Crime & Punishment

Hello spacefriends,

The ministry of truth (conveniently located on the web at evedarklord.blogspot.ca) is again called upon to keep you the valued members of crime & punishment aware of the tides of nerfdom sweeping towards the beacheads of content-creation you have worked hard to establish.

Recently in a reddit post, CCP Fozzie confirmed his intention to break faith with the basic principles of 'risk vs reward' that are central to the EvE ethos. How so? Well in short, he supports the notion of creating 'social corporations' or 'corporation lite' abominations.

What's the problem? Well, the likes of CSM Mike Asariah have poured honeyed-potions of increased player retention and the benefits of providing corp-like features to players in NPC corps, while avoiding the fact it also means said players are ultimately getting corporation features 'for free' while remaining immune to war declarations. Proponents of this abomination then try to rationalize their crimes against risk-vs-reward, by downplaying the potency of the features they will give them, saying 'its only bookmarks', or 'its only shared calendars' -- all while refusing to define what increased risks they *are* willing to accept in trade for receiving more, while risking nothing.

Is that EvE?

tldr;
I anticipate the impact of social corporations to be two-fold. First, players hiding out in perpetuity in NPC corporations today will now be able to rake in their candied ISK from incursions while also getting corporation features and being immune to wardec. In short, having their cake and eating it too.

Secondly, players in full corporations today who are frustrated with wardec mechanics, will be more inclined to drop their corporation memberships, and simply re-form as a social-corporation while hiding out in NPC corporations, again enjoying corp features without fear of wardec and the added benefit of not even having to re-roll a corp now when a dec does land.

While I support a broad-sweeping plan that includes big changes to hisec to increase player retention, I have not, and will not -- ever support nerfs in a vacuum that only offer the nerf, never the stick.

Ultimately, I just report, I am but one other (bored) dude on the internet. You however must decide what EvE is and will become, while the clock is clearly ticking on making your voices heard on several fronts.

F

Nothing CCP does now comes as a surprise anymore, since their SP buying announcement that is.

While Eve may not be dying and could in fact live on for many years, it's core is. So I couldn't care less what they do anymore.

While I don't agree with your entire premise that changes liek the ones proposed recently eliminate risk reward (rather I believe it just shakes up the source of risk) the simple fact is that more players join for mechanics based (often carebear) gameplay. CCP are looking for a middleground between maintaining the sandbox and catering to a large enough market share to guarantee ongoing survival. What that's likely to focus on is more creation, more competition, more disruption but less direct destruction (at least as far as highsec is concerned). The days of mindlessly farming swathes of noobs because they are easy kills can't continue indefinitely.

I expect to see highsec safety increased for those without space assets and mechanical rewards reduced, safety for those with in-space assets reduced and low(particularly)/null/wh rewards and increased. Across the board I expect to see mechanical risks increased.

You mean the same amount of none right?

So there are no details on social corps, what they may entail, what restrictions may be in place, but you are already break out the pitch forks. Why?

What if social corps come with a 20 or even 50% NPC tax rate? What if all industrial facilities in hi sec charged social corps (and npc ones) triple the service costs for the slot in question? What if the social corp only offered a chat channel, shared bookmarks, and calendar (all of which could be done manually with a little work or external tools) and that was it? They still had normal NPC tax, couldn't anchor structures such as citadels, no corp hangers, no corp contracts?

I don't know. It seems like you are trying to stir stuff up when there's no information out there. What if social corps lead to thevremival of NPC corps and encouraged people to move to player run corps faster because of tax or other mechanics?

I don't know, but it just doesn't seem worth it to start panicibg or screaming at CCP till more details are known.

My ShipToasting senses were tingling.

PAW

Stay safe citizens

*bat zips away*

What you posted was information from a CSM member. That is not CCP saying the will do X. I understand that person's view on social corps. I also know another CSM candidate who I talked to often. Mang had some great ideas, few made it. Many were much more simple, but they just didn't make it.

Do I think CCP may create more corp systems? Yes. Do I think the corp system needs a major overhaul? Yes. (we can't delete medals even and try to reorganize that area.) Do I think CCP will create blogs before the change with ample time for feedback? Yes. Do I think they will act on all feedback? No but I'm not worried. Until we know the actual details from CCP's devs, not the rambling of one CSM candidate, it just doesn't like a big worry, especially when there are other closer changes that are worrisome.

I mean switching the bonus on the punisher? It just seems pointless. Why use lasers at that point when ACs are capless and easier to fit? Granted the return of the AC punisher seems great, but it does seem like a step back.

Plus, I tend to back anything that has CCP fixing legacy code (such as the corp code) so future fixes are faster.

I like how some folks (namely, Feyd) are against ideas without even knowing what's behind them.

The only thing we know about social corps is that they would not be deccable - no ideas regarding what they would or would not be able to do, but Feyd and co. already know it is a horrible idea. Considering the fact that we already have NPC corps, I can't see how having social corps, allowing for smaller groups of people to build their eve connections and careers while accepting likely severe limitations on access to pos/citadels, pocos, increased taxes etc. would be a bad thing?

What is particularly hypocritical is the fact that all these criticism will be coming from members of vocal HTFU crowd (goonies, codies and probably other -ies) who regularly use NPC corp alts for their own needs (hauling, bumping etc.)
If it wasn't really sad, it might even be amusing.

Wow, so much anger...
English is not my first language, but I don't think that 'not knowing what is behind an idea' equates to 'we have absolutely no idea what this is all about', especially since the defining characteristic of 'social corps' would be lack of ability to wardec them.
Now, if the ability to war dec a corp is the only relevant characteristic of corporations in EvE, then we must be playing different games.

I suppport the introduction of social groups because they will weed out all of the groups that would have dodged the wardec anyways. Corps after the change will have skin in the game in terms of in space assets, and will be less likely to close up shop when attacked. Sounds like a win for our game play to me.