Player Features and Ideas Discussion

you don't get eve.

There's a quote that this brought to my mind. "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but loose his soul?"

In Eve terms, "What good is it to gain a ton of subscribers if it means losing the very thing that makes Eve special?"

establish yourself in some nerdish out of game forum.. talk up eve in the forum and an idea to start a rifter corp where thousands of players fly rifters and rule / wreak havoc on game... recruit everyone from that forum you can.

Following up one of my own posts with another...

I spent about a year playing on Serenity, the Chinese EVE server. While it was fun, with a lot more opportunity for non-blobby solo and small gang pvp, it was fairly uninspiring otherwise. The markets suck terribly on Serenity. This is partially because of the smaller number of aggregate players, but it's also due to the fact that (in my experience) much of the gameplay on Serenity, even in lowsec, is far more PVE friendly. There are wars, of course, and pvp, but it never seemed like it was considered an important staple of Chinese play.

For the most part even the nullsec alliances minded thier own business, content with accumalating wealth, butwithout having anything to spend it on. The result? It wasn't hard to find multi billion ISK shinies roaming around nullsec solo, without much of a care in the world. They tended to make for easy targets. Without the constant cycle of creation and destruction, the environment was pretty uninspiring. It was fun, because how ften do you get to wreck fourteen billion worth of Mackinaws in a Vaga in matter of minutes on Tranquility, but a few minutes of fun doesn't make a game. It has to be interesting overall.

On Serenity, they have the same choices we do... To PVE or PVP. My experiences there lead me to believe that most preferred PVE. The result was a picture of Tranquility's future if CCP were to ever limit player choices in any region of space. The difference between people choosing to PVE in an environment where cultural beliefs tend towrds pacifism/PVe oriented gameplay and an environment where that form of gameplay is enforced, is negligible.

But enough on this topic. I encourage you to check out Serenity yourself if you want a sneak peek of a mostly pacifist EVE. Who knows, you may actually find it fits better for you.

What you fail to mention is that all of those high population PvE servers are for games that come and go in a year or two, and none of them have a player driven market quite like Eve's.

Allow isk and minerals to be botted grinded in high sec and you face the inevitable death via mudflation issue.

Also, a massive part of Eve's player base would just move on. We are only here because there are no other games like Eve, make Eve like other games and we'll simply go and play them instead.

PvE and :gudfight: PvP is not something Eve does brilliantly well, what it does do well is sand box style game play, hunting and empire building. Your proposal would likely be the death of all three of those exceptional selling points.

What do you think makes Eve special? If it's what I think you're thinking, you clearly haven't much experience with mmos.

There are mmos out there, like Darkfall and Mortal Online, that will make you want to leap back into Eve's warm fluffy bosoms. Willing to dig deeper? There's Salem. Full pvp, full loot, perma death. You popped? Get biomassed. Game over.

You think Eve is all that, when, in fact, it has this much of that...

The "special thing" that makes Eve is... *gasp* internet spaceships - a niche with no real competition, while the fantasy genre swelled and festered. So focus on that.

I appreciate the reasoned response and I'll respond back to some of your points. In the end I think we will agree to disagree but the debate is fun.

Your first argument is the majority of players live in empire space and that is where the bulk of ship loss occurs. Moving the bulk of PVP to low/null will reduce the amount of ships lost and thus cause the market to become stagnant. Hulkageddon activities aside I would disagree with your assessment. The bulk of ship losses I've seen are in low sec with a minimal amount of loss in high sec.

The question that should be asked is how many ships are truly lost in high sec and what are the causes behind the explosion? Duel losses would stay the same since the ability to flag for PVP would allow for duels. Mission losses would increase with the inclusion of more difficult sites that have to be done with subcap fleets. So there would be an upswing in ship losses from mission running. Theft of cans/wrecks would stay the same so the losses there would remain similar. War numbers would change but I'll go into detail on that one in the war dec portion.

The biggest change would be to ganking. Without the ability to gank both the targets and the ganking ships would stop being destroyed in high sec. Lets break these numbers down some though. Assume an average of six gankers to take out a shiny mission BS. At the end of the gank there are seven wrecks. Removing PVP in high sec would cause the six gankers to move into low sec if they want to pick a fight. We'll go ahead and assume they actually do like PVP and not preying on weak targets. So the gankers will have to alter their playstyle but their PVP losses will continue since they will have more people to fight against once all the gankers have to move to low.

Population in low increased, ship losses relatively the same.

