I think this needs to be stressed. Resource Wars and FOB’s seem to have been created by CCP as content that forces players to team up. There are a LOT of folk that don’t want to do that / have the time to do that. I suspect there are enough of them that CCP do actually need to pay attention to them, even if it just the bone of “one or two new missions each patch”.
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Perhaps @Jin_taan can ask CCP Quant for that but I don’t even know what metric you would ask for. Perhaps number of players participating in a type of PvE vs reward, but the problem is rewards come in many forms, not just ISK so may not be easy to pull from the database.
ISK is still used by many players, PvE and industrial players especially, as a ‘score card’ to tell them when they are winning even if they have plenty of ISK. I am sure that very little content is run for it’s own sake, at least after the initial new player period, but is mostly done either as part of some long-term goal (building or creating something else with the resources in the sandbox) or just for ‘points’ and the satisfaction of seeing one’s wallet increase. That isn’t to say there aren’t some dedicated min-maxers who like to continually test themselves against static content to improve their performance, but in aggregate, most of the hours of PvE that is run is just to get ISK. You can see that in how much of the ISK generation comes from players just ratting in nullsec.
I’d too love some hard data on that, but I don’t think inferring player motivation from game logs is especially easy.
You’re welcome to take the position that Eve’s current PvE is fine and CCP should not experiment with new things, but I think you will be in the minority. There is a lot of promise in the new stuff CCP is doing - with the events, the new AI and so forth - and CCP would be foolish to stop experimenting with new things and just add to the L4 mission pool. I don’t think CCP should necessarily remove existing content, but the developers really need to understand what motivates people, specifically how important rewards are in a competitive, single-economy game like Eve, when they are adding new content and occasionally rebalance things when the metas shift to reflect how much risk and effort are required.
I liked Resource Wars when I tried it, but it A) provided me with negligible amounts of income, and B) were not run by anyone else so I didn’t really benefit from any of the design for it to be social and to group up with others. It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem given that without rewards, there won’t be people to test if social PvE like Resource Wars really works.
As to this point, I’ll speak to that as another motivation of me trying Resource Wars was to see if I could exploit the small windows of opportunity afforded by the design to engage in some piracy on some unsuspecting participants. While I think there are some windows, I never got the chance to try since so few people were running it.
I think though that even though they are very safe, they are no more safe than traditional mission pockets which are also pretty much immune to outlaws entering. True, you can’t enter a Resource Wars site as a criminal or without standing, but the sites last such a short time, and you can (in theory at least) catch targets entering or leaving, I don’t think that is preventing much gameplay. You can’t hide from war targets or gankers forever in these sites, and you have to move a fair bit, and thus put yourself at risk, to participate.
In my opinion it is poor uptake, and thus limited targets, that is impairing any PvP gameplay, rather than the design of the system.
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Spot on, now we have the issue of the CSM thinking the same way as CCP and think everyone has to group up to do anything when actually it’s been proven by the uptake of recent pve content that that won’t happen.
Why CCP and the CSM can’t accept that is beyond me.
This, why would players work out how to solo them if they were ok playing in groups?
Again this, and again yourself and CCP just don’t get it somehow that players want to log in and chill with a few missions or mining etc, they don’t want or need “content” shoving down their throats with harder and harder pve, that’s not relaxing play.
The Agency is garbage and offers nothing compared to the old one.
Stop with the group events/missions, they don’t seem to be popular at all.
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I don’t say that CCP shouldn’t develope and experiment with new things, but it’s sometimes reinveting the wheel again. Like with event sites, how much time it must be developed? It’s simple stuff, gateless site with few waves and boss at the end and booster drops. The end. Move on. It’s been months (years) since they started and haven’t change in their core, so why tell us they are still developing them. It timed event that become boring very quickly.
We already have mission system that is connected to the economy by LP stores, it’s a solo content but become stale (yeah it’s old). We don’t need invent new type of pve and seek how to make satisfied rewards that don’t blow out economy. So I think CCP should made bold moves but in controled steps. Look at what they got and if it what they want to stay with it before introducing new things.
Exactly more stuff like that. Or when FW used to get minor “events” that happened when one side took a region or a system. Even if it is just a Billboard ad in a station for that faction. Something that makes it feel like, your actions matter.
The Scope was a great thing, and I also enjoy your videos “Jinn’Talks”. The interviews with FCs, coverage of some of the corp wars. And other events. If there was more coverage by CCP on such things in a “RP” spin on them, where it draws people in by making the game feel more alive.
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How about also asking ourselves what was done well with pve content that is currently well played? Why do folks run sites in null? Why do folks fly around exploration sites? Why are folks running incursions? Why are folks doing fw sites?
IMHO incursions were very good for this game, it taught random folks to fleet up and perform partly like a PvP group. It sometimes generates fights in low and null. Expand on this gameplay maybe?
Give incentives to form corps and alliances of folks who can learn PvP arts from pve and grow towards being part of something in low and null later?
If they don’t/won’t do it now what makes you think that’ll change? There’s already plenty of incentives to move to null.
