EVE General Discussion

Disclaimers

1. When you undock you can be attacked and nobody is exempt from this statement. When people say this is a PvP orientated game this is what they mean

2. Spaceship PvP is the engine that drives this game and without it Eve would not function as almost all other professions are based on supplying it.

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These are the main reasons that many people will not pew pew and its based around game mechanics and human nature


1. PvP has no purpose in this game. It has no quantative value beyond killing other people. Unless you are in a fixed territory in lowsec or nullsec then you have nothing to defend. And even then you can just move off to somewhere new. This is one of the biggest problems with PvP in EVE.

2. PvP is Predatory. This covers a huge amount of ground but its also a game mechanic problem.

i) People almost never fight unless they have the advantage. A PvPer always wants an overwhelming win before they will attempt a kill. This is overly true when looking for targets. You can fit a ship for PvE or PvP and they do not overlap. A PvP ship will almost always beat a PvE ship. This means that most of the time it is the PvPers choice to select their targets and ignore those they cannot win.

ii) A corp/Alliance that wardecs another chooses a weaker corp/alliance. Even the fabled Rooks and Kings are famously risk adverse. It may look as though they are engaging huge blobs but they have complete knowledge of game mechanics and will know before hand how much DPS they can absorb and if the blob cannot produce that they will engage.

iii) Its time consuming. I have never been on a roam that did not take several hours to form up and then several more hours to find a single target that was almost always a PvE ship. Most people don’t have the time to do this.

(iv) Its expensive. There are plenty of people who can tell you to get into frigates and go out and fight but in the majority of cases you will be massacred by bigger and more expensive ships. So you need larger ships to compete. Everyone has their story of a frigate fleet that killed a Battleship fleet but these are very much the exception than the rule.

(V) Learning the mechanics of PvP. You learn in the majority of cases by dying and when people die over and over again they soon see it as a waste of time. There are some great PvP corps but try getting into one. Rooks and Kings (my apologies for using them again) have a public channel for people to come in and hero worship them in the chance of getting in.


3. Killboards are a terrible construct. They encourage blobbing and predatory PvP. Nothing worse than two evenly match fleets not fighting or a corp unwilling to undock as it might negatively affect their killboard stats. This is made worse by PvP corps/alliances that base there decisions on whether to accept someone based on their killboard. And the killboard is a fallacy. 100% kills 0% losses. But have 50 other people on the kill with them. Or even more insidious someone who has 100% kills and 0 % losses and is a solo killer but every kill is a PvE fit ship.

4. Human nature. There a many many people who do not want to predatory PvP as they don’t want to ruin someone’s day. Ganking a PvE fit tengu who is ratting does nothing for either party apart from ruin their day. They would not mind fighting another PvP corp if they could overcome all the points above.

5. Weekend lowsec roamers. There are plenty of people trying to break into PvP by running weekend lowsec roams. This can be a massive waste of time for them as not only do they risk hours of nothing or massive blob but they can be farmed as I have done it myself. You fit a ship and wait for them to come through. They all destroy you and then you have kill rights on them for a month which you collect when they are missioning with their shiny deadspace battleship. Quickly they realise that lowsec is a waste of time or they have to spend a month not raising any isk.

6. Being in a corp with PvP types. I have met every kind of player you could image in this game and there are some I would cross the road to avoid and they are mainly Predatory PvP players.

Predatory and non predatory types.

1. Angry loner- a four year old player who killed a 3 month old and his POD. When I mentioned that his pod was most of his wealth he shouted “Good” through gritted teeth. These are rare thankfully.

2. Loudmouths who are constantly bleating about their own superiority and are constantly abusive to others. There are more of these.

Normal People

1. Lowsec Pirates- people who have chosen to roleplay pirates and live exclusively of their ill gotten gains. They are normally decent people who live on gates chatting on vent and killing cargo ships/PvE ships and fighting roamers or other pirates.

2. Highsec corps who live for battle and just want targets. Im a big fan of the Orphanage as they fit this mold. They just want targets to shoot and are not overly predatory. Ive seen them destroyed before in battles but they don’t care as they just enjoy fighting.

As you can see it’s a problem because to find decent people who are pvpers you have to live that life or have a second account that raises isk for PvP.

Summary/TLDR.

PvP serves no purpose in this game beyond its own end and mostly its just predatory PvP that has already been decided long before the first shot. Its expensive and time consuming and is not something that people need to do to enjoy this game. Until this changes people will not engage in this aspect of the game.




TLDR do something else.



Your valuable comments please

Thanks for the meme

This again.

Its a thread about blowing up other peoples ships

A couple of interesting points. some of which i can agree too. i do think change needs to be made
to balance out the whole risk vs reward thing. winning an engagement should be more rewarding
than some numbers to type into a killboard.

No the problem is that im extremely good at PvP (this is my pve alt)

but its mainly predatory PvP against people who dont want it. Look at the Human nature section of the post

I read every word of the OP and found it an interesting take on the mindset of the EVE PVP player. I also look forward to the **** storm this thread will be.

Mr Epeen

No... You just managed to sweep every single player that shoots at people into your own little generalizations without considering why they do what they do in the first place.

Could it be for profit, vengeance, isk, bounty, or many other. Well you don't know.

I might as well say you typed that story up from frustration about loosing a ship to the people you think are there only spoil your day while you were missioning. I am Generalizing there, it may not be true... but it happens to many so I might as well put into that catagory as well.

You sir, are roaming WRONG and Roaming in the WRONG area.

OP is generally correct... but boy will the butt hurt peeps jump his **** for saying it.

Need popcorn cause the flames they are a coming!@!!!

I wouldn't say this is a problem with "PvP in EVE" so much as it is a problem with PvP in highsec. But, taking that into account, what Karn is saying is fundamentally true. In nullsec you fight over territory and moons. In wormholes you fight over lucrative high-income space. In lowsec you (ideally) fight over FW LP, moons and informal control space. In these regions, the game mechanics, although not always well, do support the resolution of conflict over desired things. I remember reading a post by some lowsec corp celebrating two years of camping one gate in Rancer. Not so in highsec. Infrastructure-wise, there is no way to contest ownership of a system, docking rights, manufacturing slots, Incursion usage, etc. Since the Privateers nerf, has any gate or route been 'claimed' by a highsec group? Except of course for miner bumping, that is.

If wars can't be used to contest resources and resolve conflict meaningfully, then what else purpose could they serve then predatory PvP for PvP's own sake?