Eve Online

svartalf

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Since someone deleted most of the game-specific subforums a while back, I'm making this thread as a place to dump Eve related news. I'm also leaving it nice and generic because I don't care if it's used to chat about Eve Online, either.

Here is some stuff off massively.com
Massively.com said:

EVE Evolved: Building a better empire

by Brendan Drain on Aug 28th 2011 6:00PM
Sci-fi, EVE Online, Culture, Expansions, Game mechanics, PvP, Endgame, Opinion, EVE Evolved

8




It's often said that EVE Online is 99% endgame, with only the tutorials and epic mission arcs really providing directed gameplay. Once you get out into the open world, the game is dominated by sandbox laws and social interaction. This is most clear in the lawless nullsec regions where alliances war over territory and build their own empires in the void.

Last week I looked back at the early days of nullsec industry and examined the problems industry has developed over the years. With a massive nullsec revamp scheduled to begin this winter, I went on to speculate on how the game could be changed to bring back the glory days of nullsec industry. Although adequately incentivised local mining and production could transform player-created empires, those aren't the only areas of gameplay being revisited. Sovereignty mechanics, fleet warfare, small gang warfare, exploration and small-scale territorial control will all eventually be redesigned as part of the massive iterative overhaul.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the history of EVE's empire-building and territorial warfare mechanics, some of the problems faced by the sovereignty system, and how those aspects of EVE could possibly be changed for the better.<a

Building an empire

Following the release of player-owned starbases in 2004, the lawless outer regions were colonised by alliances with strong industrial forces. Official ownership of a star system was automatically granted to the alliance with the most starbases installed there, but the huge fuel costs of defensible large starbases made them a challenge to maintain. Industrialists were given the task of turning sovereignty starbases into profit-making enterprises through moon-mining and reacting advanced materials.

Early colonisation efforts were largely unhindered by war as the effort required to destroy a starbase and the near-certainty of incurring massive losses rarely outweighed the value of a moon. When full-fledged outposts arrived on the scene, only a few alliances had the finances and manpower required to construct one. The 34.5 billion ISK needed to build EVE's first Gallente outpost, "ISS Marginis" in KDF-GY, was paid for by a huge list of public investors in the first ever financial IPO inside an MMO.

Today's nullsec is a different animal entirely, with rapid ISK inflation and the sharply decreasing build cost of outposts terraforming what was once an untamed frontier. There are now around 250 player-built outposts and 68 conquerable stations in the game, making it rare to fly more than a few jumps without bumping into one. Every moon was scanned long ago, and heavy industrial corporations are no longer required to support an alliance's sovereignty-holding efforts.

Evolution of war

In the early days of nullsec colonisation, it was more common for alliances to lock a system's stargates down and starve a starbase to death than to actually attack it head-on. When dreadnoughts were introduced, their jump drives made refueling a starbase possible even while the supply lines were under siege. Capable of dealing massive damage to stationary structures and tanking the damage output of a well-defended starbase, dreadnoughts also gave players the means to tackle starbases directly.

As dreadnoughts were stuck in place during a siege, and as losing one would cost an alliance several billion ISK per ship, they made tempting targets for the defending alliance. No commander dared commit dreadnoughts to a fight without a solid backup fleet, usually using a core force of up to a dozen dreadnoughts with a support fleet numbering in the hundreds. This setup initially worked well and produced some incredibly fun fights, but with the rapid proliferation of capital ships, things quickly got out of hand.

Alliances began to routinely throw fleets of hundreds of capital ships at each other, and for a time the titan's doomsday weapon even made support fleets all but obsolete. Today, it's the alliance with the most supercarriers and titans that wins fights. These once-rare ships designed as logistical tools and command platforms for nullsec warfare are now common and affordable, and they and fill the role of killing other capital ships with ease.

Just a name on the map?

The core concept of nullsec is that it's a place for people to create their own homes and build their own empires from the ground up. CCP tried to achieve this first through the original starbase system and later expanded on that design with Dominion's territorial claim unit mechanic. The goal for the attacker has always been to turn up at a pre-arranged time and shoot at stationary structures until he wins. While some epic battles have definitely occurred under both regimes, CCP admits that these fights have always happened in spite of the capture mechanics rather than because of them.

