Chaos,I love it. Random entropic values in action. Imagine a universe where some aspects occur that are truly random. A CME could be one of those. Imagine entering a system to find a planet’s industry taken off line or even destroyed by a natural event. Meteor impacts,comets,supernova all taking place by random occurrence.
Ya ya I know “Player Driven” is Eve. Its static in many ways and for me quite a boring situation.
"But I worked hard to build my base of operations"
Why should it always be,because you want it so? The universe is dynamic and so should the universe of Eve online.
You log on,to find the star in your systems is in flux. Damn that needs fixed. Well get to it capsuleer and make it so. Get your corp to log on and use the technology you learned to settle it down,meanwhile your neighboring enemy knows this and is on the way to stop your corp from fixing it. Your Stargate is offline. A magnetic storm or gravitational wave passed through the system. Get the resources and manpower to bring it back online.
Eve online is surely player driven but natural events could play a part in destabilization efforts to curtail the humdrum. The only argument I see against is the power control issue instilled in humans. There is the technicals of actually making it happened from a developer viewpoint.
Hard = needs lots of mechanical knowledge and/or gameplay skill to work around. The game will tell you whatever it’s doing, but once you know, you know you can’t get complacent or it will cause you trouble. “Taken offline” might fall into this category. Except if you have a life and can’t play every day, good luck doing anything about it.
Punishing = unavoidable thing that comes out of nowhere and totally ruins whatever it was you were doing with no way to counter it. And un-fun. And complete and total design fail because it’s not really gameplay if it’s something you can’t do anything about it. “Destroyed” falls into this category.
Yes,yes,and yes.
I don’t play everyday. Still,I don’t see an issue I haven’t mentioned from the OP already. I see this as confirmation of the “power control issue instilled in humans”. You want Eve static. I respect that but disagree.
I don’t see why any structure in space is free to be without maintenance. There is already a vast surplus of creation in Eve. It’s is a way to introduce some creation/destruction balance derived from a “natural” source. The concept of “if I take the time to make it,it should exist forever” violates the precept what Eve is about.
This is not a 4X game which needs such events / encounters / natural disasters to spice up the boring / repetitive landscape / gameplay. In such games such events can be countered and even if not or you fail to you only lose one of many solar systems / planets / colonies / whatever you control so except for some rare cases won’t ruin your game, but in EVE you could lose your entire / most of your stuff in one blow which is anything but fun.
And yes ignore it or not real life / available time can be very limiting in being able to respond to such events. This is a game not a reality or disaster simulator.
I don’t know what a 4X game is. I am not suggesting natural events happen 40 times a day in 30% of the Eve universe. Random is random,though some discretion should be used on the timing occurrence.
I don’t see how complacency is an essential just because.
Stargates for example. Why shouldn’t they go offline once in a while. Whether its due to nature or just the fact that items break or wear out. Its offers an opportunity to change trade route availabilty. Haulers choosing the same route for days/weeks,and even years. Gankers setting up day after day on the same pipes. I call that being lazy and uncreative thinking. Isn’t one aspect of anything fun learning new ways to achieve the goals at hand? In short it inspires adaptability and even requires it.
@Shallanna_Yassavi already explained what 4X games are, in short a type of strategy game genre and can be real-time or turn-based.
I understand your concept and reasoning of making things less static but it is like introducing randomness to chess, it would “spice” things up true, some may even like it, but most people are not playing chess for that and would dislike it as it ruins the equal playing field and game mechanics, the very reason most people play chess for.
If someone want to play a chess-like game with randomness in it and potentially other factors like choose your unit composition, change unit gear and such then they play a board game like Warhammer 40K, Battletech or such instead of chess, the two are entirely different concepts and the very nature of chess makes it a bad idea to introduce such new concepts to it as they ruin its core reason to be what it is. You can do it but it no longer will be chess.
I don’t follow your reference to unassailable wealth in as far as anything I mentioned. Perhaps more distinct detail could enlighten me.
Unassailable wealth for Eve in general doesn’t exist at its core. It is only in recent years that features added infringe on its core origins. Passive Isk generation is provided,though nothing I read or experienced in Eve provides a supposition that it should be unassailable. The phrase “Don’t fly what you aren’t willing to lose” is a mantra of Eve. To suggest that it should only apply to active participation and not passive participation is a contradiction to the core values of Eve.
