Risk AVERSE. No D. Rabble rabble robble.

First thing first: people staying in highsec is not a problem, thus, it doesn’t needs to be fixed. People staying in highsec is the profit cow where CCP earns the money for the smaller minorites doing null, low and WH stuff. so the real problem is people leaving both highsec and the game altogether.

EVE needs the kind of player who stays in highsec i.e. someone whose “risk” level is suit to highsec AS IT IS. They are the bulk of the playerbase. They also are the vast majority of any potential users (people who still haven’t played EVE) left for CCP to replace the parting players.

Plain and simple, after 13 years, EVE Online is a game where people log in, play in highsec, amass bilions and then leave. SOME people go to null, SOME people PvP, SOME people become cool guys having drinks with devs in Reykjavik, but the money for CCP it’s in the guy leveling his Raven and then removing it from the game by going inactive after roughly 2 years in highsec.

The reason why EVE economy remains healthy althouhh production triples destruction it’s because inactive accounts remove anything between 30 and 60x more money from the economy than PvP does. So the real economy flux in EVe is:

Each month, 3 ISK are produced, 1 isk is destroyed and 50 isk disappear into inactive accounts.

Each month, 25 months worth of production are removed from the game as players leave it.

Highsec is the proverbial elephant in the room. It si not a “starter area”, but the reason why EVE still is alive after 13 years. And also the slow destruction of highsec since Rubicon is the reason why EVE is going south no matter how Hilmar tries to spin CCP’s one year record to prospective buyers. You can only sell a launch app with a new hardware once. You can only go “F2P” once. You can only convince investors that VR is a thing before it crashes and burns and your company’s main future asset becomes useless.

Then 2017 comes and goes and unless someone buys CCP, you’ll be left with a company whose cash cow EVE is decaying at the same rate as development is drained from keeping EVE’s cash cow healthy and resources pour into “cooler” but financially unsustainable gameplay. Nullsec can’t pay for nullsec’s development. WH and low, they even less. PvP can’t pay for PvP’s development. Remove highsec, kill it player by apleyr, nerf by nerf and month by month of neglect, and you’ll be left with a cool highsec-free game which just happened to lose 60% of its income.

I’ll take a stab at some of these questions since I’m running for CSM this year as a Highsec candidate…

Do you feel the warnings of changes of sec status should be changed to show the positive side over the negative, risk-focused warnings we have on gates and missions currently?

I think that these exist because players were wandering into these areas of space and getting blown up without realizing that they had left Highsec. It’s very similar to an idea pitched by CSM XI to warn newer players if they significantly overload their cargo holds with assets to be wary of predatory players. Risk will continue to exist, it’s a matter of whether or not CCP thinks it is worth upholding the notion of constant player threat over unclear gameplay. There definitely is the risk for Highsec players quickly getting burned out on lack of fun, interaction, and the general fears that come with other regions of space – I know I did when I first tried EVE, and only found my way on my second try after being ganked in a brand new exhumer.

Do you think CCP needs to prioritise a smarter corp-finder as a matter of importance?

Personally I don’t think the in game corporation advertisement tool is all that great for finding corporations, and when I was looking for a corp I tended to look for advertisements in the recruitment channel. I’d be interested in hearing any suggestions to improve upon the current system, (Maybe including information about direction for the future of the corporation?) but I think the issue lies more with the bad corporations themselves, and new players not really knowing what to look for without a good idea of what they want to do in EVE.

Should CCP consider High Sec as Eve’s version of a ‘starter area’ and, if so, how should they make moving from High Sec a more natural process of player evolution if they wish to take it?

I think that CCP already does consider Highsec a starter area, but I don’t agree that moving from Highsec needs to be a natural process, as newer players leaving Highsec tend to only do so with other players or groups. It would be great to see CCP push for players to venture out into riskier space as part of the NPE to give them a better understanding of how the greater universe really functions, but for newer solo players you’re pretty logistically stuck to either living in either Highsec or Lowsec.

How will you suggest CCP use the natural language of games to develop the sandbox so no-one feels ‘stuck’ in High Sec?

I really want the NPE to include an explanation of the different types of space a pilot can live in to try and take some of the edge off of living in more dangerous space. Explain some of the reasons why players would live in X space, and maybe include some of the mechanical differences (Lowsec not having CONCORD, Wormholes having modifiers, etc.) I assume that CCP probably has objections to defining what role a region of space has or how players should play in different types of space as part of upholding the sandbox mentality of EVE, but it could go a long way for those who are interested in learning.

