Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I would simply make it escalate with the security.


Time to update is 10 seconds divided by local security. So 1.0 -> 10 seconds. 0.5 -> 20 seconds 0.1 -> 200 seconds 0.0.. infinite seconds ....

Then in 0.0 allow alliances to deploy structures that reduce the update time. But make these structures have somethign like 100 K ehp at most so they can be raided and ganked in prepartion for attacks.

Woah! How did I miss this brilliant post? Sorry I've not come back to you sooner Erutpar thank you for summarising the argument so beautifully (word not used lightly). I'll have to go away and think before I have a proper reply for you but I'm intrigued by your proposal that Local should be the last of several features to be iterated upon.

PS adding a hopefully inoffensive precis of this post to the OP, get back to me

Some people blitz anoms for bounties, yes, but those people are generally not affected by cloakers much, since they can move about and do that pretty much anywhere.

The PVE that would mainly be affected by local changes is mining and industry. Absolutely huge volumes of ore gets mined every single day in null. Now people think "bah who cares about miners, bring on the PVP!", but the problem is that null PVP wouldn't happen without the miners and industrialists. Titans and supers take an absolute mammoth amount of time and resources, way too much to simply ship things down from high sec. So even from just that point of view, you can understand why titans are core to null PVP, since they allow fleets to cover great distances. If everyone had to travel 40 jumps between battles, they soon wouldn't bother.
And it's not just limited to those. Huge volumes of modules and subcaps also get produced in null, since they get lost in the thousands, and much of the high end minerals and T2 mats get produced in null.

As much as people like to say that the guys with 10 miners chewing away at rocks all day are evil "nullbears" and should be cleansed from the game, the other part of null, the PVP that fills the news sites simply wouldn't happen without them. And many of the local changes I've seen suggested would allow a cloaker to sneak up on a miner in null with no ability for the miner to be forewarned. If that happens then they have essentially be chosen by the mechanics to die, given no opportunity to avoid it no matter how well they can play. And that's just not good game design.

With refinement, it's workable, though it's overly complex. The main problem with it is I don't think it would change anything. People already have to spend 100% of their rime staring at local, all this would do is give them a different window to look at and some probes.

The questions I've put forward, which I'm yet to get an answer to, are these:
The removal/reduction of local is often presented in the form of solutions. But what is the actual problem that is trying to be solved? There's a lot of solutions, but no real description of the problem beyond "local is automatic" which is a statement of the current mechanic, not a description of a problem caused.

And if local were to be removed or reduced, what is the improvement? What is the benefit to the player for having developers spend time on building a new system?

These are the main questions you have to answer when looking at game design. You have to have a problem to warrant a solution, and you have to be able to clearly define what benefits the playerbase has. No matter how good a solution is, people resist change, so there will be people that are upset regardless of what changes are made. To balance that out, there has to be benefit as well, to stop it turning into a monument shooting protest from all sides.

EDIT: Oh and there are 10 capsuleers willing to mine, they just each use 10 characters to do it :D
To maintain a level 5 industry index requires 12 million m3 of ore to be mined every single day in the system that holds the index. 6 million m3 to maintain a level 4. If you mined 12 mil m3 of veldspar (120m units) every day for 10 days, you'd have enough trit (but none of the other minerals) for a single titan build (approx).

Would this be any less automatic than local currently is though? With an audio indicator it just means people could turn their speakers up loud and pay much less attention.

Even with response 22 though, it's just stating how the current mechanics work and balance. It's not stating why local needs to be removed, not stating what benefit it would have and not stating what problem it is that is trying to be addressed. He says "To fix any of these things", but they are mechanics, not problems in themselves.

The whole post essentially an impact analysis of potential changes to the various mechanics. We know the impacts, they've been discussed at length. But what's the problem?

A well set up alt in a location designed to give the fastest response will be all that is needed. EVE is a game very much about perfecting the use of the meta. If a solution can be too easily perfected, then all it does is add a time or isk sink to those who haven't.

More interesting for who?
People who engage in consensual PVP would find it harder to find each other. People who engage in PVE would get ganked more. People who engage in blob warfare would have less blobs (since FCs will be less eager to leap a group into battle without being able to effectively cout their surroundings).

