EVE General Discussion

I am not impressed by not-emergent-any-more players trying to stir the same soup that they know well it's not going to work, so let me be place some counter-current and constructive suggestions aimed at springing real discussions.

First of all, there is a fundamental distinction to address: PvP players and those who are totally risk averse or just not PvP players.

- The former "would like to" play in their home and live there if only it was less convenient to JC to hi sec or similar.

- The latter are not interested the least about moving out. They are just fine to stay where they are and do their little fun things. Brutally slamming them in the face with nerfs would just make them play less, drop some accounts and so on.
They are inelastic to the requests to force them out of their home.

Now I believe the latter are also a big CCP money maker so pressuring on that key is not going to achieve a lot.

What should be addressed instead are exactly the PvP players. After all it's *them* who are unhappy and what is not working are mechanics made around *them*. It's them who are the "live breathing" players after all and deserve more than some "envy shutting" nerfs done on others. It'd be once again equal to just put PvP players in the ignore corner while only putting attention on the others.


So, what's wrong and what can be done?

Easy.

Too quick and effective military force projection has caused a lot of evil to nullsec. I won't even waste time to explain it for the 100th time since people much 0.0 knowledgeable than me have covered this enough already.

A similar process happened with logistics.

Making stuff in low sec or null will never be convenient as long as the cost of moving finished products is an O(0).
Even if you had zillions of null sec cheap slots you'd just break even.
Plus the always present risk introduces an implicit, abusive cost on everything done in low and nullsec, a cost that can't be realistically imposed in hi sec unless you remove "the sec" from hi sec and make it as risky.

EvE was harder but better before the easy mode logistics were implemented.
Null sec could have been revamped to make it a quasi-independent territory but CCP for unfathomable reasons decided to leave it slave of hi sec and just make logistics a negligible cost. "A quick hack" solution that caused endless ripple effects.


- CCP destroyed wallets segregation with PLEX and we see the negative effects on markets. Whole markets manipulated by individuals making the flaunted realistic EvE economy a much lesser asset.

- CCP destroyed hi sec trade hubs segregation by killing arbitrage (allowing sharing prices for all the regions on 3rd party web sites) and this killed the diverse micro-economy tied to the various individual empires.

- CCP destroyed nullsec segregation by introducing easy logistics projection instead of implementing a rich nullsec services infrastructure.

=> CCP basically implemented streamlining and globalization causing issues we (non Americans - no idea how much they have them) live every day on our skin. Needless to say, these issues realistically suck in EvE as well.


What's needed is to revert streamlining and fix what's broken not hotfix it with some badly conceived band aid like: "nullsec services suck, let's make it easy to leave nullsec, it's going to work GREAT!"


Therefore, null sec should be improved to hi sec levels FIRST (while leaving the higher opportunities untouched) and then:

- JCs made impossible between null sec and hi sec. I said to improve nullsec FIRST because changes like forbidding JCs would otherwise kill nullsec even more.
It should be only possible to JC into major hi sec hubs so no "I JC from 0.0 2 jumps away from hi sec to circumvent the limitation".

- JF jump *finished goods* costs (a NPC tax) risen exponentially enough that it's more profitable to do stuff in the refurbished nullsec than ferrying it across.

- Removal of any super efficient mineral compression. Rorqual and that's it.

This would probably reinstate the "freighters trains of old" and this would be good as they are slow, fragile and would bring in lots of trade route figthing again.

- Jita needs to become less efficient. This would partially happen already with the diminished resupplies but it could be improved by putting hi sec only empire "tolls" on carried goods. CCP was going to refactor customs officers anyway, no?
This would make it costly to ferry stuff across empires and thus increase the local markets convenience.


Now, on the overall outlook this sounds like an awful lot of ISK sinks (made to strategically move things away from the Jita Black Hole). Who says it's a bad thing with the current state of the economy?

