EVE General Discussion

So when is it time to actually "collect?" I mean, I've known people who played for three, four, even five years who never so much as targeted another human player with their ships.

Without having the proper experiences, you can't expect these players to graduate to a balanced form of play style at all. Most will simply continue doing the first few things they familiarized themselves with in their first few days in the game, or quit out of boredom. I can definitely say that I personally would've quit this piece of turd game if I didn't get eviscerated a couple of times during my first few days in it. Getting stomped gave me that motivation to become better; peacefully learning game mechanics one piece at a time would've never had the same effect.

Can you claim with any amount of objectivity that coddling new players would result in a greater player retention than throwing them to the wolves? I claim otherwise, because when the game was harsh in its first few years, it grew exponentially, and now that it's much safer, growth has effectively plateaued. Surely there must be more than a few hundred thousand people in the world who are interested in internet spaceships?


I've been here almost since the beginning and I can tell you for a fact that this has never been the case to begin with.


This I completely agree with.

And to an extent that's fine, but you have to remember than the grand majority of the pvp element in this game, including hardcore griefers, don't "collect" on day-old players anyway. It's purely a myth that the second a day-old character undocks from a station, he will be hounded by anyone with a gun within a thousand-light year radius. Sure, you might still get killed when you are young, but most likely because you put yourself in a situation where your killer was obligated to do so (there's such a thing as spies, et cetera). Really, most pvpers, and even griefers, derive no joy or profit from killing Velators, and don't seek to do so. The ones who do quickly get bored and move on to other things.

Maybe people should stop being such massive cowards in video games. I'm no tough guy, but when I got shanked on my second day in a low-sec system I decided to explore, my reaction was "I'll get you for that, you bastard!" I didn't pick up my bags and go play Solitaire. Can contemporary gamers simply not make the distinction between what happens in reality, and what happens inside a game? Can they not understand that getting shot in a game that advertises shooting as its main selling point is not the end of the world for them?

If the situation with perception of reality is that bad, why are we still making violent games at all? Wouldn't "receive-a-medal" simulators be more appropriate?

You guys are going way to deep into this, it's just a confirmation box so if you for some reason click challenge to a duel by mistake, you can tell the game not to send it before it's ever sent. It's not like people would be able to withdraw a challenge they issued when they realize they are going to lose. People who don't want it can click the box and never see it again. It would be fine if there were no other boxes like that for market prices, or can stealing, lowsec jumps, etc. Yes ganking should be allowed, no i don't want to see it removed in any way shape or form.


There should be a trial by fire for eve, but having a confirmation box doesn't equate to a bucket of water being on standby.

It's more like entering a boxing ring. KO (podding) is still allowed, and fights can still happen outside the ring, but inside the ring there wont be police interference, and it's pretty difficult to accidentally start a boxing match.

The confirmation is essentially eve's version of a legal document. Once you hit yes, you sign away your right to contest the fight or it's results. It means you knew what you where doing and you did it anyways.

I have alts in merc/pirate corps. I call BS.

We obviously won't agree with one another and I'm not trying to troll you, so we can agree to disagree.

It's a debate that will never end, anyway.

Ha!

Yeah. You're cute.

I'm not talking about one-day old characters in rookie ships. Thought that was already clear?

I'll define new for you: Characters less than a month old. Corps made up of newbs?

Still feel the same way about killing them? (Of course not.)

I can understand your point. But I can offer perspective from my own experience.

I never got ganked in lowsec running missions in a noob ship. Not even in Amamake. When I was a total noobling of nooblings, I remember slowboating to a gate in Amamake complaining about losing another frigate (yes, I was in a pod) and someone in local was like "LOL you should not say that out loud or is this a tarp?". Another time, outside a lowsec station, a flashy red cruiser nosed right up to my velator as I made my way to the station and I asked "Hey, why are you flashing red on my overview?".

(Did I say noob of all noobs or what?)

I did not get told what was by being ganked. At the same time I brought a girfriend's kid into the game, a total gamer of the usual stripe who had just about every game on his PC that you can think of. His goal was to get into a battle cruiser ASAP because he wanted to join a pirate gang and his corp was just beginning to figure on what they were going to do.

Anyway, one day, he decides to move all his stuff to the corp hangar, and puts it all in the cyclone, and then puts it on autopilot.

His Cyclone never made it through Amamake. This was his third cyclone, BTW, because he tried to duel me WoW-style the previous day and got Concorded right when I was saying "I don't think you can do tha....". That was his first. He cried in local and some rich player gave him ISK to buy a new cyclone, which he undocked not knowing one thing about GCC timers.

Yeah, I think you know what happened next. He had that cyclone for 3 minutes.

So when his ship was blown up the next day in Amamake, he was jumping up and down and performing the most epic rage quit I ever saw. I think Mel Gibson would have cringed had he been present.

Now, was this necessary? I can see that, had he known better, I would have been denied to site of this rather spoiled kid unraveling like that that. To this day I owe it to Sniggwaffe for the entertainment they provided.

In spite of this, I think that it's better for those who claim their prowess in a game, to rely entirely on their skill and not on a "gotcha game" of factoids and game mechanic fu. Much of what we have regarding criminal flags and dueling was born out of aggro mechanics gaming and frankly aggro-fu had all the appearance of nitpicky douchebaggery. Nobody wants to play that game.

Surely the game would not do well being encumbered with warning dialogs every two seconds, but something should be done to make sure the new players have nobody else to blame but themselves. I think the integrity and reputation of not only the game but the player base is protected when measure are taken to make sure that those who do get blapped hard knew they had it coming and not for "failing to learn every little thing". For people to be willing to harvest kills from that does not reveal them to be anything beyond a douchebag. Ultimately I'm tired of having to defend this game (admittedly it's getting easier thanks to DUST and the epic backstory).

Obviously, you can't, but who cares? Attack him if he gives you a good reason to or travels into lowsec/w-space, where they know the risks they are taking.



Thus proving my point about you.

I disagree. There's nothing wrong with a group of like-minded newbs getting together and starting their own thing together. It's often better than the alternatives. God knows I wish I'd never joined the first two corps I did with my two main characters. Both were stringent, requiring I follow a specific path in order to be part of their war machine. Sorry, not interested. If people want to get together and create something that appeals to them, why do you care? Why do you feel it is your job to "obliterate ... idiotic newb hives?" People tried that with mine. They failed, but we're an exception, not the rule. And we've created something we feel is pretty awesome and special.

Anyway, I somehow got sucked into a wormhole with you and I'm going to escape from it now.

Why do I care? Because these people tend to fit expensive ships badly with even more expensive modules. And since their entire corporations are homogenous and made up of the same players, there is no educated central authority to guide these people away from making such terrible mistakes. And thus, these people end up paying for my subscriptions and Vindicators. Meanwhile, the well-run corporations that have some newbies in them are both more difficult to go after and less profitable to fight as well. Their newbies learn quicker, fly better, and stick around longer.

If you want to start a 30-man corporation with your week-old derpo friends, be my guest. Just don't complain when you start getting farmed like sheep a week into your endeavor. The onus is on you to make it work, not on us to make it hospitable for you to do so.