Eve's missing feature: Casual MOBA

PvP Gameplay Center Tournament Discussion
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MOBA’s are fun.
Other MMO’s have them even if they’re a little odd story line wise. Onlookers can watch the battle unfold and know if one side or another is winning at a glance. It’s teams of players fighting for dominance in area control, zone denial, resource collection, coordinated strikes, intel, planning, killing and team work.

I know about low sec PvP. I get gang PvP, I understand there’s factional warfare…

But that’s a different kind of PvP.
What I’m bringing up is the total lack of a consistent, reliable, tournament style system where players can easily fleet up and enter a match against another team on a leveled playing field. We see it in League and StarCraft, games like Dreadnought and Elite Dangerous can and will challenge Eve’s player base, becuase they have what Eve doesn’t.

And that can very easily change.

Eve Online needs this.
Eve Online needs an easy to get into, balanced and easy to understand battle system with contesting groups of players. I know there’s PvP, I know there’s low sec, it’s not about that. It’s about watching teams work together to overcome their opponent. Those small moments when everything in the match rides on this one attempt. The final cheer when victory is announced.

How can we do this?
A way to que into the virtual arena is pretty straight forward. Even fleet up and join a match making system. When accepted, choose a faction and players pod up and enter a wormhole transporting them to the field of play.

There, they are instantly warped to their flagship with that factions ships and gear to use. They have 30 seconds to us the instance credits to buy and outfit their ship and warp to the front line or the asteroid belts. Destroy the enemy flagship, and you win.

Turrets with active interdiction keep players from going directly to certain areas, destroy the turrets, enable movement. Players will be using their directional scanner as a mini map. Various asteroid belts, data and relic sites spawn resources to mine, hack, steal and use as a point of attack.

Flagships spawn and deploy waves of rats to areas to mine, and attack.

Going out to earn credits, rolls are filled as front liners, brawlers, support ships, mining ships, recon, hackers… you name it. What will work? What team set up is best?

Use lasers or rail guns? Drones or ECM? Sell your ship and upgrade to a larger ship and an expensive fitting? Or save your credits in case you get destroyed and need to buy a new ship.
That risk is Eve’s flavor.

Get blown up, your pod auto warps to the flagship to rearm. Awarding a standard cruiser for combat.

I feel like Eve Online’s open gaming dynamics offers so much more variance and opportunity of play than League does. Hell any other game. Mix and match weapon and equipment layouts, how big are the teams? 4v4? 8v8? I can easily imagine a lot of roles coming to play.

What do you win?
Hell I don’t know or care. I played league for a while with friends and had fun. I dropped hundreds of dollars on skins and other crap because I wanted to support league and it was fun because I can hop on with friends and in 5 minutes we’re teamed up fighting a reasonably balanced game with predictable variables.

We won, we lost, we cried, we cheered.
We did it together and it was a blast.

I want Eve Online to get popular, I want to watch micro matches like I do with Starcraft and League of Legends. I want to root for teams and wonder if their going Gallente or Amarr in this next match. I want to hold my breath as ships go into warp towards center as the towers shields begin to buckle. Watch as ammo is dropped into space to resupply a carry, as the enemy tries to blow it out of the sky because the carry needs to get more rat kills in the area.

I don’t want Eve to fall wayward and get passed up by competition. Like it or not MOBA’s are popular for a lot of reasons, and that itch can’t be scratched with what Eve has to offer.

Anyway, fly dangerously.

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“I dropped hundreds of dollars on skins and other crap because I wanted to support league and it was fun because I can hop on with friends and in 5 minutes we’re teamed up fighting a reasonably balanced game with predictable variables.”

Yeh, thats not remotely how eve works. Eve isnt balanced like that or with predictable variables, thats the very essense of this game!
The true strenght of this game is one persistant universe for all. What you are asking for is a button you can click to get into a queue, much like raid finder in wow and then take yourself out of this persistant universe.

Im ok with this, if you get a group mission, you fly to somewhere in space and then start it, in open space, where anyone can come and kill you. Becuase thats how eve works, you never know what will happen and you never know who is watching you or why.

What you are asking for, doesnt fit into the nature of eve. You should take your friends, get into a wormhole and fly around new eden looking for opportunities. Not just sit and wait for a computer to match you to a “balanced fight”.

This is not a moba, nor will it ever be one. This is an open world MMORPG, with the highest amount of people playing on the same server, of any game in the world. Its also one of the few games left that hasnt been dumped down to spoon feeding you content, at the click of a button. Take your impatience elsewhere and let us enjoy a game that requires smarts and isnt just instant action 24/7.

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Tournament wormholes is a brilliant idea!

Set up a fleet and post a match, a wormhole spawns and you enter in a pod, active players are inside the large sphere, observers have to remain in pods?

That cleans things up a bit and makes it so the flagship is the shop to buy ships and stuff in. That sounds even easier to set up game mechanics wise.

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The challenge would be spawingin inside at the flagship if that’s possible. At the moment jump clones are used in the Eve world. Being in a pod automatically warps you to the flagship would simplify that.

Using a different, in space credit system would be needed to purchase things so players didn’t have to spend isk each match.

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I can certainly see the validity of stating the game as an MMORPG and not wanting an arena style combat system. Most people will rightfully look at WoW and cringe. It still hasn’t gotten things right for their PvP, but then again, they are still repping a playerbase that MMOs dream of. A lot of people forget gems like Guild Wars who featured an absolutely remarkable PvP arena system on top of an already remarkable MMORPG. The first one, not the second one.

Then again, the second one can’t be dismissed either. There are merits to an open PvP system, but in practice? Just a bunch of battleships chasing around anything easy to blow up that won’t have them put into significant risk. The “PvP” system is far from easy to approach. You can jump into it from day one as a “tackler” but if you want a big role. Well, see you in a few months. Then prepare to spend a massive amount of time learning to find those perfect fights.

Break it all down and you have a nice game of Player versus Time. Time being the most valuable thing I have to give. I love EVE, but I sure as hell didn’t come here for the “PvP.”

Some sort of Arena system could be really fun. Elite Dangerous had a simple but fun system for that. They lacked in a ton of other areas, but their CQC system was remarkably fun. Do I think an arena system would work in EVE? Probably not. First of all, a company is present for one goal above all others. Most would say to provide a service, but that is incorrect. They are here to make money. Providing a service is how they do it.

I don’t know if their limited combat system could provide enough entertainment to PvPers to justify them putting money into developing the arena system. I know it wouldn’t pay off for them to refine their combat system then make an arena system.

While I would love to see a fun arena based combat a lot of people are immediately going to complain that it will kill EVE because everyone will sit in a station and not leave. I doubt that. If implemented well the only rewards would be bragging rights and maybe ship skins. You would never progress, but it would provide a nice system to dive into for five minutes where the EVE skill system and needing colossal amounts of money to feel important wouldn’t apply.

In practice, that would mean the combat had to be exciting, action paced, and complex. Something EVE is toeing, but ultimately fails to deliver upon. Most excitement from PvP in this game seems to come from risking expensive ships you earned. Then because people are scared it devolves into picking fights that are near impossible to lose. So just a bunch of players in battleships chasing down frigates and cruisers.

Don’t get me wrong. There is fun to be had in EVE’s PvP system, but I wouldn’t call it the selling point that brought me here. If I wanted PvP I would just play another game. Which means there is a lacking component here, but I am not sure CCP could actually facilitate the system that would keep me here for PvP.

Instead, the complex industry, exploration, and economy will keep me around. But as soon as another game does that better, I will be there, especially if they have PvP.

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That’s what I’m talking about!

I love Eve in a lot of ways, the stories that comes from it and it’s freedom. Other MMO’s easily implement arenas into their games just fine. Some people literally just play on WoW’s battle arena. That’s not what the game started out as.

