EVE General Discussion

Agreed, and only a small part of that pool wants to play a game that works the way Eve does.

It was rarely Eve or nothing, it's been Eve or one of a variety of games that have tried to muscle in on the spaceships theme and for the most part failed.

ED and SC are merely the latest in a long line of games that have competed for the spaceships demographic, one of them is actually pretty good, the other is ...well we'll see how that pans out. People will still play Eve regardless of the success of either, because of the nature of the game and the fairly unique freedoms it offers for being a devious bastard if you want to.

Bravo, Jenny!

Well said!






Dan

well, just over 36 000 accounts online right now.

EVE is becoming more and more a PVP only game, its inevitable people who do not wish for this content will leave. Not everyone wants to come home from a busy day and be on the alert the whole time.
It is evolving the way CCP wanted.

They were 42,986 on the last sunday of October 2015.

Eve isn't a pvp game, it is a PvE game. Break down time investment overall, majority of it is PvE. PvP has zero sustainability unless you fully fit your ships from faction warfare LP earned entirely without running sites. If you are in combat, looting and selling, well guess what. The entirety of isk income, materials for manufacturing and industry? That is all PvE mechanics. It takes multiple people a fair level of time to produce something, and only one person a short time investment to blow it up. Said PvPer needs some means to aquire it.

Trading? That isn't really a reason. Market is again based off the player market. Won't be anything to trade without piles of non combat PvP to feed the market.

Eve being a PvP game is the biggest falsity I know of. Well, not entirely true. Eve is a very competitive game refering back to the old definition of PvP discussion that went on a while back. But eve is not a "Combat PvP" game just based on the time breakdown.

It is like a food pyramid, the one that shows how a higher position on the food chain requires 10x the biomass of the one below to sustain. That is Eve. Combat PvP in eve takes a multiple larger level of non combat play to sustain. Hence the issue. The mechanics to not integrate.

This drive to make eve a "Combat PvP" only game puts up barriers and segregates the player communities. Why is there not a symbiosis of play? So that the ultimate mining, or PvE combat experience is encouraged to be done with the full PvP player base? If you want to be a big war machine, be ready to be paying people to build your ships. Not charge rent. Have the non combat style players run your systems. They get their endgame fun, you get supplies.

Instead, the mechanics and play mentality encourage digging out the foundation of Eve play. Where is the incentive to protect highsec and independent players?

The LP store is probably one of the most underutilized tools for this. The LP store can easily be established so that a zero isk and "PvE", trading or whatever is required for the top tier of combat pvp. Encourage a proper lifestyle piracy vs antipiracy play.

EvE is not a combat only game like World of Tanks, World of Warships ... that much is true.

EvE is a rather unique combination of:
- persistent world (characters and their actions are not reset and more importantly: actions in the world continue having effects)
- resource gathering and base building (well known from strategy games, but expanding to other genres as seen in Ark Survival)
- mostly destructible or conquerable items and world
- player driven economy
- player driven conflict

You are right that most activities are PvE at their core mechanic, but they are always set within within a larger framework. That framework has players interacting with players, sometimes cooperatively, sometimes adverserially. This makes EvE a PvP game.

There have been and always will be people trying to push EvE into either a "consensual fights only" or "arena combat, losses don't count" direction. It's not CCP dividing the player communities. It's the lack of social glue ... and that is 100% up to the players. How is it that some corporations and alliances are doing so well over long periods of time ? It's because they managed to convey a sense of communality and greater goal to their members.

Successful WH corporations are successful because they manage to be good at fighting NPCs, harvesting resources, building and selling items and also killing other players.

I don't think that a game in which killing other players became generally sustainable would still be EvE. Conflict in EvE has to remain costly to preserve the consequences factor of anyones actions, which to me is at the core of EvE.

Likewise being able to build up fortunes without being challenged would be detrimental if such a thing was generalized. If a small number of people can do it, it's not a problem.

My point is:
- EvE isn't becoming more and more combat PvP, the combat mechanics are getting more diversity and thus get more interesting.
- CCP isn't the one who has to provide the social glue to bring players with different interests together. That's our job.
- Making PvP sustainable on a grand scale would change the nature of Eve. It would become more like World of Warships, were a loss is not a real set-back and a win just counts towards your K/D ratio bragging rights.

