Just my thoughts about current game state. Please remove local!

Communications Center My EVE
1

It’s not about blaming anyone. Just sharing my thoughts.

I’ve played EVE for many years, sometimes taking breaks. I’m nearly returning after another one. What I’ve noticed is that with the new major update, Equinox, the claim mechanics have changed, but CCP hasn’t fixed the longstanding issues.

I don’t mind people playing with 2-3 characters simultaneously, but multi-boxing becomes problematic when people use 16-20 boxes. I don’t understand why CCP hasn’t limited this. Many have heard the story of the guy from the Dracarys alliance who explained on Discord how he runs 20+ alpha accounts using virtual machines to rat in null-sec. If you fly around null-sec, you’ll find a lot of them. Why does CCP do nothing about bots that warp to structures immediately when +1 appears in local chat?

They say, “High risk – high reward.” It’s not true. To earn big ISK, you don’t need to take risks; it’s just about expenses. You buy a couple of accounts and multi-box everything you can: industry, reactions, manufacturing, ratting in null-sec or WHs, FW, and PvP. So literally everything! It’s disgusting!

By the way, DED complexes: 7 of 10 5/10 Angels (mostly low-sec) give only boxes. 8 of 10 7/10 Angels/Blood Raiders (mostly null-sec) only give boxes.

I agree that in C5s, there are no drifters without a capital ship, but you need 1 or 2 Marauders, which cost around 3 billion each. You could lose them for one anomaly that yields around 150kk - 250kk. Really? CCP, what high risk-high reward are you talking about?

Local chats: I don’t understand why they are still a thing. Maybe they were reasonable by game design at the beginning, but nowadays they’re not. I would prefer corporation or alliance-only local chats, but not for everyone.

Bugged anomalies (for example, Serpentis 6/10 or 7/10).

Wormholes haven’t changed for decades! I would expect more connections in wormholes to make it almost impossible to roll and close holes, which would hinder comfortable ratting with multi-boxing. I think this would force people to play together more instead of multi-boxing. I’ve traveled in wormholes and tried different gameplay styles, and it’s so imbalanced. You can start your journey in wormholes with a frigate, or at least a destroyer, but after that, you jump to a battleship. No smooth progression. Many players claim it’s a sandbox, right? But this is easy to fix. But not for CCP!

PvP is one of my favorite parts of this game, but today the game forces me to join a power block because if you’re not in a blob, you won’t get reasonable PvP. In fact, PvP looks weird: in FW low-sec, you might find some nice PvP, but outside of FW low-sec, you’ll probably encounter blob vs. blob or drop vs. drop. In null-sec, it’s blobs; in wormholes, it’s blobs. And everywhere, Vargurs. I don’t understand that, honestly, and I don’t like it.

I’ve found really good PvP in null-sec with scan-ships against similar ships and a bit in FW.

I think wormholes should be reworked with more connections and ship sizes rethought according to the level of wormholes. In low-sec, maybe somehow limit cyno stuff. Or I don’t know. Again, these are just thoughts! And I think local chat is a bad idea.

Ships: your website says 300+ ships you can fly. But no, you can’t. Only the meta and Marauders online.

The main problem of this game now is the imbalance of mechanics.

CCP, please do something about bots and multi-boxing! This ruins the game!

1 Like
2

Nothing wrong with multi-boxing. That’s been a thing since day one, for 21 years now. Botting, on the other hand, is indeed a problem.

As far as low-sec goes, cynos are the only thing they have left. You can’t use bubbles or bombs in low sec. Take that away and low-sec would be nothing more than high-sec with fewer rules.

2 Likes
3

But low-sec almost pointless. Only one thing which I see players can be interested is industry (reations for example) or DED escalations. And you have a crazy stuff when carrier kills DST… or on your tengu drops 5 Redeemers. And that’s it, you said only they have left, but no pilots there. Except the FW zone. So, if it’s low players areas then where is a profit for the game? I am seriously, try to understand.

4

Faction warfare, DED sites/escalations, L5 missions, gas huffing, mining, industry, reactions, PI. That’s what there is to do in low-sec. But if you choose to do those activities in low-sec, you agree to the risk of doing so, same as any other space.

5

No no no… Risks is ok. All of these activities also ok, but did you see many players do that? I am not. And low-secs are ghosty empty.

6

So what’s the problem? If you take away local they are just going to probe you down anyway. If you don’t want to be bothered in low-sec, just go to the ass end of Khanid space. I might come across one or two players every few hours there.

1 Like
7

Khanid space is empty.

1 Like
8

then it sounds like the perfect spot for you to carebear

1 Like
9

But I do not looking for carebear.

