CSM 13 - High Sec Issues/Suggestions/Ideas

I think I told you earlier that I responded to that one part because I found the rest of what you wrote cogent, and I didn’t really disagree with you. It was good feedback and I’ve got it filed with the rest of the good feedback I’ve seen here.

I hope the other high sec folks actually post here. I’d be interested in hearing what they have to say bereft of the bad attitude.

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I recognize that. That’s why I started the thread in the first place. I want to hear issues, concerns, ideas.

If we can’t have a conversation because that’s me arguing with people, that’s a shame.

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They are not dependable as the source of income is depending on luck, not skill.
They are only rewarding if you are lucky. Skill is easily outdone by a bad RNG draw or simply server instability.
I question creativity. You can pick and choose which ones you want to run and most work best with a Sacrilege or Gila with specific fittings. Missions, on the other hand, can be done reliably with a host of different fittings and tactics compared to abyssal sites.
Remains to be seen how they will get expanded on. Would also be interesting to see how many people actually run them. From my experience, more people drop out of running them than new people starting to run them.

Hopefully the fixes that are in the July update, which include expanding loot in the lower tiers, will help increase the amount of income folks can make running these.

I also think they need to tweak these to make more than one or two fits the standard. I think the fact that everybody running them in Gilas demonstrates that need to tweak these to make other fits more useful.

They’re already talking about expansions, but we don’t have any details beyond they want to do it, so we’ll see how that plays out.

Do you have statistics on Abyssal sites being run throughout null? Do you have statistics on how many cap alts are logged in to the same system? On the abyssal site? Ready to warp to said abyssal site?

I don’t, I can only base it on personal experience. I avoid Delve, so as far as I know 0 sites are being spammed there.

If you don’t your opinion is just as valid as mine or anyone else’s. Meaning you could be wrong. I would hope that before you completely shoot down the opinions you don’t agree with that you at least review some stats. You unlike the rest of us peasants have CCP’s ear. It is very important to some of us that you and the other CSM pay attention to the stats and not ignore us because of your personal anecdotal opinions.

I took it a bit too personal when you made a couple comments. I should be thanking you for trying to do right by us.

Thanks.

I don’t have the statistics, so, like you, I’m just going off of my own experience and what I’ve seen. I’ve run a ton of these sites, and I tend to do it on safes in my staging system, I don’t bother using a FAX or another cap to protect me. I have never been pinged to get in a fleet to save an abyssal site runner in my supercap/cap, either, and I have never seen one of those go out in any of our channels. So I’m just going by what I’m seeing.

I want to be clear - I will represent every opinion I see, even ones I don’t agree with, because that’s what the job is.

And I appreciate the thanks.

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It is genuine.

Yeah, and when they say the sky is red and they don’t like it red and they quit the game because is red, you will say it’s blue and move on.

If you don’t want to listen, and don’t want to ask, and don’t want to learn, if you just want to agree with us or ignore us because you disagree with us, then you’re just trolling us all.

What’s the point to ask for feedback if you’re just going to ignore it? What’s this about? You being right, or about you learning what do highseccers think and why do they leave and what would make them stay? Don’t you see that if highseccers agreed with you, they would be nullseccers like you?

I’ll ask again:

Do you want to be right?
Or do you want to learn how to help highsec, EVE and CCP?

It’s very simple. Just say:

“Yiole, why do you think that it’s different?”

I’ve already done that. If you want to keep complaining that I’m not simply agreeing with everything you’ve said, that’s one thing. But I’ve gone out of my way to be patient and to be visible and open to suggestions, ideas and concerns.

But if it means you’ll actually engage without the nonsense, then I’m happy to ask why you think that it’s different.

Not sure how this should work without expanding on red loot (ISK faucet). More drops just means less value of the drop. More people running the sites the less value has the loot.

For that they have to scrap the procedural generation. The more variability the sites have, the less fits can be used efficiently. As long as there is a death threat and RNG based composition/opposition there will be an optimal fit, with everything else being subpar to use.

