Anti-Blob Mechanics

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

Thought of something, maybe it has been covered already?
It’s my first post so please be nice. Don’t wanna embarrass my peeps. This is me and nothing to do with my corp or alliance BTW.

Can I assume blobbing is not as fun vs. relatively equal fleets? How do we tackle blobbing?

tl;dr
Use the boosting mechanic to introduce negative de-buffs on all ships on a grid if numbers on grid are too high. The blobbing group would be put at a mechanical disadvantage if they want to dodge the debuffs to the point where they would rather just show up with less people or otherwise give up some of their numbers advantage by inconvenience.

For example, if there are too many ships on grid AND in the same fleet, everyone in that fleet would suffer a negative side effect. Could be a 50% reduction in scan res? This would make locking new targets slower and logi reps land slower than the smaller fleet they are fighting. Evens the odds a bit (till both fleets are equal size).
‘But everyone will just fly armor fleets so they can use the mids to fit a sebo’
Then have the penalties to each ship type or class be different. Maybe Logi loses scan res or sensor strength, DPS class ships lose tracking, Capitals lose range or any number of things. There could be a per ship proximity weakness trait (like a reverse role bonus) if required for future balancing.

Implementation and mechanics possibilities: Spit-balling…
Debuff could build up over time to a max. Rewards faster and reactive fleets and hurts large blobs. Creates stragglers for guerrilla style game-play that could be fun?
2 blue fleets could multiply effects (up to max) when meeting on grid. Requires quicker pace of coalition coordination, makes room for mistakes if trying to avoid penalty.
(or just soak up the debuffs. Your call)
Time delayed removal of debuff as well as time accrued would lessen issues of large fleet eventually debuffing a smaller fleet as soon as the fight starts. Maybe debuff removal can by governed by aggression timers? Also lessens the need for the server to determine who’s on what side, although standings could help with that before battle?
Make links less effective based on how many ships your boosts affect?

Gaming the system:
You could just run many different fleets to skirt around this.
-> You could include standings/corp membership in the calculation.
-> Actual proximity debuff that wears off when X amount of distance and Y amount of time is achieved.
This gives a mechanical disadvantage: No fleet warps. Single comms would become confusing. Broadcasting target coordination becomes difficult. Multiple fleets on same grid still accrue penalties so you would have to space out gate jumps and everything. This makes large groups of F1 monkeys harder to use and rewards lower numbered by higher skilled players in battle.
Would you trade this for having less problems with ship debuffs? Maybe? The point is you are giving up some of your numerical advantage in the fight either way, reducing the advantage of the blob. Tweaking this will be a nightmare, but doing nothing could be worse for the health of the game IMO.

Don’t use standings if they help calculate your penalties.
-> Now you show up as neutral to your blood thirsty allies. I’m sure that will end well. Standings could just be a part of the equation; how large would be up to CCP. Sorting by alliance could negate this to an extent, but it’s another inconvenience you have to weather if you want to blob! The smaller enemy has NONE of these problems…

Flaws in the idea I can see:
Log off traps much less affected by accrued debuff? Joining fleet with a high debuff sounds ghey but could prevent this.

This all sounds like a complicated solution to a simple problem but this problem is unlikely to sort itself out by just inserting conflict all over the map. People sill still group up and N+1 their way to victory over whatever is the most important objective at the time. Without Brain-in-a-box Anything above would set the servers back 5 years in performance but maybe it’s possible now?

That’s enough for now. I’ll add and update from responses.

2

reserved

3

Here is the thing if a group is able to pull the numbers needed to be considered a blob they are already dealing with a number of administrative issues not to mention spais, internal power struggles etc. Why change the mechanics to screw them too?

Noragen Neirfallas
Judge of Crime and Punishment
Long time few against the many pilot

4

Currently the mechanics promote N+1. Alliance administrative issues and internal power struggles don’t prevent fights from happening. Everyone has spais, this does not nerf that either.

Why change the mechanics?
One reason would be that even if the enemy brought overwhelming opposition to you, you might decide to blaze of glory it since you might be able to switch targets and burn down one of their nice ships before the logi could save them. If the enemy decided to bring less, the penalty would not apply (as much) and they could have saved that ship. It encourages FCs to bring just enough vs not undocking unless they can hell dunk. This encourages fights. Blobbing makes everyone’s balls blue.

What are you willing to trade to make fights happen?

5

So the more people who work together, which is exponentially more difficult, the more they are punished?

Here is comes :smile:

-1 No

I don’t think blobs are a game problem, they are a loser problem!

6

Noted.
+1 for Blue Donut

I would argue that getting 1000 people to work together is just as hard as making 100 people work together with Discord and Jabber and all those tools. Once it’s set up it scales perfectly. Hardly exponential.

