Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Problem:
Stagnancy of trade routes, piracy chokepoints, and alliance blocs. And just a lack of what could be a higher degree of strategizing in this game.

Suggestion:
Players can vote on how to reallocate a fixed quantity of CONCORD resources, with adjustments made gradually every week, with certain restrictions.


Mechanism:
Every week, each paid account (not character) can place as many votes as they want for how CONCORD resources will be allocated for the next week. Votes are subject to the following restrictions:
1) You can only vote once for each system, with either a +0.1 or a -0.1 vote. You could choose to vote for no systems, or for 80 systems, but those are your only options if you do vote for a system.
2) All your total votes must add up to a sum of 0. (for every system you want to increase in status, you must pick one to vote for a corresponding decrease)
3) You CAN vote to decrease a -1.0 system, or to increase a 1.0 system. Neither will actually happen, but you may still have a strategic reason to do this, in order to counter the opposite vote type (and thus encourage the system to remain as is)

That's it! Simple. Then at the end of every week (or perhaps a random number of days that averages out to a week, to discourage last second voting games), the game tallies up the votes, and adjusts the security status of every system accordingly. The system ALSO has some restrictions, however:

1) All of the changes made that week must add up to 0. CONCORD has fixed resources, and for every system that goes down by one point, another has to go up by one point. This ensures some degree of balance of high vs. low sec
2) A system cannot be changed via voting if that change makes it more than 0.2 points different from the AVERAGE of all its neighbors. To be clear, this is NOT a restriction on voting. You can still vote any system up or down. This is a restriction on what the system is allowed to do BASED on voting. So even if a voter knows that a system will not be allowed to be reduced, they can still vote it down, purely to prevent it from moving up, if they want to. This rule stops people from doing things like making Jita lowsec without the entire area being low-ish: it enforces somewhat gradual shifts in security across space.
3) A system cannot end up lower than -1.0 or higher than 1.0.
4) In order to satisfy all of the above rules, the actual changes are made in a series of loops, with a priority given each loop to how lopsided the voting was. For example, let's say the voting goes as follows on a given week:
System A) 60% vote down
System B) 75% vote down
System C) 80% vote down
System D) 61% vote up
System E) 90% vote up
System F) 62% vote up
System G) 53% vote down

The highest margin of victory gets addressed first. So System E gets first priority. IF system E can be adjusted up without violating rule 2 or 3, then it get gets stored in a temporary holding slot for the moment, and we continue on look for the highest priority DOWN vote in the list to balance it. If it cannot be adjusted without violating rule #2 or 3, then we skip it entirely (for now).

Let's say that system E CANNOT be changed yet without violating rule 2 or 3. Okay, so we skip it and move to the second highest priority: system C, with 80%. Let's say that system C CAN be adjusted legally, so it gets stored for a moment in memory.

Now we look for the highest priority UP vote system to balance it. System F is the highest priority, since it is UP. Assuming it doesnt violate rule #2 or 3, then this one gets paired with System C, and both are officially changed. C going down and F going up. These two are removed from the list, meaning we now have:
System A) 60% vote down
System B) 75% vote down
System D) 61% vote up
System E) 90% vote up
System G) 53% vote down

Now we start all over again. So we start with System E again. It is now reconsidered, since the last change might have made it legal now according to rule #2 or 3. Let's say it now IS legal (maybe F was one of its neighbors, and now the average is high enough). So then we look for the highest DOWN vote to pair with it, which is B. That's legal too, so we pair off E and B, and change those, then remove them from the list. now we have:
System A) 60% vote down
System D) 61% vote up
System G) 53% vote down

System D now has priority. Let's say that it DOES violate rule #2 or 3, however. We skip it, and move on to system A. It is legal, but there are no more remaining UP voted system to pair it off with. Thus, this week's security adjustments are now OVER, and none of these remaining three systems get changed at all, since there are no possible legal pairs.

