Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Thank you ( most people) for sticking to the theme and generating a decent discussion on this for once. I'll alter my op with my thoughts about it all and see if isd will be kind enough to move it for me. Great ideas here without the 15 pages of drama. Again thank you.

To completely stifle this argument I joined Marmite with 7mil sp's and was 3rd on the kb in my 2nd month based on that weird points system (cause my kills were solo). My 3rd month I had a Frigate alt and got 6/7th cause I was **** holding the whole time with 2 toons. One had 8 mil at this point and the other 6. Now do SP's matter? Yes. Do SP's determine the outcome of a PvP engagement? No. What you choose to go in with fittings and ships against what your opponent is fielding coupled with the damage type you/he select and the skill of the pilots in question affects it. if you are both in an incursus and select orbit at the same distance and 1 has all 4's and the other has all 5's then sure sp's matter. But if the all 4's is fit to counter the 5's and flies better well then...

Now what does any of this have to do with Highsec warfare mechanics and changes? both of you go to your corners and don't come out till you have thought about your actions and are ready to apologise

It's the same throughout the game. If your goal is to minimize risk while still getting kills, it makes alot more sense for the smart, experienced players to band together and curbstomp the rest than to fight each other. Join the blob and conduct daily massacre of those who aren't in the blob = guaranteed content as long as the idiots keep undocking.

Of course I'm one of the idiots for repeatedly shooting at things without a couple of pet alts or corpmates for backup.

I don't completely disagree, but I disagree on a couple points which I think are important.

Allow me to expose them.

I think the reason it's hard to find a skilled shooter outside the merc organizations is because the crime watch system is so effective at preventing fights. I just think dabbling in PvP to learn is much more inconvenient than it used to be. The end result: newer players are doing it less.

I've was in the Orphanage back before Marmite and I also fought against the Orphanage. If that qualifies me to talk about merc v merc, here are my thoughts: fighting mercs is hard, you lose ships, your killboard(which is the only thing making the iskies roll in) suffers, and most of the time you don't get paid crap for it.

There is also the problem that merc players get to know each other over time. Most of us kind of like the same things and get on pretty well (minus a little drama). Wars are less fun when they're against your friends.

Also, note to the public: here is how you clear all those sensor boosted war targets off Jita:

Go get a macharial and fit it for alpha shooting. Then sensor boost/tracking enhance the **** out of it.

Use an alt or a buddy to set up some straight line bookmarks where the first is in dead space, the second is 70k off Jita camp, and the third is straight ahead in dead space again.

Never use the same bookmark on Jita grid twice.

Then you warp from the first point to the second, land/target lock/kill one target, and Instawarp to the third point. Congratulations for self whoring a km against a substantial fleet.

Be sure to have your alt hugging the target so you get his loots and dock up.

Mo

I would like to apply to be called the Star of Perkone. Does anyone know with whom I should speak?

Confirming, I am an alt of Nitsche

I think people that don't interact with crimewatch very often and weren't around before it existed don't really appreciate how badly crimewatch has affected highsec PVP in general. I feel that the elimination of canflipping in particular was hugely detrimental since it totally eliminated one of the easiest ways for a new player to experience PVP in a way where the newbie himself has some control over who can shoot at him.

That's not to mention the unreasonably short duration of limited engagement timers, which leads to situations where people who want to fight each other and who had been fighting each other only a few minutes earlier suddenly become totally unable to re-engage.

But from its inception crimewatch wasn't designed with gameplay in mind. CCP Greyscale was openly disdainful of highsec PVP gameplay. Not just aggressors in highsec PVP situations, but of PVP in highsec period. Subsequently he created a system without any regard for the resultant gameplay, as was painfully apparent during its development.

The result is a terrible system that leaves no openings for new players and ends most fights before they happen.

Not sure if the OP wants my perspective, as this is an alt.

However, I don't think anything can be done to change the wardec mechanisms, or even the general HiSec PvP RoE, to improve the current situation with wardecs and a lack of willingness on part of many players to defend when war is declared.

The core problem is not rooted in the current game mechanics, but are in my view due to sort of a 'meta' problem transcending actual game mechanics. The longer explanation has been discused many times before, so I won't bring up the details unless people won't mind hearing them (again).

But the tl;dr: is that the premise of EvE as a permanently cold, dark, harsh HTFUniverse may be fundamentally broken due to factors outside New Eden.

Bingo. You want to know why merc groups and gankers behave the way they do? Because of the years and years of punitive, heavy handed safety mechanics they have to deal with just to play their game at all.

Vimsy,

Those situations are not what I am getting at. There are two separate issues, which tend to reinforce one another. One is specific to EvE, the other isn't.

The first issue is how people approach playing games, and I am no referring to what we in EvE consider playstyles (PvP, PvE, etc.) Many people, when they are playing games, are not in a position, where they can give the game 100% of their attention. I'm not talking about being AFK, but perhaps there are people around the player in meatspace, who may need some attention as well.

I at least cannot work effectively in any kind of PvP scenario, if I cannot give the game my full attention. And by effectively I mean that I won't have a high risk of loosing my ships due to apparent silly mistakes, get caught during a wardec while doing PvE etc.

Have a look of some of kil2 / CCP Rise' small gang PvP videos, which he made before he started working for CCP. He literally sits completely alone in what appears to be an attick room, wearing a headset with boom mike and all the while being completely transfixed by the monitor. Try doing this with your family around, it won't fly very often.

Curiously we just heard one example of this in this thread from a CODE. member, who cannot play PvP effectively due to having to look after a small child in meatspace.

Over time I have met *many* players i EvE, for whom this is a problem for one reason or another. This to a point, where people give up on PvE activities in null/low/WH space. There are a *lot* of nullsec/WH 'refugees' in HiSec.

I used to live in null, and never lost a ratting ship and it wasn't for lack of opportunity. Also I am fairly confident I could successfully run missions during a live wardec with Marmites and their colleagues, assuming I could fully concentrate on the game while doing so. Yet with the many hours I spend in EvE, I had to split my game time between PvE and PvP. Otherwise I would end up in serious trouble with people in meatspace.

This is the reason why for instance trying to tweak the profitability of HiSec/NPC corp member activities is pointless. It won't change anything, because to many 'good' HiSec players it is not a question of the ISK/risk ratio of a given activity, as some seem to believe. CCP has tried to move the population out of HiSec by tweaking the payout of especially mining and mission running. Nothing moved in the relative population densities.

If I log in with a mind to do some PvE, and find myself forced to go do X in a PvP scenario, before I can do PvE (at higher payout), then I will just log out again. Because trying for instance to keep up with dscan every 2-3 seconds is frequently not compatible with being on a friendly footing with my surroundings.

I will post the second reason tomorrow, and that one is perhaps even worse than this one.

Eh, kinda. More like when my wife was recovering and I became the primary caregiver, it was impossible to play just about anything, because I had the newborn baby literally all the time.

It wasn't just EVE, and it wasn't just PvP, I could not do anything except type on my phone or play a game that you can play with just the mouse hand. Ended up buying one of those carriers so I could hold his little ass on my chest so that I could cook. Dominos gets tiresome after a week.




I can and have done this.

I think the failure on your part is the assumption that people who find themselves in a scenario where they can't guarantee lack of distractions will default to PvE activity. I damn sure did not, I'd almost rather not play the game at all, and I doubt I'm alone in that regard.