Posted - 2006.09.15 20:27:00 - [2]

 

So you want to lay final blow to majority of 0.0 systems? No one wants to go 0.0 if there aint anything interesting there (no, not all people want to mine you know).

Posted - 2006.09.15 20:48:00 - [4]

 

NPCing in general is holding us back. So is mining for that matter.

1.5M isk spawns are just some of the more glaring aspects of it.

I have no problem with newbies using npcs to pull themselves up to a certain level of competence and financial possibility. However, they should not be a part of end-game content.

A player run economy also means that players are the source and direction of all employment.

POS need to be rethought, and then expanded. All npc stations need to be nerfed if required, especially the insta-refining.

Posted - 2006.09.15 21:25:00 - [6]

 

Actually, inflation would be atrocious because there is an unlimited supply of minerals.

All it would take is one guy mining for a day or two to flood the market with these refined mineral-exchange tokens and bam.

Nothing is worth anything anymore.

In order for a "gold standard" to be functional it has to be a precious material of which there is a strongly limited supply.

Me.

Posted - 2006.09.15 22:06:00 - [8]

 

Edited by: Reggie Stoneloader on 15/09/2006 22:26:12
One guy mining for a day or two would produce enough minerals to maybe build a battleship. The ingots can be converted back and forth into minerals with no loss, the the value of the ingot is just 100 times the value of the mineral it's made of. It's not an abstract quantity, it's a resource, and its value is concretely bound by the stuff it can be turned into.

But there's no real way to go from the current system to that one without doing serious harm to the game, so forget I said anything.

Lienzo, you're touching on a topic that's close to my heart. The idea of EvE being populated by military-industrial complexes that are self-sufficient and capable of recruiting, equipping and paying a combat fleet to defend their means of production is one of my favorite daydreams.

I think it's even possible, if the combat subsidies of ratting and missions were done away with, and the horrible T2 gap was closed, we might realize it.

I'm not going to hold my breath, though. It would diversify the game for everyone, rather than just adding advancement opportunities for the high-level players, which seems to be the philosophy of CCP when it comes to additional content.

Posted - 2006.09.15 22:32:00 - [10]

 

You make a good point there, but if miners really were rich, and their wealth had to be transported physically through space, then piracy and escort work would become a zillion times more important.

Right now, a huge portion of the economy is loot from rats being traded for isk that's earned from rat bounties. Combat characters have all the money and all the best hardware. If you got rid of the bounties for random grinding on NPCs and instead had people fighting each other for profit, there'd be more fighting, more cooperation, and a more vibrant world.

How cool would it be if ransoms took the form of loot acquisition? You pull up in your Armageddon, draw a bead on the hauler, scan to find that they're full of compressed Zydrine, and say, "Drop 600 cubic meters of that stuff and you're free to go". Then you scoop and skedaddle. You can't carry any more anyway, so everyone wins.

Posted - 2006.09.16 09:51:00 - [12]

 

are you stupid or something?! WHY THE F should i wonna go to 0.0, where i WILL (by some point) be killed AND POPPET, without reason, just becouse some one thinks its fun,if there wasn`T anything really good to hunt or get out there?

(NO i am flying a INTERCEPTOR SO ITS NOT BECOUSE I WANNA DO IT THE EASY WAY)
but their`e should be bs spawns and dreads etc in 0.0..

Originally by: Lienzo

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This is much like with instas. We're better off without them. If it can't be fixed, just cauterize the wound.

In missions, complexes and belts alike, just get rid of all BS sized npcs. Get rid of BS sized bounties.

If you really want to fill that empty db space, add more npc cepters, drones, and make them meaner and leaner and have more aggressive behavior. Guristas kyoukan or other npc frig should be the low level npc frigs.

Leave a couple arrogators in 1.0 space for the newbs to learn on. They are good for popping afk haulers at least.

When you do this, losing BS and cepters will hurt just a little bit again. People will switch back to BCs or Cruisers for blobbing. More people might try to go out to 0.0 by their third month. (probably not, but maybe like 10% more, which could make a difference in the long run)

The people that will be building BS will be the npcing masochists, or perhaps those who work out for-pay mercenaryship with industrialists, and hopefully POS owners. Increase the pool of individuals who seek to buy products from POS operators. Then the pressure will be on amongst POS owners to procure dreads, even though they will be mega-expensive without complexes handy. I'm almost starting to favor the idea of reverse engineering because what the indirect socializing effect of the bpo lottery has basically taken hold as much as needed. However, I would still prefer to see other markets interacting with POS. They should be the best factories and refineries, not npc stations, plain and simple. It would help if frigate and cruiser factories actually cost less than BS ones though.

I would prefer to see a 0.0 full of cruisers and tacklers but only peppered with BS. Because it is easier to grind isk than to grind mins, we have a t2 glut. Get POS involved more with t1 ship production too for the love of all that is fun.

Give POS distributed defense so that even cruiser squads can cause some trouble for player owned structures in the long run, although BS/Dreads should still be required to install the headstone on a POS.

