Ripard asked a question, after learning from CCP that 50% of the paying players quit shortly after subscribing (I guess they mean 1-3 month), 40% remains solo "leveling their Raven" and only 10% goes to group play. His question is "where would you put your resources? If you think CCP should put more resources to this larger group of solo players, how do you think it would help?"
I think it's a bad question. It's not developer resources that the "solo players" need. I mean not smarter or more beautiful rats. Also, Ripard is dead wrong in his statement that other MMOs have better PvE content in the relevant range. Sure, a WoW heroic raid has much more mechanics, much more unique graphics and need much better teamwork than any PvE content in EVE. But WoW newbies don't run heroic raids! The WoW newbie is killing 10 wolves again and again and again. And the wolves aren't even prettier than EVE rats or have any interesting mechanics. They are exactly like low level EVE rats: they are all the same, they do nothing but weak DPS on you, and then they die and give you pitiful rewards. After you reached max level, you run the same daily quests and dungeons to "gear up". Unless you are playing tank (FC), you have no other job than "orbit the tank" and shoot the mobs. Actually you don't have to, this content is so trivial that it can be completed if 20-40% of the group is AFK.
What does WoW have and EVE doesn't? Low and mid-level cooperative play! If you go to a WoW server, you see every single player in a guild. There is no such WoW player as "don't trade very much... they don't engage in a diverse range of activities" except for roleplaying hermits. Why? Because WoW rewards grouping on every level to do PvE, while EVE punishes it. If two newbies in WoW group up to level, the wolves killed by their teammate counts to them too. So the "kill 10 wolves" quest turns into a "kill 5 wolves each" quest. In EVE if you group up with someone, he will steal from you and try to trick you into limited engagement and even if you found a honest fellow newbie, you will advance slower in group. If you join a guild in WoW, you get passive bonuses. If you join a corp in EVE, you get wardecced and awoxed. I play the game for more than two years, participate in the community, "got a name", took part in the greatest battle, creating my unique content and my main is still in the starter NPC corp because I saw no reason to do differently. Hell, I couldn't lure my girlfriend to EVE simply because we couldn't play together as she instantly recognized that she is just holding me back and she hated that.
There is no such thing as solo MMO player. That 40% don't prefer playing solo. They are forced to, because outside of PvP and high-end PvE (incursions, WH capital escalations), the game punishes grouping. What could be added to help them? At first, stop punishing grouping. Awoxing must go away, along with wardeccing highsec corps that have no structures. Don't give me the "EVE must be risky" crap! One can be completely safe from wars and awoxes in the NPC corp or 1-man corp. Why should the game punish having a tag while playing the same way. Of course a corp that owns POS or POCO must be wardecable, but a few guys chatting while missioning shouldn't or they will mission without chatting until getting bored and quiting.
Next step: give cooperative goals, something players can work for as a corp. No need to think something huge as stargates, much more mundane stuff could work, like Empire issue (super)capitals, that have no jump drive, so forever locked to the system they are built in. Then the currently useless "highsec missioning corp" could work together to get a big, shiny titan to peacock around. Of course they would still be useless, along with their never used titan, but who cares if they hurt nobody and help upkeeping the game development. Not to mention that sooner or later some of them feel invincible in the titan and accept a duel or do something similarly dumb.
The actions of Noir after their double-agent act Burn Jita makes much more sense after thinking about the 10% vs 90%. I mean betraying a client for lot of money makes sense. Insisting that everything was fine even after EN24 commenters and Redditors (who hate me like the plague) are siding with me is just PR suicide. Regardless of what happened, they should have apologized and replace their CEO to his own anonymous alt. Every time they say "but the contract said kills", they look worse.
But they don't stop saying that, which can only mean they really believe it. This - and the similarly pointless actions of NOHO - got me thinking about their mentality.
When I became their partner, I viewed them as teammates working for a common goal, for mutual benefit. I negotiated casually, expecting them to work for me, just like I work for them by being generous with payments (Marmites+Lemmings get from me the price of a supercarrier every month). If they were fellow PvE-ers, they would have done the best possible job for the "kudos" and rewards. When they did not do it, I saw them as traitors. Their unexpected community disaster came from the fact that most people - and all prospective clients - are PvE players, seeing the things as I did. It hit them by surprise, because in their PvP-er echo chamber everyone saw things the same way they did.
Same with NOHO. Their opening move, destroying my Phoenix was an "act of skill" in their eyes, that should have received respect. They probably expected a positive description on my blog, praising their skills. Instead, I classified them under "harmful environment", strike that, due to the high man-hour spent on it, "harmful idiots". Their further acts were aimed for the same: first to get the song which is a token of congratulation and finally they just wanted to get out of the "destructive idiots" label by reimbursing RvB when they realized that they helped me and contact attempts to "set it right".
Unfortunately, it can't be set right, as there is no common ground between the two groups. The PvP-ers and PvE players cannot mix since the first wants to compete with their friends, while the other wants to cooperate with them, creating a disaster for both sides. If CCP wants to keep the 90% (the 40% who stays solo and the 50% who quits) there must be both cooperative goals for them in highsec. All connections between PvE and PvP players must be done via the UI, anonymously. If you expect them to just talk to each other and reach an agreement, you get Noir-me situations for the disappointment of both sides.
Fun fact: CCP wants players to leave highsec but always fails. I gladly give them a "Jesus feature" that creates a new pilgrimage to nullsec: UI features that handle renting, with automatic methods of escrows against awoxing. I mean if a PvE player just want to rent a solar system, he just fires up the UI, pay the first month fee and the escrow to the system owner and you are instantly blue with the owner and light blue to other renters of the same landlord, and the solar system is removed from the available list. If you awox, you automatically lose blue status and the value of the kill is taken from the escrow. If they awox you, you get reimbursed from their escrow. All without a single chat with another player.
I think it's a bad question. It's not developer resources that the "solo players" need. I mean not smarter or more beautiful rats. Also, Ripard is dead wrong in his statement that other MMOs have better PvE content in the relevant range. Sure, a WoW heroic raid has much more mechanics, much more unique graphics and need much better teamwork than any PvE content in EVE. But WoW newbies don't run heroic raids! The WoW newbie is killing 10 wolves again and again and again. And the wolves aren't even prettier than EVE rats or have any interesting mechanics. They are exactly like low level EVE rats: they are all the same, they do nothing but weak DPS on you, and then they die and give you pitiful rewards. After you reached max level, you run the same daily quests and dungeons to "gear up". Unless you are playing tank (FC), you have no other job than "orbit the tank" and shoot the mobs. Actually you don't have to, this content is so trivial that it can be completed if 20-40% of the group is AFK.
