Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The thing is there are a lot of decent arguments for not necessarily doing away with local, but tweaking it a bit that work really well, yet no one seems to go for those. They instead go for the magic underpants theory of:

1. Remove local
2. ?????
3. EVERYONE GOES TO NULLSEC

They never actually say why that would drive people to nullsec.

And lets put this in perspective too.

We (the goons) didn't becomes as powerful as we are by being stupid. Even our vast tech moon fortune wouldn't prop us up if we did not spend it wisely.

Remember the big Faction Warfare "feature" that ended up being ruled an "exploit" after a hand full of goons figured out how to make ~trillions~ of isk off it? We have plenty of other nerds who spend all day crunching the numbers on the best way to make isk in this game. Margin trading, speculation, anom and complex ratting, FW and mission grinding, PI and production.

In short, there isn't an isk making opportunity that we haven't scrutinized backwards and forwards. We know ratting income better than anyone, and hell, we even understood FW income better than the people who designed it.



When we say that we'll go off to highsec to make money, it isn't out of protest, or because we are butthurt over losing an argument. Nothing really changed in the past year in nullsec mechanics, but a huge number of us rolled alts and went to lowsec when the FW buff happened. It wasn't because we thought lowsec was an awesome place to live, or that we were officially moving there. It was because the isk per hour was so much better, even with a month old alt, compared to what well skilled combat characters could make ratting in our space. Some of us used to chase incursions when the isk was worth it. Datacore alts were popular before those got moved into FW.

It's just good business sense to go to where the isk is the best, factoring in time, effort, overhead, loss, and opportunity cost. Some of us make it in nullsec. Many of us do it in low and highsec. No-local raises the effort, overhead, and loss on nullsec so much, that pretty much anything outside of nullsec would be better for individual income.

I've always suggested it could be exclusively a chat system - that is, you only show up in local chat if you start chatting. If chat gets nerfed in nul, then it should get nerfed in low and hi as well, but for people that still want the social element, or use chat to do business, it is still available as a chat platform, but as soon as you "announce yourself to the system", you will appear in local.

OK, yea I knew about the outpost and people docking.

When you jump back through, do you go back to where you came from or can you choose a different system?

Ere's where it all falls down sunshine: I still know they are in local, so I know to be wary that they are there and can take appropriate measures to protect myself, which is fair, he has a chance to kill me, and I have a chance to escape. Not to mention due to intel channels it's very likely that I know exactly what ship they are in. I realize you may not be privy to these things, but they do exist, and it's fairly rare that a cloaked ship will make it through deklein without someone reporting his shiptype as he passes them on a gate. What your proposal does is gives him the capability to kill me without repercussion, nor chance of escape.

About a year ago there was a small bomber gang that tried to make it their business to crap up deklein, we knew their names and shiptypes from both the killboards and gate crossings. Myself and two other people drove them off solo. Our primary tool? Watching local movements and trends. During periods of high activity they would be bouncing between VFK and 2R. Our tools to kill them? Supertanked bait industrial and the noble ~Crusader~. When they would move up and down the pipe? We would use ratters local reports to track them and run ahead on the jump bridge network.

Now let's talk about the real downside: Every single activity in nullsec would become considerably riskier with no attendant increase in rewards. Now lets talk about what I mean by "Riskier", as long as I was willing to shift constellations relatively quickly a gang of cloakie/nullified T3's (Loki for preference) fit for DPS with one fit for boosts and one fit for scan probes and a blops BS to bridge them around could literally kill every ratter in a region and there is 0 chance that you could catch/keep up with them without local.

A well kitted cloak gang is already a ratters worse nightmare, remove them even having to afk cloak to build up a false sense of confidence and covert cyno ships onto the target after the tackle to keep them from spooking and they would become unstoppable murder machines. You would literally have to lay bait out and wait for days or weeks and hope they stumbled across the bait.

Makes u think.

We could just tell them it was implemented.

It's not like they're going to come see.

Alternatively a delayed local with sov upgrades that would bring it near enough to realtime that it would match my previous proposal. Alliances that didn't give a **** about their people would soon lose them as they fell to predation, alliances that did pay for the infrastructure, time and effort would get the tools they need to quickly dispatch enemies of ~the realm~

The adaptation will be purely psychological though. That's because any change will be statistical and your adaptation to it would therefore be opportunistic but irrelevant.

I think what you really mean is you'd get used to it.

The chat solution that Remiel suggested is exactly what is used in W-space. As far as looking for a game mechanic that will "bring players back to null", you will not find one. The issue is not with the game or the mechanics of that region. It is that kind of people that play in nullsec. This is from old school nullsecer vets and a few others after 2009 that dropped out of nullsec.

I have also read from other nullsecers here in this very thread state that it was boring in your controlled regions and not much action goes on. Well you own the entire region. No one wants to go through there because there is no reason to except troll miners and ratters and probably die since there isn't any real money in that anyways according to other nullsecers posting in this very same thread. You want to enable conflict, pack up and move on the other side of the star map and lay claim to someone else's region. I know this sounds like a completely crazy and radical idea but hey, you would get a lot more conflict. And, it's guaranteed conflict.

If you want to shoot that idea down, then just ask yourself if you can come up with something better.

Wow... you guys are bored. Maybe its nothing to do with nullsec at all. Maybe you're all just burnt out on nullsec life. Maybe you all should come back to lowsec, hisec, or w-space just to get a break and try something new. Pack everything up and just let others come in and claim. Eh, you can always just take it back later.