Dear CCP @CCP_Dopamine @CCP_Rattati ,
I’ve been following your development posts in relation to the game’s plans and patches pretty thoroughly. I hate to say it, but I’ve only really known you for three months and I’m already disappointed. I hate saying that. For the last three months I’ve wanted to invest my time, effort, money, and energy because I felt that I had found my game. Now, I’m not so sure that I do anymore. Here’s my issue: I genuinely don’t think that you have any idea of what makes your game great.
It seems that you (CCP) believe that pvp is all that makes your game good. Sure, that’s a small facet of what makes your game good, but honestly: if you think that, then you are just watching the surface of the water and aren’t diving in. I may be wrong, but I’m going to go along the train of thought that none of you live in any of the “empires” within New Eden. If you did you would probably understand.
What makes this game great (in spite of what you largely do) is that it is a microcosm of real life within a sandbox mmo. I mean, honestly, as far as things go your graphics and effects can be pretty and cool, but if you wanna survive in this game you pretty much can only see a box on a grid and some color indicators of whether something will try to kill you or not. So it’s largely wasted. Probably the main reason your player base is older since most of us remember Pong, Dark Castle, and a plethora of old games all of which the graphics were meh and required a fair bit of imagination.
A microcosm of real life. The people who live within the empires of this game are as loyal or perhaps more so than to the countries they live within in real life. There are spies, intrigue, business tycoons, raw material miners and farmers, producers, bands of robbers and murderers, and universe wide organizations and leadership.
People live in high sec because they like the safety of Concord and the content that is generated as a result of living in the metropolis it provides. People moved to Low-Sec in order to kill each other and perform clandestine activities without Concord annihilating them. People moved to Null-sec in an effort to carve out their own place in New Eden and even developed a half-assed equivalent of Concord’s own umbrella. People moved to WHs because they liked the uncertainty and danger of it and they suspected correctly that it was the best kept secret when it comes to safety, wealth generation, and the ability to go screw over any enemies within a few connections.
This is the only game that I’ve seen where there are diplomatic organizations within alliances and coalitions that are actually forced to perform real world diplomatic actions within a game. How cool is that!? As someone with an International Studies degree, this is fascinating. And you say that pvp and a higher chance to lose a ship that you have legitimately either put years of time into your accounts or real world monetary investment in order to achieve is what makes this game great?? I find that disappointing and shortsighted.
Hear tell from the forums and you would think that no one dies in Null-sec especially under a local friendly super umbrella. That’s incredibly laughable because if anyone looked at DotLan or zkillboard they would know that even in the best umbrella people die all the time. All. The. Time. Small and Nano gang pvp is always going on, cloaky camping is pervasive and people are always getting dropped like it’s hot.
Null sec is not safe at all and if you aren’t paying attention to local you will die. You will. It’s only a matter of time. I don’t care what ship you’re flying. Your umbrella may try to save you at their own expense, but you probably will still die even in a super. And the trade has a good chance of leaving the umbrella isk negative, even if titans are dropped because if a hotdrop is executed correctly then the umbrella won’t be able to jump fast enough to save the victim unless the victim and the umbrella are on their best game and usually they are not. The umbrella is made up of people and this game is made of human resources that’s really what the umbrella is. People who have been fighting as-and-against nano gangs, sub-cap fleets, bombers, and caps/supers off-and-on since the game was released.
Which leads me to my next point, nerfing the resources of this game. The real resources of this game are human resources. Each corporation, alliance, and coalition has people who’ve been playing this game for years and years. They have the knowledge and skill to make money, help newbros, and fight. Half of them appear to be quitting and the more resilient are biding their time. It’s sad that corps are losing these resources. Some can’t afford to lose them and will die. The resilient ones who have weathered the stormy seas you create will meta-game and end up on top. However you will lose people at the top, middle, and bottom. The middle and bottom are more likely to unsub which goes against your belief that new players are going to stick around.
I am able to understand your desire to nerf the ability to get financial resources in this game. Specifically, the mining and moon changes. I realize that there are plenty of billionaires and trillionaires in this game. Many of whom spend large amounts of time ratting, mining, and making production lines each day. They put in lots of time, money, and work. Considering the game has been out for over 10 years that’s to be expected.
However, the nice thing that I saw in joining this game was the ability to make money and work towards the caps and supercaps which are seen as the proverbial end-game. From a newcomers standpoint, a healthy middle-class with people buying and using lots of ships to get their fill of pvp. In real life, the global pandemic has caused economic quakes and then CCP throws the Eve economy into chaos at the same time. Honestly, you could have picked a better time to throw extra stress on your clients. It probably would have helped your reputation.
Within a month of joining mining rocks were nerfed. The truth is that you’ve already hurt the poor and middle-class of the game more than you can or will the tycoons of this game. Most of the real tycoons (like in any other mmo) don’t make their money mining, they play the market and have many different lines of income. In fact, all you’ve done is raise the prices of ships and most people don’t want to take out ships because they can’t afford it unless they have SRP.
For people who are saying “scarcity breeds war” and “bloodier battles”, people are largely turtling up and have no desire to lose their investments. When there is true scarcity and no resources to fight over, there is neither the money nor the motivation to wage war. The price of battleships and other subcap prices have largely increased so the price for fighting and waging war outweighs the benefit of doing so.
