TL;DR:
Guys helped me understand that there should be better way to do it. Closing the thread soon o/
Warning: all I suggest is to conduct an experiment and analyze the results. Not to commit irreversible changes to the game. This thread is here to discuss possible pitfalls.
Schedule somewhat regular Proving Grounds for T1 frigates with restriction of T1 modules.
(at least once/twice a month)
T1 frigates/T1 modules event may be a demo version of PvP for not only newbros but also anyone who wants to get into PvP.
It can give a basic feeling of a fight with other players and an opportunity to train basic ship control skills like damage application and mitigation, repping and overheating.
Main thing is that to make it affordable for newbros but definitely not free.
Add example fittings to Community fittings to make fitting learning curve less steep. Make these fittings mediocre to encourage to learn fitting game.
Make personal non-profit rewards like personal unique SKINs which you can not sell hence can not buy too, only get through the Proving process.
Promote this on Pulse regularly.
Analyze results (eg retention and sandbox killboard activity of participants).
Remove it or improve it if it works out well.
Thoughts behind this:
T1 frigates family is diverse but seems to be completely out of PvP meta at the moment.
I started to really enjoy PvP only after I got a grip on basic PvP mechanics regarding ship/module management, which took a lot of time and several drops and come backs to EVE spanned over several years lol.
It might seem to lower an interest of big outside sandbox world, but it will most probably have an opposite effect - you got into basic mechanics and ships - you want more.
FAQ
The most important skill in EVE is to find PvP in open world.
Yes! I double this. The gist of my proposal is to incentivize people to learn this BY first letting them get a basic feeling of own ship. This includes but is not limited to:
Remember to turn on your rep in time and NOT overrep
Overheat your modules without them being burnt out
Manage your fight distance to apply or mitigate incoming damage
I strongly believe that nothing but ship fighting with other players incentivize one to learn these basics.
Why not just grab a Rifter and go to Heydieles? Isnât it true PvP experience?
Given experience wonât be less true if a person have visited couple of T1 Frigate Proving events and now got a basic habit of managing damage dealing, tackle and self-repair simultaneously while being under fire and considering it kinda normal.
Why not get alongside experienced players and go fly with and learn from them?
Because there can be language barrier, lack of soft skills etc. and this is pretty common thing.
There should be a reason to seek for someone, unless you actually came to EVE to make friends. Basic interest in PvP and a will to proceed in open world can be such reason.
On the other hand there is a reason to seek for help because you just canât get basic PvP experience without a group. And I think it looks like a stick rather than like a carrot.
Session based gameplay will kill EVE
There should be separation between instanced PvP and PvE.
Instanced PvE is now available at any time and there are a lot of triple-hawk bots flying the Abyss, totally disconnected from outside world (T6 cruisers can be ganked on way out, frigs just donât worth it). It sucks.
Regarding PvP - I think it will not harm the game if these events will not be conducted often. It should be tested.
Vets will obliterate all of the newbros
It is to be found out. Complete absence of experienced players at these events is bad too! You get better when you play against strong opponent (but not necessarily vs blob lmao). Anyways there may be some regulations to adjust it.
Risk averse players will lock up within these events and branch out of sandbox
Not really if these events will not be conducted very often. And if they are to be conducted somewhat regularly, risk averse people receive an opportunity to become much less risk averse.
So in general it can have a positive impact on sandbox PvP - some part of regular participants will go seek adventures in the wide open and they will be more ready for failing and learning than people without any experience.
personally iâd like to see more of the assault frigate stuff, due to logistical complications in game i was unable to attend the assault frigate event which just happened despite skill training for it for the last few months, i had pre-bought a bunch of assault frigates and fit them to enter the event with. as iâm very keen for the abysall glory skin for the wolf & jaguar.
Instanced anything is anti-EVE, against the founding principles of the game.
Why not organize a frigate 1v1 fight club yourself? You donât need some kind of ridiculous âproving groundâ or whatever. Players have organized such projects in the past and can do so again. All it really takes is one motivated person to drum up interest and to keep it going.
I love to participate in instanced proving battles from time to time and it actually warms up my interest in sandbox PvP.
It is also an opportunity to practice in fitting game within tight time limit, trying to align with per-event based bonuses.
I like the way CCP keeps it event-based, I think it solves the problem of instanced against sandbox. Surely this shouldnât be accessible at any moment. Players should be hungry to go seek some adventures.
If all else is equal, then a veteran player will win with better skills and experience. This doesnât help new players as much as it guarantees older players an edge.
