CCP constantly nerfs highsec income to drive people off highsec. They made highsec Planetari Interaction a joke with taxes, they plan to make the same with missioning with Faction Warfare. (the current system is accepted to be bad and will be changed, I talk about the new one where FW pilots get 3x more LP) They plan to nerf highsec refining, manufacture and blueprint research/copy.
I fully agree that nerfing highsec is necessary. My income is 10-20% of the largest sov-holder entity without taking any risks. And it's not just me. I'm selling 100-150M worth implants that are totally luxury products. Their bonus is usually 5% to some skill and you can buy a +3% one for 10-20M. I'm not making these, just trading. So there is a huge audience that can afford 100M (which is 1/5 of a month gametime) for 2% ability increase and they can't even be bothered to do some jumps or wait for a buy order to fill up. The dwellers of highsec are all rich. Maybe not as rich as me, but still would laugh on the idea to fly any of the crap the low/null people fly.
The problem is that the nerf won't help at all. Nerfing more wouldn't help either because neither one addresses the problem: unless you make something extremely stupid, you have no losses in highsec, so - just like in WoW - if you log in, you progress. Nerfing would only slow it down, but doesn't change that if you spend time in the game, you always have more assets when you log out, while in low-null you often have losses. Most highsec players are risk-averse and very happy with this space WoW. They will whine a bit on the nerf and then keep on doing everything as they were doing. They will still have a positive income, even if 20-30% less. Who cares? They like playing that way, so any positive reward is reward.
Putting risk into highsec would probably just drive most of these players away, not to mention how devastating it would be to newbies. However there is an alternative to risks: costs. In low-null you have to pay for security, mostly with your own time. In high, Concord works for free. Change that, add costs to security and you have a highsec nerf that not only stop highsec players from being dirty rich, but also give them a preview about low-null security costs.
The suggestion is that Concord protection shouldn't be automatic. Concord only responds to attacks against you, if you have license. Having license is visible to other pilots. Without license only the gate guns and the faction police responds, making highsec much like lowsec. License depends on ship type. If you want to undock a bigger ship than your license covers, you'll have a warning message "your Concord license does not cover this ship. If you proceed with undock, you lose your license and Concord will not protect you. I suggest to upgrade your license first."
The license cost is weekly and if your license expire, you get a warning box too, or you can set your license auto-recurring. The suggested license costs (weekly):
Wednesday morning report, which is still not really reliable: 157.9B, as the PLEX sale pushed the price down so I bought some extra (4.5+1 spent on main accounts, 3.1+0.5 spent on Logi/Carrier, 2.7+0.5 on Ragnarok, 2.1+0.5 on Rorqual, 1.9+0.5 on Nyx, 2.3+0.5 on Avatar, 2.6 received as gift)
I fully agree that nerfing highsec is necessary. My income is 10-20% of the largest sov-holder entity without taking any risks. And it's not just me. I'm selling 100-150M worth implants that are totally luxury products. Their bonus is usually 5% to some skill and you can buy a +3% one for 10-20M. I'm not making these, just trading. So there is a huge audience that can afford 100M (which is 1/5 of a month gametime) for 2% ability increase and they can't even be bothered to do some jumps or wait for a buy order to fill up. The dwellers of highsec are all rich. Maybe not as rich as me, but still would laugh on the idea to fly any of the crap the low/null people fly.
The problem is that the nerf won't help at all. Nerfing more wouldn't help either because neither one addresses the problem: unless you make something extremely stupid, you have no losses in highsec, so - just like in WoW - if you log in, you progress. Nerfing would only slow it down, but doesn't change that if you spend time in the game, you always have more assets when you log out, while in low-null you often have losses. Most highsec players are risk-averse and very happy with this space WoW. They will whine a bit on the nerf and then keep on doing everything as they were doing. They will still have a positive income, even if 20-30% less. Who cares? They like playing that way, so any positive reward is reward.
Putting risk into highsec would probably just drive most of these players away, not to mention how devastating it would be to newbies. However there is an alternative to risks: costs. In low-null you have to pay for security, mostly with your own time. In high, Concord works for free. Change that, add costs to security and you have a highsec nerf that not only stop highsec players from being dirty rich, but also give them a preview about low-null security costs.
