Greedy Goblin

Monday, January 14, 2013

11 CSM votes for sale

Update: the idea has been refined, see here.

I control 11 accounts. I used to publish character reports, the last one was in November, then I realized that probably no one cares so stopped. There you can see 7 accounts. Since then I started 4 more, all for training supercarrier pilots for sale on the bazaar. That's 11 votes on next CSM. These votes are for sale. They will go to the CSM candidate who endorse the following change and places into her program. There are many things wrong in EVE, just like in every game, but this one is seriously wrong and I find it the No1 reason for bad new player experience.

You can be killed 6 ways in highsec, where new players start their EVE life:
  1. You are outlaw (-5 sec status), anyone can shoot you
  2. You are a suspect, anyone can shoot you
  3. You have a kill right on you, the owner and those who buy it can shoot you (limited engagement is a version of this)
  4. You are in a corporation that is under wardec, your war enemies can shoot you
  5. Your corpmates can shoot you
  6. You can be suicide ganked
The first 3 are self-inflicted, you must shoot someone or steal first to be outlaw, suspect or kill right target. Suicide gank can happen to everyone equally but it's not so common and can be defended by not hauling billions and tanking your ship and by not AFK mining.

However the 4. and 5. ways to die can only happen to you if you are in a player corp. You can completely avoid these by remaining in the NPC corp or by creating a one-man corp (and close it if wardecced, starting a new). NPC corp has some drawbacks (mission tax, ratting tax), one-man corp has a one time creation cost but both are tiny compared to a ship loss or even being forced to stay docked.

Let me rephrase: playing together with other players increases the risk of being killed in highsec. People are in highsec because they prefer not to be killed. If your goal is safety then not playing alone is making a mistake. I can't tell how much it is a bad design. It makes miners, manufacturers, missioners having to choose between playing alone and taking extra risks. New players are looked with suspicion as they can easily be freshly created awoxer alts. Also, they can't join serious PvE corporations as there are no such: serious PvE players play alone. I want this to change.

This can be fixed several ways and you can get my vote in either way. Even the "everyone after 1 week must be in a player corp" is better than this, though it wouldn't make much sense as it would just make people move to 1-man corps. The point is to remove the "it's better to be alone" design. I repeat: I don't want to make highsec safer, you can currently avoid wardecs and awoxes. What I want to change is that this safety is connected to lone playing.

I would suggest two changes to fix this problem:
- At first a player corporation can be PvP and PvE. It's decided on creation and can be changed for a fee, but to avoid abuse not more frequently than once a month and you can't change to PvE while at war. PvE corporations have the same limitations as NPC corporations: no shooting corpmates, no towers and 11% ratting/missioning tax paid to Concord. Actually more restrains can be applied to avoid this mechanic be abused in PvP, for example being in a PvE (or NPC) corp fixes your safety on green. In turn no one can declare war on PvE corps and they are safe from awoxers (as you can't shoot corpmates).
- Secondly a flat, non-punishing but non-zero corporation upkeep cost, applying both PvP and PvE corps. I'd guess 100M/month. It's nothing for any real player corps, a few million per member, however it would be significant enough to close down one-man corps. It's paid from corp wallet, if there isn't enough in the wallet, it goes negative at first, upon reaching -200M the corp is dissolved, the members are moved to NPC corp and the corp hangar contents given to the CEO. I'd also implement a significant corporation creation fee, like 500M to avoid reckless creation of corps.

I repeat again, it's just my idea to fix it, you don't need to follow it to get my votes. You just have to offer a solution to the "safer alone" problem.

22 comments:

Unknown said...

So if leaving the NPC corp for a Pve Corp does nothing except for the fact that I know have to pay 100Mil a month why do it at all?

Gevlon said...

It gives the ability to cooperate with other players in a coordinated way. Mining ops, missioning together, PvE stuff.

Also, they are socials who are in need of chatting idly with other people or they can't have "fun".

Anonymous said...

"It gives the ability to cooperate with other players in a coordinated way. Mining ops, missioning together, PvE stuff.

Also, they are socials who are in need of chatting idly with other people or they can't have "fun"."