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It’s different because the players who do PvE in highsec, for the most part don’t want to PvP. Since getting the flag makes them a PvP target, and that’s something they don’t want, then they don’t do the sites involving that drawback. Nullseccers don’t care of the chance of PvP, but highseccers do.

Also, highseccers learn to be safe by being stealthy. Don’t speak in local, don’t bling your ship, move systems each now and then, keep an eye on local, watch out for spikes… getting a “free to shoot” flag is quite opposite to the day to day life of the highsec PvEr.

This is compoundend on how highseccers don’t stay in highsec out of love for a high risk. Highsec PvErs prefer their risk low, for the most part. This is why CCP’s attempts to lure them out of their risk zone have become tiny niches usually run by PvPers rather than pure PvErs.

You see? Risk perception is everything in highsec. The solution, by the way, is not to remove the flag. The solution is to develop content that doesn’t requries being gated behind a criminal flag so highseccers don’t farm it to death… rather only nullseccers do it.

As this si the other part. Nullseccers have no problem runningF4-F5. Not because they pay more nor becasue they play better, just because they randomly feel comfortable with a higher risk and get free perks from CCP once they pay the toll.

CCP is literally rewarding players for having certain deep built in personality traits, and diminishing the value of EVE to other players based on exactly the same deep built in personality traits. It’s as if redheads got a better EVE just because, but CCP couldn’t decide to make the game redheads only and still takes the money from other players without giving them back the same value as to redheads.

This is how you ignore more than 80% of the game.

PVP exists.
PVE exists.
Industry exists.

They are not mutually exclusive options.

I think the minimal effort and resources needed to obtain feedback from “silent” HS players through targeted,well written surveys and analysis would be far,far less than the hundreds of dev hours and company resources used to keep creating DOA new content like Resource Wars. The current method of obtaining feedback is lacking, the interpretation of the feedback is faulty and bias, and concluding that what is being done now is sufficient is in error.

I want you to listen real carefully. The large number of people who are active in EVE HS and are silent are not happily satisfied with the current state of development. They stay active in EVE because until another game comes along that can mimic the environment, they will keep doing what they have been doing for years…BUT THEY ARE NOT CONTENT. You (and CCP) may argue that HS must be fine because otherwise the players would quit doing HS activities and since people are still in HS, everyone is happy. The slow kill off you are seeing in the game and especially HS are those players who have grown bored with the current activities, not interested in null, and decide that subscribing or spending money in a game where they are bored is stupid. They move to another game, space or not. When the time occurs where there is a game close enough to EVE in regards to current HS environment, but with with some more options/challenges/puzzles,etc, well then there will be a huge exodus of HS players.

If CCP and the CSM keep doing the same thing (in regards to how they obtain HS feedback) and keep creating DOA content like RW, yet expect different results (an uptick in player population,especially in HS) well, I think that is a fine example of defining words like “stupid” and “insane”. What is being done now, isn’t working…change your data input and interpretation.

What you guys are asking for is not minimal effort. It costs companies who want to engage in that level of detail with consumers and stakeholders and politicians who want accurate polling hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in analytics and time to get that kind of feedback in meaningful numbers. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m saying that it’s not likely to be efficient, and that’s based on my RL experience, both with polling and being married to an analytics guru who has worked with some of the biggest names in polling from Frank Luntz on down.

That being said, I’ve already asked and will continue to ask for more metrics about what folks are doing in the game, and asking what kind of feedback mechanism beyond the CSM and what they’re currently doing that could be done. Once I see the feedback from the Abyssal questionnaire I think I’ll have a better idea of whether it’s feasible to expect high sec responses from players who aren’t angry.

How do you know this? How does anybody know this, if they’re not talking to anybody?

I don’t have metrics on the “slow kill off” beyond anecdotal claims that local seems smaller than it used to. Do you have any numbers to back this up, or is this just a feeling? As for other games attracting folks attention, that’s inevitable. But it’s been 15 years so far and nobody has done a game that comes remotely close to EVE, and given the fact that in the gaming community it’s largely consider a niche product, do you think it likely somebody will?

I get the message on the options/challenges/puzzles - I’ve heard that a lot now, so I will make sure to express that sentiment when we talk about highsec.

