Warfare & Tactics

Title says it all.

This is the current reality of the game in nullsec. Want to win in sov warfare? Hire Pandemic Leigon. Want to do pretty much anything else in EVE? Buy a veteran character with the required skills, buy the ships you need, and click the "I win" button.

Am I upset? Sure am.

When I started playing a long time ago (yes, this is an alt), player skill meant something. Now you only need real world money to buy the I WIN ships, and unless you are completely idiotic, you will win.

It is no wonder nullsec is dead and empty. You can only build t1 ships if you mine there yourself, everything else you need to farm in highsec or buy from Jita (because yes, you can't possibly get enough goo to make t2 ships using alchemy with a few moons because the goo is too rare to permit that. You have to go to Jita to make a t2 ship in nullsec ... which is stupid).

Lowsec is humming at the moment, but I would like CCP to admit the statistics on just how many players quit, having been lured into lowsec with the rumors of riches and exploration, only to be mercilessly butchered by veteran pvpers whom they could never beat.

Highsec ... well I kinda like highsec. Except if I want to play in carebear land, well ... I have world of warcraft, and I can be a panda.

So yes, in my view we are now in the age of pay to win. The flight of a thousand rifters rather emphasized the point - even a thousand t1 frigates were simply no threat at all to the Nyx. None. Yet a Nglafar can 2 shot kill a tanked pvp brutix.

So my thoughts on EVE at the 10 year mark?

All in all - stop playing with fluff like animations on warp gates that crash you out in the middle of jumping in nullsec, and announce you to local 2 seconds before you land, and go back to the basics. The map makes too much of nullsec inaccessible to players who are mechanically *forced* to buy things they need from highsec, jump bridges and cynos make it far too easy for tiny numbers of players to effectively control entire regions of nullsec without ever playing there, and when it comes down to it the easiest way to win in EVE is now to pay to win. That all has to change.

- jump range on capitals should be reduced 50%
- bridge range on titans similarly reduced
- jump range on carriers should be the same
- jump range on jump freighters should be 50% more
- bottleneck map points should have second and third pathways added
- nullsec should have NPC highsec areas added. Most of the players play in highsec anyway, Odyssey will never change that due to machnics forcing players to go to highsec anyway (for skill books, parts, and goo trading) - so bring highsec to null.
- review the concept of ships - capitals should NEVER be immune to 1,000 rifters, and should not be 2 shotting small ships.


PvP used to be fun in EVE. Now ... it's more fun on SiSi than tranquility.
Fix nullsec, and stop the pay to win trend, or simply give up and give us pandas in space. After all, we have Mintchip now, so the jovians really are king-fu pandas, right? I knew it.

Approve all.
There is 4 points to make pay 2 win mechanic:
1 infinite skillpoint growth
2 farming infinite powerful things
3 PLEX
4 lack of a coherent physical model (physics can open way to exploits)

And i tell you truth: it is not hard to balance, it is not a mistake.

It is by design.

So here i should ask (why not?): can i have your stuff?

Huh!? I have been playing this game since late 2007. Since that time I have been known by 33 characters. This character was bought not to long ago and a person could purchase characters when I started. NOTHING HAS CHANGED. So, in a way there is a system in place to BUY skill-points. Something that people cried about not wanting and started a big lame protest by many players in game. So you CAN "PAY TO WIN" or pay to have ALOT more advantages than others.

AS far as 0.0 being weird? You do not need pandemic Legion to own space. There are rental programs in place by many sovereignty holding entities that can help in that regard. Systems like that have been in place since I joined the game. Ultimately 0.0 is a game of choosing the right allies and focusing on what matters and has worked in the pass. For example; an alliance should have a make up of 98% PVE/PVPERS and 2% industrialist because other than massive amounts of ore that can be imported from high security space. You only need a small group of players that can do production. In fact a team of 30 manufactures can support an alliance of TEST size provided it is doctrine specific ships and they can important all the minerals. So a logistics team. Otherwise 0.0 is not a place for a industrial corporation and they are treated as such by any entity worth a grain of salt and. Industrial corporations and players are a dime a dozen. What you need in 0.0 to survive is a LARGE amount of combat pilots and the logistics and management to support that group.

Everyone likes to blame someTHING or someONE when they are not winning or having fun any more. I have noticed that people have put propaganda on a pedestal like its a thing now that is the reason entities fail. Well look at all those ELEET combat entities. That **** does not seem to determine whether they win or lose. You can put out all the crap you want and pilots can believe until they run out of isk. However, if you cannot win in combat all that PROPAGANDA means sh!t. Just another thing to blame for failure. Diplomacy is another thing entirely though. At a certain point numbers matter and the self proclaimed CFC have that. Does not mean the CFC will never lose engagements. They do so all the time. Just means you often cannot engage them in situation where they can bring there numbers to bear (guerilla tactics). For example: if a wide spread number of alliances (like 15- 30) that are R n K's size working together could do MASSIVE amount of damage in coordinated attacks. So the CFC numbers must be split to attempt to handle the threat and when that happens. Those pay to WIN HIGH SP alliances that focus on experience and skill will come out on top.