I would love to watch and participate in a League of Legends like area contest where I can watch players grow into roles and fights break out. Creative use of modules and drones used, what weapons will you bring? Dedicate a player to mining? There’s so many possibilities here.

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You do realise that for something like that, Alliance Tournaments already exist?

Hell, if you can’t wait for Alliance Tournaments, go and set up a Tournament of your own. Get a couple Alliances to appoint an organizer, select a system, in fact, just ask the devs to set up a server with everything available so that you can go and have a tournament that is as fair as possible and then go nuts.

Eve Online as it is isn’t a tournament game. It’s not a ‘quests and raids’ game. It’s a game where players dick with each other in the name of fun and profit. What you are looking for is not in this game. If you want a Moba-style tournament, you can go and get people to cooperate to create tournaments and risk people gaming the system or hotdropping supers to ruin anything, or you ask the devs to help create a separate server for people to join in and have tournaments that will not impact the main server in any real and meaningful way, or you don’t do it at all.

If you have a problem with that, go play an actual Moba. In fact, Fractured Space is the closest you can get to a spaceship Moba currently. Go play that. It’s even free to play.

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Dude, you have to understand that the fundamental difference between eve and ALL other MMO’s, is that Eve has one persistant universe, one server for every single player (except the chinese, coz they are wierd with laws)
On top of that, theres no “best in slot” item, theres no “best ship”, its all situational and with about 1000 more variables then any other MMO out there.
What you are suggesting is essentially dumbing eve down to the level of other MMO’s, giving instant action at the click of a button and having preset instances, so people can effectively “step out” and not participate in the living universe.

If you wanna fight people, go fight them? Find people to fight against and with. You are not being spoon fed content here, you have to go find content or create content in Eve.

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you might like star conflict it even offers open space, co-op against bots and a lot of ships and daily missions.

a lol loke moba would need among others:

  • an expirience collector
  • said collector as equippable item
  • a new ship slot to equip said collector like a rigging like slot.
  • a tree of specials fields or skills that this collector provides
    *a forward base and forward carrier structure as main targets
    *some kind of defense turret
    *some reason to follow a specific path

not saying the ccp could maybe (not) introduce this just pointing out the work required.

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I see your points. It just proved my point. The game lacks the capacity to provide that level of competitive PvP. Not that I think the combat system could actually be exciting enough to be appealing for that sort of PvP, but either way I think the idea here was to bring in more players. All of the following suggestions are literally suggesting people go anywhere else. That is fine.

I would like to note that this year and the year before EVE has hit player lows that it hasn’t witnessed since 2008. Their content updates are barely keeping them afloat. They are not generating any new blood. Once a game starts to stale, it starts to lose money. Once it starts to lose money you will need to start looking for another game.

EVE might still have some innovation, but other MMOs will push them out of the market entirely if they don’t keep their portfolio fresh. A shake up this big might be a push in the right direction. I think OP was just shooting out an idea that would provide a feature that would not only be entertaining, but maybe help prevent this games stagnation and decline. Though I find it intriguing that everyone is so quick to direct people elsewhere.

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The answers I’m getting here are go play something else.
I can’t imagine being a dev for a game and reading that as a good thing on my games forum.

I understand what Eve is, that wouldn’t change.
It would still be there.

The idea is attracting more players to Eve in some ways, will increase the player base and activity in other ways. An effective MOBA element would have players create their own content in their own easy to set up tournaments, rankings, and competitions. For whatever the cost of setting up this element in the game.

I want more players here, in Eve.
Clearly you don’t.

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I don’t get the mentality of, ‘go somewhere else’ either.

That’s asking for Eve to fail to me. With all the effort going into alpha clones etc, it seems like CCP is trying its best to bring in more players. If a single space game catches what people like about Eve online, and adds elements to bring in more players to satisfy those MOBA itches, and effective role players to drive the story, that’s trouble for Eve.

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Its not THAT weird of an idea.