Grow a garden too big and you spend all your time weeding it or lose your harvest. I don’t subscribe to mindless grind. That too is a boring endeavor. If this were a true 100% sandbox,I would concede to your point. It is not the case. The mindset of 'If I create it,its mine and should remain so" is an entitlement disposition. Entitlement doesn’t exist in Eve. Natural occurrences merely supports that entitlement is not a given. The human nature to hoard is innately part of our being and many can’t keep this in check. Even when directly exposed as excess. Thus the adages relating to moderation. In short its called self control.
Chess is and has been a defined game of strategy that employs all the factions of societal guise and cunning. It in it current iteration is a rigid format to utilize potentials as they evolve. Each piece is well defined. Anything that deviates from that is not chess. Eve is not defined in such a way that it can’t be amended to a degree. Eve is complex to an extent,yet its integral components are still able to be fashioned.
I understand that players want their time to have value and meaning. I also understand this game isn’t here to make that an ultimate truth. Value and meaning are a subjective,individualistic profundity only to one’s self. Natural occurrences as I described may or may not interfere with said value and meaning. Having them be random in a nature that doesn’t impede “everyone’s” value and meaning can in no way be anything but natural.
It could be a Dev will chime in and exercise their "Will to Power" and blap me into oblivion. Until such time I see no reason to not remain steadfast.
EVE is about competitive gaming and consequences based on that not random factors that have nothing to do with player choice and even the cases where that happens it should be as less influential as possible, while your concept emphasizes non-player driven beyond measure.
Losing a fleet, a citadel, trillions of assets, a hauler, a mining ship / fleet, and so on because a stronger force or smarter even lesser one attacks you is all about player choice, decisions, actions and consequences, not some random environmental behaviour. This is what EVE is about mainly and is the prime selling point of the game, even according to CCP: “build your dreams, and wreck theirs”.
I can think of no scenario that doesn’t have a counter to a player driven force. In fact nearly every aspect has been formulated to the Nth degree. Adding a layer of complexity involving an unknown adds to the dynamic.
Does Eve have a shortage of assets?
If this were a true P2W game only then would it interfere.
You didn’t mention unassailable wealth, but I thought of (and didn’t mention, oops) that mechanic as a tool/bludgeon to get industry to spread out:
The more industry happening in [insert system here], the more likely one of these things are to happen, and the bigger the response has to be. If the probability and magnitude both increase linearly with the amount of industry happening in a system, the resources required to manage this problem increase follow a power curve and eventually it gets untenable and whatever a system’s residents are doing in said systems has to spread out.
It might be kind of interesting if this happened in hisec because so much stuff is built there, except then there’s the high chance several of these hisec industrialists would just not bother leaving hisec because they just don’t want to deal with the possibility of getting caught on a gate. Some would adapt, but quite a lot of them weren’t here for that kind of game.
Since your post didn’t describe your sentences as questions (?) I took them as general statements relating to Eve and the environmental adversities players are subjected too. Not stages of a mechanic.
I try to stay away from the details of mechanic implementation. I am more interested in the concept not the detail’s refinement. I find most volunteered suggestions get bashed into the abyss by players who don’t benefit from any information given in regard to details. Basically if they can’t get “more” they are against it. What I suggested is meant to be on a random basis. Anything further would fall into details area.
Kinda have to go into some detail. Maybe that falls into the “tutorials kill creativity” thing that’s been making its rounds, so maybe try to present lots of ways it could work. We have to go into details because the playerbase here is notorious for being able to abuse things if at all possible. Which brings up the important design question: what should the mitigation mechanic be?
A very particular citadel module which requires fuel? Maybe one which has to be run during the citadel’s vulnerability window?
A very particular industry job? A group of industry jobs with a range of run-times and material requirements?
Doing something in space? <- A go-big-or-go-home mechanic if it paints a big enough target on your back. X corp has a lot of ships at X location, let’s go wreck them!
All of the above because choice is good?
If there’s no way to play with/against this thing, it’s… a random silly annoyance.
Come to think of it, having the level of industry in a system affect the chance of one of these things happening could do something interesting: have rival corps/alliances outsource production to each other so they have to deal with these events, and ship them out of their enemies’ space for their own use. Maybe unwieldy for capships, not so much for modules. But then you get into needing to be able to look at, if now what the citadels are making, how many industrial jobs are in them and who’s running them. Even without that mechanic, the counter for this hostile outsourcing would be to tax production to the moon and set up a rebate/refund system.
