My idea is to show that it is a possibility, and a viable one, in order to give High-Sec a proper purpose. The problem of people abusing it can be solved and designed around, as with any system. Yes, it will change things, it will change the game, but a big point that I’m trying to make is that Big Changes do need to happen.
This is this very attitude of putting the game on an undeserved pedestal that got it into this mess.
“EVE is a niche game and always will”, “EVE doesn’t need to adapt, it’s fine as is”, “If you change EVE, it will no longer be EVE”. All essentially arguments to have EVE ignore what is happening out there and learn from it.
If EVE is a leader, it is one whose amount of followers are dwindling by the day and more and more people are questioning its relevancy. And I will show you how:
Albion is as close, for now, as you can get from an EVE-like, you can’t get any closer. They are based on the same formula of Risks vs. Rewards, Resource Gathering, and Contest of Territories.
If you can’t use Albion Online as a way to measure and size EVE, with what game can you???
Albion Online shows that EVE is not the only one that can be in this business, that you can be EVE and do things better than EVE.
EVE is not on the pedestal of being the only game that is completely player-driven, it is not on the pedestal of being the sole purveyor of open-world PvP sandbox, it’s not on the pedestal of being the most dynamic game out there, it’s time to stop with this false pride that can only end on us getting blindsided.
I’m not asking to become Albion Online, or any other game, I just say that it is time to actually look at what is out there and what is working instead of just closing ourselves like all those communities in the game do.
In a way, I kinda hope you are right, because if not this is seriously bad news for EVE, as if indeed Albion does things better both games will compete for the same kind of players, and Albion will essentially vampirize EVE, and knock it down from its “leader” position.
Didn’t expect this to be so complicated, so INSTEAD …
This is the link to the wardec discord:
There is a search function at the top left right (the other left ), where you only need to search for “dantelion”. Then you scroll down the list of results, click on one of the last ones and click “Jump”. Then you scroll up until you find his first appearance.
Have fun reading and seeing why Arden actually kicked this guy. : - )
Hint: It’s not because of me, or anyone else except Danty himself … but you can figure that out for yourselves. : D
Not gonna spam here, or waste my time copying everything when those who want to actually see it can just look for it themselves. It’s all out there! Have fun!
So I read this, and I found myself agree with several of the observations, although less so on the proposed remedies. Let me take the sections one at a time I guess:
High-Sec is a schizophrenic zone.
It is. It is both the starting zone new players are released into, as well as the area of space most conducive to solo and small group play. While it makes sense to have safer zone, it makes less sense to release your new players into the area of the game where it is the hardest to find space ship combat. Both wars and crimes are unaccessible to new players, at least alone, leaving most to wallow in the boredom of missions or solo mining until they quit or hopefully seek out a group elsewhere. Prospective industrialists likely fare better here given how much industry and trade goes on in highsec, but it is not a place for new players to experience the core aspect of the game that drives all this industrial activity: spaceship combat.
A Pacific High-Sec.
But no, highsec should not be completely turned into a sector of space for new players. It is far, far too large and most of the activity that goes on there currently is not the training of new players. If you want a true safe space for new players, make a new 100% safe constellation economically isolated from the game where they can learn and play. There doesn’t need to be 1212 systems for “learning” and it would be much more work to try to balance that re-purposed highsec (not to mention you would piss-off a lot of highsec veterans by nerfing their income as you would have to to make this work) than to just make a new space. Albion has a starter zone that works as a new player zone specifically because it has no high-tier resources. Highsec in Eve has nothing of the sort. It is essentially a zone for solo players and small groups, with the full gamut of income potential from new player level, to incomes that rival the best available in the game with Incursions and Burners. You could change that, but you would have to change both the rewards and the risks and it is far too late in the game’s lifespan.
The Mercenaries and High-Sec.
There are a lot of words here, and opinions presented as fact, but when you finally get to it, social corps I agree are a good idea. Let new players form a social group without worrying about wars, accepting the appropriate limitations. There should be more ways for groups to tune their level of risk (and reward of course) rather than the binary safe (no corp) or vulnerable to all of New Eden (in corp) choice there is today.
Conclusion.
