How can we encourage competition and combat in Eve, how would we speed up the thrill of virtual war? This was one of the questions asked most in my recent discussions here. To answer this and come up with a concept to bring more excitement to eve we first need to look at the hard numbers.
Alright, let’s check the last monthly report: Right now destruction is happening mainly around Jita and the starlane to Amarr. Why would that be? Because there’s probably more players per star system (or region) there, so wars are fought easily on short travel distances. And because there’s a huge trade volume, with plenty of opportunities for piracy. The latter is somewhat hindered by Concord, but there is a solution at hand also. The other important figure here is bounty income as the main ISK source in New Eden, which is way higher in Null than in empire space. Right now we largely have an economy of Hisec production of goods, bought and paid for by Null money.
So, let’s move both trade and combat into combat-friendly areas, which happen to take up 80% of New Eden: Low and Null. How would we achieve that?
By replacing bounty payout outside of empire space and replacing the value by loot items. Some minerals and modules for production and fitting. And some new items for i.e. “research” and “investigation”, which only will be bought by Hisec NPC stations, so you’d need to transport your loot to empire space. Which in turn will create wonderful new opportunities for piracy and combat along the new trade lanes, all without Concord interfering.
By moving all combat outside legal wars from Hisec to Low and Null, so criminal careers would continue there only. The switch to flip here would be “empires deciding to ban perpetrators after the first non-legal ship kill, under threat of being killed on sight by faction navies upon entering empire space”. This would push all combat activity to the warzones of New Eden.
Both measures may sound upsetting to some people, but would change to galaxy into a more vibrant state. And make Lowsec important again, as trades lane would now lead from Null to empire, rather than between different empire hubs. These would still exist and be of use, but lose some importance, up to the point of possibly relocating to border systems in empire space, right next to the new space lanes leading into the void.
But, wouldn’t this be end of the atmosphere of fear in Eve? The risk of being shot down upon undocking? To be honest, this would only happen in Low or Null, or in Hi in a largely undefended ship, so there’s more myth than reality going here.
But, wouldn’t this be the end of all PvP in Hisec, rendering 20% of New Eden into a boring desert? No. Remember: Trade is PvP, too. Competition is everywhere. And so is cooperation, of people who just want to play a space game together. Fly safe.
I don’t know if your suggestions would work but the first thought that sprang to mind was that, even though hauling decisions have many factors (volume, value, to&from, solo?,etc), wouldn’t someone just haul out using a jspace connection bypassing your “route(s) of death” ?
I think this game has enough issues with boring people out of the game to just make highsec PvP-free at this point. You would need to do a bunch of game design work and rework to make this a thing. Too much is balanced around highsec not being 100%. Like, you might as well delete most of the haulers as only fitting choice that matters would be cargo capacity.
So no, to the second idea. Adding safety to your PvP sandbox game has never made it more active. CCP has tried and tried this, and all that happens is more players get bored and leave the game, and these players whose main jam is safety that the safebears promise will show up, never show up. And the game gets less active.
As to the first, this is a better idea. Moving more income sources to loot that needs to be redeemed in Empire space is probably a good idea. But there is also no point in doing this until CCP gets around to reworking jump freighters and logistics. As is it, moving stuff from nullsec to Empire is 100% safe, so I kinda doubt just adding redeemable drops to nullsec is going to re-invigorate piracy in this game.
So -1 I guess to this feature or idea in the wrong place. I mean, the only place piracy is currently working is around the trade hubs/lanes like Jita and Amarr. Why would you want to delete that if you want piracy to be in the game?
LOL…You’ve got to admire the persistance. Someone moved into low sec expecting to live life like it’s the TV version of the wild west (days and nights filled with gunfights) and found the actual wild west (so bleak and empty as far as the eye can see that you can listen to your hair grow.) Solution? Force everybody to come to you so you can shoot them like fish in a barrel. Better yet, turn it all into low/null so you can wander back from the wilderness.
Nevermind that 86% of all gamers just don’t want to fight each other. And, before you leap to that old as the hills red herring “EVE is a pvp game” (not a game where you can pvp if you want) why is there so much pve content in EVE?
