An old article about ideas UO and Crowfall developer in PVP

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Karak_Terrel

You don’t even understand the simple concept of market segmentation

You should understand what words mean before you use them. Market Segmentation is about identifying portions of your market that are higher growth or higher profit, and developing strategies to market to those portions.

What you are referring to (or trying to) is Niche Marketing, the process of identifying a specific higher growth or higher profit market segment and developing your product to address their needs better than the less-targeted competition.

What you are missing here is that both these related strategies are intended to help a company address higher growth and higher profit opportunities.

This is not niche marketing:

This is “painting yourself into a corner because you identified a non-growth market segment, and then also failed to address their needs through proper game design”. One reason EVE had any success at it is because other companies are too smart to develop a product for a non-growth market.

@Karak_Terrel

Since you don’t get the core concept of this game it is pretty meaningless to say “PvP makes up 15% or less”. You somehow think only actual combat “counts” as PvP. That is not how this game works. This is a sandbox where you always compete against other players in various forms.

Again, please work on understanding words before you use them. Here you’re trying to pretend that ‘competition’ means ‘PvP’. Virtually all MMOs feature competition for resources, market competition, competition for drops etc. ‘Competition’ is not PvP.

The thread topic is about non-consensual player combat and it’s effect on the player base. My posts and links are about player combat. The statistics I linked from CCP Quant use PvP as player combat. Your own comments are in defense of and support for non-consensual player combat, specifically in high sec.

I know you don’t want to address the issue that PvP is a minority activity in EVE, and that non-consensual PvP is the minority of the minority, but pretending everything in the game is PvP won’t make it so.

@Karak_Terrel

I guess with you it is a mix of completely not understanding the game and some deep rooted white knight feeling. But mainly a complete lack of understanding the game.

I use information from credible industry sources and verifiable data to base my opinions on. You use “the game must support non-consensual PvP because I like non-consensual PvP”. Guess who doesn’t understand how gaming businesses work?

@Karak_Terrel

EVE has a fabulous design.

Yep those steadily dropping player numbers are surely proof of “fabulous design”. As is the recent desperate flailing of CCP to do anything at all to correct those nose-diving numbers. In fact, if you remove Alphas, bots and multi-boxers from the above numbers, you’re likely down to less than 10,000 actual players average on-line these days. To support hundreds of employees and the approx. $50 million per year burn rate of CCP’s expenses, they need to do better than that.

@Karak_Terrel

What I do is essentially piracy. I want to play this game without grinding and that is best done by stealing from others.

Well you can call it piracy or whatever makes you feel good about it. From a game population perspective, what you actually are is a parasite. Each parasite in the game needs dozens if not hundreds of healthy victims in order to continue leeching resources from them. Each parasite chuckles to himself while stroking his ego, maybe goes on the forums to brag about his mighty battles against mining vessels and laugh about the tears of the fallen.

Meanwhile, every single parasite has annoyed, irritated or driven off dozens if not hundreds of potential players. They may not all quit, but they will certainly all complain about the parasites in EVE to everyone who will listen. That’s not a sustainable growth model.

Go into any public chat in any major MMO these days and say “Hey fellas I’m kinda bored here, I was thinking about trying out EVE Online. Is that a good game?”. Then you will see what the general public perception of EVE is like.

Hint: It’s not positive.

@Karak_Terrel

It seems you never experienced something like this in EVE or your wouldn’t advocate for changing it. It is exactly what Hilmar talks about when he says “magic moment”.

Well, your ‘facts’ have been proven wrong, your understanding of words questionable, your view of MMO history skewed. I suppose it’s no surprise that your reading comprehension isn’t that good either. I in fact did not advocate for changing it but only pointed out that credible industry sources and EVE’s own history show that non-consensual PvP, especially in starter regions, is bad for the population growth of a game.

I’m indicating this is one poor design choice among many in EVE. If the other design choices were much better, EVE could still support non-consensual PvP and thrive. Since it is clearly not thriving, it means that some of the bad design choices have to be reviewed and addressed.

And sorry, but if that means your niche of a minority of a segment of parasites goes the way of the dinosaur, then evidence shows that it won’t be much of a loss to EVE at all.

[Karak_Terrel]

@LlamaDrama

A lot of players prefer ‘safe’ mmorpgs. Safe areas. Most players do by a long way. The ones who prefer the dangerous/open ffa full loot pvp are a niche among players.