If the defender chooses not to show up, the attacker currently still has to jump through the same hoops of shooting at structures with practically no possibility of awesome fights occurring. Bizarrely, even if an alliance functionally shuts down and exists only as a name on the map, its space still has to be conquered through long and tedious sieges. Mostly Harmless alliance imploded months ago but still officially holds sovereignty in two systems and owns two outposts simply because it would require an investment of time and effort to take over its space. Those systems aren't easy pickings because a large force is still required to conquer it in a timely manner and there's always a risk of being attacked by a third party during each siege.

An alternative mechanic

CCP's new goal is to have official system ownership go to whichever alliance has de facto control over the system. Rather than forcing attackers to burn through a pre-determined set of roadblocks before awarding them complete control, the new mechanic would ideally determine ownership based on the current state of the natural war between neighbouring alliances. Imagine a nullsec system with dozens of different strategic points that can be attacked to win influence points. Sovereignty of the system would officially change over when the attacking alliance has more influence points than the defender.

Each piece of infrastructure built in a system would give the defender influence points, making a system that's heavily invested in harder to take over. Attackers could engage and disable each piece of infrastructure to naturally disrupt day-to-day activities and in the process capture the system a little. Potential targets include outpost services, moon-miners, sentry turrets, new anchorable structures and planetary installations, each of which could become vulnerable for short windows of time throughout the day.

After successfully disabling a piece of infrastructure, the attacker would periodically gain influence points until the defender restores the affected service. The attacker's influence points would decrease slowly over time, and to win he just needs to reach the same number as the defender. This doesn't necessarily mean he'll have to destroy or disable all of the defender's infrastructure, as certain objectives can be hit repeatedly or the system can be blockaded to prevent service restoration. This means if an alliance isn't actively defending a system, it could even lose the system to repeated hits by small roaming gangs.

System ownership is the focus of EVE's entire territorial endgame, and yet for the majority of EVE's life it has been a distinctly underwhelming experience. With the upcoming nullsec revamp, we finally have a good chance to change system ownership for the better and redefine the form that our territory takes. While it may take some time to arrive at a solid sovereignty mechanic, CCP's current goals have put it squarely on the right track. It's now up to us as players to contribute ideas that can make those goals a reality.

With systems naturally being awarded to whichever alliance can assert real military dominance over it, war could be transformed from a boring roadblock to active daily defense of infrastructure worth fighting for. Minor targets could be designed for small harassment gangs to hit multiple times per day, testing the defender's ability to patrol his space and react to roaming gangs. Larger targets like starbases might require a full-scale siege but award a huge number of influence points. We might even see a functional border mechanic, with integrated intel systems for tracking hostiles within the heart of an alliance's territory.

Tune into next week's EVE Evolved as I continue to speculate on the upcoming nullsec revamp with ideas on PvE, fleet warfare and the potentially revolutionary personal infrastructure concept.

bdrain-biopic-02.jpg
Brendan "Nyphur" Drain is an early veteran of EVE Online and writer of the weekly EVE Evolved column here at Massively. The column covers anything and everything relating to EVE Online, from in-depth guides to speculative opinion pieces. If you have an idea for a column or guide, or you just want to message him, send an email to brendan@massively.com.
 

Marc

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Nulsec is wank at the moment. Most of it is owned by the DRF/Raiden/NC/PL and you cant do jack due to the amount of supers/titans they can field. The only other powerbloc is the clusterfuck coalition consisting of goons/test/fcon/gents/lawn/razor and convicted, but I doubt we will attempt to take on the russians. Mitanni is too savvy for that
 

Ctuchik

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Even if the rest of the players banded together against the russians i doubt they would have enough resources and ISK to take them on... :)

RA can field so many supercaps and titans that almost none of the tactics against them works properly.

I wonder how many titans they actually have now, 100? 200? More?
 

svartalf

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This is fascinating. I always thought Eve's hardcore playerbase would be unwaveringly loyal, but to see them leaving is very surprising.
 

Ctuchik

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It's the same as in any other MMO. Piss off people enough and even the most die hard fanboi gets enough, and CCP is really working hard on pissing people off at the moment. :)
 

rynnor

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I think they killed their game by allowing the overpopulation of super-caps and Titans.

Bad design really as they could easily have made them require some limited number component - maybe make it survive and be always salvageable when such a ship is destroyed?

