One of the main problems in eve has and continues to be the lack of opportunity to hold sov for small alliances. This drives a LOT of people to either blob-up, or simply stay in high-sec.
If expansion into Null is a CCP goal, and I hope it is, there needs to be a mechanism to encourage massive alliances from simply owning entire regions when most of it isn’t even used.
My suggestion is to utilize a system’s “Activity Defense Multiplier” to govern the cost of sov itself in a system. Complete inactivity should result in a Massive increase in Monthly Sov maintenance cost, and that cost should be multiplied geometrically by the number of systems owned by an alliance.
This would encourage large alliances to either use their systems actively, or to simply let them be taken by smaller groups. I believe this would greatly enhance content around eve, force mega alliances to manage sov as a logistical challenge, and pull many people into Null that would otherwise think it’s an unattainable goal to hold sov.
But then you’d also have to make every system usable. A ton of systems are simply not usable at all due to their location, their bad security level or the celestial setup. It doesn’t matter whether a big or small group owns them in that regard; what you inherently and by design cannot use, cannot be used by neither group size. Instead of giving small groups something to use, you’d give them worthless, unusable crap that burdens them with administrative overhead and no rewarding features to compensate.
As much as I am for „improve chances for small groups“ the core problem with trying to create these proposals (and this current one suffers from the same flaw) is: one large group can always be N small groups plus administrative headache.
So to take advantage of the proposal and save on ISK costs, the 1 Large group will instead be N smaller groups plus a lot of additional administrative headache coordinating between the N small groups. Not to mention the excessive number of alts to be CEOs of lots of executors („yay more alts“ said no one)
Better proposals carve out additional room for small groups without penalizing large groups and without incentivizing „1 large group becomes N small groups“ phenomena.
Some people simply believe „well large groups deserve the admin headache if they want to do tax evasion as N smaller groups“ which has always been a point of contention. But I’m of the belief that since the CSM is captured by these large groups such a belief will never be reflected by players to CCP games, so the realm of „possible solutions“ pragmatically has to address this criticism.
I don’t agree with the “crap” system argument. One mans crap is another man’s gold. That’s a side distraction comment that has no bearing on the big picture.
On the other point:
Force them to manage “N” groups, just for the headache of having to do it. Also note, that it’s not outside the realm of possibility for CCP to create an enforceable set of rules governing the ownership of multiple sov holding executor corporations by an individual; they can look at alts and IP’s. While this may be difficult, many would follow the rule just because it’s a rule, and others would follow it just because of the risk and loss involved if they didn’t follow it. Also, while Fred can just get his brother Bob to take over half of an alliance’s space, at least it’s split up, and people may not actually want to be in the “goons-2” alliance.
Just as in real life, mega-corps can be forced to split up. It isn’t always pretty, or a perfect solution, but it is often effective. If you just give up, then you live with the status quo, which isn’t working for everyone, as you can clearly see.
As I said, you can have this opinion (and heck I agree), but then recognize it goes against probably 90% of the people who talk to CCP games via the CSM who represent huge quantities of players.
It’s a minority viewpoint and unlikely to ever be implemented for that reason.
It’s unlikely to ever be implemented so long as you tell leaders of large alliances „pay for 25 alts and 25 billion more per month for 25 alliances to be able to hold the same sov“ and CCP has to gamble (in their mind) with whether these large groups stick around or they drive off players in massive droves. And all the tooling with the unstable ESI just further separates the small alliances from ever becoming the big boys themselves (if they have that ambition).
This idea of alliance size and sov interplay isn’t exactly new, so for some people you’re going to open up old wounds.
Those very individuals who represent huge quantities of players are a major part of the problem. They are motivated to do everything in their power to increase their own alliance size and power, and clearly at the detriment to opportunity for others. Bending to their desires is an easy short term dismissal of the problem, which clearly festers through eve.
If you assume that breaking up such an alliance would force people to leave eve, I think this is absolutely not the case in the long run. There may be an initial set of people at the very top of the power curve that don’t like it, but the overall player base would feel that null has finally opened up to them. This is an argument to promote small business when it comes down to it. Those are the backbone of a prosperous economy.
The argument you are making is really more of the same; “cater to the huge alliances and their leaders, because they control everyone’s subscriptions”. I would argue instead, that making the rich richer, just makes the poor poorer, and you end up with a classic situation where opportunity and diversity just don’t exist.
In the absence of those new ideas however, which appears to be continuing for years now, I would have to say to look at the destruction of eve in the path currently taken, and actually try one of those tired old ideas
„Eve is dying“ is as tired a justification as „my idea will increase the number of subs“ which get paraded out all the time.
Look, there’s a lot of untapped ideas in this space, and I’m dubious the value of rehashing everything.
For example, the movement away from PoSes to iHubs and TCUs in Dominion eliminated the idea of „multiple partial system ownership“. Perhaps that idea could be recycled but it’s largely unknown and unexplored - there was a lot of push to get it changed well over a decade ago by nearly everybody into the Dominion Sov system. And PoS ideas are long dead (good riddance).
