Abyss rework, PVP integration

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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1

Greetings to all.

I want to propose the idea of reworking the abysses.
Currently, the abysses have become exclusively PVE content, PVP is only an exit :slight_smile:

Due to the fact that the abysses allow you to earn income anywhere, there are a number of serious restrictions:

  1. Death on expiration of the timer
  2. According to the requirements for ships to pass
  3. To the starting point

In the current realities, these are justified restrictions. However, this turned this content into a monotonous grind with the constant threat of internet freezes or power outages and, as a result, the inevitable loss of the ship.

Suggested changes:

  1. For 4-6 abysses, make a random passage to the PVP room after each pocket for all types of abysses (frigates, destroyers, cruisers)
  2. Remove death from the timer, replace it with clearing the hold of all materials of the abyss and imposing a time penalty for re-entering the abyss.
  3. Make the abysses passable for more ships.

Please explain in detail for each item:

  1. In the abysses of levels 4-6, when passing through each gate, there is a small chance that you will end up in a PVP room.
  1. The PvP room is the original with a few changes:
    • Room for cruisers/destroyers/frigates, no separation.
    • Time 20 minutes.
    • Waiting time 5 minutes.
    • There are 2 reductions in resistances after 10 and 15 minutes (this will avoid undying ships).
    • Loot in the container is formed in 2 stages, 1 when one of the participants enters, the amount of loot from the 3 main containers of the abyss that he passed through appears. When a second participant appears, a similar process occurs + an increased chance for mutaplasmids of weapon systems.
    • Next, the fight begins.
    • If there is no winner, then the participants leave the abyss with the hold cleared of prey and a penalty for entering the abyss within an hour.
  2. The chance of entering the PVP room increases with the level of the abyss. In order to pass to the next pocket, frigates and destroyers need to jointly confirm the passage, after which they are simultaneously transferred (until all members of the group confirm the passage, the transition will not occur further).

The most difficult part, determining the probability of moving into a PVP room.
Here it is necessary to take into account the current profitability of the abysses, the price of the ship for passing through various abysses, so that the average pilot can stay afloat without getting huge money and without going into losses. Price estimates are very rough, the fit is designed to pass most rooms, not the ultimate gils/ishtars for 10 billion.
*All statistics taken from abysstracker and zkillboard.

• T4 abyss:
Average return:
Cruisers 32 million
Destroyers 59 million
Frigates 84 million

To pass you need:
Cruiser from 300-350 million
Destroyer 2*200 = 400 million
Frigates 3*40 = 120 million

• T5 abyss:
Average return:
Cruisers 66 million
Destroyers 112 million
Frigates 170 million

To pass you need:
Cruiser from 550 million
Destroyer 2*250 = 500 million
Frigates 3*50 = 150 million

• T6 abyss:
Average return:
Cruisers 126 million
Destroyers 217 million
Frigates 340 million

To pass you need:
Cruiser from 1500 million
Destroyer 2*250 = 500 million (does anyone even do this? lol)
Frigates 3*100 = 300 million

Calculate the payback time from the condition of passing 3 abysses per hour:
• T4 abyss:
Cruisers 10 abysses = 3 hours
Destroyers 6 abysses = 2 hours
Frigates 1 abyss = 20 minutes

• T5 abyss:
Cruisers 8 abysses = 3 hours
Destroyers 5 abysses = 2 hours
Frigates 1 abyss = 1 hour

• T6 abyss:
Cruisers 12 abysses = 4 hours
Destroyers 2 abysses = 40 minutes
Frigates 1 abyss = 20 minutes

Now let’s determine with what probability there should be a transition to the PVP room (with each passage through the gate).
My suggestion is the following:

• T4 abyss:
Cruisers 0.1% = 0.3% per 1 abyss
Destroyers 0.1% = 0.3% for 1 abyss
Frigates 0.2% = 0.6% per 1 abyss
• T5 abyss:
Cruisers 0.2% = 0.6% per 1 abyss
Destroyers 0.2% = 0.6% for 1 abyss
Frigates 0.3% = 0.9% per 1 abyss
• T6 abyss:
Cruisers 0.5% = 1.5% per 1 abyss
Destroyers 0.6% = 1.8% for 1 abyss
Frigates 1% = 3% for 1 abyss

As you can see, participation in PVP is completely random, you can prepare for it, but you can’t be eady :slight_smile:

  1. Since there is a new risk, it is possible to remove the old restrictions.
    You either go through the abyss, or you are left without loot and with the inability to continue farming. In the event of a connection loss, the ship automatically enters a 10km orbit around the gate. This will avoid the most offensive losses. Player ships should be destroyed by players, not by a hung internet.

