heh, the "everyone wins" welfare philosophy is still dominant on these forums

heh, the "everyone wins" welfare philosophy is still dominant on these forums

and what is wrong with that?

because the very definition of winner means not every one can be a winner.

He can't sell me 3 hi sec stations for 20B a pop. I'd love to set them names and other things.

Or you could define it as an unwarranted sh!t decision by CCP, expecially those who did not roll Caldari.

They incremented the totally unneeded ISK faucet while causing a flood of LP (later worsened for some items by FW) making player generated "content" (trading the LP) less important and NPC faucet more important.

Are missions an ISK faucet? They're certainly a wealth faucet, but LP intrinisically a massive ISK sink.

Still, it's going to be hard for you to convince me that a change to missioning that by your own account massively increased the amount of wealth generated by missioning was a "nerf".

If that's your idea of a "nerf" then we in 0.0 could do with a few "nerfs" like that, please.

Before the LP dilution and FW competition, a smart missioneer could make a VERY nice side income. The worst module I'd sell would yield me 54M. SOE launchers yielded 45M but were coming hard and fast due to the moderate LP requirements.
Some Amarr agents yielded 3300 ISK per LP.
Placing yourself in a decent location would always get you 2-3 agents to use, even in Minmatar space where low sec is widespread.

A buff from Q18 to Q20 gave a very moderate ISK increase while diluting LP. The FW competition affected LP as well. Net result is a bad change for the game (ISK faucet increase, player made content decrease) and a nerf on wealth for all the missioneers who knew to run the 0.5 sec Q18 agents, for decent corps yielding good ISK / LP.

It's a buff for the terribles who ran brainless navy missions in 0.7 sec.

That was a very long time ago. Very much outdated now. Yet it is still the backbone of most nerf high sec arguments. The Nerf it and buff it shell game goes on but we the players beat CCP many times already. Every time they nerf, we beat them. Every time they buff, we beat them. We out played their game. Considering the last time EVE saw real content additions, I'd say they got last laugh though because we keep grinding it over.

and what is wrong with that?

As I said elsewhere , many people play EVE to relax, manufacture stuff, hang out with friends, not to have an FC yelling at them for allegedly making the team lose a PVP match. If forced to PVP, many would rather leave.

You need to train up your reading comprehension skills and/or understand first how UO worked. It had very similar aggression methods and the world was likewise divided into "safe" zones and unsafe ones. Anyone could attack anyone, anywhere, but in safe zones "unlawful" aggression was punished with a quick death. Sound familiar? You could be a crafter and never leave the safe zones, but everything else carried a risk of being "ganked". However, my main point is UO was not just a PvP game. It was much more and it's exactly what EVE needs to be too, in order to survive.

Yes you can force me to "PvP" in Highsec and I agree that ability should never be taken away from you. In fact, I think highsec currently is a very safe place and there is no need to increase its safety, nor is there a reason to bring those safety methods to low or null sec. You just need to realize there is and needs to be more to EVE than just PvP. Darkfall is a game that also has similar aggression methods and safe and unsafe areas, but it lacks any meaningful PvE content and is basically just a big FFA Full Loot PvP arena. It's not doing well. In fact, the creators just redesigned the whole game and are relaunching it early next year, adding more safe areas and stuff to do for players who don't enjoy PvP all the time.

Finally, I don't know where you got '"People enjoy doing missions" = missions are meaningful content, apparently.'. That's not what I said at all. I said that meaningful content should be sandbox content. It could be anything from people being able to build secret bases in high sec deadspace pockets, to giving tools for null players to make their Empires more worth living in and more organized. In fact, I really don't want to see more ready-canned PvE content such as Incursions in EVE. They are exactly the wrong direction for a sandbox game.

Hope I cleared things up for you a bit.

You refer to UO as was and yet you state that EVE needs to be like it in order to survive. There is something wrong with that logic if you don't mind my saying so.

I for one would love to see new content in Null that'll inspire me to go there, at the moment theres None, unless i wanna go there to get instapopped, after flying through dozens of empty systems

. Inspire us Hisec dwellers with something CCP.