End result:
1) The total sum of security statuses remains equal from the week before
2) No system changed by more than 0.1 in any direction
3) A gradual slope of security status is still maintained throughout the galaxy, with no harsh or unexpected cliffs or silly manipulations of places like Jita.
4) Yet despite all of the above,all players still have a serious strategic and competitive tool to help further their personal gameplay styles.



Note: Most of the really complicated stuff above is done automatically by the EVE server computers, while the PLAYERS' roles are very very simple (you can vote on nothing or everything. All you have to keep in mind is adding up to 0). This is very much on purpose. it makes it easy on the players, but still with a fair and balanced and cautious outcome each week.

Jita goes low sec over night.

SO, pretty much every 0.5 system goes lowsec overnight? And for balance, the nullsec of whoever the CFC and HBC don't like much this week gets boosted above the point of profitability?

i think pple forget how menny carebears we have in this game these days, highsec cant go low that quickly... and i find this idea incradibly interesting.... really, even if there is a way to completely get rid of high sec.. though that would mean everyone in the game would of wanted low sec... i love this idea tho, it makes for a mobile map that changes over time, i mean in 10 years jita and all its best fast and most moving route is gonna stay the same since the shortest ways to other hubs.. but this would change everything....

though there should be an easy way to just vote in each system you go.. just like one click and you can vote.. dont want to add a pain to vote for each systems you go in.. and the fact of being able to seperate hubs would be horible for some.... pretty nice when thinking about it :D and would probebly make seperate econnomy between these seperated highsec space...

gosh my mind is simply grinding around this nerdynest.... nice though... and you could technically move all highsec systems lowsec by moving all nullsec systems lowsec in your ... mechanics, but thats good since the players might of wanted that.... though they dont, i would not be impressed to see more highsec systems pop up carebears trying to build them selves empires...

Good post mate.... but it would take more thinking then that to make sure it makes sense though .. it does sound really nice.. for everyone i think...

If it does, so what? It takes at least a couple of months to do so realistically, if it ever does happen, and everyone will know it is happening during that time, and have every opportunity in the world to relocate safely. What's the problem?


How many people are actually in these coalitions? Unless they have 20,000+ accounts all answering to a single call, they would not be able to do anything they wanted...

I think you're greatly overestimating the number of PEOPLE in these null alliances. They may very well have a huge proportion of the RESOURCES, but not the people.

And furthermore, coordination and organization don't necessarily mean that much with this idea. It should be fairly obvious to most players what pattern of voting is in their own personal best interest, without consulting with anyone else. For instance, if you're a pirate, you know you should vote down the lowest belts of systems in between major trade hubs, while making sure not to let them stay below 0.1. It's not like pirates all have to get together and have a meeting and agree on this. It's just obvious. And the obviousness of such strategies for specific types of people significantly reduces the voting power of groups like CFC and HBC, because carebears and independents and small gangs will already be working as one, more or less, and thus easily rivaling the numbers of the blob, even though they're not actually one entity.

I think a few people in this thread are misunderstanding how the mechanism is intended to work.

You don't have to VISIT the system or "live" there in any way to vote on it. It is simply a function available through the star map, which you can activate remotely from any armchair anywhere. You can sit in Jita all week long and vote on every single system in the galaxy without going anywhere, if you want to.

hmm... i personally think you should be able to upvote or down vote only once in the system, with a ltitle butotn on the screen... not from anywhere

i think this is good isnce you don't need to live there you just need to of "been" there, maybe you could add skills on that like market skills you know where you get to do something remotely but the fact that you took the time to go there is somewhat better i think... and everyone in the game makes more then 80jumps a week.. i guess its another way to think about it

could i ask you why would you let pple vote remotely? would that not cause problems? same has remote market would (making prices world wide is lame, and so should worldwide voting)

The reason for universal, remote voting is to prevent abuse from power blocs. And it is absolutely essential to this idea working AT ALL.

For example, goonswarm sits in their defended null space and camps all their gates with their vast riches and resources, and nobody is able to easily visit their systems. Thus, they are completely and trivially protected from any voting hurting them. While at the same time, they can easily visit anywhere in the current empires, and can thus vote on everything in high sec.

