Empire mining, hard for the little guy to compete

Communications Center General Discussion
41

Not just high-sec, but the entire game in general. CCP have removed quite a few gameplay concepts from EVE over the years, including many that have nothing to do with PvP.

So the argument of taking away gameplay from players who enjoy it leading them to being driven away is kind of moot.

Yes and no.

Like I said, you pay a premium for any additional safety in practice. In the end, making 15 million ISK an hour from AFK-mining in a barge in high-sec might make more sense than making 30 million ISK an hour from active-mining in a barge in null-sec. There are a lot of considerations here, and all of them somehow deal with the baseline safety that high-sec provides. This baseline safety is what keeps many players rooted in high-sec, even if they could actually do better for themselves in null-sec.

They were never that much more profitable, even with quality levels. Also, power creep has enabled players to churn through combat PvE content much quicker than in the past.

Null-sec was more profitable in the beginning. All high-sec had to offer was missions and belt-mining.

I’m not in favor of forcing any particular group into a particular play style.

I am in favor of altering the rules of the game in a way that will impact everyone.

You can’t just change a “fun variable,” throw that in the patch notes, and call it a day. Fun means different things for different people. For some people, fun is blowing up someone’s ship and collecting their loot. For others, fun is repeating the same action over and over again for months to see the number in their wallet go up. But many such activities are in direct competition with others, so fun will always be a “zero-sum deal” in EVE.

However, by not giving players absolute choice in the matter, and structuring the game in a certain way, you can shift the baseline personal definitions of fun that players have. For example, ask yourself this: what kind of game would EVE have been if it never had high-sec to begin with?

When you ask questions like that, you start to realize the difference between arguing against changes on the merits of those changes, and arguing against changes because change is generally perceived as a bad thing by humanity.

42

i beg your pardon ms destiny but this don’t appear to be true , kids this days are into null sec alliances , big farms with services and capital umbrellas , look at the op

43

Any example will do.

Who’s doing this in nullsec? This is comparing something close to real with something fictitious.

They were 2.5 to 5 mil bounties now they.re 0.25 to 1 mil. You could also do them easily at 2mil SP in a T1 Fit torpedo raven with no drones.

Yet you’re literally arguing that yours is more valid than theirs.

Incorrect.

Also incorrect. All other players don’t have to lose for you to win. Players can choose what risk to undertake. Also you can’t shoot all players and you do have players to shoot. It cannot be zero sum by any angle.

Probably one without 80% of it’s subscribers. Certainly not one with 100% of it’s subscribers. But Eve isn’t that game. There’s no reason for it to be. You’ve made no argument that the state of high sec is detrimental, only that you don’t like that so many players stay there.

You also have no evidence that your changes will move high sec players into nullsec. It’s equally likely with no evidence that they will stay and make less isk. It’s also equally likely with no evidence that they will move on to another game.

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44

Any? Okay.

The elimination of the research lottery, and supplantation of T2 BPO production with the invention system. I’ve known quite a few players who quit because of this.

PS: No, I don’t own T2 BPOs. I just wanted to bring up a non-PvP example that CCP can and does take away gameplay that people enjoy, and are willing to drive players away.

That’s like asking “who’s mining in a Badger in high-sec?” It’s nonsensical, but it still happens all the time.

And that’s actually the crux of my argument; that players are engaging in gameplay that doesn’t actually serve their best interests on the perception that what they’re doing is providing them with the fun they desire. And that the only way to address this is by CCP fixing this “externality” with a change of the game’s rules that affects everyone.

At no point am I arguing in favor of just taking carebears and throwing them into unsafe space to act as loot pinatas for myself.

I don’t remember this to be the case, but I’ll let it go for now. Though I doubt that high-sec mission rats had such high bounties when the top null-sec spawn was valued at 1.85 million ISK, which I remember killing and thinking to myself “holy ■■■■ this is more money than I ever imagined making.”

Not at all.

I’m arguing that many players do things that they perceive as being “optimal fun” without trying other things that could turn out to be even more fun, simply because they don’t want to let go of the (mostly perceived) safety of high-sec.

That’s moot. I can just say “incorrect” to your “incorrect” and we could keep at it all day.

Once again, that wasn’t my argument. I just said that someone’s loss is another’s gain, and that humans generally dislike loss and enjoy gain is a fairly safe assumption.

And I most definitely can shoot all players, as long as they undock…so…?

Probably. Or maybe probably not. We can only speculate. I only use it as a control mechanism for evaluating the merits of change.

And on the contrary, I love that so many players stay in high-sec. After all, that’s where I also reside, and these players are responsible for the bulk of my income.

