@Destiny_Corrupted the last time I unexpectedly laughed that hard, someone posted this on our Discord server (cough) seriously asking the British players “is this true???”
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You monster.
First the ants, then this thread. What’s next. Who’s next.
If Heaven has fire and a Sanitation Department, Destiny would be right in the ■■■■■■■ middle.
Why wouldn’t people be okay with this?
Where does it say in the holy rulebook of video games that multiboxing in EVE’s abyssal arenas is “wrong”?
I have to agree with this. Seems to void the spirit of the thing - a robust spar as it were. What would possess someone to have to multi-box instead of be happy to fight alongside someone else? This is why we can’t have nice things.
There were even multiboxers in the alliance tournaments.
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Who would care about winning spots anyway? I heard the leaderboard counts wins instead of win ratio, so the only thing that ‘winning a spot’ means is that you have a lot of free time that you want to spend in the arena. And that’s nice, for those players. But I don’t care. And I care even less that some of those winners may be multiboxing.
Advantages of multiboxing the abyss:
- Better communication between the ‘two’ pilots
- Fighting abyss all day long depends on the free hours of one person instead of multiple people
Advantages of fighting alongside another player:
- Two pairs of eyes
- Quicker reaction
Multiboxers would be at a disadvantage if this leaderboard weren’t about grinding as many fights as possible.
You find this surprising? It was known as soon as they were announced this would happen.
Multiboxing, along with high-SP combat-optimized characters, expensively fitted ships, etc are (presumably) legal, but they won’t be without consequences.
Many combat gamers (e.g. with backgrounds in RTS games) don’t think like gankbears.
If they don’t think the playing field is reasonably even they won’t fight at all.
From my personal perspective (checking out current EVE after a longish break), Champions of the Abyss is an excellent idea: it has the potential to address some things that have made me lose interest in EVE more than once, all related to the process of learning about PvP …
… but that potential will never be realized until I’m 100% sure it’s not just another form of boring one-sided combat.
I hope this feature helps some players get over the startup threshold for EVE combat, but if it clearly allows for unbalanced teams , regardless of how the “stronger side” gains an advantage, I think a lot fewer people will play it for long enough to develop their EVE combat skills.
Not that you’re wrong about the other stuff, but you can never “develop combat skills” in an environment like this anyway. Actual combat in EVE, even small-scale, is still completely different. It’s like…thinking that playing a whole bunch of Counter-Strike is going to make you good at paintball.
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I think you’re looking at it from a different angle than me.
I certainly agree that EVE combat is unlike RL simulations (e.g. paintball) and RTS games, and that the skills aren’t transferable/reusable. But IMO there are combat-related skills in EVE, and there are signifcant differences between person-to-person combat and person-NPC combat .
Some people (including me) don’t bother to get started with person-to-person combat, and while they’re playing they simply avoid it. In my case, I do this because every aspect of every instance of person-to-person combat I’ve been involved in was boring, and hence a complete waste of my playing time.
IMO the best thing EVE as a game can gain from Champions of the Abyss is to give players who currently avoid person to person combat a chance to try it out in a different, possibly entertaining environment.
That gives them a chance to learn things they won’t learn via PvE combat, and to get over part of the “startup threshold”. Hopefully some will enjoy it, and thereby find new ways to enjoy EVE.
BTW I know players won’t learn everything in a “sandbox”, but that’s not the point anyway. “EVE” gains if players experiment with new things, and some of the experimenters find activities they enjoy.
I think you’re making a different argument here. You’re going back to the initial pro-arena argument that states that players who don’t normally PvP might try arenas. They might; I’m not necessarily arguing against that. But the skills they learn in arenas will mostly be inapplicable to the rest of EVE, because the survival aspects, utilization of timers, and psychological maneuvering are not present in arenas. The only skills that a player can take away from arenas involve physical maneuvering in open space in a solo or small-gang environment.
Someone who does normal PvP will have most, if not all, skills needed for arena PvP, because they’ve probably experienced plenty of solo or small-gang fights already. Someone who starts PvPing in the arena, on the other hand, would get absolutely crushed going out into the real world and expecting the same level of efficiency they’ve achieved in the sterile environment of the arena (even if we assume that they’re an intelligent player, and work their way up to a respectable win ratio).
I would not use, or recommend the usage of, arenas as a training environment for the rest of EVE.
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That copypasta is older than the sun, and yes it is true, no-one in England has a watch, we all have smartphones now instead.
Both Elena and Balos emerging again on the very same day… coincidence?
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I didn’t realize that people who don’t know what TOYME is could afford smartphones. But thank you for confirming my 547th worst fear.
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Destiny
You’re right that I expected this was intended primarily for new players. I logged on (to my Alpha) for the first time in a long while, and got some “filaments” as gifts, so I assumed CCP are looking to provide some “instant gratification” + P2P combat familiarization for beginners.
From what you’re saying I guess that was a bad assumption 
In my defense, I watched Blizz waste a lot of resources trying to make a thriving E-Sport out of WoW PvP. IMO they failed badly, and burned a lot of resources in the process. I figured CCP would have done some research, and learned from that.
My guess is that Abyss won’t shift EVE player numbers … but it’s opt-in, so it shouldn’t do any harm either, and it would be nice if a lot of players enjoy it, regardless of the effect on player numbers and/or newbie retention.
I still agree with the OP though - IMO, anything that gives an advantage to a subset of players will reduce Abyss/Arena participation.
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The fundamental truth in the gaming world is that for a game to be successful as an e-sport, it has to be a game of competitive nature (think teams, strategies, et cetera), it has to be fairly fast-paced, and it has to have a competitive “scene” already present. Think games like DotA, CS:GO, PUBG. Some other games stream well (think Minecraft, or Rust), but they don’t have an e-sport scene attached. You can’t just take any game (like EVE or WoW), add a short-form competitive feature to it, and expect it to do well, if it’s not firmly integrated into the e-sport zeitgeist. That’s what all of these companies don’t understand. They have a few board meetings where they ask why they’re not getting a piece of the e-sport pie, especially since their game already has competitive PvP features, and decide to leverage some synergies, et cetera. But it never works out in the end because they simply don’t get the mood.
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