My first null experience was in Great Wildlands before citadels were introduced. It was a place that lived up to its name… lots of sparsely populated space filled with surprise encounters. It was fun to poke around and find small operations specifically designed for sparsely populated areas.
I bring this up, because citadels have brought about a more homogeneous game play. They offer benefits, because more space becomes more usable by players. More pilots encounter each other and GFs happen, but the game loses the feeling of remote places.
I can’t deny the benefits to gameplay since the introduction of citadels, especially for wormhole corporations, but so much existing infrastructure (NPC stations, etc.) seem a bit invalidated. With “tax avoidance” for markets and industry, it seems like citadels are better than stations in every way. There doesn’t seem to be many trade offs when you use a citadel instead of a station.
So, do you think citadels made the game better? Should they be squishier and have more asset loss to make use of a citadel a more difficult decision (with risk/benefit) for a player rather than all benefit?
I think I can fit moduile on ship from container, when I am in station. Citadels made a total mess from FW system, but helped elsewhere (you can not ambush anyone on undock because of thetering) As any strong thing it gave some and took some
CCP has made noise about everything in EVE being destructible, including NPC stations and stargates. That was probably just media noise to rile up a crowd at fanfast, but it does leave the door open for citadels to replace NPC stations at some point.
Not to my overview it didnt, I am surprised some systems have any flyable space in them they are so full of citadels, I think there should have been a cap to how many per system, may equal to or just above the number of moons there are with the new moon miing structures
With any change, you give a little and take a little. Some people will inevitably be happy with changes, some people are unhappy with any changes ever. Changes, updates, iterations, are all give and take. So, I’m not surprised some people are angered while others are delighted.
Myself? I think they’re mostly perfect as they can be (other than skill requirements, which is getting changed soon isn’t it?). The only sticking point is the contention regarding asset safety. I obviously can’t speak for CCP here, but I full and truly believe they wanted citadels to be subject to loot fairy drops just like ships. At least in the beginning. But then you encounter the conundrum of “people won’t use them if their stuff isn’t safe, making the time invested in programming citadels completely pointless and a failure”, verses “if nothing drops, what’s the point of attacking it? And what of the harsh -nothing safe- nature of EVE?”
In the end, I think they made the right choice for a problem where 50% of people were guaranteed to be really pissed off whichever way they opted to go. They made the citadels more usable by providing asset safety, even if it flew in the face of the nature of EvE, because nobody would use them because the risk was too great. The only people who would use citadels then would be those who already have overwhelming force to guarantee protection for their citadels, making it just another tool that only benefits them.
I do wish people would ease up on complaining about asset safety. I agree, doesn’t really fit with EvE. But we want usable structures and we want to make sure their ability to be used is as broad as we can reasonably make it. Asset safety is a necessary (evil?) part of that.
Except that with a station, when you log in you know where your ships, items, sell orders, etc. will be; you don’t have to worry they might be in “asset safety.”
They defiantly need more tweaks; I do think they were a step in a good direction from a concept POV… but … there are some issues with them in practice within the current landscape.
I think there are just way too many of them. they should have been far more difficult to produce and have their costs increased about x100. For real. it should be like “wow a citadel” instead its just “meh another citadel to cause overview spam…”.
A limited number of slots people have to fight over, more fighting, sounds good to me.
Or on the other hand, we could apply the citadel spread to other things: remove the limit of one POCO/planet, then each planet could have 100 POCOs surrounding it!
/sarcasm
Per your example of Great Willdlands, they certainly did.
Great Wildlands only has a few NPC stations, and ALL of those are clustered together in an area easily controllable by anyone that wants to. This is peculiar to Great Wildlands topography.
Citadels in Great Wildlands improved the opportunity for smaller entities to set up their own operations there, without relying on the NPC station core.
I’m not a big fan, tbh, although tethering is a good feature (makes undock ambushes difficult).
Like the OP, I’d explore the Great Wildlands pre-citadel, and you really felt as if you were on an expedition. Not anymore. Half the systems have a freeport in them.
Good idea, there isn’t nearly enough crying about how everything is for the benefit of the mega-coalitions and totally useless/unavailable to the unwashed masses.
