EVE General Discussion

Arguments now added to the previous post in question.
Review at your leisure.

Yeah I think it was more of a reactive "whoa! PCU dropping like mad!" thing just badly thought out. I'd be very very surprised though if the PCU had a strong increase after the summer (which is pretty much over). It still showing signs of dipping and has dropped far more than other summers.

He keeps saying it, but saying this over and over doesn't make it true.

For example, via the use of a mobil depot and warp core stabs, you can turn the Guristas 10/10 (the Maze) and the Angel 10/10 (Angel Cartel Naval Shipyard) into "PVE traps" for people trying to kill you. In the 1st room of the angel 10/10 you don't have to kill everything, so you can use those npocs you leave alive as 'guards'. In the MAZE,. you can for through the 1st 4 rooms without killing anything, meaning that people trying to kill you have 4 rooms of npcs to get through (ie, they can't)

You can do it with any 9/10 as well. At the 3rd Stage of any fleet staging point, if you MJD twice straight up from the beacon, you end up outside of npc energy neut range. the 2nd spawn in that room spawns 3 neut towers.

You leave them alive, kill the station at long range and kill enough approaching NPCs to tank. Because everyone warping into the 9/10's 3rd stage gets pulled to the beacon (like in lvl 5 missions), that means that anyone who wants to kill you has to survive being neuted to death, ANY has to fly through a cloud of npcs to get to you more than 200 km off the beacon.

In low sec, you can use incursion rats and your own warp core stabs to make you invulnerable while traveling. And you can use the same kind of trick as in DEd 9/10s to turn lvl 5 missions into PVE traps for gankers

Even in high sec you can set PVE traps. Get a bling ship, undock and let the gankers see you. Warp into Recon 3 of 3 (the missions with the explosive gas cloud) and MJD away. Wait. And try not to laugh to hard as a swarm of catalysts warp in and go pop (the gankers can't tell what kind of mission they are flying into before they land).


The point here is that these people who complain about not being able to fight back using PVE never ever tried to fight back by using PVE. They gave up without trying and ran straight to CCP begging for help. CCP gives wonderful tools like mobile depots and MJDs and target lcok breakers and still they complain. It exposes their agenda, they want CCP to nerf the PVPrs, they don't give a flip about improve pve.

Thankfully, Indahmawar Fazmarai is not in the least bit representative of the real EVE PVE community. We don't need extra help, CCP gave us every tool we needed.

Very much so. Where once most of my characters were in high sec, CCP turning up the anomalies escalation chances and making the changes that made crappy space less crappy, I'm back to enjoying life in null with all my mains. Hell, I only go to empire get get mods i can get in null. And my mining buddies are mining up them indexes.

That seems to be kinda what he's saying though. That's PvP content. Effectively in order to generate content through PvE you have to shift your aim to PvP, which is kinda true. Actual PvE mechanics in EVE suck if you look at them objectively. They only really work because most people who are happy with them are happy because they like to split PvP with them.

Sorry, but no other season has had this kind of drop. PCU is down to the lowest it's been since what, 2007/2008?

I doubt that we are eagerly awaiting the upsurge in null PvE players to save the day to be quite honest. The game is just becoming a bit stagnant and dull, and people are losing interest. Myself, I'm consolidating traders and industry ops and scrapping a bunch of characters so I can drop 12 accounts, because while it's been fun, there's just not enough going on to keep that level of interest. I mean seriously, some time in the next year, we might get a new style of POS, and they might unfuck sov. Super exciting(!)

I agree that no PvE should ever be themepark or completely safe, but come on, there are loads of improvements they could add to make them more interesting. #1 on my list is failure states. It's not really possible to fail a mission without intervention from another player. You don't have to stop the evil baddies before they finish blowing up their target or anything like that, you just show up, mince the exact same set of NPCs that mission generated last time and hand in. It would be nice to have more ways to fail.

That leads on to randomisation. everything about PvE from the rats to the layour of asteroids and locations of ice belts is static. Shake it up a bit. Get ice randomly generating around the region, get rats to call in different support and be positioned differently. Have it so that when you save the damsel you might get offered an optional side mission to go after someone.

To me, it's all just about shaking it up a bit so that PvE is a bit less static. It's always seemed strange to have these fast-moving PvP mechanics but completely static PvE ones.

What you make is a very crucial point. Discussion. That is why this is on so many pages. Half derailments, but half discussions. The vets I say to **** off are the ones that want no change. Everything dies. I am not saying make a new game, was saying add to the existing mechanics.

Keep ganking/sov/etc. All the stuff that makes eve what it is. In the end, we have two choices.

1. Keep eve as it is for the current market. We won't get new players and it will just slowly die. that is the way things are.

2. Evolve and stay competitive.

For the case of evolution, eve is running double standards. We have everything from manufacturing, travel, skill training, something that is all time devoted. Attractive to tactical people like myself who prefer to take time, analyse and plan.

Then we have the other side. Ganking, zero purpose missioning, farm incursions, etc. Instant gratification which is an entirely different market.

As such eve is made up of two very different, and very identifiable player bases. One which likes a paced play. These people are the ones most likely to be long term subscribers.

The other is the instant gratification. Grab ships, gank, fight, etc. All valid plays, but eve doesn't have a valid structure for it. You have to do non gratifying things to get there. And now it has to compete with instant arena style games which do it better.


That is what I meant about not being afraid to **** people off. I see it all to often in rants and talks with former players. they like one, but quit because of the other. They love eve's rewarding and the fact that things are over a period of time, but then dislike that some stuff is pointless and "arcade-like"

From a business standpoint, I say CCP would be best picking one. Pick the one in which eve has the best tools for. Devoted play. Keep the same play styles, but make the structure solid and a unique market. Those that want the easy fight or no challenge to get to a point, well that is the gamble. To keep them, how many subs are they losing.

Lets look at it logically in my chats. People come to eve expecting a sandbox. So many rookies out there. I fly and help on the SoE epic arc all the time. That level of new accounts I see doing it every time I am in shows that there are tons of people trying. While talking, they like the pace of eve and potential. But the fact that everything is just a carnival game in the sandbox, they quickly lose interest and quit. Have a choice. Carnival games, or sov warfare. Why can everything from pve to ganking have that wide and developed structure?

Ignore Jenn, he's a troll and enjoys to lie about me.

I've proposed a few times how a player could generate PvE content for other PvErs, in the process of competing against other PvErs (aka PvP) and to get an advantage over players who skip PvE and focus on pew pew alone (that's PvP too).

That would be dynamic and player generated PvE with an impact on "pure" PvP.

(The irony with Jennatroll is that I am playing World of Warships right now. That's the kind of "themepark go back to WoW carebear" I am... )

But it isnt 2004 anymore. Yes, there have been improvements but what is wrong with more to the game? Eve isnt Dying, but ot isnt thriving either. I come and continue to post because I feel eve could offer much more without losing core gamplay. Just take what we have and build on it instead of continually rebuilding it.

Will be replying there next to address that. I am a firm believer in core systems and new player roles in Eve.