What does WoW have and EVE doesn't? Low and mid-level cooperative play! If you go to a WoW server, you see every single player in a guild. There is no such WoW player as "don't trade very much... they don't engage in a diverse range of activities" except for roleplaying hermits. Why? Because WoW rewards grouping on every level to do PvE, while EVE punishes it. If two newbies in WoW group up to level, the wolves killed by their teammate counts to them too. So the "kill 10 wolves" quest turns into a "kill 5 wolves each" quest. In EVE if you group up with someone, he will steal from you and try to trick you into limited engagement and even if you found a honest fellow newbie, you will advance slower in group. If you join a guild in WoW, you get passive bonuses. If you join a corp in EVE, you get wardecced and awoxed. I play the game for more than two years, participate in the community, "got a name", took part in the greatest battle, creating my unique content and my main is still in the starter NPC corp because I saw no reason to do differently. Hell, I couldn't lure my girlfriend to EVE simply because we couldn't play together as she instantly recognized that she is just holding me back and she hated that.
There is no such thing as solo MMO player. That 40% don't prefer playing solo. They are forced to, because outside of PvP and high-end PvE (incursions, WH capital escalations), the game punishes grouping. What could be added to help them? At first, stop punishing grouping. Awoxing must go away, along with wardeccing highsec corps that have no structures. Don't give me the "EVE must be risky" crap! One can be completely safe from wars and awoxes in the NPC corp or 1-man corp. Why should the game punish having a tag while playing the same way. Of course a corp that owns POS or POCO must be wardecable, but a few guys chatting while missioning shouldn't or they will mission without chatting until getting bored and quiting.
Next step: give cooperative goals, something players can work for as a corp. No need to think something huge as stargates, much more mundane stuff could work, like Empire issue (super)capitals, that have no jump drive, so forever locked to the system they are built in. Then the currently useless "highsec missioning corp" could work together to get a big, shiny titan to peacock around. Of course they would still be useless, along with their never used titan, but who cares if they hurt nobody and help upkeeping the game development. Not to mention that sooner or later some of them feel invincible in the titan and accept a duel or do something similarly dumb.
The actions of Noir after their double-agent act Burn Jita makes much more sense after thinking about the 10% vs 90%. I mean betraying a client for lot of money makes sense. Insisting that everything was fine even after EN24 commenters and Redditors (who hate me like the plague) are siding with me is just PR suicide. Regardless of what happened, they should have apologized and replace their CEO to his own anonymous alt. Every time they say "but the contract said kills", they look worse.
But they don't stop saying that, which can only mean they really believe it. This - and the similarly pointless actions of NOHO - got me thinking about their mentality.
- "PvE-player": competing with outsiders, side by side with his friends. He earns his status among his friends by killing more outsiders than them. The outsiders (environment) can be NPCs or players, but in the latter case the player still just sees them as obstacle or resource and not a person to socially interact with. For example the miner ganker doesn't care if his target is a player or a bot, nor he wants to chat with his target, he wants to pad his killboard with the barge.
- "PvP-er": competing with his friends. He earns his status among his friends by defeating them. I'd like to stress that the point is that he looks at the target as a (possible) friend, wants to earn his respect in a "good fight".
When I became their partner, I viewed them as teammates working for a common goal, for mutual benefit. I negotiated casually, expecting them to work for me, just like I work for them by being generous with payments (Marmites+Lemmings get from me the price of a supercarrier every month). If they were fellow PvE-ers, they would have done the best possible job for the "kudos" and rewards. When they did not do it, I saw them as traitors. Their unexpected community disaster came from the fact that most people - and all prospective clients - are PvE players, seeing the things as I did. It hit them by surprise, because in their PvP-er echo chamber everyone saw things the same way they did.
Same with NOHO. Their opening move, destroying my Phoenix was an "act of skill" in their eyes, that should have received respect. They probably expected a positive description on my blog, praising their skills. Instead, I classified them under "harmful environment", strike that, due to the high man-hour spent on it, "harmful idiots". Their further acts were aimed for the same: first to get the song which is a token of congratulation and finally they just wanted to get out of the "destructive idiots" label by reimbursing RvB when they realized that they helped me and contact attempts to "set it right".
Unfortunately, it can't be set right, as there is no common ground between the two groups. The PvP-ers and PvE players cannot mix since the first wants to compete with their friends, while the other wants to cooperate with them, creating a disaster for both sides. If CCP wants to keep the 90% (the 40% who stays solo and the 50% who quits) there must be both cooperative goals for them in highsec. All connections between PvE and PvP players must be done via the UI, anonymously. If you expect them to just talk to each other and reach an agreement, you get Noir-me situations for the disappointment of both sides.
Fun fact: CCP wants players to leave highsec but always fails. I gladly give them a "Jesus feature" that creates a new pilgrimage to nullsec: UI features that handle renting, with automatic methods of escrows against awoxing. I mean if a PvE player just want to rent a solar system, he just fires up the UI, pay the first month fee and the escrow to the system owner and you are instantly blue with the owner and light blue to other renters of the same landlord, and the solar system is removed from the available list. If you awox, you automatically lose blue status and the value of the kill is taken from the escrow. If they awox you, you get reimbursed from their escrow. All without a single chat with another player.
45 comments:
If you join a guild in WoW, you get passive bonuses. If you join a corp in EVE, you get wardecced and awoxed.
That's one of the reasons I'm one of the 50% who quit after a month. Mostly I just didn't like the mechanics- just not the game for me- but also I joined E-Uni right before they were wardecced. We weren't supposed to fly without a list of restrictions as long as my arm to avoid giving away easy kills. I liked the group, but I wasn't interested in paying to *not* fly my internet spaceship. I could have quit of course but my month was up anyway so I just walked away.
"All without a single chat with another player."
CCP doesn't like replacing player created content with rigid systems like in a theme park MMO. They also don't want to remove a social element, or be seen as encouraging renting I expect.
We have Chribba and other 3rd parties, would you suggest replacing those with a 3rd party system, help my mission with LFG tool, or reintroduce loan contracts?
