The Havoc content, in it’s current form will physically and mentally hurt players if continued

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
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After hoping the Triglavian content and the reports about player burn out and the rumors of drug assisted online time would have been a teaching moment for CCP I am deeply disappointed at the design choices made concerning the rollout of Havoc.

As this is a player health issue, and I have heard talk of using Payed Time Off work to contest the Havoc incursions already, the time for adjusting the design for Havoc is now. Right now the design for Havoc as implemented is flawed to a point where it is hazardous to player health. CCP admits it’s Havoc rollout is flawed by lifting Hek from 0.5 to 0.8.

People can’t keep this up and will burn out in game and out over the way Havoc is currently structured. Especially the knowledge re-incursion will be a constant from now on is way to much to contend with and will end up seriously injuring players in the real world.

Proposed fixes to protect player health:

  • Hitting suppression stage five before corruption stage five should be rewarded by locking the corruption at the percentage it has once suppression stage five is reached while also despawning the plexes and disallowing further plexing in system. Right now Militia players have to keep a presence in fully suppressed systems after suppression five is reached. This means the Angel players get to move elsewhere after corruption five, but the Militia players are tied down chasing the enemy so as not to have to contend with further corruption of their already defended systems.
  • No re-incursion in successfully stage five suppressed systems for MONTHS. This is an important one. The content is a grind, but do-able for a few days. But after players need a long breather or a small number of them will suffer health consequences due to the current Havoc design flaws.

Please heed this warning CCP and don’t endanger your players. Learn form past Triglavian mistakes and act fast, please.

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CCP loves unrewarding grind too much to not include it in new features.

The Triglavian experience was an outrageously boring and repetitive grind. If the Insurgencies are even remotely similar in style, I will stay as far away from this “content” as possible.

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It’s all temporary, nothing is at stake (like with pre-Pochven), relax, and enjoy the content. The imbalance IMO is the supression states add nothing of value to the game but just hinder gameplay. A principle problem, if one side is designated to fight for the status quote. I would have thought CCP learned from the Edencom debacle.

To make it work for a longer time there needs to be more a scheme red vs. blue, than bad guys vs. good guys.

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I agree with Kaver.
While successfully suppressing the insurgency in our home system of Dammalin and now the neighbouring system of Alakgur was a lot of fun too, it was also extremely exhausting.
We were plexing 24/7 with different shifts of players and FC’s. Many neglected their real life work or their health to get it done.
Don’t get me wrong it was a great sense of achievement and pride, but many players felt quite burned out afterwards.

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This is EVE, you don’t have a real life, the only life you have is EVE Online. :smiling_imp:

(Disclaimer: This is just a joke. :wink: )

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The life we chose :sweat_smile:

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As a former EDENCOM FC, I agree that the Triglavian Invasions were a case of CCP putting a proverbial gun to our heads and going: “Defend these systems or they will go to space hell. Except the Caldari ones, because those are going there by default because we don’t give our coders enough time to balance test or fix bugs before we force them to work on the next patch”.

At the time this did not affect people’s lives too much because everyone was in COVID Lockdown, but it routinely involved 12 hour FC shifts, before handing the baton over to an American FC, because AUTZ FCs apparently don’t exist. I can also confirm that people suggested the use of methamphetamines to me, to which I responded with “No” at the time. Willpower is enough for the strong.

Having FC’d the defence fleet for Dammalin whenever I could log in during the 28th, 29th and 30th of November, I can say that this Insurgency stuff feels the same as the Trigvasions, but somehow worse, because at least when you turned a system into an EDENCOM fortress, you no longer had to worry about it. Now, even if people push an insurgency to level 5 Suppression, there is no guarantee that their system won’t be affected by the next Insurgency the moment that the current one despawns.

I agree that having Insurgencies deal temporary effects to systems, rather than permanent ones, is an improvement over the Trigvasions. However, potentially having to repeat this hell-grind as soon as next week is ■■■■■■■ unacceptable. Especially when not defending a system is not an option when it entails losing everything you have built. People have IRL stuff they want to do beyond max form CTAs. My solution would be to have the coders change the Insurgencies so that the moment one despawns, it begins a Cooldown period, lasting one or more months, during which that pirate entity can not start another one.

At least this was built on the FW mechanics, so you actually get to fight people, rather than the Trigvasion thing of being forced to do unpaid belt ratting.

This statement is either purposely false, or made without having a functioning understanding of the effects of a level 5 insurgency. We will not let everything our founders built over the years be destroyed due to Flavour-Of-The-Month content.

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I’m glad I concentrate on PVE now, as in mining, missions, exploring etc as this sounds horrendous to take part in.

Good luck guys and remember your health comes first.

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I feel for highsec systems if a system reaches 100% suppression, the next time it gets invaded it should start with stage 2 suppression allready to make the grind a bit more easy.

The attackers have nothing to loose, but the defenders have a lot to loose (stations, pocos, mining time, trade routes, highsec gameplay) and right now the pirates have way superior numbers which makes fighting them very hard.

The idea that withing the next days after Abudban and Egmar are corrupted the thing could spawn in Gulmorogod or Lulm and basically the whole grind would repeat is pretty rough for me personally.

