Ariman Mintanu
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Posted - 2011.03.26 06:24:00 -
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Ok, let's be a little more honest, CCP.
tl;dr
When a group wants to achieve a certain goal with it's clients, it uses money. If a cell phone company wants less data usage on smart phones, they charge overages and fees. If a government wants to stop smoking, they tax the hell out of it. On the flip side, a group can offer incentives to encourage an action. You guys built the largest MMO server out there and you have an in house economist, so you know this. Dominion was based on this understanding.
MMO's are fun because more time spent = more power. That's the underlying rule for the whole system. The proposed changes go counter to this. Living in Null-sec takes less time and effort for the same amount of power (isk, alliances, e-peen, etc). Risk has little to do with it. Right now you will pretty much always have a net positive greater than high-sec (macro-economics is fun!). With the changes, there is no longer a good chance of a net positive greater than high-sec can offer (more on that below).
These changes are not going to make the game more fun because it takes time to get powerful enough to be competitive in null-sec, but moving to null-sec will now result in an decrease in your net gain. So you spend lots of time to become more powerful so that you can... be forced to spend even more time than you would have otherwise? No, because that's not fun. Let's look at options. No large alliance is going to allow your corp to muddy up their now even more valuable space and you can't live on Hubs. High sec stuff like invention and missioning means risking going through border systems frequentily. That leaves mining and PI (both of which only require the occasional freighter hop to HS or to a 0.0 station to sell. Even a medium-large corp can pull that off twice a month). Low true-sec means no ABC except for the occasional signature, so you're better off in high sec for that too, from an isk stand point. That leaves PI. It's immensely more profitable in null-sec as it is. But not everyone likes it. Still there'd be more incentive now.
Here's where the honesty part comes in. There are system-wide issues in the eve universe right now. CCP is delving into console gaming with Dust. There's been promise of integration with the EVE server. This of course means that there has to be a lot of PI going on for there to be any enjoyment in those console games. Your proposed changes would encourage null-sec PI on paper. You also have an inflation problem. PLEX and trit prices have jumped by around 15% in 4 months. Your economist has probably told you this is bad. He's probably also told you that you can't touch your production base (high sec / minerals) because that would cause a spike in prices eve-wide (which is also why we still have bots and macros. The economy needs them. You banned 1000 accounts because they were starting to overwhelm the economy) So what do you hit? Low-sec is an isk sink as is, so nothing to do there. You can't touch high-sec. Nerf null-sec! Make the power blocs fight harder (lose more ships) while injecting less money into the system! Problem solved. And you may get a PI boost to boot. You also impact the minimum number of players possible: small alliances in null-sec.
/tl;dr
Summary:
1) You can direct people by making things more or less expensive.
2) In MMO's, time = power. Being able to spend less time for more power makes things valuable.
3) Proposed changes interfere will make most 0.0 less valuable, therefore the game is less fun.
4) Changes would help fix some serious system-wide issues and long term econ stability.
5) Changes have few serious system-wide side effects and only affect small percentage of players.
I know "for the good of the community" doesn't sound as good as "more fun and excitement!" but at least acknowledge why you're considering these changes.
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