Again with the misinformation. Sansha Incursions very much gate camp and attack players on sight, FOBs do attack players on sight, Pirate insurgencies also do both.
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My guess? Primarily to insulate new players from escalating tensions in New Eden.
CONCORD Director General Panaja Paukonsuo told the Scope that, “In recent years, we have seen just how fragile the political links between nations can be. We have invited the Amarr, Caldari, Gallente, and Minmatar to construct their own infrastructure in Exordium’s embassy constellations to ensure that a path to peace always remains open.”
CONCORD’s goals appear to be aligned with AIR’s, though not identical. CONCORD will be enforcing strict security limitations that prohibit conflict between nations and capsuleers alike. They hope to use the region as a safe haven to foster unity between their member states, providing a space in which continued diplomatic communication can be guaranteed, no matter how dire the situation becomes in the wider cluster.
For heaven’s sake, Capsuleer Day XXIII is called “Warpath.” They’re pretty much telegraphing their next move.
PR is a thing that every MMO needs to survive. In this case it is the fact that EVE will be more accessible and attractive to new players. The part of article, that I shared, is literally a (partial) explanation for this expansion. Read it as: “this is more than just a simple pop-up in a newbie system”.
Maybe your comment just “wooshed” over my head, but this isn’t Intergalactic Summit. 
So basically, a safe space to hold newbros, while highsec burns? If so, then yeah, I can see that.
Again with your BS…
I’ve been in Sansha Incursion systems and from my experience, I’ve seen no gate camping or Sentry Guns set up on jumpgates… Same thing for FOB systems…
Maybe I was lucky..
Now I have seen some NPC"s on gates in some of the Pirate Insurgency systems I’ve gone through… However they’re not on all gates and they definitely have no Sentry Guns set up like the Trig Invasion content did…
Anyway, the Trig Invasion event was in 2019, Pirate Insurgencies is relatively new compared to it..
“Burns” is a bit much, but “changes?” Certainly. Having Exordium in place will remove a number of practical limitations for CCP making changes to the topology of New Eden and the relationships between the four Empires. Prior to having a safe, neutral space to start in, shaking up New Eden in any meaningful way would disproportionately impact those with the least knowledge and experience to manage and adapt.
Now (or soon), they’ll be free to f around and get crazy. Should be interesting.
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Oh absolutely. And I love this a lot. More and less safety, at the same time!
I bet CCP wishes they had Exordium during Triglavian Invasions… haha
I never said sentry guns, both you and I had said gate camps and players being attacked by NPCs. FOBs don’t have gatecamps, but they do have roaming fleets, I had to clear out FOBs before they were removed from HS anytime we mined in a system with one to protect our miners. Incursions have always had gate camps, roaming gangs, etc.
I also never said Pirate Insurgency had sentry guns, although suppressed systems do in fact have gate guns that gets deployed. I was very specific with what I said, you may have said sentry turrets, but I was correcting the part where NPCs actually attack players.
Yeah, they have similarities but my point is that they’re not as extreme as how the actual Trig Invasion event was…
Maybe I’ve just been lucky in my travels and haven’t seen them being as bad…
I think the difference is that triglavians were invading the empires in all out war. all 4 empires.
pirates may be at war, but they are at war with 1 empire, not the entire galaxy. So the actions have to be different.
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I’m not sure if it’s been asked, but out of curiosity, do we know if the Exordium stations will permit office rentals?
I would certainly hope so. That alone would make a great recruiting tool in an area that many folk will be looking for somewhere to call home to them.
I believe CCP has stated that not only will there be office rentals, but that the number of rentals will be increased beyond the normal (quite low) limits. This is to help corporations make themselves available to new players for recruitment and freelance jobs.
All I know is I’ll be flying around Exordium in a ship called “G4nk M3”.
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EVE has had 20 years worth of new players who got by just fine. All of us were noobs once, before any current NPE or even the new one. In all that time, the one consistent factor has been that nowhere in space is ‘safe’.
