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AFK empires don't really work. Just ask the Northern Coalition (no dot).
Passive income sources cause fights over those resources, which is, you know is - players playing the game - and, at least in my opinion, the only part of the game worth playing. If people are not fighting over passive income sources, that's what needs to be looked at:
1) Are the passive income sources not valuable enough to be worth fighting over?
2) Is the game too unbalanced towards richer players? (Wealth should not provide a devastating advantage)
3) Is the barrier to entry too high?
4) Related to the above, is the defender's advantage too high? (The defender should have some advantage to stop ping-ponging; but if it's too high you can get AFK empires).
5) Is the difficulty of controlling moons spread-out over a large amount of space too low?
In my (mostly uninformed) opinion, the answer to most of these questions is probably yes.
People may disagree with me, but I've always felt that territory was way too porous in EVE -- small gangs can roam through enemy space with relative impunity, and make easy pickings of miners. And yes, you should be paying attention -- but when they can scan down and warp to a miner in 10-15 secs flat, I consider that rather excessive. (Unless things have changed since I played a few years ago) Also -- ratters are self-contained to make money, for the most part -- whereas a miner basically needs a ratter (and hauler) to babysit them to even do their job due to rat spawns and how bulky ore is. (Although I guess that will improve with the ore hold?)
IMHO mining shouldn't have to contend with rats, but at the same time mechanics for some kind of overload, mercoxite-like gas explosions damaging stuff or even popping your ship, or other money sink/risk elements; would be a great change. It would allow miners to be self-contained similar to ratters, while maintaining an element of risk similar to ratting. (Maybe that is the idea behind the better tank and ore hold? Nullsec miners can now tank rat spawns and not need a hauler?)
tl;dr: Looking at historic wars like WW2 -- destroying the industry of an enemy country was at least as important as defeating their army when looking for ultimate victory. Mining and industry being a redheaded stepchild looked down upon by CCP/ratters is disappointing to me. It should be an important part of maintaining any war effort/alliance.
What I meant was: I don't see why mining and industry is so neglected in comparison to combat/ratting by CCP. Then again, at this point it would take pretty much a complete overhaul to fix things IMHO. And the biggest issue (porous territory) will never be changed, since it goes against CCP's design philosophy.
Anyways, it seems that there's some decent solutions out there, but it would need a change in focus for how CCP wants their game played. Since it's one of the few good sandboxes, I'd suggest they'd have more success by making the sandbox more open and deeper rather than trying to make a more traditional MMO.
@caedwyr The problem, I think, is that the majority of players live in HiSec so an easy way to make the majority of the players happy is to buff HiSec. There is also a fundamental difference in mentality. NullSec dwellers accept that there is a risk/reward model they are subscribed too; and while they might not make smart or optimal choices about how to manage that risk (see AFK cloakers and the use of PvE fits for ratting) they accept it is a part of life. Which turns into them raging and complaining less. HiSec dwellers, on the other hand, have this ideal that the world is shiny and safe and full of rainbows and butterflies. And when reality intrudes upon their fantasy of being in a StarTrek utopia, they complain. Squeeky wheels get the grease.
Personally I'd like to see industry in HiSec get nerfed in the form of no HiSec POS's, fewer industry slots (or longer production times), and asteroids in HiSec being limited in number to the point that if you want to mine for hours, you either have to mine in out of the way places or search for Grav sites (or move to WH/0.0). Changing roid respawn to several days after it popped would also work. I would also like to see access to L4 and L5 missions limited to pilots in faction warfare. I don't think the FW limit to missions would reduce the number of alt's grinding them, but it would encourage mains to get into PvP and to start thinking differently in terms of how they can get ganked.
It is precisely this mentality I hoped to address with my manifesto.
Currently the "advancement path" of EVE is "Learn to do missions and basic industry" -> Read about nullsec and WH's outside of EVE -> "Join FW/NullSec/WH corp/alliance". The fact that it relies on out of game stories, and requires corps to make the transition as a whole hurts the game. I think that if we make the advancement path "Learn to do missions and basic industry" -> "HiSec FW mission running" -> "LowSec FW & Industry" -> "NullSec/WH Corp/Alliance" we will have a lot more people following the upgrade path, and not being held (as far) back by their corp.
I also agree that the WarDec system needs to be redone, but only because so many people currently live in Hisec. If Hisec was a lot emptier, then I don't think the WarDec system would need to be touched. Or rather, it wouldn't be worth touching.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
see what they did was introduce this industry level thing in 0.0 space, and it spawned this big ass mining fields that made it better than mining a system out (Hi, I'm a nut, I did that with three hulks in two hours. a belt will always have 160,000 units of veldspar)
The industry thing spawns much bigger rocks.
Then they go respin the drone loot and stop the ability to refine ratting drops so now on of the top earners in high end mining is 1/4 the value it used to be for zydrine (out of the three hot rocks in value, two of them produce that) and it's now impossible to build any volume of ships on mining alone in 0.0, and importation starts, driving the botters nuts who now mine trit 24x7 and other minerals. Mexallon spikes because hey guess what, it comes from Rat Loot, not from mining. There's one stupid rock that isn't everywhere in the game that drops it and oh hey, it's not in the region we owned (either time) and it drops a horrible amount so you can't really feasibly mine it even with 20 people doing it 24x7.
the last go round I didn't pay attention close enough to figure it out exactly, but they screwed with drones again but not all the way, and the market went nuts. It's now more lucrative to mine Veldspar than A/B/C ore.
Speaking as someone who enjoyed the mining section of the game, because I could make money low :effort: and then get it all blown up in ships. Other people like to scam, ransom, mining was my thing until it got screwed. Ratting was lucrative when the drops were refinable into something more than 'metal scraps' and 10 minerals, now it's just about the bounties.
if it wasn't for the idiots I play with in MRCHI and some of GEWNS i'd have walked away when that happened and never came back. I mean mining itself is a holy crap this is boring type of thing, but the value you got paid for stuff that you had fun with if you did it for a few hours once or twice a month (ok, for me, that was 5 t2 fit hulks going non stop with a rorqual boosting, so not a small amount). Time cards were 190m isk for 30 days. Now plex's are 500m for 30days. Somethings broken, but it sure isn't ccp's bank accounts.
God damn.
Which was a very recent development, made up of members who mostly took them from the DRF who had taken them from the NC.
And as a member of an alliance which owns tech moons, they seem to need saving pretty frequently.
Sweeping space vistas. Hell, even astroid belts look cool.
My understanding of the reasoning behind forming OTEC was to milk as much as possible out of tech before it got nerfed, which was beneficial to all parties.
None of the alliances involved really likes each other at all (except for goons/test kinda, but if we reset test we'd have 100 goons in 6VDT within the hour most likely)
Gallente ships being terrible for fleet work is just one of those things that isn't going to change, I guess. Hybrids suck, armor sucks, drones suck. The Gallente have a perfect trifecta of shit.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Not every ship line has to be balanced around big fleet work
Are you suggesting that Gallente is balanced around other things, like small gangs/ratting?
Because the other races have ships that do those jobs, too, and do them just as well or better.
I'm not saying make the entire Gallente line fleet-worthy, but it sure would be nice if they had a few more ships that you could see being part of official fleet composition. Just making drones more fleet friendly and making armor not such a bloody chore would go a long way towards that.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=14210105
I really should start infiltrating high sec corporations, just like that guy. I might need to start a new character just for that.
hooooo.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Also, PLEX tank best tank.