I don't think giving new players are margin of protection is really what is going to get them organized to go after ten percenter content. As is, even long-term players are pretty risk averse, even when they can afford not to be.
If anything, I think people don't participate because participating is hard. It takes a long time to do, and has uncertain prospects for finding content. The only thing that makes an FC sweat more than whelping a fleet is completing a roam without encountering anything or anyone.
To that end, CCP needs to give every size group of pilots a target. They need a great big bulls-eye put up in front of them.
Example, put up a deadspace in every system which is affected by sov level. Put hacking content, and different tiers of vulnerable assets in them that different sizes of groups can affect. Import concepts from FW, and all areas of PVE. Failure to defend these assets results in logistical pitfalls for sov holding entities, obliging them to patrol their space. E.g., extra buildtime on blueprints, silo container contents lost to theft, temporary cyno or power projection disruption, etc.
This requires an expansion of player assets. Ideally, they are all interconnected somehow. It will compress far flung alliances into defendable territory, and encourage them to recruit aggressively to fill in the gaps.
Someday, corporations may even pay combat pilots for keeping their assets profitable. After that magical hurdle in player mindset, EVE subs go supernova. War should be business, and business should be good.
LOL so how exactly would that work if a n3 corp were to rent from cfc rental list? Other than that I almost agree: PvP'ers kill each PvE work together. Be interesting to see what happens when two PvE groups face off against each other.
It's funny when you think about it - the "price" of being in an NPC corp is the 10% tax. In return you get CONCORD protection. Why can't player corporations also apply for this? 10% tax(on top of any corp-set taxes), but the corp becomes like an NPC corp.
Because the 1-man corp is free and also not wardeccable (as you can disband it and make a new one).
However that could be fixed by making the corp creation cost 100M, 2x as much as the wardecs.
I do agree that there is a serious problem with EVE penalizing a lot of group play. Add the possibility of having alts to fulfil multiple roles at once and...
@SK: Oddly, Eve-Uni completely dropped those requirements this year, and the current drama in the group is from new players who think they should be reinstated.
And I thought this was Eve's USP:
the first MMO where interacting and cooperating with others is penalized!
I had opened a thread in the official forum's "Suggestion Section" where I described my thoughts on how to improve PVE experience by adding fleet missions. Not incursions, there are only about 10 "different" sites to do.
The community feedback was: there is already coop PVE content: incursions! nerf that!
or
get some friends, take frigs and go to lowsec
or EVE doesn't need more PVE content! nerf PVE!
There are so many things wrong with EVE mechanics, things that make lots of people just walk away.
The amount "consensual" pvp is so marginal, that EVe can't seriously be called a PVP game at all.
90% of so-called PVP are just ambushes and traps where people get caught without proper means of self-defense.
But, ho, I am an evil pirate, behold my glory!! I just killed 5 marauders in Osmon with 12 of my chums... Well it was always 12:1 but hey.... Life is hard...
The above lines can also be said of a playground bully where a 12 year old big guy slaps 5 year old and steals their shovels...
Is that kid a hero or a bully?
Yes, life is hard, and EVE is a harsh place but CCP lacks any decent content developpers, they suck badly...
There are way better pvp games that make much more fun.
Example, put up a deadspace in every system which is affected by sov level. Put hacking content, and different tiers of vulnerable assets in them that different sizes of groups can affect. Import concepts from FW, and all areas of PVE. Failure to defend these assets results in logistical pitfalls for sov holding entities, obliging them to patrol their space. E.g., extra buildtime on blueprints, silo container contents lost to theft, temporary cyno or power projection disruption, etc.
In fact, I've tried to discuss some idea of this sort before. It was about stripping a local chat from nulls (making it function like one in WH space) and adding some kind of counter that rougly estimates number of pilots in the system, with some error margin.
Than if you want old local back, you have to install network of Informational Hubs all over the region, linked together. Those could be easly attacked and switched off if you haven't showed up before reinforce timer runs up to reactivate them defeating attackers at the same time. They could also be used to get some advanced inel on traffic through these systems (more than general statistics, like, tag corps of moving forces, type of vessels etc)
Of course, all this options would be available only to owner and those he gave access to. But even neutral parties still could anchor a cloacked station in the system and try to create a backdoor to them to use those facilities illegally. So if you live in nulls and don't have own infrastracture, you still could "borrow" it from someone and share with your friens.. until the backdoor found, of course.
A thing you've yet to experience, a thing that REALLY hampers active recruitment of players into corps is the piss-poor UI and Corp Security. I'll name two that are extremely damaging.
* Ship Hangers that has no security. Once you can get into it you can steal everything in there. There is not even a log who took what.
* Corp Bookmarks that have no security options. Once you get a bad apple in (even a recruit) ALL bookmarks are burned/discovered.
...to just mention a few.
I'd gladly recruit people, if only it did not entail risking 3-figure billions in assets.
Ripard is right in the notion that there should be assets spent on solo players. The sandbox is for them too. If it's not it's not a sandbox, IMO.
I'd like to address a point I hear often.
"The above lines can also be said of a playground bully where a 12 year old big guy slaps 5 year old and steals their shovels...
Is that kid a hero or a bully?"
The kid is a bully. But you probably know that. You are however wrong when you try to infer that the 12 guys bullied the 50 Marauder players (or 5*1 as you put it).
The reason for this is that Eve is a game where that mechanic is fine. It is fine to argue that the mechanic is wrong. But as long ass it is in the game it is fine.
Great Post!
A lot of what you say in your post strikes a chord with me. I have to say - I'm not totally with you on the need for cooperative play. A lot of what I enjoyed about WOW was the range of solo play options (the achievements, playing the AH, crafting, mining, levelling, soloing old content) apart from the inanity of pandas - I gave WOW up as it seemed to be forcing more cooperative play.
The bottom line is introverts like MMOs too.
I'm a newb at EVE so haven't felt limited yet - but your comments re Corps are spot on. The anonymity of an NPC corp suits me well. I was in a corp for a while - but they got wardecced because I said CODE were pathetic in the anti-ganking channel (Pathetic huh). There was no disadvantage to me when I dropped corp - in fact - I gained anonymity.
I worry now that Goons have more rep on CSM that the crusade against the carebears will be expressed through developments now. I stay to hisec as I'm still learning to play and building my bankroll and who wants to be a five foot midget in a fight with the Undertaker the second you step out of hisec?
