Uh, excuse me Mr. Sociopath, some of us prefer our violent military conflicts to be honorable, rules-based, and even-sided, thank you very much.
Heh. I mean I like dueling too, but how would CCP address “blob” warfare?
How is a blob defined?
What tips it from a fleet to a blob?
Flying solo, you take the risk of getting blapped by big groups.
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I keep coming back to…….CCP can’t do anything here.
The whole point of a sandbox is that the players interact with game the way they want to. If CCP start tinkering with mechanics to break up “blobs” to try and encourage more small gang or whatever players will just resist. Because at that point they breaking existing players established gameplay…………which they enjoy and are invested in…… both from a “they care about it” perspective and a “they have invested time and isk” in it perspective.
What have now has a bit of everything. While it’s not perfect it’s not bad or awful. What I’m seeing here is a lot of suggestions that suit various individuals play styles or play aspirations that they think will “fix “ issues. What I’m. It seeing is any discussion about how these fixes break the game for others.
We don’t die enough? Who cares? I still have fun when I play and that’s all that matters.
I have no interest in the sandbox being messed up by imposes mechanics that restrict how I or others can play the game in the guise of “fixing pvp”.
Yes, This is exactly why my suggestion was an “arena” type of feature where players can configure the type of fight they want and then “wait to pvp”. A feature such as this won’t solve the issue of less pvp but it will add a controlled way for people to introduce themselves to pvp and build confidence.
If this really is a sandbox game then it must also be seen the opposite way and there should not be any problem with people not wanting to pvp, there are too many pvp’ers out there who will only engage when they know it will be a flawless victory, they never engage in balanced fights which can be frustrating for the opponent.
The only issue here is Human Behaviour which can’t be avoided but can be steered. Alternatives need to be in place where people feel like they have a chance. A “waiting to pvp” duel feature is what is required here.
This game is inspired by the “Elite” series of games which were designed by David Braben, the original designer of Eve played Elite extensively as a youth and wanted to build upon the genre. If you look at what Elite is today it actually has a Duel feature where players can PVP without being disturbed.
So my view is there shouldn’t be any change to pvp mechanics, keep the sandbox as it is and accept all types of gameplay, but make some changes to game features.
This is pretty key stuff right here. Although I would refine it a bit. “There shouldn’t be a problem with people not wanting to PvP” shouldn’t mean, for instance, “players can avoid PvP completely without noticeable effort”. Most of us agree that the constant element of risk is one of the defining features of EVE and needs to remain that way.
But yes it should be perfectly legitimate for players to choose a path of “avoid PvP” and not be sneered at or belittled for it. “Ganking is legitimate gameplay” needs to be balanced by “and so is carebearing”.
“Human behavior can’t be avoided but can be steered” is exactly what the devs’ job is. As an example, when you can gank a 2 billion freighter, resulting in average say 600 million in drops, with 150 million in cheap Catalysts, then there’s a profit motive for setting up a regular ‘business’ ganking freighters. For the gankers it’s a mix of RP, schadenfreude, salt mining, and simple business for profit.
The profit being the key portion because that’s the part that’s wired into basic human behavior patterns (and also allows you to keep repeating the activity).
Now flip it around. Suppose someone decides they want to anti-gank, play Police, or be a mercenary bodyguard-for-hire. Now, you can still RP, but the salt-mining and schadenfreude is quite limited because the gankers are already in cheap, disposable ships. And they make a profit if they’re doing this right so they can actually replace multiple ships. But there’s no profit motive for any of this because cheap DPS ships don’t drop significant value.
Let’s also look at the mechanics. Freighter = big slow valuable target, that has to travel certain well-known routes with choke/ambush points at every gate. Gankers get to choose the time and place to strike well in advance.
For the anti-gankers, they can’t choose when to strike, because if they strike first, they lose ship to Concord and gain nothing. If they strike after, all they’re doing is getting in on Concord killmails. Gankers with low status can hide in stations or off-grid until the required moment. They don’t need to slowly funnel through known chokepoints telegraphing their presence to every scout.
What the devs have done here, purely by game mechanics design, is steer player behavior towards ganking and away from anti-ganking. One gets rewarded and is considerably more workable, the other is disincentivized and rarely achievable.
