In an unprecedented event, the leaders of the Sov-holder alliances made a declaration how they want to change Sov mechanics.
These suggestions aim at one thing: to forever stabilize their situation and allow them to earn real money from playing EVE (by selling third-party content and as PLEX-affiliates and totally not by illicit RMT) without the risk of either a new empire ending their income or infighting between each other "because of a Falcon".
I urge CCP to realize that the signatories are personally depending on Nullsec being stagnant and would go great length to prevent any conflict. The best event that ever happened in EVE - B-R - which brought unprecedented player influx to EVE is their worst nightmare. Where we see a spectacular battle, they see $300000 lost income! The ISK they have to give to their pilots to reimburse the losses is an ISK they can't keep for themselves for "purposes". Remember when Montolio lost his coalition overnight for trying to play EVE instead of Jabber or when Nulli was reseted for trying to remove Providence that serves as a distraction for all to prevent a N3-CFC conflict.
The crucial point is "We believe that vast swathes of conquerable nullsec are essentially worthless to our line members and can only support the activity of a handful of players in each system. We would like to see the value of individual systems increased to support a dense ecosystem of players undocked and interacting within single system." In short: "we need solar systems to allow more ratters". This is numerically provable lie. Let's look at the Dotlan toplist of August. Best ratting system: RQNF-9 with 578665 rat kills. So you can surely kill at least this amount of rats in a single system. If we assume that it's the theoretical maximum (it's not), than in all 3295 nullsec systems people could kill 1900 million rats in a month. Number of rats killed in August in Nullsec: 97M. Yes, that's about 5% utilization and these shameless liars claim that nullsec is full and ratting should be made easier.
Why do they do it? Let me translate "a dense ecosystem of players undocked and interacting within single system": "50+ Nyxes ratting in the same system in fleet under cynojam." Each is farming in its own anom, if one is tackled, the rest warp to it and no small gang can break the spider tank of 50+ Nyxes! Currently such farm is impossible as a system can't support more than 4-6 Nyxes, that is too small number to tank BL, Snuff Box, MoA, Tri or Hard Knocks (they didn't sign, surprise!).
In the proposed Nullsec, most of the current ratters would be in a few systems, leaving the rest of the space available for bad players to form buffer zones where the big players and third-party pirates could satisfy their bloodlust. Please note that "creating conflict" and "allowing small alliances in" are mutually exclusive. Why would the big ones attack each other while a single small one is alive?! Protected by these buffer zones and wanting nothing that the other have, the signatories can sell their titans and keep the ISK. Hell, they don't need the 1000 Megas either, so they can keep the SRP fund too, the members won't need it anyway. If their suggestions comes true, there won't be a single strategic battle ever again in Nullsec!
What should CCP do instead? What they did with ice belts! Anoms spawn and if you rat them out, they won't respawn in X hours, you must move to another system. Make the spawn rate so high that perfect ratting would allow a bit less than what's killed today. This would make the space used, as ratters would need to move around. It would also force PvP as safeing up and waiting for local to clear would mean that others kill the limited anoms.
Their "occupancy-based sovereignty" suggestion just underlines their aim to avoid any conflict. They don't want to put titans or even 1000 Megas to risk. They literally want to capture land by ratting. The systems where their supers are ratting would be on max index, the rest be damned.
What CCP needs is making space a scarce resource, something worth fighting for, something that everyone wishes and only the best can own. The signatories want the very opposite: space being abundant and so worthless that literally anyone can own some. Please understand that there are two limiting factors over making ISK: resources and your time. If a resource is limited, people will have free time that they'll use it fighting for the resource or just for fun. If the resource is unlimited, there is no need to fight and all your time is consumed by making ISK anyway.
Of course there is no need for doomsaying. With the FW-farm-disaster CCP shown that while they are prone to ruin the economy with totally unbalanced features, they also shown that they aren't shy to fix them overnight. If this abomination would be implemented, they would see the runaway ISK influx from Nyx-farms and would stop further damage. But still, it would be much better if this wouldn't be implemented.
One personal comment: such amount of nerf-begging and demanding the devs to give them freebies would make Arthasdklól of WoW ashamed.
These suggestions aim at one thing: to forever stabilize their situation and allow them to earn real money from playing EVE (by selling third-party content and as PLEX-affiliates and totally not by illicit RMT) without the risk of either a new empire ending their income or infighting between each other "because of a Falcon".
I urge CCP to realize that the signatories are personally depending on Nullsec being stagnant and would go great length to prevent any conflict. The best event that ever happened in EVE - B-R - which brought unprecedented player influx to EVE is their worst nightmare. Where we see a spectacular battle, they see $300000 lost income! The ISK they have to give to their pilots to reimburse the losses is an ISK they can't keep for themselves for "purposes". Remember when Montolio lost his coalition overnight for trying to play EVE instead of Jabber or when Nulli was reseted for trying to remove Providence that serves as a distraction for all to prevent a N3-CFC conflict.
