EVE General Discussion

The discussion we are having, Murk, is whether or not a "game" can really be "about" anything at all. You say the game is about PVP, but I say that YOU are about PVP, and are imposing that view on not just the game and objects within it, but on the other players. I think this tells us something about who you are as a person, not just that you want this game to be about PVP, but that you demand that other players adopt that same desire and approach the game in that same way, even going so far as to punish them for failing to comply.

Shao Huang takes a view that is not exactly inconsistent with that. He is just asking about what the process is (according to others) that causes people to feel like you are victimizing them, when, from a literal standpoint, it's just pretty lights on a screen. "What turns a pretty pixel flash into grief?", as it were. (I think that's what he's asking.)

Interestingly enough, Murk, you have done something very similar in this thread. You seem to believe that what Shao Huang, Corey Fummimasa, I, and presumably others have contributed to the discussion so far is not really what this thread is "about", and have suggested that WE take actions to remediate our "misbehavior". Well, in the interest of staying on topic, I won't tell you what hole you can stick that suggestion in.

This is plausible. Probably CCPs intent to some extent. Structurally present to some extent. Let's say it is completely the case, whatever definition of PvP someone might use.

Is the game also a 'sandbox'?

If so, how do we put those together?

I also wonder, what are the absolute minimal requirements for playing the game? As far as I can tell it is have a sub, agree to the EULA, log in. Is there something else? Even the 'log in' part is tough. How often do they have to log in, at what frequency, in a now ten year old game, to be considered 'playing'?

So for instance, what if the game someone is playing a sandbox game where many people insist it is exclusively PvP, with a variety of definitions about that, and they insist it is not? Likely the experience would consistently suck for them to the extent that their asserted model was not structurally coupled with the game itself, but can we say they are not playing? They think they are playing. The sucky experience they might be having may constitute play for other people in some cases.

I have been thinking tonight that it might be more interesting to consider it in slightly different way than 'the game is X'.

As a model, suppose there are generally three categories of play. They overlap and are all occurring, but one of them is often contextualizing for a particular player. It is not necessary for all three to be present, but one usually is for any form of consistent play. This is more about the sandbox nature of it.

1- Power: my attention is on being able to declare a goal (any goal) and work to achieve that. If it is never possible, or I have no experience of progress, I might quit, but not necessarily.
2- Meaning: my attention is on the interconnection of things. I want to understand something and I might be interested participating in and generating meaning.
3- Affect: my attention is on how I feel when I do something I understand as playing the game, regardless what form that takes.

(The marketing might look like: Be what you want. Do what you wish. Write your own story. Feel the rush (or the pain).

Let's take the third one for a sec and imagine that is really all that is going on for a player. They do not care about goals at all. They do not care about meaning at all. Might be hard to imagine for some people. It is easier to imagine if we only include something we might consider positive affect- a good feeling of some sort. What if, for whatever reason the player actually has an appetite for something we consider a bad feeling? In the context of meaning it makes no sense for us at all. In the context of power they don't seem to have any particular goal. We might look at their behavior and ascribe goals or meaning based on our models of those things, but what if it simply does not occur for that player in that way?

And now, just take your example one step further and ask the question - what happens after said player gets swindled (or "beaten" as you put it) and basically loses all that work. Will he stay in the game or will he quit the game in disgust? Similarly to how many players quit the game after similar "interactions" with other players? And is that healthy for the game?

I mean, let's admit it, graphically EVE is one of the best MMOs out there, and it has tons of lore, some content, plenty of things to do, but only 500k subs? When other MMOs have millions? And is that actually good for EVE players? I mean, it's simple math, 500k subs generate a lot less income than 5 million subs. And less income means smaller development teams with smaller budgets producing smaller and less impressive content than it could with proper funding. So, in a way, this is harming every EVE player in terms of tweaks, features and content that the game is denied.

And what is even more counter-intuitive is the PvPers objection to flooding the game with more PvEers and "space barbie" players. Sure, most of those will remain inaccessible for PvP, locked in stations or floating around high sec with Concord protection. But out of that huge player influx, maybe some will venture into low, null or WH out of curiosity. And that's more pew pew than would otherwise be without those players. So what harm, if any, will it do to the game?

Because as other games have proved, PvEers and PvPers can co-exist on the same server, and it will not kill the economy. Case in point, WoW PvE server can contain both PvEers and PvPers (who admittedly have to stick to battleground and arenas, and are barred from griefing in the game world), and yet the server will have strong and vibrant economy, and PvEers enjoy the game's PvE content, and PvPers enjoy competitive PvP via rated arenas and battlegrounds. And everyone gets what they want. And for those who just must have griefing within the game world, there's plenty of PvP servers as well, which offer all of the above plus the griefing. And the end result? That game is "dying" now, after 9 and a half years, with its 8 million subs. Which is, drumroll please, still 16x more than EVE's "ten years and still growing" subs.

Bottom line - I'm not against PvP. But I'm against low quality PvP (your basic suicide ganks, griefing, gate camping, etc.) As I think it is costing the game more subs, and thus harms its development in all areas, than any other factor.

I also don't think there should ever be some immunity mechanic. On the other hand I am pretty interested in non-linear play and the things that reveals and makes possible...

In your example above what happens if we remove or change your first assumption: he wants ISK?

ISK is still exchanged. We can posit motives, but we actually have no idea what he wants. We see events and behaviors. We can even measure them. They have no inherent meaning, as is the case with all data.

We must add context to ascribe meaning, as we spoke of elsewhere. This is true even if we take the context to be a self evident pre-given condition. This is why I asked about the minimum context required to play the game. It does not seem to ever include anything about win/lose, attain this or that, etc. There are some prescriptions, but very, very few and none of those seem to imply anything about a necessary or fixed context. Nothing is required about competition or any of that.

