but, but, but… you said you won’t stop playing, the only thing CCP/FC would remotely care for… Instead you said you wanted to “glass your neighbours”. CCP/FC doesn’t give a damn who you attack or don’t attack as long as you are keeping the accounts subbed.
And just btw, this game has such a bad reputation and new player retention because large groups are simply too powerful and have it too easy and convenient to project their power over large areas in pretty much no time. That takes away the breathing room for any groups below their own power level, especially small groups which are the lifeblood of the future.
Only if CCP/FC can keep the promise that EVE sends out: “come play and create something own, team up with friends and build your own sandcastle, even forge your own little empire!” - it can thrive.
Very Large Alliances do nothing but suffocating this growth. Nobody joins this game to become part of some anonymeous 10.000 player group where he has no say and is just a totally unimportant screw in some machinery that makes someone else superrich. People do go there because atm it is one of the only remaining ways to play in Nullsec. Not because they want to.
And finally CCP/FC seem to have understood that they need to support small groups by limiting large ones in their ability to just teleport around and stomp everything in sight. This change is a good step into the absolute right direction and to say it bluntly: maybe 10.000 lazy nullers should just quit and maybe CCP/FC should this time sit out the shitstorm to allow a fresh growth afterwards. This game needs grassroot growth by thousands of small and medium groups, from a handful of friends over a guild of 30 to a small alliance of 100 or 200 - all with different and sometimes rivaling opinions, goals and demands. THIS is what drives conflicts, THIS is what creates an environment where new people can join and think “hey, this looks amazing, I want to be part with my peer group of friends, lets join in and also build our little participating force in this chaotic but promising universe!”.
And this can only be achieved if the near-instant mobility of large fleets is drastically nerfed in this game. Hopefully they will adress Cynos in the future, to also nerf the BLOPs/Cap/Supercap Hammer as well and make that usable only for the close-range defense of the alliances heartlands instead of controlling whole regions with it.
You are ignoring human nature as always. There are more people joining EVE because of the huge blocks than because of some small, unimportant, unnoticeable, unimpacting band of misfits. After all, the huge blocks are what CCP continuously, incessantly and since time immemorial advertises.
The change of the access list will have the exact opposite effect of what “support smaller alliances” meant.
Blocks aside, you know that there is a way called “the diplomatic way”? What about non agression packts between alliances. And the option to carter to these treaties by access to infrastructure is essential.
Let’s take a step back and think about why there are 3 majority blocks. This is natural, only logical. Player tend to collect in groups. Groups provide safety. The larger the group the better. Sure, you might not like someone, but all tend to flock together under the group. This is what happens in any society. And some like each other and some not. And then some tend to support the one or other. There are always groups opposing each other, but the number of groups always tend to merge and build blocks. This is in society, politics and world domination always the case.
And now, how is this bad? Because small groups can’t find a foothold in null? Isn’t this a fundamental problem in sov mechanic itself and not “but there are 2/3/n+1 megablocks using all of that space”? Or that they can project from their staging everywhere in minutes?
Add features for diplomatic options. Like real diplomatic contract options.
Add help for smaller groups in form of new mechanics that encourages them to step out (or even space with specific restrictions who options out big blocks of intervening there).
The more hard way would be to sort out all of the sov design flaws. This needs a lot of planing and communication of ways to discuss to not offend all current sov blocks.
But in the end there will always be a few little blocks with the real major advantage standing against each other. No change will change this fundamental fact.
The better question is: How can you, as Fenris Creation and developer of this game, support and help smaller groups to find their place in this landscape? Because you won’t change the fundamental behaviour of people to clog together.
They will add an API endpoint like for mining platforms so alliances have to add IT glue and send out their tax colletors for their 30 pieces of silver, because simply taking ISK out of people’s wallets is only ok to do to ratters in your corp, not ratters in your space.
