Right now Eve Online misses one key feature that is present in almost all mmo rpg games – regular organized PvP via battlegrounds. So my suggestion for developers is to add this feature, ie add regular 24/7 battlegrounds 10 vs 10 players (or even 50 vs 50 in future). Queue will gather players wanted to play PvP with their current ships, split players in 2 teams evenly by class ships and then allow them to fight each other within single star system until one of the teams loose all their ships or key point captured.
-There can be green, yellow and red level option for battle grounds, which any player can select before entering bg queue. In case of green level his ship will be refunded 100% with hull and modules undamaged after battle, but reward from bg will be smallest one. Yellow level – damaged ship will be returned but reward is higher. Red – no ship refund if it is killed in battle, highest reward.
-Reward from bg can be small (in minutes) boost in current learning queue, credits, resources, modules, lp.
I think battleground feature is rather easy to develop and it will bring many new players (or old ones like me) to the game, cause currently PvP in Eve Online is not good, I mean u need to scout systems during days to get your mass pvp and in almost all cases it will not be balanced and contain no fun for the fighters, because it is not actually fun to kill 1-2 with the team of 10. While battleground pvp will not be 100% balanced but it will be much more fair, fun and balanced. And you’ll need to wait only minutes for PvP, not days.
No. The reason I love this game is the PvP isn’t structured in this way which allows for actual battles. If this was put into a game it also should not give you isk for getting blown up and replace your stuff. Last, if you want a structured PvP set it up yourself and make the rewards yourself. A lot of people would participate in a contest if you set one up with a prize that us worth it.
First of all my suggestion will make unstructured pvp better, because of many new players that will come to play pvp (both structured and unstructured). And battlegrounds will not restrict it in any way, it only complement it, make game more versatile, interesting and rich. Once again, I was not talking about any limitations to open world pvp.
Second one, yes, i havent heard alot about alliance trounament, simply because it is very very rare thing. And we are discussing REGULAR PvP here, that will bring new players to Eve on regular basis.
As for refunding ships and giving isk as a reward, you are not getting isk for blown down, you get very small amount of isk to compensate your time spent on pvp, and that only if you choose green level of compensation. Also developers can make each ship refund cost isk, so if you loose, you loose money as well.
There are several reasons it won’t be added. Eve us a sandbox not a theme park. Almost every other game out there has some form of this because the mechanics for world PvP in those games suck. In eve we don’t need battlegrounds because the whole universe of eve is the battleground. Giving a battleground style instanced PvP is bad idea because it draws away from the entire reason Eve is Eve, if you started a battleground it would draw players away from the rest of the eve world leading to less dynamic PvP and turn the game into a dull world were the difference between high low and null is how many miners there are. If you want more PvP go out and start roaming or set up your own competition.
The problem with current Eve pvp it is rare and unbalanced. Great PvP mechanics and tactics present in Eve wasted atm, and these could easily be used in any sort of regular frequent pvp. Many people who play games go to work and have real life, so they cant spent days searching for single battle. All I want is to create a way in that people will be able to do brief pvp in their evenings and weekends (and since it is world wide game this must work on 24/7 basis because of different player time zones). Alliance tournament dont work cause it is rare. Contests with prizes dont work because no player will sponsor it and if these frequent contests will be sponsored by CCP it will ruin economy. Thats why im proposing controllable way to boost pvp activity. World of Tanks have 700 thouthand people online atm (thats almost a million online each second), World of Warcraft is around 200k. Thats because regular PvP is much more attractive overall. You can create super smart PvE bots, but they will never be so smart and iteresting to play with as human.
You scare small amount of people PvPing right now in Eve will become even more smaller, while im talikng about new players that will join the game because it will become more versatile.
Part of what makes PvP so enjoyable is it isn’t fair, it isnt easy, it’s not handed to you on a silver platter, and your risking whatever it is your flying. Eve is the hardcore mode for other games since they don’t come with that mode because they cater to children and teens who don’t want to put effort into something outside of hitting “find match”. I get there are people with jobs, I’m one of those people. I get hunting and finding fights is hard. There are groups you can join like bombers bar and specter fleet. You can do solo PvP just do t expect people to just sit around and wait for you to kill then. Like you said, Nothing beats the challenge of fighting other players, part of that challenge in this game is finding and catching them which requires effort. If you want a no effort game then go to Wow or whatever game you clearly love so much for very mind numbing PvP where everything is cookie cutter and flavor of the month.
