EVE General Discussion

Mercenary Corps ... are those the ones that camp Trade Hubs and hunt unaware players in High-Sec. If so staying way from Trade Hubs and moving to Low, Null, WH or even a quiet part of High is most likely enough.

About staying small I don´t know. Signal Cartel are currently 800+ players and growing and for me that seems to provide several benefits to both the Corp as a whole and to it's members. To me it seems like the important factor to make EVE fun to play is to set realistic goals for your Corp/Alliance and to do stuff that you enjoy doing. If you want to do Null Sov War you will have to either:

A. Join one of the Corps involved in said war(s) or B. Get one of the Alliances fighting in said wars to take your Corp into their fold.

Once again it does seems like you focus on SOV and SOV alone. There are other aspects of EVE that one can enjoy which doesn´t include capturing and failing to hold areas. Perhaps I misunderstand you but that's the vibe I'm getting.

One EVE:s population I can only say that there are more characters online right now then when I started playing about one year ago. The Alpha program seems to be quite a success from that perspective atleast. Finally if you think EVE is about "winning" I understand why you think it sucks since that's not the objective for the vast majority of the players.

As has been stated multiple times - loosing ships to gate camps can be avoided for the most part. The fact that this group still manages to kill many players, often many years old means that those players either don't learn or don't care. In both cases the loss is deserved in my book.


It could also mean that you are just believing what the other sides propaganda machine wants you to believe. People like to forget that NC., PL and even just the Casino-Kingpins are quite powerful in their own right, and they have a great influence on the media that you consume, just as we do. The Casino War was hyped up to be the biggest war in the history of the game, because it was a war between the biggest coherent group there is and most of the rest of nullsec. It was hyped up to be a war to destroy Goons. But that's not what it really was. It was a political power play, staged by other big players.

It certainly has not been the biggest war ever. In terms of actual fighting, not a lot has happened during the Casino War. The losses in terms of material were manageable, the morale held up. We sadly lost a few allies, but in the same way we learned who is actually with us, and who prefers to flow with the tide when the going gets rough.

The only thing Goons really lost was space, and space is not exactly rare after the Aegis expansion. Right now, Wars are going on, and once they are over, the winners don't know what they are supposed to do with all the space they conquered. So they just install some random guys there that just happen to be homeless at the time, or they just let the former owners move back in. Unlike the media liked to claim back then, the "World War Bee" (lol) was not a campaign to destroy us, otherwise they would not have let us just claim Sov somewhere else. After they had booted Goons from the north, they just declared the war over and stopped interfering with our operations. They did not even try. And you wonder how it is possible that we are still there?


And to every one of these sentiments, you'll find someone whose oppinion is the exact opposite. Who's right there, and who's wrong is hard to tell. (spoiler: I am. True story. ;) )

Alpha players really can't afford to lose anything, and they're at a disadvantage from the very outset.

Alpha players can fly up to cruisers (and the gnosis). With fitting they cost what? 30M? So what you are saying is, that alpha players cannot make a hundred million ISK so they have a buffer to replace a loss or 3?

Ask yourself a question; "Many people have played this game over the years and they all were new at some point. These situations I face probably are not new, meaning many people have figured out how to deal with them. If they can do it certainly I can as surely I am at least as smart and resilient as some of those who have played this game."

Or you can rage quit. Up to you.

You (and others like you) seem bound and determined to change a game they do not fully understand to fix percieved deficiencies that others percieve as unique features and engaging gameplay. It doesn't seem to matter that it gives the most incentive to play the game, according to CCP helps new player retention and is in effect the main reason why EVE has survived for more than a decade. There's not really any point in trying to debate or discuss this, because those who don't like the current sandbox really (really) enjoy complaining about it.

Now gather around kids and let grampa tell you about the olden days. Back when I was a young whippersnapper like you are now, there was no such thing as an NPE. No tutorial, no carreer agents, no epic arcs. What I got back then was a Newbie Corvette (back in the day this still counted as a frigate, not that it was any stronger than it is now), a gun and a message that basically said: Here's a gun, there's a pirate, have fun!

Well, that's not entirely true. There was a newbie agent with a couple of missions, but they didn't really teach you anything, and the rewards were not exactly great either. They gave you a certificate at the end that was supposed to lead you to your factions cosmos agents. But since they are a convoluted and highly standing dependent chain (and I am using the term very loosely) of missions, almost no newbie really got into them back then.