The suggestion is that Concord protection shouldn't be automatic. Concord only responds to attacks against you, if you have license. Having license is visible to other pilots. Without license only the gate guns and the faction police responds, making highsec much like lowsec. License depends on ship type. If you want to undock a bigger ship than your license covers, you'll have a warning message "your Concord license does not cover this ship. If you proceed with undock, you lose your license and Concord will not protect you. I suggest to upgrade your license first."
The license cost is weekly and if your license expire, you get a warning box too, or you can set your license auto-recurring. The suggested license costs (weekly):
- Pod: free, Concord always responds to podding
- T1 frigate, destroyer: 10K, newbies get it for almost free
- T1 cruiser: 1M
- T2, faction and pirate frigate 10M
- Battlecruiser; T2, faction and pirate cruiser; T1 industrial and mining barge: 25M
- Battleship: 50M
- T2, faction and pirate battleship; strategic cruiser; T2 industrial and exhumer: 100M
- Freighter, Orca: 200M
- License to fit faction modules and ammo: +50M
- License to fit deadspace modules: +100M
- License to fit officer modules: +250M
Wednesday morning report, which is still not really reliable: 157.9B, as the PLEX sale pushed the price down so I bought some extra (4.5+1 spent on main accounts, 3.1+0.5 spent on Logi/Carrier, 2.7+0.5 on Ragnarok, 2.1+0.5 on Rorqual, 1.9+0.5 on Nyx, 2.3+0.5 on Avatar, 2.6 received as gift)
38 comments:
It's interesting, but this post sort of dovetails nicely with a post I made the other, suggesting that taking gear crafting professions was a bad choice because you end up competing with the game, and the game always wins.
I think the argument that when you provide security, you compete with the game's security, and the deck is stacked in favor of the game, is a very insightful one.
It's another illustration of the idea that providing stuff "for free" warps the market/game. Bastiat, and what is not seen, and all that.
The only issue I have is someone who got themselves into zero credit situation. Would it be possible to recover, especially if someone was camping you? Maybe the default basic ship gets a free licence if you don't have enough credits to buy one?
Interesting. Would a player show up as licensed if I click on their profile or would it come up on a new/existing module? Otherwise what's the point, what risk would I take if I didn't buy this extra layer of security if no one could tell?
Rohan; Rookie ships could have free license for someone with a 'reasonable' security status.
However, I have a different nerf; supply and demand. This would apply across all levels of status.
The carrot for unloved areas. Some agents get no love; no one wants to do their jobs. They have to pay more. Maybe they advertise, send mail. Maybe the 'storyline' missioneers point them out. Maybe they even offer jobs to players with lower standing.
The stick for highsec areas.
Some agents get too much love. Everyone does anything they could possibly ask for. These guys can be fussier : you have to have a higher standing and get paid less.
When accessing a loyalty point store; shops that are flooded for loyalty points have inflation / higher loyalty point prices; those that are starved for 'loyalty points', give discounts.
Starter career agents could be immune to such changes
Malcanis' Law strkes again...
Why not sell these license tiers for Aurum instead of ISK?
Because it's not a pay to win Aurum idea, it's an in-game wealth management. The more your ship earns to you, the more you have to pay for protection or you can move to player-controlled areas.
Newbies would suffer the most from this. When you started playing EvE, you already had knowledge on how to operate a market to amass huge sum of money. Many people are not able to do this. If they all would, nobody would ever grind daylies in WoW. 3 differents would happens to newbies.
1- Barely breaking even and deciding to quit ebcause the progression is too harsh.
2- Fail to generate enough isk due to bad game knowledge and loose all thier "progression".
3- Get scammed to hell and back by player offering them fake protection deal.
Driving bads is bad for CCP's bottom line so it will nto ahppen.