Small groups are not lifeblood of anything, they are irrelevant. People come to eve for the big stuff, for battles and politics that change the history (not for CCPs scripted stuff). Strangely enough, CCPs advertising staff is perfectly aware of what makes eve unique and what to push in their marketing. It is just game balancing devs that are clueless (or prefer to listen to their former buddies).
After all, you can’t build an empire with 7 dudes hiding in an NPC station and crying about not having metenoxes.
Your empire means large group of players. I doubt that word empire brings 3 dudes hiding in an NPC station and padding their kb by cloaky camping a gate or two. Which is the gameplay that CCP has been pushing for decades. It’s always the small gang pvp BS that gets pushed. Except that small gang pvp doesn’t make any good stories (There are no history books about cloaky camping a gate strangely enough). Game needs a sandbox and player agency not CCP trying to make us all play correctly. small gang pvp is basically any shooter on the planet and every single one of those has much better fun to effort ratio than eve.
If nobody wants to join big blocks why are they so big? I joined goons and would never consider playing with any other group. During WWB all of us would have fought to the last ship and isk as there was no point in the game without all your friends. Way too many CCP devs and elite pvpers don’t understand that what keeps people playing are social bonds rather than kb stats. Look at GSF and compare to the elite pvp alliance like PL. We are about the same age, except we are alive and kicking while they are undocking 30 t1 destroyers on a good day (gotta guard those kb stats).
Reason this will never happen is because it is not big blocks that are predatory (we prefer fighting each other, especially now that PH is dead). It is the elite pvpers that have wet dreams of many small entities that they can step on without any risk. That is what CCP devs and their supporters want. EVE where 99% are there just to feed egos of the glorified 1% elite pvpers.
Sadly for both, people are not stupid and will not play a game where only “fun” is to get abused by psychopaths. This is a game so people are not forced to tolerate your abuse. Something both CCP and elite pvpers should try and remember from time to time.
Every time you nerf big blocks you nerf even more small groups. We will always have more brain power and bodies to spread the load of adapting on. Your idea of removing the sandbox to enforce game play where you have free game for hunting with zero to little risk is what is killing this game.
Make space valuable. Make it worth holding. Make it difficult to get trolled and stepped on by people hiding in perfectly safe NPC stations. Maybe remove docking rights for capitals from NPC stations. They can end up there due to asset safety but can’t dock up. Force the oppressive groups in low sec to be in stations where players can do something about them. Ban renting (players pretty much did this already since CCP could not be bothered to end this toxic “game play”
Show that CCP is capable of long term thinking and planning instead of listening to elite pvpers for the n:th time. Stop balancing for small gang pvp in a game of epic battles and blocks.
Unlike CCP player blocks have actually moved to enable new growth. Imperium guaranteeing drone lands freedom from big blocks has done more to bring people to 0.0 than anything CCP has done in the last decade. I’m pretty sure that both Shines and Noraus realise that this is a good thing and are not exactly pushing to attack there. I would not be surprised if three of them agree on more such spaces. We all want more strong enemies because those are actually fun to fight.
Reaction of majority of Imperium members to PH imploding after CCPs backstab was disappointment. As much as some of us hated their guts we wanted fights we wanted to dislodge them from unhealthy drone regions (too much safety is detrimental to a blocks survival as people become lazy, but it is a good space to start growing and integrating).
Finally, the server performance is already as good as it is going to get. CCP could have more nodes and better balancing (having nearby systems on the same node was a stupid move but they did it to avoid random tidi in high sec due to movement of fleets in 0.0 when nodes were not mapped based on proximity). It is truly incredible what the CCP backend devs have accomplished (no other game is even close, they are all orders of magnitude behind). TiDi is not a problem, as it is basically a symbol of fights that matter. If thousands of players are fighting it must be over something that matters and that is what is special with EVE.
That’s how GSF does it. There are APIs to log ratting income. We ask miners to give same 10% to the corp as to be fair (this is an ETNY thing, not alliance mandate). And there are alliance buyback programs for red loot that include 10% effective tax.
