If the current centralized organization of the sandbox stays the same, EVE is doomed.
The key to the current situation in EVE is to look at the disease, not the symptoms. The massive failure of the titan bridge is just a symptom. Inflation due to PLEX is a symptom. Market monopolization through polarized wealth accumulation (read: moon goo) is a symptom. Empty nullsec is a symptom.
The disease is this: the sandbox is just too damn big because it fails to be accessible. It simply takes too much real time and too many players to take and hold nullsec. It is far too easy to keep everybody docked in Empire by controlling a very few bottlenecks. It is far too easy to project forces that completely out-scale most enemies. Essentially, the player base never got big enough to take advantage of the scale of the universe.
Directly below is an analogy for those who would benefit from a greatly summarized timeline of the situation so that it’s easy to fully understand the effect of my proposed solution without using too many veteran references.
If you believe you already have a good understanding of the state of EVE today and how it happened, skip to the end of the quote.
Let’s imagine there is a massive property owned by the school district (3km radius) with a central structure that functions as schoolhouse-grocery-hardware store combination building. Kids earn money to buy food, tools and toys as they voluntarily participate in structured activities (missions) and join clubs to learn from each other (corps). The lessons teach them to build things that they then price and put on the shelf at their nearest commissary window (market). There is a fenced playground area outside where the recess monitors (CONCORD) keep an eye on things, but there are a few corners where they can’t really keep kids from roughhousing a bit (low sec). The rest of the property is divided up into many sand piles (systems) connected by specific paths (gates) that restrict movement. Lastly, all over the place are plants that grow stuffs (celestial resources) that can be used to build things. These plants vary in availability and quality of their stuffs from one sand pile to another.
So, when school first opened, lots of kids stuck around the schoolhouse and took classes, joined clubs, assembled simple widgets, and generally just got things going. Soon, the adventuresome kids learned to secure the stuffs (resources) that were out in the area that the recess monitors didn’t bother with and beat up and chased off anybody that came near their plants. By taking the sand piles and building their own shelters, they made their own special places to protect their plants and it was cool. Soon, however, some of these clubs made groups that got surprisingly big and became super-bullies who learnt that they could own bunches of the sand piles and associated plants if they just kept the routes locked down (regional bottlenecks). Unfortunately, a lot of the younger kids at the school couldn’t spend enough time away from home to make enough money to pay off or fight off the super-bullies so they settled with just playing in the fenced area (carebears). Some of these kids got older and eventually joined the super-bullies and paid schoolyard tolls (rent) so that they could make more money by picking low-lying stuffs in vast areas of tree-filled empty sand piles (nullbears). This made it nearly impossible for a new club to get into the unfenced sand piles at all. They were forced to either become friends with or paying off the super-bullies. This left the administration (CCP) sad because almost no one was graduating into playing in the greatest portion of the sandbox. So, they tried to fix it.
They introduced a new set of plans and tools at the school so that kids could more easily move in the back field sand piles, and could jump around from one area to another without the bother of the pathways. This took the form of super-expensive helicopters (titans). Administration assumed that the huge cost would assure there would never be very many helicopters. They were wrong. Eventually, helicopters popped up everywhere, but only in the hands of the super-bullies who owned the good trees and had cornered all the profitable zones. Not much later, the super-bullies figured out they could just fly big groups of kindergarteners (blob) wherever there was a fight and all they had to give them were sticks and a sweet treat. Now, they didn’t even need to hang out at their trees. They just gave little sticks to the candy-fueled babies and flew out huge groups of them whenever their trees were threatened by enterprising groups of middle-school club members. They even found that a lot of the babies would actually volunteer to hang out and play little recess games and report when the middle-school kids were messing around near the good plants. The middle-school kids got so constantly bashed by the big swarm of stick carrying kindergarteners that they stopped trying to take any sand piles at all, and the vast majority of the plants on the sand piles have remained unused.
At around the same time, the administration tried to make it easier for older kids who had less time to spend at the school. They let parents pay for stuff with money that came from outside the school (PLEX). This did get a lot of kids back in the school, but it just made everything more expensive and that money still ended up in the hands of the bullies that own the best brick-fruit trees and didn’t care what anything cost anyway. So, that only aggravated the problem, though it did put a lot of money in the school budget (which they’ve been spending on new schools, and enough fixing this one).
Analogy over. Whew. That summarizes the current state of EVE and how it developed.
Will suddenly pulling the titan bridge fix it? Nope. All the kids will just leave and no one will be left in the sandbox with nobody to shoot at.
Would altering bridging fuel requirements fix it? Hell no. It would just leave the bridge in the hands of those who have all the stashed ISK.
Will moving and/or re-distributing moon goo fix it? No. The big money has secured such an advantageous financial position they can’t be shaken and would just adapt.
