The galactic nullsec is pretty much in a stalemate since some time. Any effort to break that up ends in someone hiding behind a „blue wall of timezone tanking“ so no other groups can touch them significantly and explosions don’t happen that easy anymore.
The galactic west and part of the south are tanked into EUTZ and players of that timezone tend to join that alliances. East USTZ and North CNTZ. If you aren’t in a big alliances you have a hard time to find any content overall outside of these blocks. Any attempt of bringing up the old times ended up in one of the big blocs running through an area.
All in all that prevents us from fights and awesome little stories which make Eve like it was, where everybody fought everybody and newspaper articles were created.
To break that up I would make the following suggestion:
If an alliance wants to be blue with another alliance they have to pay an initial service fee and a monthly uptake fee based on: their own size, the size of the other alliance, the number of the blues the own alliance already has. This fee should be up to 1t isk per setting someone blue and up to 150b uphold cost per month.
To prevent dodging that mechanic alliances can only set alliances blue, corps can only set corps blue and players only can set players blue.
As you may have noticed CCP introduced an exorbitant fee to set our allied alliances to blue.
While we are not going to pay that fee, we will stay allies with our current allies in order to stand a chance against the other coalition, who will surely do the same.
For that purpose we ask you to to make sure TICKERS are always visible on your overview and to not shoot the following list of tickers (unless told otherwise by an FC):
ALLY1
ALLY2
ALLY3
etc.
Sorry for the inconvenience, but this is the best we can do until CCP reverts this questionable decision.
What else options do we have? In the end you will have some blue shooting.
They stay neutral so enough ppl will go out and hunt neutrals. That generates some salt and in the end less players are willing to agree on that.
It might not be the perfect idea but for the issue there is no perfect solution.
I‘m convinced that that has the potential to break up the stalemate we have. Yes there are ways to dodge it. But you can dodge many stuff but the (ingame) hate for someone shot his shiny Goöem. And hthis player questions why they are not shooting each other in a fleet fight. And so it begins.
Every mindset change takes time. You need to start somewhere
Your proposed change makes the game less enjoyable because people now have to track allies by hand, and also does not accomplish your goal of breaking up coalitions.
I assume your goal is to break up the coalitions into smaller entities, right?
I don’t think that’s a bad goal. I too think null sec with only two major sides can be a bit stale and would benefit from many smaller groups spread all throughout space.
I just don’t think that your solution - to make keeping track of allies inconveniently expensive - is the right way to do so.
Players will generally optimize the fun out of games. Players will work together if this is more beneficial than fighting each other. To stop people from working together you cannot simply tell them “stop working together” because they will find a different way to work together.
Coalitions do not exist in the game mechanics, yet they exist: they’re player-made.
The reason players make coalitions is because it benefits them to be part of a group of alliances because there is strength in numbers. If CCP wants to break up such coalitions into smaller groups they will have to make it beneficial to not endlessly expand to become bigger and bigger.
On the other hand CCP benefits from such big coalitions where every number counts, because:
it allows every player to be part of such fights from day one, and
it creates the massive space battles that EVE is known for in the gaming world
In other words, EVE thrives because of these giant coalitions.
So how can CCP cut up the coalitions to have a less stable, blue and boring null sec space, but at the same time provide a game where every player counts and has space battles at a massive scale?
That’s a big challenge.
Not one easily solved by ‘making it more expensive to set people to blue’, because that’s only an annoyance to many players without making an impact on the current null sec politics.
I don’t think you can solve this in general because you have two forces working against each other, one an ideal people like to talk about and claim to uphold, but really don’t, and one that is a practical concern that overrides the rhetoric.
On paper, and absent any consequences, a bunch of small groups doing their thing sounds great, but primarily to people who aren’t part of larger established groups already. People who are not part of a group and wish to project power want to be able to do so. People who are part of a group that projects power would fear giving any power to small groups that might disrupt them.
This is also why wars and highsec aggression are in the state that they are. The numerous do not want to give the individuals the power to disrupt them, and instead endeavor to take that power away.
I don’t think these coalitions make Eve ‘thrive’, but are more like incumbents that resist change and hoard activity and opportunity to themselves. They are only necessary because they exist to make themselves necessary. Take them away and people would not know what to do with themselves because they’ve relied on them so long they don’t know how to be independent.