So my argument comes from a slightly more objective perspective than you give me credit for. I want CCP to change the game in a way that shakes things up for everyone, including myself. It’s highly likely that things would become even harder for me than for the average carebear as a result. But I still think that the net positive effects would be beneficial.

Yes, that is an opinion. But it’s no more or less valid than your opinion that things should stay the way they are.

That’s why the changes have to be more comprehensive than merely adjusting the ISK faucets.

And if they will move on to another game, well, players can move on to other games because things aren’t changing as well.

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They removed the lottery but democratised T2 production. An advantage was removed from some players, yes, but not gameplay.

I just don’t see the rewards of high sec as being that good they’re drawing players in for the ISK. I believe, after spending time in every security band, including null and wormholes, that the biggest barrier to nullsec is the current sovereignty stalemate.

You want more null PvP you need to change sovereignty mechanics. Give people a reason to be in nullsec. There just isn’t much compelling gameplay in null right now. You can semi-afk mine in a capital mining fleet or semi-afk rat in a cap or supercap. You’ll make far more ISK per hour than the comparable highsec activities at less risk of your blingy ship getting ganked.

Sovereignty should be the reason to battle over nullsec, but the current mechanics don’t allow for it. They added needlejacks and all you get is a few miners ganked and roaming gangs that flee from any opposition with guns because they just don’t have any skin in the game worth fighting over that suicide home eventually.

It’s why I make my ISK in WHs right now it’s where my PvP encounters have been recently. The stagnancy of null is borne out be CCP deliberately nerfing null mining recently. Not high sec missions, and not really high sec mining. The data doesn’t support the notion that high sec is too lucrative. The abundance of nullsec has enabled the supercap umbrella and stifled any competition.

But making resources scarce in null won’t start the conflicts up again either, and it won’t drive the null players into high sec to make ISK. They’ll move to high sec if at all because wardecs and ganking provide more content than nullsec. The nullsec meta game has to change. Capital ship dynamics have to change, and supercap blobs have to change.

So yeah, focusing on carebears I feel really just misses the point. It’s more about passing on dissatisfaction than it is about fixing the situation; because the blocks are risk averse too, and don’t want to give up what they have for the benefit of the game.

1 Like
46

Have you considered joining the mighty CODE. alliance, and ganking the miners?

47

Why not just delete hi-sec while you’re at it? I’m sure ruining the most populated area of the game won’t cost them subscriptions or anything.

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48

Quote"Have you considered joining the mighty CODE. alliance, and ganking the miners?"

Sounds like it’s recruitment week

49

Sounds like somebody can’t afford a genuine Aiko corpse.

50

Seeing that the Princess brought this up here;
I shall humbly expose the plot that is currently in the works.

Re: re 10 million isk
From: [Name withheld for safety reasons]
Sent: 2020.05.18 13:31
To: Danny Frostpacker,

well a live pod is not a corpse, the 125m was for a corpse, you want a pod, thats alot more expensive.

Re: re 10 million isk
From: Danny Frostpacker
Sent: 2020.05.18 10:15
To: [Name withheld for safety reasons],

Oh it will be way harder than that.

I would require to request that you contact Aiko Danuja and have her personally deliver her pod to a location of my choosing.

/removed way too much info…

51

Still, they removed something, which was the focus of the argument.

I do agree to a large extent about the state of null, don’t get me wrong.

But my argument isn’t that high-sec rewards are too high, but that many players are choosing an overall inferior area of space only because the (almost) absolute safety is worth more to them than a much higher income elsewhere, and that’s why high-sec is too lucrative. Maybe the delta doesn’t just need to be bigger, but needs to be absolute. Players are literally choosing to barrel-fish for scraps instead of making great wealth only for the sole reason that they would never have to take losses, even if their wealth would be exponentially greater somewhere else despite of their losses.

I fundamentally agree with you that players should have the freedom of choice to decide for themselves what they find “fun.” All I’m saying is that those choices are often very misguided because the players don’t know any better. And as such, the fault lies with CCP for creating a system in which this can happen.

So maybe the solution is to limit what they can choose from.

I agree with all of this.

And for the record, I’m not asking for any concrete changes right now, since it would take a lot of brainstorming and testing to solve all of this. I just personally think that either removing raw resource generation, or somehow changing the whole “absolute safety of high-sec” mechanic, might be good places to start.

At some point we have to ask ourselves if keeping the players who will categorically pack up and leave if anything is done to their ability to semi-AFK farm low-end high-sec scraps is worth letting the game ossify over.

52

Exactly!

As this thread was about how a solo ice miner saw another solo ice miner out on a belt that had more toys in the New Eden sandpit.