It also empower bots since the best way to always make you quota required to pay for the next liscence fee is to be able to generate ISK 23/7. Making a game which should probably be considered in a niche amrket with it's current gameplay and rather low population even more niche by driving off many lazy players is probably not a good idea. Whats teh big deal with high sec earning a shit-ton of isk anyway? It's not like all those isk give them any power beside prancing out in thier purple fit Tengu. Beside the probable fact of them being your best costomer, how do they affect you as a player? Thier easyly earned isk only make you richer in the end. When you remove all the idiots from the game, who will sell underpriced ore to buy orders so industrialist can produce ships and turn a profit? Who will buy your implants in Jita and sell you the same implants cheaper a few jumps away?
'The license cost is weekly'
I would also reckon it would be essential to everyone in highsec. So really there would be no real choice over whether to pay this tax or not, although it would probably lead to some amusing kill mails.
Also why would a tax that discouraged people leaving their highsec stations benefit anyone. Living in a station=no tax, flying a ship =tax.
It would greatly increase ganking. Get a gang camping high sec gates and kill all players without a licence making sure the gankers are licenced themselves to prevent counters.
Null sec player would have pay taxes twice once while they are in null sec and again if they visit high.
It discourages people from having alts account a good source of cash for ccp. Paying a compulsory payments (yes I know its voluntary like all taxes are VAT/Income tax etc) on multiple characters would discourge playing them.
Just some thoughts.
@Rohan: you can always fly to a lvl 1 mission site in your pod.
@Bobbins: tax is trivial if you don't fly anything expensive.
Nullsec-lowsec players don't need tax as they don't live in high.
You can fly in highsec unlicensed just like you can fly in lowsec now. There are gate guns, sec status loss if anyone attacks you. There are also faction police ships camping the gate, they would also respond PvP.
You can of course shoot back to licensed pirates who attacked you, have kill rights on them, in war with them or simply below -5.0.
Yes, if you have an alt army, all in bling Tengus, you should pay multiple licenses, just like in nullsec you'd risk Nx more if you fly N blings.
This reminds me of the insurance system, which already does this by stealth.
Existing system: Pay for insurance, which expires after a few months, or risk taking a huge loss.
Proposed system: Pay for concord tax, which expires after a week, or risk taking a huge loss.
The problem, of course, is that only the cheapest ships qualify for insurance (nothing T2 or above, and it doesn't cover fits). Maybe some kind of player-run insurance system which applied to T2 and T3 ships would help solve this problem?
Anyway, I like your idea, I think it would go a long way to fixing the risk/reward balance.
"Nullsec-lowsec players don't need tax as they don't live in high."
"nullsec-lowsec player" here - 11 characters, 7 of which are in high-sec (including my primary income generator, a lvl4 mission runner).
If I had to take a guess I would say that about 70-80% of the players in my 0.0/pirate corp earn their income exclusively in high-sec (and of the remaining 20-30% a significant part converts PLEX to ISK).
Nobody is stupid enough to do risky PvE for income generation - PvE in 0.0 or low-sec has to be risk free (deep within a sea of blues with intel channels or nothing to lose like FW plexing in T1 frigates), everyone who does not have access to risk-free PvE uses high-sec alts to fund his pvp losses.
You would have to nerf high-sec (and sov 0.0 and whs) into the ground to come even remotely close to a situation in which the rewards of doing PvE in low-sec or NPC 0.0 would be competitive given its risks.
Your August 30th post was spot-on.
You're not actually making any sort of case for why this is necessary. You're just saying "Hisec income is too high" which seems like a fairly arbitrary distinction. You point to your income, which is a straw man argument itself when that income has no relation to the playstyles that you want to nerf, and to the fact that people buy stuff from you in tradehubs in hisec. You have no idea how many people buying those items are actually using them in null/lowsec (lowsec is actually fairly safe for expensive implants as there are no bubbles - pods usually have an easy time warping out after losing their ships) or even buying in high and exporting to low/null.
Even if all of these purchases do come from hisec, you're not explaining why this is bad for the game, it seems like you're starting out assuming that it's bad and running from there.
"The dwellers of highsec [...] would laugh on the idea to fly any of the crap the low/null people fly." So you never see solid T2-fit T1 BS and BC hulls being used in high? I beg to differ. Certainly they'll PvE fit rather than PvP fit, but that's because they're PvEing and not PvPing. The weapons and a lot of the tank will be the same.
