Local is akin to the Alert you used to get when a flagged contact came online - they had no say in it and it was perfect for catching super pilots logging on. It was perfect intel and too powerful.
When CCP first announced this BO I thought “delayed” would be someone enters the system and shows up 60-120 seconds later but to kill all intel was a sledge hammer.
And I don’t necessarily disagree (or agree) but it is the game design or ‘ethos’ that needs to change - if indeed it needs to change at all.
If 40,000 want to make their space safe, then they should be able to, if the threat is 5/10/50/100 people - just simple numbers
Now should you be able to cram that number into one region and establish a super-cap umbrella - that’s different - that’s to do with (in my opinion) dumb game mechanics that allow a region to produce almost infinite resources - you can fly around Delve and its half empty, yet produces more isk value in mining and ratting than the rest of null put together - that’s is what I’d like to see change
Edit:
So, one might:
That should spread people out and severely limited the capacity of super-cap umbrellas - Space is largely empty - it could do with filling up
Here’s an even better isk drain tax the null sec alliances liek Goons, Pandemic Legion, Pandemic Horde, Purple helmet and all the rest of the large null sec blue doughnuts that hold more than 10 systems 100b in every constellation they hold sov in a month for having local they don’t pay it they get no local. fixes the whole issue.
If you were not willing to deal with the risks involved living in Nul Sec, you should never have moved there in the first place.
Nul-Sec SHOULD be dangerous, there should be threat involved. There should not be perfect intel from local the second someone enters a system, certainly not when they move through a wh or a bridge.
If you wanted the security and relative safety from PVP to conduct industry and Mining, there is a place for that, its called HiSec.
I don’t disagree about the last point
But the 40,000 people should be able to make their space safe by actively defending it. If we must keep local (which I personally believe is way too powerful) then it should be something that is an investment of players effort to maintain.
A delay of a minute or two would also be something to give you half a chance of dscanning something down before it’s seen you in local and warped to dock.
Failing that, like I said, have something small roaming gangs can hit that defenders will actually care about being attacked so they need to rush out and defend it. What other game can you occupy someone else’s home area and do zero worthwhile immediate damage?
Something has to change, the state of PVP in the game is shockingly bad at the moment
You are correct, but I have a moral bar on eating the disabled so you would get a pass.
CCP Guard was a great, loveable, derpy guy. I miss that dork. 
I would absolutely love something like a delayed local (delayed time vs delayed until you speak).
I feel that would give a compromise between the perfect intel local provides currently, and the complete unknown of the blackout local.
Small gangs and pvp groups will still have a chance to find content if they are quick and cautious on dscan. And more industry PVE minded players that actually police their space would know that x minutes after actively scouting gates and entry points into a system, that the system is clear of any hostiles or neutrals.
Local populating the instant someone enters the system just maintains the status quo of relative safety and encourages the use of mass bots, who use local to trigger escape behaviors. I am sad to see blackout go, I am even sadder that we are right back where we started.
As a career high security carebear, I, for one, am absolutely going to miss the blackout.
I haven’t moved to null because I can’t stand the politics, and there’s really no place for a micro-corp that doesn’t want to play the politics game. Everything is seen as red or blue, with nothing in between.
I would absolutely love to see this come back as a permanent feature of the game.
The ability to traverse null space, without people sitting in upwell structures being able to see when I’m about, so I can grind a few null npc’s or hit some exploration sites has been wonderful. I’ve only needed to worry about people actively looking for me, so I can d-scan them right back and avoid them.
The ‘station hugging null intel system’ that arose after the ‘sit in the bubble stick’ of yesteryear no longer has been a concern, and I’ve spent more time in null in the last few weeks than I have in the previous 13 years.
This has been entirely unlike wormhole space, where there is usually an entire corp dedicated to scanning down and hunting intruders. In those, there’s extremely limited options for avoiding people, and it’s certainly worlds different moving elsewhere when you do find yourself hunted. You have to scan and bookmark exits, so its an entirely different type of play field.