  2. The fact that abysses made it easy to earn money (including “flavored”) led to the complication of abysses, up to the appearance of specially sharpened NPCs against certain setups.
    Currently, the passage requires a certain level of protection and DPS, below which it is impossible for you to pass. If we reduce the EW among the NPCs and the amount of durability, then this will allow more ships to take part.
    I will express my opinion that all pirate ships (and not just Gila) should go through the T4 of the abyss.

The proposed changes will allow you to sort out the abyss and solve one of the main problems of all arenas. Only those who were prepared for PVP came to us, there was no factor of random encounters.

Thank you for your attention.
I will be glad to discuss my suggestions.

2

I’m not in favour of instanced areas in an open world pvp sandbox game, but I do think the current abyssals are better than what you are suggesting.

Abyssals right now are

  • challenging PvE events
  • time-limited PvE events,
  • which open up the opportunity to the open world PvP EVE is known for

What is good about current abyssals is that they offer instant gameplay for people who have max 20 minutes spare time, challenging PvE combat that may cause them to lose their ship in PvE and also worth that risk because people cannot simply ‘throw more ships at it’, which is the common EVE solution to turn challenge into monotonous simple farming.

Your proposal replaces some problems of the abyssals for other problems, but doesn’t solve anything.

Instead of a maximum of 20 minutes for people to wait on the trace in order to engage in open world PvP, your suggestion results in a possible much longer waiting time on the trace, which makes the open world aspect of abyssal PvP suffer.

I also do not agree with your other suggestion:
‘Make the abyss passable for more ships’

Correct me if I’m wrong, but to me that translates to ‘make the abyssals less of a challenge so that people do not have to push their ships to their limits in PvE’, which is then done in order to allow a bigger variety of ships in instanced PvP combat.

To me it seems like you want to sacrifice the only challenging PvE this game has in order to create a hardly functioning instanced PvP combat system that goes against the wishes of people running abyssals and goes against the wishes of people who want their PvP in this game to not be instanced.

If you want to kill abyssal ships, you can wait at the trace and engage in open world PvP. Without your suggestion, you only have to wait 20 minutes at most. :wink:

2 Likes
3

You contradict yourself:

Since you cannot know if and what you will be matched against, the resulting encounter is comepletely random and, even worse, in a fixed arena that you cannot even disengage from if the match is completely unwinnable.

It will lead to:
Super-Rich people with 30B officer-abyssalrolled-fits farm like 300 other players before they finally meet a complete counterfit of another super-rich player and one of them dies. 299 casual gamers got frustrated because they never stood a chance to begin with and lost their beloved ship in a completely unwinnable engagement that was forced upon them by a random chance. We already had that when the PvP-gate at the end of the abyssal site was a voluntary choice. People will do it again and even more hardcore and blingy if they know 99% of their prey will get served involuntary to them.

Don’t get me wrong: I like ships being blown up and I have no issues with people losing their ships. But they should lose it after making one or several mistakes, that others used to their advantage. Having content you don’t want being forced upon you by a randomizer simply isn’t fun. It’s the opposite.

Last but not least I miss one final point: Why would your suggestion make the game better than it currently is? I miss the clear benefit for the majority of the players.

2 Likes
4

My suggestion does not lead to a huge increase in time, if a small percentage of pilots get into the VFR room, then they will have the opportunity to significantly speed up the waiting time.

You don’t find it ironic that all the changes in the abyss were aimed at making the abysses more difficult and related to certain setups, and now no one can go through the abyss except for them.
The addition of the Angel Cartel eliminated kite setups and Sansha set up defense requirements.
It turned out that there were a few working setups left to complete the Tier 6 abysses of Gila/ Ishtar/ Cerberus/ Stormbringer/ Hawk.
About “bringing ships to the limit” LOL.

