Eve's missing feature: Casual MOBA

PvP Gameplay Center Tournament Discussion
21

Personally, I am in favour of the concept of ‘warp cooldowns’, which increase in proportion to ship size and modifiable with implants, rigs and modules.

This way, unless the player has been extremely vigilant with d-scan, there’s a chance that they might be caught even after having warped out. At the same time, it forces the attacker to be proficient with their d-scan to catch the target before they warp out, especially after they have warped out and are waiting off their cooldown while burning away with their prop mods on.

Then throw in warp trail, with lingering time scaling proportionally to ship size. This way if the attacker is fast enough to interact with the warp trail, he (and only he) will get a beacon that allows him to warp to the target’s last warp-in location, making it easier to track them down even if they were to warp out to a safespot.

This will make it a bigger pain in the arse to avoid fights, though escape is still doable depending on ship size and player’s vigilance. It will also tempt the guy who is trying to avoid a fight consider getting his corpmates to help protect him as he goes about with his non-violent ways.

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22

You might want to consider playing something like Fractured Space. I’d hate to see EVE boiled down to a MOBA.

23

what is the problem with open world quake respawn system is that one has to buy ahead and earn ahead of action. the cycle is generate cash, acquire tools, set up tools, contribite with them in conflict.(the same gasc system existed in jumpgate tri)

a moba combines the spend in conflict and generate cash parts of the cycle. what can feel like a drag is thr generate cash part of the cycle and here people leave saying “don’t want eve to be my live” considering that code infringes on this part of the cycle they don’t generat content alone they generate drag in the cycle.

i have to be honest i also said eve moba some time ago, the thought a moba in eve would generate combat content it however would reduce social content and incentives.

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24

Why do people think MOBA’s are dumbing down the game? League of Legends, DoTA and Starcraft all take an impressive amount of skill and understanding to be good at.

And they don’t even have the depth and open ended options that Eve Online does.

Destiny is a simplistic example. People bounce between PvP and PvE freely, but they’re bored. They have nothing to fight for aside from the boring grind. WoW hits this wall too once gear is capped out and the world is static

In League and Dota though the cap is your skill against other players. You’re constantly challenging your personal skill and your cooperation with other players to defeat opposition.

I see no reason players wouldn’t dabble in the MOBA side of things and partake in the PvPvE universe of Eve, because outside of this arena, they can fight for something with skills, tactics and strategies practiced in an arena style of combat.

The advantage, training wise, with arena combat is you can’t shrug that you lost simply because you were outnumbered or caught in a clearly one sided fight. Like PvP servers in WoW the battles were chaotic and fun. But easier to recover from.

In arenas, you can break down what happened and attempt to redesign your approach, better understand a mechanic you didn’t know very well and hone that, and do so with possibly new people you meet in passing.

If anything I would see it as opening PvP to more players. If a 12 year old kicks my ass, good for him. He’s better than me. I need to improve.

If I get beaten by a potato… holly hell do I suck. But if I’m beaten by literally space potatoes because there are just too many with simple tactics to tackle, overwhelm and crush me, I learn nothing from that. Neither do they.

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25

I had a lot of socializing when I played LoL, games are, to me, a platform to socialize and have fun on. WoW did the open world quake re spawn deal, it was it’s own game of just open brawls. It’s fun in their own way but you’re not fighting for anything more than entertainment.

I get, “don’t want eve to be my life” but I don’t want to jump games to have fun.

26

Fractured space is interesting, but I like Eve.

27

I outlined an idea for micro competitions in a warp bubble. able to only enter or exit as pods with it’s own one time use currency.

It could be unique in the competition that losing the ship in the arena means you need to buy a new ship or start from scratch, fueling risk/ reward. Avoiding the progressive spawning that we see in other MOBA’s, because if you upgrade your ship with all your credits and lose, that’s a major setback.

28

Even in lesser MMOS this is completely immersion breaking. If you want to play a MOBA why not just play a MOBA? There is even an EVE MOBA

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29

I always thoroughly enjoy discussions like these because they always follow the same trend. Something is missing from a game and someone makes a suggestion that it should be added. The feature will by definition cause either minor to moderate perceived “change.” Uh oh! Did someone say “change?!”

You want to introduce something that could interfere with my current autonomy? Possibly make me lose control over my perceived “territory?” Nope, not me. I would rather stay mired in misery than head towards any unknowns. I mean, it is always easier to say no. If you bring something different to the table, that might mess with routines. Get people out of that important comfort zone.

That is okay though. It is especially interesting to see the evolution. Initial resistance to a new idea for EVE being sending the players with the idea anywhere else, to any other game. Then immediately turning around and saying that EVE fulfills a niche and that the niche should be nurtured at the cost of anything that might bring in new blood.

Sure, CCP might be making a little more money now, but that is because there have been so many successful marketing trends for them to borrow from. You want to get into the nitty gritty? This game started with no players back in 2003 and fought and uphill battle all the way into 2013. It gained players and strength, grew, became more innovative and powerful. Since 2013, it has been on the decline.

It is easy to say a game will last forever when it is bringing in more and more profits, but the company must expand to support that game. It gets bigger and better, the game gets bigger and better, profit increases more and more. Once that player base starts shrinking, it is only a matter of time until the money goes with them. That means budget cuts, staff cuts, content cuts. They aren’t going to be able to keep fulfilling this niche because there won’t be one anymore.

It is one thing to point at a game that is succeeding and say it will be around for another decade because it has been already, and an entirely other thing to say that game will survive starving economically because it’s lifeline, the players, are shrinking every month.

Not pulling this out of nowhere either. From 2010-2014 the average number of players online at any given time was 50,000. From 2014-16, the average was 37,000. Want to know the average from 2016-2017? That number is 34,000. Lost quite a bit of players. That isn’t good.

I think OP was right. Bringing competitive gameplay, a popular trend that brings success in today’s market, to a game missing it and hemorrhaging players, might be enough to keep EVE around for another decade. Maybe this isn’t the way to go. Maybe something new and innovative is the way to go. This might be a good place to discuss those options. What won’t work is expanding and trying to refine mechanics that already aren’t able to keep players interested. It hasn’t worked, doesn’t work, and won’t work.

Then again, maybe we are wrong. Maybe we shouldn’t do anything. Let EVE go the way of other niche MMOs. I had a tremendous amount of fun playing City of Heroes/City of Villains. When they were unable to evolve and the money started to sink though… Well, maybe that won’t be such a bad end for EVE when it comes. Newer space MMOs are already picking up in complexity and strength. People might be quick to dismiss them, but your niche players are going somewhere.

If EVE never changes, then it will not be innovative, just stale. This game does have something amazing in the interaction between the Devs and the players. So quit betraying them and help them save the game by coming up with ideas that expand the player base, not throwing other people’s in the mud and trampling them and telling them to try harder.

Or don’t. It doesn’t ultimately matter. Other space MMO’s are starting to scratch the niche itch better than EVE. They aren’t quite able to scratch it just right, but they are able to scratch it better in a lot of areas.

Also, “immersion breaking” is a facile argument. “Immersion breaking” is five battleships sitting outside a gate blowing up one frigate or cruiser for no other reason than for no reason. They made no money, no reputation, and defeated no enemies. Just made new ones and wasted time. I hardly see the implementation of a simulator to be “immersion breaking” considering there is a fitting simulator already in the game.

If EVE: you are talking about EVE: Valkyrie, then I agree. Can’t help but wonder how applying that sort of work to EVE Online might have improved the player base.

Tl;dr: I think OP is somewhat right. Popular market trends are with competitive PvP. That means success and if EVE wants success and to stay alive it needs to compete or it will continue to die. I don’t think implementing MOBA would be effective, but I would opt for an arena style combat system that can be done from certain stations via matchmaking. Team sizes varying from 4v4s all the way to 50v50 or bigger if the player base is there. The current gameplay is failing to provide this and slight improvements to the current content will not make enough difference.

I feel like I can’t make my case on why any more than I have so it either swayed people or it didn’t. I will come back only if I think of a new, innovative, or clever idea to contribute. Thanks for reading.

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30

Nothing immersion breaking in having tournaments where ppl fighting competitive against each other to the pod.

I am for this but have my doubts that it would work,ppl organise these things and it didn’t get enough lift so far…also I don’t think any average to pro players of these games are interested in swapping skills and muscle memory for server ticks and time wall behind skills,what drives me to that kinda games for example,.