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But they do. Many groups have started in hs, moved to low, moved to null later. Or they die trying.
Content that helps this progression and teach people to band together can only help further, don’t you think?
Another thing I just thought of that seems to be worth mentioning:
If you have a hard time running L4s, you can team up with another player. Sure, you don’t get more reward, but it also doesn’t get any harder. FOBs break that. If you bring more friends, they get harder to compensate.
It is fairly common for new players to be invited along for L4s to learn the ropes in an easy environment. First they show up in a cruiser, then BC then BS to support the older player’s BS. Then eventually you let them fly the BS and you fly a BC or cruiser, until they don’t need you anymore.
For a FOB, you can’t do that. If you bring more friends, they spawn more ships. And yeah, you get a bit more bounty at the end IF you kill it, but the additional ships don’t reward you with anything. That brings the question: Why the dynamic defense fleets from FOBs?
It makes no sense. So just because there are only 3 ships on grids, the Blood Raiders decide to tie one of their arm behind their backs and fight fair, even though the 3 ships are actually destroying their structure? The new AI may fly a bit more like players, but it doesn’t act like them (blob everything!).
Balance the defence fleet for a group of ~5 players flying T2 fit BS either with a spider tanks or a few logis. More than 5 and you start getting into not really organizable local fleets and also incursion level of numbers (can’t remember which, vanguards take 10 players?). Then make that the defence fleet regardless of what shows up. 2 players want to do it in Nestors? Sure, it’ll be doable, but the kind of players who can bling fit 2 nestors to run the FOB also will think that the reward isn’t worth it. 10 local miners want to fight it in their crap fit BS with crap skills because they are sick of it? They can do it too, and for them the reward will be the recovered freedom to fly in their system.
The scaling reward according to numbers lets you make sure that bling pilots can’t make too much, sort of punishes large fleets but those will be solely for home defence, so they will be happy because of the success regardless of isk. How awesome would it be for a small industrial corp to show up with all they’ve got in a kitchen sink fleet and actually repel the blood raider invaders? And hell, it might even teach them a bit about home defence for the next time they get wardecced. The current system instead punishes them for bringing numbers instead of quality. That’s BAD.
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They have just tried that with various new pve, it’s been widely regarded as a failure.
Very few players want harder and harder pve that tries to force players to group up with very little reward. That’s why a lot of players just want additions to the present missions and exploration that they can do casually for an hour.
The corps that I’ve been in haven’t moved to null because of content, not in the way some will argue anyway. They did it to see what is was like and for the chance of more isk, nothing more. Nothing lacking in HS forced that thinking, some wanted to give it a go, some didn’t.
Whilst this might be your personal, subjective opinion, the stats very much do not back you up - they’ve been consistently one of the more popular PvE activities and continue to be so.
Like what?
If that were true I would be swimming in isk but I don’t. There is a hard limit of what one can do.
Yes it is possible to do a sanctum in a dread in 2 siege cycles but you will have to do sanctums for months to make 5 billion to buy get the ship and the overpriced modules for said ship.
Okay some not humans are “outsourcing” that by letting the machines run the sanctums for them and the “new anomaly” system that is inbound will have exactly 0.01% effect on changing bot income.
Also I must say that this thread is doing a marvellous job of showing just how hard CCP’s job here is, as even players who enjoy the current PvE do not agree on what is fun about it, or what even makes PvE worth running. I’m trying to pick out common trains of thought, but the only major one is “Must be equivelant or better than L4 payouts to appeal to L4 runners”.
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If you think RW & FoBs weren’t designed based on large scale player surveys where they attempted to - using as many resources as they could - find out what players thought PvE should be, i.e, Challenging, Dynamic, Unpredictable & Rewarding - You’re hopelessly naive about how companies work. Hell, my last roundtable of 30~ people had a hard consensus that what they wanted was more Social PvE that had a lower barrier of entry.
that makes your job hard too.
I for one like shooting the red thingies with the price tag on or the red thingies that drop some blue stuff I can sell to a station.
From what I have read here recently is that some people accuse me of “not playing right” because I never sell stuff, I just collect it for when I need it.
Those go out of their way to sell everything they have for “profit” and only need multiples of 5 accounts to “do it right”.
Cheat stix seem to be all the rage now and should have never made it to the idea board.
Anyhow, where I do not produce isk, I also do not have to spend as much because I make my own rigs and ammo and most of the rebalanced meta modules are very useful, so I do keep them for personal use.
From a soloer perspective
Resource Wars - I found them quite entertaining at the beginning and I’m not even a miner. Mining under pressure, managing the tank and killing rats was challenging and I can see myself doing it more but … at the end of the day bills have to be paid and rewards weren’t justifying me getting into mining skills. I’d probably go for it if the rewards were at least cool and worth keeping but unfortunatedly they aren’t.
Instancing felt odd, like out of EvE. Didn’t like it, especially the banners making it look like an arena. I’d prefer it look more EvE like, dark and dangerous not a candy castle.
The Agency is an annoying crap. Candy interface with minimal usability. There’s been a lot of feedback on it, mostly ignored, so no point of going deeper.
