Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Accepting that these changes are coming in their current form plus or minus minor tweaks, why are they being introduced with such severe figures? Why not introduce the mechanic with minor penalties and grow them iteratively on a week by week basis until you find a level that seems right, rather than making such a massive change? At least that way you give players a chance to adjust and ease into them slowly, rather than having the world turn from day to night over the course of a single patch.

On that note, have you ever thought about having WH-esque system effects in k-space that affect jump ranges or fatigue? You could always fluff it as galactic weather of some sort and arbitrarily have some regions be easier to harder to jump through, according to the 'weather'. Given good 'weather' in the right places, you might just see fights reminiscent of pre-Phoebe EVE on a rarer basis, but on the whole you could make them a lot less common as intended.

Yeah... I just want to see an EVE Galactic weather channel ;)

Yup, nothing's final yet, and that's one of the things where there's clearly good arguments on both sides and we're happy to reconsider.



Generally speaking, yes, I think we would prefer to limit that as well if it were possible without severely mangling other big-picture goals. There's no obvious way to do so that I can see, though.

All that said, on the wider topic of capital alts, if alliances have the capability to fund many new capital alts, what's the reason they're not already doing so in the current system?



Primary goals:
- Severely reduce/eliminate B-R-style fights, on the grounds that the marginal inherent value of a 4000-ship fight over a 2000-ship fight is pretty small, and the negative value accrued by the inevitable lag more than cancels that out.
- Create more traffic traveling through gates in nullsec, on the grounds that gates are a primary interaction point, and more interaction makes for a more interesting game

Secondary goals:
- Make disruption of logistics a more viable weapon for nullsec alliances, on the grounds that it opens up a more interesting range of options for waging war, provided that we don't make the experience of managing alliance logistics too negative
- Make it more viable to intercept reinforcements on their way to a battle, on the grounds that it spreads the load out across more system, allows for more interesting tactics and allows major battles to produce a wider range of opportunities and give roles to a wider range of player types and preferences
- Incentivize nullsec leaders to gravitate towards smaller political groupings, on the grounds that doing so will lead to more regular, more interesting and more combat-dense conflicts.

The primary goals are what're driving the feature; the secondary goals are things we are hoping to effect to varying degrees along the way.



Entirely possible, and it's an opinion you share with several other designers ;) Happy to take the bet if you're coming to fanfest, it's going to be interesting to see how the cards fall on this one!



So there's two parts to this:
- First, capital ships are not intended to be solo assets, so we don't tend to weight the needs of solo capital pilots when doing balance work. That's not to say we think solo players shouldn't have them, or that we're in any way actively working against such things, but rather that just we recognize players will do all kinds of interesting things with the tools we give them, but we don't feel beholden to automatically supporting all these sorts of use cases when making adjustments.
- Secondly, if you're looking for suggestions, I'd propose either a) figuring out where your necessary cyno points are likely to be and negotiating for transit rights with whoever controls those systems, or b) find some other people to work with to try and solve your problem together (moving capitals in a group and getting a couple of scouts in nearby systems so you can move the fleet with low risk). Nullsec is deliberately set up to make working with other people the optimal solution to as many of its problems as possible :)



Yup, intended that there's only one station you can always hop back to - it's not a movement tool, it's a get-out-of-jail-free card

No changes to medical clones being set in non-medical stations, you will still be able to do that.

[quote=Jessica Danikov]Accepting that these changes are coming in their current form plus or minus minor tweaks, why are they being introduced with such severe figures? Why not introduce the mechanic with minor penalties and grow them iteratively on a week by week basis until you find a level that seems right,...

I dont have any exact figures about the populations in null and everywhere else - but stating that THE players got lost in this doesnt really hit it. If we ignore the Provi/Hero fights for a moment - where is the conflict? There is none and if there is one it gets a massive battle like B-R right away. Those battles have nothing really appealing besides for those who are in the front line of it - looking at some footage a day after is usually the better choice because the gain of it is usually just a massive destruction of some force with no bigger consequences anywhere else.

