Greedy Goblin

Friday, March 13, 2015

Cleansing fire

The "community" can't see how come CCP is so obtuse. I mean only a blind can't see that with the proposed Entosis mechanic there will be impossible to hold meaningful amount of Sov. Trolls with disposable and hard-to-catch ships will be impossible to get rid of, as they are having fun trolling you and suffer no losses, even if their ship explodes. This will kill nullsec life.

However, if you read the dev topic, you found the post of Fozzie telling NPC corp pilots will be able to reinforce systems, despite they obviously can't capture it. This must tell us something! I mean "trollceptors will depopulate nullsec" is a very logical prediction, but it's still just that: a prediction. An opinion that devs might not share (after all they thought Incarna was a good idea). However it's a fact that NPC corp pilots have no other reason than trolling when activating Entosis module. If they let that happen, that means CCP wants trolls and assholes destroy Sov-null.

Now why would CCP want to destroy Sov-nullsec? Because they have no other option left. They release a fire that consumes everything and hope that something regrows in its place. They don't know what it will be, all they have is hope. Their alternative is shutting down the server and file for bankruptcy. Why?

Because the sad state of nullsec has nothing to do with mechanics, structure HPs, jump ranges or anything. Back when HBC attacked SoCo, Goons evicted TEST, or N3/PL evicted Russians to create B0T/NA land, the mechanics were the same and grinding stations in battlecruisers still wasn't fun. Yet people undocked, fought, planned, won and lost.

The reason is that all the players (people who play EVE as a game) were beaten out of nullsec and all that's left is a bunch of workers who make money from EVE, either as RMT-ers or PLEX-affiliates. They used to make treaties to prevent destroying each other, therefore the risk of being destroyed. But after they lost $300000 to an unpaid Sov bill and a few trigger-happy FCs, they made treaties to never even exchange bullets, since anything can escalate. Since then they live in different corners of the universe, protected by buffer zones and feeding BRAVE scraps to their PvP-ers.

While CFC could be destroyed overnight by no longer allowing affiliates make money from game time sales, no game company can completely eliminate RMT. As long as there is RMT, the optimal way of "playing" is making sure that no one threatens the ratting bot carriers. Which means more peace treaties. Any reasonable person would prefer $ over game fun. After all, they can still have fun in other games while making money in EVE.

By the Entosis link, CCP empowers the only ones who still play the game. MoA, Snuff Box, -EH-, Bombers bar, Tri, Pizza and similar trolls, troublemakers and undesirables. You know that I despise friglolling. But even I have to accept that friglolling is better than the nothing we have now. You also don't have to like the new nullsec which will be mostly freeported and unclaimed. You don't have to like the pirates who burn it down, just to make people cry on local. But no one else is willing to stand up against the RMT-ers and the PLEX-affiliates. The pirates aren't the heroes we deserve, but they are definitely the heroes we need right now.

26 comments:

Provi miner said...

Provi says no, we have the population to hold against the trolls, and the willingness to log in reclaimed what was lost the day before.

W said...

And why do people rmt?

Psychology,greed, other primitive desires.


Oh also EVE HAS FRIGGIN WATER MECHANICS, and a ton of other subtle psychology stuff thrown in as an attempt to get players to play as long as possible.

After all, ccp employees aren't gods.
If they were, they'd lose the lore, promote ingame scripting, put an ai in charge of the whole thing, and then kick back with a nice ice cold beverage of their choice.

Sieonigh said...

im a member of -EH- and i feel i just got called a scumbag for being a pirate troll, meh im having fun anyway :p
besides the current meta for us is T3 desys with lol frig support

Anonymous said...

So basically, a "Black Swan" event to pop the PLEX price bubble.

... that seems pretty fatal to CCP. I've never considered them all that great at game design to begin with... so I have to assume that what they THINK will happen is not going to be what actually happens.

PLEX prices are in a bubble. There is PLEX in, there is PLEX out... basic supply and demand. But I don't think the price of PLEX is in a balance of supply/demand... rather it's in a speculation bubble. And it's huge.

PLEX is huge. The PLEX market cannot fail, CCP even has a "Central bank" set up to prevent it. At one point, they took PLEX from BANNED ACCOUNTS and used it to "stabilize" the market. Think about it... those were banned accounts. That PLEX was GONE. They might as well have printed PLEX to prop up the market and left the banned PLEX in the banned accounts. It would have been the same thing. And since there is no public paper trail as to what banned accounts were tapped, then it's the same thing. Accounting 101: The Audit trail. No Audit trail? It didn't happen like you said it did.

