Has there been discussions around building a dedicated PVP training mode in the game where it allows pilots to practice AND MEASURE various aspects of manual piloting and PVP mechanics? Something like how Valorant has Practice Range and Counter Strike has Aim Maps?
Thinking a mode in Eve where you pilot your ship and fit against a simulated ship. You can control whether the simulated ship is moving in a vector, orbiting, moving in an unpredictable manner, or trying to maintain a certain range from you. Whether it’s firing at you or not.
And you can practice spiraling where the mode measures relevant metrics like your transversal over a period of time, how much damage you’ve taken, how long it takes you to tackle from a given distance, how long or what portion of the time you were in point/scram range, etc.
On the flipside, you can practice being the big ship against a simulated tackler and measure how much damage you’ve applied and what % of your shots were smashes, hits, grazes, or misses.
You can practice slingshots where the simulated ship is trying to maintain a certain range and you have to slingshot to scram.
And whatever other piloting or PVP mechanic worth training mechanically.
I feel this would help a lot of new and not-so new players really get into PVP and provide an explicit pathway to hone their actual piloting skills. At its current state in Eve, the complexity of PVP along with a lack of clear path on what to practice AND opportunities and measurements to practice turn away a lot of players new to PVP because they just feel lost on the mechanics and don’t know how to get better.
I suppose Sisi was kind of what I’m proposing among veterans. But it’s not a dedicated training mode and it requires a lot of dead setup time and coordination with a partner. And it’s not something nearly all new players are aware of.
What stops you from doing such a training session on the live server?
I know I’ve done that with my alliance as new player: tackle training where one player moves in a straight line while others attempt drive-by scrams and things like that.
As a positive side effect such trainings on the live server also make the universe more alive and provide an opportunity for unplanned PvP content.
Finding a partner, partner’s availability, partner’s desire to be my practice dummy for however long I want to practice a certain mechanic. There’s no measurement of relevant metrics to precisely see what I need to improve on and what I’m doing well.
It’s much more accessible and a far more effective training method, especially for new players, with a dedicated PVP practice mode.
I can suggest you Abyssals in a Frigate to improve your flight skills. You will learn:
how to quickly identify an enemy ship composition and the threat they pose to your own ships abilities and make decisions how to engage them
watch the environment for dangerous areas (clouds, towers, border) and either use them to your advantage or avoid them
how does certain ammo apply to ships with a certain speed/signature and how do application modules increase this application? (Webs, Painters, Tracking/Guidance Computers…)
use range, flight vector, tackle mods and propmods to either avoid incoming damage or maximize your own damage output
act under time pressure, making you familiar with cap-management, pulsing repair modules, overheat planning, in-space repairs and greed-control
Now on paper all this isn’t exactly PVP since you fly against NPCs, but many of the NPCs are actually stronger than some Player Ships you will encounter, especially in numbers. And all the tasks and decisions you have to make will in similiar fashion appear in PvP. It gets even more demanding when going into the higher tiers with a small frig-gang, since you not only need to survive quite harsh focus-fire (when to use Assault Damage Control, when to overheat tank/propmods), but also need to pay attention to your buddies health (watchlist), remote-reparing them (cap-managing, watch for broadcasts, stay in range) and train ingame-comms to warn them about threats they might have overlooked (battlefield awareness).
After all, you will learn a lot of things you can use in PvP and will always make enough money while training to replace the occasional loss.
This kind of PvP training would be the absolute worst training I could imagine. As much as you try, you cannot program the AI to behave like a player. There are several better alternatives that I’d highly recommend.
join FW and ask for training
join a nullsec corp and ask for training
join a highsec war corp and ask for training
basically join any PvP group active in your time, ask for training, and ye shall receive. Just spend 30 minutes in the ingame recruitment channel to find the ones active for you.
While I agree with you an AI wouldn’t adequately mimic the behavior of real-life players and this training mode wouldn’t be valuable in developing game sense, its value comes as an accessible tool to develop the fundamental mechanics and muscle memory for PVP. The fundamentals are lacking among new PVP players and the lack of an accessible way to practice these fundamentals severely stifles the development among many, if not the majority, of Eve players trying out PVP. And they just end up quitting PVP.
But this tool is also valuable for veteran PVP players. They want to try out a new fit or new ship? This allows them to see how it flies and practice the new movement pattern. Finally mechanical skills are something all players - new or vets - can always improve on.
Look at any competitive Counter Strike or Valorant player. They spend hours every week on the aim maps or practice mode which is basically shooting at targets that move left and right and have very little bearings on actual real life player behavior. There’s very clear value to them on practicing their mechanics and maintaining their muscle memory in an accessible way. I don’t see how it’s different in Eve.
Maybe CCP should expend more effort into explaining to new players that EvE isn’t the game where you can solo the story mode before starting to make friends? I truly believe the false confidence imparted by an AI trainer being crushed by reality would be worse than the current feeling of near helplessness before asking for help. “I don’t know” is also usually easier to remedy than “but the training taught me this.”
NPCs already exist in EvE, and can be used for this purpose. They’re called Rats.
Being able to accurately center a crosshair isn’t a lot of help here. For example, there are too many variables involved in practicing just the simple act of tackling a target that doesn’t want to be tackled to ever accurately portray them in an NPC. Is spiraling the answer, is their attention somewhere else and you can burn straight in, are they unknowingly coming right to you and you just need to wait?