"The problem is that the nerf won't help at all." "They will whine a bit on the nerf and then keep on doing everything as they were doing. They will still have a positive income, even if 20-30% less." so by that same argument, what difference will a Concord protection license make? It's just going to be an obligatory cost for all players who want hisec security.
@Hivemind: I don't think the statement "nullsec players are poor" needs further proof after seeing TEST budget and the fact that even GSF (which is believed to be the richest) flies Drakes.
Yes, I've seen T1 BS-es in highsec, mostly below newbies. Any highsec missioner over 6 months has a Tengu or faction/pirate BS.
The license wouldn't be a % nerf like mission LP inflating by FW. It can go into negative by you earning less than your license.
Gevlon, I don't understand your logic. At first, you state that:
(1) nerfing income - does not work because it just slows progress, not halts it;
(2) introducing risk to highsec - will drive out carebears.
Then you propose (3): introducing the cost of risklessness - the Concord license. But what is the difference of (3) from (1) and (2)? I see no difference.
There will be people who can make enough ISK to afford the Concord license and people who can't.
The people who can afford it are in situation (1): their finacial result is effectively nerfed - decreased exactly by lisence cost. They still progress but slower then before.
The people who can't afford it are exactly in situation (2): highsec is transformed to nullsec for them, and this drives out the carebears.
"I don't think the statement "nullsec players are poor" needs further proof after seeing TEST budget and the fact that even GSF (which is believed to be the richest) flies Drakes."
How do you reach that conclusion? I mean you've seen purported income spreadsheets for the alliances. That tells you absolutely nothing about the wealth of the members; you might get an idea what the income is from members ratting in those sheets, but only for those players whose ratting characters are in the alliance. You won't find any source of income from mining, from selling loot or salvage from ratting (especially high value faction/officer loot) or from trading. Also as others have pointed out, lots of null players rely on highsec for ISK generation - if highsec players are rich, so are the nullsec mains of those highsec alts.
Alliances fly fleets that their members can fly and that they can afford to replace; as forces with lots of newer players, GSF like Drakes because they require less SP to fly effectively and are very solid ships. They also field BS fleets - alpha Maelstroms and Tempests, and Tier 3 BCs.
You still haven't explained what's actually wrong with the level of income in hisec now.
"The license wouldn't be a % nerf like mission LP inflating by FW. It can go into negative by you earning less than your license."
It won't be a % nerf but it will still be a direct nerf to income; players will have to pay for the license in order to make ISK in some degree of safety and as we've seen from hisec already players will sacrifice ISK for safety. The only people who will be in hisec PvEing without a license will be those who can't afford one. The rich are going to be a little bit less rich, but other than that it won't affect their gameplay at all, while those who struggle to make ISK now due to limited time or simple incompetence will struggle even harder and are more likely to quit.
Hivemind: the "highsec alt of a nullsec player" is actually an extra argument for me. It says that the highsec pilots are rich, the nullsec ones are poor, so if a player has both, he can even it out.
@Souldrinker and Hivemind: Everyone can afford SOME license. The point is that now everyone who cares to log in in highsec will have an officer fit Tengu. If you PvE hard, you get it fast, if you are casual, or plain bad, it will take years but you'll get it.
The suggestion is that there will be players who can afford a cruiser license, but not a battlecruiser and they are locked into cruisers until they either improve or move to low-null-WH. There won't be many.
However the top PvE players: exhumer miners, deadspace tengu ratters will have serious losses by staying in highsec, motivating them to move to null.
It is good you are thinking about changes to the game, but I for one really dislike this idea. If CCP wants to force casuals out of Eve, that is one way to do it. Paying 200m a week for my freighter? You will certainly see ship production decline. Having to haul millions of tritanium around only to make 5m profit per ship (for an example T1)? So basically you want to get rid of high sec crafting and have everyone be station traders.