I don’t know what you could feasibly do about it and I’m not going to suggest anything be done about it. Perhaps it is just the truth that this stale state is ‘good for the game’ because if things weren’t stale people would quit when things turned averse. In that case having groups so large that nobody wants to start a fight is beneficial because we’re all sore losers by this point.
Some of this is hyperbole. You would think that I hated all these groups by the way I’ve spoken so far, but I don’t. Being able to build these coalitions is an accomplishment and I do respect them for that. I think people should be able to create these organizations. I also believe they have their drawbacks, though, and are not entirely good. I also don’t think a fee structure would be a good idea, even if it could work, so I’m with you there, too.
I’m also colored by my experience with these groups since they prevented me from doing things I wanted to do so they would not disrupt the status quo or encourage content creation (fighting) in ‘their’ space. (I could not engage reds because it would encourage them to come back. Content denial as a strategy burned my biscuits a bit.)
(I could not engage reds because it would encourage them to come back. Content denial as a strategy burned my biscuits a bit.)
It sounds like you want CCP to make mechanical changes because you disagree with your ally’s policy.
Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone else if you just, you know… Didn’t follow the policy? Or perhaps, found a group with a different policy?
No one is forcing you to follow the rules, but you are attempting to force others via mechanics to do something different because you are not willing to solve your problem yourself?
Subtly tyrannical. I will shoot you in space on principle
EDIT: I just realized you are not OP. Look I’m in a shitposting mood and I saw blood. I will go to jail now.
To the extent this is a problem, and I don’t agree that it is, there are no elegant or simple game mechanics solutions to get the big groups fighting.
All of the solutions will require a lot of work, including things like reducing the price for larger ships, etc. Instead of creating easily avoidable mechanics that won’t solve the problem, the better idea is to remove the obstacles that make fights less likely - time zone tanking and cap prices being the two most obvious ones.
The issue you brought up is something I fully agree on.
I thought about the timezone tanking as well that is technically another issue on its own.
My base idea to tackle the timezone tanking is to split up the day in 6 Timezones with 4 hours each. The alliance has to choose their maintimezone and they can have 30% of their sov in that timezone, 15% in the timezone in the timeslot before and after and the rest can be split up into the other 3 timezones.
For the structure a similar system would be a possible idea.
To tackle the issue that small alliances have not the ability to cover all Timezones, they can have the first 10 sovhubs in their Maintimezone.
Originally I wanted to tinker around that idea a bit more and then do a separated post but now is a good time I would say.
Caps: I agree! Make us throw around dreads again please!
To the original topic: I understand that ppl have the drive to group up into big groups, and they still could but you would also give smaller groups who do not enjoy that but the smaller engagements and content a chance to grow in a coexistence. That’s not possible currently.
It’s funny. A lot of what the CSM does is look to see WHY something is changing and WHETHER it will work as intended. @Gerard_Amatin does a good job of pointing out the issues and workarounds which means that the solution will not fit the problem.
Alliances will just get bigger and consolidate more to counteract this feature. This can’t solve the problem unless you create a myriad of more and very annoying problems for the players.
Unrelated: Why does BRisc have a CSM tag here but Mike does not? #CCPQualityCoding
The real issue is, that cooperation is better than competition.
Who would have thought, in a negative sum game, that MAD would not be the clever answer ?
It’s like real atoms, you have to bring sufficient energy to bypass the potential required to make them link. Or destroy them. If the result does not provide enough energy back, then this reaction will not go on. You can add fees on your uranium all you want, they will give you the middle finger.
What’s more, cooperation allows people to gain more from their cattle. Be them corp members, or monopoly clients (perimeter TTT ??)
Do we want to have mega corporation working like firms, where people don’t know each other but have to clock in to not get expelled ? Setting up monopoly on whatever they can, forcing competition out by their sheer number ?
Well yes, as CCP made the structures impractical to maintain for small corps. And made also industry entry cost 10 times more expensive.
And added passive mining again.
CCP wants to have a blue doughnut. Their patches make it happen, even more every patch.
