Jester has two interesting posts up currently; this one is about his experiences with Incursions after their nerf, and today’s post is about a CSM townhall meeting and this quote in particular:
Alekseyev Karrde > Some players have unrealistic expectactions of safety in EVE. My constituants know that and wont miss people that quit because they face the cold dark reality of New Eden
One common theme here is that both posts relate to high-sec activities, be it running Incursions or simply being a high-sec Corp wary of war-decs. A well-known and confirmed fact about EVE is that the majority of the playerbase lives in high-sec (80% or so, I believe). This is important for a few reasons, not the least of which is the suggestion (though not confirmation) that a large number of EVE players are not interested in PvP (at least not direct, ship combat PvP).
Let’s talk Incursions first. As Jester notes, currently without a strong, concentrated effort, Incursions are difficult or inefficient to run due to how influence works. The fewer pilots running sites, the higher the influence bar stays and the harder/slower sites become.
The influence system should be reversed. It should start at 0% (no effect), and as more sites are run in these ideal conditions, the bar increases and sites become harder/slower to run. In order to fully finish an Incursion, and allow everyone to get LP, the final site must be run at 100% effect, representing the greatest PvE challenge in EVE.
This would greatly increase the value of out-of-the-way Incursions, as it would allow smaller groups to fly out and run sites in near-ideal conditions for greater profit. The busier Incursions could still be run, but at a profit level better reflecting their popularity; the more popular the Incursion, the tough/slower it becomes. As the influence bar goes higher and higher, more pilots will be ‘encouraged’ to seek other Incursions to fight off. Depending on how CCP tunes things, perhaps even low-sec Incursions would become a viable option, if say you could run VG sites in BCs instead of 1b ISK shiny faction ships.
Which brings me to the second point; high-sec war-decs. Having personal experience with this, it can be very difficult for a new Corp with new pilots to maintain momentum when suddenly undocking in high-sec becomes impossible. And before you state that new players should not be in new Corps, consider that EVE needs newer players replacing old, and that the best way to get someone hooked on something as initially arcane as EVE is through social hooks. To simply discount the value such Corps bring would be extremely foolish, and I doubt something that CCP themselves would agree on.
I in no way support high-sec being 100% safe, but I also don’t believe you need systems that cater to griefers, and when players talk about the negative effects of high-sec war-decs, they are talking about ‘PvP’ Corps that prey on targets they believe can’t defend themselves.
Compare war-dec greifing with suicide ganking for instance. In both cases the ‘PvPer’ is not looking for a fight, but rather simply to blow someone up. Yet with suicide ganking, they must consider the security hit, the Concord loss, and how they can recover the goods they are after. The victim can also take steps to avoid such attention, and even in the most random “for the lulz” ganking, all a player has lost is one ship. Compare that to an entire Corp of players being unable to undock for a week or more, and it’s not even close for the victim. And the griefer? All he has to pay is a bit of ISK, which again is light compared to the drawbacks of suicide ganking.
I’m not sure how the new war-dec system is going to play out starting today, but I do have some concerns that Corps like my own will be snuffed out before they get even a chance to establish themselves, and if CCP sees this trend, I doubt they will allow it to continue. It will be interesting to see how much the higher ISK cost impacts things going forward.
One root cause overall here is that in many ways, high-sec is too rewarding. What I mean by this is that there is not enough encouragement to move OUT of high-sec, and as a result many players never leave. If all high-sec stations charged higher taxes than low/null-sec, would Jita still be the undisputed market king? If missions in low/null-sec were more profitable and interesting than in high-sec, would most mission runners stay in high-sec? CCP got mining right, but did they go far enough? Is the yield profit difference great enough? Is there currently ANY reason to run low-sec Incursions over high-sec?
My point is that if CCP gave the average EVE player more reasons to leave high-sec, not only would other areas become more interesting, but some of the player-to-player problems in high-sec would be resolved indirectly as well. You would still have some players remain high-sec only, and that is 100% fine, but if done right, it would not be 80%, and a portion of that 80% would branch out and learn other aspects of the game. The more you know, and the more options you have, the more likely you are to stay hooked and playing/paying.
Hardcore Casual 