Yeah, no. Highsec does not need to be made into a giant snoozefest that is only useful to the small percentage of true new players. It has a purpose: it is a space that casual and solo players can use and find value in. Better yet, it needs more things for people to fight over to give highsec corps and conflict meaning. If social corps aren’t enough, and we need a true safe space for some reason, revamp the NPE to make a few new safe systems and let the new players figure things out there. And from there, I would by default shuttle the new players off to lowsec and throw them on a FW side where they can find some accessible PvP, always with the option they can skip this or return to highsec. Releasing them into the complex environment of highsec with its hard-to-find and arcane PvP systems seems like a poor default path for the majority of players.
Highsec would be a much better introduction into the game if it was perceived more as a big city with lots of gangs trying to compete with each other. All that’s missing are the proper mechanics for that. Though it does seem (we talked about it) that CCP’s slowly heading sort of into that direction.
I mean … we already have that in some way, but it is definitely not set up to be perceived as such. The idea that highsec is for new players, though, is nonsense. It never has been anyway. The players themselves always kept making sure of that.
You actually gave me an idea. I don’t know runescape, but what made the thought happen was “island”, because it associated with “iceland”, which reminded me of vikings and groups.
What if there was an option for new players to start together, as a group, with a tutorial teaching them how to operate as a group, at least mechanics and UI wise.
That way people already start in a group and don’t need to be compelled to join one! They’d also be much more inclined to find a new one if their old one fails, due to being “born” into a group right from the start.
I agree with the rest of your post, but not this part. If they are idiotic enough to think the earth is flat, I can’t possibly assume that they are open to changing their mind, but could assume that their wishes are fathering their beliefs. It doesn’t make sense to argue with such a person, unless you need to experience it once. Calling them an idiot is unnecessary, but it’s not wrong.
Specifically one of the big points I plan on addressing on my next post, very tied to the lack of conflict drivers.
This is actually a good point. Turning what is essentially hundreds of systems into newbs-only zones, not would it not be feasible, even if it was it would likely kill all the activity in the zone.
However, I do think that a sensible part of it could be turned into such a zone, certainly not all of it, but at least maybe several dozens systems for each of the great Empires.
The presence of so much resources in High-Sec is definitely a problem, heavily participates in the Lack of Scarcity I was talking about. You don’t need to group, and if you are big enough by yourself you don’t ever need to group up. Won’t spit on Incursions as they at least provide something severely lacking in the game, a reason to group up, problem is that they are a perfect example of Lack of Participation, being what is essentially arcane content in a zone full of noobs.
Is it really an opinion that wardeccers hold too much power when I provide a specific example showing how a single person managed to menace an entire corp of people through the use of war decs? When you have groups of a dozen of people able to send that “I will come” notice to thousands, can you call that balanced?
Social Corps are a good idea specifically because they curb that power wardeccers can have over others. The case of lone deccers wanting to unilaterally affect thousands of people and thinking the system has to work around that.
This is a simple case of commen sense, not opinion.
Not all of it, but definitely a part of it. And this part doesn’t have to be a snooze-fest, I don’t think a specific safe space is the answer, but a sector where for a moment they can organize, build up, train, before pitting themselves against the rest of EVE. What I have in mind is a place that would encourage to group up, corp up, fleet together in small objectives-based skirmishes, and keep doing so until they are ready enough to take on the rest of the game.
Maybe there should be such a thing as True High-Sec and High-Sec, Empire High-Sec/Corporation High-Sec, aka a part of High-Sec that is catering to new players.
Anyway, I’m out of the topic of new players, what I want is people to realize that Yes, maybe creating a safe space for them is something we have to consider instead of it being treated as some kind of heretical, satanical, anti-EVE idea.
Wars are always in favor of the most numerous group
Wether or not they decide or want to fight can’t be balanced by any means.
Lone deccers don’t dec thousands of people…
They’re not dumb, hence the fact they can dec by themselves
Nope, highsec doesn’t need to be touched in that regard.
The first impressions of space is what makes people stay. If you show them at first that space is safe, they will quit the moment they leave that safe space because they were taught that space was safe.
You know as much as anyone that it’s not even following the core values of EVE… lol
I can’t agree with this, as even the lowest form of resource gathering in Eve can have affects on the ‘end game’ as all materials of salvage and even Tritanium, are available in highsec and have cascading effects on the entire universe we share. I don’t know anything about Albion, or if the herbs you gather there can feed the epic mounts of the epic gear kings.
