There's no denying that the future of EVE is in much more turmoil than it has ever been before. In the past, CCP was willing to let the players define how the game should be played and was generally slow to make changes that would affect entire game play styles. Only when a mechanic spiraled out of control or a significant amount of publicity was brought to it would it get nerf batted immediately. However, post-Incarna, it is clear this is no longer the case and it is obvious that CCP's refocus on flying in space also comes with a refocus on outlining player gameplay.
It has become increasingly obvious that CCP intends to make highsec "safer". Highsec suicide gankers who have long gone without a nerf finally got hit. They've finally gotten around to taking away insurance payments for suicide gankers. You can no longer change ships while GCC. A recent thread on the eve-o forums about Tornados being able to suigank multiple targets in multiple belts before falling to Concord didn't even last a full day before it was locked by none other than CCP Guard. For the war dec groups, who have long enjoyed a paradise of small gang PVP free of supercap blobs, sov grinding, and blue NAPfests, it appears the writing is on the wall as well.
While many people herald what they think will be the creation of a "safer" highsec. The real question everyone needs to be asking is what all these highsec PVPers will do when you take away their sandbox.
For starters, recall when PL lost all of their sov and people cheered, completely unaware of what they had released into EVE.
Before Incursions came to EVE, I enjoyed hunting mission runners down. The crew I rolled with would average maybe 1-2 kills a day over the entire EU TZ. We were completely happy with this number of kills and didn't really have much desire to do anything else. People started running Incursions, mission runner traffic dried up, and the art of hunting down mission runners met its unexpected end. Instead of mission runners we turned our eyes towards Jump Freighters. Then, CCP declared dec-shield and corp hopping tactics legal, causing the pool of targets dried up a little bit more. Some groups like Moar Tears continued to operate how they did in the past, however, other groups unhappy with the changes decided to use corp hopping tactics to their advantage, creating anywhere from 3-5 corps to dec 4-5 alliances each and corp hop between them as targets presented themselves.. In the past, due to the stigma of ruining your corp history, many people refrained from using this tactic and you really only had Lonetrek Salvage and Scrap or Project Nemesis engaging in this type of warfare, but now its become just as commonplace and abused as dec shielding.
.... I guess in the end it'll be, "Join FW, go flashy in lowsec, or go to null..."
ReplyDeleteBright side: more pew in low/null.
Downside: everyone's in hisec cause that's where the easy, safe ISK is made. low/null becomes a "playground" setting instead of "srs bizness". :-/
*senses a great disturbance in the force, as if EVE is on the verge of a failscade....*
Its interesting because CCP complains that there is too much ISK in the game, yet under the new changes there will be far fewer decs. They are getting rid of dec shields, but as it stands now all the groups that are large enough to feel the need to dec shield, will cost the SAME FREAKING AMOUNT with the proposed changes.
ReplyDeleteI think it will be interesting to see how the economy changes when all the ISK worth of ships we kill, now stay in the game. As well as seeing the impact on the economy when all the nullsec alliances that used to have decs rotated on them are now free to Incursion and mission at will.
The war costs were going to be set at a higher base plus a fee based on the number of players in that corp/alliance. This will likely create a trend towards larger highsec organizations who will shield each other with numbers.
ReplyDeleteFrom an idie's standpoint this is a Bad Thing. When there is consolidation of producers then people will start forming cartels and stifle price competition. Smaller producers won't be able to compete against the cartel's volume or access to resources (alliance mate miners) and will either be made to join one of the large groups (in highsec or a nullsec entity like mine) or be run out of business.
The trade wars may lower prices initially for buyers, but once a cartel secures a foothold prices may spike if they can maintain a market share.