d4shing
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Posted - 2009.11.07 03:55:00 -
[1]
So I looked at some #s on DOTLAN and here's what I came up with:
Total # of Sov-Claimable Systems: 2192 # held by 10 largest alliances: 1194, or 54%
Total # of Sov-holding alliances: 82 Total # of toons in these alliances: 69,234 Total # of toons in the largest 10 alliances: 23,220, or 33%
Average # of alliance members per system: 103 But, in the 10 largest alliances, they have an average of 20 people per system.
So, in response to those people complaining that they'll never cram 100 people into a system, realize that the average sov-holding alliance already does.
It seems pretty obvious to me that devs can't be married to any numbers. They put these up to make current holders think long and hard about what their best systems are, and which ones they don't really care about.
The proper equilibrium, though, will be one where there are a number of systems that nobody cares enough to claim and pay for sovereignty in. The current equilibrium is that sov is way too cheap, every square inch of eve is spoken for, and it's inefficiently allocated. Relatedly, the current mechanism for redistributing it (POS warfare) sucks.
To succeed, they have to price sov such that a large number of holders with a large number of systems decide that they only want 1/2 as much space, give or take. If they initially price it too low, and that doesn't happen, they'll just have to raise it over time. I'm not a community manager or anything, but I bet they'd prefer to take a rip-off-the-bandaid approach, rather than deal with new rounds of whiny posts every time they ratchet up sov price to attain the desired equilibrium. If half the space is unclaimed after a few weeks, then they can slowly lower the price to rejoicing internet posts.
The upgrades do look kinda crappy, though. The goon who posted about how their crappiness reflects underlying problems with the game (arch/hack sites aren't worth much, mining outside of empire has a poor risk/reward tradeoff, etc.) is spot on, imo. Hopefully those can be improved, but everyone should realize that a price for sov that doesn't make everyone scream is sure to be too cheap.
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