CSM 13 - High Sec Issues/Suggestions/Ideas

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
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Do they take suggestions for software updates? Real shot in the dark but the physics engine is really rough. Could use some collision, could use objects blocking fired shots to use environment to your advantage as cover/concealment, could use NPC’s not flying through objects, could use some ability to hide behind a moon or a celestial or hide inside an asteroid to block a scan and set an ambush.

Physics engine is one of the worst I have seen. Probably not at all possible to modernize and update, BUT they did update the graphics engine, so maybe it is possible. If we are throwing ideas into the hat…just sayin…

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NPC miners spawning at downtime and stripping entire systems of belts before some continents can wake up and log on is not good gameplay. To avoid “timezone favoritism” they should spawn a random time up to 23 hours after DT, if at all.

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I know they’re constantly working on upgrading the game, but this isn’t Star Citizen, so don’t expect realistic physics. :slight_smile:

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Brisc, just tweeted this thread to see if I can get some more action on it. btw, are YOU on twitter?

m

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I kind of agree with this problem is if 1 pesky fleet spawns it’ll carve a system in no time if you make them spawn later after dt it becomes in favor of aussie tz.

A more fair aproach in my opinion should be less of them over more systems instead of 10 skiff in 1 belt have groups of 2-3 across 3-4 systems

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Although I agree with these ideas (I also think that an ealthy gank and bump is also good in all spaces) my suggestions tend to be twards some other aspects. Don’t get me wrong just because I’m not suggesting nothing more PvP (ShipvShip) related, but those ideas are being writen by other people and I still think that EVE have an huge potential in all other aspects

1 - Mentor Project

2 - Lore - standings - Negative security status being attacked by empire’ navies (and not receive only a warning)

3 - LP store - unique items per corp and not per empire, including also memorabilia. Why mining corps or labs should have on their shop ammunition or cannons instead of more mining devices or skill books?

4 - New Projects Discovery - option to receive LP instead of ISK as reward or even new memorabilia (and some other projects running at the same time for different scientific NPC corps… I’m sure that around the world CCP could find one or two more universities or scientific institutes that wanted to join and take advantage of our numbers – wonder if NASA would join)

5 - New Apparel (fantasy outfits because all current outfits are similar) + Station Skins + Alliance/Corp Skins

6 - Since WIS was labeled as something that no one used (?) and that used too much of players PC’ systems, a captain’s quarter more static (or even 2D) could be created that would allow players to show their apparel, any object or text (something more complete than the character info but only accessed on the home station)

7 - A Captain’s Log could also be created gathering notepad, an history of past jumps, maybe an official list of all monuments in the galaxy everything runned by Aura. Again, I’m not suggesting nothing that takes system resources, I’m just talking about more static screens that everyone can use or not depending of their own immersion

8 - Planet Colonization - done under corporation but without any tax to be paid to another corp/alliance has it happens now with POCUS. Buildings must be acquired through agent missions (commercial buildings trough commercial NPC corps, mining buildings trough NPC mining corps, financial, research, agricultural etc buildings trough their correspondent NPC corps) - rewards could be tax obtained on the planet population or/and empire standings

9 - Futures and Stock Market (where both NPC or player Corps could issue products

10 - Loan contracts (with interest periods and collateral)

11 - Manager Role for Stations that allow the sending of messages to everyone that have jobs running on that station (no need to know who is running the jobs, just to write a message and send it)

12 - Possibility to customize the internal screen on stations so the station’s owner can stream his own message (I usually see on my raitaru adds from other corps/alliances and always think that might be weird for some alliances to watch adds from their enemies)

13 - Increase the Agency’s agent range because is still very short and still provide some weird results - ideally it should be the old Agent Finder

14 - CCP’s posts should be more and more focused on the official forum, I know that reddit is also used but it’s weird to see that some CCP staff go there instead of their own official site. The same for CSM, every member should have an “open office thread” so we can follow the activity of each member. On this last year I think that I only noticed the participation of Steve and Jin’tan. I don’t mind to vote on a null candidate if I read that he’s working for the good of all spaces but if the counselor only speaks to his own corp it’s difficult for me to vote on him since I would assume that he was quiet the entire year

15 - QoL thread is huge and have lots and lots of good ideas. A Jira site should be created by CCP in order for us to understand what is doable, what is under analysis, what is rejected…

16 - MER report should have a comment/report done by CCP. After all SCC regulates all trade in New Eden almost like a central bank for the galaxy. Maybe CCP could delegate that task for a small group of volunteers (I bet that we have lots of players that do that in RL) that every month analyze MER report and elaborate an analysis and a forecast

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Twitter sent me here :relaxed: :purple_heart:

Highsec is many things and none of them really well, except trade hubs.