This functions under the assumption that it’s the data input and interpretation that is the problem. It may be - I don’t know. I assume I’ll get a better idea in September at the summit. But I can’t say for certain that’s true, anymore than I can say that Resource Wars was designed in response to player feedback.

I’ll see what I can do to get some answers to your questions and suggest they do more reach out to highsec players other than the ones who are actively engaged, even though I think that’s probably a waste of time.

Use dotlan. Compare June 2013 to to June 2018 for Hi-sec. Notice the decrease in kills,podding, faction kills , and ship jumps. Decreases of between 20+% to 50+% over 5 year period. That is overall data, certain HS systems have become almost non used

Now look at null sec for the same period. Player kills are down,podding is down,while Faction kills have skyrocketed as afk ratting has exploded and slightly higher number of jumps are being done. Look at Monthly Economic Reports over the last 5 years. NS has become slightly busier, but far more safe and extraordinarily more profitable.

Third party providers can supply some of the raw data, the conclusions are rather clear, the solutions appear to be in the CSM and CCP’s hands…but hey, it appears that no matter how much evidence is given, if certain groups don’t want to admit there is a solution, let alone a problem, posting in the forums appears to have little value. Most of us are not asking for a share of the economic pie of NS, just some the development resources…and end game development is not always the solution to the problem.

I am all for fighting to make sure that HS gets it’s share of resources, but it’s hard to nail down exactly what folks want. That’s why I think CCP keeps trying to think outside of the box to draw new players in. I get the message on more puzzle style content in HS, but is there anything else you think would keep folks happy up there?

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Not so much. They can somply make the drone automata do % damage and increase the range a bit.

That would effectively make drone boats less attractive. If all drones die in 30 seconds when in range and missiles die in 5 seconds they will no longer be the best ship for the job.

I know it isn’t the best solution. It would work to lower the cookie cutter fitting. It could be % based on tier as well.

See, no they are not, unless you somehow equate imaginary pixels or database numbers with “rewards”. Pretty much every type of PvE game play is available in highsec: you can do exploration, missions, Abyssal sites, mine, build stuff, do PI, run event sites etc. CCP goes out of their way, sometimes to the point of causing other problems, to add content and mechanics to all spaces and there are very few mechanics or items locked out of highsec, and almost all of these are kept out for the explicit reason to reduce PvP in highsec and increase player safety.

Yes, the database value of the rewards from those same activities are lower in highsec, but CCP is not hiding gameplay or trying to punish highsec players. This is completely intentional and has been this way from the beginning. The game is balanced on risk vs. reward to induce players to offer themselves up as content to the other players, and so safer areas need to not pay as well as there is a single shared economy. A too safe and too lucrative space drains content from the rest of the game.

There is no getting around this, so if you expect an essentially perfectly safe highsec activity to pay as much as when it is done where all the other players can shoot you, CCP will always disappoint you. Of course, not many will claim that but will say the risk premium is too high for nullsec (or too low) and may even have some valid reason why, but then we quickly fall into a morass of a lack of data and self-serving arguments that probably isn’t useful.

This is and always has been a PvP sandbox game. It’s great that people who don’t want PvP are able to play it and find enjoyment in it, but it is a little hard to take claims seriously that they are being “punished” every time CCP focuses on the core PvP game because those development efforts don’t benefit someone whose primary game is to avoid PvP.

Sorry, but that’s not the way the game is balanced. Risk is not always necessary to preform actions. ISK can be used (currently) as a full replacement for risk. There are too many things to list as riskless to put them all here and a full breakdown of what is risk and what is isk would take more paragraphs than this deserves as it would only switch the topic.

Of course it is. You can see that in every single PvE mechanic from Incursions to PI to Mission agents to mining. It is balanced on other things as well - reward vs. effort/grinding comes to mind - but the most consistent and obvious thread across PvE rewards is that more risk provides more reward.

I’ll agree that not everything is in perfect balance, and can drift out of balanced as other things in the game change, but it is clear that risk vs. reward is the overarching design paradigm of the game.