If this is about a cleansing fire in Null, then this is about PLEX.

Anonymous said...

"no game company can completely eliminate RMT"

I'm not convinced of this. Sure, you can't eliminate 100.00% of it... but you should be able to eliminate a sufficiently large percentage to make THE VAST MAJORITY reconsider even thinking of doing it.

Game economies aren't like "real world" economies. There is no possibility of "black market" transactions of your game currency. Every POSSIBLE way for your game currency to enter or leave the hands of a player is trackable.

And track it you must. Every transaction.

Then you apply the analytics.

First, is the transaction outside the bounds of a "fair market" value? Those are the ones you want to monitor.

Next, is it between characters on the same account, or between accounts owned by the same person? You can ignore those.

Next, how many of them are there?

People engaging in RMT should show up like sore thumbs under that lens.

Anonymous said...

You and I don't always see eye to eye, but I agree with you on this. These sov mechanics are shit.
I don't believe that the cfc and others are becoming rich (if they make $5 per 60 day time code, how many would they need to get rich? You'd need to sell 500 per month to make a modest living of 2500 per month)

This will troll, and I'm sure there will be a lot lot lot of trolls

Anonymous said...

It is rather rich coming from the goons regarding the use of cheap disposable ships to go out and troll.

Not to mention it has been the staple of highsec piracy since, forever.

I was amused at the success of goon lobby to de-frag syphons. We threaten to fly around low-sec bending over to pick up nickles. please ignore our $1000 notes on the tables of null moons.

As for the "its the end of coalition" - dream on. The only way would be to completely break the back of moon-goo and install mechanics to crush renting. (which is impossible).

As am amusing note, Fozzie commented that Null is basically a isk hydrant cranked up past eleven. And as usual I expect the usual forum warriors to continue to to campaign for a troll nerf of HS income. Somewhere a carebear is enjoying eve in the forge. Must keep some awake at night.

maxim said...

I agree that Entosis is an enthropic factor in the system, and was introduced specifically for the sake of desorganizing it.

I doubt this will lead to an all-out Sov exodus, though. Setting up "Entosis patrols" should be easy enough for RMTers.

Gevlon said...

@Maxim: the hourly wage you can earn from playing EVE at the average level is low. Even my 50-60B/month income translates to $6-700/month on the black market, which is crap.

RMT works on extensive botting and using players (who ask for no salary, not even in ISK) to capture moons.

Unlike large battles that decide the fate of moons, patrolling against Entosis trolls isn't fun, so has to be paid. Even if you place only one guard per system and pay him only $2/hour, you are facing a $320 bill for a month. No way in hell you can rent a system for that money.

So you either abandon Sov (while retaining moons) or you use slave labor (CTA/paplink) but that will diminish as players abandon your alliance/the game.

Fidtz said...

Amazing, sounds like it might be worth trying to reactivate my account.

I always thought sov should be something that you might lose right now unless you are actively patrolling and maintaining it with real bodies in ships in space.

It limits the sizes of regions due to geometric surface/attack area increases if you have to patrol everywhere.

Large alliances will still have obvious advantanges but they will not multiply up in a stack as they do now.

Well, if CCP doesn't back down.

daniel said...

"patrolling against Entosis trolls isn't fun"

yet moonholding alliances are doing this on a daily basis because of siphons. and if you shoot one of their pocos, a scout is coming over within minutes - must be something related to the api, or maybe an automated message, i don't know, but maybe ccp will implement the same notification thing for in case an hostile entosis thing is activated.

other than that,
"that means CCP wants trolls and assholes destroy Sov-null." isn't this what already happned :)


ccp indeed shoudln't put too much thought into the "gamedesign" aspect, a new ecosystem will develope, and you are right, it wont differ too much from the current one.
the real problem is that there is too much isk in this game, losing a ceptor with an entosis mod is not meaningful, as is losing a ratting carrier, or an entire fleet.

if those players that advocate for a change in eve the loudest would really mean what they say, they would happily agree to a massive isk-sink for rich players and alliances. the sov system itself isn't the problem so much, but if a sov.attacker has spent a year grinding for a fleet, and the defender has that fleet times 100 in the hangars, the outcome is predictable.


if ccp were smart gamedesigners, they would implement this system not within one release, but spreaded, like if they release the station service hacking thing one or two cycles more early, they could gather data on how players use it, and adapt.
but allthough they promised to use the shorter cycles to improve new stuff over time, the way they treated industry after crius indicates that they won't.

