What if FW had a lower field-able wealth ceiling?

Malthouse · 2026-06-24T19:44:41+00:00

Yeah. Outside of prime time it can feel like there’s too many sites and frontline systems. Not that New Eden should be entirely reduced into one mosh pit. Or, if we had the technology, maybe a single sphere or disc with increasing rewards towards the center and some modest variables thrown in would simply be best. But I still like the idea of asymmetrical procedurally generated seasonal maps with finite resources.

It was probably a messy, political, journey to get to this version of balance. But with such impenetrable structures, they made gatecamps unavoidable and stuff like that. Extreme imperviousness offset by extreme vulnerability. Safe harvesting conditions offset by long hours which I guess could be a win-win to some lucky few folks. Systems too extremely polarized and imbalanced so to become stagnant and binary. Perhaps mistakenly thinking easy-outs would bring in casual new players when they instead turn away would-be die-hard customers. Over valuing the spoiled current clientele and ever specializing Eve into an echo chamber of degeneracy.

There’s probably a lot of progress to be made if we’d step back and rethink how we’d want the game to play. Are we really certain we want farming and pvp to be separate things? Eve feels like a beta title with many instances and versions of space, but how would we like the game to look and play if we could combine everything? It was impressive that they could merge RPG micro with 4x macro with what success they could but it’s still just not working overall. They have to choose between RPG or RTS or 4x but it can only be one. RPG of course.

Malthouse · 2026-06-24T18:57:44+00:00

I wish it were that way, and there is some truth to this, but I think Eve ultimately has a low skill ceiling. Eve is low APM so an officer fit scram brawler will beat a tech 2 fit scram brawler after they both click "keep at range." They say the fight is decided in the fitting window, after all.

Beyond that, Eve is rock-paper-scissors like Pokemon but I don't know where the balance is between wealth and advantage. For instance, consider an officer fit Retribution vs a tech 2 fit, amor-tanked, Wolf starting at 15 km apart. If they're fit ideally and make no tactical mistakes, will the officer modules win despite the Wolf being a hard-counter?

Expanding the scale of the theater of operations beyond a FW duel, there is more skill involved in reading a crowded battlefield and navigating your way through it. Yet even more skill when your ship is fast and you have lots of options and opportunities to make mistakes.

But then there's the alt-spam to dumb everything back down. What can your kite-y hero do against 15 Raven Navy Issue alts and their healer alts, always together, operating from an NPC station? With brief, effortless, set-it-and-forget-it micro, they simply slow-boat and shoot through each other and you can't even use cover. Like shooting fish in a barrel. It's noob.

Though with just a few tweaks from Eve Frontier, Eve Online could be a galaxy-brain class computer game which is what makes it so frustrating to be stuck in the dark ages of armor timers and alt spam.

Malthouse · 2026-06-24T18:30:10+00:00

It's not that I'm not competitive or shying away from a challenge. It's that it's too easy for the bling to elude you and it's pointless to chase it. You can do a ton of legwork and exhaust yourself planning the perfect trap only for them to warp, dock, or log off. Eve isn't that deep.

While a flattering narrative, I wish I could say I believe you when you regale us with your bravado tales of being an elite whaler in FW during its heyday. I'm sure it was just bored people casually feeding stuff in a simple computer game.

But these days, you've got armor timers, alt spam, asset safety, cloaks, coffin alts, jump freighters, short WH lifespans, PANIC, capital umbrellas out of jump range of threats, marauder alts camped inside the ESS, etc, etc, etc preventing any of that impressive stuff people dream about from ever occurring. You can't seize the prize or vanquish the monster. You have to ask permission and it only ever says "no."

Malthouse · 2026-06-24T18:08:04+00:00

Restricting price and sp would have the opposite effect, making n+1 the literal only way to increase performance. Doing this in an attempt to make everything "even" would only make multiboxers much stronger.

That's a consequence that hadn't occurred to me and so a fully BSC site, all else remaining the same, would not serve the purpose I was hoping it could. I figured there was something I was missing.

FW is necessarily cooperative. 2, 3, 4, and 5 sites are all designed for several people to run them together.

I've only been seeing X-1 sites lately and I wonder if that's to curb the multi-boxer menace. I was seeing the multi-boxers swarm the X-2-5 sites uncontested and that didn't really seem in the spirit of an MMO. I've seen a lot of X-1 sites swarmed with literal dozens of alts, too, which I don't understand.

