(2) a lot of people in 0.0 would be pretty angry.

But I can promise you that if CCP decided to "nut up" tomorrow morning and start implementing my idea of what 0.0 ought to look like then (1) it would take a couple of years and (2) a lot of people in 0.0 would be pretty angry.

Prevent Moons from emailing the sov holder - "Hi, Um, I'm in the 1st Moon in HED-GP Planet I, just wanted to um, let you know someone just anchored a tower on me..." <= afaik Moons are not sentient beings that can send emails.

So, Basically the tittle says it all for me.

I know that CCP has known that no one is really happy with the current Sov System in Null.

I know that there are other parts to the game aside from null. And I do enjoy/like the current additions and fixes they've done to null as a whole. However;

Wouldn't it have been a more sound idea to fix Sov FIRST? Instead of doing these other things? I mean Sov is why we live in null really. Now more than ever its evident the system isn't a good one. NO ONE wants fight for Sov, It's boring, tedious and favors the defender enough that they can just make the game unbearable.

Just a curious question is all, I'd love to hear what CCP says. Not raging or ranting, Just wanting to know the reasoning behind why and if/when it will be fixed.


-Fox

Consider this from CCP's point of view: is sov really broken?

1) It generates a ton of publicity for eve. Look at what the B-R fight did for eve: attention in the mainstream media (BBC, CNN, NPR, WSJ, etc.) to say nothing of technical and gaming media (wired, massivley, kotaku) which led to a huge uptick of trial accounts. Some of those will become paying subscribers.

2) With each passing year, despite sov being "broken," more and more people partake in sov. Each year the biggest fights are larger, take longer, and involve more parties. And the bigger fights happen more often, and they involve alliances with more and more members.

Who cares if a sov fight can take a nauseating 12 hours at a slugs pace in a huge blob of F1 monkeys with the occasional server crash as long as people pay their subscriptions for the privilege of doing so?

The B-R fight was a one-off. the odds are against anything like that ever happening again.

No the fights have been getting progressively bigger: Asakai, Hed-GP, massive fights that got progressively larger that made the mainstream media. Each time there are people that say that it can't get any better, and each time they're proven wrong.

Other than POS spamming or PvE to hold sov what is your brilliant idea?

Do tell.

Absolutely. My main point was that many people don't appreciate the scope and commitment of the undertaking, and that they would be risking much of what they have now on the gamble of a drastic change that is only potentially an improvement. It's not simply a matter of "input dev time->happy carebear rainbow party sov fix that everyone loves unequivocally".

My emasculating secondary point was just that I think they should take the gamble; better to go out in flames now than slow bleed over five years. That said, I'm not feeding my kids on CCP cheques, so I sympathize with their decisions.

POS spamming is kinda gay for many of the same reasons as the current system. CCP didn't understand that the problem wasn't about activity. But rather structure bashing for sov. At least you have to maintain POSes. The current crop of structures are even worse. They pretty much require a super cap fleet. But at least the IHUB provides benefits.

Activity really needs to be figured into the ownership metric. And as much as I know I'll get flamed, PvE is a potential measure of activity within a system. So is PvP.

Faction Warfare figures both of these in it's calculations. Perhaps some of the lessons learned from FW can be adapted to sov ownership.

Personally, I feel that too much of sov is about structure bashing and timers, rather than actual activity. I'd like to see sov decoupled from all the structures. Why does one have to shoot an IHUB before one can shoot a station or TCU? Makes no sense.

I'm all right with an armor timer. Because of the global nature of MMOs, a timer is an appropriate way to ensure that a mechanic exists for the defender to have a chance to actually defend from players in another time zone.

There is no way to simulate taking infrastructure intact. The very idea lends itself to concepts like hacking and DUST players.

How do you define "slow bleed"?

I'm assuming this is some sort of joke or troll? As there is no "wrong" or "right" way to play eve.

only people who play it wrong say that D:

But this is exactly why there hasn't been a new sov system.

There is no universal consensus on what the new system should look like, other than some rather vague top level goals, and there's certainly no consensus on how to promote those goals.

And the reason for that is that there isn't a universal nullsec demographic that is even capable of producing that consensus; the desires of people who want to promote small gang raiding are directly opposed to those who want to promote large scale mining as a routine 0.0 activity, for instance.

So the tl;dr is: CCP are well aware that the current sov system is worse than a bag of dicks for dinner, but that there's no obvious system to replace it.

In the past, CCP have been looking for such a system on the basis that as sov is something that can only be looked at once every 5 years or so*, they need to have a system that will last 5 years or so before committing to the work. In short, there's no sense in committing a 6 month development cycle to a new system unless they're sure it will improve the game, not when there are many other gameplay mechanics equally deserving of attention.

I was going to ramble on at the OP saying that they haven't defined the problem so how do they expect a solution but you said it better :)

I'm assuming this is some sort of joke or troll? As there is no "wrong" or "right" way to play eve.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. In looking for a massive Sov overhaul, they can put off doing anything, under the claim that its a big task, no one agrees bla bla bla.

But what they could do, and probably should do, is alter the meta every 6 months, such that Sov doesn't become the boring, brofest that it is now.

Changes with moons mixed things up a bit. They would do well to alter such a thing every 6 months. Christ, maybe moon resources should run out and shift every 6 months. That alone would create plenty of conflict.

The B-R fight was a one-off. the odds are against anything like that ever happening again.

No the fights have been getting progressively bigger: Asakai, Hed-GP, massive fights that got progressively larger that made the mainstream media. Each time there are people that say that it can't get any better, and each time they're proven wrong.

There are good arguments to be made for both.

I think Jester makes a good case that things in null will have to radically change before B-R is exceeded.

That last is a separate issue, but also important: to have enormous fleet battles, you need enormous numbers of players who are both active subscribers and logged into the game. And those numbers, as I've said many times, are quite stagnant. The CFC might fall, sure, but I doubt enough new players would come into the game to make up the difference and make another hugely expensive fleet battle like B-R happen. So while the idea of large fleet battles caused by the fall of the CFC is possible, I don't consider it likely.

B-R was a non timer fight, which it why it developed the way it did.

No the fights have been getting progressively bigger: Asakai, Hed-GP, massive fights that got progressively larger that made the mainstream media. Each time there are people that say that it can't get any better, and each time they're proven wrong.