Which leads us to Force Projection...
Maybe I'm just nostalgic but I remember my early days in Low Sec PVP roaming with 10-15 man BS Fleets looking for a Brawl. Sometimes you would find nothing, and some times you would gank someone, and every once in a while you would have an epic BS Brawl that made everything else worthwhile.
Getting dropped by carriers was very rare, triage almost non existent and even when you did get dropped it was just one or two carriers.
Carriers back then were as rare as Titans are today.
Today if you roam with 10-15 BS you MUST have backup on stand by and even then it's a 50/50 chance PL or some other group drops 50-100 supers on your fleet.
In the past it was very hard to counter a good gate camp because they had scouts that watched for incoming fleets. You picked your fights. Today you attack a procurer and get Titan Bridged by 100 people.
So is EVE a game where you must be the biggest alliance with the most numbers and moons+renters or go home?
OR is EVE a game where there is a counter to everything? An Interstellar Chess Match.
Personally I liked fleet PVP a lot more before everyone had a Titan. Titans make alliances lazy and discourage enemies from ever daring to fight you.
I was just out roaming in a Solo Raven to get more footage from my Shield Boosting Guide and everyone assumed I had a Cyno because "no one roams solo in a BS without a Cyno."
This is a clear example of why Force Projection DISCOURAGES Small Gang and Solo PVP.
Maybe it's just me but low (and null) has changed over the last few years from a place where small gangs and solo pilots are common to a place where they are so rare people assume they MUST be cynos.
Faction Warfare has in some ways made it even worse by encouraging all of low sec to participate. So all you see are frigate fleets and solo warp stabbed plexing frigates.
What happened to new corps moving to low sec and carving out a home?
Why is CCP pushing the mechanics toward a "Join Goons, N3, or PL, or don't even try game?"
Why does CCP worry so much about finding innovative new ways to make their server able to hold 10,000 man BLOB Battles at full TIDI that last 48 hours straight and are so slow that people can go eat dinner in between ticks?
I'm no Game Designer but I think thing CCP needs to declare war on Blobbing, F1 PVP, and Mega Alliances/Coalitions.
Starting with limiting Cynos to allowing only 1 to 5 ships to jump through before shutting down. Then a 30-60 second cool down timer.
Then follow that with a Mass Limitation on Titan Bridges that only allows 5-10 BS worth of Mass every 30-60 seconds per Titan per Cyno.
The answer to fixing EVE is not to make it more conductive to mega blob F1 PVP, it's to focus on the health of the small groups, the 10 man corps who just started playing, the 100 man alliance that's audacious enough to move to low/null sec and carve out a home.
B-R5RB was not an amazing achievement, it was the Warning Sign at the edge of the cliff.
Make EVE fun for the little guys and everything else will follow.
The Bottom Line is simple... Force Projection Discourages "Good Fights"
View Comments (25)
IMO, I think a great idea would be some sort of mobile Cyno Jamming in certain sections of space.
There was once talk about giving a ship a bonus for mobile cyno jamming, but it never happened. Why not allow HICs to fit Mobile Cyno Interdiction Modules? I realize that would have a huge impact on many other mechanics but it's something CCP should think about.
This could not have been said better. Excellent article.
Went out for some solo saber action in syndicate and killed an enyo fitted with a cyno. Had been hot dropped before by his alliance but by god man, a cyno enyo? Solo and small gang pvp has become "might be a cyno, better not shoot it."
I know, it's getting ridiculous. The whole mechanic has made the game a "Drop or be Dropped" deal.
Well said.
Awesome insight. Great article.
How about ship scatter like they did for wormholes. That way, they could still use it for quick travel, but not as useful for hot dropping. Your cyno limitations ideas might lead to tactics with multiple cynos that even more separate the haves from the have nots as only larger groups could organize multiple cynos/bridges to still drop everything?
That's an interesting idea. Either make the mechanic force a scatter or create a Jamming Module that scatters people. Something similar to what happens when the cyno dies mid jump and your fleet ends up spread all over the system.
Good points but it won't stop the "be in a big alliance or don't play eve" trend. What's killing eve for me is that people who don't want to play by alliance rules are slowly being squeezed out of the game by their massive amounts of money.
This drop or be dropped angle is the null spec pvp incarnation of that idea. They do it because they can afford to do it.
I agree, it's kinda like the tallest tree's getting all the light and starving out all the smaller trees.
The whole "TiDi" thing is the biggest scam in MMORPG history.
Lag by any other name is still *LAG*.
What CCP lauds as "Epic Battles Involving Thousands Of Pilots" is, in reality, the worst snooze fest ever invented, and the fact that so many fanbois can't see the naked emperor would be hilarious if it weren't so tragically sad.
Control-Click to aquire target lock, go make a sandwich and have a piss and come back to see if what you are trying to target still exists on the field.
Assuming you do get target lock, press F1 and go have a half hour nap.
