Eve is appealing to many because unlike other games those ways of behaviour are viable and potentially successful strategies. Just as they are in RL. To 5% of sociopathic people. Double or tripple that for Eve, because anonymity loosens some barriers, and because it’s a game.
I wouldn’t say they are the core of Eve though. It adds realism, makes your decisions and reputation more meaningful. Makes the community more vibrant.
But you still play with your friends, you still create a corp and alliance. You still trust some people. You communicate and cooperate. People still help each other, teach newer players.
You could still gank miners in RW sites, you know? So your hardboiled deceiving backstabber pvp BS talk is way off. Most people wouldn’t play if literally everyone would backstab and deceive. If you literally couldn’t trust anyone you would most likely play solo yourself.
The premise (or lore) behind Resource Wars was one of resource scarcity. Resource scarcity has now become a much more real and widespread occurrence for all pilots. A fact that made the RW-lore a tad redundant.
My speculation is that they will “repurpose” it now as part of the next phase of mineral redistribution. The obvious way to do that would be allow the ore collected in these sites to now be taken back out, into regular space.
You understand that players worked together more when thieving and back stabbing was easier right?
Players isolate themselves simply because ccp made it easier to isolate themselves. There’s no need for a ‘safety in numbers’ attitude and resources are far easier to collect alone now.
That’s how it was in the whole first decade …
… which means it’s actually pretty trivial.
No one ever felt forced.
Player gets can-flipped in a belt …
… takes the bait …
… and gets blown up.
Welcome to EVE ONLINE.
Boom, suddenly you made a new friend …
… or a new enemy …
… but that person stayed in the game.
The reason why they stayed in the game was the sheer amazement of “what the ■■■■ just happened”,
because stuff like this doesn’t happen in literally any other game, but it’s actually the Adrenaline rush behind it.
Adrenaline is one hell of a drug.
Used it myself to convert a few people.
It just works!
It really is trivial. Mechanics just need to support it …
… and the suspect mechanics, combined with the protection button, sure as ■■■■ don’t.
Someone made a joke how EVE bonds and friendships are PTSD group therapy in disguise.
People adapt. People need to communicate and interact cooperatively or competitively. This is what made game thrive. The people, the community.
Lack of tutorial and initial hand-holding in first decade is not trivial or genius game design. It’s lack of thereof. CCP left this part empty. Players filled the void because that’s how human psychology works, and sandbox lets you do that. CCP relying on community may have been a genius move though.
That’s how empathy works. You’re empathetic. When you’ve killed a guy for no reason you feel guilt and communicate with him and help him with advice or just some cheering up and friendly bump to alleviate it. It’s reciprocal and mutually beneficial.
This could be emphasized and multyplied with game design. With events, missions or sites, or tools, designed specifically for that. So that new and old players were engaged more often in reciprocal and interdependent activities.
I think if you make this particular encounter into a forced, incentivised or ‘on the rails’ kind of interaction you’re going to undermine the genuine and human reasons for why that interaction takes place.
Like forcing people to friendly to one another means there are no real friends at all. Forcing people to not shoot or steal from their corp members undermine the very real trust players used to have in corps.
The more playstyles the better. More professions. More tools. More choice. More sand in the sandbox.
RW sites were actually pretty fun to play. They just didnt have interdependency for combat and miner players, and rewards were outrageously poor. They could easily fix RW but it was obviously low priority.
And so they didn’t. Instead they messed with diamond rat stats while tuning up FOBs or something and made RW sites harder for no reason.
I never told it was bad that people could backstab and deceive. I never told they should remove those options.
But I always have a reason.
Hunting for sports is a reason.
It’s a game.
I only feel bad for those who don’t seem to deserve it …
… and those who really can’t know better.
We can’t have that.
Those who want reward don’t care about the new players …
… and those who care about the new players don’t want anything …
… except for the new players to stay in the game and play with them, maybe.
All that’s needed is proper mechanics which allow this organic behaviour again.
Gratification for empathy can not be a thing, because the former destroys the latter.
As soon as you plug a reward onto it, people will be industrialising it, defeating the purpose.
It’s like when I make a new character, head to lowsec and let myself get blown up.
Doing my part of the equation, I play a curious and excited new player.
The other guy is happy, and he rewards me for it.
It’s a win-win situation which can only exist because it’s not being done on a bigger scale.
When you artificially create situations where people are supposed to be flying together …
… then they’ll do that without creating any emotional connection between each other.
It’d not be organic …
… and thus would be useless.
@CSM can you pass that thread along to CCP, in my opinion this cannot continue like that. It feels like that more content is getting removed than added. Resource wars were great for vets to teach new players on the industry and pve mechanics in the game. It would be nice to know what was the point behind that, and also if we ever gonna see them again as mentioned in the patch notes.
That could have been easily fixed by removing any isk requirements in the lp store to make it attractive to farm. That would have taken 5 mins of work max. It is very sad what is happening at the moment all around EVE. Like yesterday when someone found that mission payouts were nerfed massively, but luckily CCP confirmed that it was a bug before it hit TQ. Players do the content at the begin, leave feedback and CCP does nothing and then, 3 years later, decides to just scrap it.
Same sad story with abyssal PVP, and there was agazillion of threads and posts about the same problems over and over again, despite the relative low amount of people that did it(where was the solved meta or the direct entrance?), CCP did nothing and then it gets removed, making several players quit and/or angry. From an ecological point of view, this makes no sense at all, when you know that players quit.
I understand certain balance changes such as the ESS change, which indirectly introduced new meta in nullsec and increased PVP. But what it the difference, if we still have the old proving grounds and resource wars, does that change anything?
You can’t be all Karen about something no one ever gave a ■■■■ about.
You literally invented a reason for why it’s bad that it’s being removed …
… while in reality no one ever did this at all, because it was crap!
I can tell, I’ve ran quite a few!
Then stopped, because it was dumb.
Literally, absolutely dumb and mind blowingly boring.
You pull the “think of the children” card because of this abyssal pvp ■■■■■■■■,
just because you think it somehow adds to your point. It ■■■■■■■ doesn’t!
So no … it is not the same sad story with abyssal PvP, Karen …
I just noticed the patch note about Resource Wars sites being removed. Coming back from a pre-scarcity hiatus and looking for novel things to try, I’d just started running these sites again in the last few weeks. The consensus view is that it flopped because the rewards were mediocre and ISK negative, that was certainly my initial impression on release. However, with Brutix prices approaching 90M and Megathrons going for 1/4B, the highest tier reward crates had become worthwhile at around 2500 ISK/LP. The only real impediment to chaining them was their omission from the reworked Agency window. I was curious to see if some groups would notice and interest in running the content might revive, only to see this week that CCP has finally decided to remove the sites rather than the prevailing benign neglect strategy. It’ll be interesting to see if some of the more unique mechanics (site timers, dynamic environment sound, content-specific chat channels) are reintroduced in another form.
