Greetings to all.
The idea to create this article appeared after 3 months of absence from the game and due to the discussion in my previous article, it was rather a small overview of the problems in a separate place.
This text will be extremely voluminous and will cover all aspects of our favorite game.
I believe that the reasoning in this article, if heard by CCP, will help make the game more popular and energize the community.
An important note, the situation is considered from the point of view of an omega pilot in 1 window, so all the replicas that you can take a scout, logistician, damage dealerin the second, third … the tenth window is not accepted. An active subscription and a pumped character must give free access to the content of the game.
Let’s start with the basics, with economics:
It should be admitted that in some part of this area my experience is not great, since I stopped dealing with the direct production of complex goods (ships, T2 modules) and mining ore in 2017, so I will discuss general trends, they are most noticeable even to players who are not involved in the preparation of huge tables in Excel, to collect up-to-date information about the market.
Initially, in the game, the market was positioned as independent, this, in my understanding, means that the CCP have established the rules and all development takes place within the framework of these conditions.
The contradiction is immediately apparent, since the addition of new content has an impact on the economy.
Why am I talking about the free market and the game by the original rules?
The answer is simple, the CCP have announced an “era of prosperity.” But it is worth asking a very uncomfortable question, why was it needed if the economy in the game has the property of self-regulation and is controlled by the players?
The history of the formation of the “era of scarcity” casts a shadow on the CCP, which decided to “balance” the economy.
What was the reason for the intervention? Here the answer is simple: A huge amount of extracted resources and isk, which could cause a crisis of overproduction.
Frankly, I don’t understand why break what works? The game is not the real world, here, with the overproduction of certain goods, you can easily rebuild the supply chain and reorient your assets to other directions, and the money supply can be reduced by a “progressive tax” because a small number of players have large sums of sources and if you deal with possible problems , it is not at the expense of those who came to the game to relax.
CCP, from a certain point, consistently reduced the size of ore mining, divided ores into different safety zones, introduced additional materials for production.
What did this lead to? Naturally, prices will rise with each such “balancing”.
Any reader of this article will ask what is the problem?
This is where we come to one of the main reasons for the fall of the online game (in my opinion).
Here’s a good example:
These are the statistics of the average price for the Dominix ship:
From 2016 to 2020, there was a constant increase in resource extraction (the addition of new industrial ships, changes in production), the price decreased accordingly.
In 2019, it was possible to equip a ship for 180-190 million in T2, currently it costs 630 million.
However, there was no increase in income. For a long time, the Dreadnought in BX has been leading in this area, for 1 ship, in ideal conditions, the income is 1.8 billion per hour. The rest of the popular types of earnings bring 150-500 million per hour.
Take a conditional pilot, he pays for the subscription with a bank card, and for PVP gets claims in the amount of 350 million (successful passage 5/10, 6/10), respectively, for 1 hour of farming in 2019, he can afford 2 PVP departures on the Battleship.
An example of production from 5/10, as you can see the prices in 2020 decreased (decrease in resits), which means that the conditional pilot began to produce even less than before 
Now for such entertainment (you will be surprised, but the game was created for relaxation, and not a second job), you need to farm for 3.5 hours 
This is despite the fact that the subscription assumes that the person who paid for it has access to all the possibilities in the game.
I believe that such a change in prices and an increase in the cost of their time, pushes people away from the game like nothing else (the “features” of PVP can be compared, but we’ll talk about that later).
Here it is worth making a significant reservation that the CCP, most likely, realized that they had overdone it and decided to make the resources more accessible and in parallel launched an advertising campaign, made discounts and promotions.
Let’s hope that the changes in the next updates will make the second job a place where you can relax.
The global economy is over.
Ways to make money and PVE:
For any action in the game, you will need days about their methods of extraction and let’s talk.
It is worth separating active (PVE) and passive (trade / production)
About passive ones, we can say that income depends on market demand and what you produce. You receive money from other players in exchange for goods / services.
The most relevant income for PVE, since sitting in the game all day and doing business / production is not suitable for everyone.
It is worth noting that despite the large amount of PVE content, it is very monotonous.
- Destruction of NPCs and getting rewards for it.
- Passage of missions of agents (+ faction wars)
- Scanning anomalies
I do not consider other ways of earning (PVP / research agents), since they have their own specifics and will not suit the mass of players due to balance / income or for other reasons.