I do and removing easy mode cheap force and logistics projection would probably make overbloated size alliances crack and we'd have again a moltitude of smaller entities and more diversity.
This would also end the pervasive blue balling.
You will hate it, but since you don't see to care for the other players (as in quote 1) I don't care for you either.

[citation needed]

Seriously, you have absolutely no basis for this. We thrived in 0.0 before jump freighters, jump bridges or cyno beacons. We lived in some of the worst space logistically EVE has to offer and prosecuted the first Delve invasion off the back of one man and a carrier. All you're doing is increasing the barrier to entry in 0.0 and hurting smaller groups that do not have the manpower advantage we do. We're going to keep importing from highsec to 0.0 no matter the cost because it is still better than any alternative involving 0.0 production.

It should cost much more to ferry it to VFK not to build it in hi sec. If you had enough production lines created in 0.0 and ferrying a Mael costed 10M then making it in hi sec would suddenly look much less enticing.
It's exactly the topic of my post above.

I do and removing easy mode cheap force and logistics projection would probably make overbloated size alliances crack and we'd have again a moltitude of smaller entities and more diversity.
This would also end the pervasive blue balling.
You will hate it, but since you don't see to care for the other players (as in quote 1) I don't care for you either.

a) Too bad that it's exactly the olden days that grew the game, and the modern days that made it stale. Maybe searching for the factors that what made the game grow is in order?

b) In other games and even in EvE I had leaders who convinced the members to sacrifice some of their min max for the greater good. Maybe your culture brood has some downsides and you should accept the responsibility and consequences of them?

c) Sure, because you said so.

d) Balls. Don't pretend to tell a 20+ years programmer analyst that these things are impossible. It's actually pretty easy to do.

1) The "nerfs" do not have to be brutal, stop being a drama queen.
2) There's no point in trying to force them into moving into null, they're too risk averse.

1) The "nerfs" do not have to be brutal, stop being a drama queen.
2) There's no point in trying to force them into moving into null, they're too risk averse. What we're trying to do is incentivizing those who aren't as risk averse to move back to the space they've fought for, and do things there instead of in hisec, in complete safety, with less effort and less costs.

Stop talking about JCs, they're not a factor. I never move my nullsec chars into hisec to do manufacturing, I use dedicated hisec alts for this. This line of thought is a dead end.

a) How do you propose CCP implement this?
b) So make ammo, guns, mining crystals etc unrefinable? Make deep nullsec even more work to sustain for the goods which are impossible to source locally?
c) Why do you hate Jita? How do you propose CCP implement this? A "pay taxes on every gate/cyno activation" based on how much isk the content of the cargohold was worth? How would this be any less disruptive of anything in hisec?

- On a purely personal point of view I would never join GS because of:

- quite some villany exhibited by some members - they are GS supported at doing so. And I am not talking about gank miners as villany but at certain 4chan behaviors.


And then there are more objective reasons why GS as is, is a too big organization for EvE:

- you are able to make markets at whim and this is OK in WoW but less in a game where markets have a meaning.

- you outsmart CCP too much so you can gain further wealth and influence from an already hugely dominant position.

They also happen a lot more than people realize. The Forex was the first time we went public. Typically we do not, and CCP is likely unaware of the majority of our projects. This is not something only an alliance can do, though it helps tremendously. So this isn't so much a function of GS, as a function of having talented teams for each area. Others could replicate this, yet do not. Pimpin ain't easy.

Stay tuned! All of the quoted things will occur again soon.

It's hilarious that we're in a sandbox game yet you think these things are problems.

infinite hulkageddon was about suffering

market manipulation was also about suffering

but no reason not to profit off of suffering

That brings up an issue with EVE. The lack of trust has permeated beyond just tin foil hat between players in their space guilds.

CCP don't trust us
We don't trust CCP

It's always about putting one over on the other guy, be it other player or development. The fact that you feel you need to run Ops in clandestine off site rooms, shielded from big brother CCP says the mutual trust is decaying to a dangerous level of broken.