These changes will not take that away from you - it just makes it less obvious to happen constantly. So stating that we players are losing playstyle choices is a really wrong assessment. Many players like me actually see the complete opposite - that we get playchoices BACK that where taken away. Eve was always so much more than just destroying things - that was and will always be one of the core parts but its not the most important one. It is situated beside other core parts - its equal to others. Fleets like spectre, RvB Ganked and others exist because of the lack of constant skirmishes and conflicts - and even if they are great fun it is really wrong that we need something like it in the first place. The upcoming changes gives many players the chance to be part of regular conflicts again on a smaller scale because of travel restrictions for capitals. It gives players who want constant fighting a chance back to become a loyal member of a corporation/alliance again and get regular fights - instead of leaving to a NPC corp and joining free roams to cater that need.

To the first point... I didn't say that, that was a player that you've quoted there and attached my name to. Please re-check your quotes and don't misattribute things to developers that were said by players, thanks.

To the second, I don't know where you're getting the idea that this isn't player-focused from. All of those points are working towards the root value of "making the game more interesting for players". We're directly trying to constrain player activity in certain ways, yes, but with the goal of eliminating certain clearly-optimal strategies to allow more diversity and allow more players to play their favored playstyle rather than being forced into an optimal style that they do not enjoy.

(And no, "deal[ing] with them individually" in the way you seem to be suggesting, we absolutely cannot be targeting particular players or groups simply because we wish their behavior to change. That might fly in the context of a PnP RPG but it is not something we - or the playerbase at large - is prepared to countenance.)

Wrong quote

Bleah.. my bad... I' re-edit that.. sorry.



Lord TGR has pointed out, and I tend to agree with him that the main culprit here is the sov system, which allows this top heavy political impasse. Polo here works mainly in hisec, but my null alts are frankly bored with what's on the PVP menu these days. Don't get me wrong, change is needed. Much player time is invested outside of fleet activity - ships must be built so that we can blow them up :). PVP rarely pays the bills and can easily leave you in the hole. Movement expedites fun in the game and as such any drag on movement must also impact the fun. As to what the playerbase is prepared to countenance I think we can both speculate till we are blue. They will do as they will do.

In terms of game style and vision, it seems odd to me to constrain fleet movement to the point where optimal strategies would resemble those of Napoleon more than Nimitz. No game breaker here, but this is, after all, supposed to be the future. Regardless of the method, once the will to project power fails, power projection will fail, But it should always have the ability to pop up again later in the hands of fresh users. Mobility does not equal invincibility. We have seen it in history. We have seen it in Eve.

Like the best of the high powered end player content in games everywhere, Eve capitals are defined as much by their concept as their effect. Their massive power is offset by their vulnerabilities. Like Superman and kryptonite, their inability to take regular gates has both defined them and humbled them. Giving them the ability to take gates as a replacement for jump drives removes a critical stricture upon their power. Don't get me wrong, none of us will be happy now unless this is tried, but that old Gamemaster's voice in my mind is telling me it should be approached slowly and introduced all by itself .

Is CCP anti-EVE? They show an awesome video of a massive effort to take down a player built gate at FANFEST. An undertaking that is supposed to encompass EVE / DUST / VALKYRIE. Yet as stated from CCP Grayscale they are actively trying to dismantle the social groups that would make such an undertaking possible.

Seems counter productive.

p.s. Thank you for making my Carrier only good for ratting. I hope to make tons of ISK with it as it will be useful for little else.

Speaking of balance and risk and reward.... you have spent the last two years nerffing all things dangerous in High-sec. When is the high sec travel nerf or its equivalent, coming?

Its true you might not have huge cap fights but what's going to stop sub caps? You'll more likely have huge sub cap fleets.

It appears that your point is that the changes are intended to make it much more dangerous to take capital ships out of the station garage for either assault or evac. Now we have to evac our capitals before the change so that they won't be stranded during emergency evac operations later on. Null sec becomes safer for sub-capital ships and even safer for the greatly buffed Black Ops. I guess the point is to create a safer null sec for low skill pilots.

So the point is then to punish those who dedicated massive training time to capital ships and to discourage the use of capital ships for anything. The point is to turn null sec into easy mode for subcaps. I am not interested in easy mode null sec for subcaps! I have lost interest already and I blame CCP for threatening to nullify the value of my cap ship skills training time.