“Well, what might the fix be?” you should be thinking.
De-centralize Empire.
Break up nullsec with islands of empire space. It is totally sad, but I also believe it is absolutely necessary.
How?
I believe the solution should take the form of NPC sponsored pathways into deep space “colonies”.
Steal whatever the Sansha are doing to invade Empire and give it to the four races, thereby making the change logical and the storyline consistent. Empire space needs to expand out into constellation sized pockets all over the universe with large divisions of nullsec between and no titan bridge.
I believe it would also need to be accompanied by a rapid means to move jump clones and single sub-capitals via NPC sources only; a job for all the ignored logistical NPC corporations. Make these new “colonization missions” and “supply missions” adaptive thereby rewarding active players with a constant stream of active content that moves as colonial expansion does. Require distribution contracts to move NPC assets into place. Use mining mission in neighboring nullsec to amass raw materials for NPC fabrication efforts. Allow this accumulation to be actively trackable by players. Cause supply and demand rules to apply artificially thereby moving player effort to quieter areas of the colonies which would promote players to go wherever the money is best. Isn’t this why you have an economist and team?
Build these colonies with a combination of game mechanics from incursions and factional warfare. Heck, you could use player missions of all types as a means to establish NPC stations divided amongst the different service corporation that exist now – again, logically adapting content and structure which is already in place
These colonies should require constant player defense but provide an incentive superior to traditional Empire rewards and in scale with the risks, similar to how incursion rewards scale. Balance would be the key and the colonies would need to be permanent, though adapting their size and scope should fluctuate. Keeping the colony expansion at a reasonable rate and limiting the available resources would be a fabulous engine for dynamic use of all the player skill sets and starter professions. The only risk would be that Empire would significantly empty out. Good! It might also cause serious market deflation with the new massive influx of raw materials. Again, good! Finally it would be within budget to take risks with ships and many carebears would feel risk averse and finally grow testicles. It would create many areas of conflict accessible to all levels of players, similar to old gate only combat scenarios but without the requirement to dedicate huge portions of real life time just to get there and the attached risk of losing all that effort in less than 30 seconds once you do arrive on the battlefield. We would finally have pockets from which many small player run empires could grow.
It would also make it both necessary and worthwhile to conduct industry all over the universe, not just in Empire. We would return to PvP combat forces escorting mining and hauling fleets out to gather resources and establish field operations, but much more commonly and at a very different scale. EVE needs a massive nullsec population, and this is the only way I can see to make it fit.
The net result would be moving a lot of high sec effort out into nullsec. This is the part of the equation that has never been cracked. We need localized, fun, small scale PvP conflict regularly, not as an exception.
As attractive as large fleet fights might be in trailers and as a concept, it is proving to be impractical as a primary objective. The numbers of players have never been there to support it. Large fleet engagements should be a natural escalation from small, local conflict created by players who have a vested interest in the fate of their space. No more straight to big fleet fights full of noobs who are just fighting over things owned by cooperatives whose leadership hardly log in. Only when nullsec is divided between huge populations of active, permanent player residents will large fleet fights happen spontaneously.
There is no silver bullet, single issue, or quick fix, yet the tools already exist to enact a repair. Think about it. Player tasked imperialism and colonization. Make nullsec accessible and profitable, and subscriptions will grow. Keep putting band-aids on this badly organized map and it will continue to wither away.
I believe CCP is the only organization in gaming history that has the ability and balls to enact this kind of change effectively. We know you have the money for it.
Again, If the current centralized organization of the sandbox stays the same, EVE is doomed.
o7 – Brian Oakland
Then here come TEST ALLIANCE taking over all routes to these new empires and all nullsec around them because thats the way its going
frankly, i think redistribution of moon is necc. it won't fix it of course but it will stop that from being a problem. i agree on the jump bridge and titan bridge thing. not a problem that is fixable now. the decentralized empire thing may work but still too iffy.
One of these "Eve is doomed" again! Don't worr guys we're in for another 10 years anyway
I think everyone has forgotten why titan bridges where introduced…. Has everyone forgotten the awfull crushing lag caused by fleets of 200…300..500 (or more) ships traveling by gates? It used to take hours to get anywhere… Then you would jump into a sea of bubbles and have to load grid. You would then all die horribly to the 500 ships on the other side of the gate who already loaded grid!… How many nights did we all spend with two fleets sat on either side of a gate, both to scared to jump into the other? Surly know one wants to go back to that…
Moving coalition size fleets of battleships more then 10 jumps jumps by gate is not fun! Anything that increases mobility and reduces server lag is good. Less travel more pew! Fleets on titans is all part of the eve chess game
thats the point
ok fair enough point. then if force people to hold less space so they fight more locally. that then goes into subject of cost of sov and tec moons.