Now, we’re back to where the ‘hard core pvp alliances’ can sit safe in their upwells, and watch a chat channel to know when to undock and start hunting.
Gone is actually needing to go out and look.
Hope you’re happy, nullsec carebears.
Meh, Thank god I never managed to fully move into null sec not interested in null sec with a local. Wanted Wormhole local without having to live in one. Null Sec is way to safe.
What’s up fellow krabbers!
He’ll be at Vegas.
Alright. We’ll try this one last time. But you’re not this dumb, and you and I both know it.
The issue under discussion was whether or not hardcoded systems presented a ‘more level playing field’ between large groups and small groups, and whether or not the Blackout demonstrated or refuted that proposal.
When making comparisons of ‘a level playing field’, the comparison between both sides ‘on the field’ must be as direct as possible. When it’s not, then any conclusions drawn are already useless, because they are based on a flawed premise. Essentially, the question is, ‘which is larger, 6 or blue?’
In a game like chess, the comparison between one player and another is simple, and direct. The rules themselves are a narrow-enough framework that both players have essentially the same goal: to win. Thus, direct comparisons can be drawn and evaluations made as to whether or not any given change or handicap (the more experienced player beginning with only one rook, for example) presents a more ‘level’ playing field, ie: whether each group has a more even chance of achieving their goals.
In a game like EVE, however, where play styles and goals vary wildly, these comparisons are not so universally simple. Players goals, and their means of pursuing those goals, can vary significantly, even though the overall ‘rules’ are the same. Thus, any evaluation of how ‘level’ the playing field is becomes purely dependent upon which set of goals is being considered.
As an analogy even you can’t possibly consider too esoteric, how do you ‘level the playing field’ between Norway and a pride of lions on the Serengeti? After all, they’re both in the same world. The same ‘game mechanics’ apply evenly to both (ie: the laws of physics). There’s totally an equivalence there, right?
The lions have a very specific set of goals: kill things, and eat them. Make little lions. And maybe don’t die too often along the way.
Norway, by comparison, wants to provide a reasonably safe environment for its people. See to their healthcare, their education, their economic opportunity. Maintain the nation’s infrastructure. Retain standing on the world stage. Secure the borders. At the same time, Norway’s not unsympathetic to the plight of a pride of lions. Lions gotta eat, after all.
There is no level playing field there. There isn’t even a common enough frame of reference to establish how the playing field isn’t level. What do you do, make it easier for lions to kill Norwegians? That doesn’t ‘level’ anything. The pride of lions is still operating on a completely different framework than Norway.
If you want to compare the ‘playing fields’, you have to either look at Norway and another nation, or a pride of lions and another predator or group of predators.
Similarly, when looking at ‘leveling the playing field’ in null, comparing large industrial powers with small groups of roving marauders is ridiculous. There is no common frame of reference. The Imperium, Legacy, PanFam, DeadCo, Provi, it doesn’t matter—none of the blocs gives even a single rat’s ass about some bunch of hunters’ excitement, ego, killmarks, or whatever. And the hunters don’t give a crap about whether or not a bloc can continue to secure its space from invasion, provide guidance to its members, give them useful infrastructure for industrial activity and making money, etc etc.
Their activities potentially overlap in short, violent episodes, but like Norway and a random bunch of lions hunting longpork in downtown Oslo, they just ain’t playing the same game, no matter how much they’re working within the same larger reality.
In order to draw meaningful comparisons, you have to either look at small groups of hunters vs large groups of hunters—like Bomber’s Bar—or large industrial empires vs smaller groups of sov-holding null residents who engage in significant economic activity, like Provibloc.
