Courtesy of Virtuozzo The Collective AAA Alliance - Post #124
Like Holy Planetoids Batman!
Today CCP Dev Chronotis published a new Dominion dev blog called "Upgrading and Upkeep of Sovereign Solar Systems in Dominion" besides the longish title, the essay seemed promising enough, with a few nice jpegs of an auto-billing system and a new Infrastructure Hub menu. But then when you go to the blog's forum posts - HOLY MOTHER OF VELDSPAR!
The post count is now up to 312 and I imagine will climb further. But the shocker really is just how negative a reaction Eve players have had to this post by Dev Chronotis. I mean - I've played other MMOs before and other games and when a new release approaches - you get your share of negative naysayers - but this is really way over the top of negative vibes. There is almost no good at all discussed about the proposed changes - especially from the real null-sec players. One Goonswarm player even states:
"I mean, cmon, when Goons start quoting Bobby Atlas out of agreement then something has to be very, very wrong." -Navick, Goonfleet - Goonswarm
Frankly, even though I have yet to play in null-sec myself - after reading most of the posts I personally am inclined to agree with both the Goons and Atlas. What the hell kinda of incentive is there to play in null-sec when you have to pay a billion+ a month for a single system? And that's not even counting your POS expenses. Isn't the idea that players pay for an MMO to have fun, not to have a second job?
I think the most glaring problem is the ridiculous price tag of maintaining a system or even expanding. The way it is set up now, there is no real reason to want to go out and conquer more space - because it will be just way bloody harder to maintain and you'll need even more working ISK player slaves to somehow bring in the billions of tax required.
The idea of small corps being able to carve out their piece of the pie in null-sec is pie in the sky with this plan. It's way too much work for next to no payback - and the risk is huge, considering the amount of stealth, cynoid, blob griefers roaming the heavens of null-sec.
But what is worse, there really are no new game "fun" mechanics. Nothing new is introduced other than making more anomalies available, more deadspaces, more --- just more of what is already present. Half of which no one in null-sec does or even wants to do. Because null-sec is more about the PvP then it is about the big grind of fighting NPCs.
I dunno about you - but after reading the replies on this forum I hope CCP chiefs call an all-hands meeting. Because their player base are not happy campers at this moment. I imagine something will change - because "as is" will lead not to Dominion, but Exodus - PartDeux.
4 comments:
It's really weird how CCP totally missed the target on this one. They missed the whole point of the 'upgrade to 0.0'. Shocking really...
Yes it is a bit shocking. I'm going to repost my comment I made on your blog here:
I think the best response by CCP right now would be to announce a delay in the release. This will do two things:
1) Let their player base know they take them seriously and their gameplay (since you're losing a lot of trust as we speak)
2) Do a little more development - maybe a month more and use the valuable feedback provided in the disastrous forum response.
If I were in charge - these would be my moves to make. I know delay costs money - but you have to realize you're in damage control mode now.
Do you think the cost changes (6m/day for a base system, all in the TCU, hub is "free") do enough to alleviate that side of the problems?
I've come around the costs issue and really think the core of the problem is the rewards.
It's unfortunate becuz I think people really got hung up on the costs early on in the heated forum response and then it dawned on many that it really wasn't the costs as much as the rewards.
For the big alliances I don't think costs - even the initial costs would have been a big deal - but lowering the costs did help smaller alliances.
But really - I am more concerned with whether this whole concept of expanding anomalies and adding more mining and NPC pirates will be a sufficient draw for players.
In a way, CCP is forcing players to grind in order to live in nul-sec. And indeed, it won't be CCP doing this but Alliance leaders having to do it for CCP.
Not sure if this model will work that well - or be conducive to pitched PvP large fleet battles etc.
There is ALOT of risk going into nul-sec, and I'm not convinced that alliances will be able to protect PvE like activities well enough especially if they are increased.
So there are many ifs about the whole proposal - not to mention - you have to give a lot of weight to all the alliances that spoke up in a strongly negative manner in the forums. Its a bit hard to assume that all these nul-sec players were clueless and CCP has it all figured out. I personally have gone more with the players on this one ...
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