OK, stick with me, that’s one of those “what if” thread.
I have the feeling that Eve is too old for its own good.
Basically, there is just too wide a gap beetween vets and newish players. The game is advertised as “build your empire in space” and is really “come work for people who tailored their empires a long time ago when you were playing something else”.
In wealth only, some sleep on trillions of ISK, or thousands of PLex, or whatever Titans.
Hence, Eve is advertised as the New World Far West, but has become good old USA.
I believe it should have come with some sort of high inflation rate that ensure the regular devaluation of capital, and the opportunities of newcomers. With no refuge value as PLEX can be.
It’s not how it was done and it’s not gonna change, so here we are.
Sooooo (yes, I’m getting to my point) : what if EVE had seasons, like every [X] years all counters are back to zero ? Or, and it’s the same, really, a new fresh empty server was started ?
I get some major cons :
split population is bad ! Not enough players already ;
older players would still know how to outpower others ;
need for some redesign (skills training speed comes to mind).
But… Wouldn’t that appeal to more players to be (or thinking to be…) able to change things, hence driving in more players than now ? And even in a $$$ point of view, wouldn’t it stimulate PLEX sales ?
I don’t even slightly think that that would ever be, but what do you think ?
That is only to a point. Sure you could rush ahead on skills, but in the case of a complete server reset… its gonna take at least a few months before you even remotely see people get capital ship production effectively online. Gotta remember that it takes time to bootstrap indy side with blueprints, research, limited special materials, the PI materials for the citadels from which to actually make the dang ships… with priority given initially to getting the Orcas for barge boosting out and then bootstrapping to Rorquals to feed the resource needs of a capital ship production line.
It would dramatically shake up the meta because limited capital assets would make it immensely harder to hot drop people at the drop of a hat meaning sub-cap roams with battlecruisers and battleships wouldn’t be instantly getting smashed with capital ship drops.
Yes veterans will be striding ahead far faster than the newer players, but that is going to happen no matter what. The gap in wealth however would stay smaller for a good while because it takes time to reacquire faction/deadspace/officer loot to fill the slots to bring your isk per bounty cycle up.
All of this is a moot point however as the overwhelming majority of players would throw a hissy fit about losing “their” virtual stuff. Ergo this is a pipe dream that keeps popping up because lazy people can’t see a way to unseat the current powers. A fresh start would let smaller groups have a stronger hold for a time, but the march of empire building and bluing the neighbors would basically return things to approximately the way they are now with a few different faces and a heavier emphasis on T2 instead of faction/deadspace loot within a year certainly if not faster.
I’ve seen newbros belt the shite out of vets in spectacularly hilarious fights, I also know younger players that have both more xp and way more player experience than I have.
The only reason I’d entertain the notion of a refresh is for technical/engine reasons.
Otherwise it’s just a waste of time and effort,
You can’t patch dumb and no amount of “fairness” in the start is going to help here either
cant do that if you cant buy the injectors which requires other people to buy extractors and pull out SP in order for you to Inject the SP soooo.
If we do a reboot atleast let me import my guy and bee in a rookie ship, i’ve worked long and hard since 2005 and many other people would want to quit, it’d be great for an assets wipe which i’m all for, but making everyone start over on fresh characters would also make older people quit the game. I can start over from a rookie ship, but skills ive been training for 13 years is another story.
Young universes in sandboxy games are fun for a while. Then they get… not-young.
Oh, and all those groups who made a blue donut of doom? The same players and the same psychology are in play, so they’d do exactly the same thing sooner or later. It might take a while, but we’d end up right back where we started.
Also taking things away from people tends to be really bad for play.
Making TQ 2.0 exist so we don’t take everything away from people would also open the possibility of something like RMT: i’ll trade you a titan on TQ for a titan on TQ 2.0. Not even kidding. Doesn’t even matter if you lock an account to one, because we all know how many accounts people like to run.
If they made a fresh start server and put in the US, I’d be there in a heartbeat, but I honestly don’t think that would ever happen. Hopefully this time, they wouldn’t give random players T2 BPOs or other advantages.
So it takes forever if I want t to both PvP and be an industrialist? This is insane. Would you like to play a class based MMO where you only get one character with no chance of trying other classes ever? Yes alt proliferation being a its own problems. However to lock people down one path and make it take that much longer to multi-skill is foolish. Yeah you may join but so many others would quit. I’ll pass and I know many others would too.
As for a server reset… Say it happened… What would it change? PL, Goons, other big groups would still be big groups. They could still better pull resources together to out compete smaller groups. They will be the first to get T2 items to market and so much more. It would not be fun. They would simply monopolize everything while we scrounge to reach even BCs to run level 3 missions. Sorry but a reset always forgets that the group bonds won’t be reset as well.
If all our opponents must make the same choice to choose to shoot or build then its fair. Your comparing current eve to the new variation. Thats IS the point you MUST choose! Lol you are never locked down one path. Big group will still be big groups but a player will never be a big group to themselves. It would increase player interdependence. Got to get someone to light that cyno for you to scout ect… You don’t have to have lvl 5s in everything to be effective. We can overspecialize now due to having alts… put a new character in the cooker come back in a year boom cap pilot, market alt, pirate,explorer and the list goes on…
Multi skill to lvl 5 takes time… as it should. Specialization is focus power and adaptability is flexible power. You choose… I think it would not be as bad as you say. So much power comes from alts and its so indoctrinated the thought of life without them is terrifying to some…
Remember when you needed vast corps skills to make an alliance. And you had to get a guy who focused on corp management to set one up for you? That to me is good thing you can have skilled craftsman in a way. Your skill training has meaning your decision carries weight. Now make an alt meh…
Again, if I want to be both a station trader and explorer, I can’t have 2 characters to specialize, but must wait twice as long for one? Why? Just so you can feel it’s a level playing field and be ok?
And how do you enforce this? People skirt IP bans and blackout restrictions all the time on groups that have much more resources devoted to policing this stuff. How do you expect CCP to do it?
Make it so anytime isk is exchanged or ships via direct trade ect. They are publicly listed as being associates. Station trader/explorer opposite ends of the spectrum. Your choice.
Not really… because you still have that original character you put time (and subscription dollars) building up. A 2.0 would imply not being able to carry over your previously acquired skills/stuff.