It is what this game needs, at least if it is to adhere to some semblance of its original vision. Exposing purely-PvE players to additional risk of loss is a rational and necessary game design methodology in an open-world PvP economic sim. Everyone needs to produce, and everyone needs to lose. If you have a system in which one subset of players (e.g. the “carebears”) only produces, and a second subset of players (e.g. the “griefers” or just “PvPers” in general) that both produces and loses (they have to produce something in order to offset their losses), then what you get is a system with two parts production and one part destruction, and that simply doesn’t work from an economic perspective. As such, there are two ways of making the system work:
Make the dedicated producers suffer unwilling losses in order to balance the ecosystem.
Segregate the two populations so that they can’t affect each other economically (e.g. PvE server).
Pick the first solution and the PvE folks cry because they get killed, or pick the second solution and the PvE folks cry because of inflation (and the PvP folks cry because they lack content and can’t replace their ships because they get squeezed out of the market).
There is another solution which few people think about, and it entails letting PvE players be immune to PvP, in exchange for them giving up what they produce for free in order for the PvP players to be able to fight each other. But of course this will never happen, because when have you ever seen a greedy bourgie part with a nickel?
The only alternative left is to turn EVE into a generic MMO with selective/non-loss PvP, at the cost of implementing power creep in order to give value to continuous economic output.
Do you have a better solution than sending miners out into to occasionally get blown up? Let’s hear it, I’m open to ideas.
I disagree, actually. I mean yes, it would die in spirit, but if they implement power creep and casualize the experience, it’s likely that EVE would actually develop a much bigger player base, and likely lead to greater revenue for its owners.
Open-world, full-loot PvP games are an anomaly. They technically shouldn’t exist, because they intentionally target the most minor, fringe subset of gamers. Anyone making a game would only be rational to target the biggest subset of eligible players. Open-world, full-loot PvP games shouldn’t exist, and people who prefer to play them should be marginalized out of the market.
Some people try to create open-world, full-loot PvP games in order to exploit a niche, a market externality if you will. But after some time, the most rational thing to do is still to turn them into casual, PvE-driven experiences because that is the only reasonably expected (and empirically proven) way for games to grow and survive. A good example of this is what happened with the development of Amazon’s New World. Initially, it was supposed to be one of the most hardcore PvP games on the market. But after focus-testing and market research, they changed it to be a PvE game with a discrete PvP toggle (which rationally no one ever uses). They even refused to implement PvP servers for those interested in PvP gameplay. They just took a hardline stance that making a PvP game, or even a game with a PvP option, would be the absolutely worst possible business decision.
And Amazon was right. PvP games shouldn’t exist. EVE shouldn’t exist, at least as it exists today. In order to be a successful game, it needs to be changed into a dedicated PvE experience so as to appease the roughly 98% or so of the gaming market composed of players who seek that sort of experience.
If I became CCP’s CEO tomorrow, and I wanted to actually do a good job, I would instantly announce the creation of a PvE-only EVE shard.
Seriously, watch the video. it summarizes all of this so perfectly.
Oh I get what you’re saying. And from a marketing stand point I totally agree.
What most peeps don’t get is the losses in EVE hurt cause they actually mean something. The ways and means in which players can attack each other vary as well.
During my WoW days, death was nothing. Merely an inconvenience. The only time deaths have mattered to me in an MMO has been UO and EVE, due to players being able to kill you and take your stuff.
Yes, but 98% of gamers don’t want losses to mean anything. In fact, after focus-testing research, a big portion of those people were found to want losses to actually mean progress, which is why in many freemium games you gain stats (or the game automatically becomes easier) when you lose.
Think about the nature of the average human being, their tolerance for risk, their ability to resolve conflict, and their tendency to hoard. The answer lies in basic biology. People who enjoy open-world, full-loot PvP games are a fringe minority of abnormal humans who deviated from the status quo of the default evolutionary path. Also, before anyone takes the conversation in this direction, this has nothing to do with sociopathy/psychopathy, as those markers are equally present in all subsets of players, including the purely-PvE ones who are by default accepted as normal and well-adjusted.
This game is pretty bloody huge. It’s pretty easy to move to another part of it when something is annoying. Kinda why a huge sandboxy game with this much age to it is so nice.
I watched the video as well but it felt to me like Eve is not as extreme as the image it paints.
I did not feel like my life was in jeopardy at every moment. They way I felt was more like this:
Probably, nothing bad will happen today.
If something bad is going to happen, I will probably see it coming.
If something bad happens to me and I did not see it coming, then I can afford it.
I did not feel like it was possible to meaningfully harm me in game without me first making a dumb decision to put more at risk than I could afford to lose.
Wouldn’t Amazon have meant MMOs here, instead of “games”?
Consider MOBAs: it’s a much bigger genre than the entire MMO genre and it’s all PVP. Difference is it’s ranked PVP.
MOBAs is where most PVPers go today, because if it’s gudfites you want, you can get it there right away. Asymmetry is what’s holding the traditional MMOs back when challenging fights are desired.
I think the biggest threat to EVE would be a highly polished MOBA about spaceships. Such game should attract the PVPers who only reluctantly do EVE PvE, just to afford their PvP ships.
A pretty sci-fi themepark MMO with better PvE than EVE, would draw potential new players away, but I reckon EVE can survive more PvE competitors. EVE still has one unique strength that glues all the broken parts together, which is the virtual economy and I don’t see a themepark MMO replicate that.
That means that you haven’t placed yourself within the mindset of a victim of oppression. This is requisite for living in contemporary developed society. If you don’t think of yourself as a victim of something (and it can be something as minor and stupid as feeling “oppressed” by a rival political party in your democratic society), then the social fabric starts breaking down at a very fundamental level because people will no longer be preoccupied with thinking about how they’re being oppressed, which will leave them open and vulnerable to having to consider how their privileged lifestyles and actions are a source of oppression for others (e.g. the people in Asia sewing their tube sucks for 3 cents an hour).
If you want to play EVE (or any game, really, but let’s just keep it to EVE for now) as an accepted member of the general community, you will have to start thinking of yourself as a member of the underprivileged class. This will involve commiserating with other players about being “bullied” by the “radicals” and asking for CCP (i.e. the government) to intervene on your behalf. It’s really no different from how society puts pressure on people to be married and have children, for example. The downward pressure acts as relief from people having to think about and consider their own mistakes and/or negative world impacts.
Those games aren’t PvP. I mean, yes, they’re PvP, but they’re not PvP. Any game in which your opponent can be replaced by a well-crafted AI and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference is not a true PvP experience. A PvP encounter shouldn’t be routine, and all of those MOBAs and FPS games have extremely routine encounters. That’s why I would say that PvP in a game like WoW is much more “real” than in any team-based shooter.
You’ve been playing all this time and you fail to see the game plays in infinite variation. You think you are being clever in suggesting that others are doing it wrong when in fact it is just as much taking sand out of the box as putting up a wow instance right beside jita 4-4.
Mm I think the opposite tho. I share her view. I find it freeing I can do whatever I want. Death is a friend that always finds you but when he does find you, its your fault
Agreed. However, Qia, I strongly suspect you have an attitude towards gaming more condusive to thriving in a game environment such as EvE - the pvp sandbox MMOs the video referred to only a relatively small percentage of gamers like - in the manner talked about in the video.
I think it’s interesting to see how other gamers see us EvE-liking weirdos.
