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What keeps you from PvPing?

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Sin Pew
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#121 - 2012-07-12 15:29:27 UTC
Marconus Orion wrote:
This question is directed at players who choose not to PvP. I am very curious as to what barriers, if any, keep you from PvPing? Granted there are some players who live in unknown space, low sec and null sec who still avoid PvP, the question is more directed at high sec players.

So please keep the post constructive and honest guys. If you do PvP, then please don't go crazy in here with posts of 'You're doing it wrong, hurr, derp!' scaring away the non-PvPers. I really would like to just hear from them on the subject.

Thanks. Big smile
Right now, Kisumii's bewbs... can't... look... away....

[i]"haiku are easy, But sometimes they don't make sense, Refrigerator."[/i]
Sharise Dragonstar
Big Strong
#122 - 2012-07-12 15:30:58 UTC
I personally dont thinke Eve's pvp is all its cracked up to be. 95% of the skill is done on the fittings screen. When you pvp in eve its usually who brings the most ships or in the case of a 1v1 who has the best ship, player input is minimal at best.

Then there is the expense, unless you want to just fly frigates and cruisers then the cost is rather high. Don't fly what you cant afford to lose is fine but it would get dull fighting in the same ship every time.

Loss of training time due to having no implants. Takes to long to skill up even with a full set of +4's and pvping with an implanted clone is risky and reckless.

Jump clone cooldown is far to long. Not willing to lose all that training time just to do a couple of hours pvp. If i could jump into my pvp clone to answer a cta for a hour or two then jump back when finished pvp would appeal a little more for me.

No profit in pvp unless you are a pirate or a suicide ganker which i am neither (not that there is anything wrong with those style of pvpers)
BoBoZoBo
MGroup9
#123 - 2012-07-12 15:39:35 UTC  |  Edited by: BoBoZoBo
First, let's look at your definition of PVP.

Blowing up ships is not the only way to PVP in EVE, some people forget that, or can't seem to grasp it because there is no KB equivalent for the other types of PVP EVE allows.

Personally, I spent the first 5 years blowing up ships in various ways to a successful degree, now, I like to destroy people on the market and crush alliances and corps through espionage and propaganda.

In the end I probably get dozens of people killed a day, but I get no credit for it. No matter. I have fun anyway and I make ISK.

But if you need an answer about killing ships with ships - the wardec and criminal flaggin system is **** so I stay away from it and I just dont have time these dyas for Null Sec alliance fun even though I love it.

What is left now a days is killing miners in highsec or baiting noobs in lowsec, neither of which is challenging or rewarding, so I stay away from that as well.

Primary Test Subject • SmackTalker Elite
Private Pineapple
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#124 - 2012-07-12 15:45:32 UTC  |  Edited by: Private Pineapple
Jame Jarl Retief wrote:
For me personally, it is as follows:

1. PvP is hard to find.

I don't mean a gate camp, I don't mean a 10 v 1, I mean PvP where you actually have a snowball's chance of winning. I'll give you an example from FW. Myself and 4 other people are capturing a complex. We're all in T1 frigs/destroyers. Enemy militia begins jumping in, and gathering at the deadspace gate to our complex. As time goes by, there's 10 of them, still they do not engage. A few minutes later, there's 14 of them, and more coming. We capped the complex and were warping out when they started warping in. See what I mean? 3:1 odds, and they still waited. And for us, at that point, it would have been stupid to stick around - we achieved the objective, we had nothing left to fight for there.

As a general rule, from what I saw so far, unless it is a clear win, 95% of people run, and only fight when they can't run. Makes PvP not time-efficient, compared to other MMOs where you can just jump into the game and immediately find people ready and willing to fight you, and you can be PvPing in seconds, or at worst minutes. In EVE, it could be minutes, or hours, or never.

In simplest terms, imagine playing a game of chess where all your pieces are pawns, and all the opponent's pieces are queens. Makes for a very short, very uninteresting and one-sided game. That's EVE's PvP in a nutshell.


