EVE General Discussion

I've wondered for a while if killmails create an escalated sense of violence in the universe, and what the game would be like if it instead just recorded a number of "kills" and "losses", without the elegant record of exactly what was lost.

Would miner ganking still be a big deal if there was no provable way of showing what someone had on them?
Would people take screenshots of wrecks and post them?

I'm not sure if killmails have always been in Eve, or if they were added at a later date?

I'm just curious how big of a roll killmails play in encouraging people to kill each other, and how much of it is isk/pew motivated.

I certainly don't want to see them go away. It's a neat feature. But if they weren't there, would things be different?

i have a nagging suspicion that Eve without killmails would be more fun.

If there were no API hookups, you'd be **** out of luck to create a meanigfull KB. If you also remove the actual loss/killmail from the game, then your idea falls flat out on it's face. People would have to guess what the enemy was fitted with and we all know how well that would end.

Why to we keep score in any game?
Why do we track statistics in the games and sports we enjoy?

When you can answer those questions you'll begin to understand why kill notifications are, and will continue to be, an integral part of EVE.

supported

Because for some the fun only starts if they can stroke their egos?

Scores in games are for defining a winner of the game.

Here you can win a fight, but not the game.

Eve is a game, football is a game
Fight in Eve = match in football.
You can't win Eve, you can't win football.
Scores in football make no sense except stroking egos of participants.

I mostly agree with that, but I think you're making a fatal assumption: the game of EVE Online is a killmail contest. A miner could just as easily say EVE is a mining contest. A mission runner could just as easily say it is a bling contest. An alliance could just as easily say it is a sovereignty holding contest. A CEO could just as easily say it is a members-in-my-corp contest. There are lots of different metrics that we could use to support the argument that a given person or entity was "winning".

Even conceding that it is a killmail contest, there is still the question of "score". Does gang-killing a miner with 5 other people yield as many points as soloing a T3 in your Rifter? Does pwning a noob get us just as many points as fighting off and killing a prepared and battle-hardened veteran with our mining barge? It shouldn't.

Competitive games have very strict rulesets. There are team limits, handicaps, point-valuation systems, etc. All that is to make clear who the winner is, but even in systems like that, there isn't always a clear winner. Sometimes, it's a draw. Sometimes, we put an asterisk next to the "W" to indicate that the question of who won and who lost isn't the whole story in that game.

To declare that killing=victory in EVE might be just as misguided as those Call Of Duty players who run around on a Domination or Sabotage map whoring kills, as if THAT were the objective of the game.

Kill mails tell a story. You really want to remove that?

My guess is that the only difference would be that instead of seeing lots of links to killmails in the chats, you would start seeing links to posted screenshots of ships blowing up.