If the increase in loot will contribute to PVP, this is very good. This will allow to significantly compensate for the risk of losing a ship. But such income should be at least ten times higher than the home system.
I agree that there are people who will avoid PVP by all possible means, here I am powerless to change anything.
Complete avoidance of PVP comes from a simple logical chain.
I farm, my fit is not suitable for PVP, I am guaranteed to lose, I need to run and wait it out or assemble a strong fleet.
Now imagine that you are not guaranteed to lose, but there is a possibility of victory or prolonging the battle until help arrives. Why not take a risk?
Maybe it does sometimes just depend on your mood.
Had a stressful day, not that much time, lots of distractions? Okay, grab some beer, do a mining/ratting session with some friends.
Hungry for some action, a few good corpmates are online? Go poke other players in hope for a fight.
Thats the fine thing about EVE, you can do lots of things. And really nobody can complain about the lack of PvP in this game, if he can always just leave highsec and begin to shoot at something. People will find him and engage him, very quickly. More PvP than he can handle, I am sure.
If a person does not want to fight with someone, then this cannot be changed and it is stupid to discuss.
I am talking about those who are not against PVP, but run away under certain conditions.
I have encountered a situation more than once when Ishtars ran away to the dock so that in 10 minutes there would be several T3 and a pack of takl in the system. This means that these pilots were not against the fight, they were just not satisfied with their ship and the lack of fame. When they found out that this was a solo pilot, then dozens of people wanted to participate.
It is useless to remove the unknown, but if these Ishtars had neutralizers, captures. And saw, for example, the Legion, then it is very likely that the fight would have taken place.
I wrote two articles about the mechanics of cyno, drop and camp.
You just have to admit that there are several toxic mechanics in the game. They did not appear just like that, it was a long process of development. But the current state is terrible.
You canât move between locations without risking going through a gate and ending up in a situation where you die on ANY SHIP with ANY EQUIPMENT. 100% death.
This shouldnât be in the game, you can fly to an anomaly where youâll be caught, but the path to the point of interest should be possible without extreme effort.
The EW mechanics are also garbage. Recently, I got to a camp on a Navi Stubber and there was a Kitsune. Constant suppression from 95 km.
I can capture targets at 60 km⌠Luckily, after eight cycles, one didnât work, which allowed me to escape.
Those you can easily convince: come in a weak ship that they would try to engage and/or stay there for a while to give them the time to reship. But in times of (covert) Cynos around everwhere, I too would instadock as soon as someone enters the local. You simply canât know if itâs just the next âHunter Proteusâ with a full BO/T3 Fleet in the back. Better safe than sorry.
I donât really get what your message is, tho. If you go out and look for a fight in a ship or fleet that isnât totally unengagable (blinged-to-the-death full-boosted implanted faction/t3/marauder) then you will for sure find fights. Maybe not always the fights you want, but you will find people who would want to engage you. There is absolutely no need to catch even the last Ishtar out of a belt if that one doesnât want to fight you. Let him dock, offer him a 1on1 in your Fleet Stabber and if he doesnât want, accept it and move on.
I thought for a long time how to explain what I meant in simpler words.
Why a lot of theoretical reflections if you can make a practical measurement.
Take Brutix, T2 fit (the Abyss Modules are junk that Iâve had lying around for years), active armor, 3% damage implants, simple boosters.
Flew along the filaments.
1 filament. Found myself in the drone region. Half an hour of wasted time. Everyone was running away, flew about 20 systems did not receive a reaction.
2 filament. Tenal region. Incredible success. After two unsuccessful attempts to catch the Ishtar, a system was found in which 4 Ishtars slept. Having put in significant effort, I managed to defeat 3 of them (no joke, try testing 700+ dps on a T1 BC). After that, flew 15 systems to the NPC station where I repaired the modules.
3 filament. Stain. Ok, letâs fly to the nearest concentration of players in Period Basis. Flew 20+ systems and got 4 escaped targets (again escape when changing local chat). later 30+ minutes the whole region knew about me 100%.
And they finally became interested in me.
Look at the screenshot.
Now about what I wanted to say initially.
PVP will be interesting for all participants if they are prepared for it and it is sudden. The clash begins when both sides do not know what awaits them.
If you give the opportunity to escape and then assemble a fleet that is guaranteed to win, then you will get what you see in the screenshot. This is not PVP, this is shooting a helpless target. This is a waste of time for both sides.
The whole region knew that a lone T1 BC was flying. This information did not lead to anyone being ready to fight, only to collect a blob.
