Local Comms Blackout - Discussion Thread - Part Deux!

[Ikki_Phoenix]

I dont think we have any issues with helping CCP fix this mess they got themselves into, but for this to happen

-the CCP numbnuts will first need to come clean about this whole debacle, apologize and provide hard stats and not cooked ones.
-they will need to face a real interview, not a kiss my ass interview like what the TiS guys have done so far.
-they will need to actually listen and do what we as a community tell them this damn game needs

Will any of the above happen? Honestly given the idiots that work for CCP, including Falcon and Hillmar, I see hell freezing over before they do anything to show remorse or that they have learned their lesson

[ElextriX]

I despair. That’s exactly what the carebear community expects

From your post I can only assume you haven’t played the game very long either because one player kicking over another player’s sandcastle was what always used to make EVE so unique. Nowhere was risk free and eve was hard, CCP used to have a HTFU attitude to players who couldn’t deal with that. It feels a very long time ago now though.

[VeryBadLarry]

You all keep arguing and insulting each other…

Meanwhile

[Xialis]

Bring back the blackout!

Give the carebears a local restoration structure that is fragile (no timers) and requires fuel.

This fuel “Quantum entangled helium-4” is rare, so rare that the spawn rate ensures that there is not enough for everyone to run their local chat structure at all times. Have it spawn as gas clouds randomly throughout New Eden, not one per region but rarer.

If people are stock piling it or everyone has enough to run local, turn the spawn rate down until there are shortages. Have the fuel drop from the structure if destroyed and the loot fairy is generous.

This will provide a rare resource to fight over, which the carebears are already very passionate about. A boost to exploration and gas harvesting as well.

[Borbarad_Naglfar]

Just stop crying already.
If you want delayed local live in a wormhole - that easy.
I have no issues getting content without even leaving my home pocket - if you can’t find any and are not good enough to intrude a big alliances space without getting cought on the first bubble there’s allways the option of joining CODE.

The only thing blackout does is to stop more people from logging in than CCP can afford because there simply are noth enough people who enjoy being a free kill for anyone with a cov ops cloak while they are trying to make some isk.

You want PVP it’s your job to come get it - im allways ready for your kind if im not small ganging myself or enjoying some laid back f1 monkeying.
Sneaking around like a coward doesn’t make pvp any better - it makes it boring and tedious.

CCP should rather do something to fix SOV warfare and give FW an update. Free kills for frustrated noobs is not the way to go!

[Arrendis]

@Xialis

This fuel “Quantum entangled helium-4” is rare

It’s PLEX.

No, literally, check the item description. QE He-4^[1] is PLEX. It’s not rare at all. CONCORD manufactures massive amounts of it to use all day, every day in every highsec/lowsec system in EVE. It’s how your pod transmits your brain, when it explodes. It’s how literally all FTL communications happen. What FTL communications were there?

• all chat channels, of course. This one’s obvious. But there’s more.
• all EVE-mail. In fact…
• all killmails
• all scan probes (instant communication between the probes and the ship that launched them, no matter how many au apart they are in the system. That’s FTL.)
• all visible timers on sov structures, command nodes, etc—including if a command node, sov structure, or Upwell structure vanishes from your overview at more than 600,000km. If something can provide you with any immediate information whatsoever at more than 599,585km (the distance light travels in the 2s of a single effective server tick), it uses QE He-4.

So no, it’s not rare. It’s freaking Helium. It’s literally the most common form of the second most common element in the universe. The only ‘rarity’ involved is that someone’s got to run it through the quantum entangling process, and then schlep one of each quantum-entangled pair to different places, so it can be used in communication.

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¹. Which really should be written ⁴He, but CCP’s limited by their interface there.

[Chequrself]

Is this conversation still going?

Yet I notice login numbers are improving …

And queue Mark Marconi and his alt brigade raving on. I notice they haven’t stopped logging in. Or if they have, it hasn’t made a dent in the numbers.

[Xialis]

Way to completely miss the point.

I put the name of the fuel in quotation marks because the name is irrelevant. All aspects of real physics and the distribution of matter in the real universe do not matter in the slightest.

The rarity is the important attribute.

