EVE Online Ecosystem Outlook

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661

And losing quite a few players along with it.
If not for covid this would be far more apparent but the adapt or leave game design is not condusive to long term player retention.
Completely removing play styles, even temporarily, forces those who liked that style to look elsewhere for “entertainment”.

CCP have had years of “buying time”. They were warned from all sectors what would happen when they released Fozziesov, revamped Rorq’s and buffed supers. Ignored everyone because of the lure of ever bigger fights that would bring free advertising - It didn’t backfire on them, it all turned out as many predicted.

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They have an odd way of going about it.

The super and titan nerfs would be annoying at most if there wasn’t a total knee capping of FAXs stomps on both and makes effective FAX employment basically defensive only, which makes super and titan use in small numbers basically defensive as well.

The resistance nerf, is a total headscratcher that hurts newbros WAY worse than vets…all while they are crowing about the NPE, and their brawler buffs only really work for gankers (which further hurts NPE) while making it harder to brawl for legitimate PvPer…and causing more kitey ■■■■■■■■.

Much like their addition of the massive broker fees “to stop botting” that is both easily botted AND strongly favors the vets that have market alts with hundreds of order slots, just makes it more annoying to slow sell because now I have to do it in short term orders or have a ton of money just sitting there hopeing for a run?

Its silly, and their “plan” seems to be called spitballing.

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663

Can you name me 2 play styles that were “completely removed” by any of the recent changes made by CCP?

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Limit asset safety to one citadel per constellation called the constellation capitol. It has to be set during anchoring and can only be moved to another citadel by unanchoring or destroying the current capitol. Both those actions trigger asset safety for everything inside, so nobody will lose anything.

Fairly simple change that:

  1. Gives a reason to take more space, because more constellations means you can anchor more capitols with asset safety.
  2. As long as your corporation or alliance can hold 1 constellation you have a safe place to store your stuff in null.
  3. Gives strategic meaning to the capitol and the constellation it’s in (for example do I anchor a Keepstar capitol as a staging or a Sotiyo capitol for a “safe” location for industry?)
  4. All other citadels in the constellation have no asset safety so they become great loot pinatas and content generators.
  5. Makes the capitol itself more meaingful and a great war target. You can even add a unique SKIN or other artwork to the capitol to set it apart from other citadels.
665

Yep. And Chemo kills healthy cells, too.

Yup. Totally agree. Also completely irrelevant. CCP may have had years of buying time, but this is the first they’ve had someone whose actual job (and that of his team) is making sure things fit together in a healthy way. CCP’s had years. Rattati’s had months—and he’s started taking steps. All we can do is either a)be patient, or b)quit.

if… they didn’t die in under 2 minutes to large gangs of bombers now? Cuz they do.

Nah. Get rid of it completely. And…

Why would you ever have things in more than one place, other than a few ratting or mining ships?

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Yeah, hence them being docked for the most part.

667

Yeah, but that’s more than ‘annoying at most’.

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Congratulations. You just made supers pointless with your change. Why bring a super when a titan is straight up better. This is why balancing is hard. Now I know you weren’t attempting a complete solution and I think the idea of a super as a jump in true mother ship is great, remove jump bridges and make it a jump bubble instead if coding mechanics limit pilots from actually docking with the super. Forces the super to be at risk rather than the titan sitting on the keep star.
But a different role needs to be found for titans. Maybe with structures titans could become a true siege module. Where they enter an anchored mode and dps the structure every server tick enough to stop regen, this means even in tidi regen is paused, the anchoring allows you to place limits on them, and you don’t need them, but they still have a unique role that is powerful, without turning them into fleet killers.

With regards to logistics, I wonder if an interesting solution would be logistics no longer heals directly but instead massively amplifies local tank modules.
This would firstly make all the local rep bonuses ships a viable fleet ship, while resist bonuses ships would have slightly less tank but larger buffers. Which effectively doubles the number of viable ships in most cases. (usually 4% resist vs 7.5% tank bonus)
But also puts some constraints on that the ship has to have a rep, be able to run said rep, and makes it far easier coding wise to address stacking penalties since it’s one local object with external modifiers, not lots of separate external objects.
Meh, idle thought.

