EVE General Discussion

uhm... just from napkin math:

So we have 24.000 mio HP per day in PvE damage...
Let's assume everyone is using cruise ravens for PvE:
With 4 ballistics and cruise missiles we do around 4000 damage per volley, so roughly 600 damage per missile.
That would mean we would need 36 mio cruise missiles per day. That's only around 7 billion ISK or about 7 carriers worth of minerals per day.
That's pretty insignificant compared to the amount of ships destroyed in PvP even IF everyone would use ammo to kill rats. (a non-trivial amount of that damage is certainly done with drones)

It is almost half (as I said) is if you ignore "socials" who do not do much of anything (including PvE). More importantly, it is that risk of loss that the PvP environment provides that gives meaning to the many industrial players that engage in producing stuff for one of the main draws to this game, the complex player-driven economy.


Yes. Better PvE would be better. No one is going to disagree with such a self-evident point.

But if they only have limited development resources, should CCP focus them on the game mechanics they know keep players in the game longer and that gets them more engaged in the social aspects of the sandbox and that has kept the MMO going for longer than almost any other on the market, or re-focus them on solo, PvE content that their own data shows does not retain players nearly as well? Sure, perhaps if that content were better those players would stay longer, and CCP is working on it to some degree, but obviously they feel their focusing on their "core competency", the competitive PvP sandbox game they set out to create, is a better for the long-term future of the game.

I happen to agree with them.

From keeping a casual eye on reddit, at least 3 supercarriers have been destroyed this week.

A quick Flyby of Mr Ronuken's extremely useful website gives the material cost of a Nyx as 22.2 billion ISK. If you're sufficiently motivated, you could use it and zkillboard to get a reasonable order-of-magnitude estimate of how big a mineral sink PvP is.

Let's keep our maths easy and say that those 3 ships alone, together with their associated capital modules, fighters/fighter bombers &c, cost of ice products used to move the materiels, running the POS to build them, etc etc, altogether represent 70 billion ISK worth of minerals.

The highest buy price for a scourge cruise missile in Jita is right now 178 ISK

To give that a perspective, the loss of those 3 supercarriers destroyed an equivalent mineral value of 400 million cruise missiles.

Now looking at my mission CNR, it fires 8 CMLs every 8.2 seconds. Let's just call it 1 per second, shall we? Taking downtime into account, there are near as dambit 600k playable seconds per week in EVE. Let's assume that our PvE player plays for 60,000 of them and is actually shooting for 50,000 of those seconds (they are very industrious players!). So they use 50k CMLs each week.

Just those 3 ships lost this week, never mind the dozens of carriers, even more dozens of dreads and thousands of subcaps lost, used as many minerals as eight thousand highly active PvEers can fire off, (and that's assuming they're using a rather greedy ship like a CNR, not just AFKtars, laser boats, etc.

It's an interesting investigation. I think it's reasonable to conclude that PvE activy consumes a non-trivial amount of minerals, but that amount is much less than what is used to replace PvP losses.

Your mistake is buying into the self-spun myth of the minority PvP players that they comprise the most of EVE's player base (NOT) and therefore their activity is what drives the giant wheel of EVE. Note: This crowd is not known for their collective elevators reaching the top floor. What the actual majority does, not what PvP-ers are terrified you won't believe because then management might start making decisions that don't include them, rather than tailor the game to themselves, always drives the big wheel. Yes, the ego factors heavily into this equation. However, as in all egotistical enterprise, facts do not.

SO, it's a fabricated issue, PvP vs. PvE. There is no issue. Only mindless gankers claim miners don't do anything, while they suicidally lose another ship, buy one someone had to have made from minerals someone mined. It's like a kid who thinks the cookies are actually made by elves in a tree stump. By the way, even if you took the hours to drag out the definitive proof, they'd ignore it and babble on anyway. It's not just EVE, by the way. PvP-ers go to every game in existence and claim they're the only real players and the devs should tailor games to their desires. No one is immune.

The problems arise when supposedly educated and intelligent people fall for their line of crapola and accede to their wishes. Then the "balance the game for a handful of people" tug of war starts. The majority of players fall to the wayside of inattention. Subscriptions are cancelled. The game is distorted beyond recognition. The PvP-ers move on to do it to somebody else.

