EVE General Discussion

When I find RvB no longer fun (this might be in 6 months, might be in 5 years, who knows) I will leave... RvB. Doesn't mean I have to leave EVE though. I could join a wormhole corp. I could try teaching at EVE university. Maybe faction warfare. Etc etc. As long as EVE has multiple ways of playing it's not so simple as "I'm not winning, I'm quitting". In reality in EVE people win some and lose some and that's ok. I think it's simplistic to say that players need constant victory to stay satisfied. Of course, some people can make sure they are winning more by picking on newbies and well, we are back to my original point...

As an aside - I think a lot of EVE player are driven to *achieve*, and achievement isn't always blowing someone up. The thing that draw me to EVE first wasn't the PvP btw, it was the economy...

That being said - yes I do agree with you that CCP has to draw in new players *and* keep the existing player base happy. I also agree with you that the "each player has X subscription" model does leave CCP more vulnerable to player loss.

Of coruse achievement is relevant to stay subscribed, and as with "meaningful" the definition of "achievement" varies from a player to the next. One of the beauties of a sandbox system is that, theoretically, it allows the player to set whatever achievement he wants to reach, and pursue it through the rules and mechanics of the sandbox.

But then, in order to set a viable achievement, the player must KNOW the sandbox rules and mechanics. And being a sandbox, it can be very diffcult to figure them, specially if the sandbox is as obscure as EVE, where most relevant information is not documented anywhere. FAI, just these days, we see players learning the hard way that setting drones to aggressive is bad for them... but this little fact is not documented anywhere ingame, and neither the game nor CCP do nothing to prevent players abusing the drone loophole to the supposed "safety button", nor to warn unaware players of the consequences of this default setting.

It is just one of the ways in which learning the snadbox is left to chance and randomness, and so players are left to find out too late that they pursued the wrong achievement... which may be fatal if they spent months on it and didn't like anything else.

Making sure that the NPE leads the players to worthy achievements (let's say that being a competent mission runner was something better than just being a hapless farmer) is a delicate matter. Leading players to an achievement means drawing paths on the sandbox, but on the other hand, EVE as is is a game where someone can become a competent PvEr and learn, one year too late, that aggressive drones can spell doom on his hard earned achievement ship (hard earned because of the dullness of the farming implied).

And such degree of failure is not balanced out by some equally large reward. You chewed up rocks for hours and hours and took 1 minute to learn horribly that you should fit your ship X way or do Z thing in order to keep enjoying the achievement reward of... chewing more rocks.

You do realize, I hope, that the more complex AI becomes the more calculations the server has to do?

Really irrelevant to PvE. If instead of 4 rooms with 50 npcs in each room that orbit at 2, 15, 30 and 50km and shoot + randomly use ecm jammers there were 4 rooms with 5 npcs in each room that engaged like an actual pvp gang, tacklers using generic long range orbits, long points, or close orbits, scrams and webs. Long range "falcon" jammer, and mid range, long range or short range dps, RR etc.

EVE pvp is not exactly rocket science.

yeah i remember a dev saying something along the lines of 'having rats in pve act more like players is a goal'

also having pve fits the same as pvp fits would be a lot better. not having to warp out -every time- something appears on dscan and having the capability of fighting for the site would be great

All that is nice and dandy... but let's remember that people is PLEXing their accounts with mission farming.

Any sensible company in the known universe and part of the wormholes, would develop a new type of mission that was exactly as you described -hell, even *I* suggested that at one point.

But this is CCP what we are talking about, and your idea would mean the end of PvE as we know it, the waste of tirllions of ISK in PvE player assets, the end of countless subscriptions, and a severe blow to the game demographics.

Having TWO different PvE systems, is just too sensible for CCP.

In my view, a Chris Roberts, a Sid Meier, a Shigeru Miyamoto, anyone with a functional developer mind, or even a EA developer, would take the chance to make the "deadly PvE" missions player-generated and shoot two birds with a stone or however is said in English; let players create new PvE content and let that new PvE be a stepping stone for PvP, win-win!

But again, this is CCP, an amateurish gang of icelandic freaks, and you can bet your shiny new Marauder that they plan on wipping PvE fits out of the table via a AI change that will make the new anti-drone AI look sensible and balanced.

It's so nice that I already started figuring that out...

Option A: CONCORD spawns in deadspace and beats the living sh*t of any ships not a part of the mission
Option B: any player entering deadspace after the initial player gets full room aggro

I'd rather pick option A, because option B could be abused to keep the NPCs busy with a bait while a DPS boat kills them.

Why shouldn't I? If the missions were key to third parties (the players being affected by the outcome), such third parties should be protected by a game mechanic.

The player whose interest could be harmed by a succesful mission would wish to be assured that nobody would blob the NPCs, and the player whose interest could be harmed by a failed mission would wish to be assured that nobody would blob the mission runner.

Third party player stakes would allow for third party NPC intervention as a check & balance system.

Option B is fine I think. If two players can sneak up on me in a mission and one is a bait other is dps then I think that's just fail on my part. Of course I could have cloaky partner or could be bait myself, NPC's switch, scram, jam, web the bait, my guys uncloak blap dps blap bait, profit.

Sounds very EvEil.

When you get older you'll learn what sarcasm is.