EVE General Discussion

Don't mix different PvP games strategies please.

WoW willingly killed outdoor PvP by putting all the rewards inside the instanced PvP areas. This because WoW players could not stand the same that happens in EvE: guy does his stuff, 10 guys 40 levels above him gank him and then start with some banter.

Other games had more or less different approaches. Proper PvP games a la DAoC, WAR or GW2 put different rewards in different places so you are enticed to do a bit of all of them (including outdoor) to get the "carrots". Still a WoW-esque canned path but better.

Most of all, those instancing did two things:

1) They cater to the "sportmanship" "fair game" PvP players, who are 100 times as many as pure gankers. With the added benefit of having ladders, competitions etc.

2) By catering to this massive majority, all those who don't do it are either passionate outdoor players (a minority) willing to have to deal with NPC spawns interference and walking back a lot when they die or it's the pure gankers themselves.

Average Joes who hate being ganked (what's that 90% of the playerbase?) will choose to go inside the safety of instanced "fairness", often coupled with purely time based progress (i.e. no skill required).
So who are left in outdoor are an handful of passionate outdoor PvPers, an handful of material farmers / bots and the rest are gankers.


Conclusion: most are just scared sheep, this is why they refuge in instances.

The problem was not there to begin with: when they had no choice but to stay out and be farmed they just zerged or did not leave the "camps".
What you call "the PvP that ended" was basically PKillers ganking bads and singling out sheep. Idealistic PvP was never born (Edit: in the game where outdoor PvP was born, it'd die after the so called "classes stacking" and "FOTM combos" would be found. Teams of "pro-players" would just farm less FOTM ones).

In order to have your kind of game you have to pick the known "hard mode" games a la DFO or EvE but of course their numbers are in the tens of thousands not millions and tens of thousands is a big NO! in the eyes of most game publishers.


But look again, outside of blob 0.0 (see zergers above) and scarce small roamers (the passionate outdoor PvPers) what other PvP is in EvE NOW, before the changes? Surprise: gankers farming bads and sheep and material farmers / bots (miners anyone?).

EvE is just in that terminal PvP state plus due to the hard core label it also sports few tens of thousands of players. So we get the worst of the two worlds: small playerbase due to hard core label and scarce PvP anyway.


Guess where PvP flourishes the most in EvE? Exactly with small can flips, RvB and other similar "school corps". Exactly the bad stuff hard corers seem to fear the most for EvE.

Best way to promote PvP, solo-, small as well as big scale, is to change player mentality.

* Players being scared to lose ships (isk) is a reason they don't want to fight. This is very very different from early days in EVE, even when we had no isk we'd take a cheap t1 fitted t1 frigate and still fight. I remember having Executioners I used frequently, at the cost of 40k each. Now everyone wants to fly big stuff, faction stuff, t2 fit, etc.

* Killboard padding. Am not saying killboards per se is bad, in fact I like them myself. It's fun to see statistics, getting a sort of 'condensed' battlereport etc. But alot of people do care an awful lot about their killboard stats, and so do alot of corps recruiting (which adds to players being scared to die).

* Both above encourages blob- and dishonourable tactics. I'd say tho that this is EVE, being dishonourable is not a bad thing, haha, but it does affect players mentality as well. They get less eager to engage.

* Skillpoint fear. You often hear players say "but I only have XYZ SP", or "he's played since 200x so he must be super-good!". There's an unreasonble fear that skillpoints affect the game massively. In reality, I've been taking out characters that's been 1-3 weeks old and solo-roamed just for fun, when I don't feel like losing my 40 million isk (156mil?) sp clone in a frig. You don't need massive points of sp.

* ..and on that topic, clone costs are ridicilous, I'd love to take out cheap frigs in characters like this, but why do that when your pod cost 40mil.. that's several frigs already. Forcing us to play bigger stuff, or alts? Should pure-medclone cost be a factor that limit us in PvP?

There's more to it, but this is a starters. And they all have in common; players are too scared to fight. Compare to when we started this game the early years. I remember in day one I went to belts and stole straight off the cans from ratters and miners. Then I checked ingame map, where is nearest lowsec, I'mma be a pirate! There was no limits, we just did it. Find the reasons players are so damn scared to engage today, and why they must use ship/clone x, and you are on a good way to promoting all scales of PvP. If that'd happen, noone would ever need or ask for some arena/instanced PvP.

While I detest the idea of arenas, a 'duel' might be ok, as long as you still lose your ship, and no tracking mechanic of 'arena ranking'.
Also no queue, you should have to be on the grid with the other player(s) you wish to 'duel'

F: Its not an "Instanced" fight. Its just like both sides dropping a can and then stealing from the other's can is now. The "Duel" option is just a cleaner way to do what is an existing mechanic.

If there is an ongoing duel, its possible for you to stumble upon it, watch, help or hinder one side (with crimewatch consequences) salvage wrecks, loot wrecks (you become a suspect), and so on.

All the sentences were very to the point, and this one I want to talk about it.

I played 3 PvP MMOs that literally lost most of their PvP once they introduced mods similar to kill boards. They look nice and really give that "e-peen" feeling but they make all the less than super skilled never try again.

Other games made great efforts exactly to avoid having those kinds of "in the face" measurements. The latest of course would be Guild Wars 2, where you won't even be able to know what cross server guild you faced, exactly to avoid this kind of PvP avoidance.

I am not going to disagree, I played before killboards popped up and it's quite obvious the difference between PvP now and then. Most of us didn't even keep the mails that was sent to us. Hey, mailbox filled up!

We'd just take out what we had, and could afford. T1 frigate/cruiser in particular. I think I had Amarr BS 5 for 1,5 years before I even bought my first Armageddon..

The problem is what I posted above; player mentallity.

you counter your own point. If we can already do it, then there is no need for a change. save the programming hours for crap that matters.

Back in 2004 there were no alliances but corporations were grouping up into alliances on their own. Thus ccp created the alliance system to help those players in game, despite alliances already forming and existing.

By your logic, alliances should not have been added the game. How does that make you feel.

Making arenas will not allow for people to be deceptive about agreed upon "consensual fights" --- This is a big change to how it has been since 2003. Alliances didn't change how people fought, it merely provided some tools to help organizational leadership and logistics ( although not near enough tools by far, but there is talk more may be in the works, finally ). So it's apples and oranges, really.

RiS, that's the point. We and the csm are being asked how they should work. no one wants wow arenas. I think the problem is they are using a word that strikes fear. And it is justified.

The only thing i want as an arena combat allaince member is a bubble that kills you if you try to leave. This would be useful outside of arena combat as you could drop them at POS fights and such. trap the attackers inside your grid, force combat, no running. Unless you have backup kill the shield from outside. But the nice part is the defense would be locked in too.

There are no deatails, we get to ask for what we want. And I want a way kill people who get scared and try to run.

p.s.(that's how the alliance tournament works, and they said they want it to work that way)