If it will be impossible to farm AFK on Ishtar and I have to install PVP modules, then my Brutix would die during the first PVP of Ishtar, energy neutralizers + 600 DPS and thatâs it. But this does not happen in this game.
I kind of think that this is rather like me moaning about my fairly recent Sleipnir losses in Scalding Pass.
I have to say that I agree with this and have done so for a long long time:
I had that ship fit to fight small gangs, sadly I never used it against that type of gang. The first one I tried to take down the SIN that dropped on my alt at a skyhook. I failed because the Arazu managed to get ECM drones on my altâs Gnosis and warp out in very low structure. My Gnosis went down but I said sod it lets go for it and I died when the Arazu came back and hot dropped a Loki gang. I tried I failed, I am not asking for a change in mechanics over that, but I do find it tedious to be hot dropped all the time.
My second loss was because I said lets do it anyway in a gang, knowing that they would drop, they just had more than I hoped and we did not have reinforcements, which comes to the point that often you have to set up to out escalate the opponent.
What you are asking for is a definite catch of your prey with a ship that is not really setup for catching prey. In truth you have to have friends, you need someone good in an interceptor who is fine with losing his ship and another with an interdictor, then you might get your slower and more powerful ship on them. Eve is a team game, as I know to my own cost, most of the time I donât have anyone else with my when I am active, so at this point I think that PvP for me is just avoid the hot drops and donât engage. So much so that I decided not to even bother staying in Scalding Pass. There you go, the realityâŚ
And that is not me moaning, it is me just deciding that I canât be arsed to feed over-geared opponents.
Oh and good luck finding mining fleets, all of the moons are being turned into Metenox passive mining so that is dying as a targetâŚ
The problem is not the loss of the ship. Ships are expendable. The question is how interesting the process is. Defeating Ishtars is not interesting.
Even if you have a good interceptor, what will change?
You will be able to catch more Ishtars.
Will they not collect a drop against you?
No.
The problem is deeper, it is in the combination of a large number of mechanics.
My personal opinion is that CCP could have invested effort in improving the game, but instead they are making a shooter that is a failure in advance and releasing a dubious update with an unsuitable faction (due to the price, 2 weeks after the release and the price of the 2B destroyer, I wrote a post about the âincredibleâ capabilities of the new ships).
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That statement that ships are ammunition, I sort of agree, but I would also say it depends on the wealth and profit of the player concerned. What I would say is ammunition might be lower than what you say is ammunition.
You catch more of them, and that can change the loss/profit situation for the people you are attacking, and maybe make them look to counter, but that would require a campaign in one area rather then using a filament, which I may also add is another impediment on people reacting to you. In your scenario no, however there are others that would see you as a very nice target and drop you by baiting you.
Absolutely, I would also suggest that since CCP removed a timer from medium structures they made small and even medium groups deploy light in nullsec. I have a rule now, that I go in with a carriers worth of non-doctrine ships only, because the pain of rushing to evac for medium structures means that it is pointless to do more than that. Which means often I just donât have the ship that has a chance against what people come in with, so I go and make a cup of tea and wait them out. In the end I found that made it pointless to even be in Scalding Pass.
And now with passive moon mining back with a vengeance, mining fleets from these small to medium groups have all but disappeared. And many are saying what is the point in even being thereâŚ
CCPâs decisions have consequencesâŚ
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Underappreciated post, imho! I feel like we should make a separate topic just to explore a universe without cynos more. Could this be the gamechanger for EVE Online?
With remote regards
-James Fuchs
Just look at WH space.
- groups of all sizes, experience levels and activity levels can actually live there
- fights from small to large, from little skirmishes to huge evictions happening daily
- the pilots actually learn to play, need to understand all the mechanics of the environment to survive, 1 year in WH space and you know 10 times as much as someone who spent 5 years in the usual nullsec alliance
- no asset safety needed, no, not even wanted by the population. They teach their members not to stockpile, to send harvested resources back into the economic circle quickly instead of building the 1000st cap out of them that then just idles in hangar
- successful attacks actually give LOOT, defense- or evactuation operations are mandatory if you want to prevent losing all your stuff and letting it fall into enemy hands. No âbeamingâ stuff away
- mass limitations prevent endless blobbing, if you have 10 and the opponents have 12, than support for both sides is pretty limited, else the hole collapses. If you want to bring more, you have to downgrade to lighter ships. As it should be.