The best methods by far have always been and always will be;
1- learn along side vets
2- fly cheap, lose lots and ask many questions.
There may be regulations based on alpha status, skillpoints, character age, pvp activity tracker level etc.
And that is only if there will be such problem, which is not certain.
Restricting pvp so itâs one incompetent player against another, wonât help either of them. Jump into the sandbox, die and learn from skilled players that beat you.
Huge -1 to more instanced play. Itâs only for scared people.
The point is not to completely isolate these two categories.
It is about managing the steepness of learning curve.
There can be both events with T1 frigates only for say Alphas and events with the same format for everyone.
You can find the sign of this approach in Factional Warfare, where we have instances for different size of ships. The problem there though is lack of player base, bots, risk averse farmers etc.
And again, my suggestion is to set an experiment and see what happens.
There doesnât need to be any events. Just learn in the sandbox. It always has and always will be the best place to learn.
âSteepness of learning curveâ is just a other way of admitting being risk averse. Go die and learn from the skilled players that kill you. Analyse your fights and learn from mistakes you make that are capitalised on by the players that beat you.
We donât need more instanced play. That doesnât help the learning curve at all. It just allows people to lock themselves away from the sandbox, because they are risk averse.
This is true. So do number two and go make some friends or frenemies. Keep in touch and join chat channels.
But the feedback loop youâre going to create is players that think anything that isnât a âfair fightâ is cheating. A culture that doesnât work with the rest of eve.
I think you also underestimate how a big part of pvp is just learning how to hunt and survive in the sandbox.
That has absolutely nothing to do with the kind of situation Iâm talking about. We arenât talking about remotely the same thing.
Youâre talking about Saturday night roams or situations where people message eachother and say âlets fightâ. This is makes up barely a spec of the actual pvp that happens in eve.
Iâm talking about entire regions being put to the flame and their inhabitants evicted. 20+ cats ambushing freighters in hisec. Stalking a group for a couple weeks to find out who their indie alts are and which wormhole they live in. Ambushing explorers by sitting in already scanned sites. Baiting that MTU hunter thatâs been harassing you all week. Infiltrating a corp so that when you wardec them you can really clean house.
In eve, in the sandbox, the vast majority of conflicts between players are decided before a single shot is fired. That is what pvp âfeelsâ like.
Teaching players how to hunt or not be hunted is 99% of pvp. And the arena will teach them none of that. It wonât tell you what cyno-bait is, or a log on trap. It wonât teach them why certain ships donât show up on d-scan or how their âsafe spotâ got probed down. It will instead make them dull to it. It will lead them into a false sense of âfairâ.
Instancing is one of the many things throttling the game. Eve cannot be instanced as it requires people being in space to be content for other people, and them be content for someone else, and so forth. Putting people in an isolated bit of space that canât be accessed instead of having them in space is very anti-eve. Wormholes are about as much restricted as you can get, because they can still be accessed, but itâs just a bit more controlled.
You did not seriously think that a playerbase could contend with the will of Filthy Lucre?...there are none that can.
"Specifically, their stance on instanced PvE, and why a lot of the player base despises it.
One of the points that stood out on the stream is that CCP said they are designing future PvE content with limiting possible engagement from other players in mind, because âpeople wonât do stuffâ if they get ganked all the time. So the things weâve been seeing recently, like acceleration gates which lock if x people are already in the pocket are not mistakes or exceptions, but the future.
The fact is, EVE is a 18 year old game, itâs core in-space mechanics are 18 years old and it will never be competitive with newer and more modern games from a âmechanical enjoymentâ perspective. The primary point on which EVE can stay competitive is because it allows for more unrestricted player interactions than other MMOâs. By choosing to prioritize instanced PvE over dynamic player interactions, CCP have thrown out the baby and kept the bathwater.
Every player running abyssals or some other future instanced PvE is a player who removes themselves from the sandbox, who is not a target for roamers, who does not need a corporation to provide support infrastructure/defense. The more that CCP pushes instanced PvE over sandbox PvE, the less that people will do sandbox PvE, and the less that people will go into hostile/neutral space to hunt them because there simply arenât targets. With the disappearance of rabbits comes the disappearance of foxes as well.
Understand why people play your game CCP, there are far, far better games than EVE for people looking for instanced PvE. Yes Abyssals require more APM and better fits than ratting, but 3 ratters in space are part of the PvE > Hunter > Defense ecosystem, 3 hawks in an abyssal are not."
