Great post, I think there is one iteration of instance pvp yet to explore and that is the massive null fleet variety.
Make an expensive filament brand that allows 500 peeps through a chain, at the end of a 20 day abyssal slog fest is a final room with massive boss fight and prize. Let the power houses fight into this chain.
You guys are discarding this feature too quickly. I would agree with you more and call it a failure if this content was permanent. If the 1v1 Frigates was something I could do any day 365 days a year. I had a BLAST and way overplayed this game the last few days or so. I have like 70,000 ISK left in my wallet, I cashed out all my LP on Firetails and threw everything into the fire. I got some quality, QUALITY practice in and I truly believe this only made me a more fierce fighter when I have the natural, good old fashioned encounter in a null or lowsec environment.
I love the post @Black_Pedro and the commentary here has been insightful. I was a hater of these events until it came to my favorite playstyles turn. It was a different vibe to the game. I HATED THE IDEA OF DOJO’s but CCP as usual found a halfway house in between what would be a permanent feature and something that sort of rolls around like competitive seasons in pro sports.
These last few days were awesome and now I really have to get back to the salt mines in Scalding Pass to get myself more ISK. The last ships I bought I converted back to lowsec instead of Abyssal. I think I have a partner for the next one that starts October 2nd. (2v2 T1 Cruisers)
We don’t have the Alliance Tournament anymore and this might be it going forward. AFAIK. It’s pretty cool.
The effect it had on Hek’s economy too, I watched certain modules for the bastard Comet fit skyrocket, same with small T2 rigs. Hot damn Eve Online is a deep, dynamic game.
…Yes. 
Plus if you can crack the top 100, you get cool SKINs, ISK, and skillpoints!
If you ask someone on the test server you can do that with all ship classes in New Eden every day.
This is a good question (although I don’t agree with your description as instanced - it’s no different to a faction warfare plex really)
I’ve mostly participated in the FFA destroyers, FFA cruisers and the 1v1 frigates. So my answer is based on that.
For me it is a chance to practice PvP with an high chance of fighting an experienced pilot(s) most times. This means many (but not all) fights are close, I lost a 1v1 to a ship that had 1% hull left. There was an amount of Rock, Paper, Scissors going on in the 1v1 event.
The FFA is all about decision making, making moves and avoiding being ganged up on. There were some weird fits, mostly heavy on tank, light on damage and control. I found a Stabber to be fun, interesting, good practise and effective. The cruiser FFA was my favourite event so far, I feel like I learnt a lot about when to engage and disengage and also practised cap management, kite-ing and manual piloting.
The 1v1 frigates was very like faction warfare novice plex, without the blobbing and running away, There were a lot very good pilots involved and I wouldn’t be surprised if Low Sec was quiet over that weekend. Webs and scrams were very common in this event and the fits were much closer to what I am used to seeing.
I think ccp missed the mark on this one and it should have been only T1 frigates, You really needed to be in a navy frigate to stand a chance. This narrowed it down to max 4 viable ships. The T1 frigates were rarely seen. If it had been only T1 ships I think the range of ships used would have been more interesting.
Yuck.
Just wanted to offer my personal perspective here in case a dev ever reads it… I have been intensely interested in small gang and solo PVP for years and thought the abyssal PVP would be tons of fun.
The idea of finding balanced PVP without too much effort is very appealing and if there are some occasional rewards to keep the PVP loss expenses down… sounds great!
Everything is pretty great except for the queue and matchmaking component.
For example, just now EVE is doing a Halloween Horrors 4 player vs player free-for-all. I haven’t played in a few months but this looked enticing. It’s all cheap T1 frigs with sub meta 5 modules. Looks pretty fun and balanced so I fit up a good candidate in Pyfa. Fit it up in game. Went into open space. Hit the filament. …and nothing happened. Then I noticed a pop-up. I need to be in a fleet to activate the filament. Again… need to be in a fleet for a free-for-all… where, if you win, you kill everyone. Why in New Eden would a fleet be needed for FFA? I found this so frustrating, that I logged off.
