I am a five-year veteran of EVE Online. I started my EVE journey in highsec. Like many other players, I stopped and started playing EVE many times before I found my purpose.
My purpose became highsec PvP. It all started with ganking a Venture and the very weird feeling I got of doing something wrong! Many consider my playstyle to be evil! However, I take pride and joy in taking away people’s ISK in a scam or their spaceships in a fight. I enjoy making enemies because I have real friends that I can count on. Although my journey started with a PvP style that many elite PvP players look down upon, I have learned to expand my PvP horizon. Wormholes, lowsec or nullsec, really any PvP that gives me an adrenaline rush, or makes me fight, is good for EVE.
I want to tell everyone, especially CCP, how I feel about their current development direction with EVE. While I’m a single voice, I’m sure many people feel as I do, so we represent a segment of EVE players that shouldn’t be ignored.
As a Loyal Player of EVE Online . . .
- EVE-online is a game and needs to stay a game! In other words, EVE’s selling point is the sandbox! Every action of a player has a direct or indirect impact on other players! We don’t want a real-world simulation! We want a game where you can get rich and powerful. a game where people will try to take away your stuff, a game that is fun and engaging. In the words of Merkelchen CEO of KarmaFleet, “I don’t want to come home to suffer through EVE. I want to come home and be happy to start EVE and accomplish my goals!”
- Please stop nerfing ISK-making activities that are reasonable in regards to effort required and danger encountered. The dynamic bounty system is a big nerf to ratting that has basically killed ratting. Yes, you should stop explosive ISK-making and you should always look at the risk-reward ratio, but nerfing income for so many people leads to recessions! Recession leads to a collapsing economy that will lead to people not want to play anymore.
- Add playstyles to EVE instead of removing them! Any playstyle that leads to people having fun in the game is good for EVE as a whole. It doesn’t matter what kind of a playstyle it is: market PvP, highsec, roaming or nullsec fleet battles. CCP should find out what people are doing and try to add more enjoyment to those things. In a sandbox, it is not up to the developers to decide what are valid playstyles. As long as the EULA and the basic rules of the game are not violated, CCP should stay out of it and certainly should not remove playstyles!
- EVE is about PvP. What CCP should focus on is making small changes that lead to more PVP. The ESS is a great start! CCP should implement more systems like it, but there are also other far smaller changes they could make that would give people opportunities to fight more!
Give people a carrot instead of a stick!
- Mission Running: largely no risk of PvP because the PvE ship is locked behind a gate! The easiest solution would be to give people the ability to directly warp into the room with combat probes! This will give us an way to increase PvP in high sec!
- Incursions: In highsec, incursions are too easy to run with no risk of destruction! The easiest solution is to remove Concord in all highsec incursion systems. Make all incursion systems lowsec, which will lead to more PVP.
- Abyssal PvE: Many people have already found out how to min/max abyssal PvE and that means that very few people lose their ships due to rats or timeouts. The easiest solution is to remove the abyssal PvE from highsec! Activating Abyssal PvE portals should only be possible in lowsec or Pochven!
- Remove the standing requirements in Pochven for gates: This will help populate Pochven as a new space and add PvP possibilities.
Mix It Up In Nullsec
- NPC space in all nullsec regions: create new factions or create new space! I don’t care how, but some regions are way too hard to invade!
- You need NPC nullsec with NPC industry slots to start. This gives people an easy forward operating base to invade and take space! It will also lead to more small gank PvP.
- Dynamic bounty system: Big nerf to ratting! Too much intel for hunters and nobody is ratting in a dangerous system! Nobody would ever PvE in 1dq, even if the modifiers would be at 500 %! The solution would be to make the DBS calculate by constellation! This encourages people to PvE close to dangerous areas, spreading out the PvP content and actually giving people an opportunity to profit from higher payouts!
- Calculation by constellation would also make border wars between nullsec block something profitable and possibly decrease the amount of blues a block wants to have at their borders.
- Maintenance tax: many people talked about a tax on anything that you store in stations and citadels. I think the easiest and most sensible way to introduce this would be a docking tax on ships! The game already has everything it needs to set this up. Every highsec NPC empire corp station should add a docking tax for non-members! This would exclude NPC starter corps and lowsec or nullsec NPC factions. We want people to be there so they can PVP! We don’t want to punish people who take risks!
Future content I look forward to!
- Lowsec signal and noise filaments.
- Tech 2 attack battlecruisers. Make them fast and DPS strong. I want to see a Tech 2 Tornado or Talos.
- Tech 2 carriers! No DPS platforms! New playstyle abilities for the capsuleers
- Tech 2 sisters of EVE ships
- A new model Ragnarok
Give people a reason to PVP!