War

[Kitsune]

I'm going to be fascinated to see just how much the voting for every not-eve game on the ballot is inflated by the eve players.

[Endie]

In other war news The player base attacks CCP again when they asked the players to vote for Eve Online for Best Online Game...

I tried to vote, but first it said that there had been more than 200 votes cast already and locked up for half an hour before it loaded the page. Then I had to press the vote button about forty times before it registered, at which point it stopped responding and just kept trying to vote solidly for 45 minutes. Fortunately, none of them counted apparently, as I started bouncing back and forth between the poll page and the link that got me to it for about half an hour before my browser went black, my iPhone went on fire and I went to bed.

I complained that they'd not counted my vote for excellent space MMO Eve Online but they said that their records showed nothing and that it was my own fault for trying to vote in the same poll as more than thirty other people.

That was me: my annual eve-o post.  Quality will out, I suppose :D

[Goumindong]

The best response was:

"I am sorry, i can't vote right now. How about I get back to you in 18 months?"

[lac]

'Broken' Eve makes MSN.

Which wakes up a CCP PR guy who releases following statement:

CCP has invested significant time and resources throughout EVE's history on increasing the performance of fleet fights. We've always had a team of developers devoted to improving our technology and in recent years we made exponential headway through massive server upgrades and initiatives like "Stackless IO".

'Currently, unsurprisingly, this effort is our No.1 development priority and we have given the specialised team carte blanche in re-attaining 1,000+ player fleet battles that EVE is famous for.

'With the help of the EVE community on the test server, we believe we are close to some investigative breakthroughs and will continue to relay any progress via our developer blogs.'

[Vinadil]

I am not sure how standard an EVE customer I am... I am one of those "play for 6 months and take 6 months off" people who has played on and off since 2005ish.  From my experience EVE has had more people online every time I come back.

I know the lag issues are a serious concern for a segment of the player base, a segment that has a VERY large forum/internet presence.  But, for all of the talk of people cancelling subscriptions I don't see it happening, and I am fairly certain CCP does not see it happening either.

Nice PR of them to say it is getting priority attention, but I kind of doubt that too.  Most of the recent talks I have heard/read from them indicate they are moving for more and more casual players who think PvE before PvP.

[TheDreamr]

While a large percentage of the player base might not care about lag, sov or making nullsec easier to manage, they may care that CCP can't be arsed actually finishing anything and won't have the resources available to commit to fixing outstanding issues for the next 18 months while they start work on more features which may or may not be of interest to the current playerbase, but which are pretty much guaranteed to also be left half-finished.

[ajax34i]

This site doesn't have the entire 7-year history (I forget the link to the site that does ATM), but EVE has fewer people online now than last year / two years ago.  They were attaining 60k on Sundays every Sunday for a while, now it's back down to 45-50k.  Some people are leaving, or at least not logging on much.

Their 18-month period of nothing happening will affect the server population, I think.

[Kageru]

A good article on Kotaku as well. Although it doesn't also mention the new features are only tangentially eve related.

[Sir T]

I think it's far more significant that that EVO thread is now 32 pages long and not a flamewar, snark or usual suspects troll in sight.

[ajax34i]

It got spammed with "male reproductive organ" posts a while back but they cleaned it up.  The mods are doing their job.

[Kageru]

Seems to be a lot of fighting going on even with the current lag and SoV mechanics... although a fair amount of it appears to be more about getting kills and denying the use of space than territorial gains. Sure I'm getting most of this wrong but this thread has been inert for a long time and used to be part of the fun as a non-eve playing reader.

So as I understand it Doom and Cry Havok are HAC roaming the pure blind area leading to some painful moments. I'm not sure if Evoke is hostile to the others in that region. Meanwhile goons and test alliance please ignore (TEST) continue to claim the territories TCF didn't want. Also in the same region I believe Looney Toons (ACME) is getting evicted.

The NC is attacking Intrepid Cross (IRC) the strategic value of which escapes me. I know R.A.G.E is fighting the Russians in geminate so maybe this is a second front? Amusing killmails are resulting from that too, generally from people ratting in capital ships. but there are also some fairly large fights.

Providence is still a battleground after U'K was disbanded. There's a Romanian civil war in Period Basis no one seems to understand or care about. And Atlas and some of the Russians (damned if I can work out which are which, and I think PL under contract?) are playing SoV structure ping pong in a demonstration of how difficult (and bugged) taking SoV against an actual opponent is.

And sometimes alliances with intriguing names (Like "Touhou Project") simply give up space and vanish and generally no-one seems to know why.