Yes EVE should be dangerous. Yes - you should allow scamming (after all the world is full of white collar Ponzi schemers). But there should be some phased transition from the shallows to the dangerous lowsec deepend. At present there is the starter system then you are pretty much at cliff drop into the deep end. The lack of this transition - is - I'm sure what drives such high levels of disengagement. Can't be that hard to graduate the risk? And keep the newish players on the hook?
Gevlon, I think you've hit the nail on the head with regards to the PvE/PvP mentality. That dissonance between the two groups is something that appears to surround the core of what people want to do in EVE, so I don't think it'll go away any time soon - I'm not sure if it should though either.
I definitely agree with seriously reviewing corps, although I think they need a lot of work in general. The ultimate goal should be to get people out of NPC corps to promote the group play mechanics. Not sure if bringing in WoW's passive gameplay bonuses would help, but it should be something tangible enough to be worth the risk of getting in wardecs in high sec, no matter how much of a carebear you are.
As it stands now, there's no reason to join a non-NPC in highsec unless you want to build/use a POS for research there (which will matter less after July 22); tax only affects missions and chat channels allow you to be sociable with your friends.
Can't comment on the renter stuff, but from my understanding, I believe a few people have asked CCP for some help with it in terms of the UI, so it would definitely have its supporters.
I also completely agree with small to medium scale co-operative goals for corps. I'm not sure what exactly that would entail though, but I don't think building capitals in highsec is the answer. Either way, it'd have to be a project that you simply couldn't do as a single player, but you would want to go out of your way and find a few friends to help you achieve it. As a result, it'd have to be something that you all benefit from equally.
@Anon 08:50:
Based on my experience with MMOs, that sums up the vast majority of PvP encounters. Most people just want to win - the easier it is, the better. As a result, ambushes and traps are commonplace in open areas, and in games like WoW with its battlegrounds, AFKers are commonplace, as they can 'win' without participating. I don't think EVE is any different with its open world PvP, nor do I see anything wrong with it myself.
I do totally agree with your ideas of fleet PvE. This is something I'd love to see more of, and could definitely tie in with Gevlon's idea of co-operative goals for highsec corps.
I think this post should have been 2 seperate ones.
Most of the first half of the post I basically agree with.
EVE PvE needs to change so that you are insentivised to group up with actually rewards that are more if done in a group than if done solo. Thus encouraging grouping up naturally.
I also agree with a good way to solve the war dec problem (of greifing new players out of game) is to either change the corp system so that if a corp doesn't have in space anchored assets they can't be wardeced and apply that to everyone. Or create a Corp-lite situation that can't be war-decced and can't anchor stuff in space.
The second part of your post I don't really have a comment about.
PvE players and PvP players can play together nicely through the economic system.
Specifically, PvE players aim to maximize resources gained and minimize resources lost, while PvP players generally don't care about resources gained and tend to actively increase resources lost of their opponents.
Any army needs an industry supporting it. Any industry requires an army to protect it.
This, however, obviously requires some fine balancing.
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There seems to be only one real way to PvP in Eve - that is actively destroying your opponent.
There is no way to win by "holding the checkpoints" or "capturing the flag", or any other. Players are intended to generate their own strategic objectives, but they really are not given sufficient tools for this :(.
The only thing that is even remotely like a "flag" in Eve is a well-researched blueprint, but that is nigh impossible to steal (and nigh-impossible to catch when actually stolen).
And while stations work as checkpoints, they don't change hands nearly often enough to provide any real PvP dynamic on a level of individual player.
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Given my feelings about the whole Noir-Gevlon thing, i guess that makes me a PvPer :)
There's no reason why there can't be real high sec goals.
Build new space stations for NPC corps. The largest contributor to the station gets recognized in the station name and maybe in the get info panel of the station.
Because it's high sec no one can come along and steal the npc station that you built so it is an everlasting monument to you.
Make planets have natural (or man made) disasters and require capsuleer intervention to avert the catastrophe. Have the planet build a monument to the people that rescued it.
Build a star gate for an empire to a newly discovered high sec system. Move colonists to the planets, etc. Get to name the system (GM approved name of course.)
"If you join a guild in WoW, you get passive bonuses. If you join a corp in EVE, you get wardecced and awoxed."
You do?
None of the small corps I have been in have ever been wardecced or awoxed...but then, I dont join corps who offer the equivalent of a guild tabard, and spam invites to randoms.
You make some valid points there. I don't agree with you in every thing but you are heading in the right direction, I think.
PVPers... in eve? well maybe 1% ... what do all this roamers look for? Right, killing unaware solo pilots. The major 0-Sec coalitions are the greatest carebears of all. Goons at the front. They don't risk anything compared to there income. And small gangs roaming through enemy space either find solo players unaware or get hot dropped by 5x their numbers.
Eve needs more reasons to fight. And the fight has to occure fast. "lets just wait for the first timer" and all have plenty of time to assemble there troops. thats nice but not all the time.
How many small groups would start fighting if they can have an almost even fight to keep their space clear?
For high sec, war decs need penalties for the attackers who don't commit to their cause. And they need to have means to be defeated. I wardec you because I kill you X structures/ships/ISK what ever. And if you succeed in destroying my stuff instead (a structure in the defenders home system maybe), I the attacker am defeated and the war is over. We need more REAL commitment. Especially from PVPers!
There is no such thing as solo MMO player.
Hi, I'm Arrendis, and in pretty much every MMO other than EVE, I prefer solo play all the way up, because the PvE is just a repetitive grind and I don't want to deal with fucktards who either can't keep up, or keep running off on their little side-bullshit to collect flowers. I like to work at my pace, on my priorities.
I'm social with my friends - we hang out on voice comms, and we're in the same guilds - but I don't actually do stuff with them.
Also, the PvP in all of the theme parks is meaningless bullshit.
Kind of a reason the only themepark MMO I play these days is LotRO - good story to that one, even if all my issues w/themepark MMOs remain.
Example, put up a deadspace in every system which is affected by sov level. Put hacking content, and different tiers of vulnerable assets in them that different sizes of groups can affect. Import concepts from FW, and all areas of PVE. Failure to defend these assets results in logistical pitfalls for sov holding entities, obliging them to patrol their space. E.g., extra buildtime on blueprints, silo container contents lost to theft, temporary cyno or power projection disruption, etc.
Because that 40+50% of people who aren't involved in player groups... they're out in sov-holding space, right?