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For me, My mining and manufacturing. my ability to do those to fund my play style (which for years has been Mining/Manufacturing first, PVP second) has been removed.
And right now there is no clear vision for when if or how it may reappear.
I don’t want to wait another 5 or 6 years for CCP to fix what they broke 5 or 6 years ago.

Edit; Just listened to the lead dev (CCP Rattati) on declaritions of war - my 5 or 6 year estimate to “fix” things might be a bit off - Rewriting Eve as he seems to have planned, will take far longer than that.

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Yes but those cells will regenerate over time - A game that is already past its prime might not have the time it takes to regenerate lost players. Rattati talks about creating space where small mobile groups can thrive but current changes/nerfs mean smaller groups and individuals may not be around by the time they figure out how to give them the ability to survive.

And in all seriousness, Fozzie said the exact same thing about FozzieSov - It would allow smaller groups to take and hold sov.
That was and still is wrong, so one of the first things this new wonder boy has to do is find out how to build a system that doesn’t “favour” empire builders yet still allows for them to be part of the game.

Sadly this is true, I can’t afford to play the way things are so I’m not.

I just hope I’m still alive if and when things turn around. I’d like to at least be able to read about how CCP turned the game around.,. From what has been said so far, I doubt I’ll ever play again unless it is for a few days
to whelp everything i own (or just give it all away to the few corp members who’ve bothered to stay in touch)

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Yes, he did. And Aegis sov did shrink the footprint of the biggest groups… until everyone got fed up with doing it, and the offensive pressure to shrink went away. The ADMs make it absolutely better to hold the minmum amount of space.

I think you’re missing the mark there. Any system is going to favor large, organized groups. It wasn’t game mechanics that let me and some others put 2000 players (not characters) / wk through WoW’s end-game raid content during Burning Crusade, well before all of the LFR tools went in.

What we need is a system that provides clear benefits for holding sov (so there’s a reason to do it in the first place), but also incentivizes warfare and heavily punishes holding too much territory at once… while still making single-entity ownership the best way to handle things. (The old way of ‘every alliance gets their own space’ immediately contributes to sprawling empires spanning half a dozen regions, and should probably be shot in the head as thoroughly as can be achieved.)

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The question I think that needs asking is the one of ‘what type of warfare do we want’.
Do we want to see constant burning of citadels, or lots of smaller skirmishes with only occasional burning of citadels.
Till we answer that question, we can’t really design the system, as for the lots of smaller skirmishes, an islands and oceans approach where only certain areas of space can be built in, but the other areas of space are the richest in resources & rats. But… that sort of system doesn’t promote citadel burning warfare, because your enemies don’t have a fortress 1 jump away, and the rich areas don’t need fortifying.
If we want lots of Citadels burning, then we instead need to create some sort of locust system where areas burn out over time, but that is likely to end up with just one or two swarms stripping the map with regularity and scavengers in the mean time.
Both end up having significant downsides, depending what style of warfare we want to see. I’m sure there are other approaches as well. Farms & Fields was a valid approach but did make for a lot less warfare obviously, as farms & fields traditionally did.

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I agree, nothing will stop a blob but another blob and they have no reason to fight each other but I was referring to Rattatis plans to find a way to allow smaller nomadic groups to live along side the blobs. A very ambitious goal and sadly from experience one that will ultimately fail.
It will fail because when you have mega groups with thousands of bored members they won’t engage with other groups of thousands but will pick off smaller prey (nomadic groups) - It’s just human nature and no game mechanic will change that.

I care little for mega groups and empire builders except that Eve really isn’t the right place for them. Eve is and always will be a niche game that attracts a certain type of player - when the best you can achieve is 40K online for a couple of hours once a week - There really is no room for unlimited empire growth.