Dominion sov gave way to fozzie sov with Entosis links which very few people are enthusiastic about. Territory control is simply not a „content generator“ (I hate myself for using this word) for the null folks.
There’s a wealth of ideas that could generate a more dynamic territory control system without having to examine alliance size.
Examples off the top of my head, not necessarily good, and needing more fleshing out. But ideas nonetheless that don’t penalize larger groups and give opportunities to large and small alike:
I like those ideas a lot, as they move things in the right direction.
I disagree about Territory control not being a content generator. I believe diversity of territory control would dramatically increase content.
Right now, there are many regions that have VAST swaths of systems owned by one alliance, and if you go roaming through them, you’ll be lucky to see a shuttle. Many regions are like this. These huge alliances own large areas just for the sake of owning them, and they go mostly unused and just contribute to the idea that there is no opportunity to build a “small business” out in null.
Just like in Real life, sometimes a Mega Corporation is forced to split up to promote competition and growth, the same could be said about eve. Some may not like it, but it has produced great results.
The rich will get richer
The poor will get poorer
The rich will always lobby with the loudest voice to have even more
The rich will always use fear and misdirection to gain more
The Powerful will always change the rules to achieve more power
In the end, you will end up with vast groups of pleebs that lack opportunity, surrounding a few tiny islands of the ultra rich who do nothing for society and simply own things.
This is where eve is headed, and is making great progress in doing so.
Just maybe, it can be turned around.
I like that idea. Even if it “just” splits big alliances into more and smaller alliances to compensate for said cost. When having said rules of ownership enforced by CCP, there will be more real people in charge over the same area in the end. And where are lots of heads in charge, there is more room for mistrust, betrayal and people cooking their own soup right under overlords nose.
I would love to see a balkanized nullsec as i see it the way nullsec was meant to be: dozens or hundreds of small political entities living out there. Sometimes at peace, sometimes at war. Nullsec in its current state is completely uninteresting to a lot of people. You are either a blob bear or a renter feeding it. Just boring.
If no one from alliance A is allowed to have leadership ties via an alt to a corp in alliance B and this is enforced by technical means by CCP, it becomes increasingly harder (and a bannable action) to conceal ones real identity. There will be more new heads out there, and probably some old ones chopped off being caught.
It won’t be. Person A spins up 4 separate accounts each with 1 character each a CEO executor. Ta da, bad idea is still bad. 1 person, 4 small alliances, really being 1 big one.
I’m being selective in quoting because what you’re proposing is unenforceable and only addressing the realistic bit of it. If the mechanic allows people to do it, they will do it. There is no „Alt Police“ to make your vision happen. No one is going to give a real ID to start an alliance. No one is going to write a 5 page essay to satisfy a „I am not already an alliance leader“ CAPTCHA. Everyone‘s „little brother“ and „grandmother“ will be alliance leaders too, coincidentally. This is what happened to the MMO Pardus when they tried to reign in Alts using real IDs.
There is no technical way to ensure the human behind the account has one account without some Black Mirror, Orwellian, overreaching stuff. And it would have been done long ago to solve the alt problem in the first place.
What your dream relies upon is a fantasy technology that simply does not exist and is currently a hallucination. I don’t discuss make believe.
Damn, i thought it was easily possible to identify machines by hashing their hardware, drivers and software installed along with information like location, time zone and such. I apparently was misinformed this is an industry standard for ages and could easily be cross-referenced with IP, browser fingerprint over several devices and a lot of other funny things… in an imaginery world this imaginery tech would be a widely used thing surrounding us every day, delivering us tailored ads, news and cat videos. Glad you woke me up!
Google has you signed into an account and assumes 1 account equals 1 human! CCP Games makes the same assumption (when they are independent accounts).
You are delusional if you think a browser fingerprint has anything to do with the Eve client especially now that Eve Anywhere is shut down.
IP has never been a stable identifier for a human and you have NAT and IPv4 scarcity to thank for that.
Your desktop running the Eve client doesn’t have GPS so it has no idea where the heck you are. And GPS geo location does not guarantee 1 (and only one) humans warm butt in chair.
Time zone is spoofable - you can change it yourself and as such is an unreliable part of a „is this a unique human“ signal.
Hardware and drivers are available at scale and doesn’t tell you „this is one unique human“. When millions of people have the same hardware and hundreds of thousands the same driver.
Software that Scans and detects other software installed is called malware (except for your anti virus which is „good malware“).
Combining the above is not how ad tech works. I might know because I’ve worked in the space for 7 years. You’re completely off your rocker.
Tell me Mr Smarty, if there’s been ways to detect Eve Online alts all this time through your magical „ad tech“, why are you the first to ever tell CCP Games to use this magical technology? There’s a lot of people that hate alts out there but none that have pointed to what you just pointed out the past two decades. Funny that! You’re the first!