2. SP decides the outcome more than player skills.

This is an old saw that many claim is false. I suggest you do an experiment:

Take a brand new character, with 500 SP, and outfit him with Meta 0 T1 mods, which is all a newb can afford, and probably all he can fit with nonexisting fitting skills. Now take a character with 50 million SP, and again give him T2 mods, which he can both easily afford and fit with perfect level V fitting skills.

There will be a huge disparity in DPS, tank, etc. T1 version of a destroyer with T1 guns and low gunnery skills will be 200-ish DPS, same destroyer with T2 overheated guns can pull near 700-ish DPS. And obviously a 500 SP newb char can't overheat his guns.

Now give these two characters to a noob and a vet, and have them fight. Then, reverse places, giving the 500 SP char to a vet, and 50 mil to a newb, and do it again. Repeat 100 times. In the end, it'll be the 50 mil char that will win 90% of engagements, the remaining 10% happening because of human error (newbie failing to activate modules, for example). Yes, the test case is extreme (500 vs 50 mil SP), but if SP doesn't matter, then the disparity magnitude is irrelevant.

We all know this is true, though some to like to pretend that it's not. So why beat around the bush?

In other MMOs, people are usually separated by level or some other tier system, to prevent "high level" players from preying on "low level". Good example being, if you are 10 levels higher or more, you don't benefit from killing the lowbie. People still do it for giggles, so don't come crying to me that this limits your sandbox freedom, but they don't get points in the process which is more or less fair, since it takes little to no effort to win.


3. PvP is inconvenient.

OK, so you've engaged in PvP, and you lost your ship and maybe your pod if it was a competent gate camp. No biggie, it happens. Now you:
1. Appear in some clone station away from the action, and it will take you a long time to jump back into the fight.
2. You have to run logistics, buying a new clone.
3. You have to get into the next ship,
3a. If you don't have a ship ready and outfitted, you have to do even more work before you can get back to fighting
4. Travel back to where the fight was.

Compare that to most other games, where you:
1. Resurrect at the NEAREST pad/point/graveyard, and are combat effective.
2. Travel a very short distance back to the fight, and start fighting again.

The question is, is EVE's added complexity NECESSARY? Does it tax your strength, intelligence, mettle? Or just patience?


4. Ship and Weapon Imbalance

I won't go into details why some ships and some are better/worse than others. Let me just ask you this. Look at the Alliance Tournament and ships they use, See many drone boats there? Any boats with sensor dampening EWAR? Rail boats? Sure, this is not proof-positive of anything, but come on, do you honestly need me to draw it for you in crayon? Some ships are in-sane-ly popular. Other ships you can play for a year and never see flown at all.

If you were stupid/unlucky enough to train for hulls/tank/systems that were unpopular at the time, or became unpopular as you reached them, you were dead in the water. And yes, it's true, eventually everyone cross-trains. But for a new or new-ish player, who just finished a 6-month training stint for something only to find out it doesn't work, looking at another 6 months of cross-training is soul-crushing.

Good example is drone boats. I'm the idiot, and I admit that freely, who trained for drones. On this character, out of 11 million SP more than half of the SP is in drones. But guess what? There are no frigate size drone boats, and there are no destroyer size drone boats. So if my militia is flipping minor plexes, I have to fly turret or missile platforms for which I have no skills.

Though to be fair, most MMOs are like that. In some cases, it's even more glaring. Bright Wizards at Warhammer launch come to mind. The difference is, in most other MMOs you can simply re-roll that class and be at top level and combat-effective and geared in under 3 months. In EVE, nothing is that fast. As a result, if you screw up, or get screwed (by changes), you are set back by a considerable margin.


Completely agree. First forum post I've ever liked (it's hard for me to "like" a post).

But... I pooped on Bright Wizards with my Marauder so I don't know what you're doing!

.
Ruareve
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#125 - 2012-07-12 15:46:37 UTC
I do PVP sometimes, but the two biggest things that keep me from going out more often are time and generating funds. I pvp'ed the most before the incursion nerf as I knew I didn't have to spend a long time grinding out ISK.

