I really like all these posts. They tell a story I’ve seen unfold over the past 10 years.
One of the symptoms I see most clearly is in Capital ship proliferation. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE!
From a game design point of view, they have been made more and more accessible, more and more generalized. They used to be a tool, for Sov holding. Extremely useful as a force-multiplier. They where extremely cumbersome, useless for the vast majority of PVP stuff, except PVP on the largest scales and Null-sec gravitas. Titans especially.
These days? I’ve seen Titans casually gate-camp low-sec. I’ve been hot-dropped by Titans and other caps, while flying in small Cruiser fleets in Low-Sec. Everyone and their dogs have Capitals on stand-by. They no longer have restrictions in their use and movement in Low-sec.
“The game changes, so what? Adapt to survive.” - I hear many say. I think @Elena_Laskova captures this predicament perfectly.
Taking capitals in Low-Sec as a case study, how does its changes affect Player interactions when comparing it to the rest of the game-design?
Eve Online used to be a heavily lore based game, and even though many people back in the day probably never noticed it much, the lore created a solid environment to develop game-mechanics within. With the Capital ship example, I imagine the mindset in pre-2012 Eve development was something like this:
“Should capitals be allowed in Low sec?”
“Hmm… Well. They are intended Sovereignty enforcement tools. And Low-Sec is Empire Sov. So I don’t think it makes much sense that the Empires would allow Capsuleers to have more military power than themselves in their space”
“I guess you are right. Stupid idea”
Today? More something like this.
“Should capitals be allowed in Low-Sec?”
“Hmm… Would make for more cut throat PVP in Low… Maybe a big Cap-Fight… More PVP nevertheless, With bigger badder ships. I love it!”
“I’m glad you like it”
…
*EDIT 2: *
I want to add that capitals in Low make risk averse decisions much more sensible. You know that you can be hit wit overwhelming force, at any time, for any reason. So why risk doing stuff in Low?
…
Anyway. Conclusion time… Well. Obviously. Proliferation of Dead-space modules and capitals is just exacerbate what else i talk about here.
The concentration of wealth to people that use excessive alts/plexing/botting, and whatever 1 man army like “enhancement”, of gameplay methods, is high, and it is tipping the game into something, that doesn’t seem so fair.
All this works to raise the bar for being able to match pvp-ers, at a low, and even intermediate level. At the same time, general ship stats, in the sub-cap department, has become more similar between factions than ever, limiting tactical specialization available in T1 sub-caps.
I could write a book, listing stuff like this. Things, that by themselves doesn’t seem to be a big deal, but as a whole start to point at a more fundamental issue with EVE Online in its current form.
It has lost its focus. It has lost touch with some of the original underpinning game-design philosophy.
The game focused primarily on Community building, small gang, small groups doing their thing and those who got big, moved to Null, where themselves became the “Capsuleer Empires”.
Today, lore doesn’t seem to mean much for game development, other than to make new factions and ships (Hopefully this Abyssal expansion will prove me wrong).
On the PVP-/E’ers being risk-averse thing, I see it more as a symptom of trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator, while compromising on the underlying game-design philosophy. This makes the game more accessible, but over time, it drifts into an area where it doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. It slowly creates a million different opinions on what direction the game should take, and CCP wants to appeal to everything. Again,over time, creating the situation @Elena_Laskova captured so neatly in her reply.
And sadly… It is a trend I have seen a lot of game-franchises take the past 15 years. “Mainstreamification” i call it. How it affects the game-design is dependent on the game. Some franchises are improved by it, refined by it. Others… Not so much. Battlefield used to be actual 32 vs. 32 team battles. Then EA bought the development studio, and immediately online combat became 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 vs. 5 + 5 + 5 + 5.
A huge change in how online combat was. The organised teams in the earlier games was a underpinning design idea that got watered down. The result? More mainstream appeal, less original game-design. Pure economics. More money, less art.
I don’t know if I’m making much sense, but I hope you find some of it interesting. In any case, for EVE to regain its appeal, CCP need to take a conscious decision re-work the game-design philosophy from the ground up in a progressive manner. I hope it will happen, but I have my doubts.
Fly safe all o7
Edit:
I concur, sir.