Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You fail to address why people are not going there today.

Here are a list of reasons that no stick will overcome.

1. Too much drama
2. Too much of a time commitment
3. Real life precludes deploying to places where assets my be lost/locked out. Related to #2
4. Null fights are not to their liking. Dodging the hotdrop, bubble factors are not enjoyed by all.
5. Alliance CTAs can get overwhelming and annoying
6. Logistics is a pain in the ass
7. F1 monkeying is not to everyones tastes

tl;dr: THEY HAVE MORE FUN IN THE AREAS YOU WANT TO TRASH

So, then, you gamble the fate of eve on maybe getting new people in at the same time as making those who hate sov null, quit. That is not a smart play.


Now, if you want to have a debate about adding a series of carrots to get people to sov null, that might be a more fruitful conversation but will not be as useful as fixing the biggest problem plaguing eve right now: There is no reason for people to go to war beyond staged, lolwars. Fix that, then you fix eve.

So when all these lesser guys leave, because I guarantee they will quit in swathes, what is your plan? Plus nerfing WH income screws the risk reward paradigm, don't believe me - try taking local off the nullbears.

None of your points, none, address any of mine. There are a plethora of reasons why null bloc war isn't for all the players yet there are many who enjoy other aspects. If you really think they'd keep playing after a decimation of their part of the sandpit, I have a bridge to sell you. Likewise if you think an influx of newbros in their mighty rifters are all going to take to line member, F1 monkey "can't shoot him, him him or her, no blues, only scheduled 'content' of farming newbs like yourself is allowed" you have another thing coming.

People in null have no reason to fight today, NONE. Punt everyone to null and what happens? Nothing. Because there is no reason to fight. When was the last big war? When was the last time CFC was challenged, or it engaged a credible threat itself? It doesn't happen.

Null has no conflict driver, none. Adding scrubs to pop for lols in camps will not change this.


In summary, you are making the common mistake of dictating what other people must find fun. That's never worked in the history of humankind. I'd be as well trying to convince my cat to eat cabbage.

But you are facing the wrong direction.

Like many said, there is a plethora of reasons why simply removing all content BUT nullsec, will not, contrary to your constant insisting, generate any more content for nullsec and fill the rest of the player with desire to actually participate in it.

The carrot which becomes apparent, in itself is not appealing enough to actually go to nullsec.

Part of the reality of EVE is that to actually do things well, in nullsec no less, you need tons of alts. You can do stuff on one char, but the more you have the more autonomous and less reliant on other people you become.

This post describes another just few of the many of issues. The problem is not mechanical alone - it's behavioural. I live in lowsec and play FW, and when I hear about null it's exciting and all, but these reason are why I would never consider actually joining a null bloc, unless maybe Goonswarm, because they actually tackle these issues and make player involvement in these activities somewhat palatable.

We're not mules and carrots don't work on us. We like entertainment because that's what games are for. Nullsec is hardly entertaining when looking at it. Maybe my PoV would change if I played it. But nope.

Or a series of kickass (competely staged) big RvB style events in high sec.

We'd need to rely on e-honor to not have people **** move/third party them but for the good of eve, maybe...? Something that could rage back and forth for some hours.

Get some spam in local about what it's all about, get people involved. Hell even hand ships out.


Hell maybe they could start folks off gently and have some drifter shennanigas (but less lethal) to get cracking with.

Perhaps too highly artificial but still could get some people the taste for it,

Excellent summation.


No it's not. Most people are willing to accept that tastes vary, and that a sandbox game should be able to accommodate lots of play styles.

You could not pay me all the titan kills, all the super kills, all the ISK, power, and whatever else supposed derived importance you presume sov-null grants for me to ever consider it as a primary mode of play. The fights are boring, the actors predictable, the day to day experience not worth subbing for. You have a lot of explaining to do in terms of those named regions which punch above their weight in content creation vs available income, and the other way around as well.

Here's what most articles on sov battles actually read like:

Entity A 'dunks' entity B, for Y ISK in damages. Both fleets used the most boring bet-hedging comps possible, which were no fun to fly for either side, and the amount of ISK lost is barely worth mentioning on this scale considering the entities involved. No individual pilots lost anything thanks to SRP. The map didn't change at all unless it was against an aspirant or smaller entity which only are allowed to exist for farming purposes - all meaningful conflict has long gone extinct at this scale.