10

Yeah you are.

You’re looking to remove risk from the game by making it harder to notice you immediately upon entry into the system. There’s no other reason to remove local from the game, because if you wanted to hunt in a place with no local, that area already exists.

Any risk averse play style is being a carebear.

1 Like
11

EVE is a game of rock, paper, scissors and locomotive. Guess which one most players are? (hint: it’s not the train)

12

No, I am looking for adding risks in the game. Lol, dude I think you get it wrong.

13

Exactly! But that’s a bad from point of PvP view.

14

Then you have no clue what you’re talking about in the first place.

Removing local doesn’t increase risk. You can easily make yourself a safe spot off dscan in most systems, or cloak, thus making yourself absolutely invisible to everyone if there isn’t local.

An aggressor would have to dscan or visit every site in a system in order to see if anyone is there, thus making your mining and ratting near infinitely safer, since the chances they show up on dscan at another site than yours is increased.

15

you can dscan cloaked.

16

I do not think the removal of local is a good idea.

First, this kind of ‘no local’ space already exists (Pochven, Wormhole space) and the dynamics there are completely different than in null or low sec space. For one, you can sneak up on people unseen in that kind of space, which leads to surprises. But as alternative you can surprise people in null and low sec space with cynos, which you cannot do in Pochven and wormholes, so it’s easy to massively outnumber people in a system in a very short time, even if local chat did show only one potential hostile player.

Second, because of the existence of cynos in this kind of space it would be completely unbalanced if someone could camp a system and hide forever like the AFK cloaky days of old without the locals ever knowing that a 100 people could drop on any of their ships through cynos, without any signs of danger in advance. At least wormholers would be able to spot a fleet of 100 people coming into their hole if they paid attention, because you have 100 people who can be spotted rather than a single one with a cyno.

Cynos in combination with no local is not a fun game mechanic, I think.

Lastly, CCP already gave ‘no local’ a try. It severely reduced player numbers, which was a disaster and was quickly reverted.

Now, I have to admit I do like the idea of ‘no local’.

First, I agree that local chat as a form of intel feels out of place. Unlike the other intel tools the overview, directional scanner or combat probes there are no game mechanics to interact with local chat.
There is no way to fool local chat with cloaks, local-immune ships or modules to make it harder to be spotted by local chat. Every other intel tool can be interacted with: cloaks negate the overview, combat recons ignore d-scan, sensor boosters make combat probing for intel nearly impossible.

Why is there nothing to fool local chat?

Why is local chat infallible? (when it doesn’t fail due to technical reasons, I mean :joy:)

None of the other intel tools is able to guarantee 100% safety all by itself, so why does CCP allow local chat to be so powerful?

Next, the impact of such infallible intel is that people abuse local chat to immediately warp off to avoid danger even before people looking for a fight can see their ship load into system. This means a lot of potential interaction, conflict and content does not happen because of local chat.

Surely CCP can do something about that?
And with ‘something’ I don’t mean something that is as drastic as ‘turning off local chat completely’, which would completely change the feeling of NS and LS and stop make people logging in, but something smaller.

If you ask me, we should keep local chat in NS and LS, but make it fallible, trickable or slower:

Example:

  • 30 second delay before people show up in local chat. This means people cannot hide in local, but a roaming pilot or fleet gets the element of surprise that people cannot simply avoid by looking at local only. People would have to combine local with other sources of intel: intel chat channels from neighboring systems, directional scanner or obscuring their location so a roaming group doesn’t easily find their anomaly within 30 seconds by warping to the haven closest to the gate.
  • a new local-immune ship line or module with appropriate downsides of course, but gives players the opportunity to sneak past this currently infallible intel tool by not showing up in local chat.

TL;DR: Do not remove local. But I would like to see small counters to local chat as intel tool.

5 Likes
17

Right, and that’s relevant to this conversation how? Outside of no local making a cloak into a module giving you 100% safety, cloaking has no bearing on this topic.

18

it’s relevant because they won’t show up on dscan while you will.

19

It wouldn’t break my heart to see local disabled in the major trade hubs (Jita, etc.)

2 Likes
20

I get that, but it’s completely irrelevant.

The only time that matters, outside that handful of ships again, is when you’re still under gate cloak. You’re limited at that point to 14.3 AU range, and many systems are much, much larger than that range. All you have to do is stick to the sites that aren’t on d-scan from the gates, something smart ratters already do, and OP’s idea would give them near absolute safety from everything that doesn’t have a covops cloak. Except for rare occasions, you’d never know I was in a system if local wasn’t there.