Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Since you are one of the CSMs I voted for the last time, may I ask you a few questions?

Why was the new sov system designed without all the wonderfull feedback from a few years back?
Why are smallholding and new structures (new POS system) not a fundamental part of it?
Why is it just a very odd system that is not intuitive and doesn't seem natural?
Why not screw sov and just let people live in null how they want and fight about dominance in a system and not about sovereignty?

You never have to say you voted for me or not, I would answer either way.

I believe some of the goals set were based off of previous feedback. As I recall people wanted some change, now they have it.

I prefer to skip the second question for now

I actually find most of this fairly intuitive. The devil is in the details like entosis fit

With no sov how would you improve on your own space? How would you set borders (we would set borders, you know that)

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And even that doesn't really work, since if an alliance has a given primetime that means the bulk of their PvE activities are likely to be taking place in that timezone as well. AFK camping a system during the hours when nobody is trying to use it in the first place is not going to do anything about the indices.

I fully support these ideas.

No.

So I responded to the survey already, but I've refined my thoughts a bit more. I wrote a blog post about it and set it up on reddit, but it didn't do too well. I presume that's because of the wall of text. Regardless, I thought I should post it here as well so Fozzie can get a look at it.

http://evesp.blogspot.com/2015/03/fozziesov-fozzietime-and-concurrent.html

Apparently it's too long for the character limit of this forum :(

Read your blogpost, and overall it's good. However, there are two aspects of it I'd like to address:

1. Switching to or adding an LP-based income earning system in nullsec sounds good in theory, but it would backfire, and fast. As nullsecers start earning LP hand over fist, the value of items available in LP stores would plummet, lower than it already is. It also increases the reliance of nullsecers on highsec for income, as you would (likely) have to go to highsec to turn in that LP. Nullsec would have to pay large amounts of LP to make the risk worth the reward, and that reward would likely quickly plummet to lower-than highsec values, so you might as well grind in highsec, eh?

2. I don't think you intended to, but your blog post sounds like you are completely brushing off the concerns of those in the Australian time zone, and I think many (not necessarily you, but maybe) people do not realize that the concerns of the Australian time zone apply to virtually all small groups regardless of time zone. For those who don't want to read your entire blog, I quote below the relevant portions:



The issue isn't moving around for content - many in the Aussie time zone routinely roam far and wide for content, and quite a few of us like that. Roaming 30, 50 or more systems to find someone to fight is not unusual at all for my alliance, nor is it unusual for the public roams I run during AU TZ. And if we're not in the mood to travel far, we just head to Isengard, aka Brave Newbie space. They'll always undock for a fight! My AU TZ brothers in the big boy alliances often get to throw their big boy toys at other big boys to initiate sov battles, or even just harrass and troll, and they are highly important to the continuing defense of their own space, holding off others from attacking during the quieter AU hours.


There is a high likelihood that there will be VERY, VERY FEW systems for AU TZ to ATTACK, that the strategic and tactical benefits of having a strong Aussie time zone force in large(r) alliances will be negatively impacted, that we will be relegated to janitorial duties, cleaning up the mess left by the other, larger time zones, instead of how it is now - where we can actually start the fight that is finished by our numerous US/EU brethren. Aussies in the big alliances won't hardly have to spend time defending, ether, since their primetimes will likely be set during their alliances' US/EU times. That means less content for AU TZ.

In other words, many in the AU TZ are concerned - rightly so - that we will cease to be relevant.

Your thoughts that we will congregate to the areas where China, India, Japan, and Russian players are active is getting the point, but not the perspective: WHY should ANY group be forced to only play with, attack, or otherwise engage with ONLY those who happen to be in their same time zone?

This applies to all alliances in all time zones: Why should ANYONE be forced through an artificial mechanic to only attack those in their own time zone? Please do not misunderstand my emphasis on attack here - I agree and strongly support the fact that the defenders get to decide what time the defense occurs. I do not want nor do I believe that the defense of a system should be on the timezone terms of the attacker.

We are moving from a system where the initiation of taking sov is done on the terms of the attacker and the defense of sov is done on the terms of the defender, to a system where attacking AND defending is done on the terms of the defender. That is whacked out of balance.


Somewhat but not entirely hypothetically, we could end up with a nullsec where the overwhelming bulk of the north is owned by US TZ alliances, who eventually blue up and become a coalition, and the overwhelming bulk of the south is owned by EU TZ alliances who eventually blue up and become a coalition, and between jump fatigue and primetimes never bother attacking each other. Plus two lovely little pockets of vibrant activity called ProviBlock and Brave. (N.B. I wish all of nullsec was like Providence and Catch right now - so much fun! ♥)

You know, what we have right now. Just ever more deeply entrenched and even harder to take over.

I understand and, somewhat reluctantly, agree that there does need to be some sort of mechanic in place so that sov holders are not under constant clean-up duty, spending 24/7 chasing nodes, but a hard, alliance-wide 4 hour limit is not the answer.

The answer to the inflexibility problem is to make it more flexible. Let unused systems become ever-increasingly more vulnerable. Let alliances set constellation-wide timers. Or Mike Azariah's idea on p4 about letting alliances willingly increase their primetime hours in exchange for bonuses - brilliant!

In other words, risks and rewards.

This. +1000.

Wrong question: the question should be how much should any player commit to capturing your space. Right now you need a lot of expensive toys or a lot of mates. BNI proved that sov is conquerable by anyone with the will and the mates. New sov will be boring FW style solo play for the most part in cheap disposable ships. That shows a distinct lack of commitment to me.

My thought is that the current plan to have a 4 hour window every day needs to change. Many of the reasons have already been mentioned.

Instead, the 'prime time' would be better if it occurred less frequently but for a longer period. Even better would be too remove the idea altogether, and instead allow the defender to set when the capture event occurs similar to the way pocos function, but instead of setting a time, you would set a day of the week. This would give players who may be busy during the week for example the ability to still capture and defend when they have free time.

To attack the structure initially could be made harder this way, with the entosis link needing to be applied for more time in order to trigger the timer for the capture event.