Yes and EVE is the game for that niche. Because if you didn’t notice it is a full loot PvP sandbox. Otherwise why would you be here and cry about it.

Lucky for you there are other games who aren’t EVE and are doing exactly what you want by not being full loot MMOs. Why not play those?

@LlamaDrama

Your idea that hi-sec players should be in null is short sighted to the extreme. Many players don’t want to live in null, and would rather quit.

I don’t think highsec players should live in null. I think they should accept their role, like many do, and not cry about it on the forums to get the game changed. That is really all

[Vokan_Narkar]

@Karak_Terrel

Rust is a survival game. It is a lot harsher and overall extremely different than EVE. There are some similarities, but I would not classify them the same. There isn’t really a complex economy with trade, speculation, manipulation and piracy in that game. Things like that made UO and EVE very special and are completely missing from those type of games.

Could you stay true to the argument you used for a once? You said non-consensual PvP sandbox. And Rust is definitely matching that description. Of course there are obvious differences, it is not a space game for example. But thats not what you were argumenting with.

I don’t deny that for its super specific niche, EVE is probably the only game that offers all it offers, but comparing it with other games and saying EVE dominates these games with popularity/player count is just not true.

@Karak_Terrel

How is “unfair” PvP not real?

I specifically used quotes to prevent discussion about what is fair and real pvp. There are two groups of players obviously and one will simply not consider cases where one side is extremely outgunned or outnumbered a fair or real pvp.

I don’t say I agree, but I respect their opinion and I try to see the problem from both sides. That is all.

Fact is that when you take the gate and there is a 10+ man gatecamp you can’t do anything (edit: unless you knew about it and came there to drop them ofc). From the definition it was PvP because players killed players, but in reality it is just automatic loss and you don’t get to play. Again, not saying gatecamps are wrong, I have no problems with them and therefore I did not participate that gc thread. PvP in EVE is simply very different to the other games PvP, sure it matches reality - if it was a real game players would behave exactly this way, but it is not really fun for the outgunned/outnumbered party, is it?

[Karak_Terrel]

@Vokan_Narkar

Could you stay true to the argument you used for a once?

Calm down man. I think we just have a little confusion here. I was talking about games like UO and EVE and Rust is clearly not in the same category even if I used a term to describe EVE that may encompass Rust as well probably.

I just think it attracts a different audience.

@Vokan_Narkar

Fact is that when you take the gate and there is a 10+ man gatecamp you can’t do anything (edit: unless you knew about it and came there to drop them ofc). From the definition it was PvP because players killed players, but in reality it is just automatic loss and you don’t get to play.

You are again making the obvious mistake that you limit the PvP to the actual act of combat. In most cases you have lost the fight before it even starts. But why you happen to be in that situation is highly important and part of the PvP. If you can’t see that then… sorry… there isn’t really much we can talk about because you somehow managed to ignore the most important part of EVE PvP.

[Vokan_Narkar]

@Karak_Terrel

Yes, EVE is special that way. And it changes a lot how the game is approached. I don’t think suicide ganking would exist the way it does if it wasn’t for multiboxing. Alts completely cancel the effect the security status has. I would not say that it would vanish, but it would go back to fleets of individual players.

I wasn’t there from start, I am still relatively new player. But from what I read and heard, the nerfs to ganking were made because of the multiboxers or in a time there used to be more players.

What happened is that multiboxers were not affected by it at all and multiboxing currently remains basically the only way to perform suicide-ganking. And that is wrong in my opinion. As a player who no longer wants to run 8 accounts in same time, I just cannot gank that overpowered Orca that is plaguing highsec unless I find at least 8 more players/accounts flying at least 1t Talos assuming the Orca has ■■■■ fit. And even then it will not be isk effective most of the time but a kill for the sake of the kill. Same to freighters. w/e not a thread for this discussion anyway

[Vokan_Narkar]

@Karak_Terrel

You are again making the obvious mistake that you limit the PvP to the actual act of combat. In most cases you have lost the fight before it even starts. But why you happen to be in that situation is highly important and part of the PvP. If you can’t see that then… sorry… there isn’t really much we can talk about because you somehow managed to ignore the most important part of EVE PvP.

I do see it and I have no problem with that. But I absolutely understand why some players don’t get it.

@Kezrai_Charzai has one good point. Not sure if you acknowledged. If all the players who we are preying upon left EVE who wins?

[Karak_Terrel]

@Vokan_Narkar

I wasn’t there from start, I am still relatively new player. But from what I read and heard, the nerfs to ganking were made because of the multiboxers or in a time there used to be more players.