Adding a “profit motive” with even a small net profit to Bounty Hunter style play would create a new playstyle, or even several, not remove existing ones. The same would happen if Faction Warfare was fixed, or Resource wars, or even Low Sec. You don’t generally improve a sandbox by taking things away and limiting them, you improve it by adding new and interesting options.
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CCP isn’t bothering with this sort of idea because they’re likely aware that the amount of players who would take part in it is so small that the return on the investment simply isn’t there. Between the players who engage in PvP as a power move of some sort and the players who strictly don’t engage in PvP at all, there just aren’t many left who would fall into the “I’d like to PvP for no ostensible gain, but only if it’s fair” category. As is, the current arena system only has a few hundred participants every season, and most of those do one or two matches and never touch it again.
It would be an entirely inconsequential feature, and they’d be better off doing the minimum of work to allow fleets to challenge other fleets to duels instead of doing it one player at a time. The only way that the arena idea could maybe work is if the battles are simulated and don’t result in actual ship loss, but then that’s so anti-EVE that I doubt even 2022 CCP would go for something like that.
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If I win I was in a fleet, if you win you were in a blob.
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Yes, this is what I meant. Me and 2 other guys could configure a 3v3 cruiser match, and then “wait to pvp” and see if there are any takers. 4v4, 5v5, 6v6 could also be options. Eve combat is really good and we can see this from the yearly tournament.
This is a most basic feature in combat pvp games, It is important for Eve to diversify and cater to other types of gamers who might like instanced and controlled pvp.
Many will have to accept replacing your pve/pvp ship in Eve can be long and requires hours of work depending on how much time you have to play. For this reason losses will hurt and many can become discouraged with the long arduous grind, stop being blind to this fact and pretend it is normal in games, It really isn’t.
Pretty much like @Destiny_Corrupted said, I don’t see how this brings out anyone more than the FFAs do right now. When I was doing the corvette arenas, which were as cheap as they could possibly be in eve, I saw the same group of people over, and over, and over. People who like to PVP. Every once in a while a new face would appear, immediately get dunked by the guys who had 600 LS kills, and move on.
Yeah, it’s a workable idea, because it won’t break anything, and they effectively already have the code for it. But it’s not a high-impact idea because only people already interested in PvP are going to sign up. Unless the reward systems are significantly modified.
EVE needs some PvP ideas that will get hundreds and thousands of players out exposed to more risk.
Still, kudos to Aaron for sticking his neck out with it, which is more than can be said for most of the so-called PvP ‘experts’ on the forums.
I’m not saying that they can’t, or that they shouldn’t do it; I’m only saying that very few will take advantage of the feature. Even in a game like WoW, where arenas don’t cause you to lose anything (and in fact you get good gear out of it), only a very small percentage of the population engages in them.
Personally, I don’t bother with EVE’s current arenas because it’s a losing proposition no matter how I look at it. First of all, I’d have to use a character dedicated specifically to the activity because it would otherwise pollute my open-world PvP stats, and there isn’t any way to separate the two. Second, it costs money, and “fairness” being a drain on users’ wallets is terrible game design. It effectively becomes a punishment for those who choose to willingly handicap themselves by fairness. If anything, “fair” PvP should be an income stream, and not a net loss.
You can have your arena, just don’t complain when you’re going to be dropping against the same 20 other players over and over again.
The sheer level of doublethink on this matter, on this forum, is astounding.
One minute people are extoling the ‘play as you want to’ line…the next minute many of the very same people are pushing a ‘this is how you play the game’ narrative and telling others they aren’t playing the game ‘properly’.
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The real mechanic being played on is co-operation. Ganking is mostly a co-operative effort against solo players. Thus the best AG is not for teams of AG to go around looking for gankers to proactively attack, but for the solo players to co-operate with each other for defence…maybe even with the help of AG players. Sort of like the convoy system in war. The fact that a fee could be charged for this defence could make it profitable.
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Maybe if such scenarios ( arena ) had predetermined hulls, multiracial and fixed fittings regardless of SP… or sort of minigame in which your progress unlocks other hulls, dunno… and also limited turns or access, a few times/week or month.
Just because I’ve seen how frustration works on PVP wannabe’s.
That, or a bunch of gates to the test server. The Idea is for peeps to have a taste of PVP, assuming a good percentage just have no idea on how to. Also, you may lose access after some number of “kills”… within the arena.
