EVE General Discussion

No why limit him, he spends more time so his reward (isk) is greater, I am more taking about allowing people to ease into areas without requiring huge hours as to how to do this I am not really sure but it definitely deserves further study.

Unless you remove the requirement for people to be online for territory defense to happen, the causals will never be a target audience for SOV warfare. It just does not work. You need people online to form those fleets. The only way a casual can be usefull in SOV warfare is if there are so many of them that you can still always for up. This require massive numbers of player to work. Truly massive.

Which, now that I think about it, is very likely one of the drivers behind the increasing bloc sizes in 0.0

Warning: Long post and no TLDR.

I had been in null sec for a long while, and I have witnessed massive amounts of iskies made in null sec. The position that null sec needs more buff is ridiculous, yes, it is dangerous and easily disrupted but you still make crapload of iskies than you can ever make in low or empire sec. Even if you're just a low rank pleb, you can make crazy isk not to mention those in the upper echelons. If you can't there are two reasons: you don't care for isk, and all you want is to kill ****. and/or you have no clue to make iskies.

Nerfing hi-sec as proposed by some is quite literally a game killer. The stand you make is that these people are making sick money in empire, you also claim that risk/reward is much too high. But where is the evidence? L4? nerfed! Incursion? nerfed! Mining.. crap.

Let's say these might be true as you claim it to be. What you don't realize is the fact that MOTIVATION is the real reason behind so many empire dwellers remain where they are. If they don't wish to go to null-sec, you can't decrease their already rather rubbish rewards and hope that this will somehow make them interested in joining your alliance. This will cause a major upset as their values and motivations are not aligned to null sec living. Hell, you can even open a conduit like some alliances back in the day tried (and FAILED) they still didn't go. Their is no motivation, their is no will to head there. The 71% argument does make sense, hi sec empires dwellers are the lifeblood of eve, if the stats are reversed then there is indeed something wrong. Even if you take an RP view, shouldn't long established empires be MORE POPULATED than fledgling empires?

Null sec alliances are run like Mexican druglords area, rather than establishing links to empire, each has their own agenda to push. some are motivated to pvp consistently, others driven by moon goo and so on. These territories are guarded with extreme prejudice to anyone who is not blue. Entry is not as simple as it seems and there are probably lots of stories when empire dwellers have tried and got scammed shot killed. So again, where is the precedent undertaken by null sec empires apart from filling up the coffers of some guy at the top. The distribution of wealth is definitely like an MLM scheme though you can still make iskies. There has to be more offered by Null sec to make them to move.

What you propose will also cause different effects on empire dwelling. One, less iskies for them means less iskies for you. They don't have the moneh to buy your 4 billion implants or your perfectly priced pirate ships etc. Two, the economy is already inflated not just plexes, but everything in EVE is much more expensive than they were circa 2006-2011, nerfing income will make players who are dependent on PLEXes quit as they are unable to match the needed isk. Three, risk adverse players (believe me there are plenty) will most likely quit if the null sec agenda, calling unfairness.

Coming from ex-null sec dweller, I care not what your arguments are about risk/reward in null because it's rubbish. I do however care when null sec people are of the mind that people should indeed flock to get higher reward THROUGH nerfing income in empire. What I see in null sec dwelling is the same old same old, it gets boring and extremely time consuming (36 hrs CTA or get kicked out, FC screaming etc). The ball actually lies in the null sec alliance leaders and CCP on how to upgrade the dynamics of interaction between null and empire. It cannot survive on just pvp-ing alone and establishment of territory without interaction of the majority. The game mechanics should therefore allow this to happen. The question is HOW.

Well the follow on from that would have to be

How do we sculpt Null so that it is more casual player friendly?

Isn't that what makes WoW stand out so much? It's design was almost that of instant gratification across the board but it also have areas where you still have to invest a lot of time in order to clear, such as boss fights? And let's not forget that WoW doesn't have anything that is nearly as complex in terms of economy, risks, conspiracies, advanced player interactions. Everything about it's design screams streamlined simplicity and easy accessibility.

Then again, I thought that people played EVE because it wasn't another WoW-based game.

No, WoW did not start like that.
It started like an Everquest clone with characters liberally adapted from the Warhammer lore. Blizzard lost to Mythic Games so the latter won over the license (and produced the most broken and badly directed MMO of all times, shame on them!).
Blizzard lost because they could not fit into the Game Workshop high quality standards for their characters (WoW like most titles was created to appease the huge masses with crappy computers).

