Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ultimately if an individual decides to ignore other players and exclusively PVE then that's their choice to make - but they can make that choice AND be subscribed to EVE.

As a pirate and PvP player, I am a proponent of more PvE, BUT, there is one caveat. Make it either required for players to team up, or strongly encourage it.

Any content that encourages solo play is detrimental to the game.

This is already worked on heavily by CCP, you can see the effects with the new npc mining content, and also to some degree with the burner mission (though these are more about fittings). Creating PvE content that mirrors how endgame PvP content is will not only make for a much more interesting and flexible experience, but also make the transition and "learning period" much smoother.

Wall of text, sorry.

I saw someone talk about how each faction loss/gain should be mirrored by and equal increase/loss in an opposing faction. This can be amarr vs minmatar in general or more specifically depending on other things. The gurista pirates don't care much if you shoot amarr ships, but sanshas do, each standing between the factions are already there, just work out a spread system so that all the positive npc rep is neutralized by negative rep and you don't really have to work that much. SoE for example can give slight increase to all the pirate factions, with slight decrease for all the empires. Most pirate factions will have bordering factions that are enemies and one or two empire faction they are opposed to. Guristas are actually historically friendly to minmatar and gallente but opposed to amarr and caldari. This will require some work, but except for the many facets of government the politics of eve is rather straightforward. The benefits from this should also be mirrored in being able to enter combat sites for a +10 faction and pvp without fear of repercussions, making pve an actual way to enhance pvp experiences and increase dynamics abit.

As for another aspect that needs to be tackled is the widely different approaches to fits, since pve is so predicable, fitting for area specific counters is the way to go. One can predict the damage output of encounters and tank accordingly while optimizing dps application for other slots. So lets see what we can do to counter the current static style of PvE gameplay with fitting choices.

Priority should be to normalize drone aggro to counter the vni/afktar menace. When this is done, normalize the npc ships to normal fitting, but buffertank them, and sometimes bring logistics ships. Mechanics should follow the rules of fitting and ship mechanics, meaning that if you have an angel rat with buffertanked shields, and you killed the logi (if any), you only have to deal with passive shield regen. Tweak rewards so that time spent killing vs reward is still the same?

Now - Why dont gurista ships launch drones? Why can't you neut out a frigate? Why are there no ECM in the rest of the galaxy save for gurista space? All the factions should have ships that use all special aspects, but with varying intensity. Looking out for the specialized ship among the spawns is slightly more engaging than target closest frigate first, and then go down the list. Add that to rats warping in and out of sites (not gated), and/or mjd'ing rats and you are going to have to rethink alot of current PvE meta.

Finally I think that this will lead to more varied fittings, where it can be interesting to put sensor booster, ecm or even using two highslots for vamp/neut, or smartbombs to counter drones. This meshes better with pvp than just dumping as much dps as possibly into a solo ship to kill everything as quick as possible to counter their tanking/dps threshold. Using smartbombs against swarms of hobgoblins launched by serpentis rats provides a better defensive benefit than killing a single ship quicker.

The only thing that needs a slight tweak now is buffertanks vs active tanks, and afterburners vs mwd. Easy fix to that: Just add a script that is only switchable without weapons timer. This script decides on the module effect. If the booster is scripted for buffer, instead of boosting the shield it creates a buffer on top of the current shield, This buffer is then kept through warp/jump/docking etc, aslong as it is scripted, the script ofcourse can only do this is there is enough powergrid available. Same can be done with ablavative armor buffer, working in much the same way. The propulsion module can either use capacitor to enhance the thrusters or use that power to create a localized warp field, though this will have adverse effects on the capacitor regen in general.

I probably forgot something, but this is enough for a random post. Sorry for Wall of text and semi-hijacking.

TL;DR: Make pve into pvp, normalize modules and fits to avoid fitting PvE fits. Fix standings so that they matter (this will make pve usefull in pvp aswell, since sites containing rats can be a place to hide out, if outnumbered. Make rats more varied in random effects, give them drones. Fix buffertank vs active tank .. (lol). o/

Any content that forces people to team up is detrimental to the game as well. I have a character in NPC Null sec, they are alone there. When I want to run missions, I want to do that when I want to how long I want to where I want to. I do not want to have to wait for other people to show up, help me or make it possible for me to run missions at all.

Making it possible for fleets to potentially earn more by bringing more people is one thing. That is what burner missions as most recent addition as well as Level 5 missions do and try to encourage and fail spectacularly at because people use alts instead of useless other players (see above reasons). Making it impossible to run missions solo is another thing and detrimental to my and many other people's enjoyment of the game.


I am not sure how you run your missions but when I run them in my BS, many missions get my heart racing because the NPC DPS outmatches my reps and I have to work hard to get DPS removed from the field, manage my reps and capacitor. The missions themselves are obviously always the same but by fitting your ship properly, you can still get a nice adrenaline rush out of them.

Furthermore, if the missions cost you more than you earn from them, they are not worth doing. Take the one and only Guristas Event as an example. I tried to run these sites with a Sacrilege several times. I lost millions in medium drones to them, similar values in ammo and Nanite Paste and all I got was worthless clothing and ugly skins. I didn't bother with these event sites after 2 tries. Bringing a fleet or even another guy would not have made things better because the reward stayed the same: nothing. If your "more fun, engaging and procedurally generated missions" are remotely like that, you will surely and rightfully so receive complaints by players.

Oh I absolutely agree. At no point should the player ever be 100% safe from harm. All of the things I mentioned would still be susceptible to other players crashing the party - that's one of the fundamental features of the game.