My Issue with Citadels/CCP

Communications Center General Discussion
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After reading some of the various “Eve is dying threads”, I have been inspired to write up this short post on my thoughts on the current state of EVE, how CCP has lost focus on what truly matters to its playerbase, and why, if they dont immediately shift gears, Eve will ultimately fail.

While every person on these forums or in Eve at large has their own thoughts about what CCP should do to improve the game, the one thing that every single poster/player has in common is that they want CCP to give them a reason to undock their ships, and fly them. Whether this is through more engaging and rewarding PvE experience, through helping FW players feel more invested in the success or failure of their conflict, through Null Sec alliances being given real reasons to fight over space other than “good fights” and “you guys cheated, F U”, or any of a million other potential improvements to the gameplay of Eve, the common thread is that people want a reason to fly their spaceship.

This leads me to my main point, that the work CCP has done on Citadels is a complete waste of time, and shows that they are either ignoring their playerbase/CSM, or simply are completely out-of-tune with why people play this game.

What is a structure? At its core, a structure is a place to dock your ship. Do Structures drive content creation and/or conflict? Besides a pretty interesting story coming out of the first group to build a Keepstar, something which affected maybe 500 players out of a player base in the tens of thousands, I honestly do not think they do, or at least no more than POS’s already did. Sure, there was that cool fight when people went to kill the first Keepstar, but at the end of it, what? Nothing dropped, nothing was gained, and once the novelty of being “the first to do it” was over, the content creation potential of Citadels was basically over.

Are citadels a Quality of LIfe Improvement for WH dwellers? Aboslutely. Has CCP sorted their spaghetti code for stations? Yes. Do citadels give players a reason to undock their ship? Do they drive content creation? Absolutely not.

And that’s the problem. CCP has essentially spent two entire years of development time on things which are a minor QoL update, and sorting out their own code. Ok, ,T3C rework is something, we got some cool looking skins, and some CONCORD ships which only the richest players will ever undock with due to their prohibitive cost, but CCP has, as far as I can see without access to NDA’d CSM talks, done NOTHING to give players a reason to actually fly their spaceships in a spaceship game for TWO ENTIRE YEARS.

There are a million and a half ideas on this forum alone for things that can be improved/tweaked which would drastically improve the state of every area of space. Instead, we get cooler places to DOCK our spaceship, and make it easier to build ■■■■ by yourself.

Eve is at its core a game about player interaction, and literally the least interactive thing any player can do is dock up and click buttons on a menu. I don’t know if CCP is this ignorant as to why people play their game, what they want, or is just plain stubborn, but their last two years of development time has been a collossul waste of time and effort, and has done nothing to address the ONE shared desire of every single EVE player, give us a reason to undock, not cooler/better coded places to park our spaceships.

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So all those huge battles fought to kill onlining citadels are not content? The war over the perimeter trade hubs was not content? The free ports in wormhole space that make access far easier for newbs is not content? The huge resource drain provided by citadels that is cause a nice rise in the cost of pi products isn’t content?

Sorry but I think you are confusing what is content with what you want for content. Citadels ate huge sources of content from PvP all the way down to miners and PI specialists. Just because they give people some place to dock doesn’t mean they don’t general a huge amount of content too.

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Everything you mentioned besides a change to PI prices would have been exactly the same if those citadels were just POS’s.

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uh… no, pos’ needed to ■■■■■■■ die. /thread

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No… You can’t grant access rights to a POS for everyone regardless of corp or alliance. A POS does not have a trade hub option either.
Additionally, citadels cost far far far more in resources than a POS and the corresponding modules. Heck, POS had no rigs, adding rigs drew salvage from the market which was a nice addition.

Plus, POS modules and the sticks themselves have long since been produced. Getting into that market as a new trader/manufacturer is tough. Citadels opened up a whole new branch of manufacturing that enabled people to get into a market that did not exist prior.

Or ate you suggesting CCP should have just fixed the POS code and expanded POSes instead of creating citadels?

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I’m saying the should have drawn the line at citadels, and shifted focus onto better avenues for allowing players to interact and create content.