Outside of a 6 year hiatus, I’ve been playing EvE since 2005. I’ve learned more about solo PvP living in lowsec for a couple weeks with a FW group teaching me than I learned in over a decade as a nullsec F1 monkey, practicing on NPCs and losing expensive ships cause I thought I knew what I was doing. Real instruction is invaluable, but it’s been so long since I went through the NPE that I don’t know how well CCP pushes the social aspect of the game and the value of learning from other players.
I truly believe the false confidence imparted by an AI trainer being crushed by reality would be worse than the current feeling of near helplessness before asking for help. “I don’t know” is also usually easier to remedy than “but the training taught me this.”
Gamers today aren’t naive to think that just because they can crush an AI means they can dominate PVP. This is common knowledge among gamers across all genres (from CS to Dota). On the contrary, the trading mode will only incentivize Eve players to get better. Oh my tackle attempt against a slow moving battleship failed because I couldn’t keep my transversal up or I kept a high transversal but approached the battleship too slowly? Let me work on my short-comings in the training mode. Oh I predicted exactly when the kiter was turning into me but messed up the slingshot because I couldn’t time my prop cycle or I miscalculated my fit’s turn radius? Let me work on these in the traning mode. Again it’s about practicing the fundamental mechanical skills which is less about your opponent’s behavior.
NPCs already exist in EvE, and can be used for this purpose. They’re called Rats.
This is suboptimal. You can’t have any control of the rats, you can’t control what you’re trying to practice (tackle, anti-takcle, spiral, slingshot), you have to go around searching for new ones after clearing them, you risk getting your ship blown up, you can’t isolate to one ship in a readily consistent manner, and there isn’t too much meaningful feedback on what you’re trying to practice. A training module makes this accessible and practical to consistently practice the fundamentals.
Being able to accurately center a crosshair isn’t a lot of help here. For example, there are too many variables involved in practicing just the simple act of tackling a target that doesn’t want to be tackled to ever accurately portray them in an NPC. Is spiraling the answer, is their attention somewhere else and you can burn straight in, are they unknowingly coming right to you and you just need to wait?
This is game sense and something the training mode can’t help with. But what good is game sense if the player has poor fundamentals to tackle or spiral effectively?
Outside of a 6 year hiatus, I’ve been playing EvE since 2005. I’ve learned more about solo PvP living in lowsec for a couple weeks with a FW group teaching me than I learned in over a decade as a nullsec F1 monkey, practicing on NPCs and losing expensive ships cause I thought I knew what I was doing. Real instruction is invaluable, but it’s been so long since I went through the NPE that I don’t know how well CCP pushes the social aspect of the game and the value of learning from other players.
No denying your experience in LS and FW was invaluable. But that experience in tandem with a practice mode to easily practice your fundamentals would have made you a better PVP player.
All A PvE PvP trainer is going to do is promote bad habits that will have to be broken later. It’s an issue with the very basis of PvE vs PvP, predictability. AI has a very limited skill set and a distinct inability to do anything outside that skill set. Unless you make this trainer the most advanced gaming AI ever created, it’s going to be a hindrance more than a help. If you are able to make an AI do more than sit there while you shoot it, seems a bit of a waste to make it a training bot when you could make general PvE considerably more dangerous.
The idea of randomized rats is also utterly ludicrous in a training aid. If I’m good at spiraling but suck at keeping optimal, why would I care to run against anti-tackle rats? Again, in every instance, talking to real people about learning PvP is better in both the short and long term for players and the game as a whole. Think of how many questions you could have answered for new players if you were interacting with them? Instead it looks to me like you’re here asking for a way to better treat the other players as slightly more advanced NPCs. How hard is it to ask someone to help you practice PvP?
All A PvE PvP trainer is going to do is promote bad habits that will have to be broken later. It’s an issue with the very basis of PvE vs PvP, predictability. AI has a very limited skill set and a distinct inability to do anything outside that skill set. Unless you make this trainer the most advanced gaming AI ever created, it’s going to be a hindrance more than a help. If you are able to make an AI do more than sit there while you shoot it, seems a bit of a waste to make it a training bot when you could make general PvE considerably more dangerous.
Hard disagree on this. I don’t see actual PVP and the training mode being mutually exclusive nor conflicting with each other (ie forming bad habits). Rather, a pilot goes into PVP. Gets wrecked. Thinks about what he/she did poorly or could have done better with. If it’s mechanically related, then practice this singular aspect in a consistent and easily accessible way through the training mode.
The idea of randomized rats is also utterly ludicrous in a training aid.
Huh? I never proposed this nor am I fan of this idea. In fact, this is one of the shortcomings of “just shoot rats”.
How hard is it to ask someone to help you practice PvP?
Asking is not hard but there are cumbersome elements to this. Finding a partner who wants to be your dummy target, partner’s availability and logistics to meet, partner’s desire to be your practice dummy target for however long you want to practice a certain mechanic. And there’s no measurement of relevant metrics to precisely see what you need to improve on and what you’re doing well.
Why bother other people for their time which yields inconsistent and limited practice runs when you can have a training mode that allows for practicing your mechanical skills whenever you want and for however long you want without taking anyone else’s time?
Maybe spend less time trying to get CCP to code a solution to YOUR problem, and more time using all the various methods of communication available to you to contact the EvE community, and coordinate some training classes?
For the last time, because I’m not wasting anymore bandwidth on someone who won’t help themselves, a bot is not the solution in a multiplayer game.
“What is this blasphemy you speak of? Player interaction in mah vid'ya game? What is this some kind of massively multiplayer game or something?! Nobody needs that stuff.”
Just spend 30 minutes in the ingame recruitment channel to find the ones active for you.