Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Lets put it down very clearly so people get it, just after I joined the system was changed to Dominion from the number of POS's in system, so I saw the change occur. I am sure many of you saw a very good video put out on the war between Red Alliance and allies against Etherium Dawn and IRC, in that war a smaller less well equipped coalition was able to keep fighting for months and people had fun and epic fights. I know some of those people.

Let now look at the event when Razor accidently IRC'd, in fact it was more that the CFC by accident killed IRC, I was in IRC when that happened, the leadership of IRC was poor and there was one event with a CSAA that really set the scene for a certain level of disbelief. What caused IRC to fail cascade, it was simple the use of what was for IRC an overwhelming force of supers, the realisation was that IRC was facing all of the CFC on any critical timer, so what was the point of throwing ships away with no chance of victory, in some cases no chance of kills. People said, can't resist, no fun and walked away, it did not help that the IRC leadership was pretty poor.

So when people say this is not fun, well I can tell you I would have loved the current sov system to have been in place with the IRC I was then in, there was people in almost every system living in that space. IRC would not have died with a whimper, it would have been as epic as that fight against Red Alliance.

You Goonies as the Imperium along with your NIP with PL and the affects of the Dominion system have destroyed the game, true you had big fleet battles, but 10% tidi for 20 hours, wow but no thanks.

At this point people are having to operate in their systems, over time it will reduce the size of alliances and coalitions because in Eve the conflict needs to be a lot more local and the jump changes, jump fatigue and this new sov will change relationships.

Some cretins on this thread, and I use that deliberately have said that people who do not hold sov at this point have no voice, I will tell you to F off, I have held sov in the past and intend to do so again, what I am waiting for is the Imperium and PL to crumble and people to start ignoring the poorer systems, once that happens I intend to move in. I expect I have quite a long wait, but if CCP sticks to their guns and does not cave in to your tears this will eventually happen.

And what MOA is doing in Pure Blind is harassment of an enemy who has already put off their much talked about invasion of Provi, because of what exactly? The feeling that they cannot allow MOA to take systems. I call that a big win for Eve.

Stay strong CCP, I am having a ball at this moment.

For whom? Time Dilation gave us the ability to have the really huge, headline-generating battles. That started January 18th, 2012. Can you show me where all the growth in the game is as a result? You have the substantial increase from Crucible, which was mostly a package of features that players had waited years for. You have spikes for the big battles, but they deflate quickly--most of the people who come don't even stay for the three months that the average theme park MMO hopes for. There's no indication that those were all new subscriptions anyway. How many were situationally resubbed supercap accounts? The big battles are terrible marketing, not because they're boring to read about, but because they vividly describe a part of the game that new players--indeed, most players--will never experience. They don't represent the game.

And that's the problem: the optimal alliance structure is for the vast bulk of the players to not play the game. They log in when told, get in a ship they're told to, go where they're told (often being driven there), shoot what they're told to, then click the pap link they're told to and leave. If they do PVE, it's AFK. They're perhaps the most minimally invested players in the entire game; all the work they would do is instead done by a handful of people for whom it's a second job, or even a first job. In other words, Aegis sov, which all told is meant to spread the workload out, is fundamentally incompatible with this alliance structure. The same handful of people can't run around doing everything that the people randomly present in a system are supposed to be able to take care of. The huge, centralized battles are still possible, but now there's an everyday hum of conflict as well.

Why not design the sov to match the existing alliance structure? Here's the rub: CCP needs players to be engaged in the game, not just the metagame, to ensure its long-term survival. If your alliance structure is such that you can muster hundreds or thousands of people to follow directions in game X, where X could be any game in existence, that's not good for EVE, which is only potentially one of those games. People look askance at the loners leveling their Ravens, but those guys decide when to log in, and for what reason; which ship to fly and how to fit it; where to go, even if that's just the system they happen to be in; what their goals are, and; when to log out. Some of them, when they've leveled their Raven to 80, or 90, or 100, decide to use their exhaustive knowledge of missions and PVE mechanics to become baiters or gankers, or they pitch it all and go do something totally different--or they leave, but that's another discussion. The point is that they're invested in the game itself, which is good, even if they're sticking to one relatively shallow and dusty corner of the game. They still have more experience, more autonomy, and more initiative to log in and do their own thing than many nullsec line members. The more players there are who make their own decisions and take their own intiatives, the richer and deeper and more unpredictable the sandbox is.