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31

And if it absolutely has to be in Eve, why not start an Alliance, get sponsors in-game or something, find a good star system or wormhole space to set up the competition, park some carriers around to act as towers, ‘ancient’ and stuff with fighters/fighter-bombers as your creeps, set up bookmarks here and there, put together Bowheads or something for the ships for the competitors, establish a point-buy system for modules, highlight the point-gain system based around killing creeps and there! A MOBA! Run by players, organized by players, and competed on by players.

Sounds like alot of work? This IS EVE. Even solo play requires some level of work on logistics and income stream. If you can’t do this alone, get friends or make friends with someone with the in-game cash and assets and sell the idea. This is how we do things in Eve.

If there’s anything about this game I had learned during those times I was actually active and not getting bogged down by RL work, it’s that to do anything in Eve, you need to be a go-getter. So go be a go-getter and create the MOBA gameplay you always wanted.

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32

By that logic, every WoW-killer MMO would have been super profitable and still open even now.

Guess where all that WoW-killer went?

They all died!

The MMOs that are still alive are NOT WoW-killers. They all offer something that WoW doesn’t have. That something attracts more players who are already interested in MMOs and aren’t interested in what’s going on in WoW.

You are not supposed to chase after that popular thing. It doesn’t work. You make your own thing that is different from the popular thing, make it good, market it and someone will bite. And they will come and stay, especially if you did the new thing first and you didn’t screw it up.

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33

I played other MMOS, and the MOBA stille PvP in there had absolutely nothing to do with the initial game. It was also never played much. It was a bad excuse for not having a good endgame which actually belonged to the real game.

Why should I grind gear for months just to play capture the flag with it? If I want to actually play capture the flag there are a gazillion better implementations out there that not look like someone glued a checkers board to the side of the monopoly board because “the main market trend” goes to checkers.

If you want an EVE themed MOBA, go play EVE Valkyrie. Look how well that went.

EVE Online the MMO is an absolute success story, it is one of the oldest MMOs and still running very strong. The PvP in eve is emergent and that makes it very special and different from all the other MMOs and this is the reason a lot of people play it and perceive it as a living thriving world. You don’t gain new players because you make your product look more similar to all those other games who try to look similar to WOW. They all failed. You retain player by giving them an experience they could not get everywhere else and EVE is pretty strong on that, so the right direction would be to expand on this quality and not to turn it into something completely different.

And please for the love of James, keep the “you just hate change” argument to yourself. I play this game for 10 years and A LOT has changed since I started and I had very little issue with it. But stuff like this suggestion is in my opinion completely different to what EVE is and where it has to go and has nothing to do with “hating change” more like “hating your stupid proposal”.

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34

Eve Online can definitely use some changes to some of the mechanics, but MOBA system isn’t the change the game needs.

Keep the change to changing sovereignty mechanics, interdictions, Empire-building, etc. You know, the things that people play Eve for, to begin with.

I think the main reason for Valkyrie’s lack of a success is because it’s tied to VR, which is really darn expensive currently. You can buy a whole new computer with the cost for VR.

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35

If I want to play a MOBA, I’d so so. But I don’t. I play EvE Online, simple as that.

And isn’t Thera already one big battleground as it is? I’m sure it is, and before you ask, I never plan on showing up there as well, too.

36

I will still assert a few things.

There are new blood out there who are interested in Eve Online. It is quite clear when you look at the new accounts number surging whenever there’s a big news about what’s going on in Eve Online.

Guess what does the news report to get people interested enough to start new accounts for this game.

Big scams, corporate spycraft and massive fleet battles.

The guys who came in and create new accounts are here for all these things, that they can’t get in any other games.

However, most of these new blood do not linger around. The problem isn’t the lack of interest. It’s clearly there, or they wouldn’t have bothered to poke their nose into this game whenever there’s a Big Eve Happening reported. The problem is the barrier of entry.

The UI looks like a spreadsheet. There are a million and one things floating around with barely any indication of what they are used for. Frankly, the new player experience is bloody atrocious. The only reason why I didn’t struggle so much was thanks to a friend, who no longer plays, warning me about the atrocious new player experience and pointing me to ISK the Guide. But what about the guys who don’t have the fortune of having a friend to warn him about the atrocious NPE and a list of guides/training corporations to help ease the entry?

They leave.