Putting in some sort of artificial " you can only hold this many systems with your alliance" wouldn't do anything except make the api influence map harder to read. Coalitions would still form around power blocks, which would then use holding alliances to control sov (if they bothered with it at all.) In short, your idea is terrible.
That is a good post.
Titan bridge is not the problem. Less Travel, more Pew.
The problem is out of game communities are superior than any opportunity player and we came to the point, when the final Empire became so big, that nobody can take them on anymore in an open territory fight. They even became so powerful, they have to run operations in High Sec against Neutrals, because they have no more enough enemies left in 0.0 And all their little pets and satellite alliances are too afraid to stand up. They are like Wal-Mart employees
Don't move coalition sized fleets, the whole point is this need to have 1000 man fleets, bring back small fleet skirmishes where the blob doesn't get bat phoned or involved at all
But i want proper fleet fights. Not some crappy 10vs10 or 100vs100.
I want 10000vs10000 fleet fights.
Couldn't agree more. 10% tidi, 1 minute grid load lags and load bugs kicking in every gate jump with 200+ fleet moving via gates is not fun for anyone. Servers and the code still can't handle any of this. One can dream though.
I think that the proposals are interesting and its obvious that the majority of players find the problem lies within Titan bridging. I agree with this, not so much in the fact that large amount of ships can be bridge across vast distances but the fact that there is no limitation to it. Bridging your entire force across the universe should leave your home sov undefended and vulnerable to attack, the force should not be able to simply Titan Bridge back at a moments notice. There should be time limitations and/or something similar to prevent unlimited use of Bridging. Someone mentioned the 'effects' it could have on a clone making it only possible to jump once every so many hours. I believe that they are a part of the game but must be altered to make force projection/defense more strategic and tactical rather than insta blobbing fleets on a moments notice
Want to open up null and have more empire players move out? Limit the amount of space 1 corp/alliance can hold, then add some sort of cost for sov (such as minerals or materials to run the system) and increase the cost when upgrades are in place. I know that CFC and the others are huge but if they drop some of the poorer systems it gives a young allaince somewhere to go and begin building. As the titan bridges go I like the idea of having to have a titan on both sides of the bridge and a time limit on being able to bridge back…..While we are dreaming how about a specialized ship that can (ping) out cloaks lol
brilliant
Easy fix.
Make the titan have to jump as well perhaps to start a 5 min worm hole to the destination.
Dropping a titan on grid first will certainly make people rethink bridging
it won't stop the big boys and theirs no way t0 instant pop a titan so even if it jumps first, theirs plenty of time to get the hundreds of people into system to defend it.
That will once again empower the super bullies who have the most titans. What needs to happen is the big coalitions need to break up, the resources need to be mobile. Imagine if every moon had the chance to spawn tech, once a week the moon resources deplete and someone somewhere scans a moon and finds a new tech,dispro or what ever moon goo vein. This would mean that everyone who makes the effort could make the isk. Then the big bullies would have to spend countless resources on moving to the wealth that the could not guarantee they could maintain control of.
It's simple titan bridge puts a titans on field. also limit the number of ships it can bridge in and distance this bridge can go. Make all the regions have the same moons. as for large alliances just make the cost of hold systems a costly one. e.g.alliance own ten system normal price, they own 20+ double the cost they own 50 systems x5 the costs ect ect…
Also a special ship that can scan down cloaked ships or put a timer on a cloak if they are not in their own system.
Titan bridging introduces a different approach to a fight which imo is what makes eve so fun to play. It is never as simple as shooting player x until he gets bored of dying and runs away in EVE you can choose to shoot him, you can choose to shoot his POS's so he has no place to hide you can choose to rig the market so the ship that your target is most familiar with is too expensive to field in numbers, you can get a spy into their corporation and break them down from the inside, you can hotdrop them as they move to form numbers to fight, or you can choose a precise time where things have gone wrong for them.
I am completely against limiting options to success in EVE, the game is great how it is and sooner or later people will band together and destroy whatever threats face the game, where it was BoB or Goonies.
Nerfing things so that everybody stands on a level playing field regardless off experience or time playing completely ruins games, who wants to play a game where the end game is not only to kill your target, but to do so with such little amounts of skill required
The best fix i can come up with is giving the smaller alliances a way to fight the blob, best way i can think to do that is bring back AOE doomsday.
Remove the ability for titans to bridge from within the pos.
Remove cap jumpdrive, force caps to move by gates.
or
Limit the jumprange of caps and install a cooldown timer on the jumpdrives (say, an hour before you can use it again).
