EVE General Discussion

Good god.

There was someone in help chat a while back claiming that being good at chess would make you good at EVE. They were really adamant and disruptive about it, too.

I agree with the OP on this one. New players are vital to the continued growth and success of EvE. Personally i think this issue boils down to those players that believe the game should be played in a particular way, almost always the exact way they play the game. The fact is, they are wrong. EvE is great for exactly the reason it allows lots of different play styles. Everyone gets from EvE exactly what it is that they enjoy. From the most hardened PvP pirate scumbag scammer to the AFK mining single parent. Doesn't matter how little time you have to play, or your individual tastes in computer games, EvE offers something to everyone.

It's often the narrow-minded selfish players that see other players doing the things they hate, and they simply dismiss them, as if they are playing the game wrong. Their selfishness is highlighted the moment they say that these players should unsub, or that it is good they they don't bother playing. They rate their own enjoyment over the success of the game itself.

Personally, i think that anyone that truly loves EvE, for it's uniquely diverse and interesting universe, should see the obvious importance of constantly gaining new members. We want EvE to continue to grow and be successful, so that it can stand the test of time. Those players that dismiss them, or think they aren't needed or unwanted, are ignorant and selfish in the extreme, and would see their own niche play-style take precedence over the game itself.

If a tactic is almost exclusively used to kill someone with impugnity, then players should encourage CCP to change it. Some of these tactics show up on GD quite often (afk cloaking, hot dropping, hisec crime mechanics) but I believe the question whether any of these are an exploit is very contentious.

I think you're asking a philosophical question here, and it's better to talk about specifics (ie: how would EVE encourage that?).


Let's say there is some kind of terrain advantage we can invent to give as an advantage the 5 can take advantage of. If this advantage exists in the game, then what if the 40 get this advantage too? What if the 40 have this advantage but the 5 don't? I'm alluding to Malcanis's Law. Invariably, if you create an advantage of this sort, it will be *more likely* that bands of 40 will end up gaining this advantage in greater frequency because they will have more resources, and more eyes and hands.

I think we might be tempted to fantasize that the 5 are Jedi and the 40 are stormtroopers.. and that somehow the Jedi should be able to build themselves an advantage. But in an MMO, everyone is a Jedi. The 5 Jedi don't happen to be legendary superheroes, and the 40 don't happen to be goons (no pun intended) with terrible aim.

The *only* advantages that CCP can't manufacture is (1) player skill, (2) player numbers. I'm not convinced that #1 is so devalued as to make it worthless. I know that guys like Remiel would disagree.

I believe instancing is bad. Any system in EVE is completely open to any bullets flying by. You're in war, and anyone can jump in and contribute to the carnage. Insulating combat from this wrecks the vicious beauty of the game, in my opinion.. and it isolates people, which will eventually make EVE appear to shrink.


I think this is a more complicated issue.

The economics simply don't exist for players to band together to do anything in hisec, except gank overstuffed freighters. So players must find other motivations. Gankers have an easy motivation, because killing together really is a lot of fun. You feel pumped. You feel solidarity. Doing protection detail is boring, and with the razor thin margins that haulers and miners see it doesn't make a lot of sense in hisec to pay protection detail.

There is a lot of storming and forming in anti-ganking. The movement is plagued by pilots who can't seem to stop trolling, and the channel itself can often be toxic and unhelpful even though there are folks on it who are great pilots. Anti-gankers can be hobbyists, they may not assemble in large groups, not backed by billions in funds, lack good propaganda (instead, losing the battle against bad propaganda) and no monolithic or iconic corp exists to champion the cause.

I hope I didn't miss anything.

This is simply not true. There are already elements of this in the game right now. Wormholes (mass limits), gate aggression (allow you to split a fleet), and kiting are the big 3. EVE could have more of this.

Imagine something like FW zones that had mechanics to encourage smaller-engagement sizes. Something like WH mass, but for acceleration gates, or timers, so only X ships could take the gate every time interval. Chase someone in your fleet of 40? They took the acceleration gate? Send your best pilot after him. Or wait for him to come out and camp him in system. Or go somewhere else. You still need that big fleet for POS bashes, SOV timers, and everything else that you do now in EVE. But now you *also* have a new mechanic that makes certain people happy and supports their interests.

Another example is PvE sites that you run in groups of 3-4, and that naturally take you to a places where you'll contest with another group of 3-4. Maybe allow bringing more, but then it becomes less economical, etc.