But that's more than it's been lately -- EVE IS SAVED!!

And that is my point. Concord as a police force, not a bad thing. I love that highsec is not safe. So I had this sort of interesting image reliant on two key, and under-utilized attributes. Security status, and faction standings, then apply this to a zero sum mechanic.

Zero sum means that going any direction has advantage and disadvantage, is no right way and always give something up to gain. I have thought that sec standing needs to be removed from missions all together. The only way to gain sec standing would be to counter criminal activity. So need to be destroying negs to gain. To prevent accidental large standing accidents, the flip works for losing standing. The more positive/negative a target is, the more this changes. Exchange rate of damage to gain should be as such that if you destroy somebody -10, then the change should be on par to isk value plus some to that by tag.

This means a big hit, such as a multi bil isk crime gives an immediate piracy. For extra fun, concord puts an LP isk equal value on said target. This LP pays out similar to bounties as a portion of damage dealt or implant values. I originally thought of this back when clones had a value. The current issue is lack of value on gank ships.

Now what makes it zero sum? Well, I said both stats. Have standings gain and loss affected by the target's standings. So if a pie hits somebody quite high in amarr standings, they take a hit with amarr and allies, but gain with blood raiders and sansha for examples. This also means a slight change with minmatar, etc. What it gains you is access to more specialized pirate gates. So hidden low to highsec gates that bypass main gates. Essentially go from the standard route to pirate routes. Using previous example, if you are -10 standing with say a +10 to blood raiders, and a -10 to Amarr, you lose access to all standard gates, but now have access right to Amarr via lucrative pirate gates. Toss in new AI defenses, and a bonus. These gates move around making them near impossible to scan or camp.

For simplicity, we can make the same in reverse for empires. They would not have secret gates, but I like to think a jump bridge system. More like a base, they would take some firepower to take out. Thus putting larger assets at risk opening up large pvp fights for high sec anti pirates as pirates try to take out these stations (and by extension, gain some LP)

This was all theory crafting, but essentially right now being an anti pirate doesn't have incentive. I love anti pirate play in games, but in eve, too expensive for zero gain. Biggest issue will be exploit by having somebody with a spy alt to track down gates. Farm an alt up to -10,+10 and suddenly bookmark and spread the info.

Just saying that. I think a module alternative. Imagine if you will a pirate cyno instead. The better your standing, the more useful it is. Essentially convert high sec from ganking to blops?

Versa to be awesome when combined with police outposts would be that extreme positives on standing start allowing movement of caps through highsec.

Yes, I said it. My motion is that with this, bring capitals into highsec. Thereby making antipirates able to do hot drops. Back to Amarr example, if you are +10 amarr, +10 concord, suddenly you are able to move your capitals throughout amarr's space.

I am a bit tired, I had done a massive writeup many moons ago but lost it, I hope the concept came through though. Make going positive and negative both sustainable lifestyles. Tweak ships and such so that highsec piracy is more than an instant thing. Instead of concord being consequence, it is now pretty much criminal activity will very rapidly burn you. Many options to have it both ways. Solve many complaints while bringing a whole style of play.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could go out to a region of space and never have to go back into highsec again? Running low on cash? Well you start running next generation non station based piracy missions, or hunt anti-pirate NPC mercenaries.

All in all, sounds like it is a fair bit, but I do not think so. Not adding any new modules, or systems, or stations, just changing how things respond. The most difficult part would be the sec and standing changes to be result of target's standings that I can think of.

Also from the presentation, 50% of all isk in all accounts are currently active. Which means 50% has been lost to closed/banned accounts.

CPI inflation is down. Eve was rather deflationary this past year.
Average wallet sizes increased, people are hording isk.
Production and Destruction were equal, but production per individual logon account was up.
People are hording assets.

Mining is the most popular activity in the game (undocked), but it is the least popular activity on the forums...

Makes you think that these forum warriors beating their chest might be wrong about a lot of things huh