Exactly. Boring as can be. Now compare that to Low, NPC null, or WH battles where people actually put their assets on the line, and actually have a personal stake in the fight, resulting in an actual story and fun gaming experience. If you are actually trying to paint sov-battles as gladiatorial spectacles, I would hate to be forced to watch this no matter how much bread I was given - there are literally screen savers more exciting to watch than the average blob v blob battle. Now small gang? There's some actually exciting fights, where the skill of more than just the FC may actually matter.

Sov is not for everyone. You want to help newbies, you give them choices in a sandbox. What a novel idea.

The giant nullsec fights were terrible PR for EVE, because everyone who read those articles thought they could just roll up a character and roll in to thrilling real-time mass combat, you know, the way nearly every other PVP game works. Those people left when they saw what the game actually is, and doubly so in sov null. The subscription count spike around those battles was inflated by people re-upping dormant super accounts, which then counted for part of the subscription sag when they were unsubbed as unnecessary again. The nearest equivalent to a huge, accessible war is RvB, and how are they doing these days? Or BRAVE, but guess what? They're in low sec now because they have a particular set of goals, and low sec is much better suited to them than sov is. Sov null makes very particular demands, and those unable or unwilling to meet those demands will either find a better-suited part of the game, or leave. And, by the way, how's BRAVE doing these days?

PR that doesn't sell what the game is really like is worse than no PR at all.

I know it's the fashion to talk about how ~sov is dying~ because of Aegis, but there's no evidence of that yet (nor, to be fair, is there firm evidence that it's a success). What's provably suffering is high sec. L4 rat kills are way down. Even incursions are down. It's at the point where the usually confident CCP Fozzie was left stammering when asked about the data. Personally, I think the nullsec buffs, and the new roles that miners and ratters have in securing systems, were enough for a lot of people to retire a lot of high sec ISK-making alts. But there could be more than that going on, and that would be bad news for CCP. Like it or not, high sec is CCP's bedrock and still the engine of its famed in-game economy.

Furthermore, the cries for incentives to fight miss a critical point: anything that's worth fighting over is also worth negotiating over, which means that a more powerful and established party can get what it wants with no logistical overhead, no asset risk, no cat-herding over Jabber, and greatly reduced odds that an opportunistic third party will complicate things. If they can do that, why would they consider the alternative? There's a saying that war is just diplomacy by other means, but at least in the context of EVE it would be more accurate to say that diplomacy is just war by other means. Given that the burden of planning and executing campaigns in sov null reliably falls on the shoulders of the same handful of people every time, and given that it's a serious burden to bear, I don't blame any of the alliances for talking first. If the alternative was fitting a thousand Napocs and schlepping them (the equivalent of) 30 jumps while listening to everyone else enjoying World of Warships on comms, I'd do exactly the same thing.

What CCP is doing is pivoting from making a game that inflates its sub count with alts, encourages huge groups run by a handful of people with real responsibilities and second jobs leading masses of people who just do what they're told, and which creates amazing but misleading headlines, to making a game that more people can get into and enjoy more quickly and more certainly. This involves a certain amount of feeling around in the dark, because there are no games like EVE and no examples for CCP to follow, but it makes a lot more sense than the previous strategy.

Stop being broken record, Feyd.


Claim with no backup, refuted previously.


Which is main selling point of EVE. I mean, it's what brings money in the long run, not trial accounts that get abandoned in 2 weeks.


"This is EVE" also shows explo, mining, industry...
It also shows BB shenanigans which is something HS/low/WH people involve themselves into. Something it's exactly that kind of pew with no strings attached - something not everyone aligned with null entities could do because *shooting blues*. And what about their targets? Some of them are people doing that infrastructure part you want removed or nerfed.
It also shows RnK exploits that couldn't happen if not for the context, which in turn couldn't happen in dumbed down EVE you want.

If players choose activity they don't like, it's their choice and problem.


What's wrong with being niche game? Wanna see us competing with CoD or something?
And if it reaches that mass, what happens?
I mean, besides servers exploding.


Yes, EVE is burger shop with great burgers. However, null battles are not those burgers despite what you seem to think.

Who on Earth changes product to fit advertisement instead of making advertisement that reflects strong side of product? And yes, we had more or less fitting ads ("Butterfly effect").