Break up the stagnant map by rearranging it

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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TL;DR = read below the dotted line

I quit playing Eve three years ago and one of the most glaring changes is… the lack of change to the big fat blue donut. Its like i stepped away for a month not 36 months. Eve is stagnant. Gameplay is stagnant. Eve is being consolidated down into larger and fewer power blocs. Serenity V2.0 coming to a server near you!

The struggle to fix the blue donut so it becomes more diverse is a tough one. Any mechanic you introduce into the game can be manipulated by the same people it was meant to break up and used to their advantage. We saw this with Fozzie sov and system upgrades.

The part that is worse though is that gameplay has become more and more stagnant. The " content creators" are creating the same tired ass content they have been for over a decade only with less diversity than before. Null has become carebear central and the big hole in the donut is mostly void of life.

What if we caused a little chaos in New Eden?

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What if every 8 to 12 weeks we “rearranged” New Eden randomly?

Brief Backstory: The ( bad guys of your choice) manage to infect the “public” gate network with a virus. The vulnerability it exploits in the system requires gates to be at least X distance apart for the virus to be effective. The purpose of the virus is to cause the gates to “jump” to a different gate. This is to sew chaos across New Eden and make the capsuleers and empire factions both more vulnerable.

Once it reroutes gate connections the virus goes dormant and hides for 2-3 months and then spreads and repeats.

  1. Initial release: 20% of the constellation/region gate pairs( randomly selected by an algorithm) will be assigned new “partners” for a while. So as an example:
  • The Efa (Khanid) gate will no longer go to 3-FKCZ (Querious).
  • Efa might instead go to NIF-JE in Cache
  • 3-FKCZ might then go EF-F36 In Syndicate.
  • The gates that EF-F36 and NIF-JE were paired with originally will also have new partner gates( possible to be each other)
  1. Every 2 or 3 months after that ( i prefer 2 months), two things happen:
  • Every gate that swapped partners has a 50% chance of reconnecting to its original partner. Each “round” that is not connected to its original partner this chance is increased by 10%.
  • Every single constellation/region gate pair has a 20% chance of randomly swapping to another constellation gate.
  1. Player gates and Jump drives are not affected by this. Just because a delve gate connects to pure blind doesnt mean you can single jump your capital ship across eve. It would have to take the same route it has always had to take.

This could lead to some very interesting scenarios and bring loads of content to the game.

One of the more creative scenarios this could spawn is something like:

PA-VE3 pocket in Period Basis( Goons) connected to FB5U-I in The Kalevala Expanse ( Pandemic Horde). That could lead to these two constellations becoming hotzones for pvp action in a sort of Arena style setup.

Another possible scenario would be one in which two pipe gates connect in these regions. That means that Horde could roam goon space without having to traverse Eve to get there and vice versa. It also means that each would need to protect their normally safe spaces from potentially large organized gangs or even full on subcap fleet invasions.

If an invasion did happen, they might lose their “supply line” at the next gate flip and end up with stranded assets and a difficult time reinforcing their beach head.

It might spice things up sort of like Needlejack but on a bigger scale and not just pvp focused. People could explore parts of Eve they never considered exploring because it was to many jumps.

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People will just not fight because why bother fighting for territory when it might separate from the rest of your territory.
Congratulations, now Null is even more stagnant.

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…but I’m gonna tell you how things really work and how it should be fixed.

Ah, the variation of the “It might make things interesting” red flag that warns of trash ideas from trash people.

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Damn dog, that’s a little harsh.

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Instead of rearranging gates, maybe try and add some new permanent ones?

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If you want to change behavior, you need to change the incentives. A few years ago, CCP made Nullsec regions self sufficient with infinite resources - bad idea. They have now committed to changing this with dynamic redistribution of finite resources that should give people something to fight over.

Another problem (personal opinion) is there is no disincentive to huge alliances. There needs to be some sort of negative feedback where sov bonuses are inversely proportional to the amount of sov you hold.

I’m not sure that randomizing the NPC gate network would accomplish much given that players can now build their own jump gates.

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So goons 1 to goons 5 now hold sov.

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Perhaps, but you’ve increased the complexity and the level of effort required. You’ve probably also increased the number of seats at the table where decisions are made. If the theories of Joseph Tainter are correct, they could be sowing the seeds of their own destruction!

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No, it’ll be the same guy with 5 alts.

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Perhaps, but there is a point where the workload stops being fun and people start to burn out. Rational people will respond to incentives in predictable ways but there is nothing stopping people from choosing to be irrational.

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That would not create the effect im going for which is a more chaotic map. It would only mean people take news ways to some of the same places.

They though this would happen with the original moon layout. It didnt. They tried to make sure that people were limited with fuels by having each empire faction use a different type of fuel only found in their space. None of those worked.

The thing is we dont fight over resources in null like people think we do. Its not like one alliance took a great region and every other alliance dogpiled on so they could get that region. Most of the null wars i have been in are because an alliance wanted space or wanted more space because they was expanding and a lot of times it was because their (pvp) members get bored so they go on campaigns with some ( artificial ) important task we must do to inspire people to join in.

CCP made a few attempts at this but alliances always manage to find a way around it. CCP always tries a indirect mechanic to discourage it like i mentioned in my original post. But alliances just learn to adapt and use it to their advantage. Take Fozzie sov…

Fozzie was to keep us from having to do constant POS bashing. A big alliance could just tos up POS after POS. A little alliance could go broke quickly. And a POS was defenseless against an organized group of moderate size.

With Fozzie sov no more bashing and even a couple of people could run around a constellation and do entosis. It seemed like a good solution. Until your little alliance that can field 20-30 people meets up with a mega alliance that can field more than 30… in logi alone. You have no chance.

Moon mining will take the moon minerals out of alliances hands and put them in the players where they should be!.. nope alliances kind of share moon minerals now…kind of. But you still have to buy rights to the moon or donate a large portion to the alliance or other forms of payment. So moon mining actually got easier for an alliance because instead of having to run POS chains and then haul the stuff and sell it at whatever point in production they wanted too. they simply say " That moon will be 1 bil a month" get their cash like rent and DO NO WORK for that income. So it basically got turned into another form of space renting.

Its not about rearranging gates so that you need to go through Deklein to get to Omist from Providence. Its about rearranging gates so players have new places to roam from their front door and putting their own space at risk of roams and possible invasions. But its not just about connecting different parts of null to each other. All constellation gates would have a chance each “round” to be affected. So you might be able to jump out of stain and right into Domain. a few jumps from Amarr. Or you might be able to go from a constellation in Black Rise to a constellation in Derelik. Or your high sec mission hub pocket might end up in the middle of Cobalt Edge. People in wicked creek might be one gate jump from Solitude. The map would change presenting new opportunities to new people.

A side effect is that a big space holder like Goons or Test or Horde/NC has a high chance of multiple pockets affected the more space you hold the more fractures in your space. So if you own like, i dont know, 3 regions, a few rounds in you might end up with 6-12 constellations connecting to somewhere else. It can get exhausting to have to defend that much space constantly when the roams in your space can be any size. Imagine if Test had a constellation connected to all of the following: faction war low sec with high sec access, Fountain ( Initiative) , Branch ( Fraternity), and Spire( NC). And that is totally possible. It becomes exhausting to have to defend a large amount of systems that a bunch of other alliances now have easy access too. Even though you can still defend those system its the point of having to defend that many and them not being “as safe” as they once were. This is basically needlejack on crack.

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