EVE General Discussion

I was wondering what I can do to make Eve Online PvP more fun.

For the first few years of playing Eve Online, I've concentrated on Trading, Industry, and making ISK. Now I have enough to fly pretty much whatever I want, so for the last few months I've been concentrating on PvP, and I haven't done any ISK making activities at all.

1. I started out PvP'ing to get the best KB Ratio that I could. But that became boring quickly, because as long as you join Alliance CTA's where you're a DPS grunt flying a battlecruiser, you'll end up with a 95%+ KB ratio. I also started thinking that large fleets are boring because the kills are not very satisfying. Even if it's a juicy kill, there are 30 of us ganking a single target. So I stopped joining large fleets.

2. I joined a few small gang camps, but I started getting bored of those because you're just trying to catch solo ships in a bubble. Smaller ships and gangs would always hide or run away from you, and you would always run away from slightly larger gangs (Even if I wanted to engage, other fleets members don't, for the fear of losing ships - either because they don't want to lose ISK or because they care about their KB ratio).

3. I did some solo bubble camping / roaming in a cloaky, where I would kill a single Stealth Bomber here, a single tech 3 destroyer there. When a large fleets come in I would run away. But that also got boring, because the strategy of picking off single vulnerable targets by yourself only yields about 1 - 2 kills for 2 hours (if you're lucky). And most of those kills are just 30 - 40 million ISK destroyers after all.

All this is in 0.0 by the way.

4. So recently, I've started solo flying Deadspace fitted Faction cruisers / battleships. I would pick fights with small fleets (5 - 15 people). I would look at their fleet composition with my scout, and if I think it would be a close fight, I would engage.

This method has gotten me into some pretty fun and adrenaline rushing fights. Sometimes I would kill 4 - 5 ships then escape. Other times I would kill 4 - 5 ships, then the enemy fleet would run away.

However, there are just as many times when their additional fleet members from 2 systems away would come and join the fight, and I would get ganked by 30 people. They would get all excited because they just got a juicy 3 Billion ISK killmail, while I engaged in the first place out of boredom. Because it's either that, or station spin.

The bad thing is, every time I die with a juicy Deadspace set up, it becomes harder to fly solo.

The local enemies that wander the area, they know that you like to fly solo in Deadspace fittings, and in the future they would just bring ships / compositions that is especially designed to counter you - so they can make their Killboard stats look pretty.

Because they are content with being 1 of the 30 people on the kill mail, while I don't find any satisfaction in those kill mails (It's for this reason, that I did not whore in on the free Titan kill event a few weeks back. Therefore I didn't think it was worth the trouble to make all those jumps to the system where the event happened)

But after losing about 30 Billion ISK of ships this way, this method has also become boring. So what else is there left for me to do?

Become a bitter vet forum whore who complains endlessly on how the game could be better, and be ignored by everyone except other bitter vet forum whores who have different opinions than you.

One of the worse things about this game is the hint that it could be something so much better.

When a man is tired of PVP, he is tired of life.

PvP in all games is mindless repetition. It's even mindless repetition in professional boxing - a true PvP game. Oh yeah, it's captivating when you're new, and learning - then developing your own toon, then getting the wherewithal to outfit yourself properly at last. But, when at last all this done, it's just mindless button mashing. Go ahead and tell that lie - no no no it's MORE! Sure it is.

Building an actual empire with all the features EVE has at your (possible) command, growing and expanding until you bump into the borders of someone else doing the same thing, then firing up a fleet to defend your own interests, or possibly expand them by taking that system with that mining potential, is ALSO a form of PvP and is NOT mindless repetition.

It must be a case of, with EVE, just how you go about it. It also must account for why such a small percentage of internet gamers PvP. I might hasten to add, there is a "treaty" between the two "largest" forces in EVE to control a mineral or two significant in building T2 ships to sell. This to ensure they don't have to fight each other.

What that means is, the loudest mouths yelling "Let's PVP you risk averse shmucks" are actually the most risk averse in the game, as they have agreed with each other to NOT fight over the resources, and have devoted themselves to backing a penny ante GANKING party in high sec - CODE for "We suck. Don't tell our moms."

So, with this level of hypocrisy why are we still pretending we actually discuss this PVP thing? It's certainly not to explore the issue. Maybe it's to pretend it's something we actually do in EVE!

PS You can't be bored "of" something. You can be bored "with" something. Saying "bored of..." demonstrates a lack of intelligence which says "you're probably bored with anything that requires thought."

Fit up an assault frigate, no Deadspace mods, and roam lowsec solo. Works for me.

Get some normal t1 cruisers, go to low sec, get fights against pirates and FW ppl, problem solved.

yah .. problem with playing in a sandbox is you get sand in the most unfortunate places and their is a limit to what you can do with sand anyway

I don't see suicide ganking on your list.

Taking a break, change your PvP style (become unpredictable), or better doing something completely different may help ... I recently started having fun exploring again, and plan to do some missioning after the holidays. Change and breaks keep my game fresh. There was a time I attended almost every NPSI fleet, every evening, all weekend long, plus solo roaming in between, while it was a rush ... after a short (forced) break I didn't feel like logging in anymore, and had to find a reason, new idea first, to get back into the game. Since then I significantly reduced my EvE time, which feels much healthier now.

killboards should divide a kill (ISK-amount of a, that is) by the number of people that took part in the killing.