Jita Park Speakers Corner

My stance on WiS swings between stubborn negation and mild despair, and today I'm in despair mode and think WiS is that one feature CCP can afford to ignore completely so they can focus on more promising/demanding features.

I think that EVE doesn't haves any future worth that name without WiS. But then I see how it's been protoyped as a big group combat PvP activity that would serve me nothing, and even that useless installment has been pushed so back that even WoD haves a better chance to become real sooner.

And frankly, the joke's been running for over two years, and never was that funny to start with.

It's been 2 years, 3 months and 6 days since I saved this:

Ishtanchuk Fazmarai - new character test #2, October 16th 2010 (Singularity build)

And you guess what? Today I could log in and have my avatar do the exact same things she could do back in 2010.

NOTHING.

I have been playing this game since 2005. That is not to say I've been subscribed all that time. I would guess I actively play the game about 7 months out of every year, usually operating multiple accounts. I have played EVE in that time almost entirely solo. In these respects I have treated EVE differently from every other online game I have ever played. My usual modus operandi is to subscribe to a game, guild up, and min/max hardcore mode until I eventually tire of the game for one reason or another and leave it, never to return. This period of time can vary from a year (Guild Wars) to six or seven years (Everquest/EQ2). Since 2005 I have played EVE exclusively or in consort with another game. The point is that I seem to keep coming back even though I don't integrate in the same way I have other games.

Don't get me wrong. I've tried to find a corp in that time. I've joined many only to find that either I've been enrolled under false pretences, such as all they really do is mine as a collective, or that their peak playtime is outwith my available windows of opportunity. I've joined EVE University and found that can be frustrating during (almost permanent) wardecs even if the training materials are very useful. I think most people will agree that the most difficult aspect of this game is finding a corp that allows you to do what you want, when you want. While this may sound moany I don't want you to think that I expect to have my hand held. I've made my choices and I live with them, consequently I play solo. The upshot is however that I eventually tire of the "lonliness" and become frustrated by the limitations playing solo places on one.

EVE is such however that after a time it draws me back in. I'm back in for the sixth time now and I don't think my story is that uncommon. If CCP was able to introduce a mechanic to more fully involve players such as myself they would be on to a goldmine.

EVE is different from most games in that corps are in the main made up of mostly casually active players with a hard core of perhaps six or seven that play for hours straight seven days a week. The rest turn up for the weekly roam or Sunday minefest. If you are a casual and you turn up outwith your usual timeslot you find the hardcore clique is probably off at the other end of the galaxy doing fun stuff.

If there was some way you could get yourself teleported directly to the fleet without having to fly solo through 30 low/null sec systems to catch up in such a way that it didn't totally upset the balance of the game I think this would make the game more user friendly for the casual gamer. So that the mechanic wasn't abused I would suggest it is a one way deal. You couldn't teleport back to base, change ship and teleport back to the action. Of course you could argue that this could upset the balance of war mechanics if implemented badly. You could reduce the chance of this happening by limiting the numbers of ships jumping or the frequency with which the jumps are enabled. The added benefit would be to reduce the amount of time spent in station waiting for the fleet to form up. Designate a non cov-ops ship as the flagship and allow only them to do the inviting and off you go. I'm sure you could introduce some backstory idea that would allow this

Lots of promissing words from Seagull, but....

I doubt CCP can deliver anything worthy for lurkers. They might consider it, but they won't have the balls to deliver a kick in the ass to all those forum warriors (and CSM's) claiming the "right way to play it".

I also doubt that CCP will ever force EvE into a direction where it might start to draw new players, because.. let's face it, EvE is a game highly focussed on PvP. This is a problem (success-wise), because PvP is only real fun if players are on the same level. Whitout a catchup-mechanism to even the field, PvP is just borked. In addition, success of other games proofs that most players prefer PvE with the "option" to PvP. Since PvE is borked in EvE - this fact is prooven and unlikely to change - this game's success on the market will remain "low".

