Bring back old proving grounds

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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As the title says, bring back the old abyssal proving grounds! As I am not sure where to put, I put it into feature and idea discussion.

I know, this is not the first thread about that(and there will be more coming for sure), but there are people who liked it, and so it should come back. There was nothing wrong with them, really not! I dont understand, why content, which is great got replaced with these filaments. Why was it not possible to keep the old arena?
to be honest, I was thinking about running for this CSM. Assuming, I got elected and possibly one of the first things to learn is that CCP removes content you enjoyed for over a year would have been very depressing and demotivating. I dont know if CSM would be that productive at all with me beeing salty all the time and whining. Imagine you come to CSM to bring feedback to them, and then the following happens:
CCP: Here, we are taking away great content and give you filaments for cheap ships!
This was not the feedback I saw on the forums often(or reddit). Anyways, I am glad I did not candidate for CSM, would have been such a depressing experience for me and not so fun for the rest of the CSM and CCP.

All began, when CCP released the dev blog in June, saying they replace great content with content that is not so great at all. I remember, waking up in the next morning with(WARNING: TEARS INCOMING) a tear streaming down my face. I really could not believe what actually was happening. I never expected that to happen, never. There was also no reason for that.

What I also dont understand, is that CCP did not listen to feedback when they first came out in 2018. The same points came up multiple times, which was not matchmaking, solved meta or accessibility:

  • Stalemate issue
  • Timezone restrictions
  • Value of loot was not enought
  • adding a small arena after tier 0, 1 and 2 sites for cheap ships, not making all cheap only

I made about 5 threads here in the forums and another 2 or so on reddit in first half of 2019. And other players made that too. There are like 20+ threads here on the forums with more or less the same points brought up. None had stuff like direct entrance, solved meta(which is a ship balance issue) or matchmaking system. Old arena was more like FW Plexing. You never always got a fight. Sometimes you got, sometimes not.

The real reason abyssal PVP became unpopular was that CCP did not do anything to fix it. It took 4 months to fix a bug making the gate not spwn often enought. Rest was not looked at all, even if I brought it up to CSM back then. And in early 2019 a lot of people liked it. Summer 2019 has driven away a lot of people because of the gate only spawning for 1-2 hours per day.

If you dont know how great this content was, check this out: https://abysra.com/
There you find a lot of clips from great fights happening in the old arena.

Please, bring it back! This is great content you removed, not a balance change or so.
CCP should know that the reason this became unpopular wa becuse they did not listen to feedbck and did not do work that would have taken a few hours of coding.

On a side note, dont do the same misstake with pochven too. Looking at zkill indicates that most kills happen by npc’s, which indicates a low population there.

Edit 08/29/2022: Since its 2 years since the old arenas are gone, I made a quick video about them: Eve Online What was the old arena like? - YouTube

Edit 02/19/2023: Also, as CCP did not do any arenas in the past month, my state of mind on that is: If you don’t want to continue the PG’s, then return the old arena.

37 Likes
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CCP you fail us, You fail at coding, taking another content to create your new content. Taking shortcut by removing a great content was very very bad DEV. The new arena is just bad, it gave the feeling that anyone can be apart of. But in reality, newb has to chance to compete without ELO matchup. Without talking about geolocalition issue, collusion , people cheating this FALSE leaderboard.

You cannot call this a leaderboard. This is a FARM board. You only counting wins. This is not a leaderboard.

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i did not play abyssal arena but i loved watching streams about it

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I think in General, that removing content is a bad idea. I dont remember that this has ever happened before, with CCP taking away content. Why did they not make the effort to keep the old arenas and actually listen to player feedback? It would have been a lot more active then it was in the last months of its existance.

Maybe back in 2006 when they took away the datacore lottery to get T2 BPO’s was the last time CCP removed whole content?

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I approve this!

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From Torvlds Discord I heard that the frequency of proving events is getting decreased, which justifys much less the removeal of the old arena!

check this out at 45:50 and listen carefully what CCP says

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7

That depends how you define content.

I have done a little bit of research on past content removeal since 2003. The only time CCP took away a whole gameplay activity was back in 2012 when they removed the static DED 1 and 2 sites. And there they gave decent reasons for(botting and afk farming), which CCP did not really do with the old provings. There they listed problems which affect other parts of EVE too, especially the “solved meta”.

