You can repeat that as often as you want, it won’t get true. Players who enjoy small&med-corp lifestyle and intentionally want to stay away from big alliances also count by the thousands and you are not even counting all those tens of thousands the constant pampering of the big blocs has driven away from the game. Too easy Power Projection (and Ansiblex Gates are a part of that) makes the game an uninteresting product for many (ten)thousand possible players, no matter how often you try to ignore that. There are reasons why EVE can’t hold many players for long and one of the most important is the fact that EVE can’t keep it’s promise of a vast, open universe where you (and a couple of friends) can create some vision of your own little space empire. Because in reality, you can’t. You can join some existing bloc or stay small forever, because you get constantly pounded into the ground by just the next bigger group that can easily jump on anything you dare to bring to the field from lightyears away with the click of a button. The amount of players EVE has lost since it became Hotdrop/Blobbing-Online™ cannot even be counted.
Another problem the big alliances created entirely on their own (and Ansiblex Gates are again part of that). Stop blobbing small or medium roaming gangs with a perfect countersetup of 3x the numbers and you maybe get interesting skirmishes that bring enjoyment for much longer than the 15 seconds you need to either stomp them or lose them because they warp off and show you the finger.
Thats the problem and many people wholeheartedly disagree with that statement. Ansiblex Gates were a mistake to implement and the right step would be realizing it an cut down their power. I don’t nessessarily speak of total removal, but definitely a nerf in range and insta-accessibility, so they can still be used for tactical and strategical deployments, but not for actively defending all corners of an empire with the same staging fleet.
I never talked about elite PvP kids. But well, if someone has 200+ killmarks on his ship and you finally catch him with a huge numerical advantage plus a teleporter that enables you to cut off all possible escape routes, then corner him with a whole bunch of specialized ships and then need to rely on a fuckup on his side, that still smells like a pretty cheap victory. But if you enjoy it, have fun with it. Still no justification for having something as broken as an Ansiblex System in the game.
Under the current circumstances for sure not, but the question is rather irrelevant because I am not arguing for my own benefit but because of my deep conviction that what you call the “status quo” is bad for the games long-term health.
I wouldn’t even “remove” Ansiblex Gates as a whole. But I would definitly restrict all kinds of insta-travel quite a bit, which of course includes Cynos and Jumpclones, each to their own degree. All of them shall be usable strategically and tactically for planned operations or to reinforce a fight with delay, but not instantly on demand to influence or counter an already ongoing engagement with a push of a button.
Let’s for a moment consider the possibility of a game without ansiblexes.
The game wouldn’t die because of it, that’s an exaggeration just to kill the discussion.
Space would take longer to traverse for players who currently do use ansiblexes
What we do know is that without ansiblexes it takes longer to traverse blue space. As a result, it will both (1) be harder to project combined power across multiple regions, and (2 it will be harder for a single entity to have all their people stage from one central place, so they would have to spread out more.
Now I’m not saying we should nerf Ansiblexes, but I do know that Ansiblexes are part of what enables big groups to be big groups without breaking apart due to regional differences within the group (see 2), and are also enabling a big group to defend a boundary much further from their home (see 1).
Ansiblexes are part of the reason small groups have trouble taking space and why most people consolidate into the very few big groups the game has.
Sure, there are many other reason for people to group up, as N+1 is always a valid strategy, Ansiblexes or not, but Ansiblexes are yet another factor that makes people group up.
Now I’m not saying Ansiblexes should be removed, I rather like their use and see the benefit of having a small infrastructure target that people can shoot to provoke a fleet fight, but still I am willing to discuss possible nerfs, if the nerfs make sense.
What kind of nerfs have we seen proposed?
blue timer - I’m not a fan, blue timer messes with fleets where people will suddenly be left out just because they took a gate earlier
polarization - doesn’t really stop projecting across a region, but would at least make it possible to bubble camp one side of the ansiblex and stop people from jumping back immediately, if polarization happens after one jump rather than back-and-forth like wormholes
access to anyone - I’ve seen this proposed, but I don’t think this would work as it would enable people to completely empty the fuel of hostile ansiblexes?
Well, i disagree. And your one-sided opinion won’t stop me. I have not heard a single argument so far why Ansiblex Gates in their current form are so absolutely nessessary for the game that holding sov would be almost impossible without them. And your “i don’t want to nerf what many people enjoy” does not convince me, if a mistake was made it’s best to acknowlege it and soften it’s impact as good as possible. If that means a nerf, it means a nerf, so what, people will get over it.
