EVE General Discussion

Rewards for big scale events could include limited ship blueprint drops. Not just any limited ships, but ones which host unique traits of particular fleet or personal value.[/quote]
so like the sansha carrier, or the blood raider capitals in the newest incarnation of group content?

The big problem with a lot of your suggestions, beyond the fact that most of them already exist in game in one form or another. and the only real difference with what you suggest is that you want them to be more exclusive, "one shot" kind of deals...
there are multiple issues with that, first off, if its a one time thing then that means that large chunks of the player base are going to be cut off from participating.
I remember back when they had the live events team, and it was awesome and I loved hearing stories from it. but despite wanting to participate it seemed that the events always happened when I was at work.
secondly comes the reward balancing, if the potential rewards are "meh" then most people won't even bother with it, since its a fairly major disruption to their day to day lives to participate. if the rewards are good, then the added exclusivity of them makes them a big beacon for major players to take control of the event and prevent anyone else from getting those rewards. but probably won't be enough, (unless the reward is TRULY broken and unbalanced) to spur the empires into any meaningful war.

just look at the blood raider EC's, no major wars have broken out over them, and even if it was a one time thing its unlikely things would have played out any differently except for even greater levels of salt and butthurt over "goon favoritism" the fact that it is recurring does mean though that if people really want to experience that content they have the chance too. Either by joining up with goons, or if for whatever reason that isn't something your willing to do. just wait a year or so until the borders shift again and sign up with whoever holds that space at that point.

one time, major events might be fun and have the potential to be really cool. but only for the small number of players who can actually participate in them, and it isn't a good use of developer resources to spend time on something that only a fraction of the player base even has a chance of experiencing.

Where is this stagnation? In null? Then fight! No? So why are you complaining?

If boredom is not enough to make you do something about it, you are not really bored.

I agree. When you are designing a integrated and living game like Eve how you implement something will influence the game larger than the mechanic. Introducing uber-Rorquals and nerfing them back probably has resulted in much more daily mining today than if they were introduced as they are now or in a weaker form and then buffed up. Players rushed out and trained/bought characters and ships, organized mining systems and so forth and this change in behaviour will be felt long after the economic effects have normalized.

CCP knows this too. This is part of why Upwell structures are so safe. They want to influence player behaviour by skewing the game such that their big push for a new feature is embraced by players rather than ignored. The danger is though that some players will be fickle and resist future change when CCP tries to restore some balance (see: Rorqual tears) and possibly even rage-quit over them, while others who suffer from the temporary imbalance might just leave the game or significantly change their game play in some probably irreversible way (see: increasing organization and entrenchment in the trade hubs of highsec mercenaries with each nerf to wardecs).

It's a tough gig and I don't envy the Eve game designers. It's why they probably should stick to a policy of increasing sandbox behaviour and maximizing player freedom rather than purposely trying to manipulate player behaviour with changes by limiting player freedom with gimmicks designed to produce "Good Fights" or adding imbalanced inducements to do whatever content they just spent effort on an want to be considered a success. Maybe it made sense to shower ISK on the first Incursion runners to get them to organize and experiment with the new content some team at CCP spent a year making, but now, 5+ years later most of those developers have left the company. There is no need to convince the higher-ups that you did good work by building something the players are using but yet for whatever reason CCP has decided to skew the sandbox by leaving those gross rewards in the game.

Will 100% jump drive safety via Upwell structures be removed now? I don't know and get less sure of that each month it is left in the game as more and more player come to rely on it and take it as an entitlement to move their ships at no risk, and the pirates that specialized in preying on moving capital ships find less and less content and move on to other things or quit the game. As you say Teckos, emergence takes hold and fixing something is not just as simple as returning a mechanic to a previous state, and this is more true the longer a changed mechanic stays in the game.

I guess this is drifting off-topic so I'll try to bring it back. CCP made a decision to favour small-scale conflict over the big wars in nullsec with Aegis Sov. This was done intentionally so you can probably just say that stagnation of the big blocs is "working as intended" and stop hoping for a massive war to provide you with content. Join up with a small group and carve out some sov for yourself and enjoy some meaningful content, or join a big bloc and skirmish with these little groups or other blocs mostly for fun. Or look elsewhere to make content in lowsec, highsec or a wormhole. Or if none of that appeals to you OP, then leave the game.

The insidious and eroding safety/income creep I am less sure is intentional. Opening the mineral floodgate seems completely intentional perhaps as part of a possibly misguided attempt to lower the cost of capital ships, but much of the rest of it comes from CCP developers pulling too hard on levers they should probably leave alone for the greater health of the game in an attempt to influence player perception/behaviour. They really need a specific person in the position "New Eden Economic Planner" who can rein in other development teams when they choose to give away too many resources or give too much safety to make their pet project a success, and who does this promptly and early before problems can grow to seriously affect the economy, but with even broader authority and responsibility to balance destruction and production in a way that promotes player conflict and interactions.

Stop talking "entertain me".

Make something about that. Shoot them!