I joined Eve Uni. Got wardecced. And waited. And waited some more. Then left and have been solo ever since. I haven't left the game but I fail to see the value proposition of being in a group.
Build new space stations for NPC corps. The largest contributor to the station gets recognized in the station name and maybe in the get info panel of the station.
Because it's high sec no one can come along and steal the npc station that you built so it is an everlasting monument to you.
High-sec's already got a ridiculous number of stations. Who would make an effort toward putting up more of them?
Make planets have natural (or man made) disasters and require capsuleer intervention to avert the catastrophe. Have the planet build a monument to the people that rescued it.
This isn't a bad idea on the surface (pun intended), but there's a lot of complications to consider: a)how often can a planet suffer such a disaster? ie: how do you determine if a planet is undergoing one? Clearly, if there's a planetary disaster occurring, this shouldn't be a 'one guy gets a mission' thing, but a system- or constellation-wide distress beacon, at least. So, what are the chances of it happening on any specific planet on any given tick? Should it be random, or should there be a formula for it?
b)what happens to the PI being undertaken on that planet while this is going on? I ask this because clearly, a planet-wide disaster should affect planetary production, but at the same time, if you inconvenience them, the players will bitch. A lot.
c)What happens if the relief/aid efforts fail? EVE is a game where there are consequences - if the idea here is to try to achieve a unity of cohesive gameplay with people interacting, then there shouldn't be a disconnect of 'PvP has consequences, failure in PvE doesn't'. Even individual mission failure can impact your rep w/that agent, after all. Especially since, just like most nullsec systems, the majority of high-sec systems aren't exactly brimming with people. Outside the trade hubs, people thin out fast.
d)Success. If the consequences of failure are the stick, this is your carrot. A monument? A monument is nothing. Nobody's going to care about their name on a plaque on a planet in some godforsaken system in Khanid space. It needs a reward worth the effort - without being unbalancing.
Build a star gate for an empire to a newly discovered high sec system. Move colonists to the planets, etc. Get to name the system (GM approved name of course.)
Have you met CCP's plans for the next couple of years of EVE's development, and player-constructed stargates to an entirely new region of space, developed from the Ghost Sites that went in with Rubicon?
The PvP-ers and PvE players cannot mix since the first wants to compete with their friends, while the other wants to cooperate with them, creating a disaster for both sides.
Nonsense. I don't want to compete with my friends. I want to cooperate with my friends to crush my enemies.
If you want to see a decent model for PvP/PvE interaction, look at the pirate hunter groups out there, or the counter-wardec merc corps.
Yes, Noir did something you don't like. If they've pissed off enough potential customers, they'll pay for it. That's life in New Eden, and they knew the consequences when they logged in.
That's not because they're 'PvPers'... it's because they're mercs. Anyone who trusts a merc to have their best interests at heart is an idiot. A mercenary is a killer who wants you to pay him to get his rocks off. The issue wasn't 'Noir was smarter than you', the issue was 'Jesus Christ, how could you be that dumb?'
As for NOHO... I seriously doubt NOHO expected anything from you but the tears they got. No, when we go and kick TRI or MOA in the teeth for setting up a tower in our space, we're not looking for them to respect us. We're there to kick them in the teeth. Fuck their respect. You know what their respect is worth in Jita? That's what it's worth everywhere else, too. I'm not looking for my enemies to 'respect' me. I don't need that crap. I do what I do, and the people I fly with recognize it. I'm not competing with them, I'm cooperating with them.
You do not understand, and have never understood, the motives of the people who actively PvP. From mercs like NOIR to active hunter groups like NOHO to sov-holding major blocs like PL, N3, and the CFC, you simply do not get it. You prove this again and again when you post these long expositions that tell everyone what we think, because you get it wrong.
And that, Gevlon, means you're not informing the masses, you're not teaching them the way you've claimed you want to do - it means you're misinforming them. At this point, given how many of us have told you 'you're wrong, here's how...', it has to be that you're intentionally misleading them. You are adopting the Fox News model. Congratulations.
And to all of your readers, I say this:
If you are reading this blog with any expectation that it actually helps you stay safe from PVPers, from gankers up to Goons, or that it represents some sort of effective 'resistance' that we gnash our teeth about and rue the day we fomented such an implacable foe... I have bad news for you.
Yes, I post here often. I fully admit, I am a pedantic asshole. Gevlon is, more or less, my xkcd moment, my 'Someone on the Internet is WRONG'. You all don't have to be wrong. Just don't expect him to be right.
Deary me. Gevlon you just dont "get" NoHo. you keep trying to force the reasoning behind our motives into a template that fits with your view of the world.
I have to quote Batman here "Some men just want to watch the world burn"
We killed your phoenix because frankly we don't get a lot of chances to kill Phoenix in wormholes, considering the utter uselessness they have suffered from.
We then went back to get a fight and eventually a song, We don't do it for Kudos (who would we get Kudos from?) We do it because it promotes teamspirit to have people sing on our coms.
I guess your just not a very musical person and find it hard to fathom others enjoyment it.
It all bottoms out in you trying to enforce some sort of metric that other people play by, and never realizing that peoples reasons for doing things are so diverse that whatever metric you apply in truth applies to no one but yourself
Kind Regards
Sandslinger
NoHo Executor
My secound attempt to play this game was like you mentioned, I joined a Small Corp, it got Wardecd and i left to a NPC corp... One week later i Quit.
almost 2 years later I made my third attempt in EVE, I set Goals that i could do Solo and that worked for 3 months than i got bored and Quit again.
Im on my forth attempt is stll working so far because, because i now have the Skills to try diferent things in the game and set diferent goals WHILE playing.
IMO Skills are the worst damn barrier in this game. WoW and others games you can level up faster if you play more, here does not matter how much you play, you will level at the same pace as someone who just logs once a day or more. If I am starting in a game I dont want to log once a day for 5min and do nothing while waiting.
My sugestion would be some One time run Missions that reward some Basic Skills or some way to improve the skill points. Its 1 Week doing nothing just to get inside a Retriever.
and PvE is even worst just the same all the "recomended" LvL 3 Fits need more than a Month... One month just wating to get stated at one of the most grindy part of the game.
@Omar: I've heard some of the songs you get from people. You have to be a pretty non-musical person to enjoy that.
Deafness might help.
