D'ren
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Posted - 2003.06.23 23:27:00 -
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Hey all,
Have an idea that I think might balance a few things out in the game and might address some current problems. That said, I'm a n00b and I'm curious how other people feel about this. As the game is currently, there's no real sense of urgency about earning money, and there's nothing stopping really big corps from putting every member into a huge ship. When you buy/build a big ship, the initial cost is the only cost, unless you require repairs. This seems a little too easy.
The idea of incorporating maintenance costs into RPGs is nothing new; Shadowrun and D&D both have optional rules covering this. Introducing these costs to EVE might have beneficial effects. For instance, if a corp wants to field a huge fleet of cruisers, that's fine, but each of those cruisers would be a constant drain on the corporate coffers. This means that a corporation would actually need to spend a lot of its time making money to support its fleet, as opposed to allowing its membership to go gallivanting off in search of adventure. There are a variety of possible pitfalls that I'll try to address:
1) Newbies can't afford the upkeep costs on even very small ships, the game is too hard, and nobody wants to play.
The maintenance costs of a given ship should be related to its size and expense. For instance, the n00b frigate should have just a tiny upkeep cost, e.g., 10 ISK/hour. That's 240 ISK a day, just enough to alert people that they'll need to be earning at least a little money to avoid zeroing out. The other frigates might have an upkeep of 100 ISK an hour and so on, each size increase carrying a maintenance cost an order of magnitude greater than the last. These numbers are for illustration only.
2) Solo players won't be able to make enough to stay afloat - they'll have to play and mine/trade constantly to support themselves once they get a decent size ship, and that's no fun.
I don't think this is a huge problem, actually. What maintenance costs might do is push back purchase of new ships somewhat, forcing players to carefully evaluate when they have the resources and revenue available to upgrade. Like many other areas of the game, being a corp member would bestow an advantage and solo players would have to work a little harder to catch up. I think that's part of the challenge of playing solo; I think this would simply add a little urgency to the equation.
3) People's interest in a game can wax and wane; what if I walk away for a month and come back to find myself penniless, drained by maintenance costs?
This one is problematic, but I think it could be avoided by implementing a stasis/asset freeze option at logout generally or in specific stations. That is, you would be able to logout just as you do now, which allows your skills to train in your absence and the proposed maintenance costs to continue accruing, or you could choose to put your character in stasis and freeze your assets, blocking both skill advancement and maintenance charges.
There are a variety of other potential ideas that would have similar effects:
Fuel for starships, larger ones use more and more quickly
Have maintenance costs not be drained directly from your account like a tax, but instead have ships and ship systems degrade slowly over time, impinging on performance to a greater and greater degree unless repaired/refurbished. This would have the side benefit of creating a true used ship market instead of the hand-me-downs that emerge in most MMORPGs.
Have payment of maintenance be optional, but produce repo bounties for owners that don't pay.
Anyway, the basic idea is to prevent people/corps from resting on their laurels, and to prevent huge fleets from existing without an awesome supporting cast supporting them. Thoughts?
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