Relying on pure cost was always a bad idea as all mmo's are subject to inflation.

They could have slowed this down if they had tackled botting but I guess the extra subs were more persuasive.

In the end it was inevitable - maybe they should release super super caps then in a few years time super super super caps etc. :p
 

Ctuchik

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They should have stuck with the simple solution of rotating the high value moons around the universe.
 

svartalf

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I am no authority on this subject, but I'd have thought that titans would only be useful against other super-capital ships. That would make sense. If it were the case, then surely a large fleet of smaller ships would be the solution? I thought strategy was important.
 

Ctuchik

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They more or less are now, but bring enough of them and it won't matter what they are meant to do.
 

Marc

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Titans arent so much the problem. Its those fecking supercaps (motherships) and the amount of them that the DRF have.
 

Ctuchik

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Well that to, but to say that "titans aren't so much a problem" isn't quite accurate either. :)

They aren't as big a problem as they used to be with the DD nerf, but they are still enough of a problem when there are enough of them.

And RA can bring a LOT of them if they so desire. I have a nagging feeling that what they have shown so far isn't much more then a demonstration of potential.

Which honestly is a bit scary.
 

svartalf

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Here is Brendan Drain's latest piece on the proposed nulsec changes.

Massively.com said:
EVE Evolved: A new nullsec for everyone

by Brendan Drain on Sep 4th 2011 6:00PM

Sci-fi, EVE Online, Expansions, Game mechanics, PvP, Endgame, PvE, Opinion, EVE Evolved


Several weeks ago, EVE Online developer CCP Greyscale published possibly the single most important devblog of the past two years. Titled Nullsec development: Design goals, the blog laid the ground rules for high-level discussion on EVE's upcoming nullsec revamp. For those who live in nullsec, territorial warfare and nullsec life represent the true endgame of EVE. It's in these massive lawless regions of space that players forge alliances, build their own empires, and lead massive fleets of ships into enemy territory to kick over some space sandcastles.



Over the past two weeks, I've been delving into the discussion surrounding the upcoming nullsec revamp and speculating on what changes we might see. I started with a look back at the early days of nullsec industry and went on to give some ideas aimed at reclaiming those glory days. I followed that up with last week's summary of EVE Online's empire-building history, the problems faced by today's territorial warfare mechanics, and further speculation on how the system could be radically changed for the better.



In this week's EVE Evolved, I conclude this series of articles on the upcoming nullsec revamp with an examination of the discussion surrounding PvE, the local channel, and the potentially revolutionary smallholding system that could give even casual and solo players a taste of nullsec.



Balancing income



In the devblog, CCP Greyscale states that nullsec should be the most lucrative place for all PvE activities. This is already part of the exploration system, with rare 8/10 and 10/10 DED complexes having the chance to drop incredibly valuable deadspace modules. When we look at grindable PvE gameplay, however, nullsec ratting actually produces less income than speed-running level 4 missions in high-security space despite the huge difference in risk. If CCP is to address this issue, it will have to either reduce the income from level 4 missions or increase the payout from nullsec ratting and anomalies.



One way to potentially solve the balance of grindable PvE income between high-security space and nullsec automatically is through the introduction of nullsec missions. Many of the same missions might be available in both highsec and nullsec, but the nullsec varieties would have higher rewards, better bounties and a chance of faction commander spawns. After the anomaly nerf last March, an increase to nullsec grindable income is required more than ever. Part of the difficulty will be in making the new system unsafe for automated bots, which can currently detect incoming hostiles in the local channel and then cloak at a safespot to become essentially invulnerable.



Removing the local channel



You may not think of the local chat channel as an intelligence-gathering tool, but it's one of the most important weapons in a scout's arsenal. It provides instant, perfect intelligence on the pilots in a system with no effort, equipment or skills. It can see cloaked ships and docked pilots, and it can even display standings next to every pilot's name. Players have long demanded the removal of the local channel as an intelligence-gathering tool, but before that can happen CCP will need to introduce new intel tools that can gather the same information.



Scouts are currently tasked with tracking the movement of hostile fleets and sending up-to-the-minute reports back to their fleet commanders. Some alliances are lucky enough to have their own third-party intelligence application to reduce chatter, but most have to use text or voice chat. Cataloguing enemy starbase structures before an attack is another infrequent but essential task, providing the alliance decision-makers with an accurate view of the playing field. This currently has to be recorded in text, and a fleet commander may not have time during an operation to dig it out.