Plex doesn’t inrease inflation, because it does not create new isk inside the market. Mission running generates infliation since it increases the amount of ISK inside of EVE and basicly any Item which can be sold to NPCS. If you want to get rid of Inflation you have to find a way to destroy ISK inside the market. Some ideas:
A: Increasing the overall broker fee
B: Let NPCs sell cool stuff to take ISK out of the game
C: Increase ISK prices for later game skill books
D: Nerf mining->expensive minerals->more broker fee paid
E: Increase demand: give people a reason to kill more stuff->more stuff sold, more broker fee payed /higher prices->more broker fee
F: Variable Broker fee: take todays prices (09.12.12)->list{a}
brokerFee*max((set price/a(sold item));1)
G: …
Just some spontaneous ideas
The issue has and always will be safety in numbers aka force projection. You hand a cookie to someone they come. You promise them riches, fortune and glory they will come. The "blob" has grown out of excess rather than necessity and the "need" for such forces is dwindling which is why we are having this discussion.
If there truly was a need for such massive deployments risk/reward I doubt people here would be complaining if the playing field were leveled or risk truly mattered. I remember when a Titan kill was huge news or when a massive fight was truly something to behold. Where tactics and fleet doctrine were not simply built around a mechanic that is easily accessible.
SImply put, Eve has sadly outgrown itself. With the vast amount of wealth accumulated, inflation, and seeing a few hold all the cards it has made the game stale to the average player. There simply is no true need to hold SOV anymore except to make ore wealth to thus shit on the smaller guy.
I don't have a solution to fix any of it. My solution a long time ago was to be a low sec dweller and prey upon the weak and outmaneuver the "strong" or those who think safety in numbers means anything. It only means individually you are weak. Weak as a pilot, weak as a player, and truly brainless. If you truly believe listening to a screaming drunk with an accent calling primaries with 50-100 other "leet" pvpr's at your back is something to be proud of think again.
You want Eve to be what it used to be even with BoB and G00NS? Start fucking flying like you used to instead of hiding behind the blob. You are the problem and the solution. But go ahead keep sucking on the teat of those who give you scraps and wonder why the game has become stale.
Wow, just wow. What the hell is this QQ even about. If you don't like to play by the rules of Nullsec and want lowsec insted, how about to live in lowsec then. The reason null is the way it is is due to that its lawless, IT'S FUCKING NULLSEC! All you want is to make it a empire space that can be "owned" so you don't have to become as dedicated as the guys that spend all their day playing eve, that set their alarm clocks to wake up in the middle of the night to help defend their freinds and soo on. You also speak like PLEX is a system that introduce more money in the system. A PLEX doesn't introduce any money at all, it only make people spend their money they already have stocked.
What you complain about is stuff that exist in real life, have you ever thought about how politics works in real life. We got superpowers in RL as well just like in game. So if u want to fix that how about learn how we deal with them in RL. Want to kill a superpower band up with a lot of other people and become a even bigger force then they are.
There are plenty of games you can enjoy that have the hand holding you want. You can play WOW, Guild Wars 2 or maybe even Aika. But if you want to be able to destroy what someone have built and give them a big fuck you and a picture of a dick/ass you play EVE or minecraft, but don't think two can play that game in EVE.
TL:DR drama post? Simple fact is that eve is easily accessible and doesn't take isk to control, or get a bit of eve. The problem is that players choose not to let other players have access to that space, then bittervet whine that eve is dying. Want eve to thrive, make it inviting. Claim a bit of space, live dense and kill anybody who goes for a roam instead of trying to "win eve"
Remember winning is just the good game over.
You need to introduce two new variables that need to be checked whenever a pilot makes a cyno jump, is bridged, or uses a jump bridge. The first is new timer called the "cyno jump timer". This timer is similar to the jump clone timer, but its only an hour or two. The second is simply the "last system jumped from". Whenver a pilot jumps to a cyno beacon, uses a titan bridge, or uses a jump bridge the system first checks the "cyno jump timer". If the timer is 0, then jump according to existing rules and then set the "cyno jump timer" to 1-2 hours and set the "last system jumped from" to this system. If the timer is not 0, then check the distance in AU between the destination system and the "last system jumped from". If the distance is greater than 15AU you cannot jump or bridge.
At this point, you effectively limit the sphere of influece of a single pilot to a 30AU diameter. They can control that area of space, but cannot go outside that area unless they give up the ability to protect that space for a few hours.
your cracked. It would be better for them to start working on walking in stations and clothes then what your saying. fast easy travle allowes for alliances to take over huge areas of space. you can run from the far north to the south with a huge force in a few min with well placed bridges. The US army works the same way with air fields all over the world you can have a division anywhere in the world in 48 hours. CCP should be shooting for third world country armys that can only move 10's of miles not 1000's
Why not just switch the Titan jump capabilities with the black ops