Groups add value in a wide variety of areas that all of you are not considering, even more so post Kronos expansion.
Take mining. A lone miner can only pull in so much ore, especially as a newer player. Joining an Indy corp allows access to orca bonuses. Yes the risk is awoxing, this is why you do your best to vet members. Or... Orca is at a safe, near a pos, someone else picks up the ore. Still, the newer player gains an advantage by being in a group.
Will a new player have the skills and standings to reprocess material at 100% no waste? No. Again, a corp can provide an ore buying program which greatly benefits the new player.
Then there is the blue print copies, hand-me down equipment, and such. My first retriever was the last newbies retriever but he moved on to a Mac. My corps first orca... Made from bpcs that our alliance gave us. Our corp gained an asset that even the alliance could benefit from at times for a cheaper cost than buying the orca. Plus the mining for the orca made a nice corp building experience.
Sharing a wormhole is usually a corp/alliance task. Bookmarks of new sites are shared, even killing the rats and clearing sites, especially site in C3s or higher need multiple people. You could dual box, but that increases the danger. Plus, the whole POS setup currently favors and require a corp.
Even with mission running, yes by the time you are running level 4s in a golem, you may not need a group or corp. However, the fastest way to get to a level 4 agent is either to fleet up with someone running 4s and share standing, or take advantage of corp standing.
As for the vast majority of people's comments here, you are focusing your suggestions based only on what improves your style of play or what makes you happy, not the game as a whole. Take the comment about requiring space assets before you can war Dec a group. Pre-poco marmite, RvB, even lemmings had no space assets. Would you want them to be immune to war decs? All goons would have to do to avoid a war Dec is put their assets under a holding corp. Those assets can be accessed based on standings, so goons main body would be immune to deccing. Is that truly wise?
So I disagree, there are group benefits. Maybe not in being the ultimate level 4 mission runner, but on many other areas, the group is key.
High-sec's already got a ridiculous number of stations. Who would make an effort toward putting up more of them?
You may not understand wanting to build things, other people get motivated to do it. If it's deemed necessary there could be bonuses like lower trade and industry taxes at the new station for significant contributors.
This isn't a bad idea on the surface (pun intended), but there's a lot of complications to consider: a)how often can a planet suffer such a disaster? ie: how do you determine if a planet is undergoing one? Clearly, if there's a planetary disaster occurring, this shouldn't be a 'one guy gets a mission' thing, but a system- or constellation-wide distress beacon, at least. So, what are the chances of it happening on any specific planet on any given tick? Should it be random, or should there be a formula for it?
Do these specifics really matter at the level that we're talking about? You could just steal the incursion code to pick a region then a random planet in the region for the disaster. Spawn an in-space agent in the system that the disaster occurs in that generates missions. Ideally give regular agents an optional mission to go visit the disaster agent.
b)what happens to the PI being undertaken on that planet while this is going on? I ask this because clearly, a planet-wide disaster should affect planetary production, but at the same time, if you inconvenience them, the players will bitch. A lot.
Incursions inconvenience flying in space and people deal with it I don't see why a disaster shouldn't have a similar effect on a planet. Currently someone taking over the customs office and setting huge taxes essentially shuts down an entire planet and there doesn't seem to be a shit storm of whining about that.
A more interesting question might be... Could capsuleers cause disasters? Perhaps spreading viral agents for example...
c)What happens if the relief/aid efforts fail? EVE is a game where there are consequences - if the idea here is to try to achieve a unity of cohesive gameplay with people interacting, then there shouldn't be a disconnect of 'PvP has consequences, failure in PvE doesn't'. Even individual mission failure can impact your rep w/that agent, after all. Especially since, just like most nullsec systems, the majority of high-sec systems aren't exactly brimming with people. Outside the trade hubs, people thin out fast.
Well, ideally Eve would have some basic modeling of planetary populations, industry, food etc that would be impacted. However CCP has shown no interest in doing anything like this, which is a bit of a tragedy, so practically it'd probably be 'depressed PI output'. Not very exciting but more likely to be implemented. And high sec mission failure is such a small 'risk factor' that it might as well not exist so it's not really worth worrying about too much...
... part 2
d)Success. If the consequences of failure are the stick, this is your carrot. A monument? A monument is nothing. Nobody's going to care about their name on a plaque on a planet in some godforsaken system in Khanid space. It needs a reward worth the effort - without being unbalancing.
Lower PI taxes, increased PI construction. Reduced fueling costs for POS around the planet's moons? And I know quite a lot of people who were quite excited by their chance to get a name on a monument, or scratch one off, quite recently on some god forsaken ice continent. (I don't pretend to understand why, but they clearly exist.)
Have you met CCP's plans for the next couple of years of EVE's development, and player-constructed stargates to an entirely new region of space, developed from the Ghost Sites that went in with Rubicon?
I understand that there is some vague star gate plan off in null sec space using new technology that isn't available to the empires. I guess if you want to wait around for a couple of years then that's great. Empire space has its own star gate network that CCP can add to trivially, without 3 years of mucking about first. Yes, it's just a new gate to a new high sec system but at least it's something new that could be done in months rather than years.
It could even be woven into the plot greater player constructable star gate plot with capsuleers stealing gate technology from the first Empire gate under construction in years.
Gevlon, your division is too simple. That Arrendis post of 14:56 gets at something I don't think you recognize: the ape psychological itch that EVE scratches is comradery, that is, the friendship bonds that men form when they do stuff as a team. PVErs don't get it, because they don't need a team. PVPers do get it because they do fight as a team and they need the team to fight. Thus they form friendships and stay in the game. They might even have friends in enemy corps that they fight, but they are not getting big psychological rewards from fighting them. (Some respect, you are right, but this is not a huge motivater for most of PVP.) It's all about bonding with your own guys.
@arrendis.
"That's not because they're 'PvPers'- Snip - how could you be that dumb?'"
Actually that's not true, Noir aren't mercs, they are people who like to play pretend they are mercs.
there is a distinction.
In reality there were historically very few betrayals and such, because those people didn't fight for people because they liked it, they fought to earn money so they could feed themselves, Noir takes clients not to earn the food they eat, no they take clients so someone else pays for the ships they lose, while they have fun PvPing.
They are basically RVB, they are just smart enough to get paid.
In essence they play pretended they were mercs, where gevlon assumed they were mercs.
Also you do get that respect has non positive uses too?
in this context its more akin to fear, We are Big and powerful, Respect us.
