Fixing blobing, just one mechanic towards the goal

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

I think it goes without saying, tidi is no fun to play in.

Currently, I think that the meta of as many people into system at a time is not fun.

My suggestion is a mechanic for damage, like the stacking penalty for remote repping.

How it fits in lore:

As a target is being attacked, debris and, explosions obscure the target. Reducing the amount of incoming damage.

Armor plates drift around deflecting laser beams, exploding torpedoes reduce the damage of other torpedoes.

This would also allow other mechanics.

For example, carriers. For some reason CCP hates carriers. They have no real purpose, they have no t2 variant, no faction variants. Dreads do.
Carriers could have reduced damage mitigation.
The lore for this would be fighters being piloted by crew (I think they are, they have the model of a crew?) they can apply damage to areas that are not effected by debris.

This would give carriers a multiplier effect on the field. And make them useful other than flying a dread. You have 50 dreads, lets say mitigation is at max at 10, why bring 50 when you can bring 10 plus carriers. It creates a niche that carriers desperately need. In addition to this, the mitigation would help in defanging carriers.

What would this mean for dreads? Well dreads are often fitted passive HP, because usually, you donā€™t last. The damage mitigation would mean active tanking in a dread can be viable. After a certain number of dreads shooting you, it becomes less and less incoming damage due to damage mitigation. (Damage mitigation could be more for dreads as everything is bigger, less for frigates since everything is smaller so the mitigation scales with ship size) So you could tank to cycle out of siege to be repped by the faxes. This would change the dynamic in null, would change how fleets work, would alter how coordination in large fleets work.

Ganking
How would damage mitigation help in ganking?
Well if you have 50 alts being run by someone multiboxing and they gank a freighter, the increased number of ships means little in that eventually more isnt more. It would make ganking more skillful instead of as many alts on target as possible.

In closing, I think something needs done with the Max people on field mentality. If 500 dreads on field means you have to have 50 people calling targets for groups of 10 dreads, I think we would see a shift in how fleets operate.
As a note, I live in null, so most of my comments are related to null. But mitigation would help in all aspects, even in ratting or missions.

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2

what does blobbing have to do with TiDi? TiDi as much as it sucks, is better than the system crashing and everyone being kicked out, and starting back up in the same space, possibly causing another crash..

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3

Go play something else.

TiDi is how the game handles the giant battles Eve is known for. Yes, spending 7 hours on a 20 minute fight sucks, but those battles are optional.

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4

They are not optional. The entire null sec gameplay system is designed (Keepstars and structures in general, capital ratting, sov timers, sov wars, sov defending, hot drops, moving through deliberately created chokepoints due to more limited jump range, etc.) to create these huge battles that the server infrastructure cannot handle.

5

This mentality is why eve struggles keeping new players, itā€™s this way and it has to be this way.

Itā€™s not fun, it doesnā€™t have to be this way, and you are wrong.

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6

Blobbing is why we have Tidiā€¦.

Look at the picture there. Tell me how many ships are in that picture. That is the current meta.

7

You are not required to participate in those battles. If you are, you should find a new alliance.

8

These massive battles you complain about are big publicity for EVE online.

Those large scale wars are a big part of what draws many players to play this game. They often reach gaming news outlets and some fights even have their own gaming records and wikipedia pages.

TIDI is not a problem, TIDI is a solution, a workaround to make such large scale battles possible without the server dying.

In short, this thread is strange because those large scales do not need to be ā€˜fixed out of the gameā€™.

If you do not think TIDI fights are fun to play in (I am not always a fan of them either) then just simply choose to not play in them. Simple?

The only fix such large battles need is to have stronger servers and more efficient use of those servers, so the game can handle more ships with less TIDI.

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9

Almost 23k online as I post 7:00 EST on a Sat nite. Is that enough of a player base to warrant sever upgrades?

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10

Pretty sure one of the design goals of Fozziesov was to spread out conflict and reduce TiDi. System hasnā€™t been changed since, so it must be working, right ?

11

That was the goal and it sort of works, but all surrounding systems have not followed suit and instead regressed to the big blob fights that everyone loves and hates simultaneously.

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12

Fozziesov is one of the few null sec engagements where attackers and defenders are spread out over a constellation instead of all concentrated in one grid, so if spreading out players was intended then thatā€™s working indeed!

One problem is that if in any of those systems of the constellation a big fight escalates most people still gather in that one grid.

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13

Thatā€™s half of what it used to be before the last server upgrade.

14

You are on the right path your ideas, but your concept could use a bit more depth and ā€œstructureā€. It is a bit hard to read / confusing because you mix different ideas.

Anti-Blob mechanics that limit the power of N+1 are long overdue, however, especially the large groups in Null aka ā€œthe powers that beā€ will most likely oppose such changes, because ā€œnumbersā€ is their way to win battles. They have little interest to make battles skillfull, challenging or tactical because that would require them ot actually train their members and maintain a whole roster of FCs and co-FCs that could manage multiple squads with multiple purposes at the same time.

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15

It looks like youā€™re trying to address 3 separate issues.

  1. Too many people in local.
  2. Carriers are bad.
  3. DPS blobs shooting primaries is dull PvP.

These may be valid criticisms (I canā€™t speak for carriers, I donā€™t fly them), but your solution wouldnā€™t solve issue #1. Iā€™m somewhat in favor of some sort of stacking penalty when enough people are shooting something, because I think it would make it easier to balance ships for both small fights and giant fleets. You donā€™t have to make it possible to fit enormous buffer tanks, which often makes solo/small gang PvP drag a little, if thereā€™s some limit to how much damage a ship can take at a certain moment.

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