Come back to see if you have a kill mail or a loss mail because the whole time you were already blown up; the server simply hadn't informed you yet.
What a load of bollocks.
Only the mentally retarded simpletons from Something Awful could think this was "good".
Then again, they'll believe whatever their ex-lawyer boss tells them to believe..................
the battle for b-r i literaly whent to sleep after the first hour after CFC and N3+PL began deploying capitals onto the field. i woke up 8hours later still in my domi and my drones still engaging targets that the fc i had assigned them to was shooting. i then proceeded to spend the next 5hours slowboating into docking range. (was about 60k away)
all the while, i had racked up 3T in killmails, and had done nothing while my MJD took i think was around an hour to cycle properly.
i have since quit eve online, but wish those that do still play goodfights and o7
WOW, and that's what CCP is trying to encourage?
I hope you consider coming back to EVE and just avoiding the mega blob alliances. Still plenty of good small gang groups out there to join.
it is what they are revolving everything they do around. the Power blocs are who they care about.
and thats why i left, i have watched them for 5+years now do nothing but nerf everything the powerblocs cry about and completly ignore everyone els.
i would come back, but i don't see them turning or changing their ways any time soon, it's sad, but i feel the game we all loved is gone, and all we have now is a hull of what once was a great game.
They base all adds they make about Power bloc fights. and gain a massive boost in advertisement when battles like B-R5RB and VFK happen.
so they are trying to encourage more of them for the increased revenue it could make them in the short term. even 90% of the new players will leave shortly after starting the game.
So what are the steps we need to take to work on getting this on the CCP drawing board?
I'm not sure... I forwarded this to Devs Rise and Fozzie but no way to know if they read it.
I suppose you could try to get CSM members to champion the cause.
the drawing board is money, and their isn't much you can do about it. solo/small gang isn't a big enough part of the community for them to care about it unfortunetly.
Hi Guys,
I thought i would add my views on the current null issue. First this is a good good read i like your guides and tactics.
I live in w-space I know a lot of people ranting on about w-space but that is for another subject. In short i live in wormholes make isk in wormholes but tend to kill in low/null and of course w-space, more in null of late.
we tend to use interceptors because of the nullified parts fast warps and just sheer fun to fly. we do not stick to one area to roam, of course we hit provi (who doesnt :D) but we like to mix it up a little and go to NPC null and of course all the big alliance sov space. over the last month we tend to roam every other day so about 15 roams on average. During these roams some are as long as 150 jumps (at least) in these roams we was in CFC space managed to only get two kills from hard knocks i would say out of the 150 systems in null only 20 had people in 19 of which where probably in stations or a pos. The space was dead we averaged the amount of sites in each system and there was at least 30 bil in loot in systems that are not being used. on top of that we got access to a large alliance email that went to their renters which was written in a hostil fashion telling people to not rat in any system other than the ones they are paying rent for. my issue with this is a small up and coming corp rents null but is limited to the resources of that one system the corp grows but now has to share the ratting resource with more players which in turns if you average it out means less isk per player.
so on top of the whole sov issue which we all know is broken the larger alliances are using this broken system to hold back the small corps which means more in highsec and less for me to shoot. as another example of how bad null is i went with spectre fleet on a blops we did a good job but my trusty hound got alphaed off of the field by an archon which to be honest made me giggle, so i got my pod out and then though about express pod delivery back to amarr but i saw i had 150 mil of chips in my head. so i went for the 54 jumps back to amarr we was in deep null out of that 54 jumps 40 was through null/low on the route i found a station in lowsec and reshipped to a claw and just burnt back to amarr. now I saw NO ONE on my route through null and i mean no one not a soul until lowsec which was just 4 jumps. this made me think about how this is happening CCP say they work closely with the player base but as far as i can see they are working with a select group and just keep them happy. I understand eve is not all pew the indi guys need love too after all they build the ships i blow up so the balance needs to be found somehow. On the other hand though i saw a paladin ratting in on his own i was in a helios so i though i would have some fun with this guy, i decloaked 150k off very safe waved at him in local, i got a load of abuse and hit lite a cyno where 6 carriers landed. all i can say is maybe he got raped by a helios as some stage lol. he probably though i was a cyno but why would i decloak 150k off deeeeeeer. i like good fights in good fleet I have done and was at B-R and although was amazing to watch my fraps being played in 20 times speed fighting in it was a long and boring process.
My closing thoughts are it is going to be hard to get a balance for PVP/Indi/mission runners/exploration but i do think POS and SOV and Corp and Alliance mechanics are the foundation for blob online. the issue in eve is mostly the people that play it. I know lots of guys who will not fight without links/drugs and a supporting fleet just in case he gets a fight. i can understand getting the edge you want. but i think the boosting part of eve could be removed completely to make the fights last longer. at the end of the day Eve is a business and they need to make money so the larger groups will get their way and if something is not changed in the end there will be just two sides to eve everyone will be forced into a larger group to survive.
I expect to see something like the EvE Online [KR] in the near future for us.