The crucial point is "We believe that vast swathes of conquerable nullsec are essentially worthless to our line members and can only support the activity of a handful of players in each system. We would like to see the value of individual systems increased to support a dense ecosystem of players undocked and interacting within single system." In short: "we need solar systems to allow more ratters". This is numerically provable lie. Let's look at the Dotlan toplist of August. Best ratting system: RQNF-9 with 578665 rat kills. So you can surely kill at least this amount of rats in a single system. If we assume that it's the theoretical maximum (it's not), than in all 3295 nullsec systems people could kill 1900 million rats in a month. Number of rats killed in August in Nullsec: 97M. Yes, that's about 5% utilization and these shameless liars claim that nullsec is full and ratting should be made easier.
Why do they do it? Let me translate "a dense ecosystem of players undocked and interacting within single system": "50+ Nyxes ratting in the same system in fleet under cynojam." Each is farming in its own anom, if one is tackled, the rest warp to it and no small gang can break the spider tank of 50+ Nyxes! Currently such farm is impossible as a system can't support more than 4-6 Nyxes, that is too small number to tank BL, Snuff Box, MoA, Tri or Hard Knocks (they didn't sign, surprise!).
In the proposed Nullsec, most of the current ratters would be in a few systems, leaving the rest of the space available for bad players to form buffer zones where the big players and third-party pirates could satisfy their bloodlust. Please note that "creating conflict" and "allowing small alliances in" are mutually exclusive. Why would the big ones attack each other while a single small one is alive?! Protected by these buffer zones and wanting nothing that the other have, the signatories can sell their titans and keep the ISK. Hell, they don't need the 1000 Megas either, so they can keep the SRP fund too, the members won't need it anyway. If their suggestions comes true, there won't be a single strategic battle ever again in Nullsec!
What should CCP do instead? What they did with ice belts! Anoms spawn and if you rat them out, they won't respawn in X hours, you must move to another system. Make the spawn rate so high that perfect ratting would allow a bit less than what's killed today. This would make the space used, as ratters would need to move around. It would also force PvP as safeing up and waiting for local to clear would mean that others kill the limited anoms.
Their "occupancy-based sovereignty" suggestion just underlines their aim to avoid any conflict. They don't want to put titans or even 1000 Megas to risk. They literally want to capture land by ratting. The systems where their supers are ratting would be on max index, the rest be damned.
What CCP needs is making space a scarce resource, something worth fighting for, something that everyone wishes and only the best can own. The signatories want the very opposite: space being abundant and so worthless that literally anyone can own some. Please understand that there are two limiting factors over making ISK: resources and your time. If a resource is limited, people will have free time that they'll use it fighting for the resource or just for fun. If the resource is unlimited, there is no need to fight and all your time is consumed by making ISK anyway.
Of course there is no need for doomsaying. With the FW-farm-disaster CCP shown that while they are prone to ruin the economy with totally unbalanced features, they also shown that they aren't shy to fix them overnight. If this abomination would be implemented, they would see the runaway ISK influx from Nyx-farms and would stop further damage. But still, it would be much better if this wouldn't be implemented.
One personal comment: such amount of nerf-begging and demanding the devs to give them freebies would make Arthasdklól of WoW ashamed.
17 comments:
I thought Eve Hermit had a pretty good point as well: https://evehermit.wordpress.com/2014/09/30/invalid-space/
"It pays to be circumspect when listening to the propaganda of the Null Sec Lords. It is not difficult to see how they try to control the narrative of these discussions and debates. A classic approach is to say if you do not live and breathe Null Sec, your opinion shouldn’t be heard, and doesn’t matter.
At the forefront of the suggestions is to add NPC Null Sec space to every region. That will make it easier for people to stage offences into Sov Null Sec. It seems to have merit – until you stop and think about it. In a new world where Capital ship movements are restricted, it allows the current Null Sec Lords to leave caches of Capital fleets all over the map, safe in NPC stations. It allows them to bypass new force projection rules. It allows them to more easily harass other groups or defend themselves.
None of the suggestions will shake up the current status quo – it won’t open Null Sec up to new powers, it won’t topple the current winners of EVE."
Their "occupancy-based sovereignty" suggestion just underlines their aim to avoid any conflict.
Actually.. no. Occupancy-based sov is all about increasing the *density* of populations in nulsec and reducing the need for a space empire to *have* to take a quarter of the map to pay for it's existence.
The large empires wont be able to keep their enormous amounts of territory, so necessarily more entities will enter the fray. this is a conflict driver.
Large coalitions which exist right now to protect large amounts of territory. Without the need to protect large amounts of territory you'll see coalitions get smaller, fracture, with groups breaking away to fend for themselves. This is a conflict driver.
Indeed the coalitions would break up, but no one would have to fend for himself. The alliances wouldn't need more than a constellation and even if they'd evict someone for lols, they couldn't keep it due to occupancy based indexes (they don't live outside their constellation). So nullsec would turn a huge non-invasion pact with irrelevant frigate skirmishes.