Which nerf are you referring too. I don’t recollect any nerf that was because of multiboxing. In fact multiboxers that gank is rather a “new” phenomenon and appeared only with skill injectors, since you can basically make free omega alts with that.

[Vokan_Narkar]

From various threads about ganking I heard about:
crimewatch 2.0 (not really know what it changed, when I started it was already in effect)
freighter EHP buff

no more idea, but CODE members are using this argument a lot so maybe you tell me?

[Karak_Terrel]

@Vokan_Narkar

@Kezrai_Charzai has one good point. Not sure if you acknowledged. If all the players who we are preying upon left EVE who wins?

She projects here feelings and ignorance onto those players. Most players I know get the fact that suicide ganking and wars play an important part in the economy and even the remote appearance that someone could shoot you at any time creates a special dynamic and opportunities they enjoy and exploit. And all this even if they are not actively participating in combat.

People like Kezray/Balos have a completely reductionist idea about certain game principles they only watch in isolation and completely miss the complex interactions and implications those game mechanics have on other parts of the game. In short he/she simply doesn’t understand the game. And I’m really done talking to Balos, it’s like talking to those people who pretend the earth is flat. It may have a certain entertainment value at first, but it gets old really really fast.

@Vokan_Narkar

crimewatch 2.0 (not really know what it changed, when I started it was already in effect)

Crimewatch 2.0 was a complete overhaul of how highsec mechanics worked. A lot of the mechanics where made more obvious with the visible timers, the safety switch etc. I think it was right around the time when CODE. was founded. All ganking technics CODE. uses are basically post-crimewatch 2.0. The ganking community pre-crimewatch was a lot more diverse and less organized.

@Vokan_Narkar

freighter EHP buff

There where several. But we still had freighter fleets when those nerfs came and they where always lots of players with moderate amounts of alts. What some say is that those nerfs forced them to multibox. I say it was the injectors and just simple evolution by people like Kusion pushing what was possible as a solo player with multiboxing.

Oh and there was also the hyper-dunking nerf. One of the most fragile and easy to disrupt ganking methods, but CCP somehow removed it anyway. Maybe that pushed some over the edge to go for actual multiboxing back then.

I only gank miners with two alts, so I can only speak from what I hear from others and experienced in the freighter fleets we used to have (could not do that anymore because of RL commitments at some point).

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Vokan_Narkar

@Kezrai_Charzai has one good point. Not sure if you acknowledged. If all the players who we are preying upon left EVE who wins?

This is the information contained in the OP’s linked article. This is the information contained in the larger discussion of UO that I linked a little later (the post-mortem with the devs).

Games are an ecosystem. They have a life cycle. Gamers need to come in, participate in the game, learn how the game works, decide it’s good for them and stay.

Parasites preying on people in the safer zones does not lead to good publicity, does not lead to new players getting interested in the game, does not create good buzz among the gaming community. Once word gets around that’s how EVE mechanics work, players leave. Then the ganking gets boring and infrequent, and even PvPers start to leave.

Every parasite in the game loses the game more players than it retains. Many more.

There is no endless source of naive victims to prey upon. People in the game leave, people not in don’t sign up, people who sign up get clued in fairly shortly and decide ‘not for me’. Hence the nose-diving player population, despite opening the game up to free play.

Again, however, this is a minimal problem in the overall context of EVE. It’s a negative against long term growth and retention but it isn’t actually the source of EVE’s problems.

As for your question “who wins”, if the easy prey in safespace stops being available, then these pretend-PvPers have to leave their nice safe high-sec zones and fight real PvPers.

And that, of course, is exactly what they’re terrified of.

[Salt_Foambreaker]

@Kezrai_Charzai

Parasites preying on people in the safer zones does not lead to good publicity

“Everyone who enjoys a different playstyle than me is a Parasite”

“Everyone who is different than me…”

“If there are more of us, then you must change”

You are not supposed to be posting Donald.

[LlamaDrama]

Check out how safe hi-sec is guys. “Noone ganks any more” said gankers on this forum (They hope CCP won’t turn attention their way).

Hell House | Corporation

Just 2 guys suicide ganking stuff that goes down the sivala pipe with anything worth over 200m, using cheap cruisers and battlecruisers.

Hi-sec has never been safer!