In other words, your system would allow people currently in power to vote anywhere, while people not currently in power would only be able to vote in their own areas. That would accomplish nothing other than to simply hand the major coalitions everything they want on a silver platter, with absolutely no serious competition.

Non-universal voting would also give an unreasonable and unfair advantage to people who move around a lot as part of their playstyle, and who have the skills to move aroudn more in the future. Why should I have less voting power if I am a trader who operates via contracts with others, versus if I am a combat pilot with covops skills trained? None of that makes any sense.


Universal remote voting makes it clear-cut and fair all around, with no special voter manipulation or special advantages to anybody. One subscription = one set of equal votes. Only logical way to do it, and only truly competitive way to do it. Any sort of local voting would amount to nothing more than basically "Goons win the game in 2 months flat."

Oh yeah, for sure. If you want to add a REDUNDANT UI button that lets you conveniently vote in a system you are passing through, then that's fine. As long as you still have the ability to vote anywhere and everywhere.

Just to be crystal clear though and to cause no confusion, It would also have to make a tutorial box pop up the first time you do it, informing you of exactly how to vote in other places, and the reasons for doing so.

Additionally, there should be a little button/icon RIGHT NEXT TO the "vote in this system" button, which always stays tied to the "vote here" and which shortcut links you to the entire star map with the voting system pulled up and ready to go.



That's an awesome idea. Yes. Also, add a couple of statistics options to the starmap to show colored blobs that indicate the recent history of that system's voting-related changes. Like, one option that shows which systems have been changing the most (most volatile), and another one that shows which direction they have been changing in. Or both at once (size and color of blobs each carry information)


It would never be in your best interest to "throw away" your downvotes somewhere random. You would want to use them to do things like vote down on other systems that people are voting up (the ones that are different than what YOU are voting up), so that your preferred region has a higher margin of victory and is more likely to change.

It's hard to give an exact, concrete example, without having a map of the recent voting history, or whatnot. Your strategy would depend on the trends you see from the recent past, combined with your desired outcome. Not just one or the other.

1.) I think there is an inherent genius in forcing people to visit a system they wish to vote on. Frankly, if you can't fly to that system, you have no business in altering it's security status. This is even more so for nullsec, where concord doesn't have any say in the sec status of a system, and doesn't play any part in the security of a system.

2.) This system really will alter the map of nullsec and lowsec in a negative manner. Currently, the lowest security regions are typically the farthest from empire, making them have the longest logistical supply lines... With your current system, people will just change the space they have to be the "best," thereby creating idealized empires next to highsec with low-security dead-end pipe ratting systems... This seems like a very bad idea in general, as players will generally diminish the value of hard to reach space to improve the low-hanging fruit.

3.) Your system creates what I like to call dead-zones. There are generally low-populated, generally low value that people will dump their excess points into to boost the areas they want. Since no-one utilizes them to a significant level, the dead zones remain very dead. I actually think this system will destroy lowsec, as peopel strive to make systems nullsec or highsec...

4.) Nullsec wins this game: There are areas that people will universally bump one way or the other. For example, most people would think to boost jita, which would absolutely retain a huge abundance of +1's to keep it's security status high. And for all the +1's pumped into jita, they will dump their -1's into nullsec. There are more nullsec systems, and in general there is much more room for nullsec to fall than highsec, so nullsec overwhelmingly wins. To elaborate: most nullsec systems are between -0.0 to - 0.5, and can easily be lowered by 0.5 or more. Most highsec systems are 0.5-0.8, and can only shift .25 or less before ceasing to be highsec. This, coupled with more nullsec systems, and more value in nullsec systems, implies that eventually highsec will be diminished and concentrated. I realize there are more highsec "residents", and that you can use throw-away votes (like suggesting a -1.0 system be lowered), but that wont' matter until highsec becomes organized. In general, nullsec is far more group-minded and far more organized. Additionally, while highsec has numbers, those numbers are greatly inflated by nullsec alts.

In general, I just think this idea opens up a very large can of worms, unless put in check. Appropriate checks and balances include limiting the nullsum sec status changes to regions.