Let’s start by destroying the NPC:
No explanations are required here, flew in - destroyed the NPC - received a reward, only when repeating the same thing 100+ times, this activity is boring (so much so that 0 sectors are filled with bots or live people, whose actions are indistinguishable from bots)
Here you can make several changes at once:
-
NPCs should have variability of appearance and correspond to the ships of the capsuleers, depending on the strength of the NPC, it will depend on which modules are installed on the ship and what kind of pumping the NPC has.
For example, a frigate in safe sectors will have T1 equipment and skills of level 1-2, perhaps not a full set of modules, but an elite frigate at 0, will be equipped with T2-DED modules and skills 4-5, for ordinary NPS equipment T2, skills 3- 4. Extraction of unburnt equipment. -
Reduce the number of NPCs (significantly) in favor of quality. Make the appearance of the NPC random.
With PVE farming, it is necessary to choose the order of contact with the enemy and carry out piloting.
Ships carrying loot will try to fly away if they start losing, this will force players to equip ships with PVP modules.
Loot structures must be hacked. -
The game has implemented NPS mining fleets, it remains to add production for NPS and logistics convoys that will link various industries.
- Here you can do a lot, for example, no one destroys NPCs in 0, they rebuild and organize expansion to neighboring regions, alliances will not be bored
)
-
For empires, the same approach, the production of ships and equipment, based on resources, a war campaign is built in FW (now FW is used for farming LP and does not affect anything), as a result of campaigns, the boundaries of empires may change, players will be able to influence the universe of the game … Rewards for the destruction of enemy forces (NPS fleets will fight similar in invasion behavior, cooperation of militia forces will be required), sabotage operations / reconnaissance (fleet base - many opponents, it is necessary to covertly conduct an operation, keep a distance from patrols (moving) and various obstacles and sensors ( mines / clouds to remove disguise))
-
Abyss to change dramatically:
Time 20 minutes. When the timer expires (if the passage to another pocket was not made), the ship appears at the places entering with the status of a suspect and the impossibility to enter the station for 3 minutes and participation in the battle for 15 minutes. Pocket barrier repels ships.
This will avoid the loss of the ship for technical reasons (I think this is fair, since breaking the connection may not depend on the player, such a measure will, on the one hand, avoid the players’ upset from 100% loss of the ship for reasons beyond their control and impose sanctions for those who could not go through the abyss)
When passing through, the ship appears in a pocket with a diameter of 400 kilometers, the loot is scattered across various containers (3-6 pieces) and the same number of gates (gates lead to other pockets) (similar to BX) + exit gates. The loot is guarded by NPCs (see item 1), in order to obtain loot, it is necessary to destroy the keepers of the loot (it is not necessary to destroy the rest of the NPCs from the guard, but they will continue to attack).
In loot (in each container), a pass appears (with some chance) to a random gate (exists when it is in a pocket, after leaving it is removed from the hold) and for an exit gate with a 100% chance (only compatible with a gate is suitable for entering another pocket) …
The number of pockets in the abyss is limited by the number of keys that the pilot took with him and luck (to get into the next pocket, you need a key of the required type and a pass to the gate in the hold).
And the most important change:
Pockets crossings appear (starting from the entrance and for all types of abyss).
With a small chance there may be 2 pilots in your pocket, in which case they will have to decide to fight / act together / not interfere with each other.
-
In the wormholes, the sleepers will try to evict not invited guests (if they attack them, attacks on the infrastructure will begin) and patrol the territory (control the wormholes).
To stop the attacks, you need to destroy the attackers and clear their lair.
Sleepers will recover over time.
Other changes in the PVE will be closely related to the PVP and will be discussed below.
PVP and everything related to it.
I have quite a lot of experience in this area (except for big battles), I suppose 1 place in the 1v1 Throwback arena shows that I have some understanding of the mechanics of the game.
I really like PVP in the game, especially the uncertainty, you don’t know who will win and do your best to win. I had fights when I lost, however, the pleasure of the fight was extremely high (for example, the lost marauder of a duel 
).
So why don’t all players participate in PVP regularly and on a voluntary basis?