Engineering complexes feel like a QoL update that will do nothing to encourage people to want to play this game.

I appreciate that I made some very broad statements in my OP, and that you may take exception to some of these sweeping statements, but I believe that the essence of what I am saying remains valid. This year’s expansion will do nothing to give players a reason to undock, or interact with eachother in any new ways.

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So completely shifting moon mining from a passive activity that was managed by a limited number and simply required emptying silos on occassion to am active mining fleet to harvest the goo… That won’t get people into space?

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I hope it does and I hope I am proved wrong.

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Well…either people will get into space or the t2 market will tank… Which will still get people into space as they try to profit from the t2 gap.

We have new pve coming in the form of the resource conflicts too. Hopefully that helps.

I don’t know either. I just tend to be a glass half full kind of person. I think the changes CCP has made these past 3 years have been good. I get why some are not liked, but the reasoning and outcome has been solid. Yes some aspects are easier, some scamming and griefing is gone. Yet those tended to be ones that took advantage of cheesy loop holes and confusing game mechanics. So them being gone is good in my eyes.
Other changes have improved the game in many levels. So I am optimistic. Hopefully my optimism will be merited but only time can tell.

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I have lived inside a WH for about 4 years now. I realize that comparing (QOL) Null, or even HS to that of WH space is like ‘apples and oranges’. However, I would like to try related to general game content of a MMORG game that attempts to take as many real life situations and inserts them into our gaming sandbox. I believe CCP has attempted to balance the sandbox as much as possible without hindering player in-game progress.

Now more specific and more to your question and point about undocking for content, we do have better options to NOT undock our space ships if we have a tremendous disadvantage in space, however most WH entities using the unofficial WH code of conduct as a guide, will give a "GF’ one way or another. The general idea of someone hiding inside a citadel without attempting to give good content to their opponents is strictly frowned upon in the WH community. To be completely honest and as transparent as possible on this subject, it seems that Null Sec has some more difficult things to work out as they tend to hide when a fighting fleet arrives. Or they simply wait until they have ‘Super Fleet’ numbers and destroy the roaming fleet and send them reeling back to where they came from.

As a WH Alliance we attempt to better not only our content but others around us. We use many different strategies to get people to undock in our type of space, however unless we evict or have an extended or specific grudge against another entity, I see where you feel like the game is failing. I don’t agree completely with your outlook of EVE, but do understand the fear as I do love this game and everything it represents to my gaming experience.

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I too have lived in several different Wormholes, and the value of the astrahaus system cannot be overstated enough.

I also appreciate that you try to give good fights, but my question is, what are you actually fighting over? Your answer seems to be “just for the principal of giving a fight” and while 100% respected, there could very easily be so much more.

I am not attempting to say what that so much more should be, merely stating that continued work on citdadels (and by citadels I mean structures in general, maybe that is innacurate to say) is arguably not even close to the best way to create reasons for people to undock.

The “astrahause” expansion was needed and good, and while continued work in this area may yield some positive results, in my opinion it is not even close to what the community at large seems to be asking for.

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We fight for many different reasons. Though CCP has our WH space as unclaimable, we literally claim the entire WH space we live in. Some entities take that further and say that they own every static connection for the day, while others simply take it to a rudimentary level of ‘I will control’ my immediate space and fight over that.

Personally, I love to PVP…and ‘all that and a bag of chips’. I literally will take about any fight if I can see what my opponent is fielding. As you know this becomes a bit hectic for in a WH you sometimes have no idea who and how many opponents that you will be up against. What I laugh at is when someone comes into your WH territory brings a nasty, oh lets say an OP Slep fleet comp where they have dictated control over a connection and are looking to gank WH hunters or simple travel through players. When they out number the number of players you have online. When the limited options is to hide inside your home or simply ship up …they get really salty cause you bring a ‘BIG’ ship to push them off the WH. I guess It’s like anything else IRL, the minute you apply human nature to the sandbox, it dilutes the end product. Then again, I guess someone could argue that it enhances it depending on perspective. :thinking:

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