Still his groupings are poor, as in reality NoHo and Noir can be seen to be similar they are actually not so, as NoHo, is more akin to a gang, its an US v Them thing where they are the powerful and the others the weak.
Goons are inherently similar to them.
ITs not really a Question about PvP or PvE, Social or Not Social, but rather US VS them, You like forcing your will upon others, whereas others dont care.
"It's all about bonding with your own guys."
It's interesting to look at this in light of this blog's slant.
Do you "play for fun" or "play to win"? And, what is your win condition?
The beauty of EVE is to allow all forms of gameplay, and the main pitfall of EVE is to allow all forms of gameplay.
You are quite right about the first half of this post. That is stop punishing grouping and give cooperative goals.
I don't think awoxing should be abolished, except for "lite corps", which you have proposed before. Lite corps should be corps that are like current corps except:
(a) intra-corp attacks get Concorded
(b) they cannot anchor for corp (i.e. no POSes)
(c) they cannot own POCOs
As for cooperative goals, I don't find making monuments compelling. The obvious cooperative goal to create PVE sites that one simply cannot tackle alone. This is how C4 wormhole space works, more or less. (One can solo the sites in a Marauder in bastion mode. Other ships require logistics.)
"They probably expected a positive description on my blog, praising their skills. Instead, I classified them under "harmful environment", strike that, due to the high man-hour spent on it, "harmful idiots""
They probably expected no such thing, but,why change the habit of recent months on this blog.
"Hell, I couldn't lure my girlfriend to EVE simply because we couldn't play together as she instantly recognized that she is just holding me back and she hated that."
Strange, I do not view my friends in eve, or my partner, who have different activity levels, some much more skilled in their area than me, some less skilled in an area than me as "holding me back".
If a new player to Eve (Your girlfriend) is holding back you being awesome, then your issue is either that you are unable to teach, or that you are actually capable of being held back. This is not WoW where your if your GF is a bad DPSer/healer/tank actually affects you playing together in a group.
She was doing PvE, how did this impact you multiboxing industrials between trade hubs?
My partner and I have vastly different trading styles, speeds and interests...neither one of us "holds back" the other, because we have figured that we can both utilise each others skills. One of us likes flying freighters (Don't ask!), so they do that whilst setting up their orders once a week/month/whatever, whilst the other likes going through looking at trends for hours (Also don't ask!), so they can tell the other person what to grab, and then get them to list it.
Symbiosis is a thing, not just in nature, and most people can find a way to sync their skills.
I have a friend who loves building, he is a crazy industrialist, but hates the market, so, I love the market, hate building, we have set up a mutally beneficial arrangement whereby he saves on taxes, I save on taxes, and he gets to have a constant buyer for what he builds, because I tell him what to build.
Your girlfriend was PvEing...this in no way interacted with, nor held back your ambition in eve, unless you suddenly had an urge to run level 4s.
Anon@16:14ish:
P1:
You may not understand wanting to build things, other people get motivated to do it. If it's deemed necessary there could be bonuses like lower trade and industry taxes at the new station for significant contributors.
Actually, I totally get wanting to build things. But most of us who want to build things want to build things that matter, that have some impact. Yet another station in highsec with a plaque on it? That doesn't matter. Give me something that means something.
Do these specifics really matter at the level that we're talking about? You could just steal the incursion code to pick a region then a random planet in the region for the disaster. Spawn an in-space agent in the system that the disaster occurs in that generates missions. Ideally give regular agents an optional mission to go visit the disaster agent.
Of course they matter - incursions aren't the draw they were when they hit - often enough, they can be safely ignored without anyone giving a damn. Worst case, you don't rat/mission in that system for 5 days, and the incursion moves on.
If you're going to blue-sky ideas for engaging PvE that gets people motivated to do things and possibly even work together to achieve them, then you need to make it both rewarding and repeatable. Something that happens too often, people will get burned out on. Something that doesn't happen often enough, nobody's going to make the effort to disrupt their routine.
Incursions inconvenience flying in space and people deal with it I don't see why a disaster shouldn't have a similar effect on a planet. Currently someone taking over the customs office and setting huge taxes essentially shuts down an entire planet and there doesn't seem to be a shit storm of whining about that.
And oh my god, did people bitch about that when Incursions first hit. And the POCO bitching happens, they just bitch about it in the context of PVP interrupting their PI etc. People bitch. A lot. It's one of our most frequent activities! ;)
A more interesting question might be... Could capsuleers cause disasters? Perhaps spreading viral agents for example...
See now that? That's got style. That's got sizzle to it, right there. Now, here's a question to build off of that one with: Can that be a mission, given by an agent? If so, can it be done without the mission, and still trigger the resulting NPC reactions to mobilize players to fix things?
If it affects PI, what happens if this disaster isn't in Highsec, but in Sov-Null? Is a planetary disaster a feasible means of PVP?
If not... why not?
P2:
Well, ideally Eve would have some basic modeling of planetary populations, industry, food etc that would be impacted. However CCP has shown no interest in doing anything like this, which is a bit of a tragedy, so practically it'd probably be 'depressed PI output'. Not very exciting but more likely to be implemented.
And now we get into cause and effect - if the disaster is just a random disaster, maybe that's all there is. If your idea pans out, and the disaster is caused by a player, either as a mission for an enemy power/pirate, or just someone getting their jollies, can that sort of thing temporarily push a system's security rating down by 0.1? Call it for a period of 5 days (since we're taking our cue from incursions), or until player action ameliorates the disaster sufficiently.
Can that be used to temporarily drop systems into being lowsec? Being Empire-controlled nullsec? Might it even be desirable to let the system drop to being lowsec for a few days in order to use jump freighters as part of the 'relief efforts'?
Lower PI taxes, increased PI construction. Reduced fueling costs for POS around the planet's moons? And I know quite a lot of people who were quite excited by their chance to get a name on a monument, or scratch one off, quite recently on some god forsaken ice continent. (I don't pretend to understand why, but they clearly exist.)
There's a difference between a monument in the meat and a monument in the ether, though. The CCP servers, eventually, will shut down. We all know it. I flew at B-R5RB, and while the Titanomachy monument is cool... it's still just pixels.
But the rest of that? Yeah, that's good examples of carrots.
As for the gate? CCP could introduce that whenever they want. They're just not ready to. New highsec systems? Basically the same thing, but what would they offer that isn't already there? If highsec people can get there, then the gankers and griefers can, just as easily.