I like the idea but mostly because there is no quick access to test server… which is too big IMO and pretty much deserted.
It isn’t double think actually. No one is saying people aren’t playing properly. Just that it won’t be popular. I notice you dodged my post 
Thankee for conceding.
Right, so either work together or accept the risks of solo play. Thankee for conceding.
The basics have been there since release, it’s just that CCP has watered them down and made the game safer over the years.
My ideas, purely from my experiences in nulsec.
Fix sov, bight the bullet and get rid of the stupid sov wands. Ships fighting over who lives where gets people in fleet.
Sure the old structure grind before FozzieSov was a pain but Sov wands are far worse, you still have to grind but it’s entirely possible for 2 or 3 people to do it uncontested, while the support fleet, if they bothered to form one, sits back watching Netflix, porn or playing WOW.
Put Supers/Titans back in space, being able to safely park your Super and hop into a T1 frigate for some jollies is just rude. It could also help with reducing the size of Super umbrellas as a lot of these 1 pilot can fly it all guys won’t pay a sub for a dedicated pilot, if they do even better for CCP (I used to have “sitters” for my Supers, extra subs for CCP)
Tethering, is the bane of PVP across TQ not just nulsec. Tethering should be a limited time “tool”, used for making sure all fleet members are ready to go and other short term activities.
Once you undock from a structure tether should only last for, say 5 minutes, then you need to leave tether range (warp off or slowboat out of range) and return before you can tether or dock again.
The, Hey guys there’s a Super on the undock!! should put that super at risk.
Fix capital construction… Supers and Titans should be harder, cost more to build while Dreads and Carriers should be far cheaper. It’s too late to try and combat Super/Titan proliferation, it’s already here and with Dreads and Carriers costing so much more, less Supers are going to die. Dread bombs were a thing (and fun) because they were pretty much disposable. We used to regularly take out a carrier with a few subcaps looking for fights, many times you knew you weren’t bringing the carrier home but it was ok, they were cheap and created content.
that’s all for now, compliments of the whiny one.
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There goes my favourite flat earther.
Take a deep breath and try to have fun 
I have to agree here, A sandbox game is one where you can allegedly do as you like. So one can join blob warfare and stomp on others or one can be super duper skilled and avoid pvp and loss for their entire game, both playstyles must be accepted and not complained about if this is truly a sandbox game.
This really is a shame, I hope you’re wrong but you could be right. Eve PVP is actually one of the best combat systems I have ever seen in a game, I have never felt the level of adrenalin in any other game and this is fact. I enjoy taking part and watching “stalemate” pvp where you’ve got 2 teams neuting and transferring cap and RR, and the goal is to do whatever is needed to disrupt/kill their neut ship and then the rest of the opps fleet. It’s so cool when the FC has to work out the opps plan and counter it carefully. It’s a damn shame so many might miss this level of fun and tactical gameplay.
I love it, players uprising and taking it on themselves to do something about a situation ingame without complaining. You’re absolutely right, the AG folks could organise, create an alliance/corp recruit members and blues. There was a thread on here over year ago, some dude and his AG fleet managed to save a Freighter which was under attack and they helped it warp out with 2% structure! more of that please! no excuses, no complaints, can we have more, thanks!
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The problem with AG is that there’s no real counter-play to that activity. While AG in itself is an effective counter to ganking, they themselves are immune from interference because they are immune to wars, and are able to utilize criminal tactics like AoE weapons without restrictions when it’s convenient for them.
Any more game mechanics in favor of AGs would be extremely disruptive for the balance of power, and the only reason they’re not utterly dominating the field right now is because there aren’t very many of them because most players either don’t care since they’re preoccupied with their own progress, or actively dislike what they’re doing.
If there was even just 1 AG for every 2 gankers in the game, EVE would have absolutely no ganking in it whatsoever.
AG needs a proper counter-mechanic, such as either being required to be war-eligible, or something like making AG interference replace CONCORD response. At that point, it would be okay to add additional mechanics to make AG more enticing, such as financial rewards, the ability to use special ships and modules, or special powers (like moving police patrols within the system), so that more members are interested in joining their ranks.
It’d be cool if there was an actual Bounty Hunter profession. But for balance, there would need to be more perks to being -10 as well.