EVE General Discussion

Get a solid ship that can tank well, get a reasonable DPS and a cloak and go to Lowsec and Null

Kill Beltrats and run Combat Sites and Anomolies

Rake in the Isk, enjoy the randomness and have fun working on your strategy for avoiding those hunting you for your pod.

Thats where the best PvE Ive experienced is to be had.


Please stop afk mining for the safety of yourself and other space users. This is in breach of Standards and Practices [IEEE] Document Id #223.646.377 as well as the New Halaima Code of Conduct.

What makes joining a corp so special that they change the mechanics of the type of space you are in?

You can and should be able to shoot corpies in low/null/WH because there is no CONCORD protection in those areas. In high-sec there is CONCORD.

Asking CONCORD to come help is not asking for extra protection. It's asking for consistent protection.

I know you are New Order so it's hard for you to see it this way, but AWOXing in-space ships in high-sec ruins the experience - or potential experience due to fear of AWOX - for far more players than it creates exciting and emergent content for. It is a nasty thorn on the side of this game and needs to be fixed. If it were balanced - and the removal of it created an imbalance - I would say HTFU. That is not the case here though.

There's some lack of understanding on this it seems.

E-Uni used to have a policy of no mixed fleets during wars. Why? So we *COULD* pop and pod-kill fleet members if necessary.

Someone goes AFK while on an op, the FC would pop their ship and pod to see they didn't leave a free kill for the WT's there. No CONCORD involvement with corp members.

Also corp members will often go out and spar/practice at different areas - shooting each other up to test out new ships and fittings.

Alliance members are different - CONCORD will pop you if you shoot an alliance member but not a corp member.

So AWOX and all the rest is still there in highsec. The only real difference is with alliance members and non-hostiles - not fellow corporation members.

The rest of it with respect to "consistency" - bunk. There is little consistency.

Highsec is different from lowsec. Lowsec is different from NPC nullsec which is different from SOV null which is different from wormholes. There are different rule-sets and environments around the game to offer a variety of CHOICES on where and how people will choose to play the game.

K-space can't close the entrances to their "homes" if threatened, w-space can't see who's in local, empire can't pop others without game-mechanic consequences, non-empire can't readily find stations to dock up at and only SOV null can build ships that can't dock in stations.

It's about trade-offs on how and where you operate and there are a lot of "inconsistencies" across this game to enable choice. So don't come out acting like it's all (or even should be) "consistent". That eliminates options.

Great post Logan! (The post above mine)

What I see in general, is that new players overwhelmingly love combat, whether it be PVE or PVP.

I think more and more ingame guides and resources are needed to explain what combat is, and the rulings. And more teachings.

It's simply for more transparency and available knowledge. And REMEMBER::: It's not to make it easier or to tell players what to do! It's simply explaining it more and entirely, if that player is interested in combat.

It has always been so, really.

The new user experience could certainly be improved, and the introduction to FW idea is probably a good one. Having said that, the intro for new players now is thousands of times better than it was in the past. Heck, when I started there was just a very bare bones intro and off you went. Still, it can be improved.

I'm not sure PvE is the key, really. PvE could be improved with more sleeper AI as well, but EVE isn't really a PvE game, so I'm not sure this would really make a big difference. That doesn't mean PvE shouldn't be worked on, but EVE will never be a PvE centric game, at the end of the day, in terms of the "sell" to new players. It's a competitive/cooperative game at its core, and I think that's why more value could be derived from adding elements of that to the new player experience, rather than focusing more on PvE.

However, I don't think that's why the game turns off many who try it. The factors involved there are the same as they have always been. The key ones are:

Learning curve. Lots to learn, takes a good deal of reading/effort to do so. Most new players like plug and play and learn as you go, and don't expect to have to learn much until they are much more involved in the game. EVE doesn't work like that, and that's an obstacle for a lot of players. Again, it's much more accessible than it used to be with the great wikis and other guides that are available for players now, but most new players don't want to spend that much time with resources like that when they are just starting a game -- they want it to be plug and play and EVE really can't be that while still being itself, I think. And for the enterprising types who do dive into the wealth of information that is available, it seems very daunting -- the learning curve is pretty steep. A small number of players will like that and dive in, while many will just walk away and play something else. That can't be changed, though, without making EVE something that it is not.

Avatar issues. Not a plug for WIS (my own .02 ISK on WIS is that while it is nice it is not worth spending the resources on in a game like EVE, and so best to leave it be), but many gamers have issues with not really having an active avatar, an having the ships be your character, in effect, for most o the game (in terms of what you see). This can't be fixed. Again, WIS is not the answer -- not a good use of resources. But it turns people off that the game is looking at ships all the time -- again, players are coming from other games where they are looking at their avatar all the time.

Perceived gap with vets. New players are often worried that they will "never catch up" with vets. We know this is true in terms of SP, and we also know that it doesn't really matter as much as they think it matters in individual encounters (only so many skills relevant in any one encounter, really), but it's still a hard sell, given that the game has been out for 10 years now and some players have a mountain of SP. Again, can't really change this, either.

Perceptions of community. EVE has a reputation for being a rough neighborhood. This is a good thing, in a way, because the game is a very bottom line, hardcore game set in a dark universe where you can be ganked anywhere at any time. That is unappealing to quite a few players. It isn't that they are all getting ganked immediately, of course -- it's the perception of the community as being rough. That can come out in chat channels and so on when they are playing the first few days, and turn them off. I suppose the community could be more welcoming of newcomers than it is, but, again, EVE is a rough neighborhood, really -- that's a core part of the atmosphere and the mechanic in the game, in terms of needing to constantly watch your back, trust almost no-one, and engage in outright competition with pretty much everyone on the server. That's something that will appeal to a small number of players, and turn off a large amount of others, but, again, it's what EVE is, and can't really be changed very much without changing EVE.

So, yes, it would be good to continue to improve the new player experience to make it better for people. However, I do think that the reality is that the game is really designed to appeal to a limited set of players -- it can't have a more mass appeal unless it is rejiggered to be something other than what it is.

A niche Game with stone old mechanics and 99% bordedom. Thats why we love EVE..
For all those stubborn EVE-Bittervets and circlejerks, i would recommend to watch the Zero Punctuation
of EVE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US92PR1tI1o

/flame on

Not at all.

Really how much time and ISK pvp requires depends on the level you're involved in it and what you fly. It would take you five minutes to fit up a decent pvp fit frigate, another 5 mins to jump into lowsec and probably all of a minute or two to find a fight.

I read your other thread, and like you I'm a 30-something parent, working two jobs, one of them shift-work. Pretty much all I do in EVE is pvp, and when I'm not doing that I'm relaxing and doing some roleplay. I log in daily usually for a few hours, sometimes much longer depending on RL stuff.

Financing pvp? Well if you finance your EVE by working ingame (mining, farming, trading, production, etc) then why not spend a week making money, then the next week blowing it on pvp ships? Rinse and repeat. As for me I just fund my EVE fun with plex as I Just want to login and play and not spend my game time working for more game time.

Another option is to get into a large corp friendly to pilots who're new to pvp. Not only will most such corps have a ship replacement policy, but with a big membership you can be sure there'll be people online whenever you log in to fly with you.

In response to the OP, I think that EVE isn't more popular because it is a highly social game and you need to make friends in order to experience all it has to offer (other than mining and mission running).

And your average MMO consumer is not what you would call a "people person."

I cannot begin to conceive of a world where you could be more wrong.

That would be the exact opposite of what I have just stated.