EVE General Discussion

Please note that any opinion voiced in this post is representative purely of my own thoughts and not representative of my corporation or the wider Eve community.

I have played Eve for over 8 years at this point and some of you may refer to me as a Bittervet. Perhaps I am indeed bitter in many of my thoughts, but I shall set aside my overwhelming desire to evoke irony, sarcasm and blame for just a few precious moments to collect my thoughts.

The EVE universe, as most of you know, is a vast wilderness full of challenges, tension and opportunity. We live by the rules of a cutthroat environment where one small mistake can send us hurtling into the jaws of ruin. However, the universe as a whole is a far different scenario: like a bag of marbles once dropped, the marbles roll around until they finally come to rest. Such a way it has to be because the floor on which they fell is solid, unwavering. All systems set in motion must at some point reach their equilibrium.

Continued conflict in a universe like EVE requires a dynamic environment with lucrative rewards to draw players from their familiar cubby holes into the frightening unknown. It needs to appeal to the little guy and the big alliance alike. I would like to suggest that significant galactic events be brought into being. Some of these would be of small scale, such as asteroids of value passing through a constellation. Larger events would draw the attention of major alliances, incidents such as alien (or Jove, if you please) invasion of an entire region. Rewards for big scale events could include limited ship blueprint drops. Not just any limited ships, but ones which host unique traits of particular fleet or personal value. For example, a powerful battleship which takes greatly reduced damage from area damage attacks or frigates that combine stealth with interdiction nullification. Once the event is over a similar reward may not be seen for quite some time.

Big events will almost certainly attract new players as the news spills forth, new players bring revenue. I honestly think that we have come to the point where retaining the status quo is untenable for the continued fluorishing of this universe.

Eve isn't dying, but it's certainly stagnant.

The upcoming changes has something to do with it. Everybody is scared of how the changes will affect their empires so everyone is in this state of hoarding as much resources as possible. I'm sure that once the changes hit and people have something new to fight over, that wars will resume, probably with added ferocity.

Events happen all the time. They've hyped up in game events like the Coronation of the Amarrian Empress, the Drifter invasion, Drifter Incursions, all the things revolving around the 'seasonal events' like Crimson Harvest etc. 3 and a half years ago they tried an even more ambitious tack, which only proved that CCP run events are disasters waiting to happen.

For the most part, CCP generated 'events' don't make much of a splash (except those like the one I linked), it's the spontaneous player made events that make the news and draw in players. CCPs last iteration of the sovereignty system squashed a lot of the things that made truly spontaneous events possible (and when the point was brought up that the changes they were making would do this, CCP responded by saying that 'smaller scale activity will make up for it', which of course it hasn't).

Meaning no offense, but ideas like the ones you suggest Lukka could be disastrous. Big, rich groups would find a way to swarm and farm any such event or new content (CCP is about to learn this with their high sec PVE expansion the promised for the winter, because Incursions and SOE missions didn't teach teach them about how non-high sec players react to wealth generating PVE in high sec), Those "one of a kind" battleships wouldn't be used in fleets, they'd be used in scams and be used to line the pockets of the already mega rich.

What CCP should do is basically un-do some of the changes they've made since winter 2012 and let players be the driving force for activity and memorable actions. While well intentioned, many of those changes have been 'constricting' and anti-sandbox.

This is entirely predictible when you take the strategy of making everyone safe and rich and hope them to come up with reasons to fight each other. When players have everything they want, they aren't going to risk anything of significance in attacking anyone they know they might lose to. What you get is everyone just building and no one fighting because there is no need to spend the effort or risk a war they might lose.

I think we probably are past the point of no return. The developers have committed to version of Eve where players are so rich and safe that essentially only consensual fights will be the norm. This may make some people feel better, but isn't going to stimulate any great wars or meaningful conflict, and will continue to undermine the competetive core of the game.