But we had the same discussion with Marauders (yes, they should be nerfed) and Citadels (yes they are terrible and should be reworked completely). We will not agree here. But at least I try to stay friendly in the conversation.
Nobody is suggesting they are “so absolutely necessary for the game.”
They are a popular thing. Like Marauders. Like citadels.
You remove popular things that people have to come to rely upon, and those people quit playing. It’s a pretty simple concept. Folks will endure some nerfs, but when you’re advocating for either wholesale removal (which you did) or such significant nerfs that the current use is impossible, people will walk. We’ve seen it with blackout, we’ve seen it with scarcity, we’ve seen it with a dozen other game changes.
The evidence for this is all over the place - and it’s far more concrete than your claims that everybody who has quit the game in the last ten years was a small gang roaming pilot, or somebody who had the goal of being a small to medium sized sov holding alliance leader in nullsec.
Big groups have been big groups far longer than the last 5 years, which is how long these jump gates have been around. Ansiblexes make travel more convenient in sov. They aren’t the reason why big groups got big or can stay big.
First, nobody is going to sit on a jump gate and jump back and forth over and over again to empty the fuel in an ansiblex, especially if they’re paying a fee every time they jump that covers the cost of the LO. That argument has never made any sense. Second, even accepting, arguendo, that it could happen, so what? Let them do that - if they want to take the time to do that, or use a capital or something to suck the things dry faster, that’s fair game and something the owners will have to deal with. I see zero issues with that, even if I think it’s unlikely.
You build a road through your home town, you can use it, and so can everybody else, including the invading army coming to burn all your stuff. I think that solves 99% of the problem for the small gang guys while not impacting the sov holders that much, if at all.
nana, I will not take part in this word-twisting contest. You are a rhetoric pro in exaggerating others statements to make them look ridiculous even if they have never claimed so, but you will convince only those who already are on your side here. Lots of players do share my points, in many topics about these issues they even did raise their voice. I will speak up against things I feel are hurting the game balance as I see fit, if only to make sure someone does and you can’t claim to speak for all the players. Because you can’t. I doubt you even can for a majority.
The only people I’ve met IRL related to Eve are ex-players who quit en masse over the „removal of tedium“ you are so passionately against. They want to come back to the game but not in its current form. These aren’t poor randoms but people sitting on T2 BPOs, AT ships, supercaps, and other very rare forms of wealth.
And yes, people interested in holding sov.
One man’s „tedium“ is another man’s „vastness of space“.
You do accuse people with differing viewpoints as wanting to „kill the game“ or „ignoring their opposite viewpoint“. This is a laughable notion. It’s completely ridiculous: we have to live with the opposite viewpoint because the tyranny of the majority gets their way, always, at this point in the game (where’s that siege green retrospective?). We couldn’t ignore the opposite viewpoint even if we tried.
I know dozens who quit because of scarcity. They’re all in my corp, lol.
I accuse people of viewpoints that will hurt the game as wanting to kill the game. I have no problems with differing viewpoints, but that’s not what we’re seeing here. This isn’t just a differing viewpoint, it’s openly advocating for game changes. When those changes are bad, somebody has to say so.
Apparently I’m not even speaking for a majority, but I’ve made my views clear on this issue and I’m on the CSM and the folks who disagree with me run every time and lose almost every time (I had more first round votes than every small ganger combined last election, for instance). And sure you can say “big bloc vote” and the like, but who do you think it is that supports leaving ansiblexes alone? High sec miners?
I don’t have a problem with people having a different opinion than me. But when folks say things with a straight face like “restrict insta-travel quite a bit,” they have to understand that what they’re suggesting is not good for the game. You can’t take away things that people have come to rely upon without causing significant anger - this is a truism, whether it’s in a video game or anywhere else.
I’m sorry, but that’s nonsense. Any good competitive game that’s still evolving will require both buffs, nerfs and other changes from time to time. That includes ‘taking away things that some players have come to rely upon’.
Yes, people often get angry when what they used gets nerfed, but that doesn’t mean nerfs aren’t sometimes necessary for game balance, to get a better game.
Just because some people get angry when things they relied upon get taken away from them does not make the change bad for the game. It could be bad for the current playstyle of those players yet at the same time good for the game as a whole.
Nowhere did you see me say “never nerf anything” or making other changes. When CCP decides to take away things that some players have come to rely upon, they better have a good reason, and they better expect that over the long run the pain of making those changes will be outweighed by the benefit of those changes. They have, quite often, not done that and the game has suffered for it.
