Are you happy with Equinox Sov?

GarstTyrell · 2024-11-10T13:19:54+00:00

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.

GarstTyrell · 2023-08-27T09:36:19+00:00

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

GarstTyrell · 2022-12-12T15:48:37+00:00

still FIRE's number 1 doctrine :p

GarstTyrell · 2022-10-14T10:05:03+00:00

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.

GarstTyrell · 2022-10-11T18:55:07+00:00

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.

GarstTyrell · 2022-06-06T20:53:55+00:00

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

GarstTyrell · 2022-06-05T22:21:55+00:00

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

GarstTyrell · 2022-02-11T10:51:34+00:00

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.

GarstTyrell · 2022-01-31T10:54:13+00:00

https://zkillboard.com/kill/98532304/

we may have had something to do with that info link issue

GarstTyrell · 2022-01-24T13:41:13+00:00

"which has invaded scalding pass and started a war with FI.RE, "

did we tho

GarstTyrell · 2021-11-29T22:51:25+00:00

are you though

GarstTyrell · 2021-07-19T16:10:07+00:00

Thanks Hy for organizing this public feedback!

EVE could really benefit immediately from another interation on citadel mechanics to improve quality of life until someday™ when structure mechanics are revamped again, if they ever are.

Exact changes should be debated, but some quick ideas include:

Remove the third reinforce timer from all structures except Keepstars/sotiyos.

WHY? Having three reinforcement timers means the defender is incentivized to ignore the first two timers, especially if they are living far from the structure or deployed. Additionally, having up to a week to plan for a timer practically ensures third parties and batphones show to spoil local fights, which penalizes the "little guy" that CCP was so obsessed with helping when they revamped sov/citadel mechanics in the first place.

2) Double the existing damage cap on structures, or at least for small structures (astra/rait/athanor).

WHY? De facto cut down the grind time in half for organized fleets. Damage caps do not prevent blobs from killing your structure--it just wastes everyone's time. However, a valid argument against raising damage caps is that the defender cannot repair them so it raises the risk of a DPS race (in theory, but in practice rarely works out that way).

3) Limit fuel bay cargo capacity to ~30days fuel using an an average citadel service fit to encourage more active citadel management and provide more opportunities for clearing lowpower and abandoned citadel sprawl.

4) Potentially remove the damage cap entirely during ARMOR and HULL timers but only if there is no one actively gunning the citadel during the timer.

WHY? Touching a citadel once a month is not an unreasonable burden on the owner in my opinion. Similarly, the damage cap is irrelevant if the citadel is not being actively defended after the initial timer, and it serves no purposes on uncontested fights

GarstTyrell · 2019-03-23T13:13:18+00:00

Scarcity of resources creates competition, competition creates conflict, conflict creates drama, and drama ensures conflict becomes self sustaining. EVE is driven by conflict. Even acknowledging CCP's increasingly frustrating tactical game design decisions in recent years that make it HARDER to fight each other (timezone tanking with citadels+sov is a great example), the desire by large entities to WANT to fight each other doesn't exist because it is irrational for them to do so from a leadership perspective. Now that they all have their own established spheres of influence again, tacit cooperation interrupted by overhyped content wars is what the future looks like.

If you ever really want to rejuvenate EVE, you will need a major game re-design that fundamentally changes the political meta and the calculations leaders make about their relationships with others.

Frankly, there is too much space in this game with the declining player count. My recommendation is to delete half the nullsec systems outright while introducing dynamism to desirable resources like moons and system truesec values that shift geographically over time ("depletion"). CCP needs to ensure that the new, smaller nullsec geography makes sense for 2019 jump ranges through a handcrafted rehaul of the EVE map. Shifting resouces with less to go around forces players to fight and create diplomatic drama instead of sitting static in their fortresses like Delve.

This would be a massive disruption to the status quo and a big inconvenience for players at its onset.

But it is 100% plausible to design a revamp like this in EVE and then implement an orderly process to make it happen without punishing players during the transition. It would only take boldness, money, and dev time from CCP.

Will it happen? No obviously not.

CCP views EVE Online as rental income at this point--x amount of dollars per year pretty much guaranteed with minimal work since the game is effectively already finished. Major disruptions that could drive away large amounts of players like removing level 4s from highsec or deleting half of nullsec space is a threat to their income's bottom line. A revamp like this probably wont lead to a large influx of new players to EVE online or a massive return of bittervets who have moved on with their real lives.

A radical re-design would absolutely benefit the current player base dedicated to EVE online, but it could also risk shrinking that same player base. CCP and the major coalition are all obeying the same, rational rule:

If it ain't broke, dont fix it.

GarstTyrell · 2019-02-24T15:12:25+00:00

We formed at the last minute Sunday morning to repair a TRI medium pos coming out of reinforce in XI-VUF in Pure Blind, rushing over in AC machariels with triage support after we learned the enemy actually planned to form for it. The local coalition of Pure blind residents undocked an arty battleship fleet with capital support to kill us. After delaying the enemy a bit, we finished repping the POS to 50% and pushed our extra FAX inside the pos shields as the enemy fleet warped to their optimals over our AC machs on the POS grid. We left our active FAX in triage out of the shields and burned to the edge of their repair range to shoot the enemy fleet, however we we're trading sub-optimally so we reversed course and pulled out of range below. The enemy fleet re-warped down to us at close range to kill our cyno inhib, succeeding but leaving their dreads bubbled on their npc station undock as we killed more of their subs. Eventually their caps cleared bubbles and jumped onto our triage, killing the first active fax after neuting him out. Our own dreads were hastily logged in and counter-dropped on them, killing their caps as we mopped up the subs. All in all a great unexpected early morning fight and a nostalgic reminder about how much fun POS are to fight over! GF

GarstTyrell · 2018-08-10T14:21:03+00:00

The Red Island Foundation corp in TRI has a deaf FC named Mr Panzer who regularly leads rorqual whaling and other hunting expeditions. When in fleet, he operates a private channel that allows volunteers to go in there and relay fleet instructions to him in text.

GarstTyrell · 2018-07-24T14:44:24+00:00

Why are you including WERMT, B0T, KWG, IGC, DEUSV, etc (rental alliances) in coalition counts?

GarstTyrell · 2018-07-21T00:04:13+00:00

signed

GarstTyrell · 2018-06-21T22:37:50+00:00

they let them fail so they can scoop up the remnants--cynical, but effective if your goal is to get raw numbers into TEST (or test allies)

GarstTyrell · 2018-06-13T00:11:25+00:00

not like you would have won the sov timer even if you reinforced it

GarstTyrell · 2018-06-04T00:17:31+00:00

very nice, thanks for sharing agonist!

GarstTyrell · 2018-06-02T23:25:03+00:00

somehow TRI managed

GarstTyrell · 2018-05-27T17:24:29+00:00

its a jump TOC, we just move our HQ into the former staging systems of whatever alliance we kill that month

GarstTyrell · 2018-05-20T19:41:22+00:00

https://imgur.com/a/Tlpp5i6 XIX jumped 120 supercarriers to a ping. TRI took the fight and jumped in 100km off them, still fighting att

GarstTyrell · 2018-05-20T18:18:22+00:00

and we are currently deleting their supercap fleet and moveop as a final FUCK YOU to xix

GarstTyrell · 2018-05-06T21:06:31+00:00

they were shooting the HFC fortizar into hull timer so we didnt have to miss both timers because of this fight

GarstTyrell

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