This doesn't mean Eve can't be fun if you are into fleet skirmishes where only honour is at stake. But if you wanted to feel part of a shared universe where your actions matter and you were in real competition with the other players for dominance, well, Eve's aspirations to that are fading and that game is in the past. The big wars of consequence are probably over, forever, so don't set your hopes on a return to the golden age of Eve.

I'd love to be proven wrong by the upcoming mining platforms or outpost replacements, but I can't see it. There is just no reason for large groups to start real wars with other large groups anymore. Nullsec space is largely interchangeble and supports huge numbers of players, so the only reason to fight is for bragging rights. Perhaps that will happen once one group gains such a huge resource advantage they feel they cannot lose (although probably not given the number of person-hours it will take to clear sov timers and Upwell structures), but even then, with asset safety you will just see a repeat of World War Bee where the outnumbered side justs turtles up, has their assets magically transported to lowsec, and starts somewhere else.

Eve isn't dying, and I still love the game immensely. It is really the only PvP sandbox game out there that even aspires to be a full-on player-driven game, but the sad reality is that the glory days are probably behind us. Unless CCP can come up with a Hail Mary when they release new Jove (or whatever) space in a few years, there will be no more big wars. There just isn't reason enough to motivate thousands of human beings to fight over something when the other side has nothing at risk nor anything you want/need. Many people called for a kinder, gentler version of Eve so I hope they are enjoying this less meaningful and less consequential version of the game. The PCU seems to suggest they are in the minority, but that is the way the winds are blowing.

OP, I suggest you find something of smaller scope in the game that you enjoy instead of placing your hopes on top-level content providing meaning for your game play. There are still many smaller niches where you can make a difference and engage in meaningful game play. Evict someone from a wormhole. Wardec a highsec industrial corp into oblivion. Take control of an industrial niche. Make your own content and enjoy the game as you see fit, ignoring the calls of a large segement of the players and significant number of developers to nerf the game into complete irrelevance.

Play Eve as it was conceived, not as the carebears want it to be. Play it your way until you can't and then walk away. That is what I intend to do.

I'd actually love to read about how our mirror universe is doing over in China. They've had some epic, big battles of their own and it's all different groups than the same old ones you read about on Tranquility.

OP I suppose you needed to vent your frustration about the lack of news in Eve lately, but I think the best is to just worry about your own fun! As in.. Watch your own bobber lol

I used to think I wanted to be an empire builder but that ended up being way harder and more like a second job than I expected. I doubt that any alliance would have just let me move in and take space on their doorstep. Used to spend hours studying DOTLAN for unclaimed systems (there's usually a handful of them) but most people would tell me that we'd be wrecked in a second because it probably is semi-claimed by a major alliance's renter.

Actually I am having fun.

I think "going back" in a game with emergence is not really feasible. There is only going forward. Not that going forward can't try to fix some of these issues, but merely undoing them probably will not work like intuition would suggest.

Oh it's not stupidity, you're definitely no dummy; I think if you can figure out how to be in this game long enough you're smarter than the average person for sure. I think nullsec requires a special trust and a team of awesome people as well as people who would rather be followers than leaders and mix in some awesome branding or even just hilarious MS Paint work for propaganda and you're golden. Unless you're jobless and you can be a CEO full time.

Where is the visionary at CCP? Who is creating whole new aspects of gameplay or areas to explore as with Faction Warfare or Wormhole expansions? There's lots of updating things, but inevitably that just annoys someone who liked the old way better. As with the upcoming T3 balance pass. It may be an improvement, but does anyone think it will increase player count?

In EVE to be an emperor you'll need dominant personality traits, or at least the ability to rationally recognize when to fake it (almost all the time).

For just living in null successfully you can do that solo with no assistance just fine as long as you understand the concept of being hunted or camped and the mechanics of avoiding it. If you want to make it easy on yourself, then CAS is the best NPC starter corp for it, and if you already failed at EVE by not selecting CAS, then you can either make a new character in CAS or you can join pandemic horde, or brave, or karma fleet, or eve uni or find a more obscure newbie friendly corp.