I wonder how many people auto pilot down these routes only to find they are suicide ganked along the way. Doesn’t matter if you’re an elitist with no life who thinks people shouldn’t be using auto pilot. To normal people who have real lives to think about, it’s a very handy feature. It’s a feature and many players use it. If they are ganked and quit the game? EVE didn’t need those subscriptions anyway. Right gankers?

As i’ve said previously, gone are the days where it’s dangerous only if you take a packed freighter or industrial out in hi-sec. These days gankers are hungry for targets and they now go for all kinds of ship types, even ones that don’t yield profit.

This is a major problem for EVE. Ganking the pipes is too easy and too profitable. The number of gankers has grown while the number of sheep has diminished. Which is why gankers go for many kinds of target now, even if not profitable. I wonder how many players this has cost the game over the years.

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Salt_Foambreaker

“Everyone who enjoys a different playstyle than me is a Parasite”

Learn to read with actual comprehension. It’ll open new worlds for you.

@Kezrai_Charzai

The design of EVE means that PvP needs to be integrated into the game throughout, and encouraged, and enabled.

@Kezrai_Charzai

EVE can be designed for real PvP.

@Kezrai_Charzai

The issue is poorly designed competitive balance and opportunity and reward across the board. PvE and PvP both.

@Kezrai_Charzai

You can have more combat, more conflict, and more destruction simply by properly designing the game to encourage those things.

@Kezrai_Charzai

The first issue is, you don’t kill off your existing clients. You don’t attack their playstyles because you think “they aren’t playing right”. You introduce new and more interesting ways to engage in PvP and let people gradually shift focus to those things rather than eliminating the things they already do.

Really, you guys need to stop fighting the pretend-carebears in your head, and reaping pretend-tears, and pretending that I’m somebody who’s apparently been banned or something (my account is likely 10 years older than whoever ‘Balos’ is).

I get that you can’t handle rational discourse. I get that you’re terrified the game may take your safe comfortable niche away and make you fight against real PvPers. I get that you’re lazy and you don’t want to leave high sec for a little pew pew and you just keep asking CCP to somehow magically provide fat weak prey for you in high sec.

The way to deal with these issues is by addressing them and finding better ways to design the game. Pretending isn’t going to fix anything.

[Solecist_Project]

@Vokan_Narkar

(not really know what it changed, when I started it was already in effect)

I can help with that.

Back in ye old days people didn’t need to suffer from what is pretty much equivalent to a 15min death sentence when they stole from a can. They got flagged for legal combat (aka no CONCORD intervention) with the whole corp that owned the can, exception being of course NPC corps.

Back in ye old days there was no protection button both meant to protect people from making mistakes and deterring them from “breaking out of the norm” by, for example, trying stealing ore from a jetcan miner. The same “stealing from a jetcan miner” which has been called “brilliant” (due to it being unforeseen player behaviour) by former CCP devs, by the way.

Back in the slightly older days there were 2 million ISK wardecs a new player could start as soon as he was able to afford and the game still worked perfectly fine and grew, year after year, until CCP started listening to the people who naturally dropped out due to not being competitive enough.

CrimeWatch 2.0 marked the end of the era of competitiveness, where the strong willed and smart were able to flourish and those who lacked either one, or both of these traits either improved or perished. CrimeWatch 2.0 also marked the beginning of the state the game is in now, differently explained in an interview by a dev, calling it “expanding the fanbase”, which I more appropriately call “mainstreaming”.

If there was a single paragraph describing literally all of those who complain about gankers, bumpers, wars, people who mine “their roids” and whatever, it is:

These people are not competitive at all and they never will be. Naturally they must complain and beg to higher forces (CCP in this case) to protect them from the “evil” people who do nothing wrong but simply being better. Their nonsensical belief in their stagnant, deadlocked, mediocre wannabe individuality goes so deep, there is no room for self improvement at all.

[LlamaDrama]

Here we go.

So you’re suggesting anti-social behaviour/ganking is too hard now. Been all downhill since they very mildly nerfed it. EVE would still have 500k subs if only criminal behaviour wasn’t mildly nerfed.

I have another theory. They didn’t go anywhere near far enough and as a result unchecked ganking has severely harmed the subscriber count. You can’t travel through hi-sec without high risk of being blown up by some jackass. Doesn’t matter if you’re in a freighter, empty or not doesn’t matter, 250k ehp batteship, doesn’t matter. Cheap t1 battleship, doesn’t matter. Battlecruiser. Doesn’t matter. All of these ships are ganked nowadays when going through hisec.