- no local to be instantly alerted. You have to scout actively.
- absolutely no Direct-ISK-rewards. You actually have to collect the loot from the field, and others cn challenge you for it. Fail and others will get it and you get nothing. If you move it out and you get caught, others will have it. If you get sloppy, you get ganked right at the HighSec station where you wanted to sell it. And rightly so.
There is a reason why WH space is the by far best space of EVE. And there is a reason why LowSec degraded from a really nice smallscale piracy paradise into a Hotdropping/Camping zone. Itâs cynos.
Pando once said in an Interview on stream, and I think the topic was Ansiblex Gates, that âeveryone sees the fights that these things generate, but no one sees all those fights that never happen because of those thingsâ - and he is totally right. Instant Power Projection that skips geography is poison for the game. Itâs an addictive and slow poison. And those who use it will fight fiercly and try to convince everyone that it is medicine. But it isnât.
Even HighSec is better than Null and Low these days, for a simple reason: If I want to kill someone in HighSec, I actually have to MOVE and go after him with my crew or predict his route and intercept him. And if he is good, he will escape. If he is bad/lazy/sloppy, I will catch him. And if we are both good or both bad, its a 50:50 chance, fine. But all that âcyno up, jump jump, spread tackle!â is no combat. Itâs slaughter.
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One would end up with loads of ( probably irrelevant ) d-scan notifications. And even if someone is pointing d-scan in your direction it does not necessarily mean they are scanning specifically for you.
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Underappreciated post, imho!! I feel like we should make a separate topic just to explore d-scanning.
Could this be a gamechanger for EVE Online?
With far-off regards,
-YHWH Is Lord
I recall reading somewhere that CCP devs felt the action in WH space was the closest to their design goals or vision of EVE.
And perhaps you do need to know more, pay attention to more, learn more, take more risks and be more on your toes to live there. The problem with that is⌠thatâs not what most players want out of a game. From 2015 (most recent I could find quickly):
While I agree that something like cynos, force projection, and hotdrops probably remove more fights than they create, a business needs to keep in mind that a game canât tilt too far towards âdesign visionsâ that end up appealing to only 5 or 10% of the player base.
CCP needs to spend more time thinking about how to make security spaces and mechanics balances that allow and encourage different populations to live in different security spaces. Rather than mechanics that end up with 80% of the player base stuck in high sec.
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Absolutely, but thats mostly because of the lack of local, the lack of reliable connections and the generally newbro/casual-unfriendly mechanics. Itâs stressful. And I absolutely accept that this isnât exactly what attracts huge numbers of casuals.
But thats not even what I would suggest to CCP. Let null/low have itâs local, let them have their fixed stargate connections with no mass/numbers limitation. Let them have their easypeasy anomalies and the possibility to settle, improve. build up (and protect) multiple neighboring systems if you have enough active players.
Nonetheless, restrict Cynos and (insta)Power Projection in a way that they can strategically deploy forces (to reinforce an attacked home system or to invade a hostile system), but canât shut down smaller everyday ops by jumping forces directly on top within seconds from lightyears away. I believe it would make Low and Null even more appealing for more players to actually settle and do daily business activities even at the outskirts and not only under a cyno umbrella with a ready-to-jump staging fleet.
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Dumb question of the day. Does EVE need more casuals?
FTFY
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Of course! Casuals spend money too⌠if only they were given a reason to.
Absolutely. EVE needs âgrassroot growthâ more than anything else. 100.000 casuals happily grinding missions in HighSec or mining ore or exploring space solo all pay money to CCP that keeps the server running. And they are a pool of people to be convinced that the time and effort to go beyond casual gameplay can be really worth it. But itâs actually hard to convince someone to invest more time and effort into learning a game if that game has bascially all mechanics made around pounding on the weak, feeding the strong. And itâs even harder if the game is so non-interesting at a basic level, that the positive experiences are so low, that one or two negative experiences can easily make a player quit.
As long as curbstomping is made easy and lucrative by the game mechanics, this game will struggle. It currently survives with advertising for multi-accounting, microtransaction mechanics and by feeding off whales. But that wonât last forever, mass-multiboxing is already hurting the attractiveness of this game, it has become an obvious annoyance for many ânormalâ players and we will see a break-even point at some day (if we arenât alyready beyond it). And even whales will quit at some point, in the long run maybe even for simple RL reasons.
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@Syzygium
( Circumventing the Like system ) ( I ainât waiting no 7 hours!! )
Awesome post, Syzy!
o7