Yet another blog about Eve- http://ruar-eve.blogspot.com/
Tyreul Severasse
#126 - 2012-07-12 15:55:59 UTC
Why I Don't PvP, by Tyreul Severasse

1) PvP is not what attracted me to this game. I came for pretty much everything else.
2) Freedom of choice being one of the aspects that attracted me to the game, I have been unwilling to join a corporation that will want me to play the game on their terms (mandatory scheduled roams, mining ops or whatever). As a result the majority of my play time has been solo and the ISK precious. Because of this I place a lot of value in my ships and wish to avoid exploding.
3) Others have spoken of the rush. PvP in this game doesn't give me much of a rush. PvP concludes with either, "Oh good, they didn't get me." or "F&$#k! It's going to take me an hour to put together another ship!" In other PvP games the rush was accompanied with a feeling of accomplishment. (Assuming I wasn't losing.) I had overcome an obstacle, accomplished an objective or just given my team more points. If I pop a Goon* who is flying a rifter, what have I accomplished?

*Insert any large PvP corporation here.

4) In regard specifically to non-consensual PvP: I hate bullies. I have no desire to become one. Ganking miners, haulers and mission runners strikes me as the behavior of a bully. If that works for others, good for them. It's not for me.


See Jame Jarl Retief's post and add that to my list.
Vellen Thoss
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#127 - 2012-07-12 16:00:16 UTC
Jame Jarl Retief wrote:
For me personally, it is as follows:

1. PvP is hard to find.

I don't mean a gate camp, I don't mean a 10 v 1, I mean PvP where you actually have a snowball's chance of winning. I'll give you an example from FW. Myself and 4 other people are capturing a complex. We're all in T1 frigs/destroyers. Enemy militia begins jumping in, and gathering at the deadspace gate to our complex. As time goes by, there's 10 of them, still they do not engage. A few minutes later, there's 14 of them, and more coming. We capped the complex and were warping out when they started warping in. See what I mean? 3:1 odds, and they still waited. And for us, at that point, it would have been stupid to stick around - we achieved the objective, we had nothing left to fight for there.

As a general rule, from what I saw so far, unless it is a clear win, 95% of people run, and only fight when they can't run. Makes PvP not time-efficient, compared to other MMOs where you can just jump into the game and immediately find people ready and willing to fight you, and you can be PvPing in seconds, or at worst minutes. In EVE, it could be minutes, or hours, or never.

In simplest terms, imagine playing a game of chess where all your pieces are pawns, and all the opponent's pieces are queens. Makes for a very short, very uninteresting and one-sided game. That's EVE's PvP in a nutshell.


2. SP decides the outcome more than player skills.

This is an old saw that many claim is false. I suggest you do an experiment:

Take a brand new character, with 500 SP, and outfit him with Meta 0 T1 mods, which is all a newb can afford, and probably all he can fit with nonexisting fitting skills. Now take a character with 50 million SP, and again give him T2 mods, which he can both easily afford and fit with perfect level V fitting skills.

There will be a huge disparity in DPS, tank, etc. T1 version of a destroyer with T1 guns and low gunnery skills will be 200-ish DPS, same destroyer with T2 overheated guns can pull near 700-ish DPS. And obviously a 500 SP newb char can't overheat his guns.

Now give these two characters to a noob and a vet, and have them fight. Then, reverse places, giving the 500 SP char to a vet, and 50 mil to a newb, and do it again. Repeat 100 times. In the end, it'll be the 50 mil char that will win 90% of engagements, the remaining 10% happening because of human error (newbie failing to activate modules, for example). Yes, the test case is extreme (500 vs 50 mil SP), but if SP doesn't matter, then the disparity magnitude is irrelevant.

We all know this is true, though some to like to pretend that it's not. So why beat around the bush?

In other MMOs, people are usually separated by level or some other tier system, to prevent "high level" players from preying on "low level". Good example being, if you are 10 levels higher or more, you don't benefit from killing the lowbie. People still do it for giggles, so don't come crying to me that this limits your sandbox freedom, but they don't get points in the process which is more or less fair, since it takes little to no effort to win.


3. PvP is inconvenient.

OK, so you've engaged in PvP, and you lost your ship and maybe your pod if it was a competent gate camp. No biggie, it happens. Now you:
1. Appear in some clone station away from the action, and it will take you a long time to jump back into the fight.
2. You have to run logistics, buying a new clone.
3. You have to get into the next ship,
3a. If you don't have a ship ready and outfitted, you have to do even more work before you can get back to fighting
4. Travel back to where the fight was.

