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Friday, August 31, 2012

High Sec Station Nerf Incoming

Sometimes one can tell about the biases of a news site or blog by clicking on the hyper-links embedded in a story and reading the source material.  The latest case involves TheMittani.com and an article on faction warfare.  TheMittani.com is owned and operated by people heavily invested in Eve Online's null sec warfare first and general player vs player combat second.  High sec in general and high sec carebears in particular are looked down upon.  I think this article, while I really enjoyed Endie's writing, shows that bias.

What shows the bias?  The fact that he did not discuss one of the biggest nuggets of news in CCP Ytterbium's post, the planned nerf of high sec stations.
  • Q: ONE OF THE REASONS FOR LOW-SECURITY SPACE BEING CRAP REMAINS THAT HIGH-SECURITY STATIONS ARE TOO GOOD IN THE FIRST PLACE, DO YOU HAVE PLANS TO ADJUST THIS?

  • A: Indeed we do. This topic brought quite an internal discussion, and while this most likely won't be part of a Factional Warfare iteration, we do want to have a look at reducing high-security stations effectiveness to make other areas of space more interesting. Some examples could be reducing refining rates, increasing ISK payment to install jobs. Nothing is set in stone as this is not planned for the immediate future however. Another good idea we noticed here was to tie high-security tax with the war performance of its related Factional Warfare Militia. So if, by example, the Caldari Militia are losing the war in Factional Warfare, all taxes in Caldari State high-security space could go up to support the war effort.
I have expected a move like this for quite some time, which is why I am currently making the adjustment to low sec life.  I should also add I do not expect to see this occur in the Winter expansion as CCP has bigger fish to fry, such as fixing faction warfare.

I would like to add that in this case bias is not really a bad term.  Endie's article focused on faction warfare, and as CCP Ytterbium stated in his post the high sec station nerf is not a part of any faction warfare revamp.  Keeping an article focused is actually a sign of a good writer.  Also, Endie is the managing editor (I hope I got the title right) of TheMittani.com and he does have to think about future content.  TheMittani.com has posted 6 articles today so he might save the high sec news as weekend filler.

Still, passing over the news does show a bias in what TheMittani.com considers important.  That's why clicking on the hyper-link is important.  In Eve, gather all the information possible.

8 comments:

  1. Personally I'd rather see FW take a more..."direct" effect on high and lowsec. Namely: everything is game for FW. If the Gallente are just completely kicking Caldari ass, you may log in your Jita alt one day to see it occupied by the Gallente Federation.
    Now THAT, m'dears, is "faction warfare". What's in place currently is basically a badly broken "PvP 'battlegrounds'" setup.

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    1. That would be cool, Hong, if the effect was everyone Caldari rallying around to retake Jita. Instead what you usually get in MMOs when one side seems to be winning is all the new people join the winning side. Soon it would be just as stagnant as it is now except if you unwittingly picked the wrong race the game would be unplayable.

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    2. True .... dynamic changes of the major economic variables in high sec due to faction war results will be a serious motivation for faction war.

      The only problem is that any char participating becomes a war target for the other faction ..... on the whole map of New Eden.
      This means faction war is, and will stay a game of "alts" because no serious high sec industrialist will dare to put his high sec operations under the thread of "faction war" in otherwise concord protected systems.

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  2. Ummmmm, actually there is no "planned nerf" that I'm aware of. Not to say feedback against such move isn't necessary, I'm likewise of the mindset that need more incentives to live in low sec, not fewer reasons to live in high sec.

    But there's no "nerf highsec" plans in the pipeline, if there is I'll be the first to alert the player base myself. CCP Ytterbium is one of the best developers about just saying the first thing that comes to his mind, he'd rather toss out ideas at the embryonic stage if players react strongly. Players will have to learn to respect that at the same time and not assume that there is a need to be afraid of what he's thinking.

    This goes back to the premise of your blog post here - the bottom line is that TheMittani.com *knows* this about CCP Ytterbium, he's built a reputation for this on the forum, and anyone with their finger on the developer pulse is aware of this. The editors know that Ytterbium spit-balling isn't really news, and didn't report it as such. It would have been *irresponsible* of them, actually, to sensationalize that comment and turn it into some scandal about developers destroying high sec.

    Be vary careful with accusations of bias - one could just as easily make the case that your failure to give credit to the many articles that have been written so far about non-0.0 events and news is a clear indicator of YOUR bias against the website.

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    1. Actually I quite like TheMittani.com and I try to read it every day. Not only is it very well written but often thought provoking as well.

      But as the site admits, they do have biases but they are trying to address them. I think that most people think the biggest biases are trying to not paint a pro-CFC picture of null sec. But I think it is also fair to state that the editorial staff of TheMittani.com believes that null sec news is more important than high sec news. In terms of grabbing readership, that is fair because the goings-on ARE more interesting than what occurs in high sec space.

      As for CCP having no plans for nerfing high sec, I might buy your argument if CCP Ytterbium's post didn't fall in line with other actions and statements stretching back over a year. I would like to see improvements made in low sec that make people want to live there outside those given to the faction warfare community. I'm just afraid that the solution will be nerf high sec, not buff low sec.

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    2. Oh, and I'm a blogger. Of course I have biases. Comes with the territory. I'm moving to low sec and I want CCP to improve my new home :)

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    3. Best way to avoid somehow missleading blogs is paying attention to the context in which (dev)statements are made.

      The articles on mitt.com and on eve news 24 are a simple addition of 3 feedback comments from Ytterbium in a stickied faction war thread (FW: I-hub and system upgrades).
      Mittani.com says so in the prelude eve news 24 doesn't.





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  3. I don't find High Sec to be too good (the degree of "protection"). I just find High Sec to be out of whack when compared to low sec. That could also be said about null sec (sov) and low sec. The jump is so dramatic that you get gate camps on the edge of 0.5<->0.4 systems. I think the risk should be higher in 0.5-0.9 systems. I think it takes 27 seconds for Concord to show up in a 0.5 systems. I think if someone can gank someone and get off grid before Concord show up they shouldn't get toasted by Concord.

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