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53

yah dude has one toy and its fine
then , see a guy with 4 toys , and …

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54

I haven’t done any ice for quite a while but the multibox fleets were annoying but there are ways around it. The OP was crying because he wasn’t prepared to put the effort in to it.

Why anyone would day by day want to multibox ice mine is beyond me but there should be space for all types.

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55

someone has to explain that in eve you don’t have to catch up … all i see in many topics is noobs trying to catch up …they think there is some kind of wow endgame … like make a flyer os something

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56

In the same way they removed POS manufacturing. This is a little overly semantic. Those players lost nothing. They still had their BPOs. The lottery was replaced with another avenue. I don’t think it’s reasonable to argue an absolute version of loss when as with POS manufacturing the same gameplay was moved to an improved solution.

I think this is where we disagree. I think players have proven they’ll settle for less reward if the safety stays the same, and if you change the balance so much that the reward is too low they move on. I don’t think you can use the stick to move players into risky gameplay I think it has to be the carrot. ISK isn’t the right carrot, though, or they would have moved already. It’s certainly not the right stick.

I know a lot of players chase ISK. But I don’t believe players stay for ISK. a bigger wallet balance doesn’t itself make for engaging gameplay and I think EVE has always had an issue differentiating nullsec gameplay. Capitals were it for a while, but they proliferated too hard.

I think there needs to be more in null to fight over, and the above post highlights the need to enable those fights. The next incursion/invasion level event should be nullsec only. It’s fine for some content to be null exclusive. That doesn’t justify taking invasions away from highsec, there’ll be a class of PvE player for whom that’s exactly the right way to access that kind of fleet PvE. They have that now. High sec doesn’t need a budget version of every activity, but it should have every activity represented to a degree.

Level 5 missions didn’t get players into lowsec. Lowsec is a bit of a problem because it offers no NPC security but also no player security. I don’t think they’ve ever really figured out what lowsec is for. It’s really not the middle ground it could be. It needs to have a little more consequence than null and reward than high. They nerfed level 4 rewards and added level 5s to provide mission runners with more reward at greater risk. The mission runners stuck with level 4s. Move level 4s to lowsec they’ll stick to level 3s and drop down to alpha clones because they don’t need that golem anymore. Push them far enough they just won’t log in.

There’s opportunity to add in some valuable resources that only exist in null (like moon mining used to be). If those resources are scarce and have to be controlled there’ll be a reason to fight over them and move to null. None of this has to negatively impact highsec.

I’m not saying that there’s an easy answer at all, but I honestly believe the problem is with the appeal of nullsec. I don’t even think it needs to be that more rewarding in terms of ISK over high sec because players stay because they’re engaged not because they’re getting more ISK per hour.

Nullsec just isn’t enough fun anymore. The Great Northern War (first one) was fun. AFK ratting and docking up because of a small roaming gang in the pipe is kinda a yawn fest.

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57

You’re on the money here.

Ships have five mastery levels. You can hit 5 in any subcap in a few months. You’re caught up. The player with three years of skill training has few if any advantages over you in the same ship.

I know mastery levels don’t mean an awful lot but they illustrate that application of skill points is finite. A character does not get endlessly better at one thing. They get better at more things of which they can do one at a time.

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Why do we need to worry about these players? While they represent a sizable chunk of the total, they’re likely not even close to a majority. Why do we need to be so invested in their continued presence, if they’re not invested in staying in the game if it changes to their detriment to any degree?

I’d venture to say that throwing these people to the wolves is a worthwhile risk in an effort to make the game better for everyone else. Think of it this way: if 20% of the players left tomorrow, but the game became more fun for everyone else, that remaining 80% raving about the new fun and excitement would bring in more than what was lost over time. Why should we care about the minor chunk who just log in to solo-farm and don’t interact with anyone anyway? They don’t bring much to the game, and never did. :confused:

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There are some lowsec resources worth having, on average lowsec gas is worth 50% more than jspace gas, plus there is the opportunity for lowsec moon belt raiding. Both fun/risky activities and I wish I had more time to do them.

As for mining ore well thats driven by prices, if the isk is there then in my experience a certain fraction of hisec miners are willing to give it a go. But there are those who aren’t interested, they’ll park their skiff in a 1.0/0.9 belt day after day and never contemplate anything else. I’m hoping the redistribution will make lowsec more attractive.

As for PvE well it’s not my thing but I know a few who regularly go on lowsec runs and enjoy it.

60

If you want isk, go dig through the garbage and cash in some aluminum cans. Only a goofus plays EVE for isk, which CCP doesn’t seem to understand.

The PvE content is stale, boring, and repetitive. The only interesting aspect of EVE is PvP, but CCP caters to the carebears and limits PvP content. The result is a game which a lot of people want to like, but very few people actually enjoy.

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