Alekseyev Karrde
Noir.
Black Legion.
927
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Posted - 2012.12.30 03:27:00 -
[2] - Quote
Yonis Kador wrote:
That in the grand scheme of things, EvE is a capitalistic dystopia with chances for riches relative to risk and players aren't meant to live their entire lives in high-sec npc corps. They are meant to interact. So no sec space was ever meant to have "everything it needs."
But I'm still having difficulty agreeing that abilities I currently possess should be removed entirely from my game. That's not selfish - doing so would be dumb. So I'm just not gonna be a fan of moving t-2 production or perfect manufacturing/refining to low/null. Imo, if CCP allowed better refining and manufacturing even at high-sec POS's as opposed to heavily-taxed npc alternatives, this would still benefit pgc by incentivizing corp-ownership/membership. It also wouldn't remove any current abilities. Raising npc refine rates and corp taxes could be a good idea, if it would force more people into the sand. But that's only going to happen still if the cost of POS fuel is less isk/month than paying the tax. And that would be a lot of tax.
I'm not even sure if it's a legitimate concern or just null propoganda, but just in case it's being considered: don't "nerf" high sec too hard. People on one account paying with cash live there. So do noobs. Thousands of casual players. No, the game shouldn't cater to them but their games shouldn't be made impossible either. I suspect many folks in high sec pay their subs with cash. I'm guessing that matters.
Besides, there are countless mini-games individually contributing to pgc being played here all connected to each other through the sandbox. Every corp with people in it contributes to pgc. Wars are fought, resources are disputed, people are ganked....constantly in high sec. High sec generates a ton of pgc. In fact, post-Retribution pvp stats have to be up. I see people shooting each other constantly. So, to me, the size and location of the corp does not invalidate those players' contribution to pgc. I do agree that reward should scale with risk and I'm all for increasing player circulation if possible.
But I'm beginning to wonder if the community perception is that there is no more frontier. That null is wholly owned and if that itself is a factor in the perceived stagnation. Can nothing be added to null to awe and inspire the masses but industry slots and added wealth?
Must balancing risk/reward equate to loss of high-sec ability?
Adding the awe and wonder of the frontier is definitly important. CCP hit the right note with wormholes, but all those sites have been mapped out and most of that space is now experiencing the same entrentched/recycled coalition development sadly observed in nullsec. Getting that feeling back is definitly a priority i think.
But there's also the nuts and bolts of every day buisiness of the game, and that's important too. In some ways it's more important if for no other reason than players need to deal with it every day and things like balance issues drive mentality and player activity on a systematic level. No one seriously involved in the discussion is considering entirely removing any content or activities from empire space. The issue discussed most attentively is the cost of those activities relative to the convinience and security provided by empire space.
Specifically, there's very little. When you consider some individual systems in empire have more industrial capacity than heavily developed (at the cost of massive amounts of player effort to create and maintain) null sec REGIONS, it becomes aparent there's a problem. Office prices in NPC stations scale depending on how heavily that station is utilized. Try renting an office in jita, it'd give you a heart attack. But despite the MASSIVE economic actvitity going through Jita it still has the same bargain basement market tax rates, production costs, refining rates, etc as everywhere else. It's to the point where a 0.0 alliances would rather mine high end ore far deep in nullsec, jump it all the way to empire, produce ships and modules there, then jump the completed product all the way back rather than try to manufacture in-region. For nullsec production they HAVE to do out there (supers), they go to empire and purchase magic modules which refine into more volume of minerals than the item itself and haul them out.
Oh yes, and the whole CONCORD protection thing.
And an ISK/hour potential that nearly ties 0.0 even if those players arnt interrupted by hostile groups.
The fact is highsec provides all of this safety, convinience, low cost of living, and a high income puts CCP in a corner with regards to what they can do to make much riskier areas of the game competative. How can you offer refining incentives to players who develop their space when perfect refining is already in highsec? How can you expect players to mine Veld etc in 0.0 where the maximum profit would be the same but they are exposed to exponentially more risk and cost of realizing the value of what they mine? It's also worth noting that several game changes in a row have made highsec more valuable and more safe while nullsec either remained the same or became slightly less valuable, exacerbating a prexisting condition to the point that it really cant be ignored anymore.
That 0.0 is populated at all in the past year or two is a testiment to one particular unbalanced resource in the north west (tech, which needs to be addressed further) and sheer player stubborness (or enthusiasm/hope depending how you look at it) everywhere else.
So yes, empire players might get imperfect refine rates in stations. They might see labs, market taxes, and assembly lines move a variable cost like highsec offices already have. The tax for NPC corps might go up a few % points. But you'll still be able to do every single thing you can do now in highsec. And in exchange CCP will have the freedom to address long standing problems with the game.
"Alekseyev Karrde: mercenary of my heart."-á
-Arydanika, Voices from the Void
CSM7 rep, CSM 4 vet
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