It’s fairly commonly accepted that the scarcity changes implemented a while back by CCP, the effects of which still result in doubled prices for many common and nigh essential ships and commodities, resulted in the opposite of what they wanted it to achieve.
The changes were supposedly an attempt to encourage more wars and fights among groups of players but what happened is the nullsec corps just formed into far bigger coalitions, to avoid as much risk as possible. Sure they still go to war but the power balance is now one that just is too “Stable” for the big alliances to benefit the game long term.
I hope CCP is working on addressing these unintended consequences to their changes.
I have nothing against the huge coalitions but based on the information I have, I feel like their power is too solid in the current EVE economy, and encourages them to behave in ways that, inadvertently through no fault of their own, end up detrimental to smaller alliances.
This would’ve happened anyway. It’s just the natural progression of things.
This is basically a form of a market externality that falls on CCP (as the governing body) to fix, but one that they don’t want to fix (even though it makes the game suck) because they need those screenshots of neat little titan balls fighting each other inside a swarm of warp disruption bubbles for marketing purposes.
Blackout was a good solution, and everyone knows how that went.
The could also fix this by doing something like making smaller entities less “detectable” to larger entities to allow them to create beachheads and forward operating bases, and by making space less fertile if it exists in a state of peace/lack of conflict. CCP won’t be able to entice huge groups to split up, but they can punish them economically for being too huge, and create artificial competitive advantages for smaller groups to encourage adventurism.
I think a first step is making sure their player rep board has players from all kinds of playstyle so they get every perspective to consider.
I don’t think anything is wrong with titan balls and massive wars. I just think that big coalitions like that should not be long term stable. I don’t know how that would happen, but it would make the balance of power and struggles thereof more interesting and dynamic.
Right now I don’t think anyone can see a chance of a very small alliance challenging the big ones or even taking any important territory from them.
I Could be wrong, I hope I am. I want the game to stay interesting where any corp can rise to power after all.
Your “less detectable” idea is interesting though, like, what if they introduced a way to hide a forward operating base? like a big cloaking field? it would need to be affordable to any corp that can afford that base to begin with to have the intended effect.
Waiting several years for a game changing update and a few more years for it to have an effect is not the way.
Current Fozziesov and structure idea promotes large coalitions and discourages small scale pvp deep behind enemy lines.
This could be solved easily making an update which starts rapid large nullsec bloc downfall and encourages smaller entity. Last time it worked and resulted in the destruction of XIX. But this took years to run its course.
Rinse and repeat this process while making high sec a carebear safe haven theme park with sporadic event enterntainment circus.
Hisec does not need any changes. I personally find it distasteful to attack people in hisec who aren’t wardecced just for fun, but I respect peoples ability to throw away ships to CONCORD.
To me the most obvious solution is to have NPC factions in nullsec whose power scales up or down depending on the strength of whatever player alliance considers it their sov space. I would also link that NPC power to the degree of combat activity in the region, with it being stronger if there is less activity. This would force nullsec coalitions to have to fight for their existence.
All NPCs will be on farm within days, or, if they’re so strong and numerous as to be annoying due to the constant distraction they cause to residents, those players are going to start whining just like they did during blackout in order to force CCP to revert the new gameplay mechanics.
Remember the cries when the ESS was introduced everywhere in null sec, and values could go below 100%?
The intention was good, the execution clear, yet people complained that they did not want to rat in systems with high bouty modifiers, since those systems were too busy and dangerous. People wanted good payouts in the systems that were at peace, and CCP gave in.
I really don’t think a few invincible alliances is the fault of any of Eve’s design choices; it seems to be an inherent property of nearly any competition based system to devolve into an oligopoly, where the number of players will decline to the point where one player cannot be dislodged even by the combined effort of all the others. We saw it described in Orwell’s 1984; we see it in business all the time, and we saw it in the last world war bee 2. The only solution is to make sovereignty worthless, and as someone stated, the last time CCP even hinted in that direction with the ESS changes, the players rioted. Same with the drifter invasion, CCP’s previous attempt, that they had to straight up cancel and now don’t even like to talk about…
Real world markets collapse, why should not virtual ones? These are flawed systems made by us flawed humans. Besides there is always someone who benefits from the financial system collapsing in on itself.
My grandfather lived in West Texas during the Great Depression. He went from being a simple farmer to a wealthy loan-shark overnight. I am not proud of what he did, it is just the facts of history. People like Al Capone rose to power because of a group of care bears that outlawed alcohol in the US for 12 years. There will always be people who will see a void and take that advantage. As I see it, a poor virtual economy in ANY online game helps the developer to sell more virtual currency. They can even use the financial turmoil to raise the prices.
Unlike Al Capone, my grandfather was never punished for his crimes, instead he retired and died a rich oil baron in Texas. I never had much to do with the mean cuss as I lived in Chicago at that time and he considered me and my family “Damn Yankees”. Yes, he was also still fighting the Civil War in his mind. I guess the moral to that story ( if there is one ) would be; find the hole and fill it and you too can die a rich old fart in Texas.
the reason every thing got expensive wasnt because of scarcity. it was the change to industry that added many new components to a build AND taxes on each of the transactions and actions needed to complete a build. back when a player could mine everything he needed to buld a battleship are long gone. today it takes a couple dozen activities and uses materials that you cant mine but must buy off the market.
putting ore back into the belts did very little to change that because ore is not the main element of cost anymore.
as for the “content”: activities, CCP has consistently missed the mark on what real content is. At least the idea that miner ganking is content is fading, the big push now is FW. I am still waiting for the big fleet action that was supposed to happen around ESS reserve banks.
oh well, at least we are still playing and making our own fun.
con
Making our own fun was always the main draw of EVE. CCP provides the features that encourage players to make their own fun. this was what made EVE good to begin with from 2003 onwards.