So really, that’s where the effort should be going to. Make the game less of a pain to get into. Make it clearer on what on earth everything is for, clean up the UI and make it less of a spreadsheet. Or slowly introduce elements of the UI during the tutorial so that they get used to every element. Start with familiarising with the overview by using it to target and find things. Then introduce the D-scanner to find things, etc.

After that, it’s about keeping the old players playing. Why do they leave? Because of how much of a pain in the arse it is to get the big thing going. Rework those and make them less of a pain in the arse to start.

This way, we get more big explosions going, more people hearing of the big explosions coming in to make them big explosions, etc. We get a healthy ecosystem going.

For now, there is work done to make all of this happen. CCP should keep working on it, and we should keep giving feedback, in order make the game experience less of a pain, easier to get into and provide more incentive to get players to go out there and do big things. We will all have more fun this way.

37

I actually love the idea of a cut down version of eve which is like a 5v5 moba. Would much rather something like that over eve fps projects or valkyrie stuff

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38

with all the talk about valkyrie i decided to try it out.

39

The biggest reason why nothing has killed WoW is becuase when a game came out that was supposed to be a WoW-Killer, WoW adapted. But it was always reactionary. I personally consider Eve Online to be an amazing success as far as games go, it’s still around as a niche game.

Valkyrie wasn’t Eve Online, it’s a painted over Elite Dangerous.

It’s been pointed out that Alliance tournaments are a huge success, it is a competitive style Eve Online. One side vs another with agreed upon parameters.

MOBAs are a competitive, team based game that have active and passive elements such as uncontrollable armies clashing against one another, obstacles that the two teams fight over, give and take, moments, they’re also tend to be easy to visually collect information and understand the field of play.

FPS style games are often disorganized due to the constant struggle of figuring out what is going on. It’s often quick combat and actions. Eve Online is a decision based, chess style game play where you can see the board and act accordingly. Similar to the top down style of League of Legends.

40

try out valkyrie see [quote=“Allimar, post:39, topic:41215, full:true”]
The biggest reason why nothing has killed WoW is becuase when a game came out that was supposed to be a WoW-Killer, WoW adapted. But it was always reactionary. I personally consider Eve Online to be an amazing success as far as games go, it’s still around as a niche game.

Valkyrie wasn’t Eve Online, it’s a painted over Elite Dangerous.

It’s been pointed out that Alliance tournaments are a huge success, it is a competitive style Eve Online. One side vs another with agreed upon parameters.

MOBAs are a competitive, team based game that have active and passive elements such as uncontrollable armies clashing against one another, obstacles that the two teams fight over, give and take, moments, they’re also tend to be easy to visually collect information and understand the field of play.

FPS style games are often disorganized due to the constant struggle of figuring out what is going on. It’s often quick combat and actions. Eve Online is a decision based, chess style game play where you can see the board and act accordingly. Similar to the top down style of League of Legends.
[/quote]

valkyrie is not painted over elite dangerouse both are different genre. while valkyrie is a moba its more akin to wot though different.

okay my playing expirience is a bit rusty and small:

multiplayer
duke nukem
quake 1 to 3
half live
day of defeat
counterstrike from beta 3.5 onwards

star lancer
freelancer
freespace 2
jumpgate tri
star conflict

i try to stay positive, the movement controls of valkyrie is innovative going with a forward sliding that can be slowed and speed up and rolling clockwise and counterclockwise what valkyrie, valkyrie falls more under the ego shooter than space flight genre or is something in the middle a hybrid.

weapons i tried three difgerent types and what ccp could add is a test simulator run for each ship to get used to the weapons. what they introduced is a very vissible window of evasion for some weapons. lasers overheat or turrets have to reload.
missiles need some time to steer into the right direction if guided and misfired.

what can one gain from battles xps that open up new levels and xp on the ship flown. additional ingame currency and paintings for ships as well as suits for the pilot.

overall valkyrie delivers a good feeling of the chaos that exists on real battlefields. one can crash into objects if inattentive and die this way.

so for what level is valkyrie good pro gamers are going to be happy having enough luls the moment they get the hang on controlls.

personally as it stand they could experiment to include it into eve later on by introducing some spawn system that is bound to some sort of command point which give battlefield procs. i think it is unlikely to happen but was worth the design musing.