Come to think of it, fleet formation has been the obstacle for the other abyssal filaments I’ve tried. When I did 2v2 Cruisers I had to find someone interested in doing the event. Often someone not within my alliance. Had to get coms sorted. Had to agree on ship fittings. Eventually got so desperate for a fleet mate that I would just fleet with the first person who seemed remotely interested.
I would like to propose some kind of matchmaking queue to ease the pain of finding fleets. Participants should be able to queue from any system across distant systems. Even queue from station. Players should be assigned a rank based on their wins. High ranking players should match against other high ranks.
I want to be able to log in, hop in a ship and get my ass handed to me. This shouldn’t take more than 15-20 minutes.
You can form a fleet with yourself.
Just for the effects they have on the consumption and destruction of modules and ships, I think CCP will keep them.
However the weaknesses of the system are clear, the Matchmaking and the Formats.
I was not interested in flying Slicers and I hate FFAs, so I dropped out of the third event, and since then I didn’t get back in.
People have their preffered ships or classes, and by changing the formats all the time, you give no time for people to make it a playstyle to fly their preffered ship or comp in the Abyss.
That and you also give the perfect excuse for people to say, “Alright I’m done until the format comes back”.
Pretty much, the constant rotation only makes it a playstyle to people who like changing for the sake of changing. I think it is reflected in the numbers.
And the Matchmaking makes the feature extremely dependent on population, which is dangerous in a game like EVE that doesn’t have pools in the millions of people to make matches happen.
The Original Proving Grounds had the clear advantage that they were not dependent on matchmaking and population. If you got nobody, at least you got an Abyss run done. It was actually quite an elegant mechanic.
Anyway, as long as they do not stabilize the formats, make it a corporation affair, and get the PvEvP element aspect back, I don’t see the numbers going up.
Sorry to burst your bubble but the current event and the previous two have all been popular with short queues. It does look like ccp will be continuing to change the formats regularly.
I wouldn’t worry about not stepping foot into the arena as its full of kiting ■■■■■■■■ no real brawlers.
Where are your actual datas for that?
'cuse I’m pretty much totally sure that the numbers were nowhere near enough to use the word “popular”, especially after other activities that actually are popular just pushed the game in the Guiness book.
I don’t have any data, but I would say for the current event the numbers are similar to the destroyer ffa numbers. I’d say the slightly less for the ffa cruisers and significantly more for the 1v1 frigates. Perhaps the op will update us with numbers from the last few events.
I know my position in this event after one loss was over 800th place, and that was on Friday so more people will have taken part since then.
Also queue times have been quick (1-2min) whenever I have logged in including au timezone.
I don’t think something has to have a fifth of the logged in player base to be called popular. A thousand people taking part seems fairly popular to me.
You do get that the weekly player base of EVE is probably around 200k players right?
Based on numbers we are aware of and historical data.
Not really tho…
A thousand in total means probably something like 50 to 100 concurrent players (or characters) using the feature at the same time, when there is between 20K and 30K online. That’s not much. ;/
Considering the recent policy change this topic requires an update.
Instanced anything was always a bad idea in EVE. The game was built around the concept that you are never alone, no matter how hard you try. Someone, somewhere will find you and you’ll have to deal with it. I guess CCP is abandoning that concept, because instances are the very antithesis to it, just like making nullsec regions 100% self sufficient, although at least they seem to have learned from that mistake(albeit way too late). If you don’t like blobs and “kitey ■■■■■■■■”, well that’s EVE. There is literally infinite room on a grid with infinite directions to run in. You can’t corner someone or funnel them into a choke point. Kiting is optimal 95% of the time, but I’m not sure why you thinking “brawling” is so engaging. Web and scram one another, commence DPS race. Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, so engaging. Turns out most people would rather kite because they like engagements that are more than just a 50/50.
I’d love to do the proving ground but they didn’t make a frigging solo option and i can’t find people in local or corp.
I just went in with a Talwar with targetting range boost out to 100km and it wasn’t letting me lock until 30km…
They should just have kept the old Cruiser room