EVE General Discussion

If you watch the video, it's a player trying to argue that you can succeed in PvP within the limits of a trial account. The player went through nullspace looking for fights, and stitched together their wins.

The problem with the video was that even with the hypothetical advantage of years of PvP experience, they were only able to win against opponents who made some truly incredible errors (including refusing to move, or loading Void S at 5k. They still had a great ISK efficiency because his fits were far cheaper than the T2 Intys he fought, but unless you know where to find that specific type of opponent you aren't going to go very far regardless of where you're fighting.

In other words, no change happened as far as being doable for a new player with exploration. Only just made them even less likely to survive in EVE's general hostile environment, unarmed. I still think it is all just a really bad fail joke.

Do you have any idea how much easier they made it to scan down sites, compared to how it used to be? I used to think I was good at scanning. Now a 1-day old player can have 8 probes out, and doesn't even need to think about the formation used, or using DSPs to get a spread of sigs in the whole system.

It's a whole new level of simplicity.

Ok, perhaps we could add how you used to have to use different probe types for different signature types too. That's going back a bit though.

And I know about formations helping

My point is that, a new player now can scan down sites without even realising anything about formations. Before, you had to get help with that kind of stuff. Now, it just happens.

That, in itself, isn't a big deal. You had one correct formation to use, you still have it. It's basically "you need to use Google to know how to press this button" kind of thing, which I don't think is a good game design contributing anything to gameplay.

When I say that player skill should matter I don't mean that googling something out and repeat it like trained monkey passes for skill.
Whether it's new player or not, honestly, doesn't matter.

You may argue that meaningful choices were taken away though. Now you don't have an option to take a chance and try to be faster to one signature than that guy who uses DSPs by omitting DSP cycle and go for regular probes, hoping that you guesstimated sig location correctly. You cannot use ladar probes (or whatever they were, I don't think I'm old enough lol) to find gas sites faster by virtue of ignoring irrelevant sigs even before you have a hit solid enough to identify sig type.

Those things I feel are very "EVE" things we lost. Complications that don't actually provide any options like "setup once, forget forever" formations can go die under a rock as far as I'm concerned. Artificially holding new players back is none of my interest either.

Well when they first ditched DSPs I was a little butthurt, but, I have to say that I prefer the new system now. It's a lot quicker using combat probes to scan people down!

Yeah, CCP made the game slightly harsher in that regard when they dumbed it down

That was probably the goal though. Unless you are in W-space it was almost impossible to jump on someone sitting in a sig as long as he paid any attention. Launching two sets of probes one by one, doing additional scan... Considering that catch bubbles are only taken into account in the very beginning of warp initiation for that to be a real option, you had enough time to warp away as long as you are in generally friendly system.

I was referring to probing players not in signatures actually. Obviously this applies to other space as well, but to give a concrete example, let's pretend your neutral scout alt has spied a war-target missioner in a high sec system, whilst your main is nearby somewhere. Now, you can get that alt into the system, dscan to narrow down where they are, and then launch 8 probes with one button. What a timesaver!

As for signatures, consider in other spaces, that pirates can scan down all nearby signatures, early into their shift, before people even enter them!

Then probing isn't even an issue if someone goes into a site, because of the awesome noob-friendly sensor overlay, a narrow-angle dscan can do the rest. You don't even need to warp a cloaky nearby anymore to check it (unless you fear combat recons perhaps lol).

PvP is actually pretty cheap. Tossing 5M+ ISK Frigs on the bonfire is quite an ask of a brand new player, but there are ways to be able to afford that without having a an 80-20 Grinding/PvP ratio of time spent. FW D-Plexing works, I've heard good things about highsec exploration and mission salvaging. Hell, even just getting into a corp with a robust SRP.

I'll agree with you on one point though - losing attribute implants is a bad thing for PvP. I shouldn't have to choose between undocking and SP progression.

This I think is closer to the truth. Small scale PvP is very SP dependent, and that's really discouraging for somebody who both doesn't have any and sees the only way to get more is to wait. Most of the time the recommendation is "Get corp-mates that are already PvPing, and fly with them while you get your SP in order." It works if you can stand being a third wheel in fleet, but I'd personally love to start characters off well skilled enough to be desireable.

Sadly it'll probably be 2025 before that happens.

I'm going to leave this quote from a childrens book here because it sums up the reality of the OPs post