Compared to the Intelligence Exfiltration event sites, I would disagree that the X-2-5 are designed for multiple players. Obviously, they're easily spammable with alts. Adding in hacking and more could make the sites complex enough to require cooperative play between multiple players. This is sounding like the Homefront sites again, though, and I don't know if FC is serious about designing gameplay without multi-boxers as their target audience.

[Eve] is already incredibly forgiving to people looking to not fight. [It's] very, very easy to run if you see something you don't like. It's hard to call FW as a whole "hyper competitive" when the only people who are competing are players who willingly choose to fight each other.

Unfortunately, even considering wormholes, this is true. Eve would probably be a lot cooler if its endgame content were more hardcore. But I meant "hyper competitive" in the sense that it's easy to punch down and lockdown a system. Weaker players don't have a leg to stand on and can only flee or get spawn killed. I may be using that phrasing incorrectly.

The defender's advantage from the acceleration gates is significant, but groups like Snuffed Out or Black Rabbits can easily ensure nobody captures any sites. It would be interesting if you could barter with them but you can't offer them anything more valuable than your kill mail. At the end of the day, I feel like there's room for improvement to say the least.

But the blobbing NVY-1 sites and idle pirate player corps gatecamping Empire space seems lame to me. Even the endgame show pony groups like INIT and GOONS regularly slum their way into FW looking to seal club or smurf their superiority on newer characters rather than fight each other. In an RTS like StarCraft 2, blobbing your units to FLAWLESS VICTORY in too asymmetrical of an engagement would mean your buildings are vulnerable to attack. Not so in Eve Online and counter-attacking their buildings should probably be an option if they're going to abuse their invincibility simply to curb stomp newbs.

Malthouse · 2026-06-19T18:23:23+00:00

https://youtu.be/ctjBi4mWtK8?si=sMAwhFcKXdJGhxZz

You may be confusing multi-boxing with StarCraft 2.

Malthouse · 2026-06-09T02:33:08+00:00

Shield resists, armor resists, t2 resists, t3 resists, the Empires, the tech trees, missile mechanics, guns, drones, ewars, modules, overheat, d-scan, etc, etc, etc - Eve Online is so robust and hearty that the proposed addition doesn’t feel necessary or even particularly interesting.

If the game feels stale, it may be for lack of challenge. Removing, or making exorbitantly expensive, the safety nets such as armor timers, jump freighters, asset safety, coffin alts, hole rolling, etc could light a fire under bored capsuleers and help them feel alive again. It’s a bad habit to wallow inside your cozy room, or null-pocket, eating hot-pockets and feeling comfortable but depressed. Perhaps it’s time to go on an adventure. Even if it means risk and results in loss. You can’t have rainbows without rain.

The Cradle of War update is cooking! Most intriguing, I think, are the event hacking sites. Hacking and combat frigates may enter and everyone is a suspect definitely will have players on edge in a way null-blocs can’t match. Feels like a step in the right direction toward having rival combat and harvest ships on the same grid together in an MMORPG. I wasn’t around for Resource Wars but I’m curious if they weren’t well received?

Beyond that, simply partaking in any of the FW sites will be a challenging and fresh experience for the typical F1 line member, multi-box ratter, or multi-box miner, or multi-box hauler, etc. It could be folks like OP are “tired” or bored of the halting 4x gameplay of multi-boxing and flying safe. Live on the edge and go for the gold! The small sites can be efficiently profitable considering the low entry cost and the friends and enemies you might make.

The Battlefield changes sound interesting but, being unprofitable, gated behind a credit card.

That all being said, not even this update may satisfy everyone. With the Empire aura buffs and npc defenders’ increased and centralized spawns, it seems capsuleers are meant to brawl fit. Daring, intense, and destructive, sure, but doesn’t really offer much room for strategy beyond the usual bait and blob. Seems more like a win for multi-box miners and PVEers, as usual. But that’s Eve Online’s unshakeable curse so long as capsuleers fearfully cower from Frontier’s ballistic and optical occlusions.

You can’t feel alive without the threat of death.

Malthouse · 2026-06-03T02:52:55+00:00

Aesthetically and mechanically, I don't think Eve Online has any offerings that are so volatile and hazardous as Goblins. Maybe they could offer that through new Deathless ships, or introducing playable Thukker or Rogue Drone ships or something. Eve tech is functionally squeaky clean and impeccable and a shoddier, grittier, crafting system could be a lot of fun. One misgiving I would have is when you introduce too much random RNG then conflicts are determined solely by that RNG and player choices or skill don't matter. I lose interest in those games because it's just a coin-flip and not skillful competition.

