EVE General Discussion

A PvP+PvE player does a shitton of more things than pure PvE players.

You ARE disposable, you just don't get it. The only ones who really care about you people are those who market torwards your weaknesses and bleed you out of your money. That's how much value you have ... you're nothing but a cash-cow and you ARE being treated as such! You just don't ******* get it!

I knew it!

Other companies are also after money (atleast eventually when main income decreses even a bit), CCP were very smart by doing EvE as a subscription game where players can buy all sort of stuff just buy purchasing PLEX´s. This way EvE can survive as long as it has that loyal core fans buying PLEX`s.

Though, if day comes that they stop doing that, PLEX price will just explode and thousand subscribing only with PLEX (isk) most propably will drop out.

Likely it will take 6 months to show whether Fozziesov sinks or swims. No matter the what, demographics still will be trending towards the september lows.

But give it 6 months, until the february peak, and then we'll see.

Personally I think that missing nullseccers holding their breath are too few to justify the depopulation of the server. Even in the good old days, only massive battles could drive the nullsec concurrent count above 5,000.

A specific example? OK, brace yourself for a ride.

The first step is to contact a interactable NPC (I-NPC). They play the role of corrupt officials of the empires. Their abblities depend on their position and can be used after completing a successful task.

So the first thing a I-NPC will ask, is to perform a series of missions for him. Those would be regular missions, which would improve the agent quality to a basical level in which they would be "loaded" and ready to discharge a effect on a player.

In order to do that, a specific mission willl be set up, but that will no be a regular mission. That mission will affect another i-NPC owned by other player.

Missions affecting i-NPCs will be set up authomatically. They will be randomized by consuming points from a pool (similar to how AT works) and once set up the mission will be released publicly to a specific kind of agents. Any player will be able to access the mission, but he will only be informed of the reward and potential difficulty of the mission, not the parties involved, so it will be effectively imposible to farm your own missions. Those missions will be difficult and there will be a potential to miss them (for an instance, using timed triggers).

So here you are. You have an agent willing to affect a player for you, if the mission required is succesfully performed by some anonymous player.

Let's say that the mission succeeds. Then the agent is "loaded" and can be "discharged".

In order to discharge the agent, the target player must meet one or more of several requisites:

- have a negative security status (proportional to the effect, with the most powerful effects usable only on -10.0 chars)
- you have a kill right on him (your own, or bought from another player)
- he destroyed one of your I-NPCs
- he wardecced you
- he earned a criminal flag from messing with you stuff (this should work only for low level effects)
- in short, either he's a being agressing lots of players, or has agressed you specifically. Effects would not be usable on neutral players, at least initially

As for the effects, will say one I already mentioned: upon undocking, he will be "interrogated" (hold still and unable to move or use his modules) for 10 minutes. That will happen randomly and only once; say 10% chance per undock (different quality I-nPCs would have different chance per undock). For an extra cost (higher level I-NPCs, or more difficult missions, or a combo of successful missions) the target could earn a criminal flag for the duration of his "interrogation", becoming a legit target even if he wasn't.

Of course, the "interrogation" event may happen in a lonely system so nobody can shoot the guy... Tough chance.

But wait: As a player planning to undertake a criminal career, you need a lawyer! A friendly I-NPC who, in the event of being loaded, can discharge and negate the effect of another I-NPC effect. Say, a "release order" usable in the event of a "interrogation order".

Then, the original player may look for an agent willing to murder the lawyer and thus deprive the offender from defense until he finds another one... and so and so.

It would be more complicated and costly than just go and scramble the guy as he undocks and shoot his -10.0 face yourself, but also would be riskier as he can't tell when he's gonna be interrogated. And if he wants to avoid that hassle, he must play your way and do some PvE to keep his lawyer(s) loaded and ready to discharge.

The details should be tested on Unity and fine tuned so the workload and risk/reward was sensible. Also the whole randon mission generator probably could be used for ordinary agent missions and not just the I-NPCs missions. On furher iterations, some I-NPCs could be "named" ones, NPC from the lore, extremely dificult and costly to load but with the potential to discharge effects on corporations and alliances, or do really nasty things to individuals (say, tampering with skillpoints upon clone resurrection).

The whole point is, a player willing to put the effort and planning needed to control the appropiate I-NPCs should be rewarded with the abbility to PvP in that way, balanced by the fact that PvPrs could also PvE to defend themselves from that "PvE PvP".

Last but not least, I-NPCs would be a highsec only feature.

You forgot her typical carebearish superiority complex.

No, because the business model of the game should play to it's strengths, and not something that has been conclusively proven to be the worst possible path for player retention.

You're asking Mortal Kombat to have more jumping puzzles.

I'm still waiting for the obvious to sneak up and bite you in the ass.

Those players refuse to generate content based on having deliberately excluded themselves from everything but a tiny niche of the game.

Choices have consequences. If you really do want to interact, then pull your head out of the sand and play the game for once, stop asking for invincible, all powerful NPCs to do your job for you.

In short, try being a real player. It works wonders.

80% of your new customers make a uninformed choice that inevitably will drive them away form your business (they didnt' grow a goatee before trying to buy your used cars! Too late!).

What do you suggest?