The structure is made so we can compete. There is nothing required about competition, winning or losing as a frame. The inclination is to view someone not competing as losing. This is simply not the case. It is a construction and not one hard wired into the game. The reason it feels important to me not to have some mechanic that completely insulates a player in some part of the EVErse has nothing to do with a PvP frame, however we define that. It has to do with compromising the sandbox by creating authority in the game outside of any ability for player narrative to influence this. This creates evidence that the game 'should' be some way or another vested in some mediating authority. That in turn is a structure for griefing and victimization built into the game, rather than explicitly generated by the players.

Personally I would really like to see an example in EVE where there was less, or even no, external authority, only structure. The only 'authority' would be about the integrity of the structure. The EULA would exist, but for the most part be cooked into the game. It is not far off from this now. I have played other small instances of this. Many of the 'sky is falling' predictions come true, but these games are not EVE. Community often does not exist in the same way. The EVE community is generally ferociously protective of the game and the sandbox aspect of the game. We would either self regulate in way that allowed new people to enter the game or the game would become very small, and go out of existence. What is much more likely is that players would attempt to create some form of self governance. That might succeed or fail, or succeed and fail at different times in different ways.

Because this means that CCP cedes a great deal of mediating authority to the player base, and this is very high risk, it seems unlikely to happen. We could understand this as fear. It is not unreasonable, but the presence of control exerted in way that is understood as external to autonomy tends to condition and limit the possible domain of emergence in a system. CCP requires a predictable outcome in order to function as a business, with respect to most notions of what a business is. They have to manage the dynamic between what is felt as a necessary level of predictable (and so controlled) outcome and a structure that optimizes the possibility of emergence. If they get it wrong it occurs as an emergency for them, rather than as emergence. I don't have much experience with CCP about this really, but based on what I can detect and comparing to many other examples in the world I have encountered about this, I feel CCP does an amazingly good job in this particular regard, intentionally or otherwise.

There is at least one working example of self governance already. It is likely controversial to suggest. The Goons already self regulate in way that allows new players to enter the game. They have an entire structure for that which extends well beyond the formal boundaries of the game. This structure allows entry, but it does not rely on CCP as an authorizing body to function. Of course it does rely on the existence of CCP as a business in the context of EVE at least. It is only one sort of model and many others are possible. There are other limited models in the game, but the Goon model completely by-passes anything beyond the minimal requirements of have a sub, agree to the EULA, log in. They have many other requirements they self generate, but those are not stipulated or required by CCP. They are player generated.

As an aside, have you ever heard of e-prime? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime

Why? Well in practice it eliminates the ability to say: the game is X. How then would we make the statement: the game is PvP. What would we say instead?

Chess, poker, horseshoes and tic tac toe all still exist, not because there are no losers, but because they are great games. If you want to be entertained and would like Eve to do that then by all means come and participate in those areas that you find to be entertaining.

Eve was designed by gamers for gamers. It is not meant to be passive entertainment, the excitement and interaction, and emotional reaction that the universe creates is based in part on a game. An artificial system which 2 or more people attempt to master and to prove their mastery by the act of besting another player.

This act does not indicate that the losing player is any less of a person, or not deserving of victory. It is only a measure of the victors mastery of the game, nothing more or less.

To answer your question; the act of leaving a game while bemoaning the unfairness of it and besmirching the other players is, or used to be, considered poor sportsmanship. With the introduction of role-playing "games" the definition stretched a bit.

A non-competitive social interaction and play in which mastery is described by mechanical systems of scoring.

Both are perfectly valid forms of interaction. And so the question that needs to be asked about Eve is; Game or non-competitive social interaction?

CCP can handle their own business as far as target subsciptions, we have neither the experience or the data to even conjecture on their goals and progress.

Nothing to see here... Move along.. just another post complaining about the carebears...

EVE is a themepark where you get to punch other themepark goers in the groin while you are on the ride together.

Man you must have had some bad experiences with mercs. At any rate, we get plenty of contracts so we are never wanting, and never have to resort to underhanded tactics like that (not that we would anyway). Additionally, why should you not be our source of income? You buy stuff off the market all the time, you're some manufacturer's source of income. For that matter, some trader's source of income too. Since being a Merc isn't something that's officially supported by the market or something we can't grind for hours at a time, it's not a legit way to make money? You've got a strange perception.

Of course, we all already knew that.

You are right next to a heavily camped empire-lowsec gate?

You could do a great service to yourself and your argument by checking how many MMOs have "millions" of subscribers. There's World of Warcraft with 12M in 2011, Aion with 3M in 2010, Runescape with 1.3M in 2009, then a bunch of sub-million population games including EVE Online. The appeal of a science fiction universe just isn't as great as a fighting fantasy universe. I would be surprised if a significant portion of Aion's subscriber base was outside East Asia.

So of all the MMOs, which one has been consistently gaining subscribers since inception? WoW has apparently been suffering great losses for the last couple of years (depending on who you read, they've dropped to about 9M active subscribers), EVE has been consistently growing (apart from that unfortunate Incarna release), and many other MMOs have flagged their death throes by converting to Free To Play.

EVE is a PvP virtual world. There is no argument about that. Yes, people will quit when they do something foolish and loose "everything". Then they come back, because they realise the inherent fairness of the game, and want to believe that they can do better next time (and perhaps be a little less foolish with their hard one pixel wealth).

Of all the MMOs, EVE Online, Darkfall and Ultima are the only ones that you can put down for six months and return to later without having fallen behind because of an expansion or two that have been released in the meantime. So people do come back.