Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

PvE fatigue: skill and PvP over grind

I wrote that PvE activity should be time-limited (per account). However I only explained it by showing how no-lifer and bot activity drives out casuals, newbies and general bad players. These are all valid reasons, as a game which cannot be played - not won but played and enjoyed - by bad and uninvested players is a dead game.

Now I present a different approach: how such limitation enhances the gameplay of involved and veteran players. To start, I tell my own experience with PvE: I am a trader, making lots of ISK on good deals, by understanding the markets, having 300B capital invested and by taking risks of moving 10-20B on a predictable schedule trough Uedama and Niarja in my Tengus. I make enough money to literally give away two supercarrier worth every month.

Or more precisely, I make 1/2-2/3 of my ISK by trading implants between hubs with all that capital and risk and skill. What about the rest? No, not experimental and niche markets, not patch-swing-investments or price manipulation. Mining. Yes, the most lowly and baddie-friendly activity: warp to rock, press F1-F2, wait, dock. Precisely, I'm running mining missions in Hodrold. Zero skill required, no risk (if I get ganked, I shrug and grab replacement ship), capital is about a hundred replacement retrievers and a few replacement orcas, about 5-6B. How do I get about 20B/month with such lowly activity? By insane hours of my pilots. Not me, all I have to do is dock, pick new mission, undock, warp every 10-20 minutes. So when I'm home, there is no reason not to keep them logged in and and rotate them between doing my usual activities.

The problem is that to get more ISK, one doesn't have to play better or defeat competitors. He just have to be online longer. Sure, I could do more ISK by trading better. But why bother, when ISK is just rolling in while I'm not even at the computer? Without this activity I would have to improve if I wanted to get more ISK.

The point of limiting PvE time is to force players to optimize and compete instead of just throwing more accounts and semi-AFK hours on the problem. EVE supposed to be a PvP game, stellar rewards should come from dominating other players, not from running a dozen bots (or behave like a bot). I would very much prefer to find new markets and compete cunning opponents instead of just alt-tabbing back to my miners every 15 minutes. But why should I bother when there is an easy way?

I say close this easy but grindy way! Force players to interact and compete instead!


PS: I think Vince Draken should get the Francesco Schettino medal of valor!

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

So. Those implants you sell are the ones you grind with your bot farm in Hodrold.

I'm confused. Why would you rail against "no life grinding" then admit that it's what you yourself do?

Gevlon said...

The Hordrold farmed implants are Nomads. The implants I trade are Slaves, Crystals, and a few 5% enhancers. I buy them where low and sell where high.

Anonymous said...

"The Hordrold farmed implants are Nomads. The implants I trade are Slaves, Crystals, and a few 5% enhancers. I buy them where low and sell where high."

So you don't sell the implants you farm. I find that astonishingly difficult to believe.

Oh wait! That's not what you said. You said the implants you TRADE. I guess the nomads are ones you just farm and SELL, not trade.

Gevlon said...

Indeed. Nomads just go to Jita and got sold. I don't move them anywhere, don't speculate on them, just sell them in Jita.

Zax said...

With trading, isk rolls in while you are not even logged in, and even with no market effort, on 300b, 10% per month (which you should be able to do without any cunning undercutting, or manip, or undocking) on one character which would beat your 3 farming non-stop miners.

So, if you had your 3 farmers logging in for a lot less time per day doing newbie trading activities, you would make more than you make per month with them out non-stop and requiring you to actually undock.

And it is pve you want to limit?

Anonymous said...

"So, if you had your 3 farmers logging in for a lot less time per day doing newbie trading activities, you would make more than you make per month with them out non-stop and requiring you to actually undock.

And it is pve you want to limit?"

Pretty much this. He wants to limit PvE but not trading so that PvE players get hurt. He probably thinks this because he know goons rat a lot so he thinks it will damage goons. What he doesn't realise is they also have a lot of traders, so while it would hurt a lot of the ratters, overall it would be inneffective.

Trade though is ludicrously easy and safe. They need to throw a spanner into the works of trading to make it considerably tougher, challenging and more risky.

Gevlon said...

Trading is a PvP activity. No ISK, mineral or material is created (actually about 1% is destroyed by broker fees and sales taxes). This means that if many people trade, they compete for the same limited amount of ISK to be made.

PvE creates ISK, mineral or material as long as you spend time on it. If everyone would rat in peace, then they could create trillions out of nothing.

Raziel Walker said...

You wanted to limit the hours a player can spend logged in doing PVE activities correct?

So to prevent people from just using a dozen alts you'd need to limit PVE per account.

While I understand the idea I am not sure limiting players to x hours of mining/ratting/missioning/pve etc is the best solution.

Since you consider trading pvp this wouldn't be limited to x hours per player?
But mining/ratting/misisoning I can get forced into pvp by a ganker, hotdropper or just another miner competing for the same blocks of ice just as well.
We are competing over the same resources.
And don't get me started on WCS FW farmers, this is cleary just as much pve as ratting.

Do you really want to limit a jobless person with 20 hours of eve play per day to the same 2 hours of pve activity as players only able to log on for 3 hours a day?

Gevlon said...

@Raziel Walker:

Of course while you are PvP-ing, you are not ratting and mining and that time wouldn't count into the limit. Just the time while your offensive modules are cycling on a rat or you mining modules are cycling or you are on PI interface.

While "miners and ratters are competing" is a nice argument, it's not true, since
- practically there are way more rats, missions and ore than players, so you can always find uncontested
- in some cases, like missions the limit is infinite
- Most PvP against miners and ratters are not because of wanting the ore/rat, but wanting the kill, so it's an observable fact that people rarely PvP for PvE opportunities.

Raziel Walker said...

I should have limited the miners/ratters are competing to ice mining and exploration :)

An argument might be that missions lead to competition because if everyone was running the hodrold mining missions it would reduce LP values causing some players to either accept lower LP payouts or switch to farming better LP/isk rewards.

You are not interested in stimulating pvp but otherwise limiting pve will lead to less targets for pvp-ers (I'll leave the discussion about ganking/executing miners/ratters vs 'real' pvp for someone else.)

Anonymous said...

Gevlon says:
The Hordrold farmed implants are Nomads. The implants I trade are Slaves, Crystals, and a few 5% enhancers. I buy them where low and sell where high.

what's the difference? surely you transport them to jita just like all the others and open market orders for them

jita is the only large market, so I assume the vast bulk of your selling occurs there. what does it matter if you farm the implants or put in buy orders in the system where they originate?

you're trying to make is sound like you treat these implants like second class ones to support your oddly hypocritical campaign against "farming."

Gevlon said...

"Trading" means selecting an item, investing your money in it, moving it (or waiting for a market swing) and sell it.

I don't have the option to choose how I spend my LP. It's Nomads or the usual empire 950ISK/LP things. I'm stuck with them for better or worse.