I was talking a bit with some people today about the size of nullsec and it occurred to me that maybe Nullsec at this stage of the games lifespan is too large for the population within it.
Astute members of the community will remember that years ago there was debate among the devs and CSM to condense players in to less systems by doubling anomalies and other pve activities within sov null so that players in an alliance had more face to face interaction with each other instead of being spread out. Well this was a fine idea and made its way in to the current game however a problem has emerged that by condensing activity it now increases the amount of empty space in the game. Empty space that for years now has gone unused due to factors like poor location, poor connectivity to other systems, too much connectivity and low value of native resources and/or too similar to other systems better situated.
Years ago I said I wanted to have a wholistic view of EVE, that necessitated living in highsec (where I did wars), lowsec (3 years of FW) and nullsec (several years split between sovnull and npc null). I have also spent a year within WH primarily living solo in a c3 and using a YURT as my base of operations. I think by now I might have seen enough to have a qualified opinion on the universe and I genuinely believe EVE is too large for the quite meager population it has, that adding more space via triglavian sites was unnecessary and that nullsec has a lot of redundant/obsolete systems that Just Don’t Need To Exist Anymore.
That’s my 2c, give me your thoughts and opinions.
I agree that we’ve been given a lot by CCP and little has been removed and as a result are the players more spread out. I’ve already asked to combine planetary asteroid belts into a single belt per planet, because we have so many places now where players can mine and evade each another, allowing players to isolate themselves more often.
But I’m willing to wait a little longer, maybe a couple more years, before I’d start shouting it. I see the player numbers of the last 2-3 years increasing again, ever so slowly, that maybe we get to see a “second spring” in EVE. Abandoning entire solar systems might be just a little too early.
And if news of such a cut would reach the media, then it’s possibly going to get spun into an “EVE is dying”-headline, and some people might even believe it.
A more dense space could mean more conflict, but it also means less holes for potential new entities to poke in, shorter ways for supercapital fleets. Ergo, more dominance for those already established. I’m not sure if this would be good at this point.
I’d rather see the necessity to spread out further, by limiting ressources per system.
Just make environment a conditional variable, along with the introduction of concepts like entropy and cataclysm.
Did you know that once upon a time EVE actually had refugee streams, which were amazing content in their own right, served as content for others, and served as kernels of new organisation and content further down the road? It was remarkable.
Honestly, I’d love to see a few proper stellar nebulae interfering with man made creations. And heck yeah, I’d really love to see a sun go nova. Think of all the creative juices that would make flow from all sorts of angles.
Making the pressure vat simply smaller is too simple a potential factor for players to anticipate and min/max on. EVE isn’t just mechanisms. It’s life. Needs to be complex, and ■■■■needs to happen.
No! Every time the CSM or even EVE devs start to talk about this to “form” space and move stuff around in an attempt to reach a certain goal I facepalm.
Seriously, has no one payd any attention that those things don’t work. Changing something like this will have absolutely unexpected effects. You can’t plan how a sandbox with thousands of players will behave if you change it like that.
And secondly, why would you even try to do that? Instead of trying to force a certain outcome CSM and CCP should rather concentrate on providing tools to the players to do new things in the sandbox or stuff they already do better. I don’t think it is even their business to think about how to influence the sandbox in such a way.
And finally whose space would you take away? Most of nullsec is claimed, how would you decide who loses territory? With a dice? Equally in all regions? What happens to the stations in those system? What if the system was your only one, how is that fair?
Why would you risk pissing off most of the people just to try something where no one knows how it will play out?
“Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
I mean mining specifically. Consider where we can now go mining: planetary asteroid belts, anomaly belts (aka deposits), ice belts, inside security missions, mining missions, the new mining missions, moon mining, and probably a couple more places. Each planet has it’s own number of belts (i.e. Planet VII - Belt 7). Do you think we need all of them planetary belts or could we reduce this to one per planet and just add more rocks?
Do you really want to waste your time mining in security missions? Which new mining missions?
We should just get rid of ore anoms and focus all mining on normal belts and moon belts. You can add more rocks to the normal belts and most importantly spread them out more so that you can warp to far away rocks to make tackling easier. And bring back ore signatures with really good ore.
I’m mentioning security missions as one of the places where players go to isolate themselves - to hide - if you so will, because my point is that by combining the belts of a planet into one do we get players a bit closer together and so enable more interactions.
By new mining missions do I mean the resource war mining expeditions.
You’re assuming that people will accept forced interaction, and not simply leave all together. I think you may be underestimating the shear amount of the population that prefers to play and be left alone for the most part. They like doing their own thing but still being part of a larger living breathing world. There is a reason 75% of the population lives in high-sec, quietly doing their own thing.
I don’t see it as being forced, when we have so many places where one can go mining these days.
The belts are then often empty. When you then look at ice belts, where many miner come together even today (it was a lot more cheerful in the past by the way) then I don’t see a problem when planetary belts get combined. If it then also has more and/or larger rocks in them then it will make them only more attractive.
When I go ice mining then I often ask if anyone wants mining boosts. Before you know it do 2-3 miners say “Here” and you’re mining in a happy gang of strangers (I know it sounds a bit like offering candy from a van). This sort of thing cannot develop when players are too spread out and alone in a belt.
It doesn’t feel big in EVE though. It’s big enough to be somewhat tedious to move from A to B, but it’s not big enough to give it the feeling that this is actually space we are talking about. Just a couple of hours in a fast ship and you can traverse between two very far solar systems.
It is known because we have pre-installed Stargates and the “luck” of temporary Wormholes that make all systems known, because travel from A to B is not a problem. We don’t currently have exploration as in finding new solar systems or anything of the likes.
Then again, even if we found them, I wonder if they’d just be like any other solar systems in EVE: one sun, a bunch of planets and “asteroid belts” aka a bunch of stones orbiting a planet. No dangers from the environment, the only unpredictable thing are other players (to a certain extent) and the servers.
I kind of wish all Stargates would suddenly disappear, Wormholes would be much more rare and everyone who wants to move around has to build their own Stargate.
Nullsec is not too large, what you do have is certain regions due to their sheer distance away from markets, jump fatigue, fuel costs, number of jumps and the need to move stuff in are too remote for people to bother with. And I would not change that either because those people who can be bothered to deal with that can enjoy the quieter location.
I remember when it had close to 60k characters logged on and the game felt too small at least to me. But I will say that when I was last in hisec I noted the massive reduction in active population to what I had seen before, it was striking. But I would not reduce hisec either.
Space in EVE feels more like a city. The somewhat lively center with its weird side-streets, the rotten outskirts and the Home Improvement suburbs. Plus some off the road shady places. Systems feel like streets, stargates are the crossings, that’s it.
