EVE General Discussion

Standings - the single most powerful game move

It can fold entire alliances instantly (without a single shot fired)
It can prevent access to assets
It can turn a war from hopelessly lost, into a landslide victory event
It can make your overview spaz out or be completely serene
It can inhibit people from even wanting to log in and play the game for weeks at a time.
It costs zero ISK to employ, modify or threaten entities with deletion of.
It's that 800lb gorilla that CCP will have to tackle one day.

It needs removing from the game as is and bringing back in redesigned to require ISK for alterations and be contractually agreed upon.

Yupe, I played CIV recently and Yupe, they have treaties perfected. EVE, looks like they forgot to code this part completely. Looks and feels like a placeholder. It's a valid mechanic in eve and I love it, so please fix it!

Done right, everything as it is now will be again. However both parties will have equal footing and the overpowered nature will balance itself as entities find they can't afford to be blue without some representation or value (both directions).

Just kick it about a bit in your brain. Let it fester there.

Expecting screaming from those that benefit from the curent Free mechanics and their Alts mostly.

However too late for you. Seed sown!

1 bil isk and we can be friends.

See, I made a treaty and I didn't need a fancy interface!

This is one of the few ideas I ever commented on and I just wanted to let you know that this is a dumb one.

You don't need formal treaty systems to be friends with someone the whole thing is based off of trust the way it should be. If someone wants to stab someone in the back then so be it...trust broken.

Hey, I like you, lets be friends



why should that cost money?


All of the implications you listed are not from a broken "mecahnic" but is generally from a broken "friendship", espionage, under the table deals and diplomacy. Things that EVE is built on.


Aside from station access in nullsec, all it does is label someone red or blue for ease of reference in local. Even if you took it away, certain alliances would still be hostile to each other and shoot at each other and make shady back-room deals.

Clearly your 800lb gorilla is morbidly obese. It's no wonder no one wants to talk about it.

Also, paying for blues is dumb. But if you want to pay me, I'll say I'm your friend.

OP i require that you pay me 1bn isk a month not to be podded into oblivion

Any in-game system that restricts what people can do will be bypassed via out of game tools. For example, an alliance e-mail goes out saying "These alliances are on our side and these are enemy. Make note of them and check the alliance of the target before shooting".

Yeah, that sounds like all sorts of fun.

Also, checking to see if a particular person is on a list: Is not that the sort of busy work we got computers to do for us? That's all "setting standings" is. Making a list, and having the computer tells us if a particular pilot is on that list or not.

this

e.g. it would be relatively trivial to replace cached player portraits of friendlies/hostiles with an image that shows a blue plus or red minus as appropriate

CCP was going to introduce Treaties at one point and time. It never made it to the expansion. This was recently, ie. year or two ago.

Standings work fine. I'd rather see some slight automation on them rather then some complete workaround. I'd like to be able to set standings for an agreed period of time, for example. Or put them up for contract. Tolls and mercenary work come to mind. If anything, I'd even advocate as much freedom with standings as possible. There is enough of a social dynamic in EvE itself to construct situations where you absolutely cannot afford to strain standings. The fact that this can happen anyway (or regardless) of current standings is what keeps politics in constant flux.

I have to admit I usually deal with standings on a personal/corporate level, I can't speak for the larger implications they might have on sov holding alliances. Personally I would dislike having a cost associated with standings on a corporate level, it would simply associate a cost to acquiring intel. Because that's what standings are: no more then a few uppety dudes coloring your overview to what they believe are your friends and enemies. If you disagree with what you see, become a diplomat or change your political preference.

Diplomat is a Role. Players can change corporations every 24h or fall back to an NPC corp. I'd say the tools are already available, and are working as intended.