For nulsec to thrive there needs to be reasons for conflict - You are absolutely right there. Mega groups will always dominate in an arena that has limited players, like nulsec warfare. Nulsec is primarily made up of 5 or 6 mega groups, all of whom will change allegiance depending on where a threat is seen.

I feel for Rattati, he is fighting an uphill battle that traces its orgins right back to the downfall of BoB. Unless CCP is prepared to completely rewrite Eve and find a way to turn it into a mainstream game that has many more players online 24/7 - Anything they try to do will ultimately fail simply because NulSec culture is set in stone and the empire builders will destroy the game before they accept change that will limit the ability to grow and maintain their empires.

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674

That’s not why it will ‘fail’. But I’ll circle back to this at the end.

It’ll fail because that’s how the math works. Pick any large, organized, established group of people who hold territory with an eye toward being able to enforce internal order and defend from hostile nations.

Now tell me how successful, in the age of telecommunication and reasonably rapid transportation, any group of ‘nomadic raiders’ typically is in actually hurting those societies. They’re not. They’re an annoyance. That’s it. Because that’s what industrial capacity, numbers, and organization create. That’s just how things shake out.

If you try to make a system where those benefits don’t happen, where any bunch of idiots running through smashing windows and looting storefronts is an actual danger to the large society… then everything collapses. In EVE terms, at that point, nobody has any reason to hold sov. It is more time-and-effort effective for players to stay in lowsec then. Which is exactly what they’ll do.

Well, first, you don’t want ‘room for unlimited empire growth’. If there was that, there’d be no reason to fight. And so long as sov null exists… yeah, EVE is the right place for empire-builders. The big empires, in fact, tend to show better retention than the churn and burn of solo play in highsec. By a lot. That’s one of the reasons they’re big.

You’d need to see some serious new and unexpected threat to see actual change in allegiances among the core groups. You’ll see different alignments of the balance of power, sure… and when one bloc fragments, the pieces scatter to different places… but really, the cores of 4 of the 5 major blocs haven’t changed in at least seven years: Goons, TEST, NCPL, xDeath.

CFC, HBC, N3, DRF… Imperium, Legacy, PanFam, Fi.Re. Really… there’s been no major changes in allegiances since 2013. Just understand that those 4 cores, while they are loyal to one degree or another to their coalitions (and we can argue about how loyal each group is to their friends without ever agreeing), when it comes to interactions between the different cores… there’s no allegiance there to change, only different alignments in EVE’s version of Bismark’s Concert of Europe.

Nobody wants to rule over a dead game. Nobody. Not even that person you just thought of (whoever it was).

Now, back to that ‘fail’… There’s no way to make an effective system where the nimble vikings can present credible threats to the nation-states of null. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to make it so the nimble vikings can, you know, go viking. They should absolutely be able to go raiding and pillaging, and making enough money to go home covered in gold and glory.

But if they want to do it over the long term, and they want to do it successfully enough to use it as a way to grow in power until, like their antecedents, they are a Power unto themselves… well, they’ll need to be raiding from somewhere. They’ll need to be able to establish themselves as overlords, showing up and taking their due from those they can cow, and pillaging and running away from those they can’t. And that’ll mean not being so nomadic. It’ll mean having a home base they sail from. And being able to defend it.

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This is a function of game design though, whenever people ask for highsec ways to encourage corp growth they get shouted down and told ‘Go to null’.
In this regard Nullsec lobbies have managed to shut down anything that could grow into large groups with meaning other than null. And please don’t pretend that organised null sec lobbies don’t exist, you know better.

As for the rest of your post, eh fair enough on the vikings, the vikings sure weren’t some tiny guy who couldn’t threaten the english etc after all.

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676

Yep, it totally is. EVE’s a game where you get more out of it when you’re interacting with people. That’s actually true of all MMOs, though.