Titan blob vs Titan blob is fine by me. At least someone is losing something.

I’m against the whole 187 Machs and 34 logi vs 34 Machs and 9 logi where nobody fights.

Even with something like this you can still bring your blob, but instead of needing 2x the numbers to win with no losses you will instead need 3x the numbers and you still might lose a few. At least defenders can get a few nice kills if they undock. Maybe they undock a HAW dread and pop a few Machs before they die. Everyone has a cool story afterwards no?

7

:thinking:

What’s with people making threads somewhere besides where they belong in PF&I?

1 Like
8

Be the blobber and not the blobee. It’s way more fun.

Friends in this game is fun too.

9

That’s my bad. When choosing a place to put it, I didn’t see you could scroll down like 100 lines. This seemed the best match on the little window at the time. I’ll delete and put it there in 20 minutes.

First post…

10

Just tag an ISD to have them move it.

@ISD_Sakimura ^

11

No need for that.

Just @ISD_Dorrim_Barstorlode or @ISD_Buldath any chance of a thread move?

12

Thanks guys.

13

Sure, moving it over to Features and Ideas.

14

Eve is not really a PvP game, or rather most of the so called “pvp” in this game is not really pvp.

In most team vs team pvp games nowadays there are numbers of strategies and tactics available to players that are designed to specifically make use of better team play. Not here. The endgame pvp here consists exclusively of bigger numbers and “hiding in zerg” mechanics for cap battles, and “use the gigantic balance cliff” for cap vs sub-cap battles.

The only time Eve has experienced some real PvP in its entire history was back when the old R&K was playing on TQ. But they are gone now and have subsided to the masses sort of speak. In addition, the proliferation of caps has eliminated remaining few tactics for good combat.

Add to that, the devs here, in fact, CCP as a whole, fears upsetting the established zergling and botting “communities” that have formed throughout NS. Sure they have token executions etc. but all in all these are already replaced and continue on thriving.

This company is exactly and precisely backwards in this regard. Instead of promoting environment where better players win, they promote environment where worse players with more numbers win battles, and often wars due to the way gaining ISK and resources work here, thus the way losses are replenished.

15

So uh, all I do to get around this is split my fleets into smaller groups?
That sounds a bit stupid that 5 50 man fleets are considered any less a blob than a 250 man fleet.
And if it’s sounding silly then the idea has epic flaws.

The only way you are going to ‘break the blob’ is if you break the alpha mechanic. And the only realistic way to do this is to put damage caps onto ships so that people have to pay attention and not just follow the F1 target. (Or at least squad commanders have to pay attention at least). As that then introduces issues for blobs over focusing targets and over repping targets a lot more than small groups.

End of the day, assuming similar levels of skill though a large group should and will win even with that sort of measure. That sort of measure just makes sure they take some losses while doing so.

16

You missed the bit about potentially using standings to classify many small fleets as a unified force. Plus, if all these ships are on the same grid at the same time they would still suffer accrued penalties. Perhaps there is a better way to get around it? Setting temp standings screws with everyone’s overview to the point where F1 monkeys will likely make mistakes.

It also takes away the benefits of a single fleet such as links, broadcasts, fleet warps etc… You would have the choice of accepting the penalties and have a large fleet, or still get a hefty proximity penalty and deal with the shortcomings of splitting it up so much.

Also you are right about breaking the alpha mechanic. Some of the penalties could include a tracking penalty which could change a % of regular hits to glancing blows reducing DPS. Maybe a falloff penalty to certain ships? Damage capping ships incoming DPS I feel is too OP. You should be able to alpha in the right circumstances, just not split your guns and fire at 2 targets erasing 2 at a time!

17

Since when has EVE been about being fair? Tell you what. How about when some guy with 27 accounts warps in to my local ice anom with a couple of Orcas, a freighter, and 24 Skiffs, he gets his mining yield cut in half. Cause, you know, it’s not fair to those of us with only 2 ships in that ice anom…

1 Like
18

Because they are not improving the experience of EVE, they are actively and deliberately harming the experience of EVE.

19

It isn’t. I said nothing about fairness. This post isn’t about making all fights completely fair, it’s about preventing blue balls. Do you remember what happened to the Serenity server? You know, where everyone joined the same side and the game collapsed into boredom? That’s what happens when FCs won’t undock unless they have overwhelming odds in their favor. Not many FCs get their kicks out of feeding either.

20

Preventing blue balls, you say. So… in the current war between Goons and North (the single most likely conflict in Eve’s history that will and has resulted in blobbing) are fleets undocking? Are fights happening?

Yes. They are.

Don’t hate the bigger group because they’re bigger. Outsmart them. With cyno jammers :rofl: