Conflict Drivers

Communications Center General Discussion
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Over the years CCP have added various changes to the core game that removes the opportunity for shooty shooty action. You know the kind of thing this game is supposed to revolve around and which has led to the state of affairs we have now… a stagnant cesspit of mediocrity.

I’ve been playing this game off and on for nearly 15 years and there is still nothing out there like it now but holy hell is it in a bad place now or what? So much so that they’ve added PVPing NPC’s to replace the players and to break up that blue donut that is of their own making!

I’ll list a few of CCP’s daft decisions off the top of my head and maybe you people can list more changes… hopefully the powers that be see sense and revert some of these stupid changes and ADD conflict drivers instead of putting cotton wool play-suits and padded helmets on the mouthbreathers.

  • Bubble Immunity: Yes your camped in, clone jump, deal with it or maybe even call for help and have a fight!
  • High Sec Safety Button: How did we manage without it as noobs? /s
  • Jump Gate/Wormhole Warnings: Don’t go there it’s scary!
  • Citadels/Asset Safety: So your POS died and all the stuff magically appeared in high sec! Er no…
  • POS: Ever seen (or caught :grinning:) a lone Dread or Mothership bashing a citadel?
  • Killmails: Free intel and… oh sorry I can’t fight you I might go “in the red”.

A short list, that can be added to I’m sure by others…

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Ignorant person. Structures are a replacement for POS and Outposts. If you lost access to your outpost, items got no where and just stayed there. Furthermore, asset safety brings your stuff into low sec into designated stations that are heavily camped or are outright horrible places to get anything back from, like Faspera or Misaba. Learn a mechanic before you complain about it.

Bubble immunity helps to create fights because you cannot just hellbubble a pipe and keep everything safe beyond a certain point. You can also not keep an attacker locked in a system while people elsewhere keep ratting merrily like nothing happened.

Yes. During an attack of a structure, the owner dropped a Dread on another dread that attacked with us. Our dread died to this defender dread attack in cooperation with his structure. It took ages to overcome the capacitor and rep of this defender dread, while we had to manage keep the neuts of the structure in check as long as it had cap.

Oh my god! A warning messages keeps you from going to places. If that is the case, EVE as a whole is not for you and those people should just leave.

You know what really made EVE a “stagnant cesspit of mediocrity”? This:

and

Nothing of your list has harmed EVE as much as the above things.

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The standard driver of conflict is “you have something and I want it. And I feel that I have a good chance of taking it from you”.

CCP has never really understood this. They started off with an idea “we want open PvP Ultima in Space”, and that brought in a lot of people that wanted to compete, and wanted to take things away from other people, and who wanted to make things and prevent other people from taking them.

That created conflict, built the whole EVE mythos, and at that point they kicked out the guys who actually designed the core game, and then the people who were left all sat around and slapped each other on the back and said “Hey we are hella good game designers aren’t we?”.

Except they weren’t.

They misunderstood the drivers of conflict and the ways people wanted to experience that conlict from the start. When the game was huge, mostly empty, and people were on a more level playing field, conflict and game play happened because people were finding their way through the game mechanics.

Essentially, conflict-driven EVE play happened mostly by accident, starting from a new game world and putting a lot of people through the learning process.

But once the game mechanics and niches were figured out… conflict became so abusive, so exploitative, so unfair, that it was bad for the game. And where it was fair, it mostly stopped happening. Because the game ‘atmosphere’ attracts people who do not want a fair fight.

That’s okay, that’s fine, there’s room for that in the gaming player base… as long as you design for it. Which CCP has entirely and completely failed to do.

CCP has a conflict driven game, which entirely favors the pay-to-win “I’ve been here the longest” crowd, and which pretty much entirely depends on a steady stream of new chumps flowing through the system who do not know how to defend/avoid against PvP and are basically ‘volunteer victims’.

And CCP expects them to pay for the privilege of being victims!

When CCP figures out how to make conflict necessary, interesting and desirable between roughly equal opponents, then the interest will come back.

Until then, the game we have is “shooting fish in a barrel - in space”. And the fish have declined to play.

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I don’t really agree.

I think there is a certain portion of the player base who just wants to hoarde isk. I don’t know why, I don’t understand that driver. But I do know those guys HATE PvP in any fashion that doesn’t result in a windfall for their wallet.

Another style of player sees “because that’s why I logged on” as a conflict driver. He or she just wants to make ships go boom.

The strange progression of the game, for me, is that they’ve catered almost exclusively to the “isk hoarding guy” for the last decade, discarding engagement mechanics one after the next until almost all that’s left are isk hoarding mechanics.

And yeah, that’s drier than week old toast.

When I played, I did 1 thing. I got in a frigate and flew it until I lost it. Then I built another, and repeated. I did it in highsec through can flipping and wardecs.

The mechanics for doing that are so painful now that I’ve moved on, though I still miss Eve from its glory days.

Pve as a conflict driver… it doesn’t really work. Risking a high payout ship just for isk doesn’t make sense at the payout levels that the game can entertain.

PvP works best when we are in a social setting and can have squabbles over stuff. If I can steal, it gives you a reason to kill me.

That reason to kill me gives our interaction meaning.

The decision between jet can mining or warping back to station is the fundamental question of higher risk/reward and lower risk/reward.

It was all quite eloquent… but players who wanted the higher reward without that risk of crime complained and got the mechanics thrown out.

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which entirely favors the pay-to-win “I’ve been here the longest” crowd

are you seriously trying to claim that people who have played this game for a very long time, some like my self, who has played since 2003 are “paying to win” since i paid 14.99 a month and trained everything the hard way? if you are that’s the dumbest thing i have ever read on this forum. IF you want to play this game you had to subscribe and thats far from pay to win. ALSO mind you that CCP in no way has given bitter vets ■■■■. They have catered to new players for over a decade now, they get injectors, special implants and boosters and starting packs, a far better tutorial and their hand held all the way, i nor anyone from my time gets any of these. they even made sure injectors were useless for bets. at one point they talked about added just a special station for vets and couldn’t even find the time to add a station. Not even a skin, bitter vets have gotten absolutely nothing for our 16+ years of loyalty to this company not even a serious thank you and its absolutely ■■■■■■■■. other games treat vets far better and ccp should start doing a better job.

anyway - I have bought absolutely ZERO skill injectors for any of my toons and trained them the hard way. If you think Simply subscribing to a MMO and training skills is pay to win then your insane.

Now days thought you can credit card warrior your way to a decent amount of SP with plex and injectors. But by the time these came out most bitter vets already had over 200 mill SP and didn’t need or want em.

i would like to point out that the skill of piloting the ship and managing tank and speed, orbit etc is going to get you farther then training spec 5 on some weapon system - only so many skills effect each ship and i have seen plenty of people who inject skills for ships and get pwned in them over and over because they don’t know how to pilot them. I have seen people inject carriers and then gate it and die because they didn’t know it had a jump drive or how to jump or that capital mods existed. and before you ask, some of them were newer players with only a few years in game but quite a few were in the game a lot longer.

so the fact that i happen to have subbed longer then you to a game that requires one to play - doesn’t make the game pay to win and i didn’t pay to win. the fact you would try and claim that it is, requires a level of mental gymnastics i haven’t seen before

conflict became so abusive, so exploitative, so unfair and depends on a steady stream of new chumps flowing through the system who do not know how to defend/avoid against PvP

What are you even talking about? Unless your talking about high sec war griefing, this kind of thing doesn’t exist in 0.0. power blocks now days are all similar in size and power so its very hard for one group to just steam roll another unless one side just gives up. so i really want to see your examples.

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