Posted this in the BNI Candidate's thread, but would be interested in your take as well:

We often hear about "risk vs. reward" from major Nullsec powers, who are dismayed that players can make so much isk in High Sec and FW. Gevlon Goblin (trolltastic as he may be) often points out that nullbears often have high sec or FW alts to make most of their casual isk. And yet, nullsec is always the focus of the increased rewards due to perceived risk - when aside from major fleet battles, there's precious little PvP risk in nullsec. FW space - or lowsec in general - plus highsec see far more kills per day than nearly any nullsec region not currently the target of an invasion. Even wormholes, with their lack of local chat, unpredictable connections, harder NPCs, and highly restricted ship movement are considered less of an "end game" and thus deserving of less attention / reward.

What's your take on risk vs. reward? What kind of risk should be compensated? Is Sov Nullsec actually safer than high sec and low sec, and should it be rewarded less as a result? If logistical difficulty is a factor, how does the prevalence of jump capable logistics networks that allow you to bypass all the traditional chokepoints and risks of travel out to the hinterlands of nullsec?

Also, what do you think of Marlona's power projection limitation idea, or Fiddler's "Adverse Possession" ideas?

I like the feel of your position on things. However, I'm not a fan of gates only for everything. I have seen some serious gate camps including a sphere of abandoned drones which effectively shut down all gurilla style tactics. I'm more about limiting how often a group can abuse the jump drives and cynos. Enough to a point where it is not abuse and falls into a tactical decision that is not made on a whim. I suppose the is wormholes, but they are unpredictable.

I also agree completely about null industry and carrot status. Why go live at the edge of deep null when it is hard to travel to and nothing of value compared to farming level 4 missions? You need to out gold in the Klondike. Then, then living that far away from the safety of high sec will be attractive.

I read your recent blog and its a good idea basically "Jump Mana" also agreed about risk versus reward and the idea that we need GIANT CARROTS to lure people into nullsec.

Admittedly, I haven't read this blog but I'm curious what you mean by giant carrots? I hope you don't mean in a purely financial sense because expecting people to purely follow the money trail isn't going to work and just disgruntle players who prefer other areas of the game. If you want more players in 0.0 you need to make it so more players want to be there, for an example there is no room for the little guy in sov 0.0 at the moment. No matter how much the goonies and friends cry "make some friends" the fiercly independent sorts aren't going to form large gangs because it isn't what they want to be involved in.

TLDR; What giant carrots?

I cannot say I have heard a bad word about Manfred, and your ideas seem like they would greatly better eve as a whole. You have my vote.

+1

No new questions today whats up community?

I agree. They are all intertwined. Makes answering only a specific part difficult. How about something a bit different.

EVE is very much about building sand castles and knocking them over. The sandbox. While knocking them down is amazing, the satisfaction is limited to how impressive the sand castles can be. So can you talk a bit how you envision what can be added and improved on to allow players to make amazing sand castles in EVE?

Well this one was originally aimed at Mynnna due to him being more indy type, but I would like to hear a reply from all CSM delegates:

Would you rather fight 1 dbrb sized laz or 10 laz sized dbrb?

Serious question.

What do you think should be the proper "sp limit" and barriers on players entering nullsec. There's multiple facets to this - How useful should new players be in fleets? How much sp should they have before they become combat effective? Should they be able to support themselves without the charity of their corp/alliance mates?

On a related note, it's apparent that sov null pilots need a lot of alts to function properly. Is this a problem? And does this "alt requirement" pose too much of a problem to players looking into sov-null.

Thanks for responding to my earlier question, and I like your take on risk / reward (even though I personally feel that sov null can be pretty riskless the majority of the time).

Regarding "carrots" - do you think people don't live in sov null because there aren't enough incentives, or is it because it's too easy to "own" sov null and live / work in empire? Compare it to wormholes, for example. There's an entire swath of people who live and base out of wormholes - with all the logistical hassle and lack of convenience that implies - even though the rewards aren't significantly better than nullsec on a per-player basis. In spite of lacking stations, jump clones, jump freighters, etc - they still choose to live and work there.

The point being - if the rewards aren't significantly higher per player than in nullsec, why are wormholes occupied and sov null barren?

Is it truly a lack of "carrots" or is it that there's no reason to live there when they can access it at will?

you said that you see lowsec as some kind of industrial region for eve. can you elaborate a bit more on that ?

if you have farms in 00, why transport ressources to lowsec if you could just build in nullsec ?

i always see lowsec as a place where most things are possible, but with profitability, risk and most importantly commitment somewhere between highsec and nullsec.

i must say that i am not really convinced by that. if you split ressource gathering, research and manufacturing you make a lot of people very unhappy. transport is boring.

i see more potential in keeping the steps together and giving people options where they can choose how much risk they are willing to take

it works great for PI, but not so great for pretty much every other industry activity

high - low - NPC 00 - Sov 00 - wormholes

The sov system needs more depth. There is so much we could do with ihub upgrades or system add on and defensive structures to augment the player experience. Outpost should be more customizable with greater control for owners on things like factory lines copy and research slots and market control. However at the same time everything should be destructible and/or interruptible the new hacking mini-game is perfect for this. Imagine small gangs hacking market services and shutting them down or siphoning off isk through a worm or trojan they plant. Imagine hackers hacking the ihub disabling the pirate upgrades or cyno jammer upgrade. This would give incentive for more small gang roaming that can do meaningful things to targets without Grinding EHP of station services that are broken and bugged for literally YEARS.


This in turn gives incentives for defensive gangs to interdict roaming/hacking gangs. Also once something has been hacked it would need to be ~unhacked to restore the service. The idea is give players more control over their space more customization options but at the same time create more incentives for roaming gangs. Create more opportunity for harassment and in-turn give more reasons for defense fleets to patrol space. It would be hilarious to see gangs going through undefended unused space and hacking things like jumpbridges etc. In Nullsec the barrier to grow block level strat Fleet Commanders is so high. We need to give more reasons for guys/girls to form fleets and get out their and get the experience needed to develop as a fleet commander. It always starts as a roaming gang or small defense fleet FC.

On the other hand, there could be ways to incentivize things to bias it that way.

For example, if you changed the cost per unit time and job initiation fees for high sec factory slots to a model akin to office rents, that would instantly change the dynamics of high sec manufacturing. Once you do that, prevent factory modules from being anchored at high-sec POSes, and all of the sudden you have a big reason so shift your manufacturing to low sec. The logistical hurdles could well be justified by the better margins, especially if the high sec stations saw a reduction in manufacturing lines.

You could justify this in any number of ways, lore wise - stations charging in proportion to demand, higher safety standards for high sec meaning they want control over moon-based manufacturing, etc etc etc.

You could pair this with an increase in research and copy slots in high sec, possibly converting some of the factory slots to research slots instead. POS-based research modules could be unaffected in high sec as well.

This would create your bias towards research in high sec, and manufacture in low sec, without removing the option for either. It could also potentially foster better markets and item availability in low sec, which would further make those areas attractive.