Commander Aze

Council Of Stellar Management CSM Campaigns
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61

I disagree very strongly with this concept, i.e. “engagement zones”. It leads to a false impression of what the game is like. And a false impression of what the game is like leads to more new players quitting the game than anything else, in my opinion.

Highsec is currently full of areas war deccers don’t visit. The last war dec I was involved in as a defender, I went about my normal routine and never saw a single war deccer. Not one.

I have been involved as a defender and agressor, in simultaneous war decs, where my war dec agressors were 5 jumps away from me while I soloed a tower. They didn’t once leave their system.

What we do need is more education for new players.

What we need, and for the purposes of this discussion, we’re speaking of war decs, is a way for new players to engage in offensive game play that does not make them feel like paupers forever unable to join in on the fun. War decs need to be made simpler and cheaper so those new players who wish to engage in this type of content can do so.

Rather than the situation we find ourselves in now, where new players have to make a choice between 50 frigate hulls, or paying a war dec fee, for the possibility of fun.

And, we need a way for new players who wish to engage in defensive game play, whether that is by war dec avoidance or to 3rd party in on someone else’s war by remote repping, one side or another, or acting as a scout, or a spy, to learn those options are available to them as well.

We need education for new players that exposes them to their options, not safe spaces where they never learn the game.

I seriously hope you will reconsider the “engagement zone” content.

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62

I have to disagree with the corp size aspect. When I started eve about 6 months ago I joined a small corp of 5 active players. We lived in lowsec and did most of our activities there. It wasn’t easy but it paid off a lot better than sitting in highsec. After a month or so we were in talks with a small alliance with less than 50 members at the time. Eventually they moved from highsec to our pocket. Now we are at least 180 members and steadily gaining players. We run roams and dabble with highsec war decs for profit. We have a very strong Indy wing and are pretty diverse with income activities. So first hand I know its not that hard…but you have to work for it…no one handed that to us.

The whole can’t buy defense is BS too. You need to make friends and be social. You might have to look to other aspects for help as most of the major highsec merc groups don’t fight each other. That doesnt mean there aren’t groups who would be interested in making a buck for some content. How often do you see people advert sincerely with proper price for defense of their Indy corp here or elsewhere? I hardly do and the people who go about it smartly seem to care much better in wars. VMG, Spree, MC, Marmite have worked hard to reach a place where they are a force to be reckoned with but that by no means makes them beyond reproach. Also sometimes it is not shameful to avoid such fights as big merc groups when you are a small corp just starting out. My alliance regularly gets war dec from Marmite and aside from hindering travel at times its not really a huge deal. At least in highsec you’re not always wondering who is a fun =P

63

So after 3 years of running in high sec and building a high sec alliance of Newbro’s I can say with certainty Wars cause people to leave eve due to reduction in content or being forced into an Risk vs reward scenario that isn’t in line with what they want. I do think the NPE needs continued advances and better ways to teach players. However after the NPE ends there needs to be a build up and buy in for continuing to play them game. This is when they hit headlong into wars and quit because of the general silliness that they are as a mechanic. Allies pull suspect for logi even if they are both on the same side, neutral alts ruin what should be even fights or at least ruing the perception of a fair fight with the understanding of a concord sanctioned fight between two groups. Lack of win conditions for either side. and mostly that the best case scenario for winning a war is starving the aggressor of content til they go away. That isn’t good gameplay, its not good mechanics and will lead to where we are with the cancer that is high sec.

in terms of an exact fix, give me a better idea, join the discussion https://discordapp.com/invite/7wSyKp been going for a long time and actively has changed me view from what it was (originally totally remove war decs) to what is can be, a mechanic that has balance and still enables growth and gameplay for people.

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64

I was asking about the bounty thing. Sorry about the confusion, I should have quoted it.

Anyhow, despite me not believing that loosing players who can not defend themselves is a bad thing, unless there is some source to the claim that they hurt new player retention, the current “war declaration issue” remains within the realms of “problems that are being exaggerated”, right next to “bumping drives players away” and “suicide gankers are killing the game”.

Teaching players how to defend themselves would fix far more issues than simply addressing a game mechanic that will - in the end - always work in the favour of those who are smart and against those who would always be naturally selected away anyway.

This was what I was actually asking about.

Edit: Just now saw the big post above, which raises the question:

How many wars have you faught with your new players? I apologize if it may be obvious, but I have no idea who you are and the forum does not seem to offer me a way of figuring it out.

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I should also state this, the odds of CCP taking on a specific fix to a large scale problem is rare, its more likely that the fix will be presented then helped shape by CSM vs the fix coming from the CSM. so considering this more around the concept of I’m involved in the conversation and respect both sides and accessibility to chat about ideas to further shape how I might react to CCP’s fix if they present it during the term.

also I maintain a policy of present a better idea and I’m game to drop mine (not really mine its someones from the last 3 years of talking the same convo on wars.) I dont have a monopoly on good ideas, I know that new people entering the conversation really allows for better ideas to emerge.

Here’s what I can promise and my goals for wars regardless of the system implemented. I want more fights to happen, I want Defense to have good reason to come to the field and bring it, I also want to fix the sillyness related to the issues with mechanics like allies getting suspect flags should have been fixed long ago.