And no, that’s not a function of the nullsec groups. Null groups aren’t telling people not to be social in highsec. They’re just providing an open pathway to getting that social connection that keeps people in the game. As for ‘organized nullsec lobbies’… there’s the null reps on the CSM, but last time I checked, I’m not on the CSM, so I don’t know what gets discussed, beyond the minutes. @Steve_Ronuken can tell you whether or not they’ve actively attempted to keep corps from being able to grow in highsec.

Wardecs in highsec had more to do with limiting that than anything we’ve done. They’ve been dealt with… kind of… and hopefully we’ll see bigger groups growing… but bigger groups that want to actually fight probably won’t be growing in highsec. They’ll be looking into Wormholes, or lowsec, or NPC null. Which are all perfectly valid ways to go.

Individual raiding groups couldn’t do much to threaten the petty Saxon kingdoms of England, no. It took large, organized groups to do that. Some of those groups started small, yeah… but they took that plunder and turned it into influence and wealth back home, and built up into what would eventually become the Danelaw.

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No, but they are telling the CSM & CCP loudly that organised groups should get no mechanical benefits in highsec, which leads to being social in highsec being pretty much a detriment because you get all the baggage that comes with being in a group but no benefits.
Which naturally means that you don’t get very many groups of size in highsec, because groups form around mutual benefit, not just to be social.
And those mutual benefits do not exist in a meaningful way in highsec, and are far outweighed by the costs with the current balance.

And it’s very easy to couch your arguments in terms of risk/reward etc to make it seem like it’s not about keeping highsec down, in order to keep the appeal for null up, but not all of us are stupid, and trying to pretend like that isn’t going on is just duplicitous.

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Define ‘mechanical benefits in highsec’. Because social groups definitely get mechanical benefits when missioning in highsec. Standings for missions are shared across the fleet, and hey, fleet boosts happen, too. So the missions get even easier than just having multiple people in the mission working together made them, and you get to the higher-level missions faster.

Highsec groups that run moon refineries also definitely benefit from numbers: they can get the ores from the moon they’ve got a structure on, and get more of them before people they can’t shoot at show up to take some.

But no benefits from grouping up in highsec, you say? News to me. (It’s news to my highsec alt-corp, too.)

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Standings are shared by spliting them, negative for the person who’s mission it is. Also no need to form a corp to share standings.
Fleet boosts, oh hey look, no need for corp, and fleet boosts are only relevant in fleet content. Great for Incursions and Invasions.
Highsec Moons, LMAO!!! You mean the things that make ore fields that A: Can’t be defended and therefore also don’t benefit from being in the same corp and B: Just got UTTERLY NERFED. And C: Don’t provide mining boosts to corp. (I’m a strong believer that Structures should be able to fit boosts which work for Corp/Alliance at this stage, obviously not stacking with normal command boosts, but as an instead of option. As part of making them support a corp better rather than anyone on the ACL.)

So really Arrendis, stop trying to pull the stupid on this one. The mechanics don’t support corps in highsec growing. It’s nice that you have your little corner of “See, you are wrong” but just no.
Yes Social has benefits, but Growing your corp, No.

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But you still get to more missions faster, meaning more gain for everyone. That’s not theoretical, that’s direct ‘this is how quickly we go through missions’. A fleet of 5 working together rips through high-end missions in cheaper ships, faster—less than 20% of the time needed, in fact. So in the same time, the 5 people complete more missions together than they’d total separately.

And no, you don’t have to be in the same corp… but you do want people you can trust, and that’s the same in any game. That’s how you grow a corp or guild—you do stuff together.

And let’s remember: if you’re willing to fight in highsec, it’s definitely worth growing. You can’t have a bunch of allied groups in the same fleet fighting off the wardeccers anymore. You all have to be in the same alliance. Right there, that’s a mechanic specific to highsec that encourages—if not requires—growing.

Edit: Also… still waiting for you to tell me what mechanical benefits they’re being denied.

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