Every player that goes to a battleground isn’t in the sandbox. And as pvp becomes rarer in the sandbox, more players go to the battleground, creating a feedback loop where pvp in the sandbox becomes less and less in favour of instant gratification.
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Eve is fair for everyone. You’re just not thinking about the big picture.
Right now you killboard misses any entries for the past 7 years. Not a single one. Yet, you present idea for PvP arenas and concerns for PvP. Interesting.
I will call it instanced arenas, because it is an apropriate name.
Others have already pointed out several reasons why it is a bad idea. I will focus on some other aspects.
You compare EVE with MMOs which were created as fast instanced arena experience. They are different games and they work on different basis. Mutating EVE to minic one of these games would kill it. EVE is one of the most succesfull MMOs of all times. And there are good reasons why.
Lets scratch the surface more. In order to asure 10v10 or whatever numbers, you would have to instance it, that 3rd parties can’t interact. Here we have instanced arenas… What ships would the 10 randon dudes bring? What tactics could be aplied to them, if any? Who will be fleet commander? Fleet without commander will be miserable experience and fleet with miserable commander will be even worse. How will you assure that miserable commanders will not screw up experience for others? Will the dudes speak the same language in order to communicate? What coms will they use?
Sure that instanced arena game can deal with it, but let’s continue. I don’t believe that random kitchen sink fleets would be enjoyable in long term. If you allow whole trained teams in non kitchen sink compositions to enter the arenas, then they they will ruin experience for the randon dudes from the queue, waithing to get fast enjoyable PvP in the evening…
Again this can be dealt with, but it would be a whole different game.
Refund of ships and modules is a joke. No. I’m very surprised to read this from character from 2005…
You suggest in your post that this will fill need for fast PvP experience. It should be rather done through fixed Factional Warfare. Not by instanced arenas.
Yes, i did not played Eve for years because it lacks PvP, i used this time to play other games and looked at their PvP realization. Almost every decent mmo game have both structured and open world PvP present in form of arenas, battlegrounds, automated regular events. If u dont like battle grounds ok, lets make it as 24/7 arenas or regular events. To wait 1 year for next alliance tournament is very ,very, veery long. I like current Eve online PvP mechanics much, lets make them usable on frequent basis, not 1 fight per 2-3 days of searching for enemies.
“What ships would the 10 randon dudes bring”. I see you do not play other games much. Look at World of Tanks, it has clear unswer. All you need is to split 20 players with their current ships in more or less even groups based on ship class and technology level. If there are not enough people, like 17 for example, add 3 bots to balance teams.
As for the tactics all you need is to add “vote for leader” screen before of each pvp match, to pick leader of the team. Then each team placed in its corner of star system and do anything to stay alive, destroy enemy or capture point.
BTW, if you have any ideas of how to create regular PvP in Eve, please feel free to tell them there. I like Eve much, it is so much better then Elite Dangerous (manual docking, no autopilot and manual laser aim are so stupid). I wish to play Eve, but it keeps loosing players just because it is a bit complex and dont have active PvP. While other games have insane online, for example WoT online is 500k people minimum atm.
Omg, no, not a fps shooter. Eve has great unique RTS PvP mechanics that can be used in brief battles as well. In fact any FPS space ship battle with manual weapon aim is very stupid. Manual weapon aim was required in 1944 WWII because of lacking computers and AI. But even nowadays military forces use only automatic missliles and auto tracking turrets. Manual aim on a spaceships is simply retard.
Hey @synK,
Thank you for the explanation. You are right that I don’t play other games than EVE much. I play EVE. And I don’t want to turn EVE into some instanced arena. Who wants it anyway? If you like battlegrounds then why not to stick with them? There are good ones out there.
The matchmaking which you describe is familiar, but I can’t see how it could be successfully implemented in EVE for any “random” dudes from waiting que in order to provide quality gameplay. And to substitute 3 missing peole in team by bots is out of my imagination.
“And that is the last time I am going to read one of your posts”: Before the break I played Eve for years, my main char is 79 million skill points. I was doing solo roaming as well as participated in huge fleet battles with 2K ships engaged. And then after years of break i returned to Eve. And you know what? Nothing changed. Only new ships were added and 1 new weapon class.