Merouk Baas
118
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Posted - 2012.12.23 23:25:00 -
[1] - Quote
Historically, CCP has balanced the game in terms of min/max (what's the maximum mining income, mission income, etc). In high-sec, this is what players do, they eventually max out their trained industry or PVE skills and then keep grinding at the maximum efficiency level, for as long as they aren't bored. And when they do get bored, others take their place.
I don't think this works for low and nullsec, and I believe CCP should have different balancing criteria for these two regions of space. Lowsec and nullsec players can sometimes achieve maximum PVE income, but it's never for long; in lowsec you're constantly interrupted by pirates and PVP, and in nullsec there are periodic wars (hopefully).
CCP can't look at just the spread of ABC ores, mission reward increases with sec. rating, moon goo, etc., to determine "reward", because the risk of PVP isn't quantifiable, and it drastically lowers the "reward" that can be achieved.
I believe they should switch to a "reactive" balancing scheme for lowsec and nullsec.
For lowsec: instead of using formulas, ore distribution, etc., to code and predict "reward", look at what happened over the last 6 months; did the players consider it worth it to move to lowsec? Did the population numbers increase? The answer currently seems to be "no", so increase the rewards of lowsec and see what happens. Keep increasing, regardless of what happens in high-sec and null, until they have the population density they want.
For nullsec: life is governed by PVP, and really influenced by the periodic wars waged out there. Personal income and safety can vary wildly, depending on whether there's a war or not. Really drives the whole economy. Rather than ignoring the cycle, CCP should try to encourage it, and I'm not sure how they can cause wars when everybody gets too fat, but it's a cycle that I think the game needs. In any case, the situation is completely different from high-sec and lowsec, and so nullsec needs balancing independently of how high-sec and lowsec are balanced. Completely different method. I believe they should implement some sort of periodic (6-month? year?) movement of where the riches are that coincides with how often nullsec has gone to war before, so that wars are encouraged by the desire to chase the riches in addition to the usual politics that normally cause these wars to happen.
TLDR: Balance highsec independently of lowsec independently of nullsec. Balance high-sec with min/max hard-coded limits to income (what they've done, lowsec based on how popular (and populated) each area has been in the past, and nullsec based on the periodicity of alliance wars. |