On the 20th of December of the year 2018 otherwise known as the year, YC120, CCP games announced they would be placing a monument in J115405 the wormhole system known as Rage. Now, this system has been in the news a lot lately, because of the assault carried out by Goonswarm and its associated alliances. The system is known as the home system of Hard Knocks. A notorious wormhole alliance known for evicting smaller wormhole alliances. And who has regularly been named one of the reasons wormhole space was dying.
Now I am not going to be writing about wormhole politics or Hard Knocks in particular. And why or why not they deserved what they got. What I do want to focus on is making it a monument. And why I consider it both a testament from CCP to the player base and a testament to CCP games failure to balance the game.
Fort Knocks as it was called, was the first keepstar deployed in game. It was deployed during a very tumultuous time in eve. World War Bee was in full swing and everyone was getting used to using citadels and the new capitals and mechanics that came along with them. Goonswarm and its associated alliances just got evicted from their long-term homes. By what was at the time called the loose banded Money Badger Coalition. With the most notable members at the time being, Northern Coalition, Pandemic Legion, Pandemic Horde, Test alliance please ignore, Darkness, Psychotic tendencies, SNUFF, Shadow Cartel, the at the time recently flipped Circle of Two and many more I am forgetting. But during all of this Hard Knocks was capable of moving the assets into place to begin construction on Fort Knocks, and be the first alliance in the game to have anchored and armed a keepstar class citadel. Here is a scope report about those events.
Now, this is an achievement, everyone who has lived in wormholes knows how hard it is to move in and out with heavy assets. And a keepstar does require some bulk to be moved. So as a testament to that dedication I am behind CCP games decision to make it a permanent monument for everyone to see.
However, as I noted earlier in this piece I also see this monument as CCPs failure to balance the game. Since the construction of that specific keepstar. With the addition of the current rorquals, with the prevalence of skill injectors, CCP games opened the box of Pandora. Combined with some small nerfs and rebalances of popular ship classes that were used to fight outnumbered, CCP ushered in the age of N+10. It caused an imbalance in playstyles to where the current meta in null sec is the whoever brings the most ships always wins. For those of us playing long enough, this was not always the case. Not too long ago small groups like SNUFF or Shadow cartel (notorious low sec alliances) could take fights outnumbered and win. They could do this based on superior knowledge of doctrines, superior skill and skill points. This sadly is no longer the case.
Since the day this keepstar was launched until the day it died CCP has neglected the players who do not wanna be part of the big null sec groups. Who did not want to be just a number, but who strived for their own identity. A keepstar is now just a play toy to the largest single group of players in this game. A structure that will be neglected by the rest of the players because one single group, now decides who is allowed to put them up. All because of the keepstars underwhelming firepower and the unbalanced approach by the developers to favor extremely large groups over smaller individual groups.
CCP please remember what this game was supposed to be about. A sandbox where one can do whatever they want. However, the game currently is heavily favored towards extreme numbers instead of individual skill. So maybe it is time to revisit what the game is supposed to be about. And if these extremes will be healthy in the long term.
CCP, remember we wanna fly dangerous o7