There already is the alliance tournament and it is always a great success.

Why not have a persistent system using similar rules?

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Yeah, in some parts I agree. Like I stated before, a company is present to make money above anything else. I am not sure if the investment required to implement these systems would pay off enough to justify the investment. I think OP listed MOBA as the platform since it is arguably one of the most successful competitive PvP games out there that might be adaptable to this style of game.

There are many ways they could do an arena style combat system. Maybe a simple TDM. Maybe have some form of escort missions and stuff. I think these sorts of arena game types would be a fantastic training tool to prepare a player or entertain a player while they wait to get the skills trained to go out into the EVE universe and actually put the arena stuff to work making money out there.

Either way, it is just something I had to agree with OP on. I feel the game does lack approachable PvP. Sure, I could go buy a cruiser or something and dart off into space right now, but I have no skills to operate any of the fits that would make it even worthwhile. I could gather some friends, but then I have to convince them that it is worth investing so much time in. Then get blown up anyways or spend hours sitting in a system cloaked waiting for those ten battleships with nothing better to do than gate camp to go away.

Whenever I talk to people who have left EVE or didn’t like EVE or don’t want to try EVE I hear the same argument over and over again.

“I don’t want EVE to be my life.”

“It takes too much time to play.”

“I have real life to do, can’t be bothered spending two to more hours getting a bunch of people together to go do one thing.”

“EVE is a like a second job.”

A quick and easy to do PvP might bring a fresh charge to the game. But, in the end I don’t know if the combat system can hold up enough to be interesting. Sure, there are a million different fits and different tactics and strategies you can bring to the table. But get into the actual cut and thrust and it seems slow. At least, if you aren’t concerned about billions of isk getting blown to bits.

And saying there is already a mechanic out there for that in the form of the Alliance Tournament is not a valid argument. The exception to the rule only proves the rule. The Alliance Tournament actually shows how it could work and that it not only would work, but does work. Once a year… For a few people.

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Because you must first consider the niche that Eve Online is currently filling (emergent sandbox gameplay) and understand that this is exactly why the players who joined the game stuck with it. We all came here because of what Eve is, not because it copies what the other games are doing.

As long as the game maintains its niche, it is going to keep attracting the people who are looking for exactly what Eve is offering.

Trying to offer what other games are already offering doesn’t attract other players. The other players who want to play a MOBA are already playing that other MOBA. Even sunk money into that other game and are extremely unlikely move to Eve even if Eve has MOBA elements introduced now. A spaceship MOBA already exists and the other players are playing it already. It’s called Fractured Space. Adding MOBA into Eve is not going to attract these players to Eve. Why would they? They have already sunk time and money into that game. They even had progression in that game.

What Eve should be doing is NOT making creating a MOBA gameplay. What Eve should be doing is introduce something no other game has done yet. Currently, Eve has something that no other game can offer: Single-shard server and emergent sandbox gameplay where every skullduggery is allowed for as long as it’s not an exploit or a cheat. The next thing to do is to add on to that. More conflict drivers, more things to fight over, more ways to get players into running into each other and be forced to shoot one another.

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The term you are looking for is “competitive gameplay”.

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We all want more players, but we are NOT willing to sacrifice the true sandbox experience, to attract 12 year olds with the attention span of a potato, because “eve is hard and needs an instant action button”.

Eve has attracted the crowd it has, because of the way this game is. Its a single world, persistant, immersive sandbox, where you can do what ever you want, and people can do what ever they want to you.
What you want is instanced pvp, effectively pulling people out of the sandbox and placing them in protected enviorements, to get instant action.
Eve doesnt need to try and add what most other mainstream games have, because eve is different and has always been for different players, then the casual, instant action MMORPG’s like WOW and GW.

Im totally on board with having group missions, that put players against players, in some way. But this has to happen in the “open-ness” of space, where anyone can interact with the mission runners, becuase thats the very essence of eve.
Its a living, evolving, single server universe, not a bunch of random people sitting in a tradehub and clicking “join queue” every 15 mins, like most other MMO’s, spread out on 500 different servers.