Custom chat channels perform the same function.

Although, your mission now seems to be "Forcing a-socials to be social", which is a stark shift in viewpoint.

Cathfaern said...

Maybe let them have some tax reduction? Not 11% but only 6-7%... they have to pay the monthly fee, so it's still not good idea to make one man corps, but they have some advantage (I presume you want people in player corps)

Gevlon said...

I'm fully aware that the custom chat channels are providing it all. However socials want to be "in a guild with friends" and they will be. Unfortunately all the PvE focused highsec corps are failures, usually started by a clueless noob.

The NPC corp is still there, no one is forced to leave it.

Hivemind said...

I hate to point this out but CSM don't suggest new game features to CCP. Their job is to provide community feedback, nothing more. Part of that does involve CCP running new ideas past the CSM to see what their opinion (and by extension, the community's opinion) but unless CCP come to the CSM and say "What do the players think about player and NPC corps in hisec?" they will not have any opportunity to present your concerns to CCP.

The other part is that as the CSM are there as community reps, even if CCP do ask the question all they can say at the moment is "One player has said that they think the risks associated with player corporations prevents risk-averse players from becoming socially engaged with the game" which isn't going to carry a lot of weight in the face of things like thousands of players who have a slew of minor or major issues with nullsec, as an example.

If you do want to see any changes to corporations you will need to solve both of these issues by getting the playerbase involved directly; they need to share your concerns so that when CCP ask the CSM for feedback on the new player experience, or hisec war mechanics or something along those lines the CSM can say "Yes, lots of players think having to choose between the safety of an NPC corp and the social aspects of player corps is a turn-off for the game" and point to sources and suggested fixes.

On the subject of suggested fixes, a couple of points: Firstly, most hisec dwelling PvE focused corps still profess at least some small interest in PvP (how many actually go beyond talking about it is another matter) so I would suggest that a mechanic that locks the corp members out of all PvP is unlikely to receive much uptake.
Second, I think your suggested upkeep and creation fees are at the very least far too high - for a veteran they're easily affordable but they would be a significant hurdle for new players.

And on a final side note, "Suicide gank[ing] [...] can be defended by not hauling billions and tanking your ship and by not AFK mining."

Because it's not like the New Order ever ganks players who weren't AFK, or celebrates AWOX kills of groups that very definitely were at their keyboards or anything.

Gevlon said...

@Hivemind: Hans was an eager promoter of FW issues and CCP listened him. What I want is not just this one thig fixed but simply a CSM member who cares for highsec. Currently there is none, since there are no votes coming from highsec.

About the fees: they mean to be too high for new players. New players should NOT run corps, corps should be ran by veterans and newbies should be members in these corps. I think the best way to make a newbie quit EVE is putting him in a corp lead by another newbie. For this I fully support awoxing such corps. The faster they dissolve, the better for the lost newbies inside.

Finally: we are unable to determine if someone is at the keyboard or not. We can only guess by the behavior of the ship. Standing in the ice field with no response in local, ignoring being targeted by a scout who has New Order propaganda in his Bio make us believe that he is AFK/bot.

Anonymous said...

I like the idea of trying to stop botting or reduce it's impact, but if you cannot tell if someone is afk or not, then you will be attacking innocent people occasionally. The goals of the new order will be undermined and you will eventually, if not already, cause more harm than good. If you do not stop your activities despite knowing the damage you are doing, then you are on the borderline of griefing. Obviously it is a game about spaceships and shooting stuff, so blowing up someones ship under any circumstances is acceptable, but it won't be good for EVE in general if newer players are subjected to these kind of conditions.

Hivemind said...

@Gevlon "Hans was an eager promoter of FW issues and CCP listened him."

Yes, because Hans could point to the majority of the FW community who were saying the same thing. FW changes didn't come because Hans himself said "I have a problem with X", they came because he could say "These are the problems that FW players are having".

Without having a base of players that a CSM can point to and say "This isn't just my opinion, here are a lot of other players who have experienced the same thing and come to the same conclusion", CCP aren't likely to give a random idea much attention.

Once again, CSMs are representatives for the players to CCP, not advisers to CCP.