I am content with how the game is. I am not at all annoyed that CCP went with smaller content over larger content, especially given I have only ever daytripped in nullsec. I find the whole thing an interesting study in game design. I am perfectly happy doing my thing and playing the game as I find enjoyable, although I do sympathize with players who enjoyed be part of a large war like the OP.

But I do find it a little sad that a large number of players, and even a number of game designers don't see how predictable decreasing player counts and increasing stagnation is when you start eroding the competitive game making everyone richer and safer. It is completely predictable that if you make players safer or even immune to attack, there is going to be less activity in a game where we are each others' content. It is equally predictable that if players can gather all the resources they want in their current space, or in safety somewhere else (like say highsec), there is no incentive to take space from each other. The combination of wealth and safety means there is no game reason to invade or conquer other space other than the fight itself which players won't usually go for unless they have nothing to lose, or know they can't lose. I guess the strategy is to make everyone so rich and safe they won't notice a loss as everyone has so much and therefore players might fight more, but really all this does is kill any reason to directly compete with the other players and undermine the meaning and satisfaction of any win you do have.

Eve was never only about the fight itself despite what you might have gathered from the last years of development. It is primarily suppose to be a universe simulator where we fight over resources and power, not do a bunch of pointless (often AFK) grinding in complete safety only to emerge to fight consensually for honour. Making it so losses don't hurt is like wrapping some prize fighters in layers and layers of bubble-wrap - it may be fun for a while to wail on your opponent but eventually you both will realize how pointless it is when no one can be hurt or lose. And none of this even considers the effect all this excess wealth and safety will and is having on the large number of players who log in to build stuff for the market who will have less and less reason to keep playing as people continue to not need the stuff they build and collect.

Please don't take these posts as a claim that "Eve is dying". Eve is still going to be around for a while, and there are still many places where you can compete with and have an impact on the other players. But this is how Eve is going to die: smothered by safety and excess resources that result in crippling overproduction and kill the reasons to login for industrialists and aggressors, and not in some orgy of destruction that causes everyone to rage-quit because too many imaginary assets were lost. We are already a way down that road and there are no signs anyone wants to take the steering wheel away from those who think the path forward should be to gut the competitive game even further rather than rebuilding it.

Developers. It's them who choose what to add and what to remove.

As i see it, such changes need introduction of procedural generation in PvE in the form of random events across New Eden. These events should be unpredictable so it may give some work to explorers - REAL explorers, not "exploration guys" as we know 'em now.

Events should be ranged from small-scale or even solo to big ones - just as OP discribed - and require various skills, like combat, scanning, even mining, to be interesting for every player.

Such events are not something new in MMOs, but they make environment to be more "alive".

There are some very interesting points made in this thread. For those of you who say 'go and make PvP happen', it isn't such a simple scenario. In order for meaningful PvP, there must be something worth fighting over, a prize to compete for as it were. The problem is that we all have everything we need in our little spaces, there's nothing unique to be found elsewhere, so why bother beyond a consensual 'honour' match?

I have to agree with the view that the perpetually available resources in the forms of missions, anomalies, high sec incursions and regenerating belts contribute to s sedentary lifestyle. With everything available in one system there's little reason to invade a neighbouring one, particularly considering the repercussions that may have on farming your own turf.

To be clear I am not pointing fingers at 'carebears'. Preferred play style is absolutely not at fault here. The raw truth is that PvE and PvP oriented players need each other and are inextricably linked in their endeavours. Without PvP the market stagnates and PvE players find little reward for their endeavours. PvP pilots need PvE players to oil the gears of war. War consumes resources and transiently interferes with the activity of local PvE players which, together with product consumption, keeps the market buoyant. Such is the nature of EvE: PvE and PvP players rely on each other in an often tenuous relationship.
Where I point the finger is at the lack of incentive to consume products in competition over valuable resources. Without this competition the game becomes a less engaging place for PvE and PvP players alike.

Regarding the currently existing events, I would say that they are a good thing but grossly underwhelming and, perhaps more importantly, unrewarding for the average player. Having a big shipyard to shoot that may possibly maybe drop a single high skill hurdle ship isn't such an appealing prospect to the average player. I would far rather see events which drop special items or sub capital ship blueprints as the norm. These events would preferably be accessible to the masses with objectives spawning in small complexes, asteroid belts or scan down sites.

I think the idea of procedural generation is an interesting one. Certainly procedural generation of event locations would be necessary to ensure fair distribution across the galaxy and of course some procedural generation in complexes (including ship types/size encountered), asteroids or whatever may apply to the event.

I understand the concern regarding superpower alliances moving in to take over big events. This sort of activity would be expected and is of concern. However, these alliances (who need not be named) are already of extraordinary power in EVE to the extent that only overwhelming numbers can take them on. At present these alliances are highly stable in holding their grasp on the universe. Sitting pretty on their piles of ISK does nothing to change this. Perhaps their political stability may waver if they were forced to compete more across the galaxy, though I can not say. Either way they are already in control so no worse outcome is foreseeable.