A thing to fight for, to steal from your enemy, to trade for on the market.
When you have it, you can provide the security of instant local in your space, something carebears are very concerned about. If you take it from someone, you can fly through their space without showing on local.

[Arrendis]

Which achieves nothing that wouldn’t be achieved by a structure without introducing another bullshite tedium grind of ‘go get the rare macguffin’. It’d just penalize people for living in the wrong places, without there being anything they can really do about that penalty.

Players’ ability to secure their space should be dependent upon their activity and their ability to marshal one of the only real resources in EVE: people. If you can motivate people to secure a chunk of space, in sufficient numbers to secure that chunk of space, you should be able to secure that chunk of space. If you can’t, then you won’t.

All your proposal does is introduce an additional layer that is nothing but busy-work. The people who have access to this rare stuff will stockpile it. Most of them won’t sell it on the market, either. There’s just no reason to sell it to someone else, after all. Doing that only makes it harder for you to operate in their space when you want to.

You’ll see the big blocs reposition to sit on this stuff wherever they can. Yes, that might mean large coalitions abandoning their current locations. It might mean a whole lot of crap having to be moved. That crap won’t get moved in a haphazard way, and it won’t get moved in a way that leaves it exposed. You’re not going to see stupid crap like what happened with Exookiz a week ago, or what happened to the DRF on move ops last year.

Instead, you’ll just get to experience the amazing oppression of three PanFam-sized groups identifying the best space, and quickly moving to secure it. And everyone else will be screwed.

So what’s the benefit to adding the extra step? More tedium just means more people quitting. The blocs all basically taking stock of things and moving to crush small groups, rather than taking aim at one another, just means people feeling shat on, and quitting.

No, it won’t be a thing to fight for, because fighting for it will require taking and holding space, and that brings us right back to the problem of ‘why isn’t anyone actually fighting in nullsec wars anymore?’

Which is still because:

1. Supercapitals are needed to take sov.
2. Supercapitals are needed to hold sov.
3. Supercapitals are needed en masse to oppose supercapitals.
4. As a result of 1-3, supercapitals are too valuable to lose in any significant numbers, or you’re screwed for years to come. Thus, nobody will risk their supercapital fleets.
5. If supercapital fleets aren’t being risked, then they’re not being lost, which means the existing supercapital fleets will continue to get larger and larger.
6. As supercapital fleets get larger and larger, #3 becomes even more true, perpetuating the cycle and ensuring that no, nobody can afford to actually fight in a major war.

B-R5RB proved that. That’s where all of this hit the inflection point. CCP was so busy wanking about the destruction numbers^[1], they never looked at the fallout. PL took 6 months to recover from that one day of fighting—6 months while the then-CFC was continuing to build up. The N3 Coalition never really recovered. NCdot used Nulli and Darkness as meatshields, and other groups like Spaceship Samurai just completely fell apart.

The null leaders took notice. The ones who understood what they were seeing embarked on as much buildup as they could—the CFC/Imperium building up on its own, NC/PL using all of N3 and beyond to build supercapitals for them. At times they even had ‘deals’ with N3 members and even renters that basically amounted to ‘you will build supercapitals for us, and we will pay you by not killing you’.

Supers are why nobody’s fighting. Instead, they’re skirmishing with subcaps and then deciding ‘ok, time for us to cede this region and see if they’ll over-extend’. It’s not scarcity. It’s not space. If you’ve got the supers, resources can be seized. Have the supers, and space can be taken, secured, and if need be, replaced. Lose 'em, and you lose the rest of it, too.

And it shouldn’t be like that. If you didn’t need supers to secure your space from invasion (not from roamers, roaming gangs and hunters are gnats. Swat 'em or don’t, they’re not an existential threat) then smaller groups would have a shot at holding space without being part of a bloc. If ‘Moar Supers’ wasn’t the only consistently effective way to counter supers, those little groups wouldn’t be as immediately at the mercy of anyone who can bring in supers. They wouldn’t be doubly-disadvantaged by ‘too few super pilots’ and ‘our super pilots are stuck in their space-coffins because we can’t defend a Keepstar, so we can’t own one’. If supers weren’t the instant, perfect counter to literally everything including bombers (jump in and light the smartbombs), roaming hunters would have more opportunity to hit lazy or foolish targets.