You mention putting a cap on the foreever progression. Why on Earth would you want to do that to a sandbox game? The fact that you never reach max level and run out of things to do, like in WoW, is what is great about EvE. Many people quit when they feel like they have run out of things to do, or at least aren't progressing any longer.
Why do you have taxes for the lower ones? What's the benefit?
It initially seems like a complex and confusing barrier for new players. How would you avoid this?
I like it how you always propose a nerf to drive out the others from hi sec but not you. As a station trader you can stay indefinitely docked and safe without ever paying for concord licenses, only to transport goods when you pay for a sure protection. This suggestion would just encourage station trading and lead to masses of 0.01ISK-ers who are saving up for concord licenses and are station camped whereas ratters and miners would be booted out to low sec. This change would also lead to new players being unable to progress, as they not only would have to earn enough to buy a new shiny ship, but pay for the protection of it too. Casual players without a strong corp to protect them would quickly go broke, lose protection, lose their ship and left penniless in a pod. With no free safe region, an unlucky player can go irreparably broke.
If you want a change, then start by suggesting a mechanic that would drive you yourself to low sec. For instance what if CONCORD protection was not payable by a license but was included in the trading taxes. That is, an 0.8 region would have a 8% tax on trading, and a 0.2 region just 2%. Reasonable traders and couriers would move out to low sec, creating interesting low sec trading hubs. Hi sec areas would be left for newbies who are still learning to play and some carebears who follow a small risk - small pay route.
"The point is that now everyone who cares to log in in highsec will have an officer fit Tengu. If you PvE hard, you get it fast, if you are casual, or plain bad, it will take years but you'll get it."
And that still remains true if players spend that time running L1 missions in T1 frigates under your system. Other than arbitrarily attaching prices to using different ships, what difference are you making?
Your claim that everyone has/can have an officer fit Tengu is also pretty ridiculous; there's heavy selection pressure against over-pimping a ship; in that particular case (one of the most extreme examples) that pressure comes from the fact that it can be volleyed by 1-3 Tornados and will drop enough loot for the pilots to not only replace their ships but also pay for their next month's PLEX as well. Even faction fitting a Tech 3 ship is risky and can easily put you over the gank threshold. For T2 and Faction BSes you can usually faction fit them relatively safely but even with their much larger EHP pool they still become valid targets with officer mods.
I'm also still waiting for you to explain why the ease of making ISK in hisec being more popular among most of the players than the increased risk and reward in low/null is a problem for the game.
Given that you (and others) assert that "nerfing highsec" in terms of taking things away from them wont move them into low/nulsec...I'm keen to understand how imposing *another* expense to the players will encourage them?
The fact of the matter is that Mr. Level 4 mission runner in overpimped faction battleship is going to lose it anyway sooner or later. Killboards show this. He wont pay for his expensive license - it just wont happen.
I'd prefer to see a 'nerf' to highsec in terms of bluring the lines between what highsec and lowsec is. As a rather experienced player I can look back and see there is an enormous cliff between the relative safety of highsec and the lawless shanty town of lowsec. I personally believe that it is the severe abruptness of that transition coupled with a lack of motivation in terms of what can be earned out there that stops it.
I'd like to see "absolute" highsec remain as is, but as you approach 0.5, things should start becoming less cozey. Concord perhaps becomes tankable. Or perhaps there is a ceiling on the amount of concord ships which can be spawned...or random times when they don't spawn. Or maybe they wait until a certain amount of isk is destroyed. The key thing is that the difficulty should be a gradient from absolute safety insta-concordokken space such as jita down to "almost" lawless space as you approach lowsec. Then factor the rewards accordingly. Best spawns, best minerals in highsec, agent missions etc all out in the fringes of highsec. There are plenty of law reasons why this would make sense - high security space isn't a frontier, the locals have been pacified.
As it stands now you go from perfect safety in 0.5 to 0.4 where death is ever present currently. Its like the lawmen just "gave up" at a point - it seems a bit wrong.