Their job is mostly to make sure the game mechanics and features are helpful towards allowing players of various playstyles to make their own fun.
The solution is a lot simpler. Have NPCs that properly scale up to the strength of nullsec corps. If the massive corps wont fight each other, then they should have to fight strong NPCs, with the level of NPC strength being decided by how much PvP content there isn’t…so to speak. Nullsec should be a sheer battle for existence…not a place where corps rest on their laurels and safely sit on space for years on end.
There are no easy solutions, not from NPC’s in nullsec, not from large coalitions (which can’t be avoided because they don’t even formally exist within the mechanics of the game), and certainly not from blaming any playstyle in particular.
Re: nullsec and those who live there
At least a few of the major content creators have decided that the game is best served by pushing for opening up large parts of nullsec for newer groups to try their hand at establishing sov space: 1) the war in the southeast to oust one coalition known for occupying and renting out space; 2) the current war in the north against a (group of) coalition(s) known for occupying and aggressively renting out space.
The more groups that can establish themselves in nullsec the better it is for the game experience of those players, and the better it is for the EvE economy in general. There isn’t a single t2 ship or module that does NOT have a connection to nullsec. Even the smallest faction ship or a t1 battleship has a connection to nullsec these days. That does have an effect on the prices we all pay.
The fewer renters those slum lords have the slower they can build up their super fleets AND the fewer isk they have to gobble up PLEX and control that piece of the market.
Let’s not be naive. Wars in EvE, as in the real world, are not fought for glory and medals and killboard entries. While those elements may be fun to most of us, to the people who are “in control” of large groups they are the “panem et circensem” (bread and games) for the masses to keep them happy. The wars are fought for long term control of the map (and its inhabitants) via the economy. Small scale manufacturers and traders have never mattered in an environment controlled by cartels (like the TTT), and never will, when push comes to shove. They simply don’t have the numbers or the power.
Allowing more groups to establish in null, and by consequence to become new players in the economy, is the only sensible thing that will affect the economy in a positive way, by increasing the number of economic influencers.
I don’t think shenanigans in null, or the TTT, really have as much impact on noobs as the sheer scale of the mountain of skill and ISK they have to climb. Every time I create a new Alpha alt and am sitting there in a corvette in some noob station, with 5000 ISK to my name, I wonder how I ever got through my first months in the game. Of course, part of that is hindsight of knowing just how steep the curve is…something most noobs don’t know so they plod on as I did.
I would have the TTT taxed and that tax distributed as 10m ISK or some such figure for every noob.
Fair enough, I had a similar experience recently trying to beef up a token alt to be able to pay the office rent (of all things…). With 2M sp, and 10M pocket change it was a genuine challenge. It wasn’t until that character was finally able to run lvl 3 missions, and had scraped (!) enough ISK to get a half decently fitted gnosis (saves me from skilling up a weapon system that has to go on a half decent hull of the toon’s own race) that I was out of the red. Bottom line, t1 prices are extremely high for beginners, hulls, weapons, modules, and not even talking about battleship hulls which have doubled in price since the scarcity shenanigans that OP referred to.
Selling a new hull to the same guy you just removed from his ship is a double whammy, the real shits&giggles. If you can do that either in a shiny trade hub you own, or in a series of “department stores” spread out across the map, it increases your income even more. The more financial power, the more control you have on the market, because you come to a point where you can drive the prices, by your new ability to buy up entire stocks and setting new prices. The effect isn’t stable over time, it increases: more and more of the ISK flow passes through the largest wallets, allowing for even more control (in the real world it’s called “diversifying the portfolio”). In layman terms: the rich get richer, and at the other end of the spectrum the noob has a much harder time getting into the next hull, given the prices of just about anything.
Now, a cartel that exists for the purpose of achieving and maintaining control of the financial flows will rarely have significant in-fighting amongst themselves (yes, nullsec…). There’s simply too much at stake. That’s the cynical reality. With plex prices now at a median of 5M/unit, it’s high time to ask some serious questions. I’m less worried about NFT’s and blockchain wet dreams than about these influencers behind the curtains. They already have your labor as a never ending resource for their wallets.
There’s a valid reason why cartel formation is illegal in the real world.
the economy needs to go back at least somewhat to the prices of a few years ago, when you could buy an astero for 50M. the prices of most things have doubled. it’s crushing newbies and small groups.
Caps got more expensive, pirate ships, like the Astero, also got more expensive.
T2 ships on the other hand got cheaper though, especially the small ones.
I like the current prices. I think caps were too cheap anyway, and the T2 ships I lose are easier to replace.
you may mean monopoly , which some places have laws regarding .
where an entity controls much of the supply , and can set any price they like .
this is the case with the extra parts , aside from minerals , that many ships require to build . the value of mins. in those ships has gone down ; the cost increase is due to null-sec’s monopoly on the newly-required components .
No, I mean cartels and trusts, both of which are heavily restricted by laws. It doesn’t matter if they have a (combined) monopoly or not. In the EU most types of cartel formation are most certainly forbidden, perhaps with the exception of export cartels, I’m not sure.