All of this is vastly missing the point. CCP won't put any of what you are talking about in, because they aren't making that game.
Eve is about griefing. Everything in it is built for the griefer. Your own most successful campaigns have been when you are essentially griefing the goons, who are themselves consummate griefers.
The goal of Eve is to be a bigger dickhead than the next guy.
@Von Keigai: sites that require more than one ship will be done by multiboxers, not friends
@Anonymous: she held me back when we tried to play together. She could play solo but wasn't interested.
@Arrendis: a station in Niarja would definitely matter. In Derelik there are barely any station. Sure, building one more in Sobaseki would be pointless.
Also, easy to implement yet very meaningful thing: new stargates that connect highsec systems that are close to each other but not connected. A gate that saves a jump in the Jita-Amarr highway would have been used by awful lot of people. Hell, the builders could charge 100K/jump and get some recognition for their new stargate.
Eve is about griefing. Everything in it is built for the griefer. Your own most successful campaigns have been when you are essentially griefing the goons, who are themselves consummate griefers.
The goal of Eve is to be a bigger dickhead than the next guy.
It really isn't.
Even the Goons - even Waffe - openly says PvE needs to be better, that the options for doing things other than blowing up other players are sub-par and need improvement, and that part of that improvement needs to be getting people who PvE into groups, and getting them acclimated to doing things that will serve them in good stead in PvP as well - be it PvP they intend, or PvP they don't intend, like getting jumped on a low-sec gate.
Some of that can be achieved by tuning up missions for small groups w/specialized ships - encourage people to bring a pair of battlecruisers with a T1 support cruiser to a particularly vicious L3 mission, for example.
But it also has to involve a reason to go that route, and split up the rewards, rather than just go with a supertanked Drake and take longer to finish it.
Chirriba proves you wrong. He has made a huge name out of being a reliable, non-griefing entity.
Eve uni proves you wrong. It's a corp, with a huge wiki available to all, courses open to members, and provides education for new players to the game. They do not grief or charge income.
You claim the goons are consummate griefers, but they have provided to the community, free of charge and hidden trojans, several tools that help people in eve.
How about instead of just negatively bashing the game, you do a little research, find a good group to fly with, and realize that over coming a harsh world can be far more rewarding and build better friendship than bashing a game you don't play on a random blog.
I like the idea of making group play more rewarding in PvE. Incursions have a decent model for this where individual payout does not decrease over a certain range.
You've identified the problem of multiboxing to 'game' such a system, and I think this touches on a bigger problem that eve gameplay is really not very engaging, in terms of amount of user input required. For a system promoting group play to work, they'd need to address that aspect to give some benefit to a group of individuals over a multiboxer.
Again, the incursion model does a decent job of this, with quick target switching and high damage requiring a lot of pilot attention per account. This while I'm sure some people multibox incursions, it isn't the norm, and the main incursion groups don't allow it in their fleets. (At least in the 40 man HQ fleets, see below)
Unfortunately this particular doesn't scale down well. In particular, below 15 people you don't need the individuals to pay attention, only the logi, as they can watchlist the entire fleet. Below 11 a t2 logi can even keep them all targeted, so that particular attention is no longer required of each pilot
Still, I think that a multibox-able group mechanic would still be better than no group incentive at all.
I am not even an EVE player but let me throw in my WOW-inspired two cents: Having good quality, cognitively demanding, non-repetitive PvE is good for a game. EVE would gain if you had an analogue of WOW raiding - multiplayer missions, e.g. exploring relics of dead civs (robot-defended megaships lost in space, forbidden planets, this kind of goofy stuff) structured to give minor financial rewards and significant bling/bragging rights but no items usable in PvP. The bulk of EVE "space" would be still high/low/null-sec but there would be small areas completely devoted to high-level multiplayer PvE, similar to a PvP WOW server.
Hello!
Annoyed vet on extended leave from EvE here.
Pretty much everything said here is painfully true - it all comes down to this: who ever makes a living via ratting/missions/complexes is ALWAYS better off doing it alone (one or multiple accounts - it doesn't matter)! The payout mechanics simply push you to solo play, and sooner or later, you find something that has the best payout that you can achieve with your current character(s).
That is when the isk grinding becomes insanely repetitive and mind-numbing.
Example: the Chimera constellation around 6VDT-H was well upgraded and pretty safe back when I was in TEST as just another faceless guy who anchored up and pressed F1 when told to do so - you had to watch local and intel channels and you were safe as safe can be in nullsec. The flavor of that time were blaster Naga's grinding forsaken hubs which was good money but repetitive like hell and many times I got asked ("Hey, wanna team up?").
Grinding ISK is a necessary evil, and after you clear out 50 anomalies (identical or not), you don't want to run anomalies any more than you absolutely have to! 99.9% of the time, anyone who wanted to team up either had a shitty fit Naga with crap dps, or flew some other subpar ship with no implants and was basically DEAD WEIGHT for me holding my profits back and as such eroding my will to play even further by prolonging the necessary grind I had to do to have enough ISK for essentials!
What happened, is that I stopped grouping completely in an attempt to keep my sanity and I gave bookmarks to people for free if they wanted to salvage.
The fundamental problem in EvE is that making ISK is NEVER fun, it's a necessary evil that everyone wants to do as fast as possible so they can focus more on the fun stuff, but EvE punishes every form of PvE grouping (the exception being incursions and WH capital escalations, but even those are being soloed by people who have enough accounts to pull it off).
Never liked most of the posts here. But I have to say that this particular one is spot on with the dichotomy of players who just want to go about their own business and so called "PvP'ers" who just want to mess around with OTHER people's business (non consensual)
Most gamers are.... casual. We play not for a second job but as a past time. Organized group simply require too much annoyance for this population. The worst part is the required voice comn chatter. As if listening to idiotic extroverts all day in real life isn't enough. Now I have to listen to worse idiots in a GAME because it's supposedly more fun??
Let people play the game they want to play. If the casuals just want to do casual stuff - let them do it. There's no point in forcing people to do what they DO NOT want to do. Let the PvPers fight with the PvPers (consensual) and the casuals to do their casual stuff.
That idiocy that logging in is agreeing to PvP bullshit needs to end. Most players just want to train into larger ships, build some shit, sell stuff and make some money, and stare at spaceships.
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