Problem is that for smaller groups, without IT infrastructure of GSF, that is far harder. But CCP will rather waste time and resources on buffing elite pvp gankers for the n:th time than actually try to make life a bit easier for smaller groups who can’t afford to have their own IT infrastructure.
Ratting comes out of the wallet automatically with every tick, mining taxes do not.
Which lends itself to the argument this mechanic should be changed part of the ‘in game’ function to level the playing field because doing well in a game should be based of more than if you can bring a stack of nerds to your corporation.
Problem is how do you tax mining. Taking isk value would be weird as the “value” is not very well defined and CCPs ingame values are sometimes a bit off. Best way would be % taxed and dumped into the HQ of the corp/alliance but that is free transport so a bit problematic (put tax at 100% and no need to haul). This is why corp I am in uses trust approach. We trust that our miners feel that it is their contribution and ask them to dump it in a corp hangar in C-J. I don’t really think that CCP can do much here just due to the fact that ore is not instantly movable like isk.
I fully agree here. CCP better supporting small groups with in game “IT infrastructure” would be a big improvement. They had voice coms at some point but of course they were very basic and did not support command structure that we have on mumble. Maybe they could take another stab at it now that ACLs are a thing.
Problem is that this would have to work outside of clients and would cost more than some empty words about “power projection” and then buffing elite pvpers at the cost of everyone else for the n:th time.
You might be able to see that, but from what i know you would have to leave your ship and enter the ansiblex, to see the fitting window, but not many normal members have that access.
More new mechanics, new boundaries that don’t work. You want to force players to do things they don’t want to do. You’re killing Eve, and none of this can change that because you can’t think differently.
Nerf the capitals, give us the ability to get to fights where they are quickly without disruptions imposed by shortsighted devs lacking long-term statistical insights. We want to play, not be stuck with four systems if we live in a coalition that isn’t Goons or Fraternity.
You’re terrible, and this change continues to show that you don’t truly care about Eve.
Form a gang and attack someone. Nobody is imprisoning you in any system. How do you think active PvP corps are doing it? They form, pick a target/route/region that looks promising and begin to poke and bait until they get a response that results in content. People shouldn’t have the ability to “go where the fights are quickly” because exactly that results in the big groups simply crashing the party every time by dropping the blob that then obliterates any chances of having good fights. No, this “we need to go quickly…” is a false promise. Learn how to bait and poke properly and create your own content opportunities without some blob 30 jumps away being able to spot you and rushing there to bust you up within a few minutes by magic teleporter systems.
People shouldn’t have the ability to “go where the fights are quickly” because exactly that results in the big groups simply crashing the party every time by dropping the blob that then obliterates any chances of having good fights
Bruh. Filaments? Pick target route region? Huh? Everyone end their mother when going to do small gang is either filamenting or going to goons/frat. No one is like. “Hes boys lets go to Syndicate and kill some ppl.” And even when you filamenting you will end up at Goons or Frat anyways. This is the game.
You take away the ability to quickly respond to these threats. Bacause lets be hones 10 man nano gang filamenting to steal an ESS that 4 ppl ratted togehter. And what you have is a 5 minute response window that requires a 50 man fleet to deal with becuase Elite nano ESS pvp is what the DEVS yearn for. Take the ability to respond away and you just end up with ratters being okay with 60% of their income is gone. Until they arent and just go play something else because its already aids to make ISK ratting.
But that means reduced power projection. The plan is working. Except it isnt because then there is no content for the Elite gang as big blocks jsut stop responding to them. This is where the JB changes come in. Less ESS pvp Elites not happy. More pvp on JBs Elites happy.
The majority of you fail to understand that almost everything Fenris does or CCP did in the past is to cater to small gang pvp.
Yeah and hopefully Frat and Goons lose lots of those only-by-teleporters-defendable areas then if they can’t protect those ratters and miners any more from their staging areas. Then alliances can settle there that may be much smaller, but can defend locally because they actually live nearby.
