EVE needs content that brings people together at a corporate level. There is only a small handful of PVE content you can engage with as a fleet. One of those being incursions, except since their release, incursions are mainly ran by groups. Not corps. So you are pulled away from your corp to run incursions with a bunch of random people. And the other forms of PVE are no better. L5’s are interesting but highly dangerous and most people in high sec corps won’t run them. This game feels very solo oriented right now, except for PVP. But even PVP has its problems especially in large alliances. The feeling of being surrounded by people and yet so alone in this game makes it hard especially for newbies to stick with the game.
Here are some PVE suggestions that aim to get corps fleeting together and solving this problem. The more PVE content you bring out the more engaging EVE will be, the more people will stick around. You changed wardec mechanics for high sec corps. Now bring us the PVE content we so desperately need!
Corp level NPC invasion:
This is a mechanic that hits every corp in the game, randomly. Every now and then you will see NPC fleets swarm the station you are at or harass your players for a while. Think of it as a miniature incursion, except these are the rats that are native to the space you are in (Amarr/Blood Raiders, etc). The NPC’s would not attack anyone else, and would also be illegal to shoot at. They would only target your corp and not shoot at anyone else. The reward for killing them would be decent but nothing outrageous. Not even incursion rates.
The NPC’s would come in large fleets, and would scale depending on the type of corp you are in. Corp type would be limited mainly to location in space:
-High Sec: You would face NPC’s similar to L4 mission rats
-Low Sec: You would face NPC’s similar to ones you would find in L5’s
-Null Sec: Mission rats would spawn in depending on the fleet composition of you and your friends (Carriers spawn carriers etc)
A corp with multiple stations across New Eden would face NPC’s given the location of the dockup. For example, the invasion could hit a corp that has a citadels in low sec and in high sec. The invasion would hit that dockup and harass the players there.
Rat Types:
Amarr - Blood Raiders
Caldari - Guristas
Minmitar - Angels
Gallente - Mordu’s
Places they would spawn:
- Stations
- Stargates
- Citadels
- Belts
- Anomalies
Fun Fact:
These NPC’s will follow you in warp, and also jump across systems, although if they don’t initially target you but instead a dockup, they will not follow you. They will follow only what is initially targetted. If a ship target docks, the target is switched to that dockup.
These NPC’s would scale according to your fleet comp, especially in Null. So if they spawn in on you, and you are in a frig, you will see mostly frigs and maybe a few cruisers, a relatively small fleet. As more of your friends come on grid with their ships, new spawns are triggered and they get bigger. This applies to all areas of space. Alliances could get huge incursion-like fleets harrassing their dockups in Null. This would bring content that makes players fleet up at a corporation level and try to hammer down on the NPC’s.
Player triggered event:
L4 mission agents would offer a second option (as opposed to just offering missions). You can now trigger some sort of fleet PVE event. This could be considered missions L4.5. Not quite an L5 but bigger and badder than your typical L4. You would need a decent fleet comp for these “events” (5-6 players, including logi). Think of it as somewhere between Vanguards and L4’s.
The NPC’s would be tough and the risk would be high. I would recommend rat types as I listed in my first suggestion. This even could be triggered by anyone brave enough to do so. Of course, as with L4’s, the event would be triggered within a 2 jump radius. You could also combine this with some sort of mining aspect too. Spawn these NPC’s with lucrative ores to mine. The yield would be up to you to decide, as would the monetary reward for killing the NPC’s. It would be cool to have all sorts of operations happening within the event. Covering for your miners while they mine the ores would be a better reward than “mission complete”. It would encourage all types of players to get together and fleet up at a corporate level.
The event would still have a goal. One could be “mine all the ores”. Another could be “destroy the [NPC] station”. You could have these “missions” span across a couple systems too. Like “escort the convoy” that takes you 2 jumps and into a pocket, fighting NPC’s across gates etc.
Conclusion:
These are just 2 ideas with more to come. The overall focus here is to give corps PVE content that they can run fairly regularly. Things that encourage fleeting up for the content. High risk content that offers decent rewards. Take me up on my changes to the mission system, or don’t. At the end of the day, EVE needs to offer corps, especially high sec corps, more reasons to work together and accomplish goals. That is what I have indirectly been trying to say on these forums. We need more PVE to get fleeted for at a corporate level.
As I think of content ideas I will be posting new threads.
. And of course if there is no reward for an activity, it thus becomes a waste of time.