I realise this will obviously be met by ‘nope’ from the die hards, but I wanted to tell this little story.
On June 14th I was lucky enough to welcome my son into the world. He was underweight and required hospital care and once released, a great deal of time and effort (as with all newborns) from me and his mother. For those who haven’t been through it, let’s just say it’s every bit as demanding as you can imagine.
Of course, EVE was the last thing on my mind at that point. I didn’t log in for 10 days. I think it’s a fairly reasonable expectation that new parents would do this. I had 1hr at a time free every now and then, but the thought of checking on my EVE stuff, unmolested for years in my WH, did not really enter my thought process.
Anyway, I logged in last week to find my WH Astrahus had been obliterated by a small gang. Everything was gone. Without a fight, they had of course annihilated my stuff.
It struck me afterwards that had I any kind of warning, I could have at least tried a valiant last minute defence, even if it had been futile, it would have been fitting that I was able to at least make use of the billions worth of defences I had invested in.
Anyway, I think the prospect of starting again at this stage is pretty much a non-starter sadly, but could an offline notification through the eve portal not help players understand when the game needs to be actively played or you will lose everything? Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to do anything, but maybe I would have had a window (it happened around noon my time) and could have had a last stand.
Seems to me that even those guys who destroyed my astrahus would have benefited from the content it would offer, especially now that armour isn’t a thing and the chances of surviving any attack are far slimmer.
Congratulations on the birth of your son, and I hope the little guy is doing much better.
An app to send offline alerts is a great idea, provided it doesn’t turn EVE Online into EVE Offline, meaning you end up manage your capsuleer affairs without logging in. That would take the second M out of MMO.
Congratulations on your new addition to the family!
I am aware that there are discord bots that send out pings when structures are under attack. I know third party solutions aren’t what you’re looking for, but it could be an option in the mean time.
@Argel_OTF2 Congratulations on the little one!
Sorry to hear about your stuff. That’s EVE.
EVE = Loss.
But you gained much more than bragging rights in a game. You got a little buddy who will look up to you if you do things right.
Rejoice in your son and forget about a stupid game.
Congratulations on the birth of your son! Thankfully I am way past the stages of sleepless nights with my 3 boys but as they get older, along comes a different set of issues to deal with (grumpy teens)!
Sorry about your loss, that can be tough but I do think a notification when a structure is under attack gives you the ability to go down with the sinking ship, rather than arriving after it has sunk!
It’s possible to set up this kind of notification, without any paid third-party apps, server hosting, Discord bots or anything like that. It just isn’t straightforward and you have to do a bit of research and fiddling to get it to work. Which I think is how it should be. As everything in EVE, the capable can gain a competitive advantage from careful planning while the less capable or more casual need to rely on rote legwork - logging in and looking.
Attacking neglected structures in inactive-looking systems is a legit tactic and it shouldn’t be made too easy for long-term squatters - players occupying space they almost never actually use - to hold onto their space while rarely logging in.
I think personally the structure alert is a fairly good mechanism, given you receive a notification about it if you’re logged in anyway. That implies that this is something important enough that we should be aware of it wherever we are and whatever we’re doing.
Perhaps a compromise could be to let people know about shields going down after the fact? This would at least give defenders a chance to make a last stand at hull only.
I would counter the ‘too easy’ element with the fact that it is now possible to destroy structures much quicker than before, so that would give defenders just one chance, where they may have had two or even three before.
Ultimately, the benefit to the game is that every structure should ideally put up a fight and offer some PVP element for both parties. This is what EVE should be based on. The people who aren’t active aren’t going to have EVE or notifications set up on a phone, so this would likely only help those who would genuinely be active players. Even if not, is it a bad thing if an inactive player comes back and defends their e-stuff?
In fairness, I’m not seeing a lot of opposition to the idea anyway.
I’m not advanced enough to have experience with running a structure, however…
…it seems to me that the structure should be able to defend itself to a certain degree - at least provide some content like a mission…something. The warning to the owner offline seems to be obvious. Who can stay online all the time waiting on a small fleet to come randomly into the system?
What’s the fun of attacking and killing a defenseless, unmanned structure hanging in empty space?
Oh yeah, sorry…I was forgetting about ganker fun…they like killing defenseless things like newbie mining ships…
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