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Oha, I’m in the CSM subforum. Well, good morning Sol…

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67

Was in many wars all of them sucked most of the time we fleeted up the aggressors docked or ran never forming against our t1 mallers and augs

Also to answer the Bounty thing Id like to see the bounty % payout on death be higher than it is so that killing a player with a bounty means something

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check out post 1 in this thread it will dive deep into my background :slight_smile:

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Meaning does not derive from a number. Be it 20%, 40% or 60% … no matter the number, the meaning does not come from the pay-out. It comes from the story behind it.

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gives an incentive to do it. or to risk more to do it. and may help with getting some additional content out there.

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Well I am pretty new to the game in terms of eve at least…6 months in game. I remember when I first started I already knew eve had a learning curve like a brick wall. These type of games draw me in as I tend to get the most out of them. If something is easily mastered most people tend to get bored quickly. Same is true for games that are to easy to get to end game content in.

So what did I do…I used that thing called the internet to look stuff up because tbf NPE didn’t really teach me a whole lot past basic controls. I looked up everything…I spent hours on Google and YouTube. I read thread after thread on the forums. I chatted with folks who killed me in game and didn’t get all salty or pissy over dying. Everyone seems to think being good at something needs to be handed out on a platter or that’s how it usually feels. That doesn’t see players stay long term at all. There is no sense of accomplishment with that…no rush from taking that fight you didn’t know if you’d win.

So sure there are difficult and sometimes unfair aspects in games such as this. That’s what adds to the feeling of accomplishment when you do “get gud”. I go through this still with some aspects of eve, but I promise pandering to low skill lazy people who don’t want to put in the effort will drive more people away that would spend more and play longer as opposed to making things easier and more fair in an attempt to keep players who will still probably quit in a year or less anyway. Seen it in a few games and guess what…I don’t play those games anymore cause they are easy and boring now.

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72

Here’s the thing, Eve in the early game is viewed by people as a casual game prior to their buy in, and by buy in I don’t mean omega vs alpha. the big thing is people have a low level of ■■■■ it I quit before they spend a certain amount of time playing a game. Like last week I bought a game on steam, I quit in 15 minutes and returned the game. Ive played eve for 6…7 idk years so my level of screw it I quit is pretty high. Last year I almost quit due to wars that should say a lot about it as a mechanic.

now people learn in different ways when I wanted to become an FC I studied FC’s how they called targets and why, what they said so I could try and figure out what they intended on doing. Here’s the thing, not everyone is willing to do that, some have handicaps that prevent them from accomplishing that. Developing a less abrasive mechanic is vital to getting more people to keep playing eve long term.

I think CCP stated that if someone played Eve for 7 months they have them … more or less, for life. Id really like to work with CCP on looking at stats on player retention and determining the biggest player retention issues. (with Jump fatigue cut to a nice size I think that will come off the list now thank god) it always bugged me reading the minutes when they asked how many people completed the NPE… that’s not a good stat it really doesn’t matter. How many of those that completed the new NPE subbed to the game, how many stayed playing +30 +90 +120 days. I’m a numbers guy and I deal with programs for Federal government that I look at stats like this to make programs better and help remove pain points in the processes often under huge pressure (disaster response work) but that’s the mentality i bring to it.

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I can appreciate actual stats, but I’m the end I still know from experience in many other games that if you make a game easy to master the player base will stop playing sooner as its a lot easier to become bored. Lazy people who don’t try to learn on their own or go off crying when they die instead of trying to learn from it tend to not stick with games long anyway. I would love to see some of CCPs metrics about that though. Until then I can only rely on my personal observations and experiences.

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It’s less about making it easier than it Is about removing abrasive mechanics that cause people to quit. Eve will always be more difficult than Other MMOs and that’s good. It needs that depth. What it doemst need is mechanics that make it a pain in the ass to play :slight_smile:

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And I feel like that’s where a lot of the learning comes in. As a newer player myself I had to learn how to avoid loss to a point I could outpace that loss to make gains. When we have a Marmite war dec we use out of alliance alts to haul stuff. We use scouts to move around. We check zkill to see where they are active before OPs. Do we always run successful OPs…no, but we do enough things well to want to log in tomorrow and pick it back up. Complaining about highsec wars for example…but not taking the effort to gather Intel, scout, find somewhere to avoid them, or have planned to hire some defense ahead of time (making friends helps here) then you don’t deserve to be handed that safety by CCP making it harder for the aggressor. Its already hard enough to be the aggressor…most of our highsec wars end up being botters, they drop corp/quit till its over, or they move away. If they move…we track them down…then they quite playing.

There needs to be more incentives for them to fight or to defend rather just quit. What those incentives would be I can only suggest things but as a newer player I think others may have more answers in that area. What would have motivated you to actually defend what you had or your turf? What would make you want to participate in a war as a small highsec corp who might have a lot of noncombat players?

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The invitation has expired. I have no idea how this stuff works.

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Wardec Project - https://discord.gg/ensfjug

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78

“You do not have permission to send messages in this channel.”

Nevermind, figured it out.

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Thanks Toxic forgot to make my invite not expire :stuck_out_tongue:

80

This guy is single-handedly the classiest guy alive. Worked with him IRL and in-game he’s got my vote and hopefully everyone else. I fully endorse this candidate.

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