I'm actually with Yoji on some of his arguments, and had considered writing a big Manifesto on EVE-O about how I think the "EVE Sandbox" has overflown.

This game is currently about numbers. Numbers of support and/or numbers of capitals and/or numbers of supercapitals.

Yes, there are ways to counter numbers to certain extent, but at certain point that becomes impossible due to the sheer numbers that counter draws. In not too distant future (ie within the next 6 months) -- you WILL see one side in EVE field over 200 Titans in battle. Or non-battle as it will be -- because there is nothing you can do about that number of Titans.

But is that ultimately any more or less broken than what we have already seen on the number of subcapitals? 1500 pilots, with say 800+ Maelstroms have already been fielded. And there's fuckall you can do about that either.

The sandbox has spiralled overtime to counter subcapitals with capitals, which in turn have been countered with more subcapitals by creating coalitions, which in turn have been countered by yet more capitals by forming coalitions already heavy in capitals. And so the hamster wheel will continue to turn and turn and turn.

About the only thing going for EVE right now is that there are entities like -A- (and PL at the time), who are not attached to their space and will simply walk away. And come back in some time in the future when the numbers can be countered.

But -- to suggest that somehow simply changing one leg of the wheel (ie. lets say titans) will somehow magically "fix" this game, I believe is fucking retarded and ultimately selfserving to the interest and fighting type of the alliance the member is part of who is suggesting this. All you will do is force yet more megacoalitions to be formed and suddenly everyone in EVE will have to have a 600 man BS gang to defend their most important assets. Or everyone will have to go the way of the blueball and recapture.

I think we'd be far better off fucking accepting the fact that the sandbox has overflown. It's fucking done. No point in trying to patch the holes, fucking knock that shit down and build yourself a playground instead. Playground with rules, guidelines and barriers to limit and direct what and how you are able to do things.

I think that Titans shouldn't be the end-all of combat in EVE. I've said that for like 2-3 years now. I'd like all offensive abilities removed from them. But I also believe that what the game needs are ways to limit and discourage what the end-all of current combat ships (Titan) is countering -- ie. subcapital numbers.

How you do it is of course up for debate, but you could fucking start by first acknowledging that sandbox was for time when this game wasn't ancient. It was for when EVE was young and fresh, not when a new person can go and buy a character that can fly any ship they want + the ship itself with relative ease. The game is old and old sandboxes break under wear and tear.

So start implementing encouragements to smaller size combat (not a single sov objective for example) and start limiting what pure numbers are able to do (ie. damage mitigation, or proximity sensor strenght disruption, etc). Yes. It is sandbox no more, but fuck it at least it's got a chance to NOT be so FUCKING broken.

Make sov taking EASY, not hard. If you make it easy, you allow small entities to take space without having to wait fucking 4-6 days for it. You make it harder for massive alliances to defend 4 regions. Yes, it makes it VERY easy to also LOSE space -- but fuck it -- I think -A- has it right in many ways in that if you get blobbed to fuck, you should just be able to go v0v and come back few weeks after if the assaulter REALLY doesn't want to live in the space they just conquered.

But -- you have to balance that by making it hurt financially if you walk away. Sure -- make stations destroyable, but create a wreck instead for example which you can rebuild -- at cost. Also boost the rewards of owning space, so people will want to rebuild said wrecks and defend the space they own so they won't loose income/have to rebuild assets.

Anyway... maybe one day I will write my manifesto for broken sandboxes, but today I will just bitch and whine v0v.