In the future, I think we can expect new reporting tools to be integrated into the EVE client. Fleet commanders might have access to a star map showing reports from their scouts in realtime and the locations of catalogued enemy infrastructure. Static scanning posts might trigger a warning when enough ships pass through a stargate in a short period of time, allowing small gangs the ability to move largely unnoticed but providing intel on incoming large fleets. As the local channel can see cloaked ships but current scanners and probes can't, we would also need a way to scan for cloaked ships.



A place to call your own



One of the most interesting ideas to come out of Greyscale's nullsec devblog and the ensuing discussion was the concept of smallholdings. The basic idea is to introduce a whole series of small anchorable structures that can be hidden in deep space. While starbases are costly but highly configurable bases typically owned by a corporation, smallholdings would be personal-level structures with very limited functionality. We might get mobile docking ports that would act as a temporary base of operations, a loot drop-off point or an ore depot.



The current plan is to make it so that alliances will take over a week to track down and evict the owner of a smallholding operation, but that it won't require much effort. If the smallholdings themselves can be placed in deep space, far outside the range of the normal directional scanner, they could be made impossible to find with current scanners and probes. The only way to locate them might then be through the installation of a new scanning structure that would take a few days to produce a list of smallholdings in the system and several more to get a positive lock on one. This would provide the owner with warning that he's about to come under threat.



A new nullsec for everyone



The ultimate goal of this new personal infrastructure is to re-invent nullsec as a place players can go to make their own way in EVE even if they aren't part of a big alliance. It should be possible to sneak into an alliance's territory and set up a temporary base from which to engage in nullsec PvE, industry, mining or PvP. When that base is discovered, there should be sufficient warning to let a pilot pack a small operation up and move it elsewhere. Combined with new ways of getting past the initial gatecamps on the way in to nullsec, low-cost personal infrastructure that's largely self-sufficient would help a lot of players finally take the plunge and give nullsec a try.



Perhaps the most exciting possibility for smallholdings is that pilots might be able to hide out there to avoid detection. Added to the possibility of industrial capabilities, a small group of players could feasibly start up their own self-sufficient pirate base to build new ships and store loot. An idea that's been repeated several times on the forum is to make it beneficial for an alliance to leave private smallholdings intact as long as the owner isn't causing any trouble. A tax on produced or deposited goods is probably the simplest way to achieve this, but there are some interesting alternatives. Smallholdings might contribute to the security of a system, or they might use products made on planets as their sole fuel source and so encourage privateers to help secure planets for the local alliance when DUST 514 finally opens EVE's planets for conquest.





The omnipresent local channel currently makes it difficult for pilots to hide in another alliance's space. With new intel tools on the way, local may eventually be replaced with a set of passive scanning infrastructure and active tools for scouts. With scanners watching stargates, the advantage of stealth could be given to small gangs and individual pilots who might not trigger detection in the same way a larger fleet would. Smallholdings also represent a potentially game-changing gameplay mechanic, providing anyone who's ever wanted to live in nullsec with the affordable tools required to make it happen.



So far CCP has only discussed the high-level goals of the upcoming nullsec revamp, with no solid timeline yet released nor any specific mechanics defined. The revamp is scheduled to begin roughly this winter, but developers expect it will take years to fully renovate all of the mechanics discussed in Greyscale's devblog. With a team dedicated to nullsec and a high degree of player-involvement in the design process, I can say without a doubt that CCP is on the right track with the nullsec revamp.



bdrain-biopic-02.jpg
Brendan "Nyphur" Drain is an early veteran of EVE Online and writer of the weekly EVE Evolved column here at Massively. The column covers anything and everything relating to EVE Online, from in-depth guides to speculative opinion pieces. If you have an idea for a column or guide, or you just want to message him, send an email to brendan@massively.com.

