Originally a comment by Axloth Okiah on my Hypothesis on Wormholes post.
As a "professional wormholer" pretty much on top of the whole foodchain (ie. diplo and leadership of one of top alliances), please allow me to correct some of your inaccurate assumptions.
The biggest one is that there is some preferential space one needs to "break ïnto" in order live in wspace. Your text suggests that we somehow block off entry to these systems - in a similar manner to sov-holding alliances in null which prevent newcomers from taking root. By this you probably mean C5 and C6 systems where capital escalations are possible.
But in reality, there are dozens of free and unoccupied systems like this and even bigger number of semi-inactive and poorly defended ones. The infamous "fortress systems" with 10+ POSes and tons of capitals are at most 10% of the total. In this respect, situation got even better for "newcomers" with Hyperion and number of good systems went up because of the wh-effects and C4 static rebalance (Black Holes for example used to be basically uninhabitable, now they are actually good and desirable).
There is simply no way and, perhaps more importantly, no incentive for us to prevent others from settling in. There isnt any competition for resources going on because escalations are same everywhere and most of publicized evicitons happen because of grudges and enmity. Coming into wspace is in practice extremely easy. What is hard is actually living here longterm which is a result of shit POS design and shit corp role management that make growing, recruitment and ship security a total nightmare. Start-up groups often dwindle and die because they cannot sustain any growth as result of pressure from the environment and game itself, not because of other wormholers trying to remove them.
The income is not that stellar either. Prices of salvage have been dropping for a long time, which unfortunately disproptionately affects lower-class wormholers. On top of that, all of the income must be divided among the membership, so bigger groups earn less. While 3-men farming groups earn a ton of isk, average membership of professional wormholers earn less then hisec incursioners while facing significantly higher risk (regardless of Hyperion release).
In the end, the current slumber is nothing new and is a result of overall eve slowdown and less players logging in - it will hopefully pick as the summer ended. Similar concerns about wspace dying and groups being too big, evil and entrenched crop up every couple months, regardless of whats really going on. But its been the same and roughly cyclical in nature for several years now as strong alliances form and then disintegrate into smaller ones.
So... I think your hypothesis is not correct and hopefully I managed to explain why ;)
Everything he said, exactly.
ReplyDeleteThis especially hurts: "Start-up groups often dwindle and die because they cannot sustain any growth as result of pressure from the environment and game itself, not because of other wormholers trying to remove them."
That's what happened to us.
-Dersen
Adding: Running into other corps was one of the things that kept us around and engaged. Other people aren't the problem in wormholes. The combination of logistics and ISK making opportunities that are in desperate need of a rebalance had more to do with it.
ReplyDeleteThe recent changes are almost entirely positive--and the not-so-positive parts aren't deal-breakers, just something else to adapt to--but they don't get at the problems.
You could start with the fact that the only way to scale WH income up is to drop capitals in high end sites. We ran C5s for income, but we had to jump through a C2 hole to get there, and they were often other people's C5s, so we made our ISK in PVP-capable subcap fleets. The ISK wasn't bad, but with 10-12 or more in fleet it got diluted.
C6 space is still pretty hard to survive in as a small or mid sized group as sooner or later one of the large C6 group curb stomps you. There are simply too few C6 holes, and to make folks with C6 statics. Once you go below that in C rating it's not as bad as in a C5 it's much harder to deploy and recover large cap fleets. The problem you run into is a number of the C types are hard to live in as a group.
ReplyDeleteC1- Easy to solo sites, but local content doesn't really pay the bills for a POS.
C4- Very difficult to solo or even duo the sites, and the rewards aren't better than a C3. Prior to adding a 2nd static logistics were as difficult as a C5-C6s (or more difficult).
So most smal corps tend to stick to C2-3, and mid sized corps stick C5s.