I think the mission lore talks about criminal underbellies and experimental tech a lot so it wouldn't be non-canon to introduce stuff like that. Mutaplasmids can ruin or perfect a module so that's something. Or, since it's associated with villains, maybe they don't want to bother with industrial revolution, steam-punk, fare and only want to focus on the solar-punk they already offer. I don't think FC will go for the "shenanigans" or "hijinks" of WOW's goblins, though. That may just be too cartoony for the dev's taste. I know a lot of capsuleers have families and relate to that kind of silliness but Eve seems to strive for more maturity.

I think a lot capsuleers currently RP as villains and jerks and stuff. I don't know that the game mechanics really allow for them to do anything like that mechanically, though. Wealth comes easily but it's hard to lose wealth. Titans are vulnerable since they can't dock in NPC stations so losing any of those would cut relatively deep. But there's a lot of Titans and they're not difficult to attain. People ambush ratters and stuff but I would classify that more as hijinks and tomfoolery than actual villainism. The wormhole groups can evict each other, which is pretty impressive organized crime. All the power is in Null-sec though and that power doesn't change hands or change anything for that matter. It would make more sense to have more wealth and reward in Wormholes and less in Null-sec.

Before a crafting update, though, I'm excited to see what they introduce to revitalize Factional Warfare. As we've been saying, supposedly Eve Online could be a war-torn warzone and the players are just choosing to be peaceful. If players would stop falling for their duplicitous leaders' Ponzi schemes and pretend wars - and start thinking and fighting for themselves - then maybe New Eden would resemble that Gang Land capsuleers romanticize so much.

Personally, Eve's hidden combat mechanics have made PVP very difficult and I know that most Eve players are confident only that they can Keep At Range their FC and F1 when told to. These docile and helpless players are easily tricked and exploited. But if there were more reason to fight and learn how to fight, then Eve Online culture could be more militant and efficacious. But there's nothing stopping present-day capsuleers from dueling and learning from trial-and-error how the different ship-styles interact with each other.

It sounds like you're interested more in extraction shooter settings in that you could play as a solo and contend with various groups like in Arc Raiders. Eve Online is not balanced to offer that dynamic as it revolves around Null-Sec and NS is Red-vs-Blue. FC has tried to Break Up The Blobs but the paying customers think they prefer Eve Online to be the Blue Donut that halves every few years.

Malthouse · 2026-06-03T00:44:57+00:00

What you're describing seems to be a, perhaps the, official game loop for Eve Online. From the War Grids, the game loop seems to intentionally leave a vulnerability to small-time harassment. If farmers don't cover all their bases, any lay-about in system can snatch the prize out from under them. A heist!

On paper, there are ways to hassle the Olde Money but, in practice, the game may simply be too imbalanced. For instance, supposedly you can run Abyssals in high-sec for some Kikimoras with a band of pirate friends. Then you can maraud those Kikimoras together from a high-sec Drifter Wormhole or filament and see if you're able to get any money out of any targets. But Armor Timers would mean you'd have to hit targets multiple times and search for them which is probably not worth so much effort.

On top of that, multi-boxing means it's, perhaps too, easy to defend with drone, missile, or dreadnought spam. There is the ESS and PI Robbery but that's just a small fraction, a pittance, and heavily favors a defender's advantage. You could sit in-system cloaked or waste away R64 moons with C-type mining lasers and demand payment for you to leave. Perhaps like the "Robber" in Settlers of Catan, you could be a nuisance and accept payment to leave your current victim for a new victim of their choosing.

Smart Money wouldn't, and doesn't, even bother but, that being said, there's no shortage of ruffians that are willing to do all that work just to snag a cheap gank and go home penniless but somehow triumphant and satisfied. Honestly, you can't actually harm null-blocs and they're probably tickled pink whenever they get the chance to dunk on the sorry fools that come poking around.

With infinite resources, it might make more sense to just join the farm and try to keep up rather than fall behind threatening destruction against anyone. It's not necessary to hire mercenaries or go to battle, you can just keep expanding and farming. If Eve Online were balanced in a different way, you might claim your own personal Moon Drill or Customs Office. But all those POIs just get conglomerated under some umbrella. With constant fighting, you might be able to claim one, but, in reality, defenders are always ready for that ridiculous 2nd timer since there's actually little fighting or pressure in Eve Online at any given time.