Compare that to most other games, where you:
1. Resurrect at the NEAREST pad/point/graveyard, and are combat effective.
2. Travel a very short distance back to the fight, and start fighting again.

The question is, is EVE's added complexity NECESSARY? Does it tax your strength, intelligence, mettle? Or just patience?


4. Ship and Weapon Imbalance

I won't go into details why some ships and some are better/worse than others. Let me just ask you this. Look at the Alliance Tournament and ships they use, See many drone boats there? Any boats with sensor dampening EWAR? Rail boats? Sure, this is not proof-positive of anything, but come on, do you honestly need me to draw it for you in crayon? Some ships are in-sane-ly popular. Other ships you can play for a year and never see flown at all.

If you were stupid/unlucky enough to train for hulls/tank/systems that were unpopular at the time, or became unpopular as you reached them, you were dead in the water. And yes, it's true, eventually everyone cross-trains. But for a new or new-ish player, who just finished a 6-month training stint for something only to find out it doesn't work, looking at another 6 months of cross-training is soul-crushing.

Good example is drone boats. I'm the idiot, and I admit that freely, who trained for drones. On this character, out of 11 million SP more than half of the SP is in drones. But guess what? There are no frigate size drone boats, and there are no destroyer size drone boats. So if my militia is flipping minor plexes, I have to fly turret or missile platforms for which I have no skills.

Though to be fair, most MMOs are like that. In some cases, it's even more glaring. Bright Wizards at Warhammer launch come to mind. The difference is, in most other MMOs you can simply re-roll that class and be at top level and combat-effective and geared in under 3 months. In EVE, nothing is that fast. As a result, if you screw up, or get screwed (by changes), you are set back by a considerable margin.



This, especially section 1 highlight that PVPers are just as risk averse as the carebears they decry that want to change highsec.

Nobody wants a challenge anymore, they want to win at any cost.
Private Pineapple
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#128 - 2012-07-12 16:00:47 UTC  |  Edited by: Private Pineapple
Adding another post to this thread.

For those who know my true gamer alias (a few in EVE do), they know I play a shitload of games. I am playing games 7-16 hours a day no matter what (exceptions apply, girlfriend wants to have sex, road trip, overtime at work, college party all night, etc). I never play a game that doesn't have a PVP aspect because that's the aspect I usually sink my "fun" time into. I played UO, WoW, WAR and a ton of shooters. But I want to name one game in particular that makes me have the same feeling about PVP as I do towards EVE PVP. This game is Mortal Online, and I have no idea why I'm still paying for a subscription. It used to have a once booming population but now it's sort-of dead except for the veterans such as I who are patiently waiting for the new expansion, Awakening, to redeem the game's population. Most people left MO because it was buggy as heck, but now it's not that bad anymore.

The game is full-loot on death, stat-loss on death if you have too many statlosscounts from recent murders, and no teleportation. The developers say it is supposed to be "3D UO" just to give you an idea what the game is about. The problem is that the world is big enough that the current population makes it hard to find a fight that you have a chance of winning.

For example, a melee warrior on foot has a problem catching mages because mages run too fast, but mages can't kill the warrior either, he's too powerful. Comparatively, a mounted archer is able to kite forever and kill any class in the game - the only counter is archery. My melee warrior may or may not have a bow on him but if he doesnt, I am reduced to fighting other melee warriors. Thus, when I am running around the world it's extremely hard for me to find a solo melee warrior. If it's a group, I can't do anything about it. If it's a not a melee warrior, I can't do anything about it.

I face the same problem in EVE. Admittedly this is partly due to my lack of skillpoints at this time, but it's even worse anyways. A Rifter cannot hope to beat a properly fitted capsuleer piloting a Republic Fleet Firetail, Dramiel, or even a Wolf/Jaguar. That's the issue with me. As a Rifter I am only open to fighting other "true" T1 frigates - no faction, no pirate, and no T2 frigates. And of course, the game is big enough that I can go hours and not find a fight.