Eve has been around for 14 years without any instanced stuff, it will conteniue to be around without instanced stuff.

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Absolutely, I understand that. EVE is filling a niche, but there is a problem with filling a niche. It is by definition a tiny corner of the market. And if you go by their server statistics, it is a corner of the market that peaked on 2013-05-05 at 65,303 players and has been shrinking. I mean in 2008 the server was peaking at 37,000 players. In 2017 the server is hitting lows of 30,000 for months on end and peaking during content drops at just over 40,000 with a notable peak of 50,000 for like two months in 2016.

The point is if the niche dries up or moves on, goodbye game. How do you stay relevant when the niche is drying up? For a company they hit a crossroads. Abandon the niche and the game and make a new one. Or revitalize the current material, which they are so obviously and desperately trying to do recently with the Alpha Clones and such. The easiest way to revitalize a game is taking what is working out there in the market right now and making it work for your niche before that niche is gone. What is currently working? “Competitive gameplay” (thanks Anderson Geten).

My take, adding some “competitive gameplay” could make this game more appealing to more players keeping this niche alive instead of letting it steadily die like it has been doing since early 2014.

Edit: And the “crowd” EVE has is getting bored and moving on. The die hards are starting to wave goodbye. But disregard that notion and circle back to your point. If the “crowd” who likes EVE likes their openworld sandbox, it still isn’t going anywhere. In fact, it is just going to bring in players to fund filling your box with sand. If that crowd is going to stick around, then even if these gameplay elements are added, that “crowd” shouldn’t go anywhere.

Saying if EVE added a competitive gameplay feature, everyone would suddenly drop everything they were doing before and just go play in the space stations all day is saying no one actually likes the game anyways.

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Yes, you can and should add more competitive gameplay, but that should not be a MOBA.

What this game is very much lacking, the reason why there’s a stagnancy in this game, is because there’s not all that much worth fighting over that isn’t a major pain in the arse to fight over, and what isn’t a pain in the arse to fight over isn’t very good at keeping people from running away when encountering anyone willing to actually fight over it.

The open world PVP system needs to be worked on some more. Maybe even revamped. Newbies who come here are generally here to get involved in massive fleet fights that they read in the news. So make that easier to happen. Give more things to make people want to form 100 man fleets to go fight over. And if they tire of the 100 man fleet fights, let there be just as many things to fight over as small gangs. More importantly, make it a bigger PITA to actually avoid fights, force people to commit to battle.

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Does all games have to be mainstream? Eve has survived as a niche game for 14 years, the CCP stock hasnt been worth as much as now, since before they launched Eve, and CCP has never made as many money as they are, right now.
Thats also why we see a ton of updates now, compared to just 5 years ago and why we see CCP working on a ton of other products.
Eve updates that the community wants and asks CCP for, through the CSM. Hell, we even elect people each year to represent us to CCP, which other MMO does this?
The community is extremly strong, the player base is generally here to stay and thats because eve is a niche game, not because its mainstream.

I totally agree that we need content added to encourage new players to start and old players to stay, but it has to be within the lore/boundaries/ideaology of eve and not just a copy paste from the most popular games around.
Get innovative, invent something new, like CCP has done over and over already and involve the comunity as they have also done.

“Competative gameplay” is very difficult to apply to a game like eve. In general it requires a very limited amount of heroes/races/ships with an everchanging meta of “best in slot” item, to keep it interesting.
Eve does something completely different. Every single thing in eve has a direct counter, every single ship in eve can be fitted in a 1000 different ways, because your engagement is 100% situational. You simply dont know what you are up against, which would be nessecary to know for true competative gameplay, like we see in MOBA’s and major MMO’s like WOW and GW.

We do need more reason to fight each other, thats not a pain in the neck though, but instanced queue pvp isnt the way.

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