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EVE Evolved: Capital ships ruined nullsec
All throughout EVE Online's lifetime, compelling stories of incredible events, daring heists, and colossal battles with thousands of players have periodically surfaced and spread across the gaming media like wildfire. Most of the recent stories have been about record-breaking battles between huge alliances of players in the lawless depths of null-security space, and each one has been met with an influx of new players who want to participate. The surprising truth behind nullsec warfare, however, is that many of those on the front lines are simply fed up with the political state of the game. In EVE's early years, the map was split between hundreds of small alliances, each of which slowly expanded its influence by conquering the star systems bordering its space. Skirmishes and pirate incursions were brief and commonplace, while border wars over territory were long and protracted affairs. Today's nullsec is a different animal entirely, with nearly the entire map carved up between two colossal mega-coalitions of alliances (N3/PL and CFC), each one internally held in a state of perpetually monotonous peace. No alliance in a coalition can break away and stand on its own for fear of being demolished by the others, and so all of nullsec is at peace with its neighbours and bored to tears by it. In this edition of EVE Evolved, I examine how nullsec got to the state it's in now and why it's badly in need of an overhaul.
EVE Evolved: Consequences and conflict
I've always considered EVE Online to be the model sandbox MMO and a template that could theoretically be applied to other titles. Whether you believe it's by careful design or a happy accident, EVE has stumbled on a formula that clearly works and has helped the game stay popular for over a decade. I've written before about the many interconnected parts that make EVE's sandbox model work and how pulling out essential features such as item loss on death or adding foreign mechanics like global banking could cause the whole game to fall apart. But there's one aspect I didn't really cover in depth: consequences for negative behaviour. In his latest Some Assembly Required column, Massively's Jef Reahard argued that EVE can't be considered the quintessential sandbox MMO because it lacks consequences for bad behaviour. While I would argue that EVE is as close to the ideal model of the genre as exists at the moment, I'm forced to agree with Jef's assessment. Almost all of the major events in EVE's recent history that have hit the gaming media have been about theft or war, with tales of massive scams and alliance warfare painting New Eden in a dark and violent light. The ultimate sandbox would be equally capable of birthing incredible stories of exploration and players working together to build magnificent things, not just chaos and death in the gloomy depths of interstellar space. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the lack of consequence for negative actions in EVE Online, whether it causes negative behaviour, and why sandboxes need to be about more than just destruction.
EVE Evolved: The top five most dangerous solar systems
EVE Online is a PvP game at its core, with conflict built in at a fundamental level. Pirates lurk around key trade routes and stand ready to pounce on unsuspecting victims, while vast nullsec alliances protect their territories with watchful vigilance and never-ending bloodlust. Wander into the wrong solar system as a new player and your precious ship and cargo will be turned into molten slag and a few points on a killboard quicker than you can say, "Hello, new friend, and what does that red square on your ship mean?" The original map of EVE was generated one evening by an Icelandic developer who could scarcely have known he was deciding the fates of thousands of gamers for years to come. New systems have been added to the game over the years, and a few manual changes have been made to the stargate network, but most of the universe has remained the same for over a decade. In all that time, a few solar systems have stood out as brazen bastions of bastardly behaviour and made their marks on EVE's history. In this week's EVE Evolved, I run down a list of the top five most dangerous solar systems in EVE's long history and delve into why each has earned its reputation as a no-fly-zone for newbies.
EVE Evolved: Building a better empire
It's often said that EVE Online is 99% endgame, with only the tutorials and epic mission arcs really providing directed gameplay. Once you get out into the open world, the game is dominated by sandbox laws and social interaction. This is most clear in the lawless nullsec regions where alliances war over territory and build their own empires in the void. Last week I looked back at the early days of nullsec industry and examined the problems industry has developed over the years. With a massive nullsec revamp scheduled to begin this winter, I went on to speculate on how the game could be changed to bring back the glory days of nullsec industry. Although adequately incentivised local mining and production could transform player-created empires, those aren't the only areas of gameplay being revisited. Sovereignty mechanics, fleet warfare, small gang warfare, exploration and small-scale territorial control will all eventually be redesigned as part of the massive iterative overhaul. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the history of EVE's empire-building and territorial warfare mechanics, some of the problems faced by the sovereignty system, and how those aspects of EVE could possibly be changed for the better.