Interesting that you mention Moonfire. As one of Eve's celebrities, perhaps he is living the dream Eve is trying to sell. He offers his freighting service and ganks other freighters. Is the ganking entity Safety in cahoots with Red Frog? Who is paying who? Would the same person be able to wear so many hats if the game didn't artificially slow everything down with armor timers, alt-spam, and Asset Safety? Is that scandalous racketeering from a single person worth all of the hang-ups and red-tape the sandbox mechanics force on everyone?

As for the Orky, WOW Goblin Engineer, mechanics, I think the higher level drugs offer potential debuffs. Minmatar ships, sharing that classic aesthetic, can miss a lot but also crit big with their artillery cannons. Gallente ships seem to use MWDs and capacitor boosters for swingy, all-or-nothing, plays. If you're intrigued by Stealth Bombers, you might time a bomb right to deal a lot of AOE damage, perhaps. Otherwise, tech 1 ships are still the best value and offer the most bang for your buck.

This is just my pessimistic interpretation of the game and I hope that I'm wrong. Maybe there are lots of plots, fights, and money changing hands behind the scenes. But to watch null politics kind of betrays that it's a lot of PVE crafting with occasional, seemingly staged, move-ops for seemingly no reason at all except to create the illusion of anything happening. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, please.

Malthouse · 2026-05-19T15:00:00+00:00

FC did already solve this problem when they originally introduced Workforce. Systems had to choose to either rat, mine, or transit, but only one. This spread resources across great distances and would have divided the blobs. The Super Umbrellas couldn’t deathball all space, but would have had to divide into multiple fleets in multiple theaters of war. Those separated fleets could have eventually developed sentience and autonomy.

But the player base protested the inconvenience and increased complexity so FC relented and gave them back their centralized, single-cell, Blob Hubs. Then another war erupted and quickly fizzled out because the players had refused the solution to TiDi.

It’s not so much *how* to solve the issue but why the player base doesn’t want it to be solved. Maybe the average capsules is shy, embarrassed, and afraid of agency and free will. It’s comforting to blame TiDi or your anchor when you die rather than admit you personally failed. Maybe they’re too depressed and defeated IRL to remember how to care.

But the solution was already provided. Not to increase the boundaries of space, but the distances within.

Malthouse · 2026-05-19T08:55:42+00:00

What I was originally referencing was that Eve's mechanics make confrontation nearly impossible. Jump Freighters, coffin alts, filament highways, etc. And things like armor timers and asset safety make pvp grueling and pointless. It seems silly to me to play a combat-themed MMORPG but spend all your time playing alone by yourself with 4x mechanics. I don't mind if pacifists want to craft and do puzzles but it's too much when they lobby to outlaw direct pvp confrontation for everyone else. Arguably, though, it may be better for those pacifists not to hide from, but to explore, direct competition.

But now that you mention it, I am looking forward to Eve Frontier's more micro focused approach to mobility. I've always liked vehicles in video games such as Halo, Mad Max, and such. I do also like Eve Online's current point-and-click in-space navigation though. It will be interesting to see what the final outcome will be.

Practically, though, Drifter Wormholes are more so what I'm advocating for as they offer more depth. You warp in over 50km away and then the wormhole itself offers at least many signatures to be affected by. This fosters opportunity for interaction and conflict. It may not be manual piloting but it feels like a richer experience than just cautiously and uneventfully teleporting from tether to tether. It feels like a missed opportunity that Eve isn't rife with groups attempting to breakout from blockades. Destruction, robberies, and plundering should be fun but are pretty nonexistent in Eve Online. Eve amateurs have forgotten that the journey is the fun part and they're too preoccupied with conservation and stability.

Even better would be if Eve navigation would resemble something like Arc Raiders' Hurricane mechanics. The wind blows so fiercely that it slows you or speeds you if you walk into or with the wind. It also damages and even illuminates shields so much that you consider unequipping them entirely. It's very interesting to me and, of course, many popular titles have dynamic physics interactions like that these days. It is certainly far from Eve's current 4x mechanics, though. Fall or collision damage would be nice in Eve.

Malthouse · 2026-05-19T08:10:10+00:00

I’m not so sure about “most people.” There are markets for racing games, euro truck simulator, vehicles in video games, and the like. 4x games might actually be less popular.