My biggest concern about Exordium is that it has been conceived and implemented by people who were last newbies when the dinosaurs were around…and who have long forgotten how newbies actually behave. I think those closer to being noobs ( such as myself ) have a way better memory of the actual process…and how the biggest factor is not risk or lack of understanding, but the potential for boredom to creep in.
I mean, yes…as a noob I was getting bored. It was boring mining and skilling for 2 weeks or more just to fly a Procurer. My initially heady rush of ’ Hey…look everyone…I’m flying a Venture !’ had passed and worse still…I was starting to realise just how POOR I was in the game. These days I have 250 ships and billions and billions of ISK…but I am close enough to being a noob that I still recall having just 10 million ISK.
What did EVE really feel like at that point ? It felt like I was in a game of Monopoly where all the properties already had hotels, there was no get out of jail free, and I’d be lucky to collect 5 million ISK passing ‘GO’.
I was days away from quitting EVE ( and CCPs own stats show most people leave EVE not from ganking, etc, but most likely from boredom ) …when I was ganked. Being the daft noob that I was…I thought that Catalyst had come to help me defeat the NPCs…LOL.
For the first time, something unscripted and organic happened in my game. It was impactful…and just what I needed. And I am still in EVE over 4 years later as a direct result.
That’s not what some CCP Dev ‘thinks’ is how noobs behave…it is actual first hand experience. The process I describe is the metaphorical goose that lays the golden egg…and we all know what happens when the farmer wants more eggs.
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One third of the players opposed to Exordium are because they can’t come up with a better idea. Another third are opposed on general principal because… legacy. The remaining third are opposed because it places them out of reach from easy marks.
@Arthur_Aihaken
You posted your comment directly below insights on how to do it better. Maybe you didn’t read or understand it?
The problem is that the basic concepts of EVE originate in the early 2000s when MMORPGs were a new thing and also the concept of “grind” wasn’t perceived as something bad and cumbersome yet.
Today’s new player generations want instant gratification and get bored superfast. Just as @Gloria_Exercitus wrote, they need action and visible reaction. If they only live with NPC grind in Exordium, it will be interesting how many actually transition to the outside world at all, before they uninstalled the game due to boredom.
With the old starter systems this was not a problem…you just ventured outside at some point because you were curious about what those stargates do. And then the world opened up for you to experience and conquer.
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Speaking as someone who has been here for over 16 years and joined the game when the NPE was little more than “Here’s a ship. Good luck, kid,” let me just point out that there’s an element of survivorship bias at work in your statement. Do we have solid numbers for the new players who both did and did not get by just fine?
I would imagine if anyone does, it’s probably FC. They probably wouldn’t invest development resources to build Exordium if they didn’t have some compelling reason to do so. If the present NPE was working just fine, they’d leave it, since it would cost them nothing to do nothing. The fact that they spent the money to build Exordium suggests that FC believes it would cost them more not to do so.
Anecdotally, I have, over the years, introduced quite a few people to EVE. Despite my assistance and enthusiasm, none have lasted more than a month or so. As of about 2017, I stopped recommending EVE to potential new players. I think that’s an indictment of the status quo.
I’m happy for you (sincerely). But also consider that your experience and reaction may not be reflective of the general newbie population (or it may! I don’t have the data, just like none of us do, outside of FC).
And it seems FC is attempting to address this as well. I think Exordium is just one of several puzzle pieces currently being placed. The forthcoming expansion also adds military campaigns and eases the on-ramp into FW. It looks like they are trying to give noobs a safe place to learn the ropes, then funnel them into a range of active gameplay options. This is probably a good strategy. We’ll see.
The historical alternative has been to give a basic tutorial, then cut the noob loose and hope that 1) they find a corp, and 2) that corp enriches the play experience enough to retain the noob. From what I know, that hasn’t been working out too well.
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There’s a large disconnect between how EVE is advertised and marketed and what it actually delivers. But I don’t disagree with your assessment, either.
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You can either blame the current generation of “defective” gamers who want that so-called instant gratification or you can adapt your game to more closely align with the current market. Or, you can slowly ossify and fade to irrelevance. You guess which course FC is taking.