If something is truly out of balance, people expect it and aren’t going to complain that loudly. Most of the time they understand things were messed up and unsustainable. But when changes are made that are huge, not really that justifiable, or otherwise screw up something that many believe isn’t causing any problems, that’s where you get folks angry enough to walk away.
If it causes more people to quit than come back or stay with the game, it’s a bad change. The bottom line in a game like this is if the change doesn’t keep people playing, it’s probably a bad change.
Oh come on Brisc, you can’t be that stubborn. When Cynos & Co were introduced up to like 2008/2009 they weren’t that much of a problem, because:
the amount of people having access to an escalation fleet was pretty limited and those mostly were located in nullsec, so the game had VAST areas of space where smaller groups could live and thrive without being blobbed basically all the time whenever they dared to commit to any engagement. That changed a lot
at first you could maybe jump in a Triage Carrier or a SentryCarrier which could hold up your fleet but you couldn’t kill an entire gang with it, so the smaller group could at least disengage, lose a ship or two and keep playing instead of just losing everything to a multi-specialized-Titanbridgegang that is coming trough the cyno and has everything tackled, webbed, damped, jammed at 50+ km
Dreads were no problem for roamers because the Weapons simply didn’t track smaller ships very well and they couldn’t move anyway, so you could easily disengage from them as well.
back in the days it took almost a minute from lighting the cyno to actually having hostiles shooting at you because system change took a long time, the server was slower, the grid had to be loaded and then they could lock and then they could fire. That always gave the dropped ones a reaction window of roughly 60 seconds to pull range, disengage and jump the gate, focus fire the cynoship or bring own reinforcements in. All that is gone today, if you see the Cyno, roughly 10 seconds later the enemy fleet is there.
almost nobody had BlackOps (not even talking about superblingy 10B BOs with full FAX+Super escalation in the backhand) available, nowadays its called “content” to bust a single Brutix with a full BO gang and people cry bitter tears if you want to remove that crap from the game or at least bring its power back to normal levels.
instant jumpclone switchign wasn’t an issue anyway becaue clones were expensive and you couldnt instaswitch them with perfect booster-rolls on a citadel as often as you liked. So even if people had lets say a Slave-Clone for brawling they jumped into that evening, they couldn’t suddenly jump into a Crystal-Clone and using a shielddoctrine to perfectly counter someone. It simply wasn’t a problem at large scale.
All these changes created a problem over time and possible nerfs to these mechanics do not aim to hurt anyone but to restore the old balance that was providing a MUCH BETTER game experience for everyone. No one wants to take away your nullsec blobs toys, but tuning them a bit down so anyone else gets some goddamn breathing room again. Io Korval is completely right, all those people I liked and who left over the years (which were all Vets, experienced long-year players, good FCs and Co.) left over the ever-increasing blobmechanics that only catered the big groups and they have no interest to play this game in its current state any more. And yes, thats most likely different people that Io knows. And you know what. Everyone of us “smallscalers” knows like a dozen of these people. In your nullsec bubble I think you have no clue how much players this barren wasteland of a once pvp-rich lowsec had cost the game because it became simply Hotdropland™, suffering from the instant and wide-ranged power projection of all those who could afford Capfleets, Titans, BlackOps and so on. EVE lost probably hundreds, if not thousands of year-long players over that problem.
For every dozen small ganger you guys know who left because he was tired of being blobbed, I know a dozen or more players who left because they were tired of the nerfs and CCP undercutting them constantly.
The idea that you guys honestly think that making it harder to move around space is the silver bullet to fixing all that’s wrong with EVe and ushering in a new Golden Age of New Eden would be laughable if you didn’t earnestly believe it so much. That you do just makes it unfortunate.
Thats not our fault. No one of us asked for Blackout, Scarcity or any other nerfs. So all the guys you know who quit did not because we wished them ill. I wish you guys the most expensive rats, the biggest Asteroids, the richest Icefields and the most lucrative GasSites. Truly, please get all spacerich in 0.0 space and build the Dream Empires of Cap- and Supercapfleets all day long. Do your 1000 Man battles, crush opposing Fortresses or fortify your own systems to the teeth. Please do all that and have fun with it, we simply don’t care.
There probably is no “silver bullet” to fix literally everything, but it would be a great step into the right direction to add some delay to every insta-travel mechanic to give the opposing side a reaction window again and give back some tactical gameplay that goes beyond “who has more escalation potential behind the cyno”.