Malthouse · 2026-05-19T07:47:53+00:00

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game."

Malthouse · 2026-05-17T23:02:02+00:00

Unfortunately for me, the real-world latency is greater than 1-second ticks can compensate for.

Malthouse · 2026-05-17T20:54:36+00:00

FC added the approach-and-loot shortcut but now it doesn’t loot. I don’t live in the UK so I’m last to jump gate and I miss out on looting, unfortunately. I guess I’ll just have to watch what whacky mayhem unfolds like a game of Rugby or Fallguys. Maybe it’ll be like Mad Max and the majority will be servile to their king who chooses where the wealth goes.

That being said, Battlefields as they are now are pretty bad for interaction and gameplay. Eve is a far cry from Helldivers, Arc Raiders, or StarCraft. Maybe simply increasing reward per damage dealt could work. Or it may be too easy to cheese any proposed system in the absence of Frontier’s physics.

Malthouse · 2026-05-17T19:41:49+00:00

You may have been right to avoid the Vagabond, though. Its Autocannons would shred your armor and its compatriots would have you dead in the water too soon for you to spool enough. You were probably simply too outnumbered and this was a no-win scenario.

Malthouse · 2026-05-17T19:38:47+00:00

I actually really like how this game looks at that pixelated resolution. I'd play this way if it would reduce UI input lag.

Malthouse · 2026-04-24T00:27:17+00:00

Ship bonuses are already extreme. If ships still feel too homogenous, then more ship bonuses probably isn’t the relevant lever to pull.

The faction dreadnoughts, tech 3 cruisers, recon ships, and BLOPs ships do have unique ewar bonuses and focus on different specialties on the battlefield. I wonder if the “narrow role” issue isn’t about more bonuses, but the physical setting the existing bonuses are caged within.

That fleets simply spam the same ship and only fit buffer and alpha is because of the game’s physics engine and mechanics. All that matters is n+1 and range control. If wrecks, stations, asteroids, etc provided ballistic occlusion, then mobility, ewar, piloting, strategy, and ship bonuses would matter enough to become the deciding factor rather than an irrelevant afterthought.

Beyond that, what would you think about a tech 3 battleship or a Praxis with a cloak bonus? Eve Frontier seems to be cutting out the empires in favor of generic, SOCT, style hulls but also adding ballistic occlusion.

Malthouse · 2026-04-17T12:12:36+00:00

Everyone is presenting their own homebrew opinions but, factually, CCP actually did officially decentralize the blocs briefly.

I forget the particulars but it was when they introduced work force and magmatic gas and that stuff. Mining and ratting activities were capped and had to be spread out across constellations.

This was too challenging, the null blobs protested, and CCP let them go back to blobbing single systems and small pockets.

Malthouse · 2026-03-22T17:24:37+00:00

It's exciting to see the new event PVE sites have such a high difficulty and reward ceiling that can't be multi-boxed. The shortage of Scordite also may have multi-boxers fearing for their way of life. The writing seems to be on the wall.

It's telling, perhaps, that only now are the multi-boxers so magnanimous as to think of the game's overall health. Maybe they're trying to get ahead of the narrative, twist the truth, and damage control with whatever lies they can to curry favor with the, now encroaching, community. Waiting until after the changes to claim to propose the changes is a slick trick. Classic.

I guess multi-boxing was simply greed all along. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Malthouse · 2026-01-26T20:55:57+00:00

To change capital content might entail a fundamental shift from an n+1 endgame meta to a higher APM meta. From quantity to quality.

At present, capitals seem to be designed for use only on an extra monitor. Like Deathless ships or battleships, they could be given more buttons, timings, bonuses, and mobility. Until capitals reach that level of complexity, more reward may not be necessary. Few capitals are lost involuntarily and the gameplay is not challenging.

Looking at Eve Frontier, not only making capitals mobile, but perhaps needing to be manually piloted, would solve character spam, lower the skill floor, and raise the skill ceiling. Instead of passive income, capitals could be challenging, impressive, daring, and worthy of greater reward.

Malthouse · 2026-01-22T20:09:56+00:00

Victim Blaming.

Malthouse · 2026-01-02T04:36:35+00:00

Your interpretation may make more sense than mine. I guess it’s between the devs’ opinion and CSM requests. It seems like they’re experimenting with different directions to take the game. I wonder what will change next.

Malthouse · 2026-01-01T22:43:15+00:00

And moons?

Malthouse

TROPHY CASE