It would seem to me that the only people that are likely to gain from any mechanic changes would be people who want to kill the ships of players who don't want to PVP, so gankers basically. And even their gain would be minimal, since ganking would just push more people into safer areas. Is more ganking really what you would consider "interesting" gameplay?

Even Fozzie doesn't really state what the problem is. He says "too powerful" but what is that? Too powerful for what or compared to what?

A lot of the people arguing for the changes it sounds like they just don't like local. They aren't able to articulate a problem it is causing, and they can't highlight who it is that is being disadvantaged by it, they just don't like that it's "automatic". But that's nto a reason for change. If anything things are getting MORE automatic.

For example, you used to have to fly between safes, plonking down scan probes to scan people out, as you couldn't drag them on the system map. They then changed that to the new dragging mechanic. They then changed it so you can preset their formation, and that they return automatically to your cargohold when docking or jumping. Essentially they realised that all this flying about and button clicking was annoying and streamlined it down to the new, automatic system.

A new local mechanic would be the direct opposite. They would be adding clicks and sinks to the existing system. Now if that had some profound benefit, I'd be well on board, but it doesn't. At most it helps gankers and makes other forms of PVP harder to find. And I'd be pretty pissed off if CCP wastes a whole bunch of time developing things like this while SOV mechanics themselves are still shite, POS permissions are a true nightmare (especially in wormholes where a POS is mandatory) and the research and manufacturing clickfest is still in full swing.

You realize how out of touch you are? No one will sit by your mining ship for 3 reasons. Extremely Boring, they are gaining nothing, and it will not prevent you from dieing (because a pair of tornados can always combe by and insta pop you andget the **** out).

Defense must be mae bya coordianted inteligence netwrok between several groups patroilling looking to have fights, for FUN.

I would agree with this if it wasn't for the fact that you overlook the point that sov isn't free. You say this like all there is to it is turning up in null and grinding for isk. That's not the case. Null is only as safe as it is because we work day in day out to maintain it. Null is not inherently safe. A combination of the ownership of the systems, the intel infrastructure and well laid out strategic planning allows us to maintain a high level of safety, sure, but the same could be said anywhere, and could still be said if most of the local changes proposed were put in place.

Mining and ratting aficionados generally don;t get their thrills by spending most of their time dodging PVP players. Believe it or not, a miner likes to mine and a ratter likes to rat. The preparation they perfrom allows them to do this as efficiently as they can so they can achieve whatever targets they are setting themselves. I don't know of many people that mine or rat for no bigger reason. The reason may be for a ship or for plex or even just to watch a bank balance tick up. Not many are mining hoping someone will try to kill them so they can dodge and go "woah, what a thrill".

Nope, but saying null should be forced to adhere to what you want is. Null needs PVE efficiency to survive which with your ideas they would lose. The silly thing is, you can already have what you want! You want "thrilling PVE", so go gas mining in wormholes or in hostile null space. Hop into an exploration ship and go do a whole bunch of relic and data sites all over hostile null. Or just minimise your local window.

Exactly the opposite, I want people to PvE in null. Without it null would indeed be a complete wasteland except for people mining moons and building super capitals.

PvE players do a risk-reward calculus. When it is favorable they undock; when not they don't. By removing local you'll be changing that calculus.

Same thing goes for large scale combat too. If you are thinking of dropping capitals on somebody one thing you'll want to do is be aware of who might counter drop you with supers. FCs rely on the current mechanics for intel and that includes local. If you know where people are staging/basing out of you can watch local there, if it starts to go up and d-scan shows supers and/or titans logging in that is valuable to the FC.

I think you totally missed the point here. The point is it's a game. Who is going to want to spend all day watching you mine or rat all day long? And what is to stop someone coming along and alphaing you in a volley? A wormhole could open in system for example bypassing all gate camps. So you could spend all day watching someone mine or rat for a portion of their already terrible income, only to watch them get vapourised before you can land a blow. It pretty much sounds like the opposite of fun from moment 1.