Hello, my name is Seraph IX Basarab and I’m an opinion piece writer and analyst of Eve politics and war here at EN24. The thoughts and opinions written here are mine and not meant to represent anyone else’s
Plenty of people are making posts on the current state of the game and these complaints have existed before:
There’s no conflict driver, there’s no reason to fight. While I defended CCP a few weeks ago when the squeaky wheels were screeching wheel on Reddit, I did not do so as a way to say that CCP is perfect. My criticism was more around HOW they voiced their concerns rather than what they were saying. “I’m unsubbing cause CCP is literally eating my family alive” reactions are petty, childish and CCP should not be held at ransom by such childish behavior.
However, CCP does have some key aspects that they need to address…
The current sovereignty system that we have, is in large part exactly what the community asked for. Jump fatigue (stopping 1 or 2 groups from dominating every sizable cap engagement) and occupancy sovereigntv is EXACTLY what the players asked for, for years, and exactly what this game needed. Unless you think having two coalitions own 90 percent of 0.0 space is a “good sov mechanic” you cannot say Aegis is not a major improvement. (For those who may not have been around prior to “Aegis Sov” all of 0.0 space was owned by either N3PL, the Imperium, or their renter alliances. Two coalitions owned about 95% of all space.)
Despite this, two major obstacles still exist in the way of “content heaven.” The first is the way citadels operate. Every billion ISK Astrahus has several timers that one has to deal with making said conflict tedious and ‘grindy’. This is exactly what we wanted to get away from in regards to the Dominion ‘sov’ system. With the removal of Player Owned Star-bases (POS’s) and stations, I understand the need for citadels to be secure, but that itself should be tiered.Keepstars can remain as defensible as they are now. Fortizars should remain as-is if they are in ‘sov’ space, otherwise, removing a timer is reasonable. An astrahus should likewise lose a timer regardless of where it is placed and when outside of its ‘sov’ holder’s system, should operate exactly like a POS in regards to timers. Asset safety needs an overhaul as well. There needs to be a serious loss when your citadel dies. Either push the asset safety up to 70% or even 100, or make it so some of your things are destroyed and those things are salvageable from the wreckage of the citadel itself. “Oh Seraph but that’s way too scary!!!”
Damn it are we playing Eve or not?
The second major obstacle is that right now Eve needs more scarcity. A single ‘null-sec’ system can support multiple corps. In a way this concentration and abundance of resources has made Eve “bigger” making it as though people never have to fight over “resources wise”. Instead everyone can get their slice of the pie and the only reason to really fight is ego. Lessen the amount of resources per system, and people will want to expand out. Conflict will naturally arise and you’ll get that content that you want. Stability leads to stagnation.
Eve needs chaos.
Other people have brought this up, but it doesn’t really make sense that the more you mine in a system, the more ore would appear. The more you rat (shoot pirate battleships) in a system, the more pirates show up. It makes no sense. Lower the amount of resources per system, and have some kind of depletion system where you need to move around/expand.
I can already hear the ‘krabs’ pinching in anger “but I won’t be able to make muh X ticks/ore per hour no way!”
Actually since resources would be more scarce, the per resource value of things will go up. The only thing that really changes is the game-play around acquiring resources, not the relative value. This kind of change would push people to expand and compete for resources increasing content/conflict. Scarcity is the most reliable conflict driver. Why do you think there have always been wars over gold, silver, diamonds and now oil? If everyone had a bunch of it, nobody would care.
Fix citadels, push for more scarcity, you’ll get your wars. I guarantee it.