But I do like the idea of baby corps, limited in their access to structures and possibly bounties (100% taxed) and awful refining returns and no contract options or direct trades.
This man is all about the stick, and does not even know what a carrot is. Why don’t you tar and feather them too and publicly shame them. You actually made me laugh out loud in amazement, I hope you were not being serious with that 100% tax idea.
Tell me please that you were joking or even being sarcastic, I need to know!!!
On to the OP. Hi, it is good to see thoughtful people try to assess what is an ungodly mess and you have started with hisec first, the most difficult one actually…
Hisec is not actually eating up the game, because it really is not that important any more, previously when I joined the game again in 2009 I decided to re-start as a noob. So what I did was read C&P and CAOD (what was left of it) and go in and do what any new player did, but I wanted this time to be more solo or small group. So I joined a mining corp in hisec and I started to mine and build up those skills. It was a good bunch of lads, a couple of veteran miners, one being a know it all, and the corp CEO who was also doing stuff in nullsec and was not active on the CEO much.
However hisec was active, there was people running around war decking each other, people blowing up people for mining the same rocks, it was good and active, and an area in which people like Pyhchotic Monk could have a lot of fun. I saw how poor the mechanics were in hisec, after one mate went suspect in his Tengu and he had no idea why. But we had wardecs, we moved stuff through low sec and for fun I went into a nearby 0.4 and practices my evasion techniques as a noob. I also did a 1v1 in a frigate against a war decker who let me live, but then did not allow my corp mate in a drake that same mercy, well played you devious git.
I did learn the game in hisec, however like you it was too controlled, less spontaneous and quite frankly too bug riddled at that time to be worth bothering about and the RR mechanics were terribad. So I looked around and decided to join something called Hub Zero in Stain. After that I went to sov 0.0 and then back to hisec for a bit before creating an alliance and renting at a very cheap rate in Querious, it was hilarious seeing people coming into kill renters and instead dying to us, but I digress. I did active stuff in hisec in 2009/ first quarter 2010.
And most of the low ends came from hisec, now it comes from Rorquals…
At this CCP massively increased the DPS of destroyers, making them the best way to gank mining ships and very soon everyone was in on it, and every mining ship had the tank of a wet paper bag. I watched as people I knew from the early period as Dracvlad lose ship after ship, their net worth diminish and their anger grow at the poor balancing of CCP. Many left the game for good in the two and a half years that this state of affairs continued.
People might also know about an alliance called the Orphanage, this was a hisec mer / war decker that did blanket war decs, one of my corp mates had been an FC in them and knew Pitbull very well and he joined what was to become my corp just as I joined a 0.0 rental alliance in late 2010. He told me so much about tactics and strategy in hisec and I soaked it up. The thing is that they realised that the content they needed was possible by blanket war decs and they ran around in hisec blapping stuff, which is why when people say it was the watch list, look at them askew, they are talking rubbish. They were looked down upon by many of the war deckers, but they got big fleets and people realise what this could develop into.
So hisec was actually an incubation area, it did have a style and content of its own. However with the buff to destroyer DPS and lack of mining ship tanks, and the development of blanket war decs the less able players that were just playing there for casual fun, were effectively kicked out of the game. But CCP did not even notice, they were too busy looking at the numbers of new players sucked in by big headline 0.0 battles.
I came back to hisec a number of times over the years my most recent stint was about two years prior to joining my current alliance which is now at 18 months plus.
Other changes that came later was nullsec alliances realising that they had to recruit bodies directly, so now anyone with a bit of ooomph joins the game is immediately off to join PH, Karma Fleet or Brave. So what is left in hisec, old vets who know how to evade, indy alts of nullsec players and new players who want to play very casual and of course a desperate bunch of bitter vets desperate for something to feed to them, and gankers of course feeding on anyone they can
That is my perspective, and I think that hisec in now in a terrible state.
The war dec system in itself is quite good, there are a few changes I would make to it, but they are minor changes, but the main change would be to limit all entities in hisec to five wars maximum, and if they wanted more then they would have to put up a citadel in which a CONCORD agent would be stationed and all their war decs would be based from that location. Were it to be destroyed all but the latest five war decs would be dropped. In returned they would get the CONCORD agent giving them online and location intel in person to a character. They would have to ask, pay a fee and have some sort of cool down like now with locators.