By gradually increasing risk while expoentially increasing rewards as you head further and further out you play on the basic human emotion of greed and more people will gravitate to the more dangerous parts of space. If done properly the leap from the "edge of highsec" to the "safest of lowsec" should be almost seamless.
also gevlon, your spreadsheets show nothing except that you have accepted TEST propaganda as gospel. Please verify these *moon income* spreadsheets, and then do a little bit of research into how else alliances make money. And what the average income of a rank and file nulsec member is under the warm embrace of SRP.
@Hivemind: the easiness of highsec is a problem because highsec is "Space WoW": you log in, you grind, you progress. No skill or brain is needed. And WoW is prettier. I left WoW for a competitive game and I found only Space WoW. More about it tomorrow.
So im a miner/indy/missioner, where im using 2 mackinaws/Hulk for mining ice and ore (yes, im one of the insane few that actually likes mining) In your proposal i should pay (200+100+100+100+100=600M) on a weekly basis.
What will happen with your proposal in general is that mineral prices will increase. Not a movement to lowsec. Reason is that its more likely to be popped in an mack/hulk/orca in lowsec then it is when being protected in highsec. but thanks to the license my operational cost would increase, which have to be payed by the buyer. During the otec hassle, my profits did not lower. My operational increased as well as the prices for t2 equip. Did it make me any poorer.. not really.
I only thing you will acomplish is drive people away from eve, not to lowsec/nullsec. If lowsec is not sexy, make it more sexy, but not by making something else more terrible.
@Gevlon " I left WoW for a competitive game and I found only Space WoW."
That says more about you than about the game. Nobody and nothing forced you to stay in hi-sec and be a trader.
@Druur: profit does. Even if I would be the best PvP-er of EVE, I'd be significantly poorer than today.
@Hivemind
'that pressure comes from the fact that it can be volleyed by 1-3 Tornados '
Who needs 3. http://jestertrek.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/kill-of-week-buffer.html
If you don't like 'space wow' maybe you can try going in low sec/null sec yourself to have a glimpse at what the game can offer. And nullsec is definitely riskier than wow, but i don't see why you want to make the whole game risky.
@Mike - if mineral prices increase nullsec miners get more income- mission accomplished. You also bring up a good point with the accumulative cost of multiple barges, which might go an excellent way towards discouraging the colossal ice mining armies that appeared with the new "ore bay barges".
In high sec you cannot do anything interesting enough to spend all the ISK you can make. That's the only real drawback to highsec and that's the only one needed.
What do you think about a license that measures some sort of flight time instead of real-world time?
E.g. If you take your ship out on weekends but not weekdays, then you only need to make 2/7ths as much as someone who takes their ship out every day.
Conversely, what if the human administrative costs of figuring out who is "all payed up" is what is preventing pvp corps from selling protection? The devs could add the in-game means for alliances to manufacture time-limited "friend" broadcasters that renters could keep in cargo.
"highsec is "Space WoW": you log in, you grind, you progress. No skill or brain is needed."
True, but only in the most general sense. In WoW a player in level-appropriate gear that matches their class can solo any solo content without much trouble, and the game will hand out that gear as a consequence of playing. In EVE a player has to figure out for themselves what is content-appropriate gear and how to obtain it. In WoW a warrior with however many millions of XP equate to level 80 and wearing plate armor from levels 77-80 can expect to tackle level 80-82 content with little difficulty. In EVE a player in a battleship with 4 months’ worth of SP cannot expect to tackle L4 missions with little difficulty, as it comes down to how the SP is spent and the battleship is fitted. Even if you tighten it up to "A battleship fitted with battleship-class modules" it's still not guaranteed. Even if we go further and say "A battleship using bonused weapons and tank that suits the hull" it's still not guaranteed because there's a huge amount of nuance with weapon types, ammo types, active, passive and buffer tanks and so on.
Yes, there are still options that are guaranteed success in the "Insert time, collect ISK" sense that require no research, experience or skill, but players are punished harshly for trying to take that attitude to higher levels of gameplay, which isn't the case in WoW or many other MMOs.
"I left WoW for a competitive game and I found only Space WoW."