These brilliant schemes are always hatched in the same way. Some guy logs into his “pirate lair” hoping to pick off passing traffic, or ambush some (shudder) mission runner and the hours pass…and pass…while the delirium of solitary confinement sets in. Before even he realizes, a “great idea” LEAPS to mind!
In the end, once again, we are treated to the ramblings of yet another who has a slim grasp on the principles of games, and an even slimmer grasp on the nebulous nature of EVE.
This is just a “remove ganking from high sec” thread under the very tenuous guise of (incorrectly) suggesting it will promote combat elsewhere.
Most of the valuable materials and loot are already generated in nullsec and transported to high sec. Your suggestion changes nothing. You can already intercept this stuff and pirate the balls off it if you want to.
That’s irrelevant, actually. You’ve misunderstood the base situation. The situation is not “CCP needs ideas from players on how to fix things and should do those things”. The situation is:
“CCP has a lot of people very vested in the way things work right now. A small section of players in a few regions pay for a large part of CCP’s income. CCP can’t afford to mess with those players without shooting themselves in the foot (see Blackout), and CCP has no clue how to fix the problems without messing with those players, and wouldn’t have the programming talent to implement it properly if they did.”
Replace bounties with loot drops? Suggested dozens of times. Easy improvement in the botting and AFK krabbing and space combat/destruction areas. CCP can’t do it because it messes with the people who drive their income.
Remove ganking from Hisec? Basically means destruction wold drop in half, since most of the AFK mining and manufacturing would simply move to HiSec and be completely safe. Any attempt at a solution along these lines would require creative programming and careful judgment in applying rewards and penalties. Neither of which has been in strong supply at CCP for years now.
Simplistic, “flip a switch to make things my way” approaches aren’t going to help EVE. Either CCP starts getting serious about game design and programming quality, or we all just watch EVE slowly swirl down the drain for the next 10 years.
Pve is less about ‘content’ and more resource generation and conflict drivers.
That’s how eve is a pvp sandbox.
@OP
Many people won’t goto null/low even if it makes them richer. This will still be the case after.
What hi-sec players will do if there was no pvp in hi-sec is simply pve harder and the economy would suffer from it. For the market to work there must be danger everywhere there are rewards and the level of danger should correlate with the rewards to provide the healthiest amount of opportunities for all players new and old, carebear or pirate.
This is an absolute requirement for the game to work well. And getting it wrong the past half decade or more has done it’s damage. This is why trigs are roaming hi-sec and downgrading sec status.
Different approaches to the way null risk/reward works have been tried, but it’s fairly true that they are the spoilt brat of the family.
BWAAA HAAAA HAAAA…that’s a good one., “Less about conflict…” Coming from a fabulous game engineer such as yourself…I’ll stick your response in the round file where it belongs. Gee. Thanks.
You should train more SP in Reading. The statement is that PvE is not about content, and it’s 100% true. Most PvE is menial farming tasks that few people would ever do if they didn’t need the resources it provides, there’s little or no interaction with other players involved, and every time CCP introduces more challenging PvE content the farmers whine about how hard it is and how they don’t make enough ISK/hour farming it.
Were it up to me™ there would never have been mining or any such resource gathering related activity in Eve.
All of that would be done by NPCs, hired by players, flying ships the players pay for. Once a mining, hauling, and planetary cargo ship is purchased and crewed, the player sends it out with orders.
And any other player can attack it. Just like attacking those NPC cargo ships outside of stations to get copies of Pax Amarria or something.
Except the owner of the ships has authorization to attack you, make kill rights available on you, etc.
This way everybody would be in a combat ship, and it would be the ultimate combination resource gathering and PVP and “de facto” war.
BUT… too many people love the victim-victimizer status quo. Break’s over, back on yer heads.
I can’t take any thread citing a ‘make X great again’ premise seriously. Instant hard no. I have yet to see anyone posting like that who isn’t either trolling, or completely lacking in fundamental understanding of balance mechanics and their role in a healthy PvP ecosystem.
