EVE General Discussion

No, it's not. That's the whole point. You cannot avoid competing with other players in anything you do.

No, it requires nothing special — you just have to look if you are competing with other players in doing whatever it is you're doing. As it happens, you are. Always. Even in the stuff that ostensibly qualifies as PvE.

It is helpful because it tells you what kind of game it is: a PvP game. It instantly provides the fundamental and overarching dynamic of the whole mess, which is pretty neat. If you feel the need to interject “…but not just in the form of combat” because the guy you're talking to is a bit daft and hasty in his judgement, then fine. It still allows us to give a name to that core element that sets EVE apart.

If a player doesn't enjoy PvP dynamics, then he will not like EVE very much. By saying right out that EVE is a PvP game, he knows what to expect. That is a lot better than dangling some elusive “PvE content” (much less the contradictory “competitive PvE”) in front of him, because at the end of the day, the core PvP aspects that come inherent with that content will eventually make him miserable. So that's helpful from the very get-go in filtering the kind of player that might be interested in EVE.

If he sticks around or wants to know more — presumably because he likes or is curious about PvP dynamics — then it's far more helpful to drill into the variations of PvP the game offers, rather than to suddenly pull that old “PvE” rabbit out of the hat. After all, that's not the dynamic he's interested in (which is good, since EVE has very little of it, and all of it sucks). Instead, it's better to discuss competition over resources, market competition, face-melt combat, strategic combat, button-mashing races (read: exploration), etc. Now we're getting more into the actual aesthetics of play that will (hopefully) capture the player's attention. Are they after competition or challenge; discovery or expression? Are they looking for tests of situational awareness and timing or of execution of a strategy; logistical planning or speculation?

That kind of categorisation also helps us clear up the confusion you're alluding to when we just call it “PvP”. The fact that we can (indeed have to) provide a handful of subcategories further highlights what the game is about, and also lets us talk about the different type of contents in a fairly precise manner without the obvious, clumsy, and ambiguous overlaps of “PvE in a PvP environment” and “competitive PvE”.

And that's really another key point here: categorising based on mechanics isn't all that useful because it tells us so little about the actual game. It's that kind of categorisation that has given us the nonsensical “FPS” genre — as if Freespace and Portal were the same kind of game. If we were to use mechanics to categorise activities in EVE, missions and fleet combat become largely the same, and since everything has its own little quirk and bespoke mechanisms, we'd end up with the what-to-do chart rather than proper encompassing categories. Instead, dynamics and aesthetics are better tools for explaining exactly what it is the player is doing.

I haven't. You need to stop using that moronic strawman because it will never help you.

This is the truth. The problem is that some people HATE 're-using terms', so they create ever more terms to differentiate between things, usually unnecessarily.

The Statement "EVE is a pvp game" drives them nuts, because pvp describes something specific (player combat) and something non-specific (broader player interactions). They litteraly can't stand it, thus the new fangled term 'competative PVE'. But Competitive PVE is just PVP when you get right down to it. It's people (Player) competing against (Verses) other people (Player).

I have a buddy who works in my department's IT section, and he's a perfect example. If you say police meaning police officers or a police department, that's fine, but if you say "Police" in the more colloquial sense meaning "Law Enforcement as a whole" he actually loses his mind because "not everyone in Law Enforcement are police, there are special agents, troopers, deputy sheriffs, constables, marshals etc etc!!".

It boils down to personality driven preferences, no amount of arguing will ever change that. I just let them say "competitive pve" because it makes them feel better even if it makes me want to roll my eyes. What they really mean is "pvp"...

but shooting miners and freighters aint pvp, just throwing a cat amongst the pigeons kk

No see you can't compare it to FW because FW effects you and me even though I've only ever taken part in it for a week, tops, many years ago. It effects the value of my LP at various corps right now, it effect the price of modules both you and I put on our ships, it affects everyone in the game.

CQ does not affect me. You using CQ does not affect me. In fact it affects no one in the game if every single person uses it or no one uses it. It's different (and thus currently irrelevant) to every other mechanic in Eve where it effects, or can effect, other people. Kind of like how you're trying to compare instancing between EvE and other MMOs.

Yes you can, by sticking to instances and by not trading with other players.

…except hat in WoW, you can choose not to interact in any way with other players, much less compete with them. You can effectively treat the whole game as online single-player if you so choose. No such option exists in EVE.

Of course it is. There isn't a single thing in EVE that isn't inherently subject to player competition and opposition. The whole game is built from the ground up to never let you escape these competitive elements (which is why instancing doesn't exist, for instance). The PvP dynamic suffuses everything, unlike most MMOs where you can just ignore what other players are doing and never have it make any difference whatsoever due to the protections and limitations those games have built in to separate their players.

WoW is the quintessential game where you can choose to be completely cut off from other players. EVE is the quintessential game where that choice does not even remotely exists.

Nope. Not even close. That's still just some moronic strawaman you've erected because you can't actually address my argument.

go look at codes killboards and tell me miners are not engaged in pvp. (pvp of the lowest form but still pvp)

Hah private instances are a thing in WoW and in most MMOs. Plenty of them in GW2 that I can personally attest to for example. Also that courier mission? You can get ganked from point a to point B. Bam player interaction.

Then you are disqualified from making any further comments about how WoW works.

No. Even by spending your ISK on NPC items (to no effect, since they won't let you do anything useful), you are affecting other players.

You can do the same in EVE. In fact if you just hang out in rookie systems repeating the missions there and only buying npc seeded items, people aren't even allowed to shoot you or steal your mission item.

Yes it does, see above.

Wrong. Your argument is flawed. You want to redefine terms to wrap around EVE then not have that same definition in other games.

Any instances can be seen by your party or by people around you depending on the instance.

LOL, yet in wow you're not? what kind of crazy **** are you on?