EVE once was great because everyone had their niche and there was thriving life of all kinds and sizes all over new eden. But evasion and non-lucrativity were the only layer of defense smaller groups had against the larger ones. And EVE desperately needs mechanics that ensures that greater power is always tied to lesser mobility, not only on grid but also though the universe. Which means: less instant power projection, only delayed jumping on someone and high costs for deploying over range to make small groups non-interesting targets. I am pretty sure the tacticians could adapt your warfare strategies easily, it’s not like an enemy Keepstar, System or Region can run away.
Of course you were asking for blackout. Of course you were asking for scarcity.
Complaints about perfect intel. Complaints about intel channels. Complaints about intel scraping tools. Complaints about nobody roaming. Complaints about super cap proliferation. Complaints about too many titans on gates. Complaints about supers. Complaints about all the big blocs.
Constant, continual complaints. And the result was blackout, scarcity, the ESS, rorq nerfs, super nerfs, removal of HAWs on titans, removal of cynos from every ship but recons, and multiple other changes all championed by the small gangers of the world.
I mean, Olmeca and others did untold damage to the game in the name of trying to harm the big blocs.
Bro, did you just say that the removal of HAW Titans was a bad thing? That was the only time I quit EvE, when HaW Titan hotdrops were the norm. I’ve been able to endure everything else in this game, but not that. That was nuts.
I was in a private phpBB forum based gaming community well over 10 years ago of about 100 people. A subset of 10-20 folks had started venturing in Eve and we ultimately merged into ex-Morsus Mihi elements and FW elements in lowsec.
When I came back to Eve from my 10 year hiatus I put back out the feelers to the old gaming community as well as wide hobby (gaming) internal mailing list for the 100k+ coworkers I have at my day job. The number of people I talked to totals probably around one to two dozen. Not one still played. Very lonely.
No matter your number or mine, it’s still all anecdotes for sure. Which is why I don’t think this debate will end.
I appreciate that we can disagree so passionately without escalating to degraded rhetoric.
Maybe people should invest their time less into complaining and more into coming up with creative ideas how to play the game best under current mechanics.
The fact that @Saladinae is making some much ISK from ESS is showing that it works, even though there is so much blobbing here and there. On the other side, complaining about fight not always being in favour to you is like asking for more NPC farming content, where you know that you will always win.
It is just natural, that as an individual player I calculate my chances against an opponent and I will only engage if I see good chances for me to win. If I do not seem them, people will either move along or simply call to local cavalry, if it is available. This is just…
a) human
b) reasonable
c) result of Darwinistic conditioning of social creatures
Nope. I never did that. Again, it’s not our fault if CCP choses bad ways to adress appropriate complaints about bad conditions.
Bottleneck-Camping/scouting together with the map design of many regions and as result almost complete safety of the nullsec backlands was a problem, but WHs solved that as they offered ways to sneak in and out and not all of them could be rolled away or blocked/watched. Would have been absolutely enough in my book. Nobody I am associacted with ever asked for a “solution” like “Blackout”.
Nobody complained when these Supercaps were used as they were initially meant: to play a backbone role in SOV warfare, only available to the biggest entities. It was CCPs fault from the beginning not to design them in a way that would made them comepletely useless against anything smaller than a capital/structure, very expensive, slow to move and always requiring a support fleet in combat. I (and again everyone I am associated with or know of) couldn’t care less how many Super and Titans you stockpile as long as the game mechanics make them only useful against similar sized opponents. Many people left the game when supercaps were just commonly used/dropped on any occasion, with the users well knowing that smaller entities couldn’t do anything against them, especially when taken into account that most of these users also had further backup available. It was a great imbalance, but again, it is not the players fault which solution CCP chose for that.
Again, not our fault if CCP comes up with these crappy ideas to solve the problem (which was obviously existant).
I can only repeat: If it was up to me, you could have the time of your life there in deep null and do all the nice things, get the greatest armies, the richest wallets, the biggest fights ever. I wish your playstyle nothing but good, shall CCP remove all TiDi, shall they give you all the administration tools for larger groups you need and whatnot, because I sincerily believe that you love the game really big, else you wouldn’t be so furious/bitter about what has been done to it. Kudos for that. But please believe me: I am also arguing from the postion of someone who has seen whole corporations and groups of corporations just disappear over what this game has become and I also love the game too much to stay silent in face of terrible mechanics that drive so many players away from this once great universe (needlessly!).
There is no point in CCP developing the game for people who have quit. They need to focus their attention on keeping existing players and getting new ones. Trying to change the game that people like now so they can get people who quit in the past back - at the expense of existing players - is absurd.