Tags: alliance, casual, ccp, ccp-eve, ccp-games, ccp-greyscale, eve, eve-ccp, eve-evolved, eve-mmorpg, eve-online, exploration, featured, fleet, fleet-command, fleet-warfare, fleets, homestead, intel, intelligence, local, mission, mission-running, nullsec, player-owned-starbase, pve, pvp, sandbox, scout, scouting, smallholding, smallholdings, solo, starbase, war
 

Ctuchik

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Interesting stuff indeed, i'm especially looking forward to their bot and gatecamp solutions.
 

svartalf

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Interesting stuff indeed, i'm especially looking forward to their bot and gatecamp solutions.

Well, I think most people who tried it and quit were victims of gatecampers, but I think they've shot their bolt with those people. I can't see them re-trying Eve when there's more modern stuff around, unless they REALLY love





spreadsheets.
 

Ctuchik

FH is my second home
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Most people that tried and quit did so because there were so little safe high end pve.

All pve worth a damn is being done either in lowsec or in nulsec.

I really wished that they opened up a new server that focused more on pve then pvp, but if they did that their pvp server would be near deserted i guess.
 

old.Tohtori

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I "quit"(do you really ever quit an MMO ;)) because it lacked the fluff, the RP in MMORPG if you will. Ambulation could've brought it, but that got turned to a bad place.

In essence, it was too much of a clinical game.

It's good as what it is, really good, but it severely needs meat on those hightech alloy bones.
 

Marc

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Most people that tried and quit did so because there were so little safe high end pve.

All pve worth a damn is being done either in lowsec or in nulsec.

Too right. Its all about risk/reward.

Why should a hi-sec carebear earn the same isk as me, when im in nul sec where its much more dangerous.
 

rynnor

Rockhound
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Too right. Its all about risk/reward.

Why should a hi-sec carebear earn the same isk as me, when im in nul sec where its much more dangerous.

Thats not really whats wrecking the game though - russians macro ratting in carriers are pulling in a lot more cash and bounties actually directly feed inflation by increasing the supply of isk in circulation.
 

svartalf

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This looked interesting so I pulled it.

Kugutsumen - Goonswarm Federation: The Last Bastion Of True Gooniness



Drawn_wallpapers_Nuclear_Winter_016548_.jpg


he's happy because he has a maelstrom to go along with the gas mask



CEO Update: Nuclear Winter

Winter is coming, and with it the dominant power structures of EVE will be violently overturned. As is now public from the comments Stoffer made at PAX, Supercaps are going to have the living shit nerfed out of them. While they will remain valuable anti-capital weapons, they will be useless without a support fleet and almost entirely unable to impact subcaps. The fruits of our political efforts in March - winning the CSM and then establishing dominance there for the good of the game - are finally being revealed in public: not only is the focus of the next expansion on issues championed by us, the supercap nerf itself is almost word for word what we have advocated.



Since the release of Dominion brought stagnation, apathy and grossly overpowered supercaps to nullsec, these hulls have wildly tilted the balance of power to small ‘elite’ groups of EVE snobs. These people have looked down their noses at the rest of the game, conflating the laughable imbalance of their hulls with their supposed personal skill. Whenever these elite groups (inevitably made up of the same crowd of joiners we have battled endlessly since 2006) have been stripped of their supercaps we have humiliated them; a brief glance at Kugutsumen of late sees nothing but the howling of people whose very identities have been contradicted by the result of engagements in ‘Eve Online: A Bad Game’.



The distraught mewlings of our foes will soon reach a higher octave as they at last realize (six months too late) that they have been completely outplayed in the political metagame.



Come Winter we will commence wreaking a bloody and unforgettable vengeance upon every member of that old guard who felt justified - nay, entitled - while killing our Rifters with their Avatars. It falls to us to send an entire class of alliances screaming to the abyss of strategic irrelevance, to knock down the graven idols of EVE’s so-called ‘elite’ and burn them to ash - and then expunge their history, mock their memory, and rewrite their narratives, taking away everything they have grown so unjustifiably proud of.



Our memories are long, our knives are jagged, and our hate is yet unsated.



Membercorp Purges



Since taking over this trainwreck a year and a half ago, I have made it clear that only one thing matters for membercorps: bodies in fleets in the appropriate ships on strategic ops. Membercorps are a special class in the alliance; they do not pay taxes of any kind, yet they receive the same benefits any citizen of Goonwaffe enjoys. The price of this special status is service on the front line; where wandering around and blundering into walls in Waffe will not result in a purge, we expect membercorps to contribute to the defense of the realm.