FOB’s - I think the new AI and it’s dynamic fleet composition is a step in a good direction and I enjoy encounters with both mining fleets and FOB fleets. Killing the FOB itself is utterly boring though, and imo unnecessarily delayed by structure EHP. Focus should be on killing the fleet not bashing the structure till you fall asleep. I’d gladly see some hacking mechanic, maybe a boss with a key to structure self destruct or something different yet interesting and engaging.
Missions - I enjoyed them to the point they were challenging but now when I can run them with no effort I don’t run them any more. I think they could use a complete overhaul with new AI. I’d also love to see some more exploration content added, preferably dynamic.
Incursions - well. I prefer solo. High pressure, waiting for a fleet fleet to form and moving ships far distances are nuisances I prefer to avoid.
I don’t expect PvE to make me a trillionaire. Overall I prefer activities that reward with a sense of accomplishment, that are interesting to “deconstruct” and explore. If, on top, they put enough isk in my wallet to compensate for the occasional losses and leave something extra to plex the account I’m fine.
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@Jin_taan, thank you for your time for this topic. Cool that you pay attention to PvE. Appreciated. There are spot on comments in this thread and I particularly identify myself in what @Chan_aar wrote. I will not repeat these, but instead I will write something to my motivation to PvE as a still fairly new player to EvE:
- PvE and exploration is intertwined for me. I go for ninja harvesting signatures in null or low. I like the thrill of harvesting mushrooms in someone’s else’s space. I don’t do level XX missions grind. I tried up to level 4 but left
- I don’t want to be forced into group content PvE. I don’t obey to that, I will do things my way. Just give us options. The new AI is very promissing.
- I love blue modules and love them as rewards and motivation
- I would like to see the low sec combat signatures getting some love in terms of rewards. Introduce 2 new sites with the new AI, soloable, into low sec, with no joke rewards, it will bring people and content
- I identify myself as logistics pilot, so maybe I’m utterly wrong about PvE, or just don’t play it right
Cheers
BB
Holy lord in heaven, please no Flavor-of-the-month concept WoW style balance patching. No!~
Some events can be awesome. I liked the more dynamic one and wish I could have tried the last one. But things like the last rogue drones pigeon shoot got boring quickly.
Similar to missions: sit still and shoot red crosses that never challenge you is boring. Then the only thing that is engaging is wondering how big you can make that tick and that leads to the over-focus on isk/hr. If a game is fun, you can play it without worrying about amassing resources because it’s fun. Take any game that you just play one-off sessions. If a game is a grind, then the only incentive is the pleasure of getting the reward, so people focus on the reward. Make things fun!
And that’s about right, but it also needs to be fun and not make you feel like you are wasting your time (so if not really fun, at least give good rewards).
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RW: Social, low barrier of entry BUT bringing combat ships reduces your income compared to bringing more mining ships (not fun! Blowing ships up is more fun than blowing rocks up!), so it’s not for combat pilots, and the LP has negative isk value (Not rewarding either!), so the whole thing rewards less than, say, grouping to finish L4s faster/cleaner (loot and salvage). Successful? Nope
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FOBs: Social? Yup. Low barrier of entry you said? Ha! Nope. Also, Fun? Well, no, the strategy involve sitting still and grinding down the structure while tanking the defence fleet instead of actually engaging the fleet and fighting. Fleet fights are fun, structure bash are boring, that’s true for HS as much as other spaces!. Rewarding? Apparently not for the amount of investment/effort required. Successful? Nope
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Incursions: Social? Check. Low entry? ~check Might seem intimidating, but it’s also not that hard to join WTM or TVP and their entry fits are even alpha friendly!. Fun? Check! Well it’s mostly a fleet fight, you shoot ships, ships shoot you, you might get blown up if you mess up. Rewarding? CHECK! So much a lot of people want to nerf it. Successful? Yep! Surprised? Nope, not at all…
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Missions: Social? ~check, in as much as you can mentor/be mentored through them, get your friend to fleet up so you can grind standings and teaming up is not overly punishing especially if you specialize (1 killer, 1 cleaner or 1 for large ships, 1 for small ships)… Low entry? Check! L1s are super easy. Fun? ~check Well, more relaxing than fun, but you make ships explode so kinda. Add the challenge of burners and blitzing and it’s even better. Rewarding? Check. for L4s. Successful? Yup! Not perfect but not bad at all. It also helps that you can always get more, unlike most other PvE.
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Exploration: Social? No, there are really not much reasons to team up for them. Low entry? Definitely just start in HS. Fun? Kinda You never know what site and loot you’ll find. Rewarding? Yup! can be, even in HS. Successful? Quite
Hopefully that gives a bit better view. There’s 4 things to have in some measure for good PvE: Fun, Social, Low entry, Rewarding. You can get away with only some of those, but not without either Fun or Rewarding and especially not when missing both. Unfortunately, FOBs and RW are both missing the fun and the reward, so they failed. Note: I am not saying something should have low difficulty and be very rewarding, that can go in tiers, like missions do.
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