EVE General Discussion

I'm not going to trek back to page one now since I already hit "reply" and I'm lazy but your points were No Concord, No points/scrams, change PVE?

The only one I took issue with was points/scrams change. The others I would have to see fleshed out a little more.

It's pretty arrogant to say that, eh? I mean I don't even make games like this. I'm not very qualified. But it's what you do in this situation as a designer? What would I do differently?

I tried to outline it above. But the best I can do is principles. Obviously, they're doing pretty well without semi-pro/amateur help from me.

But, I thought, it would be a lot like exploration. You'd have to ambush people doing stuff in space. A hard counter is basically dull; you point, I stab. Those don't require thought. Or choice. Like say, how close do you orbit? Do you switch ammo?

The biggest thing I've learned in the thread is that the game isn't really meant to be about on grid during encounter choices - what I call tactics. It's mostly meant to be strategic. That's cool... seems a bit flat maybe, but hey....

Think about how their play style could be more enjoyable for them.

exploration is boring, i like shooting people

Yup. You did. Rather well.

You should try hunting explorers.

Problem #1: You assert, as fact, things that are decidedly less than factual. You seem to think, for instance, that stabs are the go-to counter for points. This is a common belief among new players.

In reality, WCS are an EXTREMELY situational, niche module with only a handful of use-cases. If you're commonly fitting them, you're almost certainly doing something wrong.

The thing you think is a "basically dull" hard counter is more accurately called a "rookie mistake".

Gatecamps are a situation where they're likely to be LEAST useful: There will probably be a hictor. If there isn't a hictor, there will probably be too many points anyways. If it's in null, there will probably be a static bubble, or a dictor.

In short: It probably won't work.

Good usecase for WCS: Wormhole epithals. A lone stealth bomber sitting on a POCO is not a rare occurrence. There's nothing else you could really put in those lows that will save you if it happens, but he's probably not packing enough points to tie you down.




No, we've covered this. It's very much about both. You need to make good decisions in fitting to give yourself tactical options.

Consider, e.g.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqPBXKsKREc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i68ij_ZjahA

You still think it's a discussion about fits or me personally.

I don't know why I enable you. Maybe you seem to me like you'd be good at talking about the original idea. But you really are enamored of talking about fits and strategy.

Stabs are pretty limited. It's really about one ship escaping from one other ship. Some good uses;

* cov ops explorers
* miners

You have to not care about range or fighting. But you see me putting them on a ship that isn't one of those and you lose it. I'm a terrible player... and will be forever. So why do you persist? Obviously I'm too stupid to learn, eh?

To be fair, this was (and still is) a design constraint imposed by the topology of the Internet; you can't really have a dogfight / tactical gameplay with 250 ms (across the ocean) network lag (each way, so 500 ms round trip) and 1 second server tick. So they minimized the FPS / dogfight / reaction tactics aspects of the game and designed it more for grand strategy, so that the lag can be hidden.

As a result of that decision, they could implement Time Dilation, where the server tick is slowed down to even longer, to allow a battle of 800+ vs. 800+ ships to still take place and not crash the servers. 800 vs. 800 dogfight with instantaneously responsive tactics is impossible, even with today's computers; there's a reason why FPS and simulator games are limited to 32 or so. All the MMO's where the gameplay is about tactics (for example WoW and SWTOR) have instanced zones with no more than 40 players, and it still lags out.

Ultimately, in a fight between two equally-equipped battalions, strategy matters more than tactics, so... I guess I would argue that the design choices made for EVE are in tune with each other.

EDIT: In that video, those are capital ships; the regular ships used as support / defense screens are too small to be seen at that zoomed-out distance.

The 700m hauler loss before you made this thread says otherwise. About the not caring.
The claims you're a game designer but won't prove it because being challenged makes you *sadfaec*, that's amazing.
You're sounding like a boxer who got flattened and is now suggesting ways boxing could be changed to be more interesting for all concerned.
"I coulda dodged... I coulda won that... I coulda been a contender!"