Lets look at the target of the gank though. He's safe from attack in high sec so he can mission to his hearts content. What does he spend the ISK on though? Sure he'll expand his fleet of ships making upgrades for his mission running, but eventually there will be a point where there's nothing left to get. At this point the player will start looking for other things to do. Exploration, WH's, mining, production, the possibilities in Eve are multitude but there's also the excitement of PVP. Given the way PVP is talked about in Eve I just bet our intrepid mission runner will be willing to try out low sec. He'll probably have met someone that goes into low, or has heard about RVB or Eve Uni, so I imagine he'll be able to try things out with some help. He'll have some losses, small stuff he's willing to risk, but I bet he has fun too. He'll continue participating in PVP to liven things up and eventually he might just move into null. All this time our PVE player can log on and run a mission when he feels like or do something else relaxing without having to worry about someone ganking him. PVP becomes a positive experience instead of a negative and he ends up losing more ships in the end since he'll play the game longer but at his own pace.

In the end the population of low is plussed up by the gankers having to seek new grounds to get a target and the typical PVE player will spend some time roaming in low sec figuring out if he likes PVP or not. All the while the PVE player is spending his ISK on the market for new PVE ships or replacing the PVP ships he loses while he's learning the ropes when he feels like some added risk. Null will receive the benefits as well as more people playing will mean more people trying out the end game.


Next we got the shifting of resources, something which I already agreed would need to happen. The difference between the two of us is what we see as risk.

I see risk inherent in PVE. I've lost ships in missions to NPC's. Doesn't happen often but the risk is still there. Imagine running a lvl 5 mission without the benefit of a carrier and tell me there isn't increased risk. Incursions are the single riskiest thing I've done in high sec, to include wars. I almost exclusively fly logi and incursions are more stressing then a roam through low sec. Creating a lvl 6 mission to increase the risks for PVE would also help keeping industrialists employed. The main consideration has to be ensuring the same lvl of mission in low sec has higher return than the one in high. I doubt those missions would be used that often but the option should always be there.

The real pull to go to low sec should be resources. Exploration sites and combat sites. Items that can be completed by small groups of PVP oriented ships taking on the risk of additional combat. The sites would need to be buffed compared to the current payout. Finding a radiometric site in low is somewhat of a letdown currently, but make the reward worth the risk of venturing into the PVP grounds and you'll see more people taking the risk.

Mining probably won't shift to low sec, just too easy for the attacker to win, but reducing high sec payouts by 10-15% while increasing null sec returns should be sufficient to encourage people towards null. It won't solve bots but neither does the ability to gank in high sec. Mining will require a more fundamental change or some adjustments to make sure the output from high doesn't become too much. However this is a relatively simple thing to adjust and can be done as needed.

The result should be the ability to make ISK in high sec but the truly lucrative ventures will reside in low/null. Incursions, Lvl 5's and 6's will also give decent returns but they will also eat up more ships. Just NPC's doing the eating instead of players. Less return for the safer choices, more return for more risk even if that risk is NPC.


Continued in next post

You know, I'm starting to think this would be a good thing (tm).

Think about it, there's a huge proliferation of one-sided corps/alliances out there that either only do 100% pvp all the time, or really only market PvP. So, if the markets crash because of lack of miners ... then it's in the best interests of "PvP" corporations to start making deals with their "local" mining crews...

... but, it'll never happen, so ... meh

I have to ask why?

The title 5 ways to increase game population.

Why would anyone want to?

I just do not get it.

It is not like the game will get any cheaper to play it with more players.

More players will cause lag issues.

Again why?

Are their not enough players in the game for you to interact with right now?

If you are bored I highly doubt more players will make you less bored.

The target is not to bring back people that played Eve before, although that wouldn't be a bad thing. The point is to pull in some of the millions of gamers that play MMO's.

Eve is known as a niche game and one of the biggest reasons for this reputation is the close minded attitude of the players themselves. Failing to embrace ideas that will expand the game because it goes against the "hardcore" mindset.

Providing a better atmosphere for PVE oriented players wouldn't lessen Eve or change the sandbox nature; but would provide more revenue for more expansions and improvements.


My favorite argument is the sandbox idea. Eve is a sandbox so players should be able to do whatever they want. You can't bring a cap into high sec, can't fly fighters in missions, and can't make a Hulk safe in high sec. Promoting PVE wouldn't ruin the sandbox, it'd just make the playground more appealing to a broader crowd. The PVP folks can still have their corner to knock each other's sandcastles over. The only difference would be a dividing line telling them to place nice in some sectors. Sorta like you can't fly your super through Jita.