If we talk about “the desires of people who control the abyssals” then you have heard the phrase “be afraid of your desires.” My suggestion puts players in a simple choice, you accept additional PvP risks, while you get more security when traversing the abyss, was, death after 20 minutes/death by NPCs, became death by NPCs/death by players. An exchange of risks has been made.

5

There is no contradiction, they entered a separate PVP pocket specifically for PVP, which means that all participants were prepared in advance.

If you are interested in the survival of a 30B ship, then there are several options:

  1. Win
  2. Do not die within 20 minutes (after the time expires, you return to normal space without loot and with a penalty for re-entering the abyss)
  3. Negotiate with the other party.
  4. Do not build a ship for 30B

Lastly, the advantage for most players is to look at the loss in the abyss on the zkillboard. I think 299 out of 300 players would prefer to trade timer risk for PvP risk.
The abyss will cease to be a grind, a great variety will appear, and most importantly, all my experience says that the most interesting PVP happens when both sides are prepared for it (if there is a description of such a possibility when entering the abyss, then you are already ready) but not ready for the current moment.
The main problem with PvP arenas was that those who were completely ready for PvP went there.
My first place in the arena of the old format allows me to say that PVP in the abyss is interesting, waiting for an opponent is exciting. These are extremely positive emotions.
Random selection of opponents will help avoid turning PVP into a 10B+ ship race.
I don’t think there will be a large number of people who spend hours going through the T4 abyss on 30B Ikiturs in order to meet 3 Hawk with a 0.3% chance (total DPS can be more than 900, so even here the victory is not obvious) or a passive Gila.

6

Not once a meta has formed after a couple days. By then, every ‘random opponent’ will be flying the same 10B+ ship that maximises their chances.

7

Maybe you didn’t read my post carefully.

A few percent chance to get into the PVP room (and not necessarily the second side will appear there), constantly fly on PVP ships for 10B? While PvP builds have problems with high-level abysses.

To get to a 100% PVP ship in a PVP room with a 50% chance from T4, you need to go through 50 rooms, with such a probability random encounters will be guaranteed to be random. Meetings of standard PVE ships with a gradual weakening of resistance, so that there is a possibility of victory for one of the parties.

Or a severe loss of ISK/Hour if no one wins before 20 minutes for the abyss + 20 minutes of PVP room + 1 hour penalty for entering the abyss and losing all loot. The ship is intact, but your profitability leaves much to be desired.

8

Why should the ship stay intact after failure?

While I don’t really like instanced areas in EVE, at least abyssals cause some ship destruction to boost the economy.

‘Lose all loot’ or ‘1 hour penalty’ is barely a penalty, where this game is about ship destruction upon failure. It’s like playing with safety rails, playing on the test server, inconsequential. Anyone willing to do more abyssals would just swap to their alt during that ‘1 hour penalty’ anyway to continue without any penalty at all.

Ship death upon PvE failure, that’s what makes abyssals challenging.

I do not see how replacing the risk of ship death and replacing the PvE challenge by some instanced PvP is improving the game.

It sounds to me like you want the old 1v1 abyssal arenas back, and want to change other parts of the game to suit your own needs.

1 Like
9

You said

but a random chance to get matched against a random dude is just that: a random encounter.

The nice thing about EVE PvP is that you can act tactically and strategically and a win usually is served for making the better decisions. Unless you are a blinger of course that only flies with ships full of faction, deadspace and abyssalmods, probably having a support-alt and an implantset in the clone and is proud of himself when he blaps a bunch of casuals who stupidly thought they could win. Oh wait, your killboard says you are doing exactly that.

After checking your killboard of these times I can sense where this suggestion is coming from. Waiting in the Abyss with a 10b+ Ikitursa knowing that you will easily beat 99% of all targets that are involuntarily served to you by a randomizer. And that is “fun” and “exciting”? No sorry, I don’t see how your suggestion makes the game any better. Might try Duels in Jita to get cheap kills.