The answer is simple. There are a lot of bottlenecks in the game mechanics:
- The gate
To move from one system to another, you need to go through the gates (capital ships and black ops can jump on to cyno). This leads to the fact that you find yourself at a distance of 13 kilometers from the gate. If you organize a camp at the gate, then you can achieve a huge advantage. Since only a ship with less than 1 second of transition to warp mode can get away from such a trap (in the absence of Mobile Warp Disruptor, as far as I know this is the only ship in the game).
Any other ships can be caught in various ways (fast ship to turn off invisibility, a large number of objects in the ship’s spawn area, synchronization of timing with the server).
This leads to the fact that the players are at the gate with a gang (a reinforcement squad can arrive within 1-3 minutes) and destroy everyone who enters the gate.
If you are in a system with 1 gate and you, for example, on a battleship, then you have 2 ways: or stay in the system and wait for the campers to get bored or die from them.
This alignment scares away single players and small groups from PVP.
(You can give a counterargument that the camp can be won, there are examples of such victories, however, according to my observations, these are extremely rare cases (for solo pilots and small groups) and in most situations you will not live more than a minute after entering the gate)
A typical example, to defeat a T1 cruiser, you need to deploy 8 ships and a marauder with cino on the way, if something goes wrong …
Here you can make the following changes:
• Change the distance of appearance from the gate by 60 kilometers and the activation of the gate from 15 kilometers, this will allow the players to move freely (note, you simply cannot fly, you must use the methods for passing the camps). This solution will avoid the absolute domination of the camp.
• Remove restrictions on ship classes for modules that give immunity to Mobile Warp Disruptor (increase penalties for non-profile ships).
- CYNO
Let me explain right away that this mechanic is necessary for the game, since it allows battles of super capital fleets.
However, at the moment this mechanic has completely destroyed solo PVP and PVP in small groups.
Even more can be said, together with the camp this gave rise to the “PVP Cycle” for the solo player:
- You take a frigate, a destroyer - there are no targets for them (relevant only in FW), at 0 they farm on cruisers that easily destroy such targets. But there is a chance to go to camps and a low probability of using cyno.
- You take a cruiser / battle cruiser - it is not realistic to pass the camp, you have to fight with it (the outcome is known), you will be gladly dropped by cyno. But there are goals for hunting.
- You take a battleship - you have chances to defeat the camp, farmers will successfully run away from you, cyno will be waiting for you at every gate.
- You take a capital ship - you can destroy a lot of ships (if you’re lucky and the capital fleet will not be promptly sent to you), but this is a one-way flight at the cost of 4+ billion.
Now sectors with low security are overlaid with cyno, I flew for many hours and checked on ZKB who was in the system. About 40% were droppers, the rest of the PVE players (Venture *, Heron * and other similar ships are used by these pilots …).
How it looks from the player’s perspective:
- Took the sabotage ship Purifier *, flew to zero with a flamine. I flew for 1 hour, there were no targets, since all farmers, when they appear in the locale, warp off anomalies (bots?).
Found Gila * - Gila * found me
- Took Drekavac * received Bhaalgorn * …
- Took Moa * … see the picture above.
- Took Vargur * (he was fit for travel) - met 2x Vedmak, a small destroyer gang and a few more small gangs of 2-4 pilots - they ran away. Soon, Pilgrim *, who drops 5 blackops, was on the gate with Stiletto *. I was incredibly lucky twice, when I tried to fly away my ship was taken out of invisibility, however, the droppers did not have time to impose points. He flew to the anomaly at 100. Stiletto flew to me at 0, but for some reason he didn’t show off, he just took it in capture. (multibox?)
Last exposure to cyno brought me 6 capital ships 
What can be changed:
- The cyno module must have an activation time and at least 1 minute, do not work at the gate (50 kilometers)
- Must have weight restrictions.
Add alternative ways to travel between systems (Jump like capital ships with severe penalties to the characteristics of the ships and with a delay in the possibility of jumping inside the system). The jump is carried out at random coordinates in the system.
Introduce a delay for jumping on a member of the fleet (after his command to a new location for) 1 minutes.
All the ideas described will help attract players to PVP and make it accessible.
You don’t have to write tales about balance in the comments (the balance in this game depends on the number of pilots in the battle (with equal skills)), if you can destroy campers and droppers in one window, or say that you need to correctly bypass them, then good luck to bypass the littered ones gate with a gang of 20 pilots.
Thank you all for reading to the end.