Local isn’t the problem. Scarcity isn’t the problem. Supercapitals are the problem.

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¹ - For them, that amounted to instant gratification. Their biggest day of bloodshed ever, coming only a week after another big fight in HED-GP. But that fight didn’t see supercapital losses. It just saw a whole bunch of carriers and supers slaughtering dreads who couldn’t fight back because the server completely crapped its own pants.

[Xialis]

I’m not denying that super-cap and structure proliferation is a huge problem, it is.

It is not the topic of this thread.

The topic is the “local comms blackout”.

While I would prefer the blackout to come back just as it was, carebears are very much opposed to that. They want local, they want the failsafe intel.

My idea of a rare fuel sourced from a transient resource such as the gas clouds, provides a conflict point that is not fixed in one place.
It can’t be camped for very long as it will be mined out or despawned. There shouldn’t be many of these sites, no singular region better than another for finding it, it’s not a moon, it’s not static, it’ll be in one system for a while and gone later.

If you want instant local 24/7 in all of your systems, you’ll have to have people chasing down this fuel.

Stockpiles might work for a while, but turn down the spawn rate and those stocks will eventually run out because you need to burn the fuel to keep your instant local operational.

[Arrendis]

Yes, and I’m discussing the fact that the Blackout, partial or not, dependent on some resource or not, will not actually help anything. It will address absolutely none of the actual issues causing problems in nullsec in a way that has lasting, systemic impact.

And no, your idea for a rare fuel is a terrible one, especially clarified as you have with this post. It will not promote fights. It will not promote activity. It will, in fact, simply restore things to the way they were prior to last weekend, and will resume the trend of ‘screw this noise’—because it is nothing but additional tedium. It offers nothing. Make a thing unreliable, and people won’t use it. Give players an effort needed that attains an insufficient reward, and they won’t do it. Go look into Resource Wars, and see how that went.

Hell, just look at how many people have bothered even trying to build the Palatine Keepstar.

[Xialis]

Carebears thrive on tedium. Are you saying running a rorqual mining op or super ratting is not tedious?

Further, I don’t think mining a valuable resource that many people want, in hostile space, with delayed local (hopefully, but maybe a few will spawn in instant local enabled space) is going to feel tedious.

If instant local is not worth any effort, then it can fade away. But if the sentiment of this thread and the previous 10k response thread are anything to go by, there certainly are some that would be willing to put in the effort.

Resource Wars provided what vital resource not available elsewhere? Oh right, nothing. LP points? Who cares.

The Palatine Keepstar? No practical benefit over a regular Keepstar or however many you can build for the same cost.

Instant local chat on the other hand, lots of people care, both for and against.

[Arrendis]

No, carebears thrive on stability. The people who run rorqs and rat in supers don’t find those activities particularly tedious. Tedium is boring, repetitive work that you’re forced to do, as opposed to something you opt into because it’s the particular path for making game-money that you chose.

That’s the thing you’re not getting here. It’s extra busy-work, and with your clarification, it’s extra busy-work just to get to do that first set of extra busy-work. People just won’t do it, because the amount of effort needed is just not worth the payoff. There’s less effort involved in ‘I’ll just go back to doing the other stuff I was doing during the Blackout, and not play EVE’—and clearly, the reward EVE was offering wasn’t better than whatever the other games were offering, or activity numbers wouldn’t have dropped off the way they did.

So, as I said, you’ll be right back to ‘screw this, I’ll go play [insert other game]’.

[Xialis]

No one ever does exploration, or goes mining gas, or does anything in a wormhole. Just because you write that play style off as tedious or busy work, doesn’t mean it is:

Someone has to mine so anything can be built.
Someone has to salvage or explore to build rigs.
Someone has to huff gas to make boosters.

It’s not much of a stretch to think that:
Someone has to go get the magic water for instant local ramen noodles to have local.

[Arrendis]

Well, considering I’ve done both of those activities in wormholes, nice try at a strawman, but again: Stability.

