EVE General Discussion

I have removed some offending posts and those quoting it.

So how's that working out, then?

Well player count says otherwise.

By the way did you used to have a character in BoB? I remember one who was like a dog with a bone and conceded nothing about WTZ. I forget the name. I'm sure it was you.

I agree entirely to the quote, as Ive snipped it.

The key is always, pervasively, integrating any and all PvE activities (new and old) with an underlying PvP (in any of its many forms) foundation.

Conflict, competition, interaction and risk between players is core to EVE.

There is a nascent hypocritical and self-defeating nature in many PvE players.
I dont mean this as critique or shaming, just stating an inebitable flaw in the logic of what they are used to enjoying.
Its vested in the essential paradox between competing against the game, and competing with other players.
The former is very limited. Its coded and scripted.
You can add more PvE content, but this fundamental limitation never goes away.
The encounters invariably become repetetive, boring, because they dont react or adapt.

In light of this, many games have been successful by integrating cooperative player interaction into that, vs the essentially limited PvE. Though the encounter doesnt change, the players you run it with, do.

Which leads to my next point, and one that is universal to the idea of an MMO.

Players. And the absolute importance of providing as much interaction/competition between them (or cooperatively as another option) as far as is possible. Players are a unique, unpredictable, adaptable, social etc element that no NPC system can match.

So having settled that from a game design perspective, onto my core point here, as relevant to PvE players and their attitude towards this.

People are unpredictable. People are dangerous. People can also be rude. People will shame/gloat.
Losing to a player is a world of difference to losing to an NPC.
Having said that, people also make better friends and allies than an NPC. People are REAL, social and interactive.
Those people will also support you, thank you, congratulate you, share with you.
As enemies people are terrible and formidable.
As friends people are irreplaceable and your greatest asset.
People matter in a way no NPC ever can.

EVE walks the knife's edge on that paradox.

My personal opinion, and experience, is that many PvE oriented players are afraid of what other people could do to them.
They see that as the greatest risk. And certainly rightfully so, because no NPC can fk you up like another person can.

But.

There is more to PvP than that. There are opportunities with other players in conflict or cooperation with you that exceed NPC interaction by any orders of magnitude. The risk is high, and personal, but so are the potential rewards.

I say this to PvE players:
ITS NOT SO BAD TO LOSE EVERY NOW AND THEN.

It wont kill you. Here, its just a game. You will survive. You will rebuild. You will learn

And as a game, once you accept that, you will realize that risk and competition with/against PEOPLE is exactly what makes a game the most exciting and engaging hobby you can have online, in an MMO.

Risk is what makes it exciting. People are what make it exciting.
Realize compared to that, an NPC encounter has rather little to offer you.
Sure its safe, predictable and profitable, but can it compare to what interaction with other players offers?

Competing against/with other people. That is where the real essence of an MMO is, not in NPCs.

By all means, engage in PvE, but I would hope for your sake, that it would never in EVE be so poor an experience, as to deprive you of what your fellow capsuleers have to offer.

NPCs cannot replace people. Though the risk in interacting with people is higher, so too are the potential rewards.

I agree the dispersal of default NPC corp (and chat channels) is unhelpful to new players. A single NPC newb corp would provide more response, by aggregate, but also overburden the channel. (On the otherhand, NPC corp vets rarely monitor the NPC channel, let alone bother to answer)

Having seen how overburdened Rookie chat is, (it moves so fast people dont see the question, nor the answer) it would help perhaps to divide part of the traffic between two dedicated channels.

Your cost suggestion is intriguing, but falls on the point that newbs who need answers most, dont have isk to buy themselves into it, and wont be able to earn isk, because they are still so clueless, inorder to get into it.

Id rather prefer, and suggest, that there would be more opportunity for experienced players to involve themselves in Rookie chat, under moderation, real responsibility and specific rules, to answer questions.

Furthermore Id suggest that Rookie chat generates Rookie (2->x) channels when its population exceeds a nominal value, to which all Rookie chat participants are automatically added, to help divide and address traffic.

Id even further suggest that CCP creates profession specific chats, and a popup gump to access them, that makes it easy for new players (and old) to Q&A on particular specifics of different activities of EVE, especially in their own area of expertise.

Last night I was watching a young girl on her second day in EVE on Twitch.
Goddam, the difficulties of new players to understand the UI and basic functions of it, let alone the rest of EVE.
Things that seem obvious to us are a complete mystery and source of great confusion and frustration to new players.

1) Would they also accept more interaction/competition/cooperation/conflict with other players in those improved forms of PvE?

2) PvE activities have universally turned into farmville/boredom. Is not the missing element player intervention, rather than "improving" PvE for its own sake st its exclusion?

Of course there are. Go to fanfest sometime and visit the PvE panels and you can see people there who really want the content to be better and are growing increasingly frustrated that it's not.

Yeah, it's just take 10 times longer, thus increase the length of subs and thus the exposure to other, more interesting parts of EVE for people who joined initially seeking PvE. Add to that elements of random and mix-matched mission chunks, and shazzam! even more variety.

Most other MMOs also have considerably more subs. Even FF11 has more subs than EVE at last check and that was replaced by it's own sequel. EVE's PvE is dire. Leaving it dire is a bad idea. They should either fix it so that it's entertaining to play or they should simply remove it and declare EVE PvEless.

No... I never suggested it would be more exciting, but if the missions were reworked so blitzing was less efficient, rewards could be increased overall to bring the amount of income back level. Right now blitzing makes so much that rewards have no room to be raised without breaking it. People who play missions "properly" get under-rewarded simply because minmaxers and multiboxers run though mission sites in 60 seconds.

Obviously that they would want less competition/conflict with other players.

It's not a huge assumption that the expansion that marked the start of a drastic downturn marked the start of a drastic downturn. If you want to use the standard “correlation does not imply causation”, then that's fine, but if you're going to dismiss the reasoning I've provided, you still need to present some reasons why the connections I've made can't possibly be right and offer some coherent and plausible ones of your own — you haven't even touched the former, and offered nothing of the latter.

…and that's exactly what you saw: a huge peak, and then a constant up-surge throughout the rest of spring, summer, and even fall. You can try to ignore it as much as you like, but that's what actually happened. Oh, and it does indeed show up on eve-offline. Apocrypha was fairly special; Incursion was special too, but in the opposite way.

So I'm wrong, but you're agreeing with me? What am I wrong about?

This is entirely your opinion, not mine.

Your penchant towards self-ironic sarcasm is going so far as to make it very difficult to discuss with you and understand your position.

Are you saying you agree with me that PvE should, in all its forms, include as much PvP as possible?