Simply put, I am a hardcore PVPer but in this game people would not think so. And that makes this fruit feel bad.

.
Vellen Thoss
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#129 - 2012-07-12 16:06:20 UTC
Private Pineapple wrote:
Adding another post to this thread.

For those who know my true gamer alias (a few in EVE do), they know I play a shitload of games. I am playing games 7-16 hours a day no matter what (exceptions apply, girlfriend wants to have sex, road trip, overtime at work, college party all night, etc). I never play a game that doesn't have a PVP aspect because that's the aspect I usually sink my "fun" time into. I played UO, WoW, WAR and a ton of shooters. But I want to name one game in particular that makes me have the same feeling about PVP as I do towards EVE PVP. This game is Mortal Online, and I have no idea why I'm still paying for a subscription. It used to have a once booming population but now it's sort-of dead except for the veterans such as I who are patiently waiting for the new expansion, Awakening, to redeem the game's population. Most people left MO because it was buggy as heck, but now it's not that bad anymore.

The game is full-loot on death, stat-loss on death if you have too many statlosscounts from recent murders, and no teleportation. The developers say it is supposed to be "3D UO" just to give you an idea what the game is about. The problem is that the world is big enough that the current population makes it hard to find a fight that you have a chance of winning.

For example, a melee warrior on foot has a problem catching mages because mages run too fast, but mages can't kill the warrior either, he's too powerful. Comparatively, a mounted archer is able to kite forever and kill any class in the game - the only counter is archery. My melee warrior may or may not have a bow on him but if he doesnt, I am reduced to fighting other melee warriors. Thus, when I am running around the world it's extremely hard for me to find a solo melee warrior. If it's a group, I can't do anything about it. If it's a not a melee warrior, I can't do anything about it.

I face the same problem in EVE. Admittedly this is partly due to my lack of skillpoints at this time, but it's even worse anyways. A Rifter cannot hope to beat a properly fitted capsuleer piloting a Republic Fleet Firetail, Dramiel, or even a Wolf/Jaguar. That's the issue with me. As a Rifter I am only open to fighting other "true" T1 frigates - no faction, no pirate, and no T2 frigates. And of course, the game is big enough that I can go hours and not find a fight.

Simply put, I am a hardcore PVPer but in this game people would not think so. And that makes this fruit feel bad.



Dont feel bad, have a Mai Tai.
Shizuken
Venerated Stars
#130 - 2012-07-12 16:12:44 UTC
Mallak Azaria wrote:
They're afraid to lose their stuff.


I think this is exactly it. If one is trying to accumulate wealth it is best not to engage in activity that will destroy that wealth. Plus, buying and fitting ships over and over just to throw them into combat and get destroyed does not seem fun to me. I am about 51% role player in this game too and I enjoy the "privateer making his own way in space" idea too much. I get attached to my ships in the way that Malcom Reynolds or Han Solo would. I take care in naming them and have goals and a purpose for them.

The only point I see to routene PvP for its own sake is for some people to stroke their e-peen that they are "better" than someone else. I do respect true pirates though. They are having a go at it much like myself but from a different perspective. They too are trying to make it rich but choose to do so outside the "legal" framework.
Sarcasim
HOW to PEG SAFETY
#131 - 2012-07-12 16:13:05 UTC
I played for a month and came back after 8 months off. I think for a new player like me its the lack of funds and the lack of income. I have already lost 2 cruisers to pvp. I plan to continue to pvp however wont be able to until I can make more isk.
Vellen Thoss
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#132 - 2012-07-12 16:16:14 UTC
Shizuken wrote:
Mallak Azaria wrote:
They're afraid to lose their stuff.


I think this is exactly it. If one is trying to accumulate wealth it is best not to engage in activity that will destroy that wealth. Plus, buying and fitting ships over and over just to throw them into combat and get destroyed does not seem fun to me. I am about 51% role player in this game too and I enjoy the "privateer making his own way in space" idea too much. I get attached to my ships in the way that Malcom Reynolds or Han Solo would. I take care in naming them and have goals and a purpose for them.