2016 there was the ban of gambling sites, but these were never introduced by CCP, all player made, so that does not count.

So that means that the removeal of the old proving ground is something completely different than the removeal of the static DED sites. (fun fact: back then the idea of a “proving ground” like the old one came up).

But I can say and most likely confirm: The removeal of the old proving ground feature was the first time in the entire EVE history where CCP directly removed an ingame activity as a whole, without giving an equivalent replace at all.

With the static DED sites, they moved it to the exploration system, so that you have to scan them down. The sites itself remained unchanged. So byebye botting and welcome for those who liked to farm it.

If CCP decided to follow a similar path, they would have either left the old arena alone or gave us a new filament that brings you into the old proving grounds, while these themselves remained unchanged, so still any Cruiser allowed, 1v1, 30 min, 5 min to unlock cache, same scenery etc…
See here: Burner proving grounds as a replacement/relaunch for the old 1v1 arena at the end of abyssal sites

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The fact that you’re referring to it as ‘old’ proving ground contradicts what you are saying.

They have been replaced with an equivalent. It’s just that you don’t like that equivalent. Nothing new there. Content gets nerfed/changed all the time.

Meanwhile CCP have indeed removed content/playstyles before. AWOXing is one such case.

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Except its not really equivelent. The last ones were constant any time of day and any day at all. these new ones only run when CCP wants them too. not when players are looking for them.

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Awoxing is still possible, look for a corp that has set friendly fire to legal. Or look for a corp in low or nullsec. Also, you can still hope to get a director and then steal all the stuff.

If CCP removed content, then you need to ask the question: Can I still do x?
For Awoxing, the answer is yes, for Abyssal PVP the answer is no.

@Fenrir_Stargazer that is exactly what I mean, the old ones were accessible all the time, the new ones are accessible when CCP wants them to be

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Well then almost anything that’s been changed is not equivalent. Wardecs aren’t equivalent to what they used to be because of war eligibility. Sov war is not equivalent. Using jump drives.

It’s not like proving grounds worked 24/7. There were often complaints of periods where they were not opening because of too few players.

By restricting the times CCP are funneling people together so that players know when matches can happen.

Exactly. It’s not equivalent.

There’s more difference between AWOXing of new vs old than there is between these proving grounds.

The answer is objectively; yes.

Exactly. I can’t AWOX by joining any corp. My options are more limited now.

Like it or not. The statement that Abyss pvp is getting unprecedented content removal isn’t true.

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Old Abyssal PVP was a direct removeal of a feature

the others were indirect throught other changes

By the way, the fact that CCP awarded cheating players in the new proving grounds made me even more angry that the old arena is gone

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You can still AWOX any corp, just not in the offensive way by shooting people, you can still steal from the corp, look for one with legal friendly fire or join a corp in nullsec or wormholespace

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And you can still do abyssal pvp.

Sure it’s different now, a few extra hoops to jump through, a more specific list of targets. Just like awoxing.

Cut the self-pitying.

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in the end, you cannot really compare the remove of the old Cruiser 1v1 room to other game mechanics. In the new Abyssal PVP, the format is not the same, mostly T1 BC and smaller and only T2 fits, while the old allowed any kind of fittings. The old one was more like a bonus room in high tier abyssal sites, while the new one can be directly accessed by a filament. So we are talking about two completely different systems that, if we have both, do have nothing to do with each other.

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And I’d say AWOXing today is a completely different system to AWOXing of yesteryear.

Features change in eve. Get over it.

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yeah, but Abyssal PVP? Can you do it whenever you want? For Awoxing the answer is yes, as soon as you find a target, for Abyssal PVP you have to wait until CCP launches an event.

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I remember players complaining that the pvp gates didn’t appear outside of peak times.

I’m not at all denying the system has been fundamentally changed. Or saying you have no grounds to be pissed off.

Just that this is not the first time a feature in eve has been changed so much that participants declared it unrecognisable.

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solved meta was not an issue of the proving grounds themselves it was a ship balance issue

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Hello,
I am wondering if that would be too much of a problem for CCP to have 1 vs 1/ 2 vs 2/3vs3 pockets available 24 hours/7days. If they think there wont be enough ppl to participate in all of them, make the pockets alternate every week.