We have two types of membercorps in Goonswarm. Some are 'stakeholders', meaning they have a representative in Illuminati and generally enjoy my favor. Other corps are probationary, and/or too small to justify an Illum rep despite being well-managed. Today several stakeholders will learn that their status does not mean that they have a pass to wallow in complacency; several corps will also be rewarded with new representatives.



The Purged:



Effective immediately, RosAviaCosmos, Russian Specnaz and RAID are out of the alliance. They have blue standings for seven days to get the fuck out.



The Demoted:



Thunderwaffe, Sundering, Kernel of War and Merch Industrial have been in a state of long, slow decline. We hope that the loss of their stakeholder status will serve as a wakeup call.



The Scolded:



I would demote EJB from stakeholder status but Kazanir is too useful as an auditor. Their op attendance has been dismal, with only 1-3 EJB deigning help on strategic ops. While they are very useful via Padded Helmets, GARPA and Kazanir's service, it's not fair to hold EJB to a different standard from everyone else, especially when the bar of &quot;have more than two guys on an op, god damn&quot; is practically on the floor.



The Promoted:



NED-Clan and ODN have been standouts, demonstrating that language is no barrier to op participation. Sjinta and his Dutch have for more than a year topped the charts for a small pvp corp, and ODN an impressively active TCF corp. Both will now have representatives in Illuminati.



General Praise:



Eternity Inc and Bat Country already have stakeholder reps; their participation in strategic ops is consistently massive. They get a gratuitous hat-tip here. Amok would typically top this chart as well, but have fallen into a period of slight inactivity as Rydis is on vacation - yet even in that inactivity they outrank most other corps. KMW also gets a shoutout for being a corp of basically ten guys who nevertheless show up on every goddamned op.



This will not be the last purge. If you are wondering if your corp is at risk, all you have to do is consider your levels of attendance on strategic ops. GSF is very simple; we don't care about k/d ratios or how well your corp can gank people in Curse. The bar is low and easy to reach: strategic op attendance.



The Reconquista Continues



I've hired Dabigredboat to the directorate after a long period in exile. If he lords his 'I'm a director' status over anyone, I'll fire him. That said, DBRB has been instrumental to the Reconquista, working with Vily to arrange for the doom of a plethora of PL and Ev0ke towers in Fade and Pure Blind. This is ugly killing work, requiring a kind of steadfast dedication; at any moment you might lose a capital fleet, and the gain is 'just a moon', which isn't enough to motivate our more jaded FCs. We have captured 10+ moons in the past seven days, and DBRB and Vily deserve significant praise for this.



Oh, and he got Welpfleet's first supercap kill, a PL Nyx. Nbd.



Dread Cache



We have long debated the merits of a Dread Cache. Instead of adopting a full-communist style of cache where we hold 50+ hulls and risk a director stealing them all, we're introducing a small cache to 'top up' a capfleet, since many capital pilots have abandoned Dreads entirely - and who can blame them? Based on the PAX leak, CCP is thinking about changing the siege cycle to 5 minutes, which - in concert with the supercap nerf - means that this hull class is going to get a lot more use in the future.



The CSM, PCUs and FiS Neglect



CCP is a schizophrenic organization.



In some areas, good work is done. Flying in Space (FiS) is presently being run by CCP Soundwave/Stoffer. When dealing with someone like Stoffer, the power and influence of the CSM is obvious (except to the screaming lunatics on Failheap) as many of the upcoming gameplay changes are explicitly the suggestions of the CSM hashed out over shots at one of Reykjavik's gay bars. You can say to someone like Stoffer &quot;Dude, Doomsdays blapping Logistics ships is bullshit&quot; and he will agree with you, then nerf the living shit out of supercaps. Pro.



In other areas, particularly upper management, the company seems hell-bent on running Eve Online into the ground to try to make a reality out of the foolish business decisions they made during the Icelandic banking bubble. In 2006 they acquired White Wolf and promised to develop a World of Darkness MMO; similarly, they committed to developing a FPS that will somehow link to EVE out of Shanghai. Then the bubble popped, and everyone began to ask tough questions about the notorious overconfidence of Icelandic males. One of these projects at a time seems reasonable; developing both of them simultaneously is 'Fearless' and 'Innovative' using Hilmar's favorite buzzwords. Elsewhere we call it groupthink-fueled folly.