(and yes, most of this is from reading websites because Perkone doesn't seem to be too involved :)

[MahrinSkel]

Mostly because there are no wars anymore, just skirmishes.  Every major power's strategy comes down to "how fast can we give away space to people that won't raid us too much?"  Nobody wants more territory, and except for some musical chairs as they jockey for better territory, there's no conquest.

--Dave

[Sparky]

The 0.0 metagame has mutated from diplomacy/infiltration/conquest to "keeping our guys from quitting faster than your guys"

[Phildo]

The Russians involved in the fighting against Atlas are primarily Red Alliance, Legion of xXDeathXx and White Noise.  Meanwhile, it was Defi4nt that were evicted from Deklein.  And most of the losses that you linked to were also in Deklein, with one in Tribute.  None were in Pure Blind, although there has been some amusing ganking there as well as a large number of new guests of the NC have settled in.  Cry Havoc, Ev0ke, D00m. (sometimes in -A-, currently in an alliance called Northern Coalition), Hydra Reloaded and a few various other entities are the aggressors there.

[Trigona]

Pure Blind has the potential to become interesting.  The NC have installed a number of 'pet' alliances who are responsible for the area, the big problem being that Doom and friends are based in the NPC stations and are using super caps and superior skill to terrorize the new alliances.  Doom have just set up an alliance called Northern Coalition (their idea of a jk) and have the potential to wreak havoc. 

It will be hard for Doom to take sov as if they get too annoying the NC will blob them back to the stone age but if they assemble enough people in their new alliance (some are calling it Tri 5) they might be hard to stop, blob or no blob.  Meanwhile the new alliances are finding that their jump bridges are getting destroyed and they have their space regularly harvested by Doom et al.

[Phildo]

Oh, look at that.  Looney Tunes ARE being evicted from Razor space.

[Sir T]

There's a Bugs Bunny joke in there somewhere.

{edit} In the mean time, some people are playing with Atlas

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/8647/20100814190735.jpg

[Stabs]

That looks like very bored people making pretty patterns rather than an effort to seize and hold space.

[Stabs]

I'm back in the NC and we just blew up a station owned by Intrepid Crossing in MO-YDG. Battlestars got the last blow and the station.

Shooting the TCU at the moment. In fact, boom, there she blows.

It's laggy with 312 in Local (and that's after the other side gave up and left).

We had a hodgepodge of BCs and BS mainly, they had loads of Stealth Bombers. Seemed to me Stealth Bombers don't really work as a main battle fleet (although I don't think they were great with them either). Things got a little heated on our side regarding the issue of dropping bubbles. We bubbled some of our own people while the FC was warping us out presenting the enemy with free kills. But we also gloriously captured squadrons of decloaked SBs inside bubbles for our less lagged members to destroy.

Good stuff, very enjoyable run. I guess I'm a softie but I felt a bit sorry for the people we descended upon. Having your station taken must hurt and the stealth bomber defence seemed more desperate than likely to work.

[Phildo]

Northern Coalition. hotdropped a Goonswarm Federation station claiming op and stole one outpost from us.  We had superior numbers of supercaps, but out subcap fleet was run off too fast to put up a fight.  We lost one Revelation that was afk as well.

[Sir T]

They had the luxury of pickling their entrance point. We had a lot of Drakes that could bot hit out to 100 kms, and they came in at that and started sniping and stuff. Everyone was bored senseless at that stage from hours of playing transformice.. They stole it in the sense that the captured the station but left with no attempt to take the system. And afaik goons got the station again anyway. The station was at like 25% structure when they came in so it was easy.

The station Swapping mechanics are retarded anyway. Under no circumstances could it be called fun.

[Stabs]

Are NC fighting the Goons now or am I misunderstanding Phildo's post? I'm not sure if you mean you were both shooting the station and NC poached the killing blow or if you were fighting.

Phildo. Hmmm. Have you ever considered setting your name to iambic pentameter?

As for station shooting being fun I think you forget how new I am in many ways. I have never blown up a station before. I did attack one on my first day in Eve but it had lots of mates in police uniforms. It was fun to blow up a station for the first time. It was fun leaving my missile launchers on autofire while waiting for the incoming bombers. It was fun when a bomber landed near me so I could turn mwd on and try to get within point range. It was fun pvping and not dying for once. And it was fun watching the argument between the guy who was trying to trap the bombers in a bubble and the people who failed to warp out and died because of his bubbles.

I do see how if Eve once was better and now is worse plus it's your thousandth op the mechanics might be horrible. But I'm a long way off that stage.