Basil said...

I think that it's a little early to be predicting the doom of nullsec, considering that the devs haven't even finished designing it yet. Also, they were clear that it would get revised if needed, and completely depopulating null would make a revision needed, in their minds.

I think they want to break null up into smaller empires, but not reduce the numbers of players there.

Fidtz said...

Even a cursory look at the wikipedia article on entosis shows gevlon to be right about CCP's intentions.

"entosis acts as a nonapoptotic cell death mechanism, and could possibly be a new way in which cancer cells can be killed"

Gevlon said...

@daniel: patrolling against siphons is rewarding and easy: you get the siphon mail, the stolen moon material and you can do it in your own time. If you catch that siphon half an hour later, nothing happens. If you don't catch the Entosis frig NOW, bye-bye Sov

daniel said...

you have like what, 20min reaction time, in which you don't _have_ to catch the frig, but simply counter entosis, until your friends show up in something that can kill a frig, and yes a fittedt caracal will cost less than the ceptor plus entosis mod - given that ppl join fw to farm killmails of <5m frigs, a 50m entosis ceptor km should be rewarding enough to field a handfull of cruisers, dessies or t1 frigs, all of which will eat or drive off a ceptor within seconds - even a solo t1 frig will kill it, and because it's the station of the defender, there will be a stack of prefittedt ones to instantly reship. ppl will turn it into a minigame, who killed the most entosis ceptors, alliances will hand out monthly prices for the top.performers and so on ... no, ceptors and the like won't be much of a problem at all.

those siphons that get killed with goo in them were those of less smart siphoners, those that didn't patrol them themself and grab the goo before the patrol came. after all, the notification window for a hostile siphon seems to be a few hours, while you get notices about a poco being shot within an instant, and i assume it will be the same amount of time for the entosis thing.

Zyan said...

If fighting in NULL is a lot about moons, why doesn't CCP make those moons drying out?
i.e. if you have a R64-moon, after some time all the expensive resource is taken. The moon is still there, but the ressource is gone.
While it is gone here, it will pop somewhere else in the Universe, a moon will become the new R64.

So at least for moons the big ones have to move to keep their moon income.

Anonymous said...

@daniel "assume"

[..]During the vulnerability period any character can activate an Entosis Link on the Sovereignty structures to begin the process of reinforcing it. Once the first cycle of the Entosis Link completes and the capture progress begins the Alliance who owns the structure will be notified of the attack and will need to respond in order to prevent the attackers from reinforcing the structure.[..]
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/politics-by-other-means/#PRIME

[..]When the first cycle of the Entosis Link completes, this triggers an alert for everyone in the system (including docked players) and the fact that the station is under attack is visible in a new Sov Structure system info panel on the right hand side of the screen. Blackhawk Alliance members with the correct roles also receive a notification letting them know about the attack.[..]

under "Hypothetical Example Battle"

and now you know.

Anonymous said...

Zyan said...
"If fighting in NULL is a lot about moons, why doesn't CCP make those moons drying out?"

CCP appears to want to make "null" about giant, glorious space battles between giant, glorious, and massively expensive ships.

This works for them from a marketing standpoint. For example... who hasn't heard of the battle for B-R5RB that gevlon mentioned in the blog post? where an estimated 300,000 dollars worth of ships were destroyed?

For this level of carnage to be possible, the isk faucets in null have to be, and I quote, "isk hydrants cranked up past 11." It's not just moons, it's all of it.

Once you have a Titan destroyed in battle, the only path is to have 2 destroyed in the next one. Then 10... then 100... etc. The winning move was NOT TO HAVE TITANS IN THE FIRST PLACE. Now you have this giant bubble that can only get bigger and bigger.

Cutting off that flow of isk now would be like denying crack addicts their crack.

Anonymous said...

Give us the tools to wage the war (Entosis link), and we will make null burn... so bright you will see it in the south.

NPC alliances already have nothing....and nothing is what we will allow our enemies to have.

