Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Sorry for the delayed reply folks. CCP Bettik is the man with the plan on pve complexes and he was gone on vacation then came down sick. The rest of us on the team had a good idea of the thought process here and had a chance to go over a bit of it with the CSM before the holidays but we wanted to wait until we went over it thoroughly with Bettik before making the public post.

The good news is that I've now had a chance to touch base with Bettik and go over the situation.

Back in the day when most of the DED complexes were moved from static spawns to the exploration system, the 1/10 and 2/10 plexes were left static because it was thought that leaving them accessible for people who had not yet learned how to probe would benefit new players. A happy side effect of that decision (that most of you are very familiar with) was that the lowsec plexes became geographical landmarks that give people a location to fight over to a certain extent.

However during this last release we went over some of the available data to look at how the 1/10 and 2/10 plexes were serving their various purposes. Our metrics made clear that they were not living up to their primary purpose as interesting pve content, with the majority of the completions performed by the same small group of experienced players, some of which were clearly farming the content. The decision was made that special casing these plexes from the rest of the DED system was no longer worth it, and that the content would serve its primary purpose much better and to a much wider variety of people as exploration content.

This of course meant losing some of the interesting and positive gameplay associated with the 1/10 and 2/10 plexes, just as the old removal of the 6/10, 8/10 and 10/10 statics removed interesting gameplay in its time. However with hindsight it's fairly clear to us that the benefits of the old static plex removal outweighed the harm, with the content being run by many more people than could ever use the old farmable statics. The benefits of this change will be wider access to the pve content provided by these plexes and hopefully more people exploring lowsec as a whole (although less concentrated than previously). The downsides of course are a reduction in the number of geographical features that make some systems unique, as well as the easily seen focal point for players in space. We feel that as a whole this change will be a net positive, although I completely understand that it may not seem the case to those people who strongly benefited from the previous mechanic.

One idea that came up from the CSM discussion that I would like your opinions on (no promises at this stage):
What would you guys think about the plexes being reintroduced with the same size restrictions but without the NPCs (or without the NPCs in the final room) as a simple location for size restricted pvp decoupled from the DED loot?

If you put these dead spaces through out the universe, could you consider adding the ability to anchor POS in them.

Being able to 'colonise' a plex in hostile 0.0 might be cool, especially if you got to choose one that restricted access to frigates, or sub-caps or some other random combination of ships.

I think that a reward should still be in place.

From my experience, the NPC rats were basically like "rain" in the duels that followed, but the actual goal was always, and always, to loot or deny the loot tothe other player in the room.

So I think that if a "new" complex was added, with the reward in the end it'd result in pretty much be the same, especially with the keys and acess timers.

All in all What I trully suggest is just the same complex, renamed, added as a static location, with the NPC's and all, to continue doing what was being done.

Nobody except farmers cared about NPCs behind accel gates because massive amounts of fights was outside of plex anyway. You hanged out at beacon until somebody arrived and if you didn't want to take that fight because of whatever you warped out or used accel gate as immediate GTFO and warp out then.

And farmers in low got a one way ticket to clone vat sooner or later.

EDIT after few minutes of flexing my brain muscles:

As much I would like to see our beloved 2/10 plex in Heild back on my overview I wouldn't like it to become a basis for "arenas" in Eve. Dedicated places for pvp have no place in New Eden, period. Beauty of lowsec plexes was in emergent gameplay driven by players "misusing" those beacons. And I am afraid that if you make that first step and put even a hint of "arenas" out there that would make more harm than good in the long run.

I find this argument interesting. Removing existing "arenas" is bad but reintroducing them would be a slippery slope towards something harmful?

Also technically everything in eve is a "dedicated place for pvp", I don't see how adding more variety of locations to pvp would be a bad thing.

To be very clear, this "no NPC" idea is just that, and idea. Don't anyone go getting your hopes up I just want to have a discussion on upsides and downsides.

I'm pretty ok with content existing in Eve that I personally wouldn't use. So I'm ok with adding "arenas".

You do know that people would game them, don't you? Point frigates landing on the gate with battlecruisers and gank them as they try to go in.

Also I really like it that conflict in Eve happens as a course of going about one's business. Maybe I'll get ganked when I'm fuelling my pos, maybe I'll catch a straggler ghosting along behind a big fleet op in my Rapier. It's the asymmetry that appeals.

Putting in mini-Warsong Gulches creates a space where everyone is there only to pvp while incidentally, accidentally, protecting the rest of Eve from them. If 20 frigates are fighting in an arena they just kill pvpers. If 20 frigates are fighting on a gate and a Badger jumps in, dead Badger. I much prefer the worldiness of the second scenario.

Also it's worth remembering that designed content negates the need for emergent content. We have some really good player conceived methods of generating frigate pvp. Red v Blue, the Tuskers events, etc. If there's no need to come up with such ideas because there are these deadspace battlegrounds Eve loses some of its character.

But sure, stick them in if you like. I'll be on the gate in my cane looking forward to meeting the enthusiastic frigate pilots!

The 2/10's were never an arena.

They were a naturally formed food chain of pvp content. PVE Guy goes to farm it, PVP Guy 1 hunts him to the plex, PVP Guy 2 hunts PVP Guy 1 etc.

An empty beacon for PVP purposes will be nothing like what the 2/10's were. The 2/10's existed as the PVP hotspot they were because of the DED loot, because of the farming. Low-sec pvp almost always revolves around pve content. Whether its hunting of belt ratters or mission runners, setting up gate camps to catch haulers and freighters, fighting over control of POCO's. Non-FW low sec has no sovereignty mechanic, most of the PVP that happens, happens around PVE content and is initiated by Pirates.

And I still don't understand why letting some farmers farm is worse than destroying a successful and vibrant PVP eco-system in CCP's eyes.

By turning these into "arenas" it could have a negative impact of faction warfare complexes, which are used by both FW and pirates for PvP

I never did the old DED sites, but what you described sounds a lot like Faction Warfare plexes in their current form. Maybe make it so that once one of the DED sites is scanned and warped to it appears on the overview so that others can warp to the plex, thereby creating pvp conflict? This would be a middle ground between completely removing them from overview and giving newbie scanners something to strive for.

When I say vibrant I don't mean constant "good fights". I mean a healthy mixture of blobbing, camping, spontaneousness and 1v1's. Constant "good fights" would be nearly as stale as constant blobbing or ganking.

Their relevance should not be determined by whether they give regular "good fights" or not. It's the amount and the mixture of PVP that went on there that made them relevant. And in a sea of inactive low-sec systems, these places were relatively buzzing with PVP action.

Now those systems and areas are dieing. All because CCP wants to stop some farmers from farming. It's completely mad.