Monday, 28 October 2013
GD 281013
Still trying something new.
This is a read of the General Discussion forum headings and some further information for the 28th of October 2013. It is intended to be a skim of the details and you may or may not find this interesting.
FYI it could be NSFW.
I'm going to try and find the time to break out the better microphones and other gear for next week.
Monday, 21 October 2013
GD 211013
Trying something new.
This is a read of the General Discussion forum headings and some further information for the 21st of October 2013. It is intended to be a skim of the details and you may or may not find this interesting.
FYI it could be NSFW.
This is a read of the General Discussion forum headings and some further information for the 21st of October 2013. It is intended to be a skim of the details and you may or may not find this interesting.
FYI it could be NSFW.
Thursday, 17 October 2013
Trading Youth For Wisdom
In its current form somebody can offer to form a war declaration alliance with you for free, or for an amount of ISK. Once the agreement has been made the game does nothing to enforce this agreement, if they want to take the money and run nothing is stopping them.
What I propose is a modification of the ally part of the war declaration mechanic to do the following.
I can set how much I will pay them, to be kept in escrow, for each amount of ISK they destroy of the enemies, up to a certain amount.
For example, I could offer to pay 1 million ISK for every 10 million ISK of enemy "stuff" they destroy, with a limit of my payments at 50 million, which would mean they have to destroy 500 million in ISK value to receive the total 50 million.
Obviously that's a low amount but good enough as an example.
About half an hour after suggesting this on voice comms as one solution to the ally mechanic, one of the younger corporation members proudly proclaimed he'd come up with an idea and then outlined the above, except thirty minutes late.
I'm pretty sure it isn't a new idea anyway, but whatever.
Tuesday, 15 October 2013
The Excitement Deflation
It made me very happy.
Since then the corp has grown into an alliance and the core group of members have grown together, while also adding some new ones along the way.
Lately we have started interdicting a choke point low security system which has been surprisingly enjoyable. Some nights all we kill are cyno ships but talk about all sorts of crap on comms and laugh through half the night.
At the moment we are avoiding some professional war deccers who are trying to camp trade hubs and choke points to destroy members from the roughly thirty five current war decs they have.
On the one hand it is annoying but on the other it adds to the flavour of the game, some danger and excitement!
I'm waiting, probably in vain, for some more Rubicon announcements to firmly move it from an update to an expansion. One of the interesting items though will be the belated introduction of DirectX 11 which will run alongside DirectX 9 for the foreseeable future.
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/directx-11-in-eve/
Eventually it will add more shiny things to the game, but will it add game play?
Do the majority of gamers want game play over improved graphics?
Sadly probably not.
Wednesday, 2 October 2013
Don't Take Your Love To Town
The fallout from the Rubicon announcement seems to be three fold.
1. Owning high security space customs offices (POCO) is a bad idea.
2. This is another expansion/update which greatly benefits the large power blocs.
3. The expansion is a bit light at the moment of content.
Firstly here is the Dev Blog with more details on the high security customs house ownership.
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/player-owned-customs-offices-in-hi-sec/
On the one hand I think the change from NPC ownership to private is a bad idea, it hurts the smaller player. One the other hand it will be a cause of conflict and will force relocation, of PI or players, which can be seen as a good thing.
Your options are to stop PI, move your PI operation, own the POCO yourself, or make your ISK in other ways. Adapt or perish.
However I've been talking to some people in game who are deep into PI and they are quite concerned their income is about to get cut off. The main thought is a large power bloc will destroy the Interbus POCO's and anchor their own, raise taxes and manipulate the PI market.
This is Eve Online, these things happen.
We do not want people to leave the game because of it though, especially if they see a large alliance just juggernauting through empire space.
Example. Lets use a name like "Goons". If these "Goons" remove the local Interbus POCO's and raise their own they can then set the tax rate. Now if they set the tax rate at a high amount few people would bother exporting via the launchpad, they may try smaller container launches via the command center, and thus not much ISK would be made by the "Goons" compared to the time and cost replacing the POCO's.
