Its time for another Arena thread-- Bittervets reheat the old smugtarded rejections. They are rebutted after the tl:dr:
-An arena can be done with minimal loss to the precious ‘sandbox’, and I argue would rejuvenate it.
-Some pvp revamp needs to happen otherwise the downward trend in subscriptions will continue then gl with any pvp whatsoever.
-Create delocalized or even ‘virtual’ arena(s), where one-time-use ships and mods are cheaper.
“this has been proposed many times already”. Yes, Illustrating that there is alot of interest in it.
“EVE is already an arena… just hit undock”. Right, thats all one has to do to find great content. Even if you do find it, adding a dash of sporting contest is what we’re talking about, which rarely exists.
“it will remove PvP from the rest of the universe”. No. One does not preclude the other. Sport is fun; so is hotblobbing random ppl when they least expect it, ganking, baiting, griefing or any number of other shady ventures. They are not mutually exclusive.
“EVE strives to be a realistic type game” Eve is a bastardization of both game and reality, getting neither quite right. But you know what they DO have in reality: dojo’s, tournaments, matches pairing competitors by skill and weight, with arena’s to watch and/or participate in them.
“organize it yourself”. “You can do it already”. No you really cant. Small scale training and local corps pvp maybe. But the amount of time and effort to make anything large scale happen would be beyond most corps’ means. Even if a huge influential eve corp did make the effort to do it, it would be unsustainable: how do the players get to and from some Null or LS locale reasonably quickly and safely? How would you defend the area against the stream of gankers? If you argue that moderatly quick and safe arena transit is not needed, then that defeats the purpose entirely.
If arena is a big CCP feature-- with de-localized arena’s also for those pirates and far-flung null-secers (or it could be ‘virtual’)-- it will become a thing.
“hold the matches on an honor system” Do you actually play this game? One second the argument is arena’s will take away precious whoring, then the next we’re talking about the honor system.
“they have FW plexes for that”. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and say you havent tried this recently, but that’s not even close to the answer. Sometimes they are not bad, but usually I fly around for an hr+ and consider it lucky to find even a couple mismatch 1v1 fights; usually I get blobbed in the plex.
There is both cake and the ability to eat it with this, and they will feed off each other. I take out bling dreads on sisi sometimes and enjoy it, but that doesnt make we want to ditch the regular server, in fact it motivates me to go play ‘for real’. Outside the arena is where the ‘real’ territory and environment lay. There is no way to make isk or do anything but pvp in an arena. So when Rome built arena’s they gave up on conquering and fighting other civilizations and dissolved the army?
I’ll go one further on arena, and say the cost of ships should be lower for arena use only, and they be one-time use in the arena only. Any one can issue challenges, open or otherwise, under detailed conditions (or not). Does anyone want to see a titan vs 50 bling T3c’s? I do. Big fights can be streamed on billboards at gates or stations.
All skill req’s still apply of course, and there is even more motivation for newbs to keep training and plexing (money cough CCP cough).
Newish or even intermediate players have a major barrier to even medium pvp. Grinding for days or weeks to buy a ship then getting it blown up in 30 seconds doesnt make new players want to stay or pvp. Even space rich players are often afraid to lose their precious bling ships sometimes. I’d love to fly the moros I recently skilled into, but I simply dont have the 2-4b isk to light on fire when on first undock 3 titans show up and melt me. Eve should not just be a game for 10yr trillionaires.
CCP listening to only the entrenched rich elite players is a problem. Go to eve offline and look at avg logons since 2013 (hint, solid downward trend). I know the disciples think they are defending the grail against the tide of superficial insta-gratifiers, but its not entirely like that.
Sorry but this game too often is damn boring and we all know this. CCP trying to save it w pve and expansions will never happen.
Again, its called fun people, and yes [knock knock], this is indeed a game. So even if this does cut in on the outside arena pvp somewhat… is that a horrible thing? So you all just really prefer to cruise around for hours looking for the tiniest scrap of content?
The alternative is making the galaxy smaller and reducing high sec zones as subscriptions dwindle, but this will alienate pvp-averse players and may force them from the game. And you will wind up w an arena anyway. Like it or not, that is the reality.
where currently they only have to play with those they want to.