I love games which are story generators. EVE is a great story generator. There’s the Nullsec stories about empires rising and falling but there’s also highsec stories about industrialists rising and falling, competing on thin margins, risking attack by gankers and mercs, occasionally getting burned at Jita (4 kids of course).

I don’t see how that should be considered inferior.

IMO social interaction is the main force which makes people stay in the game so play to that. I think the aim of Highsec should be to get people interacting with each other as much as possible.

Like missions that require multiple ships (2 beacons need pressing simultaneously). Maybe PI gives you a multiplier if you connect your setup to another players’. Moving more and more of the commerce of the game to player owned structures. Make mining ships have either large cargo holds OR big lasers which mine a lot (jetcan mining used to be really fun, even Hilmar said it was one of his first great EVE social experiences, when they got rid of it we lost something).

Or actual better ideas than these. Yeah people could do all this with alts if they really wanted. But my point is if they get started with social interaction they may really get into it and play longer -> more money for ccp -> more content for everyone.

In EVE no one is “stuck” in HS. Not even Alphas. Anyone of any aged character can go to NS and be welcomed and nurtured by a corp. Our corp has done it and so have many other corps and alliances. If one is stuck in HS it is their own doing by not taking a leap.

There is no doubt that you can train into a much better and more profitable industrialist or miner and make more money in NS faster than you can in HS. Nothing will get a player better guidance and training in what to train and how to do things than hanging with the seasoned folks. There is a reason Delve and other places are hub of activity.

You also don’t address that a good many HS players are alts of NS players. Many corps are quiet groups from NS using HS for easier access for markets and the like.

I don’t mind people sticking to the safety of High Sec. The bigger problem is PvE being generally boring in this game imo. It’s causing way more people to unnecessary quit the game that would avoid PvP anyway.

It always goes back to risk vs reward vs fun.
If the high sec care bear was rewarded according to the risks they take, then it would take a month of shooting asteroids to afford a single Rifter.
But that wouldn’t be fun as a game, so the rewards in high sec are outlandishly large considering the sheer lack of risk required. There is always going to have to be some compromise made, but CCP has allowed that thin line to become a yawning cavern of disparity.
High sec safety wouldn’t be a bad thing IF it were benefiting new players- instead it serves only to benefit professional care bears with 100mil SP but have never crossed into .4 space and below.
It’s ridiculous that by far the richest players and most expensive ships exist solely in the space with supposedly the least risk+reward. Most games punish players for squatting in newbie areas. But Eve actually rewards this behavior, and players simply abuse the system (then go on to complain about how boring Eve’s PvE is despite the fact that they themselves make it so).

Better still. Let’s have no CSM at all. That way everyone is equally unrepresented.

The real question here is – who on earth has the time and energy to ‘get involved’ wit the space democratic process. Who has the time to lobby the candidates and pressure them for highsec support?

It doesn’t work for the same reason local democracy doesn’t works (for any significant decision making) – too few people have the time to care.

And unlike real life, you can’t approach someone claiming it’s their patriotic duty to get involved and make a difference for their… video game.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought CCP was in charge of Eve ? In fact, when the whole CSM petitionned to get the infamous wrecks hp change, were they to blame ? Hell no : CCP couldn’t ignore how HS works…

Should CCP consider High Sec as Eve’s version of a ‘starter area’ and, if so, how should they make moving from High Sec a more natural process of player evolution if they wish to take it?
No, the solution is not making people want to leave h-s, just because you want to feed your goons ranks, but there should be a more engaging high-sec, right now the game helps only the mindless people that wanna join a big alliance with no identity, and ccp keeps feeding null-sec with more and more good ways to be the only alternative, if null-sec was more available for the small corps than yes, i would agree that high-sec to null-sec should be the natural progress for a player, but if you wanna just play the game with your friends and in a small corp, and ccp don’t want to make null.sec very accesible for you, than at least should give the palyers a better high-sec experience.

I don’t really agree with the idea that highsec is a starter zone and all efforts should be focused on getting people out of highsec. Highsec is actually an incredibly interesting sector of space mostly because almost everybody is there, and the safety and easy access to goods allows for a much more casual play style where a player could just stop playing for a few months and not have to come back and move their shit half way across space to wherever their corp moved.

