NPC Corporate Offices: A change is needed

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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Dear CCP and fellow weebs,

I wanted to make a suggestion a change regarding NPC corp offices. The days of limited corporate offices in NPC stations need to come to an end. The reasons for this change in my opinion are listed below.

  1. Most NPC corp offices are completely unused. Travel around New Eden and dock up at any of the NPC stations. Many stations have only a zero or only a couple of their offices rented, and are super cheap. Of course, this excludes Jita, the other trade hub stations, and NPC null where there are limited viable stations (e.g., Venal). Citadels have completely made offices irrelevant and with the exception of a few random stations, most go largely unused.

  2. With regard to the few stations that have valuable stations (e.g., Venal), the limited number of offices only hinders solo players, smaller corps, and newer players that may not have the liquid isk to spend on monthly offices or cannot get an office because none are open. I know, some of the neckbeards may say something like “just drop a citadel.” Well for some players/groups, this may be possible, but a waste of time and isk. For example, ask BOSS about their Venal structures. Try to anchor a citadel in NPC Delve or Pure Blind, if it anchors and/or onlines, I doubt it will last long. Long story short, the established nullsec blocks or trolls (e.g., BBC) will just kill them to troll-a-weeb.

  3. Eliminating this outdated mechanic would help the aforementioned smaller groups. How? Because that corp can invest in corp offices that help their members grow. Want to move to try to move to Venal to own some peebs. Cool, but we only have two offices available so, only two corps can get an office to help support their members. All the offices are rented? Now the corp costs 1bil+ a month. Damn, guess Jimmy and his one-man army can’t live there anymore. Trying to move stuff between your toons or toons on the same account. Yes, it can be done, but it’s dumb and unnecessary.

  4. In its current form, NPC corp offices are a wasted isk sink. But weeb, the 50 offices that are rented across New Eden are an isk sink. True, but… if these are changed, it does not mean the isk sink would be eliminated. How is that you may ask? Use the TTT (RIP) for example. They set their office rentals at 25 million (I think…?). There were tons of corps, solo players, try-hards, and plebs that would rented an office there. It did not matter if the person/group was a day old or 15+ years old. They could afford the office. Although the 20 corps that have an office in Jita 4-4 will likely save isk each month, if the price is reduced, the sheer volume of potential office rentals will help offset that difference.

  5. Aligning with the previous point, if you dock and look at the number of corps that had an office rented in Jita, you will notice that some of the corps listed are the holding corps for large null-sec alliances. Yes, there are some that are not (I think, but I am not going to track them down to verify each), but these groups can afford a 21b a month fee, but isk obviously does not mean as much to these groups as it does to the newer, less established or wealthy corps. Making an unlimited number of offices with a set rate would only help bridge the outdated, absurd mechanic.

  6. Office prices could vary by nullsec. For example, highsec stations cost 50 million isk per month, lowsec stations 100 million per month, NPC nullsec could cost 200 million per month (the prices here are just an example). Now, I would be more inclined to just set all NPC corp office rentals at a set rate across New Eden, but from an Eve is real perspective, the price differences would make sense. Taking off my weeb hat off and replacing it with my roleplaying hat, you could say that lowsec NPC stations cost more to establish and protect than highsec NPC stations. Same with nullsec to lowsec NPC stations.

  7. With the recent 20-year anniversary and all the updates (good and bad, no judgments) launched, you’re telling me it’s the same obsolete mechanic that still limits player accessibility and playability is still present???. Yes poor weebs, it is. I know, as a bitter-vet weeb myself, I know some will say that there are still lots of mechanics and things that fit into that category. Well, yeah…possibly, but the game is much easier for new players to get into and more playable than ever before (imo).

  8. Also, I have a hard time believing that if the Eve was real, the Caldari Navy would not increased the number of offices available in the 4-4 trade hub when they made it as large as Mitttani’s ego. Hey dudes, let’s make this giant station that will likely be in construction forever, but hey, we do not want too many weebs hanging about. It’d be bad for business.

Although not currently part of my current TED talk, why would they not install a cloning facility in the CENTER OF THE GALAXY??? Maybe adding one more station service in the most unique and important system did not make sense years ago. However, with all the changes to clones and citadels, it that really necessary in Jita 4-4. Come on…

Thank you for attending my TED talk.

1 Like
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I disagree.

The current system works very well imho. All the examples you brought are intended gameplay. High costs at the crowded spots, cheap offices at the outskirts as incentive for smaller/newer corps to settle there, produce there, create business there.
Incentive to drop Citadels where NPC offices are rare or too expensive, which leads to conflicts, which leads to PewPew.

4 Likes
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Thanks for your response.

There are plenty of incentives to drop citadels (e.g., tether) yes, but it’s not always possible because the established neighbors could just pwn it. I guess the group could move to a less crowded area, or just say F it and join the already established neighbor, or…they could get discouraged and frustrated, and not grow and develop at all. That is, given that NPC corp offices have not changed since 2009 (when I started playing, idk before then), but I think that the cost and limited number of NPC offices are a limitation to growth.

Trade hubs are a completely separate issue and come down to more of a logistic and QoL issue. In Jita 4-4 and possibly other hubs(?) only a few people groups can or would be willing to spend 21 bil per month (Jita 4-4) to have an office there. Yes, there are other stations, but moving stuff is very time-consuming and unnecessarily tedious, and is similar to the jump clone or death clone changes QoL changes. Updating these mechanics would be a welcomed and needed change.

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From a lore / immersion perspective, I actually like that there’s a limited resource availability. It will also be useful to have limited spaces for when walking in stations actually becomes a thing. Those corp offices will have physical presence within the station space.

You do bring up a good point that more offices should be created in hot spot locations, but personally I’d prefer if that was a more wholistic approach.

In other words, stations that see a lot of activity would upgrade to larger versions of themselves, and certain small stations wouldn’t allow the docking of large vessels (though, perhaps they could have shipyard docking locations like some of the navy systems do for npc assets.)

Furthermore, your bit about increased corp hanger costs in prime locations should be handled by auction rather than some arbitrary cost increase. You could do a price floor, but then also allow corps and alliances to bid much higher for next month’s spaces. The top 20 get the space, and people who lose the space would have an amount of time to receive their assets or forfeit them to the port authority.

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all NPC stations and Citadels should have limited cargo and docking space.

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Ideally that would be true. It’s not exactly realistic to expect that to happen though… just from a practical standpoint.

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