In the past, EVE expansions were based off the desires of the players, to augment their behavior. Player Owned Stations exist because CCP noticed players stockpiling goods in safespots in GSCs. Outposts were added based on the obvious attempts to build more infrastructure in 0.0. Wormholes provided a place for players to indulge in a no-local environment and explore the unknown. Capital ships were created to deal with the POSes, and Supercapitals were made due to a fit of utter stupidity that haunts the Reykjavik office to this day.



Due to DUST we have Tyrannis, an expansion which gave us Spacebook (EVE Gate, remember? Yeah, I didn't think so) and Farmville (PI), one of the most boring and underutilized features in the game, judging by the price of POS fuel. Now to provide an engine for World of Darkness, we have Incarna - and the NeX for DUST - the rollout of which might have been somewhat botched.



The Kool-Aid only goes so far. This is the face of Fearless Innovation:



eve-players-2011.png




What we see here is the impact of the neglect of what CCP now calls &quot;Flying in Space&quot;, what you and I call &quot;Eve Online&quot;. Usually after an expansion there is a surge of players who join the game; these create peaks and valleys in PCU (Peak Concurrent User) numbers as people kick the tires on the new content and then either stick around or leave. Incarna, which has taken a tremendous amount of development and marketing resources from FiS, essentially had no impact.



Read that again. No impact. Millions of dollars and months of development, into a toilet. Meanwhile we suffer a backhanded Sanctum nerf and have had no new FiS content besides Incursions since the introduction of Wormholes.



CCP has a small number of feature teams, and before the WoD and DUST follies those teams would be allocated to FiS. Since Incarna (&quot;Walking in Stations&quot; or WiS) came under development, we have seen FiS merit only a skeleton crew, thankfully including some excellent people like Stoffer. This might be acceptable if Incarna had been produced properly - a temporary reallocation of resources for a serious project, then it's back to expansions we enjoy. But Incarna has been a disaster so far; in addition to flatlining PCU, it appears to be suffering significant delays - much like Tyrannis's manifold errors devoured two expansions, we are still waiting for the other three Captains Quarters (the ones that do not look like a ghetto shithole, and actually seem 'scifi') as well as Establishments. And something about contraband, I guess.



There are two fronts to the political metagame of the CSM. On one front, that of micro-level gameplay, we have done very well with FiS negotiation, focusing the next expansion on 0.0 issues and communicating our views with absolute clarity. On the other front, dealing with macro-level business decisions and squaring off with CCP's upper management, our 'carrot' strategy has failed. We can get along peachy with Stoffer and fix FiS at the micro level. But at the macro level, Hilmar et al control the amount of resources that good people like Stoffer gets, and they seem to think their subscriber curve will go upward even if they spoonfeed us excrement.



Worse, our interactions with CCP's upper management in the aftermath of the Emergency Summit have shown us that the suits are not treating the needs of the players with the gravity they deserve; our willingness to negotiate in a chill way with the FiS teams (which has met with obvious success) is being misinterpreted as a sign of weakness and compliance by the suits.



So the gloves come off. There's not much point for Goonswarm striving to 'fix EVE' by seizing control of the CSM and negotiating successfully with the FiS devs if the amount of resources allocated to FiS itself dwindles and the game continues to stagnate. In the coming weeks we are going to be making some extremely loud statements regarding the neglect of FiS, the failure of Incarna, and the need for CCP's management to pull the game out of this stall. We need something new to do, not something new to wear.



This will not take the form of an incoherent threadnaught (though that certainly got results, last time) but we may seize control of the internet's dynamic media - Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, and the gaming press as a whole for several news cycles.



We will not stand idly by as an alliance while our subscription money goes to waste, watching the game we pay to play spiraling into entropy due to the folly and neglect of CCP's management. It is not yet time to start a fire, but get your gasoline ready.



A Wild Column Appears



I wrote a thing. Go read it.
 

Marc

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CCP Fucked up the game with the release of Incarna.

Mittens, who is the CSM chair, has just pretty much declared war on CCP and all the main gaming sites have picked up on it.