The current Abyssal sites serve their purpose pretty well:

  • they expose someone in space (visible, scannable trace) for a predictable timeframe
  • their design (higher difficulty → need for more expensive ships) is visible from the outside
  • the higher tier sites can only be opened in less secure space, which makes the more blingy ships easier to find and easier to kill
  • anyone who want to engage the Abyssalrunner can prepare, he has to come out within the next 20 minutes
2 Likes
10

I’m really for the return of arenas, but this will not happen in the old format. Therefore, new options are needed, I proposed one.

11

Perhaps the current state of the game gives you the choice to improve the performance of the ships and use multiple windows, or go with a multiple superior enemy?

If you think that PvP using expensive modules and implants is something unusual, then we are playing different games. And I did not notice that my opponents did not use what you said.

The board of that time is probably related to the old arena event and I used one of the most effective formats to win?

After looking at your history, I conclude that you are fighting in the format of 10+ against one.

I wrote this post after a month of lowsec and zero flights.
A huge number of pilots cannot take part in PVP. It’s just ridiculous, 40 pilots cannot fly to 2 ships, in another system 4 cyno, there are very few options to get interesting PVP.

Are you sure that my main goal is to get “easy wins”? You didn’t think that risk shifting would bring more benefits to everyone.
And I want to see how you will get into the PVP pocket on 10B Ikitoursa, are you sure that she can easily go through the T4+ abyss? I’ll tell you a secret, you either collect PVP Ikitursu and you have a chance to die in the abyss or PVE, but then Ishtar or Cerberus will surprise you.

12

Sure the game allows it and its used more and more by people who don’t need to care for money. In most cases dualboxing multiple many-billion-ISK ships to farm casuals in ships costing not even 10% of their own fits. It has not made PvP better over the years. It has just given the richer people a higher advance over the casuals. When I started the game you could go roam in T1 cruisers / BC and get good fights. Plenty of them. Do that today and you’ll get smashed to the wall by some “elite gang” full of T2, T3, Factionfitted, fleetboosted, drugged multiboxers or even get BlackOpsed by 10 BOs of which every single one does cost more than your whole gang. Boring crap.

U used fittings+pods+drugs that 99% of the participants couldn’t even afford. Of course, with enough ISK one can do that. And in the end the participants entered the last gate to the PvP arena voluntary, they should have known after a few days how it will end.

It’s another thing if we should like a suggestion that changes this voluntary decision to take part into a randomizer that throws average fits into a meatgrinder against maxrolled-maxblinged PvP fits that just wait to shred them. I don’t see how this suggestion makes the game a better game.

Then you conclude pretty wrong. I usually only fly in Pando’s public fleets which end outnumbered and cornered in most cases. So while on many kills there are 20 other ships, its more a 20 vs 50 than a 20 vs 1. Of course, if someone gets tackled lonely, he is also snacked by the fleet, ■■■■ happens. But that not the fights the fleet is after. Someone with experience in PvP should know that.

Apart from that I mostly assist noobs in learning the basics of EVE combat, which means T1 ships with a T2 fit.

Maybe the majority does not want your kind of PvP? Do not show up in a blinged Golem + Loki-Alt and maybe people fight you. Grab a T2 Brutix and roam around, I bet you get plenty of PVP pretty quickly.

Since I run T5/T6 Abyss myself, you don’t tell me any secrets. A fully blinged + drugged Ikitursa has little problems reaching the last pocket in a T4/T5 site. You even want to remove the timer, nice idea, since you need even less damage mods and fit even more unbreakable tank while breaking any opponent with the constant spool-up damage over time anyway. Yes, I really believe you want easy kills with that suggestion because 90% of the fits that would be assigned to you would be simply a death-sentence for them as they could never ever hope to break the tank of your 10B fit while you sooner or later eat their “cheap” 2B ship like a snack.

Here is my suggestion: They shall bring back the Abyssal Tournaments, in different classes (1v1 Frig, 1v1 Destroyer, 1v1 Cruiser, 3v3 Frig, 2v2 Destroyer). Then limit the access to only T2 modules max. No faction, deadspace, abyssal. No Implants. No Drugs. Anyone who wants to participate can do that and none of the super rich guys has any advantage in there. Here you get your interesting PvP, all day long.