I see they target a lot of newbies in industrial ships, which even with a cargo of just 50m get blown up because they’re so easy to gank.

If you use the game feature known as autopilot you are highly likely to be targetted too.

[ISD_Dorrim_Barstorlode]

Removed some off topic posts.

[Valiran_Teleros]

In this thread: entitlement, namecalling, a whole lot of bad-faith debating and a few outright lies. Jesus Christ.

You know, with EvE being the sandbox that it is, there’s always going to be friction between players with different views of how the game should be. But changing certain core concepts of the game that make it unique and appealing is, in all likelihood, not a very good idea.

And really, @Kezrai_Charzai? I can agree that the current PvE system needs improvement, but insinuating that EvE’s PvP system isn’t "real PvP? You’re diving straight into the “No True Scotsman” fallacy there. While I do believe that completely unrestricted PvP would be a bad thing, I also believe that removing the ability to engage other players at will would also be a bad thing.

I do agree that there need to be some kind of limits and consequences to PvP violence because unlike @Solecist_Project I don’t believe there are enough people in the world “competitive enough” to keep it going.

Furthermore, EvE’s PvP systems don’t stop at shooting each other. Someone who has been docked up in a station for the last decade and regularly trades on the market to their profit is also participating in PvP, and so is someone hunting around for an ore anomaly they can mine the richest asteroids from before anyone else gets there.

EvE is not like World of Warcraft, it’s like Ultima Online, DayZ, and Rust mashed together with a few other games and various sci-fi shows before getting launched into space.

Ultimately, it sounds like some people just can’t accept that EvE is different from other MMOs, and there is nothing wrong with that. If it’s not your cup of tea, there’s nothing wrong with that either! I don’t play racing games or sports games because I prefer shooters, RPGs, and real-time strategy games.

That doesn’t mean that I rag on other gamers for playing Forza, or that I demand the devs add guns to the cars so I can blow up the other racers because it would make the game more fun for me.

If I can accept that, why can’t everyone else? Hell, have a semi-relevant Jimquisition video while you’re at it.

@Karak_Terrel

Oh and there was also the hyper-dunking nerf. One of the most fragile and easy to disrupt ganking methods, but CCP somehow removed it anyway. Maybe that pushed some over the edge to go for actual multiboxing back then.

What’s hyper-dunking?

[Nevyn_Auscent]

You could board a ship in space with a criminal timer. To summarise you just jumped into a new ship just after they popped you with someone else or an alt pulling concord to elsewhere in system. Basically you never had to stop shooting.
CCP deemed any mechanic that could achieve this an exploit and changed a couple of things.

[Mortlake]

@LlamaDrama

I wonder how many players this has cost the game over the years.

A lot, I imagine.

The vast majority of those being the type that wipe their asses with cacti repeatedly whilst writing a succession of increasingly angry letters to the Royal Horticultural Society complaining that the spikes are too sharp.

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Valiran_Teleros

And really, @Kezrai_Charzai? I can agree that the current PvE system needs improvement, but insinuating that EvE’s PvP system isn’t "real PvP?

Understandably, some people react to only one line in a conversation, because they either skimmed, skipped, or simply didn’t understand other parts of it. Here’s what I said about ‘real’ PvP:

@Kezrai_Charzai

PS: I don’t really care about ‘fair’ PvP although I have a preference for what I consider ‘real’ PvP (a reasonable risk to both sides)

The OP and the thread is about the effects of widespread non-consensual PvP, most particularly of higher players against lower players (‘ganking’ and ‘PKing’). When I point out people are being ‘pretend PvPers’ it’s because they are not in fact ‘being competitive’.

They are hovering around in safe space, knowing they won’t be attacked because the rules there protect them, until they see a target they can take that will be worth the loss of the ship they are in. They are hiding from real PvP.

They even call everyone else in high sec ‘carebears, afraid to step out of their comfort zone’ while they themselves are hiding from the real PvP in the entire rest of the game.

It just doesn’t get much more lame or hypocritical than that. This isn’t about being competitive. It’s about justifying cowardice and parasitism.

At any rate, as said many times already but apparently no one gets it… non-con PvP is a small but persistent negative influence on EVE as a whole. The only people that really care about it are those that get ganked more than a couple times, and the pretend-PvPers who need to operate in safe space because they can’t cut it elsewhere.

EVE’s primary issues are deeper than a minority population of gankers and gankees in a fraction of EVE space.