EVE has some of the most amazing and dynamic PVP any game has to offer.
Up until now, competitive PVP has only been accessible through organizations such as the AT, EVE NT and other various tournament formats, and these were not readily accessible for your average pilot, since it required a decent amount of dedication of time, energy, planning, scheduling etc.
These arena formats make it possible to jump in at a low level and have the potential to take competitive PVP to the highest level in various formats.
Having lower level formats such as T1 frigate arenas will allow for new players to get a taste of fun and engaging PVP while learning the essentials and simultaneously serve as a stepping stone to the more advanced, higher tier arenas.
A match making system where you can choose the teams you want to fly against would be nice to see developed, along with a division system for different levels of skill. This could be accompanied with restrictions in lower divisions, with restrictions being lifted the higher up you go.
Having a feature where you can spectate pilots in the arena both from outside as from the pilots perspective is key to making this watchable as an esport.
Another idea is having a standalone client specifically for arena PVP that is tied into TQ’s economy to create an environment that has direct response times instead of 1000ms server ticks.
I am very excited to see these arenas develop to their full potential which will allow a whole new (and old) wave of players to come and enjoy the brilliant PVP EVE has to offer.
These ■■■■■■■arenas shouldn’t be in the game, period. I just knew it when they introduced the ■■■■■■■abysmall sites they would go down this slippery slope and bit by bit tear down what makes EvE unique: while undocked you are never perfectly safe.
For the player? Maybe.
For the audience? Snoozefest.
Wow, a ship is spinning in a slightly different circle from the other one. Oh wow, the big ship can’t hit the little ship since it’s guns can’t track? So that means it’s dead and can’t do anything? So are we just gonna wait and watch the health slowly drop? Wow, riveting.
This is why EVE Online “esports” can’t/won’t survive. It’s boring garbage as a spectator esport.
I don’t really mind these as an event, but I’d honestly hate to see them become a permanent feature.
Outside of the context of periodic tournaments, I find instanced/structured PvP that is safe from outside interference to be somewhat abhorrent and conceptually very anti-eve.
At the same time, they’re clearly not structured enough to function as a viable, credible, tournament platform, either, and the obvious best approach to achieve victory is to game the queuing.
This only works for the small number of pilots who were already invested into the PvP aspect of EVE Online. Beyond the 2k ish or so people, it’s got no draw from any wider audience.
Why do you think CCP killed it? It wasn’t pulling in enough attention or players compared to the expenses.
Edit: not to mention, the hundreds of people who openly admit that they only cared about AT because they could gamble on the results.
CCP need to focus less on trying to do the same thing other developers are doing, and more on what made EVE a success in the first place, and allowed it to last so long in such a competitive industry.
Every MMO that copied WoW is dead, and WoW itself has been on a steady decline since they removed all forms of player-driven content from the game years ago.
EVE’s only hope is it’s uniqueness, and you won’t keep that by adding in WoW Arenas and trying to copy the mind-numbingly boring e-sports fad.
The alliance tournament only worked because they gave out prizes that are worth hundreds of billions of ISK, to be honest. I can name only maybe 2 people out of everyone I’ve known in EVE up until a few years ago who watched more than five minutes of it.