Of course, all the hi-sec carebears are up in arms about it being for the benefit of goonswarm, but its not. Hes right. Whilst CCP are screwing us over with 1billion isk monocales, what actual content have we had since apocrpyha?
 

old.Tohtori

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Mittens, who is the CSM chair, has just pretty much declared war on CCP and all the main gaming sites have picked up on it.

Problem with CSMs is that they think they're special, or have superpowers and don't act as voices for the community, often simply driving their own agenda.

BAsically bullsh*t politicians with an INTERNET background :p
 

Ctuchik

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You got my interest up enough so i could read through most of it, and while i agree with what he's saying there's something about it that makes me really suspicious.

I can't put my finger on what it is but for some reason i just can't trust his intentions.

It doesn't have anything to do with him being in GS or that i dislike him personally, it's just....... Something about that "press release" just gets my red light to blink furiously....
 

Marc

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You got my interest up enough so i could read through most of it, and while i agree with what he's saying there's something about it that makes me really suspicious.

I can't put my finger on what it is but for some reason i just can't trust his intentions.

It doesn't have anything to do with him being in GS or that i dislike him personally, it's just....... Something about that "press release" just gets my red light to blink furiously....

Its not though. The playerbase as a whole are furious at the lack of content for FiS (flying in space). Its only the carebears who are quite happy plodding along doing their level 4 missions that dont care. Pretty much all of nulsec are in agreement with what mittens is saying.
 

Ctuchik

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And i agree with him to.

It's just...... Something about it feels odd....

*shrug* maybe it's just me.
 

Marc

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And i agree with him to.

It's just...... Something about it feels odd....

*shrug* maybe it's just me.

Whilst ingame politics with regards nulsec can be quite aggressive between the big players like Mittens, Shadoo, Elise, Pripyat etc, when it comes to the actual game, they are all pretty friendly and mittens has consulted with the other big players and are all in agreement, even the russians. Mittens is using his seat as CSM chair to convey the feelings of an upset player base.

The only thing that is a bit odd is Mittens stance on the supercap nerf which CCP are going along with. This suits the clusterfuck coalition to a tee, whilst it damages the russian coalition and the elite PvP coalition a hell of a lot. People are accusing mittens of running with this because it benefits his coalition the most. But that said, its plain to see that supercaps need a nerf
 

SilverHood

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Whilst ingame politics with regards nulsec can be quite aggressive between the big players like Mittens, Shadoo, Elise, Pripyat etc, when it comes to the actual game, they are all pretty friendly and mittens has consulted with the other big players and are all in agreement, even the russians. Mittens is using his seat as CSM chair to convey the feelings of an upset player base.

The only thing that is a bit odd is Mittens stance on the supercap nerf which CCP are going along with. This suits the clusterfuck coalition to a tee, whilst it damages the russian coalition and the elite PvP coalition a hell of a lot. People are accusing mittens of running with this because it benefits his coalition the most. But that said, its plain to see that supercaps need a nerf

As a CFC member, bring on the super nerf! Having been on the receiving end of 200 super carriers and 50 titans, plus another 100 or so carriers and dreads.... not fun. I imagine being on the receiving end of 700 Maelstroms isn't fun either, but at least you have a realistic chance of killing those.

Hopefully the supercap nerf will remove the need for the massive block politics that's polarising eve and the game will open up some more, though I still think that Eve needs another 10-15 regions the size and shape of Stain.
 

Marc

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As a CFC member, bring on the super nerf! Having been on the receiving end of 200 super carriers and 50 titans, plus another 100 or so carriers and dreads.... not fun. I imagine being on the receiving end of 700 Maelstroms isn't fun either, but at least you have a realistic chance of killing those.

Hopefully the supercap nerf will remove the need for the massive block politics that's polarising eve and the game will open up some more, though I still think that Eve needs another 10-15 regions the size and shape of Stain.

Oh I agree dude, Im CFC myself.
 

Ctuchik

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Forgot to mention one thing about the graph.

It's only -6000:ish players over 8 months, and he's talking about it like it's judgement day...

Yes it's a decline in logged in players, but he's not giving anything to compare with, such as previous years stats.

So for all i know this could be perfectly normal and he's just trying to scare people with incomplete data.

So now i'm even more distrustful as that's plain and simple scaremongering tactics there..

Oh and EvE still has over 350.000 active subscriptions. It dipped somewhat around new year 2010 to 2011 but picked right back up again.

http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png
 

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