"they mean to be too high for new players. New players should NOT run corps"

I'll have to disagree with you on that one; effective corp management relies on leadership skills not specific to EVE rather more than experience in the game. The fact a player is new doesn't automatically mean they'll be a bad leader, the fact they're a veteran doesn't guarantee they'll be a good one.

The other thing I was thinking about when I wrote that the fees were too high were pre-existing groups coming into EVE, whether from other MMOs or IRL friends or whatever, who want to set up their own group from the start.

Gevlon said...

@Hivemind: 80% lives in highsec. They can be referred as the people who experienced these problems. Hans was one of the FW people so what he experienced was the same as they did. If gateguns popped Hans, it surely popped others. If Hans could slide, everyone could slide. Hans could ignore everyone else and talk only for his own wishes and still be a good representative as his wishes are the same as the other FW pilots. Similarly what I experienced in highsec is the same as every other highseccer experienced. My main stayed in NPC corp all his life because it would have been stupid to do other ways. So did every trader and manufacturer. (1 man corp is the same as NPC).

if you don't know the specialities of EVE, your corp will fail. And by "speciality", I don't mean ship fitting but the unique EVE philosophy. For example awoxing is unknown to anyone not familiar with EVE. There is no awoxing in WoW, if you steal the guild bank, the Game Masters will restore it and the thief will get a week ban. There is no scamming in WoW. There is no can-flipping in WoW. If you don't know these, your corp will utterly fail. A single WoW player can live in EVE as long as he is not so stupid to give anything to anyone. But a corp naturally share things and without an intimate knowledge of the security philosophy of EVE, you'll lose everything the whole corp collected.

Hivemind said...

@ Gevlon

"What I want is not just this one thig fixed but simply a CSM member who cares for highsec. Currently there is none, since there are no votes coming from highsec."

I think you're very wrong that there are no votes coming from hisec, though I suspect that the % turnout from hisec dwellers is a lot lower than it is for the other areas. A large part of that is that for the most part players outside hisec belong to large organisations that can coordinate them; it only takes a few people who are committed to the CSM elections to get the majority to turn out and vote. In hisec there are a lot fewer such organisations and the majority of residents aren't members of them.

I actually don't think the concept of "a CSM member who cares for highsec" is workable because "hisec" is too broad a field. It covers the hisec income generator alts of ancient nullsec bittervets and the freshest new players, the dedicated gankers in the New Order and the AFK miners they prey upon (and the active ones who have the misfortune to not be looking at Local of course), hisec wardec mercenary alliances, the pirates who wardec null alliances so they can rob their shipping in trade hubs, mission runners of all flavours, traders, explorers, can flippers, Red vs Blue, freighter gankers, courier haulers, industrialists and probably a dozen other groups I've forgotten.

In theory, a "hisec CSM rep" would be expected to listen to all of these groups and provide useful feedback to CCP, which means separating the signal from the noise in all of those cases. The problem is that any player with the experience and name recognition to be a CSM candidate is likely to have issues engaging with all of those groups as they will probably have picked up some biases in their EVE career and even if they are able to put those aside their history would bias some groups against them. Courier haulers are probably going to be unwilling to engage with a freighter ganker, for example.

That's also setting aside the probably-impossible workload that actually collecting useful feedback from all of those groups would be if it were possible to engage with all of them. CSMs usually focus on the player groups that tie into their main interest in EVE, but the diversity of hisec would make that impossible for a hisec rep to do the same, which makes it harder for them to get useful information regarding areas they don't have current experience with.

Hivemind said...

@Gevlon

"Hans could ignore everyone else and talk only for his own wishes and still be a good representative as his wishes are the same as the other FW pilots."

You're missing my point; yes, Hans' own experiences are a solid basis for what is/isn't working with FW, but my point is that CCP don't listen because it's Hans saying these things, they listen because Hans and the rest of the FW community are both saying these things. If Hans or any other CSM member are saying something on their own that's not based on what the community involved have said (if there was something that Hans personally disliked but the majority of FWers were fine with for example) then A) they're not doing their job and B) CCP are unlikely to listen.

