The dev blogs simply say the devs want more resource scarcity because they want things to “matter more.” But they don’t go the next logical step…namely that rational actors will respond to things “mattering (costing) more” by losing less.
You will get less conflict and less content as the cost of loss increases. Nothing CCP can do is going to change that.
The person who plays 10 hours a week and averages 50 mill an hour when they are trying to make isk is still going to make 500 mill isk. In the best possible world where scarcity means they make 100 mill an hour but costs increase by 100%, they are no better off. And perceptually, they are worse off because losing 1 billion feels worse than losing 500 mill. CCP is driving down conflict whether they know it or not.
Lot’s of people already have more resources than they require. My main at its home base has enough stock not to have to buy anything for several years.
Things become harder to obtain then people become more risk adverse. If you want people to care less about losing things then they need to be easier to get not harder.
More meaningful, you can’t really get more meaningful when you have PLEX. Humans tend to develop ways to be more efficient, they don’t normally go out of their way to be less efficient. I boosted a character sometime back, gave it injectors and billions of isk. Then thought how about doing some missions, could do low level missions, then thought what’s the point as already got billions of isk.
As minerals and ships got cheaper we weren’t fighting more and losing more were we? There isn’t a record number of players in low and null sec doing pew pew.
Conflict drivers and non-consensual pvp in general create content regardless of how expensive a ship is.
Is exactly what we got the past 7 years or so and it didn’t work like that.
Risk averse players still refuse to pvp. Goons still hid in lowsec during the casino war. People still docked up for a week during wardecs. People still refuse to undock when an afk cloaker is in system or local is blacked out.
Tell yourselves as much as you want that you’ll pvp more if things are cheaper. But it’s bull ■■■■ as per the last 7 years.
This is why CCP are trying to make it harder to spam ships. So we appreciate our ships (and their demise) more.
Wealth difference between players was one of the ‘high priority’ things for ccp to tackle. That’s why certain sec status are getting unique mineral access, because that necessity to trade will help distribute wealth.
Destruction (or production nerfs) also helps here. If we all lose stuff faster than we can make it, our wealth approaches zero. It approaches that of a new player.
I agree with many of the other posters that something had to be done about the ridiculous levels of wealth buildup and stagnation in EVE.
I disagree with those who think that “CCP is doing the best solution they can”, since I can think of several other ways to handle excess resource buildup that would be more focused on the problem, less of a barrier for new players, and less obstructive to the purpose of getting on with the game.
It’s unlikely any of those methods would be fun, popular, or interesting, but they could be considerably less clunky than the current approach.
To my mind the current process just doubles down on every mistake CCP has been making for the past 10 years: they don’t look at long term consequences, they don’t balance the changes so the rich pay out exponentially more than new/casual players, they don’t affect the true roots of the problem, and they’re a boring an unimaginative approach which minimizes results but maximizes inconvenience.
So something needed to be done, yes. The current approach is better than doing nothing - maybe. I expect it will hurt the game more than it helps. Is it the best CCP could have done? Definitely not.
Except they don’t. People just dock up…unless you think we’re going to have massive pvp driven by ganking…which I really hope you aren’t naive enough to believe.
We have plenty of ships and opportunity for pew pew. It doesn’t happen because people would rather not risk the ships, even at the low prices. Making prices higher won’t help.
Pushing destruction comes from conflict drivers and non-consensual pvp. Not ship prices. So dock up if you want, but you’re going to lose your structures. Dock up if you want but you can’t mine the ore you want. Dock up if you want but you can’t trade the modules you want.
If your answer is to not undock because you might lose your ship, then you were already not undocking and nothing of value will be lost.
If goons never undock their titans, am i supposed to care? They are already only deployed in low risk situations. Again look at what goons did with their super fleet during the casino war. Look at what panfam did when their faction titans were under threat.
Way too many people have this attitude of “I will PVE for a few hours to fund my PVP.” These ecosystem changes should provide a lot more incentive to PVP as part of PVE. If there aren’t enough rocks then people will fight over them, rather than just everybody AFKing-it and earning some billions - then engaging in some meaningless roams and gate camps to get their guns off.
but the phrase ‘non-consentual pvp’ keeps coming up…
sure for the gankers it may be fun, but for the people who are not doing pvp because they don’t desire and seek pvp, being told ‘tough titties, if you stay on eve you -have- to pvp, even if you don’t like it’ is usually met with a simple K BAI!
What would you say to a COD player that doesn’t like military style games?
Or a NFS player that doesn’t want to drive cars?
The core feature of eve is full time pvp in a sandbox environment. It is as essential to the eve experience as cars are to racing games and guns are to FPS games.