And in both cases, no, the smaller groups did not do better during the Blackout. Provi pretty much died, dropping from 700B in bounties and 530B mined in May, and 832B / 493B in June to 400B in bounties and 1144B mined in July (which, again, was only half blacked-out), and 71B / 122B in August. Mar5hy’s bomber crew got so puffed up during the Blackout that when CCP ‘announced’ it was ending, he immediately declared that not only was he going to unsub dozens of accounts, but that he actively hoped it hurt EVE.
The bigger groups did better than the smaller groups with the same basic goals and play style. Regardless of what that play style actually was. Even if the ‘bigger group’ was only bigger because it was literally ‘anyone who wants to come along’.
But that comparison can only be made, that determination of ‘how level is the playing field?’ because the groups in question undertake the same basic activities—play the same game—rather than simply inhabiting the same world. EVE’s sandbox is big and varied enough that looking at it through the simplistic lens of ‘a game’ will never give you a clear view of even the medium picture. It’s a simulated economic ecosystem, and bound within it are a lot of very different games.
Back to stagnation then.
F
The Blackout was never going to fix that, and didn’t
Any change that gets people out of their routines and makes them come up with new strategies, etc is going to fix stagnation.
Not true. If anything, the Blackout exacerbated it, as it drove people out of smaller groups, and encouraged the larger groups to strengthen their defensive structures and practices. A change might disrupt existing routines, but whether it increases or lessens stagnation depends entirely on what new routines they adopt. Because they will adopt new routines. People are creatures of habit, and consistently fall into reliable patterns of behavior.
I completely disagree. As I mentioned here, the blackout has definitely helped level the playing field for smaller groups. You’re comparing ‘mega’ to ‘big’, and sure, ‘big corps’ suffer a bit, as you above mentioned Provi dropped to 122B income instead of 500B.
There’s a VERY large number of subscriptions out there for the ACTUAL small corps. The ones with 1-10 players. The small groups of friends. We make up a huge part of the playerbase, and while a few of us have done this long term, it’s also heavily populated by newer players, the ones without the in game income to support plexing themselves with ISK. We’re the primary demographic for opening our wallets.
In your comparisons, you’re comparing corps and alliances large enough to operate both mining and other operations. Sure, they have to deal with intel wars. There’s those of us though, a mining op is 4 or 5 people. Running sites is a duo activity. We rat solo. We don’t have the ability to call in reinforcements, let alone operating intel.
Local hurts us. Anyone who can see it usually can use tools to determine, we don’t have support, and are therefor, prey.
Lack of local has been a game changer. People have to find us first.
Entirely new gameplay has opened up for those of us in the smaller groups. We’re seeing gameplay that hasn’t been possible without joining a large group, like Provibloc or Bomber’s Barr, or just about anyone you can name that others have heard of.
A LOT of corps, you’ve never heard of.
Sure, you can point out this group was hurt by 300B or so, and it’s killing that ‘small’ group.
Others, in groups like mine, have been able to turn over 10B for the first time ever.
It has NOT hurt the small groups, it’s helped them. Sure, it affects the nullsec carebear politics teams, but it’s adding gameplay to a lot of people, and the ones who are the target audience to pay money.
And, again, you’re playing a significantly different game. You’re not holding sov. To continue the earlier analogy, you’re claiming blackout helped ‘level the playing field’ between Norway and a small knot of car thieves. Apples and oranges.
You’re missing the similarity.
We’re both customers.
If Norway wants to bid on an item at Sothbys to add to their national museum, and a ‘small group of car salesman’ wants to outbid them on that item to use for a trophy, then the item will ultimately be awarded to whomever pays the most money.
What this ultimately boils down to, is which pays more… Norway, or all the car salesmen in the group.
Which draws more subs?
Those are stats I’d love to see. Are a few hundred hurt by the changes, and several thousand seeing new gameplay? Then several thousand open wallets is more of a draw to do it than those few hundred ones hurt. What you’re missing is we’re not talking one group of 300 vs a group of 10. How many groups of 10 are helped? You need to add those altogether, and it may just be enough to outbid ‘Norway’.