The problem is that Hi Sec PVE is boring and doesn’t generally offer much interaction with other players, and the war dec feature is sort of a relic from an era where EVE was much more of a Role Playing game than it is now (did you know that people used to hold people for ransom in lowsec? that’s insane). Like an easy way to encourage better and more Hi Sec corps to pop up would be to just allow corps to opt out of wardeccing entirely (as long as they don’t anchor structures). There’s probably a better solution to the wardec problem but as it is now the risk vs reward for creating a goofy starter community corp in hisec is pretty out of wack (you’re basically throwing all of the safety of hisec in the garbage for a chatroom), and what most people want out of a player organization in an mmo is just a group of people to talk to and work with towards some arbitrary, generally easily achievable goal. Most people don’t want to lock down a pipe in NPC null during European hours (no matter how big the in game rewards for that could be) or whatever and that’s fine.

The sort of in space conflict that High Sec excels at is shit like suicide ganking and shooting MTUs, punishing people who overbling their ship or just causing some light mischief that can snowball if people handle it a certain way, we need more stuff like that, and honestly I don’t fucking understand the sec status system at all, all it does is restrict suicide ganking as a play style to specialized alts / vacationing nullsec characters and it could use a major rethink.

“Dod o’Dixie is a High Sec pilot who has no direction in game and is the most casual of casuals.”

This is cute because the average “long on, log off” guy that you barley see around has the attention span of a fly when it comes to the meta, let alone the CSM.

There are more of us than you think who are “log on, log off” that pay attention to things 😉

Edit: It might be better phrased as the average player doesn’t pay much attention to either the meta or CSM, regardless of where they fly or how often they log on for or how active they are in your alliance/corp chat

This article is hilarious. Hilarious in that it literally states how little of research the author did into the work the CSM has done. Specifically for PVE.

To begin with the NPE is a huge part of the PVE experience. CCP is fully aware of the “cliff” as you put it and we have virtually all voiced an opinion regarding it. But I don’t blame you for not knowing that. However, multiple CSM’s (myself included) sat through a THREE HOUR TOWNHALL about nothing but the PVE in eve.

Here since you were too lazy to do any real research before publishing https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6620934

Furthermore, if you would have read the first summit minutes you would have read this.

“CCP Seagull then asked each member of the CSM for what they really want to see on the roadmap. They answered:”

“Better and more engaging NPCs – Sullen”
“More Social PvE – Jin’taan”
“More high-risk, high reward PvE – Gorski”

So as you can see, the CSM has made A LOT of effort into improving the PVE. It’s up to CCP as to the direction they want to go. You should do more research into your topic before publishing such an obviously ignorant article.

The warning on lowsec gates is so players will be warned they can lose their ships to other players there. Tons of new players ignore it, go mine or rat in lowsec, and are surprised when they get ganked. Also, selling lowsec as an area of untold riches is simply untrue. For a new player, neither it, nor null or w-space, are gold mines.

Players are lazy, whiny entitled bitches. Tell them there’s more gold in lowsec, and they’ll flock there before ragequitting after they got ganked. In EVE you can get rich, but you will not automatically become so, that’s why the warnings are there.

The fact that PVE and industry are marginally interactive is something that multiple players, and the CSM, have raised with CCP. At some point, we were treated to the prospect of a new PVE experience, but it seems CCP have gone back to dealing with emergencies, aka fixing the mess they created with the Rorqual, being late with the drilling platforms and other stuff. Working as usual.

A proper corp finder would be great. It’s also not easy.
Remember that being shit and having dreams is part of what EVE is about. Thousands of new players grind their personal Astrahus and hope that will be the cornerstone to a vast empire. If you prevent relatively new players from recruiting because that’ll
likely end up in a shit corp, not only do you take away from the sandbox, you rule out the possibility of Goonswarm
(the old one, not the current one) or Brave Newbies.
An increasing number of players end up in the large corps like PH and KF already. Is that good for the game?

Last but not least: some people just like highsec. They’re not newbies waiting to be ready to upgrade to nullsec, they have lived in other areas of space and have found highsec to be the place for them. Nothing wrong with that, too, except in the Imperium narrative that EVE is about sovnull and everything else is a starter dish or a sideshow.