Then there are some other problems with fairness. People in Nullsec earn more money than people in Highsec, because there is more risk involved. However since most of the pirates are from big nullsec groups, there is a question of fairness that needs to be adressed.
For somebody running combat sites in Highsec it might be a lot harder to replace a ship than for people running crab beacons in nullsec.
People mining Highsec Moon ores might have a way harder time than people mining Zicron or R64 in nullsec.

But now those two kinds of people clash. If Highsec needs to compete with nullsec, we need better ways of income like better moon ores, better combat sites, better ores.

This is only one day of Fighting in 3 systems:

As you can see, the lowsec people and highsec people traded pretty well against the pirates. But they still lost 20bil and replacing billions in Highsec is pretty rough.

Over time I feel this could become a burnout factor as well for highsec and lowsec people.

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The introduction of new BPCs and rewards for pirate factions has created a significant imbalance in Havoc’s gameplay. While pirates reap substantial benefits, militia players like myself are left to defend our hard-earned sectors with little to no incentive, aside from avoiding the loss of our investments. This is not just a game mechanics issue; it’s a matter of player welfare.

The current state of Havoc is driving players to unhealthy lengths. I’ve personally experienced this, fighting tirelessly to protect our sectors. The thrill of the battle is overshadowed by the relentless grind, turning what could be engaging content into an exhausting ordeal.

Our sectors, even at ‘100% suppressed’, remain vulnerable, leaving us in a perpetual state of defense from players and an inability to resume normal operations due to new roaming rats that persist. This has not only led to physical symptoms like headaches for players like myself but has also opened opportunities for others to exploit our weakened state, further diminishing our morale and resources.

This situation feels more like bullying than balanced gameplay. If such events are to be a regular occurrence, I fear not only for my continued participation in the game but also for the health and well-being of the player community. A game should be a source of enjoyment, not a cause of physical distress.

I urge CCP to reconsider the mechanics of Havoc. A balance must be struck between challenge and player health.

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These stories are scripted now. Even tho I fairly like CCP they just put the Edencom story right on the shelf.

I am excited to see how EVE Vanguard will mix with FW. I do plan on doing ground combat ops for FW if possible.

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What are you talking about, is this roleplay?

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It’s Havoc! YaY!

A captain always goes down with his ship :smiling_imp:

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Getting to Stage 3 Corruption and having the Insurgency spread is way too easy for cartel players to accomplish. The Insurgency should spread at 4 or 5 to make things less taxing… When the event started I thought it was going to be fun getting into fights in Dammalin and keeping my stations there safe, but when it spread to Alakgur, I had all my guys that could pvp running sites nonstop to try and get Alakgur to 5, way too taxing and exhausting and I definitely don’t want to repeat this every couple weeks… and it’s not fair that most Cartel players are nullsec bankrolled so they’re bringing in blobs of bling ships while highsec players are running with cheap T1 fits.

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While I agree that the idea of doing this insurgency thing over and over again for years is hardly appealing, and that CCP seems to not have learned much from the Edencom fiasco, I’d like to remind everyone that EVE is a game.

No one is in fact holding a gun (proverbial or otherwise) to your head and forcing you to play. If you notice your relationship to the the game becoming unhealthy, you need to step back. Were the game to become unplayable without sacrificing your well-being, you should vote with your feet and your wallet.

There are things in this world worth making such sacrifices for. Pixelated spaceships ain’t.

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I think there are two problems at the core of this issue.

  1. The possible risk of losing ones high-sec structures.
  2. The imbalance in reward for time spent between the two sides.

If a system falls to corruption V early in an insurgency there is enough time to reinforce and blow up local structures. Angel comms even talked about looking forward to getting this opportunity to bash these “carebear” structures.
This vulnerability window is narrow given the current behaviors but in the future as the angels get more organized and coordinated they will be able to siege entire systems as a reward for winning an insurgency. This places high-security space dwellers into a state of constant worry about defending against seemingly unrelenting hordes of angel pilots who out number the locals 10-1. CCP has essentially opened up random parts of high sec to null sec and said we’ll put highly rewarding event sites for you to run and if you out-compete the locals you can break all their stuff.

A possible solution would be to keep concord protect for high-sec structures in insurgency V systems.

The second problem is the imbalance of reward. Again angel communications report that typical returns on participation ran from 1-4 hundred million an hour. This is already good money in eve, but for angels it was also made with low risk cheap ships.

On the other hand defenders can only get close to 100m isk an hour after suppression III is achieved. Due to the numerical disadvantage defenders often had to up ship to more expensive doctrines.

In its present form Havoc is a new incentive system for the larger groups of richer players to punch down.

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I was looking for that .gif for my post but didn’t find it. It’s gotten harder to find anything online these days and Google has become useless but for ads.

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The imbalance of rewards is also in your first problem.

If pirates get a system in corruption 5, it opens new gameplay (bubbles, vulnerable structures, etc). There is no similar effect for suppression 5 (gateguns don’t add to anyone’s gameplay, they remove options). Having one side play offense to gain something while the other can only either lose or stay the same was not a good idea in the invasions, and it is not a good idea now.

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sorry but people figting for supression are mainly miners. CCP gave them a grindy play-style which fits their bot-aspirant gameplay.

It is not so hard to understand.

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