But let's see what they can do - maybe they will bring new and exciting features.

CCP Seagull, could you chime in here with a definition? When you say most players are "Solo players" or "Lurkers", what is your definition?

Someone who has always been in an NPC corp?
Someone who has always been in an NPC corp and also never joined a fleet?
Someone who has always been in an NPC corp, also never joined a fleet and never talks in chat?
Or something else?

Also do you look at all the alts on an account? Say I got one guy in a corp, gets in fleets, do stuff with others, etc. But I also got a trader alt sitting in an NPC corp. Is that pilot counted as a Lurker even though I, as a player am not a Lurker? What fraction of accounts contain at least one pilot who is not a Lurker? What fraction of players have at least one pilot on one account that is not a Lurker? (Yes, I know that is hard to answer).

Ines, I believe your plan is flawed. CCP can look for and identify what people are currently doing all they like. That is not neccessarily identifying what they want to be doing. I for example primarilly solo, either hi-sec missioning, PI, Industry or mining to support the forgoing. Personally I would prefer to be in a corp/alliance with pvp activity. What stops (or at least restricts) me from doing this is the available time I have to play. The last thing I want to do is log on and then sit in station for an hour or more while the fleets forms up if I can only usefully allocate a couple of hours to play EVE.

The peculiar thing is though that if any other game I have ever played online created such frustration for me I would have left never to return. As it is I have been playing for 7 or 8 years. CCP must be doing something right, and I believe that to be supplying us with what we need, not neccessarily what we think we want.

I will comment this last thing... Time ago, I suggested to add new missions which required PvP-like fits to be done. The goal was to close the gap between PvE and PvP fits, and how expensive PvE fits are hopeless against far cheaper PvP fits.

Some weeks or months ago, I read a dev blog talking about changes to AI, and I read something that ruffled my feathers: the dev in charge told about plans for changing mission AI so missions required PvP fittings, thus effectively killing PvE fits altogether.

At that point I recalled how hard i grinded to get my PvE uberships, and felt like punching that dev in the nose for threatening to lay all my hard work to waste. Also felt the so-usual-that-I-unsubbed-because-of-it feeling that CCP "does not get it".

As i stated above, people playing solo/casual do so for good reasons. Anything that prevents them to keep doing what they do is going to cost CCP subscribers.

Over the year and half since Incarna, some funny facts have come to light.

It turned out that nullsec is a tiny minority of the game, demographically well below its self-proclaimed self-importance. Turned out that most people don't join EVE because of PvP. Turns out that most people don't play with others.

So yes, it would be important to figure what people actually does, why, and how long. And then be sure they can keep doing it, as much as they are not forced to keep doing it forever.

"Fancy" PvE fits have a reason to exist - the faster they die the sooner you can kill more. Personally i think that officer modules are largely irrelevant in that respect, and also heard enough tales about officer fit ships going down in seconds as to bother with such kind of blinkies.

But he point I wanted to state is how CCP removes with one hand instead of giving with another. That's an ongoing issue as IMO the game is so complex that they must remove complexity to keep iterating parts of the complexity, thus any new content is being balanced out with stuff that gets the door. It's like, "Enter new music system, say goodbye to jukebox". (And say goodbye to people whose EVE aural experience has become listening to the same three tracks forever). CCP never gets it right.

In my view about the big scheme of EVE, WiS could had saved the day by expanding the current risk-reward framework (there is more rewards than ISK in life), thus adding content without overloading the current FiS complexity. Allowing EVE to be more instead of just be more of the same.

But that is largely gone. That path was not taken and now CCP says they just figured soloers may need some attention (I expect them to find out that soloers and casual players overlap by 90%, anytime soon before 2015), but frankly, i'm not in the mood to trust their abbility to get anything right.

This is exactly my view.

soz if your barbie and doll house aspirations are dashed.

Hey, content is content, hard to write about lvl4s aint it?