I don't know the best ways to do this. But there are ways that are much better than what I just described and more natural as well (no hard limits - just a mechanic that increases the likelihood you will run into a fleet similar to yours). Saying otherwise is being overly dismissive, as is assuming that this would "actively discourage escalation and friends getting together" in EVE. If anything, it would encourage getting together but in smaller groups, and only in some cases... the factors that encourage big fleets can still exist as they do now.


Not in those exact words, but yes, I've been in fleets where we engaged with less than we could have to get a good fight. Honor brawl. And it's a bit silly, tbh, to even have do that... it would be much better if that happened naturally in the game.


In other words, you think EVE is perfect. Or if not, we should adapt or accept its current state, else stop playing.


Then you should know how situational it is. Go to FW space in a frigate, guaranteed you can find good fights easily. It's all downhill from there. I never said it was impossible, but it shouldn't be as difficult as it is now. To say CCP can't do things to make this better is just wrong, and saying that they shouldn't, well that's your opinion then and I disagree with it.


No it doesn't. I've already described what a good fight is - one based more on skill. I still don't see why EVE shouldn't do more to encourage this in some aspects of the game. I don't think a blanket dismissal is warranted, either.

lol, nice pun. I agree with you on this. I don't think you need to give any one person an advantage to balance 5 vs. 40 though. Think mini-wormholes with a mass-limit of a few ships. Just one example. And simply providing a means for that fleet of 5 to be more likely to run into another fleet of 5, than the fleet of 40, is another aspect of this that wouldn't have the consequences you describe.


Yeah. I don't think this is as simple as "buff/nerf ganking". It's more complicated. HS mechanics could be reworked to be more engaging overall, IMO, and that could potentially have a huge impact on the new player experience.


Yeah. Maybe that could be taken advantage of... but I think defensive mechanics are better than aggressive ones for security enforcement. At least it would encourage more PvP, if CONCORD didn't do all the shooting for you.


Well, we have POS shields. But yeah, I think that's too extreme for sure. I guess what I mean is I agree with the concept of an open arena. Where people can shoot you inside. But you can defend it, and should have the appropriate tools to do so (whether or not that's anything extra than is available already, idk).

Your definition of a good fight is not everyone's definition, and some people don't consider losing as very skillful. So again, someone will need to define good fight for CCP to make the necessary changes, or instead of trying to get the devs to make changes to the core tenets of the game, you can accept that sometimes you'll get good fights, sometimes you won't, and adapt to the nature of the game accordingly. Do you really think it's going to be possible for everyone to get what they consider a good fight all of the time? Is it more naive to dismiss unnecessary and probably damaging changes to the game, or to suggest that everyone can be happy with what they're getting from it all the time? I know the answer, of course, but now it's time for you to accuse me of trolling....


In the meantime, I've been mostly-solo pvp'ing since September 2012, and I can tell you if you're not finding fights that require skill to survive and/or win, then you simply aren't trying hard enough.

EDIT: Let me tell you my definition of a good fight. A good fight is like good sex: whether you're doing the *******, or you're the one getting ******, if you don't finish feeling like a cigarette and a nap, then it wasn't a good fight. And fyi, good sex doesn't require skill, just some rudimentary up-and-down motion.

You're playing a game with almost functionally zero combat flight controls. You can double click in space, or you can issue rote commands.

So please, tell me about how "skill" plays such an important role. I'm all ears.

Oh, that's simple. Asteroids can't kill you if you don't fit correctly.

Don't get me wrong, they're both mindless, meaningless forms of gameplay, but missions at least set the bar higher than mining. But mostly only because it's impossible to set the bar lower than mining without actually botting.

I never said it was impossible, or that it doesn't happen, or that it's not fun as it is now. I just said I think more could be done to make this better. And while you or I don't necessarily mind going out to look for content, some players do. If the game can bring that naturally in more places, then I think that's a good thing.

And I defined what skill meant as well. A good fight is one where your ability to manage your modules, pilot your ship, pick your targets, fit/choose your ship, etc. matters more. That's why you feel "tired" and "satisfied" after a good fight - because for you to win it requires you to do more than press F1. And if you lost it was still fun because you were actually doing something engaging.


A better fight, by my definition, is the one that is *more* based on skill.


I can't tell if you guys are serious or not. Have you ever tried solo PvP? Or been part of a small combat fleet? Range control, traversal, rep management, off-lining MWD to give you more cap for example... +many many many more things

Are you kidding? Most of those things are decisions. You make the decision correctly and live, or you don't and you die. I love how you put "range control" in there though. There's a button for that by the way.

But hey, apparently "don't make bad choices" is called "skill" now in EVE Online. I suppose next he'll be telling us that the MWD+Cloak trick is "skill" too.