Shadow of Cerberus EVE Community Forum

Comment of the Week: Proposals for proposals

This was an incredibly busy week for comments, with something like 300 of them in a single week, which is equal to or more comments than I received during the height of the Mittens drama back in March.  Thank you so much to everyone who wanted to weigh in on the various posts!  There were four posts that generated a lot of comments this week -- someone remind me next time to separate contentious posts with a few more days in between them, heh -- so I thought I'd cover one from each.

First was my proposal around building "faction warfare" play into the pirate factions by letting players join those factions, and in so doing, automatically get permanent Suspect flags but be able to "rat" by shooting other players.  Virtually every comment was very complimentary of the idea and nobody could point out major flaws in the proposal, so hopefully CCP will consider it.  One anonymous commenter raised an interesting concern:

My only concerns would be the "gaming" of the system as far as the pirate faction ships are concerned. You know damn well that everyone and their brother will then have a pirate faction alt that supplies their mains with Sansha/Gurista/whatever ships from their respective LP stores.

And yeah, you have a good point there, which is the main reason I specified that the LP gain for shooting other players would be "small".  The tricky part would be defining just how small...

The second major post that generated a lot of comments this week was my post regarding CCP's slow decline in logged-in EVE players.  This one struck a nerve in a big way and was one of the most commented-on posts this year.  Comments on this one ran down three tracks.  First, has EVE "run out of content?"  Second, how much impact does rising PLEX prices have on logged-in players?  And third, what will the impact of DUST be, particularly in direct competition with Planetside 2?

I haven't had a lot to say about PS2 because I haven't tried it yet, but those who have tried both DUST 514 and PS2 have been unanimous on the comments that PS2 is simply the better game.  Halycon put it best here:

...unless Dust does something truly revolutionary with shooter mechanics there is no way it'll be able to compete with Planetside2. I spent a bit of time playing it over the double EXP weekend and I have never had an experience in gaming that comes anywhere close.

As I've said a couple of times, I think DUST 514 is going to rise or fall based on the long-term impact it has on EVE sovereignty.  But there's no question that PS2 is a good reason for CCP to be worried.

The third post that generated a lot of comments -- 93 of them so far and counting -- was my proposal to open up Jove space for EVE's tenth anniversary.  People were split about 66/34 on this one in terms of favorability.  Lots of people loved it, lots of people thought it was daft.  A pretty common complaint from Kel Hound:

With only 3 of the ancient stargates there would be no way for anyone not in a Sov-coalition to enter Jove space. 1 gate for the CFC, 1 for the Russians, and 1 for whoever else hold enough power.

And yeah, that's a very good point.  Given more time to think about the proposal later in the week, I'd like to amend it.  There should be four entrances to Jove space, not three: one each in high-sec, low-sec, null-sec, and wormhole space.  Only a truly frightening alliance would be able to control them all.  Put the null-sec one in Curse.  Put the low-sec one in Genesis.  I'm not sure about the high-sec one.  My gut instinct says to put it in Heimatar.

I think splitting out the entrances would address a lot of the other complaints about the proposal, notably the complaint that the null-sec alliances would swoop in and take control of them and still maintain their overpowering superiority elsewhere.  With more scattered entrances and entrances that null-sec can't immediately take control of, I think that danger is substantially reduced.  Of course, the high-sec entrance to Jove space would become the most camped null-sec entry gate in EVE, though.  ;-)

Finally, if I were to pick a single comment of the week, here is part of it:

Unifex will make the call on what gets the focus after Retribution, Soundwave will then lead the specific gameplay designs within that remit and Ripley will facilitate its delivery.

That's part of an anonymous comment on my late-week question: who is driving medium-term EVE development and making the decisions about what goes into the next expansion and the one after that?  I got three anonymous comments that I'm almost positive are the same person, all assuring me that the answer to the question is CCP Unifex.  But will CCP make this clear?  Hans Jagerblitzen says "yes, soon(tm)".  But Hans -- unlike the anonymous commenter -- doesn't actually answer the question and says that the specific answer might be under NDA...  Anyway, if you haven't done so already and are interested in the topic, I suggest reading all the comments on this one.

All in all, a great week for comments and discussion around here!  Thank you again to everyone that participated!  You gave me a lot of reading material for a change.  ;-)
Source: Comment of the Week: Proposals for proposals