Albion has a new content update introducing new regions with content that facilitates solo and duo content, kinda resembling the Abyss in its ephemeral nature: Beyond the Veil
Ignoring how Albion drops content that majorly changes its game at a backbreaking pace while here we struggle for years to get a revamp of Faction Warfare.
It seems like once again they are doing something that is considered heretical and impious here, which is catering to solo-content. And that seems to be a constant pattern with Albion, they do things that EVE prides itself in not doing, and somehow they keep growing and finding success doing it:
Since we have entire contingents of players (especially here, bet we will see some fine specimens in this thread) who keep telling people (and especially themselves) that those things would be disastrous for EVE, I wonder how they explain Albion’s success?!
Albion has never not catered to solo content. You have regions and dungeons that you can run solo all the time. I have run a ton of dungeons there with my fire mage while only attempted to a handful of group dungeons with a guild. You have to run the solo dungeons anyway all the time to progress your gear. If you wait for your guild to be around for action, you’ll never get anywhere with your gear.
Numbers limitations were also always a thing in Albion in the dungeons in secure regions. Albion never made the same claims that CCP has made for EVE. CCP says that EVE should be open and unsafe everywhere. Albion does not. CCP strays from these claims mechanically, but keeps saying they are still valid. Albion does not do that.
The Mists offer an array of open world-like gameplay opportunities to solo and duo players. Both lethal and non-lethal zones exist, corresponding to the zone from which they were entered, allowing players to try their hand at lower-risk 1v1 combat in the non-lethal zones or compete for valuable rewards in the lethal areas.
See, this is another difference. You get more rewards if you start them from dangerous territories. CCP allowed the most lucrative abyss crap to be run from secure space without any downsides. Albion does it sorta right, while CCP just failed spectacularly for the sake of increasing the uptake of its newest and detrimental dev baby.
CCP also has a big case of doing pretty non-sensical stuff over the years.
I can clearly remember the thread discussing the Abyss, and people were clearly telling them, in different ways, to not make them able to be run in High-Sec undisturbed. I myself was for T3+ being only doable in Low and lower…
At the top of my head:
Killing the Old Arena, the best case of PvEvP they add.
Making NPC Mining Fleets a nuisance and another thing to exploit instead of the explicit goal they had of being Training for Fleet Combat.
Making Resources Wars unprofitable and killing it instead of fixing and building upon it.
Making Industry even harder than it already was (making Battleships need components), and closing T2 manufacturing from solo-players.
It seems like they either badly implement whatever good idea they have, or worse, actively make sure to shoot themselves in the foot in the most debilitating way possible…
No not really, it CAN be but it doesn’t have to be unless you want to make things main stream. Thing is that not everything should be mainstream, in fact most things should not be. There are tons of mainstream easy single player focussed safe MMO’s out there, if you like that so much why not go there instead of trying to change the few that aren’t.
If you don’t like it either gtfo or accept and stfu.
Why are those the only options? All games change over time with market changes and player feedback. Why is is that when people try to give feedback for EVE some people start telling others to leave? It’s not even like EVE is the same as it was on day one, so you’ve accepted some changes.
I think all players are allowed to give feedback and CCP is allowed to make decisions for the game they develop. What really seems to upset you is when you realise your views are not representative of the majority.
All this instanced content, as well as how they implemented “null” and FW, basically achieves the focusing of PvP content to decrease downtime.
Combined with more modern game mechanics, the pretty available PvP makes it a decent alternative for a full-loot game, which generally has pretty sparse options. This is what explains the player numbers.
Not sure why you mention “PvP-free High-Sec” though, because most people who play Albion didn’t stay for the blue zones. New players are advised to get the ■■■■into red/black zones as soon as possible instead. The completely PvP-free zones are rookie zones (T3 blues), or at least they are intended as such since the income is extremely low in those zones. You can still experience PvP in normal blue zones with FW, so it’s not like they’ve turned all of EVE highsec into PvE only.
Anyways, it’s a comparison between two different games, so you can’t just take stuff from Albion and go “if we put this into EvE this will work”. But I’d love an EvE with the ganking from Albion. Imagine pulling people out of warp and killing them, as in you see someone zoom by and you pursue. Yes, I know bubbles exist…
TLDR: Albion is a PvP game through and through. Making highsec PvP-free ain’t the solution.
In Albion there are “tiers” of gear. While you can wear higher tier items in the pvp free zones all the materials (except for some spice in the refining process) for them come from the pvp zones. These gears have much more power than the gear from non pvp zones. There isn’t even competition. Whereas you can be competitive in Eve in many aspects using ships exclusively made from high sec materials.
This, along with much lower fame reward from pvp free zones (you level your skills/gear by using them vs sp accumulation over time like Eve) means that if you stay in the pvp free zones forever your grind to level skills and gear to gets much harder.
Eve has less of a clear delineation of manufacturing - there aren’t tiers of ships in the same manner. A lot of high sec activities are arguably more lucrative than null with little danger.
Eve’s skill system doesn’t penalize you for staying in high sec. You learn just as fast wherever you are. In fact you might learn faster in high sec because your not afraid to lose implants.
Albion’s solo dungeons have much lower fame and loot rewards than multi player dungeons or open world. Eve solo dungeons (abyss etc) have much higher reward than open world.
So in conclusion, Eve isn’t Albion and it would take a massive change to core mechanics to become like Albion. This isn’t a critique as to which is better. Both games have their charms, advantages/disadvantages, and in many cases Eve has a higher “solo” reward balance. It’s to say don’t expect any major changes to Eve in that direction any time soon.
