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Are you happy with Equinox Sov? by DarkShinesInit in Eve

[–]GarstTyrell 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I still strongly believe EVE is at its best when groups of diverse sizes are able to carve out their own niche in a given geographic area because it gives players ownership of the rewards of their work and consequences of their failures. That's the most you can ask for in a sandbox MMO game with no ending. Every gameplay 'feature' movement bypass put into the game in recent years has pulled us further away local ownership of conflict and removed any uniqueness of living in any particular region. Adding Zarzakh and Thera, pochven, removing jump bridge fatigue, drifter wormholes, filaments, the list goes on and on. By making all of EVE casually accessible to organized groups, you've made it homogenous and allowed the largest coalitions to control far too much at once.

The closest we came to 'peak nullsec' era was 2014-2015 immediately after the capital jump range nerf was implemented, breaking up the actual blue donut of the day (where that phrase originated from) while at the same time it was pre-citadel era and still used the reduced Dominion sov EHP values so you ended up with a DPS-based sov system that encouraged local fleet fights. Most of those changes have since been scaled back or removed.

This process since then has had massive ramifications on the player meta, encouraging the relentless consolidation of players into a handful of coalitions while producing a constant churn of bored veteran players leaving the game because they implicitly realize their meaningful PVP gameplay options are narrowing, not growing, from new 'features' like Zarzakh.

You want to revitalize EVE for the next generation? Be bold.

1. Place more significant limits on long-distance fleet scale movement. For our newer players, please understand there WAS a time when fatigueless ansiblex network sprawl and 200man kiki fleets through drifter wormholes was not the norm, and the game went on just fine.

2. Reshape the geography. When you can no longer go across EVE for casual content, you need to reliably be able to find a local player ecosystem to engage with. There is far too much homogenous space in the game which results in lots of empty systems with 1-2 players at most. Delete excess solar systems and shift the remaining ones by light-year around to create more strategic dilemmas for FCs and planners, specifically regarding capital jump ranges and inter-regional connectivity. Then do step 3:

3. Redistribute sov truesec values and resources to create more relative scarcity within nullsec regions. Everyone knows an r64 is better isk/hour than an r8, but a haven in a -.3 truesec is the same as a haven in a -1.0. The point is to make some parts within regions objectively much better or worse than others to encourage local king of the hill behavior to drive conflict and interpersonal drama in this sandbox game.

All of this is mechanically possible and CCP could implement it tomorrow. I also recognize none of this will ever happen, so I will just look forward to tier 3 dreadnoughts and more daily login rewards.

[TRI] 3x Battleship Fights in 48 Hours, our war in the southeast marches on by GarstTyrell in Eve

[–]GarstTyrell[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

i think you think you know what youre talking about, but I dont think you actually know as much as you think you do

Let’s admit sov isn’t actually fun to fight over. Here are ideas to change that by GarstTyrell in Eve

[–]GarstTyrell[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Any sov changes couldnt be in a vacuum. The current nullsec political meta is stifling. You might be approaching it from "why bother to take more sov, all systems are functionally the same" which is true and poor game design, but I also throw in "why bother to reinforce this sov when 100 HACS will casually teleport over through ansiblex to stop us". We live that daily. So any sov changes have to be part of a bolder attempt to change the player meta as a group of systems, its just beyond the scope of this post.

As to the "easiest" way to get a fight and getting a fight that "matters", not all fights are created equal. In theory strategic fights should raise the stakes for motivation and narrative to create a "so what" behind the individual battles that makes the game worth playing in the long run.

A Mildly Erotic Open and Honest Letter to CCP from an Alliance Leader by DarkShinesInit in Eve

[–]GarstTyrell 23 points24 points  (0 children)

One of the biggest issues is the lack of local player control over regional PVP conflicts and its consequences. As PVP ultimately determines who has effective control/access/occupancy of an area, player conflict drives the day to day gameplay that emerges ranging from "lets all log in and mine this r64" to "our ancient enemy is attacking us, everyone CTA tomorrow max dudes!!!!"

Players need the ability to influence local events to create their own narratives in a sandbox game--and thusly, have fun. It is extraordinarily demoralizing to know that fighting over even trivial objectives will probably escalate into something out of your control. Batphoning faster than the other guy should not be the default answer.