Only because you refuse to take part in most of the competitive aspects. Scratch that, all of EVE is competitive - every mission runner's profits are affected by how many other mission runners are making and cashing in LP and providing meta loot and salvage items to the market, however in most of the cases you're involved in it's simply impractical to act on that competition. A ganking campaign can ruin the gameplay of a single mission runner, but it’s not really feasible to gank enough to impact the supply of salvage or LP store items, for example, at least compared to applying the same effort to simply producing more items yourself. Trade is no exception; you’ve said yourself that it’s easier to diversify to less competitive markets than try and join in a more heavily competed one.
“@Druur: profit does. Even if I would be the best PvP-er of EVE, I'd be significantly poorer than today.”
You’re still the person who chose to define success largely around accumulation of ISK. Obviously you want enough income to make the game free to play and cover expenses for skillbooks, ships and fittings, but you’re the only one who defines success based on income above that threshold. If you’re the best PvPer in EVE, that’s competitive success right there, and again you’re the only one who decides whether that success matters or not.
There’s also more to competition in EVE than PvP. Exploration can be a race rather than a battle, for example; finding and completing sites before other players can do the same. You’re still the one who’s saying “I don’t care about this type of competitive gameplay.”
On the other hand, saying “EVE isn’t a competitive game because I only care about the parts of EVE that most strongly discourage direct competition with other players”, which is exactly what you’re doing right now, is blatantly false.
@Bobbins
Yep, I was thinking of that post/kill when I wrote that line, hence the '1' part of '1-3', but as Jester pointed out in the post it would only have taken a little buffer to have survived a single volley (possibly even turning on the EM hardener on that particular kill would have been enough), so I figured I'd err on the side of caution.
@Gevlon I enjoy reading your blog; even so I'm under the impression that today you're half-trolling.
In the case outlined in the comment above, to finance his habit of mining peacefully Mike would have to spend 102.6 euros per month. I don't think Eve would last a day with the numbers you propose. It would be much simpler to just remove Concord once and for all and make newbies non-targetable.
You say that people don't leave highsec because they are carebears and a make a big lump with all of them (included those who have their main null). Even though there's a lot of them, the problem is not how to relocate all of them but why an x% margin with better sense of adventure don't go to low and null. When you look at it as a matter of margins, would you still treat it as some sort of anthropological problem rather than one where some sort of equilibium is reached for some given conditions?
In other words if everything stays the same and the number of accounts subscribed and hours played is the same, because we all love Eve and want to play no matter what, there's two possible outcomes from nerfing highsec income:
1. some people leave highsec for lowsec and null.
2. people leave nullsec and amass even more in highsec.
Can you determine which one is true and which false without doubt? Because I think there are many tacit assumptions that are made here and not entirely verified.
@Clymenus: good point. It is possible that instead of getting battleships in null, I'd gate more T1 cruisers busily grinding lvl2 securities. I did not think of that option
@Hivemind: life could be competitive and it's only my fault that I live a middle class life instead of joining the local boxing club or go to Somalia and sign up for some random militia for good fights.
My point is that if you'd roleplay a character in EVE, you'd never leave highsec. Pilots only leave because they have bored players behind them. There is no reward or prize to claim in null for the average player (read tomorrows post)
"life could be competitive and it's only my fault that I live a middle class life instead of joining the local boxing club or go to Somalia and sign up for some random militia for good fights"
But would you say "Because my own income and living isn't affected by direct competition with other people, clearly life itself isn't very competitive"? That seems, at least to me, to be what you're saying about EVE with your complaints.
Since you mentioned awareness of more competitive lifestyles in the line I quoted, I'd assume that that's not a position you hold in real life, yet you're also aware of more directly competitive playstyles in EVE, like those of Sugar Kyle and Jester, but still say EVE as a whole isn't competitive.
"My point is that if you'd roleplay a character in EVE, you'd never leave highsec."
Why? I mean EVE characters are immortal, backed up by clone technology. They're just as likely to get bored in the low risk environment of hisec and take a jaunt to low/nullsec for excitement as their players would be. Without any serious long-term consequences like permanent injury or death, which is the case in EVE, you could even make a case for people joining militias for the thrill of the fight, which is pretty much what we're talking about with goodfights.