Exploration and gas mining are relatively stable activities, both in k-space, and in j-space. Gas clouds are fairly consistent, and exploration sites have a reasonably consistent spawn rate. Those rates differ between New Eden and Anoikis, but in each environment, those rates are consistent, without relocation. And that means it’s a stable activity, over time. This is especially true in j-space, where the variation in where your static connects to means that you are, in effect, moving about without ever leaving home.

Salvaging’s pretty consistent, too. Lower-SP characters, or wormholers who aren’t immediately part of the combat wing of the fleet, can do salvage in relatively predictable, stable ways. So they choose to.

And all of these things are for ISK. At no point is a group in the position of ‘if we don’t mine, we can’t have ships’ or 'if we don’t suck down gas, we can’t get x-instinct. But yeah, if you don’t go getting your ‘magic water’, betcher ass nobody’s gonna sell it to you. The people who have it are already your direct competitors for consuming it. So they’re gonna want to build up any stockpile they can while they’ve got it, and try to get through the lean times that way.

It’s also gonna be considered a strategic resource, and when it shows up, getting it will be mandatory. When it shows up within a region or two from one of the big blocs, they’re gonna drop the wrath of god on that spot—with a level of firepower that just isn’t reasonable to oppose unless you’re another megabloc—and suck it all down before heading home.

So yeah, it’s just tedium. It’s more work, for no real gain, and the people who can’t get it, won’t get it. And at that point, there’s no reason for them to put up with the Blackout crap, is there? After all, the hunters will know the megablocs have the most reliable intel networks, and the best odds of having a working local. So they won’t go hunting in the blocs’ space.

And login numbers tank again. Worse, now CCP’s demonstrated a continuing lack of understanding of how people behave, and a continuing lack of willingness to address core problems, rather than chasing after ■■■■■■■■ solutions that don’t actually help. That gets more and more people convinced CCP has no idea what they’re doing, that they’re just flailing about ineffectually, and they’re less willing to put up with it and suffer through… and less willing to come back again, after.

[Xialis]

Strawman? Really? you’re the one who brought up “tedium”. Also, didn’t you first respond to this idea with how “Helium” is common throughout the real universe, as an easy way to dismiss the idea of a rare fuel resource? I guess addressing that means you need to move your goalposts again.

It’ll be a “strategic resource”.

Yes, it will.

“Big blocs will drop the wrath of god on it”

Cool, hopefully they’ll find someone else there to shoot with their big toys, maybe they’ll even get there fast enough before some opportunist gets it all first. I hope the cyno changes don’t mean they might be out of position to defend their other valuable resources/structures/what have you. Nah, I do hope that will happen.

Will the big blocks have the best instant local capability, sure, but the structures as per the original post, are fragile and have no timer, it’s a thing small groups can affect.

You’re also assuming, no one but the big blocs or sov holders interested in having instant local will find the sites and it will only spawn in sov-null. I did say anywhere in the cluster. There will be a market for those that manage to get there first.

If the carebears want stability they should have to do something for it; if the hunters want no local, they should have to do something for it. This provides a nexus for both sides to influence instant vs delayed local in game. And it’s not orbiting a damn button with a sov-wand.

[Offline_Alt]

You’re right Arrendis:

The resource-dependent local is tedious and counterproductive.

Big blocs are unassailable, blackout or not. Hunters are (mostly) but gnats.

So let’s bring back blackout. It’s fun for the gnats. And the bloc’s miners get better ore prices!

[Flipster1990]

The ONLY way to really end the nullsec stalemate, is to completely remove ALL structure timers. This way, you keep all structures vulnerable for attacks 24/7, and you force the large alliances to only capture and hold space they can actually defend.

[Ramona_McCandless]

Is there an issue with people wanting conflictless farming?
Ive seen people on either side argue both sides here and in other threads.

If people woukd actually just come clean about what they want rather than mocking others from behind their hands then… Well I was about to say more practical things might get done, but thats less likely that CCP actually expressing honest intentions.

[Borbarad_Naglfar]

Well SOV space is for player built nations to throw 1000man fleets against each other.
What Nullsec needs is an update to SOV warfare.

The people crying for BO to return are just bad at PVP - they should be ignored because they have nothing of value to add to the debate about Nullsec health.