I’ve been spending the morning reading the new Dev blog on how CCP is fixing sovereignty. I’ve also been reading the comments thread on the EVE forums (at 23 pages at the time of this blog entry) and I have to say, the majority of the responses are not in favor of the changes. Most people think it will break EVE Online to the point that no one will want to be in 0.0 space.
The TL;DR version is that a typical system will take roughly 2 billion isk a month to maintain once you have it fully developed. Given all the upgrades to the space that you can add, you simply can not generate the needed income if you are an alliance that is considered small. I have to agree with the sentiment on the EVE forums here, this simply will not work and all the thoughts that come into my head are already being spoken on the EVE forums and the EVE Blogging community. The best response I’ve seen on the EVE forums sums everything up by Bobby Atlas and oddly enough, it’s been quoted in post number 666 (I’m not kidding), http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1210267&page=23#666.
Yes, our beloved EVE Blogging community, in a rare event, is agreeing with the sentiment on the EVE forums. For ease of reading, I have setup a shared Google Reader page for those responses: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user%2F03749674846786948488%2Flabel%2FSOV. As more blogging articles are posted talking about the soverignity changes, I’ll add them to this shared page.
Everyone, keep reading, thinking and posting your thoughts as there are intelligent discussions going on both the EVE forums and the blogging community.
The debater in my heart is happy to see such discussion but by the same token, I am very concerned that the upcoming changes that caused this debate will simply break 0.0 in EVE. One of two things will result. People will simply not go to 0.0 as the risk exceedingly outweighs the rewards or many people will simply leave EVE as it’s becoming World of Warcraft in space with 0.0 becoming arenas.
Many people are claiming that these changes are going to have an NGE effect on EVE Online. To refresh everyone’s memory, SWG:NGE was a bait and switch upgrade. Buy the next expansion and change the game to a new game and not let anyone know about the change until after it happened. I was there for that and let me tell you, it was not pretty.
The sovereignty changes to EVE are not another NGE. We all can see the changes coming and that’s what makes this different. The part of the NGE event where Sony did not listen to the players however, has the potential to happen here. I’ve not seen such consensus of thought and discussion on the EVE forums since the proposed speed balancing. We all remember what happened with that change, CCP listened to the players, modified what they planned and released a better patch to the game.
I hope the CCP listens to the players again and revises what they are planning on releasing on December 1. As it stands now, they need to delay the expansion and make the changes that everyone on the EVE forums is calling for. People think it will be another NGE, I have to agree the the potential for an NGE event set of results is there. We will have to simply wait and see.
November 7th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
The difference (from the perspective of another NGE vet
) is that the designers are engaging actively in the thread and talking about tweaks instead of saying "but you will love these EVE-y and iconic action changes"… CCP Soundwave seems to be wading through the crap to engage the useful criticisms and feedback.
November 7th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Don's misunderstand me, it's not an NGE event as in the facet of communication. SOE simply ignored all player inquires concerning the SWG Starer Kit when it was listed on Amazon and Best Buy's websites. They flat out told people that no change was coming and littearly the next day, NGE went live.
I am not referring to that part of the debacle as it is clear that CCP is reading the thread and communicating with players. I am referring to the sentiment of player's no longer wanting to play the game because of a change implementation that simply will not work and the potential (only at this point) of people leaving the game from such an implementation. That is the NGE Event result to which I was referring.
CCP Soundwave, like many other community managers, has a tough job and unfortunately he will sound like he is trolling when he is simply trying to respond to questions. The problem is the EVE forums are a venue that as you are well aware, will lack logic in arguments when logic is the actual answer. We are all conditioned at this point to react to any response that is not immediately clear as a troll post.
CCP Soundwave will continue to respond to questions because he is NOT trolling, he is trying to garner a discussion on the points presented and get useful feedback. The only way to do that is to respond and there will be responses that will be well received and others that will not.
We need to continue to discuss these changes as they were announced. We still have time before December 1 and I honestly believe that CCP is taking this discussion seriously. I don't see the changes that were originally listed in the dev blog going live. Why? Well, CCP has continually said that EVE is a sandbox and that things may change around launch. I must stress this, around launch includes during, after AND BEFORE the launch.
Let's wait and see how things unfold and continue to have this discussion.
November 7th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
I agree that CCP ought to put a delay on the release. Primarily to regain the trust that they are losing in bucket fulls right now with their players (at least in null-sec).
Regain player trust and then put out a better effort on the release. No one is going to be happy with the delay but heck it is better than the risk of an NGE release.
November 7th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
I think people would rather live with the current system a while longer rather than have something that has yet to be fully tested as a production release should be.
November 7th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I've been playing EVE for 3 months now, never been to null-sec and never did PvP.
But they seem to have FUBARed the titans. and the new changes seem way too costly. Dominion should increase passive income and make it easier for small alliances to get 0.0sec space not make it more difficult.
November 7th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Indeed my friend. CCP was suppored to try to help people get into 0.0, not repopulate Empire space.
November 7th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
I do have confidence they will listen — though with the NGE, I will point out we had a whole two weeks of "discussion" before it went live, and it basically went "you will play it and YOU WILL LIKE IT." And yeah, that was just after ToOW / Mustafar. I still played off and on for the next several years, but the game has withered on the vine since then.
So in this case, CCP Chronotis has already started to list tweaks based on the feedback. I have confidence in CCP over the course of the process.
November 7th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
With NGE, the discussion was more of everyone gathering information from outside sources rather than from SOE. We all learned about the changes that were coming from reliable sources before SOE would admit that they were changing the game to NGE. SOE would not have said anything unless we, the players, had not pressed them for information, they were outright hiding the truth and if you remember, they tried to say that the starter kit was an error on Amazon's part, that it was not a real product. Come November 15th of that year, we all learned that it was in fact the new SWG.
CCP is the opposite here, they released the dev blog, which disclosed what the changes were. They did this for the purpose of soliciting feedback. The comments that CCP Chronotis has made on the post you point out are a good indication that CCP is in fact listening.
I don't think that we are going to have an NGE event in EVE Online, not with Dominion. As the released dev blog stood, yes, it would have broken 0.0 and ultimately the game. They are changing the new sov system now. I think we will be okay. The tweaks are not enough, but they are much better than how it was. As the discussion continues, I think the devs and the players will come together to a set of features that will balance the game play in 0.0 space.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:04 am
Ah chaos!!!
I love it
November 11th, 2009 at 2:25 am
:*
Where you been mate?