13

I mean PvP abyssals sound like a good idea to me but mixing and matching like this doesn’t.

Just came back to game and I’m trying to get a sense for the changes over the years so I wasn’t around for PvP abyssal so I don’t know the problems it had but…

Sounds like it could be a good idea and problems with Meta could be solved by randomizing effects in pvp abyssal, fitting too much for a certain Meta could wind up being a real downside in some regards. It would also reduce use of blingy fits since you wouldn’t want to risk bling when there is a chance you might get screwed by environment.

It could be done simply too, 2 enter one leaves takes gate to next room with a loot drop, next gate back to k-space. Biggest problem would be getting two players at same time, would require a q of some kind.

14

It was like this in the old times: In the last pocket of an abyssal site were two gates. One back to K-space, One leading into an Arena with an additional loot cache. If no other player entered after a few minutes, you got the loot and the exit gate to K-Space opened. If another player entered, one had to die for the gate to open. You could either lose your ship or get the loot + the other players loot. Which could be quite lucrative.

15

What was problem with this? Why did they change it?

Also why not just a dedicated abyss for PvP with no PVE prior at all?

16

People just used it less and less often because a handful of PvPers built insanely expensive fits that a normal player can even hardly afford. And these fits were nearly unbreakable for a normal Abyssalrunner, so they basically just farmed other players in there with little risk of losing their own ship.

The placement in the last pocket of a PvE-Abyss made sure you could not go in there with absolute Trollfits. You had to use a fit that was able to finish the PvE part in less than 20 minutes.

17

Which is why I think PvP exclusive abyssal with random effects will fix that since blinging out a ship or troll fitting a ship wouldn’t be a great idea if you were likely to land in an environment that would lead to your loss. Random effect would favor economical general purpose fits.

18

But random environment effect will also lead to frustration, because you can end up in a match that is completely unwinnable for you right from the start.

Mechanics in a game should offer interesting opportunities and a roughly fair chance of winning or at least survival for everyone taking these opportunities. They should not lead to guaranteed failure every so often just because some dices rolled against you.

19

I disagree, that chance might be frustrating some of the time but it won’t be most of the time.

There are 5 terrain types now, its possible to budget build a decent fit that would be great in one, decent in two or three, probably lose in one. Keep in mind that the other player has same thing going so if you say build a gun focused ship and get a dark you will think you are borked, unless they also brought a gunboat. Same thing applies to favorable terrain, thing is chances are still roughly even to get a good match vs a bad one with majority probably being okay.

Lots of PvP games actually do this very successfully, World of Warships and Warthunder both have similar setups where if you get a bad map for your vehicle its going to be hard plus RNG of whether or not you get a decent team. OFC it can be frustrating sometimes but generally it is still more fun at least it keeps people coming back for more. Interestingly enough, the least fun map in WoWs is the most neutral, Ocean. These are fun games with razor thin margins on winrates where even the best lose about 40% of the time, yet they keep people engaged.

In the proposal I made the key would be to use a ship that you are likely to lose 50% of the time but are comfortable with that. Everyone else will have to make the same choice since meta fitting the perfect ship wouldn’t be economical. You could also ask yourself this would you be more frustrated with a 10% dice roll of getting a bad terrain or a 100% dice roll of facing a P2W fit ship?

Psychologically the design I propose would also be more likely to succeed in drawing more players since it relies of variable interval reward. This is the reason why games like WT and WoWs (and casinos) maintain playerbases that win less than half the time. The High from winning once is enough to keep someone coming back and trying again even if they only win 30% of the time or so. Especially since loot drop can be titrated to effect meaning that loot from complex plus loot from player ship will likely be more than enough to cover losses if you build economically.

20

It’s okay, we don’t have to agree on that. As long as participation is voluntary, I won’t care for the specific design. I personally don’t like losing on dice rolls, so I would prefer a “neutral terrain” as you call it. But however, the most important part in my opinion is the limitation of bling to have a halfway fair playground for a large base of participants and good chances in affordable fits.