After the moon and anomaly nerfs, the general consensus is that Rorquals are almost worthless except as boosters and moon miners. What doesn’t seem to be talked about is the fact that Rorqual mining was largely low-stress and relaxing in that you could sit there and destress after a rough day or after pvping in fleets or nano gangs. With the surgical strike nerfs that are inc, why would you take a rorq out? You’re just going to get dropped and die is the current belief.
A whole branch of content that many people enjoyed is going the way of the buffalo. There is no real content being put next to it and saying “Hey miners, this isn’t as good, but its almost as good” which is what sanctum mining was. “Get gud, learn to leet pvp” is not a good response nor is it reasonable to those people. Positive reinforcement goes a lot further in most people than negative reinforcement does.
Now for supercaps. Your average supercarrier is 19+bil after being in a good fit not including implants. With the eHp nerf and application nerfs it appears that you won’t be able to effectively super rat anymore. Another loss of enjoyable content without an equivalent piece of content being handed out like anomalies filled with capitals that are worth doing even if they aren’t as valuable as haven running. If you are developing that content then you should release it when you apply the nerf. On the pvp side of things, if you drop a supercarrier in an escalation chain the probability of losing it is high and if it’s a bunch of subcaps you may not be able to kill them because you may not apply effectively. The eHp nerf and the application nerf, one or the other may have been enough. Now…?
Super carriers and titans look like they may become proverbial paper weights. A real world example is Nuclear Deterrence and Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaties. Titans like Nukes are the end of the escalation change. Hence, why the empires rarely drop them on each other. The empires often use expeditionary forces and throw away massive amounts of ships creating content against each other. However, if things begin to get too serious they will drop Titans in order to stop the abuse by an invading force.
These changes just make supercaps faulty nukes with overly large price tags that will not be worth using unless you generate other content that requires their use. The problem isn’t so much the stockpiles as there is no real content that requires their use and loss outside of putting down large hotdrop fleets and the incredibly rare war. If they are supposed to be nukes then you should have turned them into glass cannons that can lay waste to everything, but go up in a puff of smoke. Or you should have left them as the giant monsters they have been in the past. Your changes create nothing more than something in a similar vein of non-Proliferation. Shy of wanting to build vanity pieces titans and supers will probably non-proliferate. Welcome to Eve’s Cold War expansion, sounds about as enjoyable as it did during the 60s, 70s, and 80s in real life. Instead of creating more wars, it sounds like no one wants to fight a war at all now due to your content changes.
While I don’t have the actual quote, someone from CCP was saying how they believe that the small groups should be able to take down the empires. What have they built that should allow them to do so? Why haven’t they banded together in great coalitions to take down an enemy? Have they done the extensive networking and work within the systems and sovs that you CCP have created over the course of years in an effort to do so? If so, then they deserve the win and gf. It’s still possible, only a few years ago the Goons got kicked out of Deklein, the Fountain War, BoB, etc. Nano gangs and Cloaky campers are incredibly effective at killing people all over New Eden. I’m sure that between the two categories plenty of salt is sown and people unsub.
Speaking of something that should be balanced: cloaky camping. There should be a cloaking timer or resource consumption or some other finite resource that dictates the ability to cloak. The fact that people are able to nigh indefinitely stay cloaked, are unable to be scanned down, and appear to be easily abused by input broadcasting. Personally, I find input broadcasting more offensive than botting and I’m surprised that the high profile players who have input broadcasted haven’t been more severely punished. At least botting doesn’t outright directly affect the way I play the game or feel while playing the game. Especially in light of the supercap nerfs. There is no way to actually hurt them. They fly relatively inexpensive bombers. They have no Sov. They are in a mass majority of systems at the same time. And shy of the camper in question making a rare mistake it’s almost impossible to root them out and kill them. Even then, they haven’t really incurred any real loss. Under your idea of a perfect Eve with bloody battles and that the loss of ships should matter, shouldn’t they feel the weight of that loss just as much as everyone else in the game?
TL:DR, PvP isn’t everything. Eve is a microcosm of real life on a scale unlike anything seen in other games and the majority of your population is here for that whether they realize it or not. Super Umbrellas aren’t as effective as everyone seems to think and take lots of work and are largely isk negative structures. Human resources are the real resource in this game and you are creating an environment which is inhospitable to many Vets except the hardiest. Your nerfs hurt the middle and small fries, the poor will die and the tycoons will thrive because mining and ratting isn’t their bread and butter outside of buying low and selling high (Welcome to real life). Your killing of content without equivalent enjoyable content is demoralizing and most people don’t want to wait for you to get your business in order especially when it is the de-stressing content being removed (Don’t remove content without a carrot in the other hand especially when real life feels like it’s taking a big steaming poop on us). No wars appear to be in the planning process and I guess thanks for our paperweights…? Balance cloaking, I know you hate the Empires, but it really needs to be done for a healthier Eve. It’s more than a little ridiculous at the moment.
P.S. Hire me as a consultant, CCP. I would love to work with you on bettering New Eden.