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Posted - 2006.09.16 21:57:00 - [14]

 

The reason there is not much trade in 0.0 and lowsec is simple - there are thousands of products and not that many traders. Ids quite easy to find markets with big margins in empire simply because there are thousands of products and only 50-100 market orders per specialised trade character. So You can easily find 50 items to place low buy orders in safe space.

The other reason for low trade in 0.0 is 0.0 culture, where lots of people prefer to spend 2 hours en route to empire, 2 hours going back, risk death, employ scouts, and whine on alliance forums, then spend those 4 hours ratting (120 million earned average) but pay 500k more for 5 T2 drones.

Anyways.

It wuld be enough to remove chaining. Without chaining, ratting wuld need about 5 times more space to make the same money. Groups controlling vast areas, wuld be still able to make fortune ratting, but densly habited areas wuld enforce other moneymaking activities (arm mining mainly).

Posted - 2006.09.17 03:27:00 - [16]

 

PvE is a crutch for those who just want to grind on mobs all day like in every other MMO or single player RPG. If you want to kill NPCs and get money from it, go play Maple Story.

EvE has the mechanics in place to really offer a social system with means of production and military conflicts to obtain and defend it. Isk isn't worth anything, you can't build ships with isk. It's flooding into the economy at the rate of billions a day through missions and rat bounties and insurance payouts and NPC trading, and trickling out through POS resources and research slots and defaulted insurance policies. Losing a ship doesn't take isk out of the game, it takes minerals out. The isk stays in somebody's wallet. Unless you have access either to the isk generators (Level 4 kill missions, 0.0 ratting, freighter trading) or the isk magnets (T2 production, large-scale mining, successful piracy) you fall through the cracks and are very poor, while those who print the money can afford things, and those who attract the money have more than they know what to do with.

That's bad.

Posted - 2006.09.17 04:15:00 - [18]

 

The problem with that is that once the alliances reach that level, they won't need anyone else to do their trading for them. They'll use Titans to jump freighters around.

Besides, it'll never happen because there's no way for players to imitate Concord. Condord doesn't camp a gate for seven hours and wait for you to log back on, it just appears out of nowhere and blows you up. Nobody can ever do that, so 0.0 will always consist of jealously guarded space and NBSI.

Posted - 2006.09.17 07:47:00 - [20]

 

Originally by: Alessar Kaldorei

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Originally by: Lienzo

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EVE is a dark place where the shrewd and the aggressive prosper. It's a place where people make hard decisions, and I think we should stand up for that model rather than let grinds slowly take its place.

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I'd love to agree with you, but I have to ask, what was the last 'hard decision' you had to make in Eve?

As far as I can tell, Eve has no memory. Any decision you make can be reversed easily enough. "Choices" are an illusion, and only relevant for as long as you want them to be, eventualy desolving into nothingness. As soon as you change your mind about something, you can fix whatever bridges you burned and go back to where you started, happy in the knowlodge that no consequence will ever reach you.

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Really? Seems like a pretty hard choice whenever I leave a corp to try something new. Or whenever you decide to abandon a friend once they've become to weak to deal with the foes they have chose. Other times it's to decide whether you are going to leave a system because somebody like me is griefing you because I want to sell one more unit of a product you're selling. Or it could be a decision to go pirate, or to go back to not being a pirate. Any decision that involves actual players tends to need to be considered carefully. Decisions or mistakes you make with your persona probably can be reversed once every seven months or so, or whenever collective amnesia sets in. I have people I don't even know occasionally flame and harass me for stuff and comments made back in 2004 believe it or not.

Posted - 2006.09.17 14:40:00 - [22]

 

While Eve originally was incepted as a PVP focused game (as most long running MMOs are), look at the population distribution for just a moment. 0.0 is basically empty, empire is rather packed in some systems. Believe it or not, Eve has attracted many people who like its PvE aspects, who like to build stuff (both literally and figuratively) and _not_ be attacked by other people while doing it.

Do you want to kick these people out of Eve, because they're not conforming with the (supposed) original vision?

Also, there is a sort of self-organization at work here. Why do trade hubs form, for example? Because it's convenient for the traders to do all their deals in one place (or small area), and because everybody knows that you can buy XYZ in Jita/Oursulaert/Hub X, and also in many cases buy it cheap, because competition is high. Still, demand is high enough to keep the prices from dropping severely enough to scare the traders away.

If you want an active 0.0, you need to provide structures that encourage formation of hubs, in a sense. Travelling in and out of empire for resupplying is just ineffective in the long run, because of the almost omnipresent camps. And since 0.0 is rather sparsely populated, it's not easy to get travel groups together that are strong enough to break a camp without incurring too many losses.

Posted - 2006.09.17 16:03:00 - [24]

 

So every new players will work for Eve.

Now, third problem. Can't declare war on NPC corps. So why not make NPC memberships last for a limited time? 3 months? 6? The duration doesn't really matter, the point is to have the least stagnation as possible (plus farmers / macroers control). No more griefing and then sanctuary in NPC corps. This is detremental to the game and needs to be addressed.