I'm pleased to see that you're finally on the same page as those of us who live there. The foundation of a lively, interesting and diverse sov 0.0 is the viability of lots of different niches in the player ecology. Manufacturing, R&D, invention and resource gathering are the base of that ecological pyramid.

I'm pleased to see that you're finally on the same page as those of us who live there. The foundation of a lively, interesting and diverse sov 0.0 is the viability of lots of different niches in the player ecology. Manufacturing, R&D, invention and resource gathering are the base of that ecological pyramid.

As I said elsewhere , many people play EVE to relax, manufacture stuff, hang out with friends, not to have an FC yelling at them for allegedly making the team lose a PVP match. If forced to PVP, many would rather leave.

You mean the plankton, right?

And in this game mostly made up of the masochists who also provide the entertainment for the sadists higher up them in the 'food chain'.

It is people that act immature that keeps everyone mostly out of null space. After all who would put up with this. What you get in null space.

No one said they have to PVP, what they are saying is if you aren't going to work for it you shouldn't get free access to the best processing, research facilites and production in the game for almost no cost and next to no risk.

There are multiple aspects to this situation, they all need resolving seperately,fixing just one of them isn't going to solve anything, and rebalancing them is going to be delicate and difficult.

(1) Sov 0.0 simply does not and cannot have sufficient manufacturing capacity to supply itself with the current outpost mechanics. There simply aren't the available production lines. Thus, simply "nerfing hi-sec" won't solve the problem. Even if CCP deleted hi-sec tomorrow, sov industry still wouldn't be viable. It would just move to lo-sec or NPC 0.0. Player built outposts need a complete rebalance.

(2) Hi-sec is virtually "perfect"; there is only one constraint to manufacturing and industry in hi-sec and that is the requirement to purchase Zydrine, Megacyte and Mercoxit from 0.0 or W-space sources. As these minerals are the ones with the lowest physical volume, they're also by far the easiest to transport, so even here, hi-sec has the advantage. With the sole exception of high end minerals, hi-sec is currently either better than anywhere else or else unbeatable (assuming we don't advocate silliness like 110% refine rates) for manufacturing, R&D, Invention, trading and so on. Even if 0.0 was "good" for these activities, hi-sec is arguably too good at all of them.

(3) Productive activity in sov 0.0 operates with some intrinsic costs that mean it has to be "better" than hi-sec to be viable; the productive output of a 0.0 station has to be better than that of a hi-sec system by at least the cost of the sov bills in order for that production to be competitive. To make this clear: let's imagine that CCP make sov outposts have the same number of production lines as a good hi-sec station, and both can make, say, 100 battleships a month. If the sov bill for the 0.0 system to 750M ISK per month, then the cost of producing those battleships needs to be at least 7.5M ISK less in the sov outpost for its production to be competitive.

Whether this difference is best achieved by making hi-sec stations less efficient or sov outposts more efficient is a matter for the economists to decide. And in practice there are quite a few other 'hidden' costs to operating productive activities in 0.0; delays caused by hostile presence, increased losses from same, additional transport overhead due to the 1 station per system limit, the actuarial cost of the possibility of losing the station and the space, plus the (very significant) sunk costs of building the station in the first place and of establishing the sov structures.

So it's easy to imagine that after taking all these into account that our imaginary sov outpost would actually need a 15M or 20M ISK production cost per battleship or BPC run or invention job efficiency advantage to be viable in the long run.

Please bear in mind that the numbers I have used are purely for example purposes, and the actual percentages might be lower or higher. However my instinct is that the real number will be at least ~15%.

What you're saying is that it's OK for hi-sec to be grossly overpowered because anyone can use hisec and no-one is forced to stop using it. In other words, why should CCP waste time and resources enabling playstyles you personally are not interested in?

I will give you credit in that you are frank and open about your indifference to game balance and the enjoyment of the game of people who do different things than you in it. It saves a lot of tedious arguing about what you really meant, and for that I'm sure we all thank you.

However, those of us taking a larger view are definitely going to disagree with you on this fundamental principle

Thanks for providing a meaningless cliche. It really helped to move the discussion along, wasn't an ignorant generalisation and didn't insult anyone's intelligence.

Who cares about game balance, ~my highsec experience~ is something you can all enjoy.

AFKing a mackinaw on ice in highsec is easy, low risk and fun. Try it.