Noisrevbus
10
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Posted - 2011.11.13 00:54:00 -
[1] - Quote
Continuing where a few posters in this thread left off...
The #1 problem with sovnull is the ease of maintaining an organisation incapable of keeping itself up. That's why pets and renters exist and that's why sovspace has turned into a stale feudal shithole. That is a problem, as by extension, it counteracts the emergent gameplay necessary for the political life and EVE as a game to thrive.
The problem became pretty evident with the introduction of the (later nerfed) anomalies. It brought out more people to 0.0 but it didn't create more emergence, interaction or changes in the landscape. If i join a sovnull alliance and do nothing but run anomalies i am really not interacting anymore than i would playing L4 in empire. If there is one continued development in sovspace over the past five years in EVE, then it is that the space has become far less sovereign in it's literal form. There may be more players, but there is far less individual will and ambition. A twosided "forever war" is extremely conservative, fit for a feudal landscape.
There are numerous causes and solutions that has already been mentioned time and time again, from these forums over to even being aknowledged by the CSM:
- Most sov-interaction being volume-based (as opposed to time-based or otherwise) leading to profileration towards vast resources in either number (blob) or size (supers). Numbers and commodity resources should be an important factor in an MMO, i am not against them being a factor, but now it's both king, queen and jack. There's no space left for aces in space. Some people attribute that to lag, but as far as i am concerned lag is only a symptom of a gameworld based on volume. It's better to combat lag by providing options to volume than it is to enter an arms-race with technology.
- Most sov-interaction lacking exponential upkeep (i'm not necessarily saying making things tedious is the way to go about it, but somehow you should have POS and similar operations because you enjoy dealing with them, and it should involve being out there actively interacting with them and being emerged in the gameworld - with all it's risks and opportunities - while you do). Taking care of more space should force more activity.
- Mechanics that control corporations, alliances and diplomacy. It was mentioned already in this thread, and i have no larger details to add, but it's evidently far too easy to grow an ineffectively organised entity in this game. A typical example of such an overtly powerful tool is how blue standings are nigh infinite. I don't mind people interacting, forming bonds and temporary alliances - but giving them tools to distinguish each other and more easily cooperate in both daily life and on grid is a crutch. Political ties will not disappear by limiting blues - but that's not the ambition either, simply making it less easily controlled. More kinks in the machinery lead to more opening for exploitation, grudges and emergence - as well as player ingenuity in the metagame.
- Mechanics that directly create goals and objectives for groups or situations that don't allow the vast resources necessary to make a dent or impression on existing infrastructure, mechanics and balance. As you've probably noticed by now, all my points tie into each other, so any examples i give will also be examples on time-based interaction or upkeep-limitation in the form of sabotage, griefing or asset denial balanced in time and effort between agressor and defender.
Examples: Personal favourities include things like hacking into infrastructure, to gain access to content and features contained therein. You could hack into a POS, gain access to floating ships, POS hangars and moon-material storage silos or simply turn the miners off so it stops producing income. You could hack into sov-control modules to disrupt system-wide bonuses, or you could hack into stations, disrupting station services - forcing an equally time-consuming response where PvE-minded players repair the damage done - leaving your actions open to counter-action and further interaction beyond. Most of these things can already been done with vast force and resources, but can easily be shifted over into smaller gang operations that are less damaging and more interesting both for free roaming and for strategic objective oriented use of smaller entities in larger conflicts (you have the shiptypes: blackops, recons etc., give them the missions beyond removing cyno-inhibitors, which they are not very potent at anyway). Bad RL-examples will remain bad, but you get the gist of it i imagine.
Conclusion: As i briefly brushed over earlier, introducing things like this i belive will allow most issues (from lag to pets, to renters, to botting, to rmt and the lack of both invidual will and smaller-entity presence in sovnull and the political life) to solve themselves. It's the current reactive nature of life in nullsec that hold them up (bots rmt within pet, renter and pseudo alliances where existing alliances know that they exist, while lack of escalation in strategic objectives encourage numbers and resources that lead to lag). There have been several examples over the past few years were small single-corp entities have managed to put large multi-alliance coalitions on their knees - but it has almost always ended in a stalemate when any interaction has approached the sov mechanics level (where hiding in your feudal castle have denied all sides of entertainment).
Other than that, CAOD never cease to entertain in it's ability to portrait sheep crying wolf. |