I lost my first ship 5 days into the game. I cannot remember exactly how that went down, please excuse an old mans forgetfulness. But considering it was a Rifter not fit for PvP combat and the loss happened in a 0.9 security system, I would argue that this was not a consensual PvP engagement. I then lost a Thrasher in Lowsec to a gatecamp consisting of a heavy interdictor, Battlecruisers and even a smartbombing Battleship, and there went my pod as well. I would not exactly call that a fair engagement.

So, you see, this is not a new phenomenon. Yet I am still playing the game, and I am the veteran now, that has such an unfair advantage over you, quite like the pilot in that battleship was back then. "How can that be?" you ask?

Well, let me tell you. One day, I was mining in a Scythe (that used to be a mining cruiser - the venture was not a thing back then) in the System of Todaki - a newbie system where messing with the newbies would be frowned upon today.

Since it only had 3 turret slots for me to put mining lasers into, I had fitted it with two of what is now known as rapid light missile launchers. Excellent anti-frigate weapons, I was told.

And as I was floating there in space, mining peacefully, a puny little Merlin warped in and stole the ore that I took so long to mine from my jetcan. In my youthful carelessness I thought: Well, I'm in a cruiser with anti-frigate weapons, he's just a frigate, and he stole from me - now he's gonna get it! And frankly, this was a very welcome distraction, because mining was already getting rather boring, but I needed the money. Needless to say that I was wrong. Just seconds later I sat there in my pod, wondering what had happened.

I asked the guy why he had killed me. He told me, that I should not engage in combat if my ship did not even have a tank fitted to it, not to mention a point of any sort. I had no idea what he was talking about, but he apparently liked my calm and polite demeanor, so he invited me to join his little posse of bored Nullsec alts, aptly named "GRIEF - Greatly Reducing Inflation Every Fight" and show me the ropes.

Following that event, I just did the same thing this guy did to me - and to players much older than me no less. I was actually winning, making explosions that did not originate from my own ship and I even made some money on the side. And I remember this event to this day. I do not remember the roids I mined, the NPCs I blew up and the exploration sites I found.

So you see, I had to face the same hardships as you, in an environment that was much less helpful and protective than the one we see today, and had I not died in a very unfair non-consensual pvp engagement, I would probably have gotten bored of mining and running missions, and would not still be playing this game almost nine years later.

There are two sides to this coin. Some players prefer a harsh game like Eve. Some do not. For the former, there is only one game that provides this sort of gameplay. For the latter there are hundreds of alternatives out there. I am with Jonah Gravenstein with this one: If you don't like this game, just play one that you do like instead of trying to destroy ours.

It is about correlation and causation. I've yet to see proofs of EvE getting safer makes EvE losing players.
We know what:
- EvE is getting safer for years, starting in 2012-2013(?)
- EvE loses players, the most PCU was in 2011-2013
But not one person provided proofs of these things being related.


Again: what DID I see from their presentation is: those who did lose ship in first 2-3 weeks stay in the game for longer.
But the question still is: what was the first here?
- Player lost the ship ('suffered PvP' as you wrote) and then he changed his ways
or
- player WAS ALREADY involved in PvP and because of it he lost his ship(s) in his first weeks
?


Let's hope. At the moment it loos like mainstream is the destination for EvE


This is pure semantics. Personally i haven't seen much benefits of Alphas for the game. Let's hope it was not another fail.

Source: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6822616#post6822616

Not empty quoting. This is just a very awesome post.

This kind of logic can be applied to many games, not to EVE. There are good reasons why virtually every other online game swings the banhammer on detecting multiaccounts. And nearly every other game has a sort of "season" system or regular updates that devalue the old stuff. These limits and inflation systems, think WoWs yearly? addons, serve a critical function in equalizing chances.
Not even going big on the questonable skillsystem here. really longterm, it tends to get very specialized so its more a question how many different ships someone can fly rather than how good he is with them. That doesnt excuse the existence of "waste-my-time" skills like the engineering tab but the difference between 10M and 100M SP will be rather low if both pilots are sitting in a common ship.


Think about real life for a second. When Intel started to build processors in the 70s, they had pretty much free reign over the market. their stuff back then wouldnt pass for a calculator today, but there was nobody building quadcores back then. obviously.
Would you try to start a corporation with the goal of becoming marketleader in the cpu business today, if you had the same starterfunds as intel had back then? right, the "tutorial" became better, but does that make your chances of success actually better?