The ESS was explicitly designed to force the ratters to either fight off invaders (which will be very limited in numbers because filaments have limits) or lose parts of their income if they don’t fight. Can’t be that hard to have a powerful ESS doctrine ready and waiting in an inhabited ratting system and teaching players how to use it. Most ESS-robbing gangs are ~10 people, often less. Easy as heck to deflect them if you just get 3 or 4 people together. Learn to fight properly. Learn how smallgang warfare works, or you simply can’t hold a system 30 jumps away from the alliances main staging which is only reachable in time by a proper defense fleet via magic teleporter systems.
You clearly dont understand how SOV works it seems. Or what a Timer is. Or PVP it seems.
“You deflecting a 10 man gang with an ESS doctrine and 4 pilots.” 0 clue.
“Smaller alliances taking space because no teleporti magic” 0 clue.
Do you even know how SOV is taken? Taht everything got timers? Every infrasctructure is ties to a TIMER. A TIMER that is not affected by any of this. And it doesnt matter even if you didnt have JBs at all. You will meet the timers as a BLOCK.
And even IF there is a multi directional simultanious attack. the Blocks will meet all the timers. As attackers spread thin so can the defenders to mmet those timers. And i can tell you. The defenders will ALWAYS outnumber the attackers.
You think taking space is just flying i nthere popping a structure and its urs in 30 minutes or what?
The consensus from my alliance+ restricting jump bridge use to just alliance is a bad idea,
But the limiting of power projecting and thinking of ideas to encourage or allow more nullsec entities to exist isn’t a bad idea.
In some ways this could make fleets take longer but it also might not make a difference, because all previous wars, we stage in a system that is close to enemy, and we dont use bridges once in hostile territory, So this, would benefit attackers.
This might push warfare/movement more in favor of caps, because aniplex alliance use restrictions, a mixed alliance cap fleet faces no restrictions.
This will make aniplex use as a more local alliance defence or civilian transport that multi alliance groups ignore for mixed fleets, and have less mingling for allied alliances and more each sticking to own territory.
This could have a huge impact on big groups having one market with it being harder to travel to it out of alliance making hubs for each alliance and region be a thing.
The main thing I dont like about this is its a sort of artificial restriction that doesn’t make sense on jump bridges, the magic alliance restriction doesn’t make sense, why cant anyone be allowed to use it, it restricts the sandbox. The no capitals can make sense because they are too fat.
Though as an entity, leadership has planned to adapt to this. Its not realy game ending, its just a change to adapt to, good or bad they have cosigned to like every other change its just something thats going to happen.
Oh god. elite pvper talking about fighting. That’s why you are all in nano ganngs and have cloaks. To better stay and fight. After all 20 vs 1 is a good fight and show of skill while 20 vs 50 is dirty blobbing and we have to cry to CCP. Smaller alliance will not be able to defend against 20-30 nanogangers because the only way to chase them off is to have so large numbers that you can just alpha them off the field at which point they ran away to protect their kb stats.
This is great. Each system can support 3-4 ratters while filaments can support 25 people. Those are those good fights you and ccp devs yearn for. Padded kb and boosted ego because you bravely defeated 4 ratters.
Why don’t you learn to organise real fleets and come with to a proper fight? Why does everyone else have “adapt” to your play style? It is obvious from past times where ccp devs sniffed elite pvp farts that majority of players do not enjoy being told you are pray and you should plex more ships so you can feed to people talking about risk while hiding in NPC stations or WHs (for those that can tolerate slightly higher amount of risk).
All this elite pvper crying but I can’t remember when was the last time we fought anyone other than Init and FRT outside of our space. What fun is it to stomp on a 50 man alliance? Just today we had fleet from each of us in 4-H shooting it out. If we were like elite pvpers we would have taken those fleets and ganked some poor ratter in a random region and then bragged how we killed his ass with no losses and how locals are ■■■■ because they can’t defend against a full raven fleet. Thankfully none of the three blocks is led by psychopaths like that. More sadly, ccp devs keep listening to such people.