Good luck getting everyone happy!

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I’ll approach this topic from a different perspective - High Sec works very well for me and has kept me engaged for more than 4 years. I moved several characters to Null Sec for a couple of years but, it wasn’t the way I wanted to play the game. So, what’s working for me and can it be extended to other play styles?

I was attracted to Eve by the economic simulation and play as an industrialist. My game play involves interaction with other players through the markets. This is dynamic - the strategy that worked last week won’t necessarily work next week - and asynchronous - I don’t need to be logged in the same time as my competition. There are elements of risk - my transports are juicy targets for the pirates of New Eden but surviving, indeed thriving, as prey is part of the challenge that makes the game enjoyable. Last, but not least, the markets are lucrative if you know what you’re doing - I doubt you can earn more ISK/hour of gameplay doing any other activity.

Breaking this down into components:

  • There is strategy. I need to set goals, plan how I intend to achieve them and adapt to changing conditions.
  • There is flexibility. The game I want to play is available when I want to play it - I’m not dependent on anyone else’s schedule.
  • There is progression and reward. My business today is a lot more sophisticated than it was a couple of years ago and my in game wealth has grown proportionally.

People who play for the combat simulation can easily find strategic gameplay, progression and reward in the lower security regions but lower population density makes finding a fight when you want one more of a challenge. High Sec PVP tends to be predator and prey - people looking for kills rather than fights but can involve considerable strategy and skill on both sides. High Sec wars tend to be asymmetric - but you learn to deal with them, “win by not losing”. The only concern I have with the current mechanics is rookie griefing and I don’t know how big a problem that actually is.

Most players get started in High Sec mining and mission running. Mining is the first link in a complex value chain that can lead to an industrial career like the one I followed. Missions tend to be isolated ISK faucets. There is little strategy - these sites were solved and documented years ago and, for High Sec, progression stops at level 4. Some people like predictable ISK faucets but we also need content with strategic depth - a reason beyond bounties to do the activity. Ideally this will be competitive with some method of ranking players and rewarding achievement.

CCP hasn’t published a demographic map of New Eden for some time, the last one showed about 70% of the population in High Sec with 15% in sovereign Null Sec and about 5% each in Low Sec, NPC Null and Wormhole space. I doubt this distribution has changed much so a lot of paychecks at CCP depend on a healthy High Sec. The players who want to leave High Sec have already gone - pushing the others too hard will simply push them out of the game. High Sec gameplay needs to be sufficiently satisfying and rewarding to keep these players in the game.

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Thanks Mike!

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Because of this ccp need to pay much more attention to Hi sec, because Hi sec is heart of Eve civilization and null sec and low sec are just remote periphery.

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What highsec is: an emergent mess of complex mechanics and player interactions, where all players start.

What CCP tries to shape highsec into: a starter area that prepares players for the “real game”, some of which happens in highsec (economy) and some not (multiplayer PvP)

What highsec should be IMO: a viable endgame venue for players not interested on economy, multiplaying or PvP.

Most online palyers are solo PvErs and CCP’s efforts to make everything better for multiplayer PvPrs are bleeding dry the population and income that highsec used to provide.

There is a simple truth CCP has never understood (or their development culture ignores it): individual risk/reward is set in stone. Each player will search for and stick to his risk/reward ratio, and will stick to it forever.

All attempts by CCP to lure players into higher risk/reward have the collateral of rewarding players who naturally agree to higher risk/reward and downplay the perceived value of players who prefer lower risk/reward, since they get less or nothing.

Case in point: abysmal sites, F1-F3 loot is poor because of extensive use in highsec whereas players who run F4-F5 in null get full, better loot. Thus the feature effectively punishes players for being “just F1-F3”.

Since highsec doesn’t gets viable endgame, and is just a showroom for “the real thing” and a starter area and a playgorud for economy players, it is losing CCP precious players for no good reason at all. It was this way in 2008 when I started, was this way in 2011 with Incarna, was this way in 2013 when CCP comitted to Rubicon and still is this way now.

Highsec is losing players for no good reason at all, just because CCP strives to make sure that highsec players are fuill aware that they should be elsewhere since they don’t meet the standards of CCP’s desired target.

It would be much better if highsec had it’s own high grade, EXCLUSIVE content to reward players who prefer that risk/ reward, rather than constantly reminding them that they’re missing the “real thing”. NPC standings and security status could provide ways to gate content as “highsec exclusive”.

