CCP recently announced that they would hold a round table where Eve players will be able to speak their mind about jump fatigue and ask some questions. We know for sure that we are going to hear some heavy criticism concerning jump fatigue but it is important to remember why most of this criticism is misplaced and why these changes were even introduced.
Before the jump changes 0.0 was extremely boring concerning its political make up. Here is a map from during the Halloween War.
As you can see you have four factions (plus provibloc and “neutral states” which are not relevant for this discussion). If you remember your history it is important to note that the “Halloween Coalition” and the CFC were allied while N3 and PL mirrored their foe. In essence you had two nullsec political blocs. The result of the Halloween War was a CFC/Halloween Coalition defeat with N3/PL flooding the south. The end result was even more depressing…
The dual nature of 0.0 is further solidified with giant swaths of empty space and two factions that did not want to fight one another. Instead they spent most of their time dropping supers on anyone that was not them. Anyone that wanted to live in 0.0 either had to pick which ass they wanted to kiss or simply rent. Taking up arms and actually invading 0.0 required capitals which would easily get slaughtered by either of the two factions which were bored and starved of content. Any sort of war would require a boring tidi snooze fest. The only entities outside of CFC and N3/PL are aptly named “Greater Southern Bufferzone Gamepreserve”. They’re literally only left standing to provide entertainment for the bigger entities that have nothing else to do.
Yes yes this is Wimp Lo…
Now compare the previous maps with the current one:
At the time of writing this article there are at least a dozen or so distinct factions and some groups are even being lumped in together even though they are only loosely associated with their respective colors. 0.0 is a much more diverse and interesting place now.
Yet if you read reddit and noticed some of the people complaining, you would get the notion that the jump changes are partially to blame for declining subscriptions.The groups that have taken issue with the jump fatigue are usually the ones that most benefited from the use of capital warfare in 0.0. They feel that since they spent the money and skill points “earning” a super or Titan, they should have an “I WIN” button at their disposal. The real reason many of the groups in 0.0 were SO successful is because of a broken and overpowered game mechanic. The individuals that could fly these overpowered behemoths grouped together to ensure their own survivability and due to the power projection of these ships we ended up with the dualistic 0.0 we saw on the maps. The people complaining about this feel entitled to return things to how they were.
To hell with that. It goes directly against what Eve stands for. People shouldn’t be able to win simply because they’ve played longer. Sure, there should be certain advantages one gets after they have put time and effort into a game, but not to the point where it excludes any meaningful progress for anyone else.
Can jump fatigue be modified to a certain extent? Of course, but it should be done in a balanced way. If jump range is extended for caps and up, the penalty should incrementally raise as well. If the penalty is lowered, than range should be lowered. I could live with a slight relaxation on the over all mechanic but we must be careful. The larger the power projection is for these super weapons, the less diversity of factions we will have.
One change I would support is the elimination of jump fatigue for Black Ops and other cloaky ships. Their whole purpose is to be nimble hit and run ships and hardly anyone would argue that Blops are overpowered. Head to head a Blops BS will lose against their T1 equivalent, not to mention the huge price tag these ships demand.
So you may be saying “fine Seraph, you’re right on all those points…but subscriptions are still going down”.
Well CCP has stated elsewhere that the real subscription drop has happened mostly in Highsec. I know that as nullseccers we like to think we’re the center of the Eve universe, but the vast majority of players live in highsec. The over all larger issue may be the gameplay in highsec rather than anything else.
Sure you do have several loud mouth 0.0 players talking about how the jump changes are oh so awful and they unsubbed their 20 accounts. Well these were probably the people making the most use benefiting from a broken jump mechanic in the first place. And if people meme their sentiment about how awful things are and generally being toxic within their own entities, no wonder less people want to log in and hear that sort of negativity and bitching. We also have to admit that ISboxer being banned also had a large impact and this too was broken. On top of that CCP has continued its crusade against RMTing/botting which was much easier and more prevalent in a stagnant two sides of the same coin styled 0.0. Perhaps those factors should be taken into account before anything else.
Oh I know…I know, right about now some of you are thinking of rage raping your keyboard with your fingers telling me off and by all means it is your right. But before you do I want you to look and compare those maps at the start of the article and think really really hard which world you prefer to live in. And hey maybe you do prefer to live in a stagnant two sided version of Eve. And for those individuals I’d like to say, hey did you know that the “Pan-Intergalactic Business Community” on the Serenity server is recruiting?
Seraph IX Basarab