Objective is really quite obvious and rather frightening to a number of the war deckers, which is a strategic consequence for war decking the wrong people.
My hope was that people would start to gang up again, rather than avoid as they do now in one man corps, and this would make hisec a much more interesting place again, because as soon as you get to a certain size you get war decked, and if you fight back you get hit again and I the end you feed until you cannot feed anymore and then all your members leave because they cannot make any ISK, some leaving the game forever.
Hisec did not used to be like this and this is because CCP was not careful in terms of understanding their client base in hisec, they only focussed on what they called the content providers which blew stuff up and completely ignored the prey, making it easier to blow them up and impossible to develop. The result is the absolute pile of poo called hisec which you see now.
Making hisec into a newbie safe zone would be a sad final capitulation of what hisec used to be, but looking at it with jaded eyes, perhaps that is all that hisec can be in the state it is now in, because it looks too far gone for me. And on that note, I wonder why I even bothered writing that. But let me post it anyway, it will certainly get a few people foaming at the mouth, even if that is not my intent as they do it to themselves.
lmfao. Isn’t this premise the whole idea behind the proposed solution? Yet, it flies contrary to the very idea of starting a corporation to begin with. The freedom to claim ownership of things and the liberty to set your own limits.
If you impose any restrictions, just put them on the npc corporations and figure out a better wardec system that considers each entities past number of declared wardecs into the price calculator. Make every individual, corp and alliance level Wardec be compounded. And if you recruit during an active wardec, let CONCORD send the differential bill.
Ps. Keeping mercs in mind, maybe just have the history charged by a time frame of wardecs in the past year.
One thing Im noticing about proposed changes, these noob systems would be quickly infiltrated by vets and they would set up cartels poaching the promising new players, controling those markets, and dictating the attitude twoards Eve of new players. As I think about it, the current way it starts by throwing each and every person in the meat grinder is fair. Everybody has an equal start. Some more equal than others by having a vet friend bring them into the game as opposed by one who heard of Eve and is trying it on a whim. But thats an uncontrolable variable. A required tutorial that covers most of the game wiuld be a better place to start. A security mission, one delivery, one mining, one recon mission, ect ect. Freely given the basest of equipment to do them and clear instructions. Something along those lines.
As for war decs, if you change the price to consider war history, kdr, size of corp, youll just see the number of new corps rise astoundingly. Same as with limiting the number of corps you can dec. Just more coallitions and allying in.
To fix war decs there will have to be a more fun or profitable hisec to bring in a bigger number of vets/good players to boost the population, give them something to fight over, and make it easier for targeted war decs.
I took something different away from Albion Online
They started instancing more and more content. This caused less people to be out in the world. Less people out in the world caused more people to leave or start using the instance content because it was too ahrd to find world PvP outside big zerg v zerg battles. Which in turn caused more people to leave as less people were out in the world… This continued until they finally bandaged it with some new open world content but the damage was already done to the player base
They encouraged new ‘corps’ to grow much better than eve does. In the low safe areas resource gatering and PvE is so low teir it’s a massive grind to even afford and wera decent gear. That said there are some low teir ‘sov’ worth fighting over in these areas that isn’t worth holding as anything other than practice at the upper teir of the game. This gave new groups something to battle over and was a stepping stone to launching into ‘lowsec’ or ‘nullsec’. I could get behind something in eve that gives low teir groups a chance to form up and fight over something sov like in highsec and lowsec that gives higher than average rewards but still much lower than nullsec.
I invented ‘Baka stacking’ and the good old ‘Dungeon pipe bomb’. This has no relevance to the topic I just wanted to brag ;). If killboards go back far enough you can find ‘Noragen’ doing this in various locations with 3-4 other people from day 2-3 of launch
As a remainder, I am out of the talk about New Players/Social Corps for now. The Plan is also to have you yourself figure out what is the best solution regarding those.
), where you only need to search for “dantelion”. Then you scroll down the list of results, click on one of the last ones and click “Jump”. Then you scroll up until you find his first appearance.