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I am not sure this is the thread to debate this, but while I have no doubt this commentary reflects you and your views, I don’t think it is as near universal as you claim.

Yes, there are players who don’t want any risk and can’t handle loss at all, but I don’t accept these are set in stone nor immutable for most players. In fact, I think it is a common arc to start your Eve career seeking safety and progress, but after some months or years, when your wallet and hangers are overflowing, players tend to seek out more risky activities and meaning for why they are playing this game. Maybe that’s isn’t a real change in risk tolerance as risking 0.01% of your net worth in a ship that would have been 10% of your net worth as a 3 month old player has a completely different feeling, but it is an real one and does send people out from highsec to the more risky spaces once they feel well off.

No it doesn’t. F1-F3 loot is worth nothing because we, the players, decide what stuff coming out of those sites is worth. No matter how much stuff CCP has comes out of them, the value will trend towards nothing given as the content is, by design, very safe and infinitely spamable. F4-F5 loot is just more of the same, and can be run anywhere, but the value of those too will continue to decrease as players perfect farming them. Because they largely share the same loot table, they will be the only one’s worth doing at some point, and likely only that because they are gated by SP, ISK and some player skill.

Being in highsec doesn’t prevent you from running them - only being risk averse does. Being risk averse is suppose to “actively punish” you but providing less rewards as it does most other places in the game.

And nullsec is gaining players, likely many of them the same ones leaving highsec, or ones that would have made highsec their home but have been attracted by the increased rewards CCP has stuffed there in recent years. I can see why some people, especially people who like the highsec life don’t like that, but it is completely obvious that these buffs to nullsec to shift activity were completely intended.

That said, it is a little telling that many highsec players quit or moved to nullsec when rewards were buffed there. The highsec content itself didn’t change - in fact it also has been expanded significantly in recent years after a period of neglect, but yet a relative decrease in the income of highsec as compared to nullsec was sufficient to drive them away. I think that argues that it was indeed an overly generous risk vs. reward balance that kept players there, rather than something intrinsically compelling about the place.

Farmers follow the ISK, and many players in Eve are just farmers. They go where the best income-to-risk balance is. Before it was highsec, now it is nullsec so they are there.

There can be no highsec exclusive content that is rewarding. It will be farmed into worthlessness in short order, and/or draw people back from nullsec to participate. Nullsec ratters have the highest security statuses in the game, and rabid FW players the best with the NPC factions. Highsec will always be there for the solo/small group/casual to play, but I see no viable way to make an exclusive and valuable reward widely-available available only to highsec players.

The Abyssal sites are a textbook example of the problems of balancing rewards of safe and unlimited content in a player-driven economy. Any such new highsec end-game exclusive content would have to be more like incursions with some progression and competition, and yes risk, competing for limited prizes if you want the rewards to retain or have any value. Even then, if it is too valuable, it will just be taken from highsec by organized nullsec groups, like Incursions were at times.

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There was a drop rate nerf after release of Abyssal space.

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Sure. And there is another rebalance planned for the July release.

But it won’t matter as, at least as it has been advertised, the loot tables are shared across the sites with the higher sites just dropping more loot. Therefore as long as those high end sites have some value, the T4/T5 will be hyper-farmed by those who have mastered them and have the gear necessary and push the value of all the Abyssal loot to near nothing.

I mean, I look forward to dirt cheap Triglavian ships and mutaplasmids down the road, but expecting sites that are unlimited in number and safe from other players to pay more than the existing options on offer isn’t realistic. No matter how CCP balances the loot drops the value of the loot coming out of these sites will crash to near or below that offered by the existing PvE options on the table.

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Not unlimited and not safe. The filaments come from somewhere. The trillions lost in ships and implants inside the Abyss are a testament to how hard they can be. Not to mention that even running a “safe” site can still land you a gank anywhere that you can’t escape or defend yourself from if the gankers are organized.

I get it though. If they all dropped enough to make people rich, they wouldn’t be worth much for long.

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Players can run F4-F5 sites in high sec, so why are they only running the lower level ones with less lucrative loot?

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You already know the answer to that. I’ll give you a hint, it rhymes with suspect timer.

Players in sov null can run F4 and F5 in perfect safety with supercap overwatch, that’s why…

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Because, unlike nullsec, they risk being ganked by literally anyone as long as their suspect flag lasts.

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Why is that unlike null sec? You run these on a safe, even in highsec, somebody has to scan you down to find you and kill you. Same as in null sec. There shouldn’t be any difference in terms of your risk profile.

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How did you manage to make CSM without having even a basic grasp of game mechanics?

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