After your membership is up, you need to join an actual corp. With the new system, I cannot imagine someone not being able to find a place to go. Even people that want to be left alone and aren't really looking for player interactions will be able to find a corp welling to accept them just to better their numbers. For this player, what's the difference between minimising this corp's chat? Instead of running contracts for an NPC corp, it's doing it for this corp instead.

What happens to people that are fired or decide not to join a corp?

There's no easy solution, and I know that the one I bring is heavily biased towards my warped sense of reality, but here goes anyways. They are ronin. Masterless, defenceless, at the mercy of anyone. Without a corporation backing you up, you're forced to fend for yourself. No one can declare war on your "corp" they can simply shoot you anywhere they want.

This goes with the "less stagnation" wave, where you won't want to stay corporation-less for long. Again, in the context of how Eve is *today* it makes it scary, but remember that this is for the Eve that's *tomorrow*, where ISK doesn't exist. A real corporation asset will be its members again. Not its BPOs or ships. Corporations will need anyone they can get their hands on.

Mining permits

I envision them being issued by NPC corporations to PC corporations (in High and Low sec). In 0.0, I believe something can be instaured with the sovereinity system and standing. Allow sovereign alliances to put up sentries and catch poachers, though I have not really thought about this yet.

These NPC permits are issued with the same contract system. Renewable just like renting space for headquarters and offices is. Allowing a corp full access to all the belts under its control. Possible inter-faction warfare through mission agents here. Where a contract is issued for certain NPC tags. Conviniently enough, they spawn in a belt that's being exploited by corporation members working for the competion. Your fighters move to the belt, attack the NPCs, this flags them and the competition gets to shoot back.

This is still something that I have not fully thought about.

In conclusion, I will repeat that a world without ISK is, imho, a very realistic possibility.

Posted - 2006.09.17 21:56:00 - [26]

 

Many good points from all of you. I definitely like the idea of a geddon, or another industrial for that matter, ransoming for loot as often as isk. I would almost say that most ships would need a special non-tactical slot for fitting things like cargo scanners, or anything else that doesn't give an edge in combat. People just aren't going to give up those opportunities to defend themselves to make the game more robust. The escort and piracy business are more important to me than npcs, because they are between people. If there are fewer people in battleships or T2 ships because of it, then c'est la vie. Inty/Cruiser Ganks on the rich people will just become more common, or they will hole up and not matter anyway.

Ideally, incentive to build up a corp should come from outside. I've noticed over the years that the corps that break off from larger organizations tend to have higher success rates than those that form from scratch. This is excellent fuel for politics. People that leave the game over politics are weird, and should be considered another form of carebear. Hitting one plateau or another should be hard, and should require a revolution in the corp's whole outlook and interaction with those around them rather than just a mineral or isk drive from the grind crew. It's tough love. The only way I can think of to make it less hard on the newbs is to make the wealthy and the established desperately need new players, even if they are a liability.

Right now, it is possible to get by with only a few dedicated individuals. The only people who are accepted beyond this point are the self-starters, the gregarious, and the very active grinders. This is a good stew for leadership, but it doesn't make for nations. This is part of the reason why entire regions are "controlled" by such small entities. 1000 people is not that many in the long run. Corps can get much bigger, and new leadership styles will be developed by trend. EVE will press people really hard, just like any war presses an organization. Groups will find new and successful strategies, and others will immediately begin to emulate them en masse. Others will rely on older leadership strategies, and they will remain small.

Any content which prompts leaders to delegate and subdivide tasks and time to boost efficiency and increase profit is the goal. People should be able to get wealthier as their organizations and contact improve, not as their willingness to grind becomes more available.

Pirates have established some of the best models sans any tools, but they need a few points to focus on. They too can become more organized and competitive for greater profit. When a pirate has too much, he switches to alternate currencies where he feels he is defficient. A kill count is a currency, a social currency. To keep him in the same game as the industrialist or the fighter, it's always good to give the combat ship captain lots of ongoing costs to worry about when it is in combat-ready mode. That should provide the necessary incentive for dialogue and even disputes over spoils of war.

Industrialists need the most work in terms of operating environment, culture, tools, and mechanics demanding the distribution of tasks, and task tracking. It doesn't help that the main line of products is next to useless. It doesn't help that it all extends from grinding. It doesn't help that they cannot construct and assemble machinery from start to finish (starbase equipment should be built from moon minerals). Shippers have a pretty good thing running if they have connections. They are very few, however, mainly because other professions require less organization, and pay better AND NOT because of high entrance costs. Hubbing is as much a function of greed or short term on-margin rationality as it is a function of instas and excessively short galactic travel time.

Posted - 2006.09.18 12:53:00 - [28]

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Posted - 2006.09.18 14:40:00 - [30]

 

Originally by: Reggie Stoneloader

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I'm afraid you're right. Too bad, really. I think that game would be way better than EvE.

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Then do it! :D