Because it can be taken this way, but is also something of an idiom and may not be meant as such, are you saying you agree there’s a problem, or are you just expressing this wouldn’t work to address the OP’s concern, but don’t think it’s an issue, same as Brisc?
There simply is no single solution that will fit the problem entirely. The CSM and CCP can of course wait for another 10 years and witness that no one will come up with a perfect solution.
Fees of course achieve something: They lower the economical power of those who maintain long blue-lists and give those who don’t an economic edge. They put pressure on the leadership to really justify these costs. And I don’t believe for a second in such “workarounds” like “shooting-by-ticker”… this would lead to major fuckups in every single joint operation and quickly abandoned, either by the leadership who wants to see success on the battlefield or by the members who would simply leave such alliances who want to force them to do that to save fees.
That being said, I can absolutely see this leading to the cancellation of non-essential blue-standings, depending on the final design. I personally would prefer an exponential increase over a linear one, so it is always possible to have a core-group of close friends that you blue, but after a few agreements the fees really skyrocket and you will want to really think about the costs and benefits before you hand out another blue.
Of course that doesn’t stop alliances to work together strategically, by keeping the fleets separated, still attacking the same opponent at the same time in different locations. But thats okay, it’s just one brick in the wall against endless blue-coalitions.
However, to fight stagnation much more desperate measures must be taken. I don’t want to derail the topic, but things like Insta-Powerprojection and Citadel Mechanics (incl. Asset Safety) are the elephant in the room. All those things need to be adressed. And I don’t mean tweaked slightly but completely redesigned.
Yes they achieve to be more tedious, making the game worse.
If only there could be a fee per bad forum topic …
I’m all for a more dynamic game, where people can’t batphone least be prepared to lose an asset or a service, but not at the cost of making the game plain worse.
In the end, if your “feature” can be circumvented in any way… let’s just say that players, hu, find a way.
And no, asset safety does not need to be redesigned. It needs to be reverted to what it was at first : a way for people to be allowed to not play for long term without losing everything in the game.
And if that means spoonfed abusers cry more, the merrier.
I’m asking for clarification on Mike’s position purely out of curiosity. Philosophically, I think we disagree more than we agree, but he’s still a smart cookie, and as an aside I don’t really want to see him misunderstood as taking a side he doesn’t actually believe in.
I see what you are saying, but I have very little experience with the upper levels of blue donut management or the inner workings of huge coalition to huge coalition politics or policy. I can only speak to what I know as a short term line member and general outside observer.
Still, this seems like the kind of problem creative people would solve. Unless you intend to charge fees for individual standings as well, having people use an ESI based tool to copy a master standings list over their personal selections and having the alliance auth verify they are correctly set so that people who don’t follow protocol can be punished or ejected might be a doable alternative. It would primarily be a further invasion of the rights of the individual for the sake of the group in that case, I think.
If there is a solution (assuming we ever reach the point where we generally agree this is a problem that needs one), then it probably lies elsewhere, perhaps in those other things you mentioned.
I agree there. It is just one brick in the wall of changes.
Defining that suggestion as the solution for everything is wrong to a extend. It is the idea to make ppl rethink if being blue to 4-8 regions is necessary or if it is fine to keep more neutrals. Yes they organize in some way and the fee is surely not the most elegant solution.
Some of you think that this is not a problem but it is a part of the big problem stagnation. And it starts to stagnate when you have 2 big groups. Once you break it up into many smaller groups more dynamic has the potential to start.
Yes you still could organize untill some pvp oriented leaders show up who don’t need a narrative to shoot and conquer your space and actually have the ability to because you are same sized. For some players it is enough to be bored and start to shoot your stuff.
Those players can’t atm.
So how do you generate more smaller groups?
One idea and part of many other changes necessary can be to lower the incentive of blueing up other alliances. As there is no malus of having every alliance in this game set to blue, why not start there?
Still there is not the ideal solution nevertheless there have to be changes to fight the stagnation. Big alliances are saturated and have everything they need.
I always think that stagnation in a game leads to heat death. A solid, stable blue doughnut in null is both a goal for the big null sec folks to strive for and something that must be opposed by everyone who wants the game to thrive in the future.
We want the big battles, the small skirmishes and yes, even the ganking in hisec. I do not want eve to be ‘won’ and in that winning, end the game.