However it is now quite expensive and difficult to remove that POCO as the new war declaration rules now apply.
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/42269
As you can see from the above graph the costs are not to be trifled with. At the member count today of Goonswarm Federation (10880 members on 02-10-13) the war declaration cost will be about 700-800 million ISK, certainly quite an ISK hit to hopefully remove some POCO's and reduce the tax, which of course could be reversed immediately using the same mechanic but at a much reduced cost by the large bloc.
It's not a very good mechanic.
One suggestion would be a cap on the number of POCO's any once alliance can own in high security space, perhaps the units have a running cost or a tax on the tax multiplied by the number of POCO's owned. This could be seen as an anti monopoly measure by the various governments. Certainly the different alliances could then own many POCO's but they would be more vulnerable to war declarations as the costs would be more realistic.
Another one could be once the new owners change the tax rate, it changes slowly. For example the POCO corp tax rate is currently 0%, the high security tax rate is 10% (this will stay the same unless you train a skill only recently announced). Once the new owners change the rate from 0% to, lets say, 40%, the rate changes at a smaller amount per day, maybe 3%. This gives the current PI users time to offload their cargo, look for other places to more their PI to, and/or complain to their new landlords.
Finally, the Rubicon content announced so far for this expansion seems to be rather light on, I'm hoping some more features, some great features, are also due as it's feeling more like an update than an expansion at the moment.
1. Owning high security space customs offices (POCO) is a bad idea.
2. This is another expansion/update which greatly benefits the large power blocs.
3. The expansion is a bit light at the moment of content.
Firstly here is the Dev Blog with more details on the high security customs house ownership.
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/player-owned-customs-offices-in-hi-sec/
On the one hand I think the change from NPC ownership to private is a bad idea, it hurts the smaller player. One the other hand it will be a cause of conflict and will force relocation, of PI or players, which can be seen as a good thing.
Your options are to stop PI, move your PI operation, own the POCO yourself, or make your ISK in other ways. Adapt or perish.
However I've been talking to some people in game who are deep into PI and they are quite concerned their income is about to get cut off. The main thought is a large power bloc will destroy the Interbus POCO's and anchor their own, raise taxes and manipulate the PI market.
This is Eve Online, these things happen.
We do not want people to leave the game because of it though, especially if they see a large alliance just juggernauting through empire space.
Example. Lets use a name like "Goons". If these "Goons" remove the local Interbus POCO's and raise their own they can then set the tax rate. Now if they set the tax rate at a high amount few people would bother exporting via the launchpad, they may try smaller container launches via the command center, and thus not much ISK would be made by the "Goons" compared to the time and cost replacing the POCO's.
However it is now quite expensive and difficult to remove that POCO as the new war declaration rules now apply.
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/42269
As you can see from the above graph the costs are not to be trifled with. At the member count today of Goonswarm Federation (10880 members on 02-10-13) the war declaration cost will be about 700-800 million ISK, certainly quite an ISK hit to hopefully remove some POCO's and reduce the tax, which of course could be reversed immediately using the same mechanic but at a much reduced cost by the large bloc.
It's not a very good mechanic.
One suggestion would be a cap on the number of POCO's any once alliance can own in high security space, perhaps the units have a running cost or a tax on the tax multiplied by the number of POCO's owned. This could be seen as an anti monopoly measure by the various governments. Certainly the different alliances could then own many POCO's but they would be more vulnerable to war declarations as the costs would be more realistic.
Another one could be once the new owners change the tax rate, it changes slowly. For example the POCO corp tax rate is currently 0%, the high security tax rate is 10% (this will stay the same unless you train a skill only recently announced). Once the new owners change the rate from 0% to, lets say, 40%, the rate changes at a smaller amount per day, maybe 3%. This gives the current PI users time to offload their cargo, look for other places to more their PI to, and/or complain to their new landlords.
Finally, the Rubicon content announced so far for this expansion seems to be rather light on, I'm hoping some more features, some great features, are also due as it's feeling more like an update than an expansion at the moment.