They really don't like it when you bring this up. It's not only like telling the king's mother he has no clothes, it's like telling the king, he really isn't a king, either. You know how that goes. Just remember as you wade through the back and forth, these people don't get the luxury of defining the terms. They don't get to say "it's a PvP-centric game" and that becomes a fact. They don't get to say "PvE is allowed" and that becomes a fact. But, they do say these things hoping to be taken as some sort of authority. You can tell if this tactic is working by how people frame their discussion after that, i.e. "...since it's a PvP-centric game, then...." It's propaganda. It's bogus. They have no authority to define anything. They are bullsh!tting and hoping it sticks.

We are all the masters of our own stupidity, or our own comprehension. Be swayed by whom you will. I prefer to remember some random geek on the internet who struts in text typing "PvP" every third syllable, isn't GOD.

That number is not just correct, but at least 2 years old.

I'd rather use server data on HP/ammo converted to ammo x mineral. ISK cost always includes other costs not related to minerals (everything related to manufacturing costs, plus items with zero mineral cost like salvage).

I like napkin calculations, but ISK does not correlate to mineral usage.

I await your results with interest. it's your investigation and if you want to work out better figues than my quick and dirty napkin math can provide, I'll be fascinated to see both the numbers and the results of you doing something for yourself instead of trying to complain that other people aren't doing it for you in just the way you want.

Well, I was there when PvPrs began killing Pirates of the Burning Sea. It was when Pirates found out that the Royal Couronne, the Merchant Class' top tier ship, was so good at PvP that it took some effort to kill one. "Bwaaaah, we risk losing as much as 2 and even 3 of our NPC-dropped frigates to kill a single MERCHANT ship! Nerf it nerf it nerf it!!!". Flying Labs Software agreed. The fact that a Royal Couronne costed as much as 4 player-built Frigates (and Pirates used NPC-dropped frigates which were essentially free to acquire) was ignored. And then FLS kept agreeing each time that their "core" playerbase, their loved beta-testers, asked for more and more PvP while PvE was left to rot or was developed by devs who didn't bothered to ask the players about ground gameplay.

The rest of the story... bought up by SOE, F2P, closed by sOE, rights sold to a ghost company now squeezing the last pennies from the old beaten MMO. I played it again for a month or so last year. PvP is being pursued by a few but dedicated guys, and 90% of the guys (not many people, anyway) are happily PvEing and showing up their pet parrots.

Sea PvE still is engaging as superior NPC ships can pull a hell of a fight. Land PvE is... yuck. Oh, and hats & hairstyles are cool.

For T1 ammo the numbers are fairly close - that's why I used them. (and because the initial discussion was about minerals)
Yes, resists of rats push that number up by a factor of 3 or 4, but drones will certainly push it back down - most ratting in null is done with drones/lasers.
It just gives you an idea of the order of magnitude we are talking about and it's extremely far away from what gets destroyed in PvP.

You do realise those minority PvP players invariably have at one alt, often several, involved in what are, incorrectly, seen as non-PvP activities don't you?

Your mistake is assuming that PvP players only do PvP, they know how the other bits of the game work and see them as extensions of their traditional PvP activities.

I've not seen many gankers say that miners don't do anything, even James315 admits that miners have a purpose and should exist in Eve. Gankers are well aware of where their ships come from, several have alts who mine and manufacture. In general they don't have a problem with mining, they have a problem with the way people do it.

I'd say that there are far fewer PvP-ers going to PvE games and demanding that they be made more dangerous than there are carebears going to PvP games and demanding they be made safer.

Congratulations you just described a carebear in a PvP game, the only bit you got wrong was that you misspelled PvE-er.

Actually we do, courtesy of CCP.

• This is because EVE Online is essentially a PvP (Player versus Player)
• Furthermore, as we mentioned previously, once you enter New Eden you must consider every action you take as a form of PvP since this is the core game concept. In the asteroid field you’re competing with other pilots to obtain resources; you may also have to defend against ore thieves. On the market you battle for control of the economy in certain areas; for the supply and demand of your products versus other aspiring tycoons. On the battlefield you may fight for glory, for money, or for the right to rule whole areas of space.
• The essential core concept of EVE Online is that it is full time PvP in a sandbox environment
• No; there are no systems or locations in New Eden where PvP may be completely avoided. The safest systems are the ‘rookie systems’ where new players start their journey in EVE.

PvE is allowed, nobody is saying that it isn't; what they are saying is that, as with any other activity, in Eve it comes with a risk. It's up to the player, not CCP, to manage that risk through the choices that they make.

CCP define Eve as a PvP game, IIRC one of the cornerstones of it is that "someone can ruin your day at any time".

Not getting ganked because you planned ahead is as much PvP as shooting someone in the face because they didn't plan ahead.