The only point I see to routene PvP for its own sake is for some people to stroke their e-peen that they are "better" than someone else. I do respect true pirates though. They are having a go at it much like myself but from a different perspective. They too are trying to make it rich but choose to do so outside the "legal" framework.



I am a bit weary of losing ships I spend lots of time bringing in income to purchase and fit, so I am probably going to Han Solo it for a while and play the trading game.
Marconus Orion
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#133 - 2012-07-12 16:23:57 UTC
I updated the OP to clarify more. Also you guys need to calm down with your opinions on other posters in here, please. For those baptized in combat daily, will you please just listen silently for once? I don't want any flame wars and other mud slinging in here.
Incindir Mauser
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#134 - 2012-07-12 16:47:34 UTC


Ship hulls and modules. Namely the cost. PvP is an activity which destroys wealth.

Not that I am particularly attached to my ships, but PvP for new players is expensive.
Delvega
The Geedunk Expedition
#135 - 2012-07-12 16:51:55 UTC
A lot of nullsec dwellers are of the opinion that we highsec dwellers live here because we're afraid of PvP and losing our ships. This is simply wrong and an over simplified answer to a greater underlying problem.

1. We're not avoiding PvP per say. We're avoiding PvP when it's to our overwhelming disadvantage. Do you honestly expect a small mining corp to stand its ground and fight when a large PvP corp/alliance wardecs them? Absolutely not and there's no hope for that corp to be victorious against such odds. Doesn't matter whatever exception to the rule you conjure up, that's the harsh reality of it.

2. PvP mechanics in highsec are wonky at best. Sometimes we can come to a corpmates aid when he's getting griefed, but most of the time the highsec PvP mechanics forbid such aid and defense.

3. We want absolutely nothing to do with your nullsec politics. With the exception of the Goons, you people treat your members like garbage. You lie about your ship replacement program, you behave like killmail nazzi's, you don't respect your members RL priorities, you scream and rage on coms, you demand 24/7 mandatory fleet ops, and you use your members as disposable meat shields. Say what you want about the Goons, but at least they treat their own right. All others are horrible.
In short: WE PLAY EVE TO HAVE FUN, NOT AS A SECOND JOB AND CERTAINLY NOT TO BE SCREAMED AT NOR CHASTIZED.

4. Ship losses are expensive an it adds up quick. My current (or soon to be former) nullsec alliance runs a Welp campaign. Throw ships at the enemy until the objective is complete. Die, reship, rejoin fight, die again, reship again, rinse and repeat. Some pilots lose their battleships or battlecruisers as many as five or six times per op. Ship replacement? Laughable at best. We can't sustain such heavy losses on our own individual wallets. Screw that. I'll stay in highsec.

5. Again the whole Play EvE To Have Fun bit. Highsec is simply the place for casual players which make up roughly 80% of the games population. We're not adverse to PvP, it's typically at overwhelmingly bad odds when we do encounter it. Yeah yeah, htfu, man up, and all that mindless gibberish. Whatever. We're not stupid. If PvP comes our way and it looks like we'll lose, we will run. Just like you nullsec guys do when an enemy roam rolls through your home or when a superior force is reported by the scouts.
Tom Bithoff
OSG Planetary Operations
#136 - 2012-07-12 16:54:10 UTC
What little interest I have in PvP is interest in Red vs. Blue. What makes PvP in any game fun for me, is a close fight. I enjoy a close fight, even if I lose, more than I enjoy an easy win. Most of Eve's PvP doesn't appear designed to lure gamers like me, who want faster access to more balanced fights. Something more available in almost any other PvP game.

Yes, I look forward to Dust514 and haven't gotten around to it, but will be checking out RvB.
Vellen Thoss
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#137 - 2012-07-12 16:54:37 UTC
Incindir Mauser wrote:


Ship hulls and modules. Namely the cost. PvP is an activity which destroys wealth.

Not that I am particularly attached to my ships, but PvP for new players is expensive.



My favorite lines are "You dont need to have much money to pvp! You can pvp in a T1 combat frig!" Yeah... well, pvping in a T1 fit basic combat frigate is a lot like rolling a new character in WoW and doing battlegrounds with people who have shiny top tier armor while youre stuck with the basic rusty sword which you'll lose and have to buy again anyway when you get killed.