You forget the NPC station in each area of the game to counter the next update of CCP for outpost: make they destructible. So the stock all ressources on NPC station at end.
Indeed the coalitions would break up, but no one would have to fend for himself. The alliances wouldn't need more than a constellation and even if they'd evict someone for lols, they couldn't keep it due to occupancy based indexes (they don't live outside their constellation). So nullsec would turn a huge non-invasion pact with irrelevant frigate skirmishes.
That's a long bow you draw... and why would it turn into a huge non-invasion pact with irrelevant frigate skirmishes? because you say it would? Logic right there..
Without the need to manage and maintain what are incredibly unwieldy organizations for the sake of maintaining in game livelihood, alliances would be free to actually engage their enemies in open war...because this is fun, and what they actually want to be doing anyway. The NIPs exist right now because nobody wants to structure grind for sov, and nobody can afford to lose their massive empires because if they lose them they can't afford to defend themselves. I.e. right now there is a minimum practical size that an entity needs to be to defend space and that minimum size is actually pretty enormous.
"use it or lose it" is not only fair, it aligns with your philosophy of "work hard, win at the game, don't accept handouts". I think you are only railing against this because "grr goons" and "grr themittani"..not because of any practical reason to be upset about it.
It is a human trait to generally make a deal with the guy who lives next to your border so they dont keep popping across and fighting with you.
What makes you think Eve is not played by humans?
The mechanics themselves would enforce NIPs. Since you can't live in their space, you can't even capture it due to occupancy Sov, unless you abandon your old space and move to their space. But they can't care less, they just go somewhere else.
Firstly, you probably shouldn't lead off with RMT tinfoil. Most people will just roll their eyes and not even read on.
Secondly, your idea would be to make null pointelss? To make it so bad for making isk that highsec would be the choice? highsec is already better for isk making than null just from missions alone. You yourself have shown that you need to put in nearly zero effort to make buckets and buckets of cash. Why should null sec be made even lower on the income ladder than highsec?
Highsec doesn't create ISK, it destroys it. In highsec you mostly create LP items.
That being said, highsec income would deserve an income nerf, but it can't be replaced by a huge nullsec buff.
"Highsec doesn't create ISK, it destroys it. In highsec you mostly create LP items."
It also creates isk in the form of bounties and isk rewards. Null has the same, there's bounties (isk creation) and then there drops, moon goo, rental income (isk transference). the difference is that in null there's a real risk of you getting blown up and it takes a lot of effort to gain a lot of isk. In high sec, it takes 10 minutes a day trading, an hour a day AFK mining or a few hours a day blitzing.
Honestly, trading should be the part that is nuked. It's clear that there's a massive imbalance there since trading for a month can give you enough isk to never care about losses again.
Trading creates no value. Everything a trader makes is an ISK taken from other players. Trading is a PvP activity, not farming.
In addition to the RMT tinfoilery, the ratting Nyx trope is silly, too. Quite wisely, there's nothing in the statement that says *how* nullsec should be modified to support increased numbers of pilots. It could easily be done in a way that isn't friendly to supercapitals and cyno-jammers. The obvious (oft-suggested) way is to add mission agents to some nullsec stations.
But please, don't let the obvious, gapping holes in your argument get in the way of spreading FUD.
Nyxes are the most obvious way to abuse player density, but even if they are somehow restrained into subcaps, the fact remains that 500+ friendlies will be ratting in 3 jumps distance and ready to respond to any roaming fleets. While you can score kills against that, it's clear that pirates won't have much chance.
The question I suppose is - is it bad if people rat in Nyxes?
The life of a ratting Nyx is merry, it goes on for a while until it winds up dropped on and blown up. Then you get an ALOD to enjoy.
They can't be dropped. The system is cynojammed, the nearest alliance with 50 able bodies is 5 regions away and there are 500 friendlies in 3 jumps away.
It would seem the obvious answer to large coalitions seeding NPC outposts with Caps or using them as staging posts is simple enough - prevent any pilots belonging to a Sov Holding entity person non grata at these stations i.e. negative standings to the NPC faction holding the station.
I know this wouldn't prevent alts etc but it would be an ease of use barrier.
Well... from reading the article and the comments here, it indeed seems that the Space Emperors would like to take their Roman Empire type things and extract the same money from... Italy alone.
Fast forward past the industrial revolution and voila - Italy today likely has a far higher GDP (even when adjusted for population) than the entire Roman Empire had 2000 years back. Not to talk about its near neighbor Germany.
Plus once the last big war raged in Europe, leaders have realized how much is at stake and it's the first time ever (historians please correct me when I am wrong here) that Western and Central Europe (leaving out the Balkan) have not been at war for 3 generations.
As Gevlon states, great for living in these times, but hell boring for the history books.
Translated to this video game, this could well be the point where Eve Online turns into Sim Space Online. Which I (noob as I am to this game) would find a damn pity.
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