“Eve Online is a PvP game and PvP is the heart of the game, without PvP the game will die…”, I heard this a lot, but will it?
*** For the short TLDR version skip to “The End”. *** (End of this original post)
In Eve Online PvP is unconsented most of the time in the form of ganking be it for profit or LOLs. Fact is the guy getting killed does not care if he was killed for profit or LOLs. He just knows he lost his ship and cargo. If he/she has played for a while they are fine with it because they are used to it. To a new player that feels bad, and they quit playing. A game not retaining its new players will slowly shrink because the veterans get tired of just fighting each other and very few new players come into the game and stay so “fresh meat” is becoming less and less.
I have watched a bunch of Eve streamers and most of them do PvE content. They run missions, do exploration , do abyssal or help people with in-game questions. (I have not seen any incursions being streamed yet, but that may because other players can come into incursions and steal their team’s loot and bounties.) This tells me that PvE is the content they like to run. That being said instanced, PvP like the tournaments are also very popular, but that along with duels, are all consented PvP. Everyone involved in the tournament or duel knows exactly what is happening and what they have entered into. Looking at tournaments or duels in that way it is more like an incursion or abyssal and nothing like a gank.
Some people say that items (ships, modules, implants) in-game only have a value since someone can take the items from you or destroy it in PvP and that causes you to assign a value to the item, but I don’t think that is entirely true.
I think a big part of the value of an item is also assigned by the player him or herself and is related to the amount of time it took them to get it as well as the player’s own attachment to the item. It might be their first ship, it might be their favourite ship because of appearance or how it performs in the content the player is consuming.
I mean your IRL car, TV, PC, laptop, mobile phone, watch, clothing etc only has value to you because someone can steal it from you. I think you bought them because you wanted them, and they had value to you even before you owned them.
I have recently watched streamers complaining about balance in-game because they can no longer take out their Titan solo to do ratting or run high level missions because there are people out there that just waiting to gank them with a swarm of very small and inexpensive ships. Did PvP, in this case, cause the player to assign too a high value to their Titan so that they are too scared to fly it because of fear of losing it? It’s IRL like leaving your Ferrari in your garage at home because you are too scared to drive it because someone will bump it. What fun do you get out of it if you can’t drive and show it off to other people?
Might this be the reason why most PvP in-game happens in frigates? Seems a little limiting if you have access to over 350 ships and you only use a few small ones due to fear of loss.
“The End”
Let’s see how PvE holds up in of Eve Online.
- Set up a PvE server with PvE content and only consented PvP (duels and fleet duels/tournaments) content. It does not have to be a very big server, I mean no one is going to play on it and its economy will fail right? In other words, it won’t last too long.
- Let us freely transfer between the two servers with the jump clone system with access our assets (Ships, hanger contents, ISK, PLEX etc). So people can have somewhere to go and rat, run high level missions and run incursions in their crazy blinged out ships or Titans and show off their toys to other players. “Can’t be done…” → RuneScape can and it is old, very old, try harder.
- Upgrade the belt NPC pirates to also use PvP equipment like webs, scrams and neuts like the NPCs in the events. Scale them according to the level of the systems you are in. For example, 1.0 and 0.9 uses frigates with only short-range webs to still allow warping out. 0.8 and 0.7 use frigates and destroyers short-range webs and scrams and so on and so forth. 0.6 and 0.5 adds cruisers and short-range neuts to the mix. To prepare them for the heart of the game, PvP, so they can join the big boys on the PvP server when they feel ready.
- Wormhole NPC pirates = NULL sec NPC pirates.
- Put some NPC pirate gate campers on the PvE servers that will try and “gank” you, using PvP equipment like webs and scrams but scale them according to the level of the systems you are in like the belt rats. Once again in preparation of PvP with the big boys on the PvP server when they are ready.
- Add some of those new “upgraded” NPC pirates to the relic and data sites to make the “hacking” game a little more challenging. Again, for PvP preparation.
- Make shared bounties and loot on NPCs. If you do 20% of the damage, you get 20% of the bounty/site clear pay out. As for the loot, a container drops for each player containing some of the dropped loot. Some will contain loot items while others will contain only ammo or metal scraps based on the percentage damage done.
I know Eve was developed as a PvP sandbox and PvP is the “fun” and “exciting” part of the game. But maybe a PvE server can help pay the bills (wink, wink, nudge, nudge at the financial director).