"80% lives in highsec. They can be referred as the people who experienced these problems. [...] My main stayed in NPC corp all his life because it would have been stupid to do other ways. So did every trader and manufacturer."

Yes, lots of people are in NPC corps. The thing is, the majority of them don't view this as a problem. That's what I mean by needing to have community support; it's not enough to point at the bloated NPC corps and say "See! This is proof!" because if nobody else considers it a problem, it's not a problem worth the development time to fix.

"if you don't know the specialities of EVE, your corp will fail."

Or they might run afoul of those specialities and bounce back; they get awoxed, learn that it exists, is possible and brings no punishment and also learn how to minimize the risk of future awoxers.

I do have to ask, how much of these concerns are based on personal experience, or at least 2nd hand experience, and how much is purely hypothetical? I know that joining corps isn't exactly your thing and my own experiences in hisec corps have been that awoxers and corp thieves are actually quite rare, at least compared to the number of corps out there. I have no idea if that's just me being lucky or good work by recruiters behind the scenes or if that is genuinely the case though.

Anonymous said...

I think making EVE more social is an excellent goal, but I find these ideas just terrible.

The well known antisocial Gevlon Goblin would be my last adviser in socializing EVE - I mean that in a non offensive way.

1) Paying 500M and having 100M upkeep would be detrimental to current corp architectures, and would be as anti-social as it can get.

If anything is social, then making a corp for your buddies and missioning together is definitely social. Or a roleplaying group, which is totally uninterested in isk, and is only there for social purposes. Or a noob corp which you form with the folks who you mine together with often in the same belt, and start a little community. Or your roaming corp, which camps gates together, or runs around in 0 sec, looking for prey. These would instantly go down the drain, taking out the majority of corps from EVE.

The only corps that would survive are the ones which already have a lot of members (like dreddit), the ones which are well organized (like a low sec POS corp), or ones which have at least a few rich players, who are willing to pay up for their poorer corpmates.

So this wouldn't increase social grouping at all, it would have the exact opposite message: if you want to play with your buddies, then pay 1 plex to create a corp, and pay 2 plex a year to keep it up. Sounds lovely.

Also it wouldn't really deter expert hisec missioners from making 1 man Potemkin corps, as they can afford it. They just do 2 more missions a month, and nothing else changes for them.

This would actively deter any relatively new player from starting corps, and would lead to masses of players accumulating in npc corps, which are again just a random group of folks who you don't want to be together with.

2) Splitting PvP and PvE corps. PvE corps would be the ultimate carebear corps, who don't even fit a gun anymore, as they are barred from doing any pvp. They would be forced to miss out on a large and thrilling part of the game, for no real reason, but they would stay as the perfect gank targets. Also, low sec non-pvp corps would become a joke, as pvp corps would attack them anyway, and they couldn't even shoot back. They'd be just punchbags full of valuable modules.

Only a few groups would be successful, who can organize both a good pvp and pve corp: the first one protects the operation, the second one produces isk. This requires a 2 highly organized groups, which cooperate for mutual survival. Certainly not a solution to promote gathering and casual socializing for people, as if you log in to your account, you have to do your part, and nothing else.


My solution to make EVE more social would be the following.

a) Get transferred 1 month after character creation from the npc noob corp to the default npc corp. The default npc corp should be able to be wardecced, and will be wardecced by any sane pvp oriented corp, as it contains all the noobs and dropouts who didn't organize something for themselves. This would encourage people to form corps, and not to stay with tens of thousands of characters in an npc corp full of unknown people who are constantly attacked.

b) To prevent making 1 man corps, I would simply change one rule: currently characters holding a position in a corp can only switch corps 24 hours after they resign from all roles. I would extend this to 1 week. So you are a sole missioner in a one man corp? Then you are the CEO. If you get wardecced, you either dock up for a week and lose a lot of time, or fight alone against some griefer group. First time this happens, you will realize that you should join a large corp from where you can quit more easily as you don't have to have a role there, or this corp is big enough to protect itself from casual griefers.

mordis mydaddy said...

"Then you are the CEO. If you get wardecced, you either dock up for a week and lose a lot of time, or fight alone against some griefer group."