Yeah you can do it, but it isnt as much fun, and this turns off some people.
Pipa Porto
#138 - 2012-07-12 17:05:51 UTC
Jame Jarl Retief wrote:

2. SP decides the outcome more than player skills.

This is an old saw that many claim is false. I suggest you do an experiment:

Take a brand new character, with 500 SP, and outfit him with Meta 0 T1 mods, which is all a newb can afford, and probably all he can fit with nonexisting fitting skills. Now take a character with 50 million SP, and again give him T2 mods, which he can both easily afford and fit with perfect level V fitting skills.

There will be a huge disparity in DPS, tank, etc. T1 version of a destroyer with T1 guns and low gunnery skills will be 200-ish DPS, same destroyer with T2 overheated guns can pull near 700-ish DPS. And obviously a 500 SP newb char can't overheat his guns.

Now give these two characters to a noob and a vet, and have them fight. Then, reverse places, giving the 500 SP char to a vet, and 50 mil to a newb, and do it again. Repeat 100 times. In the end, it'll be the 50 mil char that will win 90% of engagements, the remaining 10% happening because of human error (newbie failing to activate modules, for example). Yes, the test case is extreme (500 vs 50 mil SP), but if SP doesn't matter, then the disparity magnitude is irrelevant.

We all know this is true, though some to like to pretend that it's not. So why beat around the bush?

In other MMOs, people are usually separated by level or some other tier system, to prevent "high level" players from preying on "low level". Good example being, if you are 10 levels higher or more, you don't benefit from killing the lowbie. People still do it for giggles, so don't come crying to me that this limits your sandbox freedom, but they don't get points in the process which is more or less fair, since it takes little to no effort to win.


1. 500 SP is not enough to fly anything more advanced than a Capsule, let alone fit it. (Spaceship Command 1 + Racial Frigate 1 = 750SP). Exaggeration does not help your point seem reasonable.

2. SP Doesn't matter after a point, and stops being the deciding factor in a fight well before that point. Try this: Take a 2-3m (like a month-6 weeks of training) SP character focused on one ship and pit it against a random generalist with 50m SP. You'll find that, given equal hulls, the better pilot will most likely win, not the one with more SP. After about 10-15m SP (call it a year), a focused frigate pilot will be able to fly any frigate as well, or better than anyone else, and then at about 45m SP, there is nothing else you can possibly train to help a frigate. The Character with 45m SP in frigates will not trump the 10-15m SP Character every time, but it might give the player an edge over an equally skilled (player skill, not SP) opponent. The Character with 45m SP in frigates flown by a newbie will not even beat the 2-3m SP character flown by a pro every time (or even most of the time).

3. More importantly, an arena-like 1v1 with identical hulls doesn't represent the reality of EvE at all. Someone with 50k SP can tackle most ships long enough for their friends to come and kill the prey. Someone with some guile and 1m SP can easily kill someone they sneak up on, or someone who brought Rock to the hunter's Paper. Newbies in an MMO are always best off making friends (see: Second "M" in the acronym), EvE is no different.

4. Throwing money into the mix also doesn't help your assertion. The counterclaim to "SP doesn't matter" is not "SP and Money matters," though, like SP, money only matters up to a point.

5. Good God, where did you get the notion that EvE is supposed to be Fair? EvE is a Level Playing Field, which may be the least fair field possible.

EvE: Everyone vs Everyone

-RubyPorto
Corina Jarr
en Welle Shipping Inc.
#139 - 2012-07-12 17:07:30 UTC
A little late to the party but, I don't PvP (assuming ship to ship combat)... much... because I don't always want to.
Cavel Avada
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#140 - 2012-07-12 17:18:17 UTC  |  Edited by: Cavel Avada
I do pvp, but I'll just add here why I do it so little. It comes down to a very simple mechanic.

Jump clone timers are too long. They need to be shortened to 12h to allow for day-to-day turn around. I can pvp one night, switch back before I log for the night, come home the next day and pvp again if I need to.

Edit: Here's an idea. Why not add a skill that lowers jumpclone cooldown?