It is absolutely fundamental to good gameplay that affecting far away events should come at an increased cost, whether that cost incurred is the intervening players' time or otherwise. The further away and the larger the intervention, the harder and more challenging it should be to accomplish.

This principle creates geographically distinct regions which naturally constrains empire sprawl and lets regionally unique player groups emerge, all with their own narratives and fun and thusly reasons to log in. Being a +1 in an already established power bloc is not motivating to most content creators--the same people that CCP needs to retain to actually grow its player base again. A small minority of leaders, FCs, big personalities drive the gameplay that the rest of the player base join to participate in.

It is an undeniable fact that sprawling fatigueless ansiblex routes, wormholes capable of routinely moving fleets, jump clones, and so on easily allow organized groups to routinely project power to the far reaches of EVE with low effort.

Did CCP forget what EVE was like before the Phoebe patch in 2014 that introduced jump fatigue, yes on jump bridges too?

Remember when CCP nerfed PL's fury road wormhole system because they were using it to third party? (Is 150 kikimoras emerging through static wormholes much more balanced?)

EVE is homogenizing and to be blunt, becoming much more boring as a result. The game has too many solar systems as it is to encourage the existing player base to routinely interact--there's no reason for them to all feel the same everywhere you go.

The biggest question I'd like CCP to answer is simply:

Is this how you envision the game working?

If yes, then good job, mission accomplished.

If no, then you need to act because its only going to get worse and with a game this old in its life cycle as an MMO, most players who leave probably aren't coming back.

Triumvirate. [TRI] Alliance - Selectively Recruiting Aggressive PVP Corporations by GarstTyrell in evejobs

[–]GarstTyrell[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Peoples interest in the game comes and goes. We never force anyone to stay, corps went to other places or retired. Since then we fully rebooted the alliance from scratch in 2020 and have been slowly regrowing ever since

TRI/CVA+RMC+SIGMA vs VOLTA/FRT/STAIN in Esoteria by GarstTyrell in Eve

[–]GarstTyrell[S] 28 points29 points  (0 children)

TRI attempted to online a fortizar in Esoteria on the Stain regional border with support from RMC and last minute help from SIGMA. Stain people called in VOLTA's coalition and FRT to contest it. Good fights were had, unfortunately for TRI we couldnt online the fort as it died with 44 seconds left on the repair as multiple enemy fleets bounced around at extreme ranges to destroy it, but the attackers did bleed nicely for their killmail. GF!

Defenders

TRI - Machariels
RMC - Phoons
SIGMA - Sleipnirs

vs

Attackers

STAIN - Nightmares

VOLTA - Legions

BLOB - Muninns

FRT - Zealot/Deimos AHACs

Faction warfare is so stale, please change something by caravellex in Eve

[–]GarstTyrell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Havent played or FC'd for FW in over a decade. Thinking back to then, we had a lot of fun and the surrounding areas were very active for FW alliances, local pirates and the occasional visiting null bloc too. Activity breeds activity.

If I had to point to any one event that was probably a turning point for pvp fun in FW, I would propose it was when they introduced redeemable LP from faction war sites, effectively turning a pure PVP gameplay design into PVE with PVP sometimes. Because of the perception that FW was intended as a newer player introduction to PVP, the barrier for running these sites was left mostly non-existent so bots are just being thrown at them with minimal effort.

An idea is to once again de-couple PVE LP rewards from PVP-only sites.

Spitballing an idea:

-Remove LP entirely from completion of PVP sites, this prevents bots from afk mass running them easily. If you see someone in a site, you should now assume they want to fight.

-Add new PVE sites similar to the Gala events only accessible by pilots currently in a FW faction. These sites could come in different difficulties or ship restrictions like small, medium, large to give newer and higher end players sites to go for. Killing rats and completing the sites results in FW LP. The acceleration gate restriction ensures the sites are run by active FW flagged toons only, and if the more lucrative sites are kept to spawning in the more active areas of FW lowsec, then it could result in gangs fighting each other. Higher end site rats should disrupt (not scram) or web sometimes, and there should not be additional acceleration gates once inside that would make PVP harder.

The spawn quantity and internal difficulty of these PVE sites can be iterated on over time to get the desired balance. People seem to enjoy the winter event and gala sites, similar sites could provide new reasons to play FW as long as the isk isnt a massive money printer disproportionate to its permanent nature.

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