The CEO of my 1-man corp is an alt with just enough SP for leadership skills. The toons I use to play are just members with no roles, so they can leave corp whenever wardecced. I learned how important this was back in E-Uni where wardecs meant docking up forever or just jumping into a neutral corp until the wardec ended.

Anonymous said...

I think a better balance would be personal wardecs. 1 player decs 1 person even if they are in an NPC corp. You would no longer be safer by playing alone so the benefits of a player corp would not be given up for safety. Making it impossible to kill Corp members would be a mistake. It would take away gameplay options and allow idiots to prosper running corps without background checks

Dersen Lowery said...

"About the fees: they mean to be too high for new players. New players should NOT run corps, corps should be ran by veterans and newbies should be members in these corps. I think the best way to make a newbie quit EVE is putting him in a corp lead by another newbie. For this I fully support awoxing such corps. The faster they dissolve, the better for the lost newbies inside."

If you don't give new players an opportunity to fail, especially when they have very little at stake, then they will never learn. If they never learn, they will never get better. If they never get better, your idea fails, because there will be a crop of veterans who are just as clueless about running corps as any new player is. There's no better time to run into an Awoxer or a corp thief then when you have a tiny little corp with 100M ISK to its name.

At any rate, it's a player skill, not a character skill, so it can very well be available on day one.

As for your terrible idea about separating PvE and PvP corps: It will go nowhere anyway, because CCP is determined to make PvE more like PvP in terms of ship fittings, tactics, and so forth. The farther along they get with that project, the more irrelevant the distinction. Also, it's not unheard of for carebears to try defending themselves, succeed, and enjoy it enough to go in to PvP. Why do you want to make that harder in a PvP game?

Lastly, I assume that your PvE corps could still do market PvP, mine out rival corps' belts, and so forth, yes? In EVE, the line between PvE and PvP is deliberately blurry.

Anonymous said...

Hmm... you have a point. My b) suggestion would be easy to circumvent with alts. oh well, back to the drawing board.

Anonymous said...

So you'll sell your votes to a CSM who can make a hollow promise to do something outside of the remit of the CSM?

Nice.


CSM are not game designers. They are a focus group. They do not get to design features. They can say "this is dumb" but CCP can go "no its not" and ignore them - it happens every year.

Bosh said...

Would the following work:

-Split High Sec into High Sec and Mid Sec.
-Allow people to wardec NPC corps.
-In High Sec wardecs are invalid.
-Have enough corp fees to avoid a massive profusion of one-man corps.

I'm probably missing something though...

Malcanis said...

11 CSM votes, you say?

Have you read my hisec manifesto? I understand what you want to achieve, I just suspect that your proposal won't achieve it.

Also, I rather suspect that many of the "silent" NPC/single member corp members are alts of 0.0 players. Making the non-combat activities viable in 0.0 will go a long way to reducing the problem.

Anyway I invite you to post your offer in my CSM election thread and I will answer more fully there:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=192717&find=unread

regards,

Malc

Anonymous said...

My favourite part is the bit about "All highsec pve corps are failures."

Yet, with a brief search through the recruitment tool ingame, you can find a wide range of mining, mission running, and incursion corps, that are HIGHSEC and pve only corps, that have been doing comfortably well for many months, in some cases years.

Perhaps a TINY bit of research before going on your rant would be a nice idea.

What you are TRYING to do, is force people who don't want to be in palyer corps, to be in player corps, and are trying to charge them an additional cost to exist. This takes choice and opportunity away from eve, and will overall create a much worse new player experience.

To any CSM reading this, should you support the ideas mentioned that he lists, my 4 account votes will be to whichever CSM candidate specifically does NOT endorse force restructuring of highsec corps, or allowing player corps to be wardec immune.

Thus, if you support this guys policies, you get (11-4) 7 votes.

Anonymous said...

Horrible ideia.

EvE is a pvp centric sandbox mmo-rpg,after the login screen, everything you do in EvE is PvP.

The problem is themepark mindset players that don't understant what a sandbox game is.

If you're not willing to fight for what you have in EvE Online, you don't deserve it, and you will lose it. That EvE Online in a nutshell.