So they created their own "orcs and elves" and a lore and then released a 500k subs MMO featuring outdoor raid bosses, instanced 40 men hard core content and some of the most time consuming 6 men instances ever created (the Blackrock mountain one could last 6 hours+ to complete and at the time "heroic mode" instances did not even exist!).

In order to be competitive, potions etc. were needed for the first 2 expansion and it took 1 good hour a day just to farm the marterials.

I was the leader of a 160 men guild back then. We were "laid back" as in "just raiding 6 hours a day". Others would DEMAND two raids a day for up to 14 hours a day.
Despite the server being EU based we had to have an about 20 hours a day coverage, we had duplicate "officers" so to be able and field at least two x 40 men raids at any raiding time.

I had to forfeit my RL summer and Christmas vacations because just holding it all together (super hard corers create LOTS of issues and drama) was an excruciating chore.

But it all turned into VICTORY when we won and were the top of all. Reward for that effort.


Now, do you call this "casual"?

Casuals back in 2004 - 2006 were the "guys in rags" with self crafted gear who we'd farm in PvP like pigs. A warrior with a Naxxramas (T3) setup plus an healer could hold and kill 6+ of those casual players easy mode.

Then Blizzard - despite their size - understood the markets were changing.
They understood that an untapped, enormous amount of subscriptions could come if they'd make their games enjoyable to those "players in rags".

Since then, the 500k players have turned into 14M (then down once the game jumped the shark).


What could EvE learn from this? Its player base could never be as high. Space is less attractive than sword and board (but then why Star Wars and Star Treck etc. had so much of an huge fan base? Explain me please!), PvP and sandbox are hard concepts.
Notwithstanding this, EvE could have topped at 200k concurrent players. Even CCP stated they engineered the hardware for 100k+ concurrent players, this means it was in their hopes.

The EvE markets themselves are made for 100k+ players, with the current 40k-ish they are too illiquid and choppy.

As long as EvE will have "players in rags" it won't take off and at this point I fear EvE missed the train.

Actually, for your information risk and reward are not dependent on each other. Zero. Nada. Zilch. They just happen to complement each other in EVE. They MUST complement each other in order for the sandbox to work and make sense. That is a huge difference. On top of that you make an even huger mistake by using a lottery as a justification of risk vs reward. Sorry, but EVE does not work like a lottery so that example is null and void in every sense, form and shape. EVE works mainly through player actions and skill, not pure luck. The last thing we want is the luck factor dominating (ECM anyone?). Luck also has an importance of course but it's not in many places in a game like EVE.

As for risk/reward: if CCP so wanted they could make all high-sec completely risk free and have the biggest rewards. But that wouldn't be much fun for anyone now would it, specially when wealth is a primary factor in EVE?

So once again just to recap case: RISK and REWARD have absolutely NO dependence on each other. However in order to have any kind of gameplay in EVE they must complement each other where appropriate. But because they are independent on one another that means you can change them separately, which is a claim you seem to deny.

The next example you use is the 20 mil retriever making 5 bil an hour with a few trips. Here again you make several mistakes.
First of all you don't take into account the status quo of null-sec, nor do you take into account what a change of this magnitude (if I am to borrow your example) would do to the economy. Unless you haven't noticed, EVE has a bit of an inflation issue going on so the last thing we want is more isk sinks anywhere. This the first reason why reckless "increase rewards here and there" suggestions are bad.

As for the status quo: if we ignore the economic consequences, what do you think would happen if null-sec had a much increased reward from mining and such? Do you think that the sov-holders would simply let people come in and do as they please? If they are aware that more people were to enter their space in order to reap the rewards, what do you think the logical step would be for a group of null-sec dwellers that are constantly looking for PvP?
And this is the second reason for why "increase rewards here and there" suggestions are bad.

The "masters" comment wasn't really meant to slander in that way hehe. I was actually referring to the fact that newer players who want to try out null early on pretty much have no choice but to join the already existing sov holders as they have no hope in making any progress themselves. The "do whatever you want in EVE" factor is especially weak in this area. How often do you see genuinely newer players band together and take sov that they can genuinely call their own? If this actually happened in EVE then there would not be any "null-sec" is so empty complaints going on in the first place.

Whew, long post...

I don't know how this is exactly related to WoW being born "classic" and being turned into "casual friendly" but I'll tell you some things:

- WoW cannot be copied. They "got there first", .

So we've kind of got off topic but then this thread has run a lot of it's course. In all it's many pages there really isn't any serious objection to the idea null needs an industrial base of it's own which, given enough work, should be as efficient as HighSec's. And if a nerf is required to achieve this then so be it.