Massadeath (MOA)

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately the same thing will just happen again with different (or maybe even the same) groups coming out on top. Success of alliances works on a "success to the successful" archetype, any slight advantage will reinforce itself exponentially to make that alliance stronger until they are bloated and stagnant like today, and competing alliances weaker and weaker. ie, taking a few moons lets you have more SRP, which lets you take even more moons, which gives even higher SRP, and so on and so forth. Replace moons with renters or whatever the FOTM income source is.

CCP would be better off having "rounds" of EVE that last say, 5 years, then doing a complete server reset, rather than having a (nominal) sandbox that lasts forever. I guess though this will fly under the radar of the hardcore "don't touch my emergent-sandbox" supporters while essentially being the same thing.

Anonymous said...

"in its wake there will follow a storm..."

Interesting angle to look at it, a cleansing fire that forces player density sounds promising

Unknown said...

Can't wait for that crappy idea to happen, which I seriously doubt will happen.

There might be a real probability that people who lose sov via entosis trolling will sell their stuff and mpve on to other games, Mittens might cry over it, but his slave workers will not. They do not need capitals anymore, since no bottom up income structure will be generated...
I wonder what gimmick CCP wants to throw in after a significant amount of players decide to give EVE a well deserved rest...

Anonymous said...

Oh really? After seeing a noob suffer a particularly vicious loss I sold him a Plex for the price for the price of a skill book I needed (10m isk). Under your scheme my act of charity would see us both banned for rmt.

Anonymous said...

What I see is this: CCP is tired of giving carrots to NULL to 'continue to make the news', NULL spitting in their face and CCP having to take that carrot away. CCP is tired of false promises of 'newsworthy content' and getting nothing but Hulkageddeon and Burn Jita, literally yesterdays news. CCP is tired of reinforcing the hardware to allow huge space battles and NULL breaking them on purpose. CCP is fed up with a one-sided relationship and wants to try something new.

Phase One: Limit travel and encourage local industry (hw may times have they attempted this?) Let the NULL leaders know that industry is the way forward; get people to start scouting like you own it and want to keep it, helping those logi (you grudingly accept) and those miners (you flat out hate).

Phase Two: Reinforce owning and living in your area with a mechanic that says ... if you want to keep it, get out of highsec and live in your space. More hints that industry is the way of the future.

Phase 2.5: ALL industry (to include mining and research) makes it into the indices to further encourage local living. Leaders are encouraged to recruit even MORE logi, miners and researchers as they are now the backbone of sov gameplay.

Phase Three: If you built it, it is now destructible (retroactive also ... I am looking at you outposts). If you did not see the writing on the wall, to bad - so sad - hate to be you. NULL leaders scramble to get with the program / smaller alliances who are inclusive (i.e. are not making real money of their members - gambling/PLEX sales/membership fees) carve out and hold their sov while their much larger neighbors burn.

I know there is a little tinfoil-ry in there, but having played this long and seeing CCP flip-flop so often when it comes to null, the current events kind of makes sense.

Anonymous said...

"Oh really? After seeing a noob suffer a particularly vicious loss I sold him a Plex for the price for the price of a skill book I needed (10m isk). Under your scheme my act of charity would see us both banned for rmt."

I assume you're talking to me, Anonymous at 13 March, 2015 05:13.

I said monitor, not auto-ban. I expect the best mechanic would be to disallow the trade if it falls outside a range of acceptability, like within 25% of value. So your plex would have to be traded for something with a value between .75*plex and 1.00*plex. (You would use the higher value side of the trade to determine the range.)

Tragically, that would also prevent pretty much all scamming in Jita, and the "Isk doubling" schemes. And RMT.

After all, how would a GM know if you were actually going around, being a little angel and passing out plex like candy out of altruism or an RMTer?

Of course, a ramification of this is it would block the "Give Isk" function from working, so Gevlon couldn't donate billions to MoA, etc. They would need to add a "Contract type: Charitable Donation" mechanic that is scrutinized by GMs.

mugg said...

The obsession with ill-though out mechanical systems to prevent non-issues like that in a sandbox is silly and easy to circumvent, instead of giving someone who buys 1b ISK 1b of loot or cash they will simply use a dead drop or sell 4b of loot for 3b.

You would also destroy the Angel Project and other charities, annoy betting services and customers, most people who run alts, SRP services, mercenaries, contract traders, etc.