What is the benefit for CCP's profits? I don't see any more of the 1337 0.0 sociopaths subscribing because of it. Making hisec PvE more of a hassle will have to make some of the customers leave. There is no way it can be revenue positive for CCP. Just as a mechanic, it means I have a reason not to log in this week, since I don't have to buy a license. Then next week, then it occurs to me how to save $180 per year.
Re "However the top PvE players: exhumer miners, deadspace tengu ratters will have serious losses by staying in highsec, motivating them to move to null." what the PvE players are motivated to do is not play in high sec. One way to accomplish this is play in 0.0. Another is to unsub. Players don't like nerfs so emoragequit seems like a reasonable expectation for a number of them. The customers who decide to stay won't generate any more revenue.
I can't see any change you would enjoy improving CCP's profits and can't understand why a business exec would be such a M&S as to lower his profits.
The other buff/nerf I would put in;
Each time concord resources are called upon, their resourcing gets weaker (i.e. temporary drop in security status).
A lot of ganking in Jita, then concord resources are strecthed.
For the carebears that don't like that : allow loyalty points to be spent on supporting concord.
Gevlon,
I'm not sure your pricing makes sense unless you're trying to drive out carebears at least as far as mining is concerned
I believe the yield difference between Covetor and a Hulk is only a 25% increase assuming you've actually bothered to train Exhumers IV/V.
So to go from Covetor to Hulk I increase my revenue by 25% but my cost for flying a ship increases by 300%.
So lets say I mine enough in a week to get 40m isk with a Covetor. Upgraded to a fully trained Hulk would raise my income to 50m isk which is 50m short of just covering my weekly license cost.
I'll need to play 2.3x as long as I normal do to cover my license cost and maintain my profit.
While this isn't exactly in the same line as your ideas, the folks at CCP are indeed looking at driving/screwing industrialists out of high sec.
CCP Ytterbium says:
Q: ONE OF THE REASONS FOR LOW-SECURITY SPACE BEING CRAP REMAINS THAT HIGH-SECURITY STATIONS ARE TOO GOOD IN THE FIRST PLACE, DO YOU HAVE PLANS TO ADJUST THIS?
A: Indeed we do. This topic brought quite an internal discussion, and while this most likely won't be part of a Factional Warfare iteration, we do want to have a look at reducing high-security stations effectiveness to make other areas of space more interesting. Some examples could be reducing refining rates, increasing ISK payment to install jobs. Nothing is set in stone as this is not planned for the immediate future however. Another good idea we noticed here was to tie high-security tax with the war performance of its related Factional Warfare Militia. So if, by example, the Caldari Militia are losing the war in Factional Warfare, all taxes in Caldari State high-security space could go up to support the war effort.
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1865084
This goes in line with the increases in planetary interaction taxes in high sec. If CCP is smart, they'll carefully figure out how much to nerf it without making it so bad that half of highsec cancels their account.
However, I totally disagree with the premises of both the question and the response by CCP. Highsec has the population it has today because people don't want to be punching bags for jerks (not all the time, anyway). You can't fix that issue by pushing them into smaller rooms with the bullies. You can't fix that issue by making them "play nice" with the jerks.
I'm not thrilled about the idea of getting forced into low/null. Our corp was one of the many forced out of Tribute by Goon. I left some stuff in high sec so that even if I lost *everything* in the move to null, then I would have enough stuff to get back on my feet. Some of the folks lost a lot of ships due to screwing around during the evacuation; I'm torqued off at losing all my PI stuff. Someone got them, and if they get ice, they have enough PI stuff to make 2 months of fuel blocks for a large tower and about 10M of T2 missiles. I'm more pissed off about the lost rocket fuel than the fuel blocks, and my corpies are complaining about the lack of missiles. HTFU, go buy some in Jita now.
Our corp was mostly made of newbies, and we lost about 1/2 moving to null, and we lost another half in the departure. Most of the ones we lost have quit the game (I know because they contracted their stuff to others before logging off for the last time). I know that HTFU is the reply they'd get, but you know, they pay $15/month to have fun, not get beaten up by the playground bullies.
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