[Pezzle]

Northern Coalition.  is TRI V (a single Alliance), not the actual Northern Coalition (which is several alliances).  Try five is not a northern friend.

[Phildo]

It currently consists of one corporation, D00M., who were recently in Red.Overlord and are long-time Triumvirate.

[Stabs]

Ah now I see. Well whichever cunning linguist came up with that confusing name can take pride in having bamboozled me.

[Kageru]

It almost looks like some well-established corporations (Pandemic Legion, Doom, maybe Cry Havoc) are opting out of the "Control Space" game and going into mercenary or roaming mode. With entire squadrons of super-capital ships or a fleet entirely based around a certain strategy and high-skilled pilots (eg. Armor-HAC's, Stealth Bombers) and no space to force them into defensive actions they can pick their fights carefully and do an awful amount of damage. Almost looks like a result of space being expensive and not (for a mature corporation) really required. Though it's probably more an indication of the fact the game is heavily mudflated where you have squadrons like this consisting entirely of carriers, super-carriers with a couple of interdictors and a scout.

It is going to be interesting seeing how CCP's game balance fares. In theory it should balance out when all those nice ships get killed and the corporations don't have the economy to replace them but I'm not sure if either of those things are going to happen. Certainly if the game does become "Capital Ship online" then a great number of Eve players (and all new players) could easily find themselves effectively locked out of 0.0 which would lead to lots of "pwnage" for whoever comes out on top while the game stagnates.

[Vinadil]

Hmm, I wonder if they will ever think about making certain types of ships require fuel... some sort of economic "cost" to maintain so that they are not free once you build them and require people to stay landed even after they have made their fleet.

[Phildo]

Capital ships do require fuel to jump between systems, and fighters are reasonably expensive to lose.  Fighter bombers even more-so.

[Kageru]

And 20 Billion for each station PL helps the Russian alliances take from Atlas buys quite a few of those (unsupported number from Kugu).

Of course the real trick is they don't plan on fighting when they will take those sort of losses. Whereas Doom can plant a SBU and force an engagement, or Pandemic Legion can wait until they have a local advantage to attack infrastructure, the same tactics cannot be used against them.

[Endie]

That's the choice CCP explicitly said they wanted people to make, using Tri as an example.

[tgr]

Try five is not a northern friend.

They could be the retarded friend you punch in the face repeatedly for fun until they go to the hospital and come back as tri mk 6.

[Sir T]

CCP has not had balance right for years, probably because they proceed from false assumptions. They seem to have it in their skulls that really expensive ships should be horrifically powerful and the "balance" is the fact that it takes ages for someone to fly them AND they are really expensive. Of course. as can be seen, all that means is that eventually everyone can fly then that keeps playing for a few years can fly them, and that means that everyone that comes after IS locked out.

It's not the first time that Motherships were overpowered or the phrase "cap ships online" was used. MC basically destroyed the north with 6 motherships and CCP basically was very slow to correct the very obvious imbalances. They were basically invincible for various reasons.

[Endie]

Unless the Russians suddenly lose interest, or the Russians run out of money to pay PL (hah!), or someone like IT basically moves in with them, then Atlas are pretty fucked right now.  They are in that place where they think that undocking against PL and Rus just means dying, while their supercap pilots are ignoring the phone.  This morning's fight saw 9 atlas supercarriers and no titans in a fight where PL + Rus had almost as many nyxs (24) as they did zealots.

If Atlas falls, and the current Drone Russians plus White Noise control everything from Omist to eastern Cobalt Edge, then the political make-up of Eve shifts dramatically.  Including the space of AAA (admittedly about as Russian as Goonswarm) that makes everything from Stain to the northern drones basically Russophone or Russophile.

[Sir T]

Their usual pattern is for the the Axis of Faggotry to pile everyone into one place and outnumber the foe. If that cannot happen Mollie will cut and run, and hope that Delve will be such a pain in the ass to invade. Mollie's only solution to any problem is more firepower. If he cant be on the right side of a supercap numbers duel he will promise the earth to the people being attacked and simply nit turn up. Plus Atlas basically calling him a total imbecile as they left the north will have left him with a taste for revenge, and he simply does not have the intelligence to subsume his ego for strategic gains. In short. He will laugh even though his revenge makes his alliance far weaker strategically.

That's all conjecture of course, but logical.

[Endie]

You're thinking of the SC as being like the NC, and of IT as being essentially committed to Atlas surviving in their current space.  They are anything but, and certain people in IT see Atlas imploding as a desirable end in itself.