Providence, take a bow.

So wait, before I even consider reading your entire tl;dr rant, what you are saying is that having no headlines about EVE is better than or equal to having some headlines about epic space battles. I refuse to believe that appearing in international news for epic levels of gameplay will ever be anything except positive for the game no matter how shortlived those benefits may be.

no, ccp should go ahead and fix it

they should not, however, give me an i-win button and expect it not to be pressed, especially when other people have the same button (though most pubbies are not strong enough to push it ofc)

That would limit the "sandbox" gameplay aspect of the game even further, and at this point a lot of those sandbox "anything can happen" elements have been greatly reduced.

For dropping player counts to 2007 levels. A very successful series of changes indeed.

Wait wait wait.... IRC is complaining about the use of capitals and having peace agreements with other entities?

I'm pretty sure you guys got too greedy and wanted more space and got punched for it.

Go to the east where the command nodes have been sitting since the sov changes

Why do you want our space?

Actually people are feeling out the new system, there are some major fights occurring, the Intiative vs Gentlemans Club is one such example. These bigger escalation will start happening more and more, because they can not be easily third partied and there are systems that will be more important for a full on fight

You cannot asses it based on your issues in Pure Blind is mainly because of your strength, it has to be harassment, you just have to deal with it and not assume taht all the content is like that.

The good news is that your ability to project your fun on others which is not fun to them is curtailed, before you could sit behind the huge EHP and super / titan superiority and go anywhere in Eve without a care to look for fights, it made Sov space boring for many people, oh look its the Imperium, stop people doing PvE with cloaky camps etc., after a while when numbers are down as people go back to hisec in comes the big guns, go for head shot, done dusted, agree to transfer sov, look how great we are, more recruits great game. That is not going to work for you any more is it?


You ask about PL, well the issue about them is the ability to escalate to full on end game escalation, that means any sov holder has to take them into consideration. The Darkness retreat is what I expect to see from many alliances, however as soon as they get complacent and go in half hearted someone will give them a a bloody nose at least for a short while. Personally for my part as a future sov holder I would not put all my eggs in one basket, let them take the sov and take it back when they go elsewhere. The key question in terms of PL is how many stupid alliances are out there that will give hell camp full on content to PL, not many I hope. If that is the case then I expect a certain downgrading of their ability as time goes on, classic Eve boredom wearing out of an enemy.

The question is how long will this take and how many players leave because of it, well my group came back because of these changes, but the change in the players will take time to manifest itself, but it will.

I said that it's terrible marketing, because it indisputably is: anyone who runs from some media site to download the EVE client because they have visions of massive battles dancing in their heads is going to be disappointed. Disappointed players don't stay. They don't tell their friends about that great game that they got hooked on. Instead, when their friends come to them all excited about the latest lagfest in the latest string of random characters, they shake their heads and say that it's not like that. Bad word of mouth marketing is much, much worse than no marketing at all.

I'm not saying that it wouldn't be nice to see the battle you were part of in print. I'm not saying they aren't good stories.I'm saying that they come with a steep price.



Yeah, I tried the button-orbiting thing myself (not on this character). Even when there was conflict, it wasn't particularly fun. I didn't last very long before I got bored and left. So I understand some of the frustration. But I only care about having enough ISK to stay in ships, and I have plenty of ships. LP--even stacks of LP--simply wasn't enough of an incentive to sit there and watch a Breacher orbit. As a result I'm deeply skeptical of ISK particularly or wealth generally as a conflict driver. First of all, there's a surreal amount of wealth sloshing around the game; second, if wealth is a conflict driver then it's also a conflict resolver, which means that wealthy alliances can simply buy off anyone who presents a plausible threat, either with a nice region or moons or outright cash. Third, anything worth fighting over is worth negotiating over. You can have conflicts start and end in diplomatic channels, without a single ship undocking and with next to no risk of third party interference.

It's a game. At the end of the day, people have to want to fight for fights to occur. If they don't, they won't.