As for why null sec is the way it is. The answer is simple. ORGANIZATION! That's the big problem that everyone tries to fix with more ways to make that easier. If CCP removed the alliance system. Then coordinating multiple corporations and personalities becomes ALOT MORE difficult. Restricting the size of a corporation to 200 would also help. Believe me. A leader of a coalition has an easier time coordinating 7 alliances than what it would take to organize a coalition of the 700 corporations those 7 alliances now make up. This will not STOP organization but it will make it HELLA hard. It would split up alliances like Pandemic legion to just those corporation that are currently in them. They would still be able to work together like nothing has changed but admining that would be HARDER to do. More than anything it would turn 0.0 more into fiefdoms that fight and would make controlling all those personalities and rivalries harder to manage and contain. Reducing sov from regional control to just system control would also help. So a corp would control a constellation and call that constellation whatever it wants and have its stamp on it. I would also make holding up keeping a system serious biz. At-least the benefits you'd get from it. Not just build structure and go away but a progress bar that diminishes if you are not up-keeping the system (using it). You could put **** like jammers in those systems and really it would be about the moons and the resources in that system and it would not be effected by total sov or owning other systems in a WHOLE REGION. So system by system based system where if you aint doing sh!t there your structures go OFFLINE.

This will not get rid of ELEET entities in fact it may make them more numerous and spread all over the universe. This will not get rid of organization it would just make things like the CFC almost impossible to do kinda like monopoly laws in real life. It would also give alot of new players and entities a chance to get together with 7 or so and engage an area to take multiple systems from the 7 or 12 corporations already together in their little peaceful area. ALOT MORE CREATIVE DESTRUCTION. It might even bring down the BLOB sizes.


- killz

You make some good points. And then drown them in a sea of b.s.

It's ok, I do the same thing too on the forums sometimes. We probably share the same mental illnesses

If PL is the problem then kill it. problem solved

Eve has always been pay to win since I started playing.

Buying a character that you didn't earn is pay to win.

Buying isk is pay to win.

Buying ships and blue print copies is pay to win.

If it's something a player uses while playing, and you buy it with cash.... it's pay to win.

Now all of the players that don't actually like to play their games will argue that "no advantage, just convienice" crap.

It is possible for a new player with a new toon to die to a 40 million sp toon with 2 billion isk worth of faction ships and modules piloted by another new player, simply because of actual money. It doesn't get any more pay to win than that.

So yeah, sorry OP but EVE isn't about playing a video game. Eve is about paying lots of money, being an *******, and pretending you won something through actual skill, then getting made if someone calls you to your face.

Hell, this is the only game I've heard of where people are actually proud to abuse programming to achieve a result, and get off the game thinking they are gamers...... it's just another footnote in the decline of the quality of games and people.

I have consulted the local doctor and the consensus seems to be you are down with "bittervet syndrome". Symptoms include delusional memories of "better times", blaming features and pilots at random for imaginary problems, and coming up with contradictory solutions that "sound nice and sophisticated".

Cures include going out to take a doze of sunlight, or go to minerbumping so you can curb your thirst on some miner tears, or simply check out the new Apocalypse hull.


Just to respond to a few points:

Buying characters is not pay to win, please refer to the multitudes of alod aritcles and various killmaills for dead supers and titans for proof of that. If winning for you means being featured on the kill of the week article, then I apologize for misunderstanding. The character bazaar is one of the best features in EVE. Without it the older players will have a permanent advantage over newer players, and the motto will be "older to win". Personally if the character bazaar didn't exist I wouldn't have continued playing this game because it would have taken ages to get a character that I could play with. Just a reminder making isk is not that easy. You can have an advantage by making isk, and if you do you kinda deserve it. After all making isk takes some degree of effort / skill. And just remember having a skilled pilot or a shiny ship doesn't mean **** in this game without the proper knowledge, experience, skill, and friends.

And saying that EVE cares about "fluff" is hogwash at best. The graphical upgrades only adds to the atmosphere and make EVE more appealing. The jump feature is simple yet very well made, just watch the video for the reactions when CCP soundwave first introduced it. It is definitely better than watching a loading bar. Criticizing something like that is cheap at best. First and foremost EVE is a game of spreadsheets and windows in space, but it still looks beautiful (just take a look at the background) and there is nothing wrong with trying to make it look better (as long as it is not the priority).

A 1000 rifters still cost 1/50th of a nyx's price, the rifters were being blown up like crazy and there was no coordination, and fyi the nyx will also have a difficult time in killing all those rifters (smartbombs dont count, they could orbit at range). And a nag costs 3-4b a brutix cost 50m, and the nag cant kill the brutix unless it was heavily webbed and painted, or staying at 0 m/s (bad brutix pilot). I still don't get the argument about imbalance, especially after we had this major overhaul in ship rebalancing, which really seems impossible in the time frame that CCP hada accomplished it in.

Again this is just a few replies to let to see how ridiculous your arguments sound.

I am not saying there isn't problems in EVE or that nullsec is perfect, but the amount of changes and improvements brought in the previous expansions was mind boggling and credit should be given where it is earned. So thank you CCP for making a game like EVE, (and please remember this for my next reimbursement petition) and really OP you should chill the **** out.

I love how how the "2003" characters forget the days of 7 heat sinked alpha armagaddon, or the overpowered DD's, Supers that don't die, and titans that single blap logies with officer tracking computers, and many many more. Memory is a fickly thing.



(sorry for being especially mean today, I am at work and bored)

I am involved in pay-to-win.

People pay 10-30% markup for the stuff I stock in lowsec, and I win 100M a day while not logging in for 2 weeks while I am out in the desert licking rocks.

Does that make the game broken, or beautiful?

Sounds like "Eve Online: YOU can change the universe" for me. No jokes.

I really do not understand what is your message of your statement.

Titans, Black Ops etc. are mostly useless in low-sec FW space because fights are usually happening in plexes which mostly don't grant access to these types of ships. You naturally could use them for bash a hub or POS here or there... but they work as pirate magnet... so expect every pirate and his dog to come and fight you whenever your bring something like this out. You will probably lose it faster then you expect which means it is not cost efficient... therefore everyone just uses small stuff in FW even for hub and POS bash.