Solo PvP Mentallity or the lack of it

PvP Gameplay Center Warfare & Tactics
1

I keep saying to maself I gonna take this Hurricane FI and pvp.

BUT:
1 - I’m smart enough to understand if I have zero experience flying bigger only makes it worse;
2 - Reading one above, I try to fly dessies and frigs and I feel totally ■■■■. They are paper, the dps is low and I fail to see the application;
3 - I come back to Medium mentality, then I try to fit all the good stuff plus protection. IT DOES NOT FIT! Ofc, so I get frustrated and I go back to my PvE;

I don’t know how to be gentle about it, so here it goes (understand this is my subjective PoV based on my experiences including my time in NS corp):
1 - EVE is failing miserably @ solo PvP new experience, sure there are people in LS doing it, but they are so opportunist it’s questionable if it’s PvP or just griefing;
2 - Efficient fits are only for fleet engagement, there are so many stuff to do when soloing that the ship cannot hold, SCRAM + WEB is a design smell, since they are mandatory it’s not about a decision anymore. MWD over AB follows; Time to rethink?
3 - Small stuff is garbage for solo play, exception made to T3 dessy?! Well some people manage to pull it off so I gonna be fair;
4 - It does not feel about engaging, it feels about finding easy targets. I don’t need to look at my Zkill, I can’t give a damn less if I’m snuggly, I want to fight and learn and make GF really means something. My EGO is ok, I already know what I’m and what I’m not. I’m no Joe Bane, it’s cool can I get a good fight?
4.1 While TOTALLY NOT WRONG, I feel like everything is bait or camp or opportunity, sometimes is cool to just bump into someone ready to engage and engage and lose just because, and I’m not talking about players here, players do what they want, I’m talking about bad design and poor options. Tether everywhere, no anti-cloak, gate mechanics. I liked ESS bubble, it’s honest, ‘if you go be prepared no ez way outta there’;

So not really complaining, just putting why I can’t go PvP, it does not make sense other than cause grief and I have zero pleasure doing that. I was happier in NS fighting with stand, but now every time neuts come they come with absurd comps.

My critique here is people are not taking the fight unless they are 99% they can win. The only good fights are the War ones, but I’m not ready to go war, I’m an in training char.

I hope some of this made any sense, it is some disorganized train of thought, ofc some people is going to ‘OMG QQ’, lol it was not supposed to be, it’s more like ‘how do I use this stratio to PvP’ or ‘WTF do I do with this Osprey NI’ they don’t make sense in my head when I appraise my options doing it solo.

So keep in mind this post is about my SOLO view of the PvP game.

They day I will be stealth in gate to firewall, I gonna rethink my necessity to play. I understand people that do it, it’s an opportunistic play style to avoid LS being a ‘safe place’, but I prefer to spent my time elsewhere.

Also FW looks so unappealing, why screw my rep to farm sites? Like, if anybody comes I warp out, let me farm these LP’s, well I can do that in L4’s and they are more enjoyable. Why am I going to engage knowing more people will come and I have zero chances?

FW in my opinion was supposed to be ‘my entry ticket to PvP’ but it seems the worst option to solo PvP. I’m alone, there’s not stand fleet, no ‘casual’ helpers and all neuts are the enemy. Objectives are stupid and concentrated on choking points. No thanks, maybe an alt…

Well it’s a lot, it’s disorganize, but it’s honest. Wanting to fight must be discerned from ganking and griefing, they appeal to different people with different necessities.

Another problem, CCP is so fixed into getting you in trouble with factions it’s hard to experiment without closing your door in PvE. So, joining small LS corp is mostly an ISK loss and a future headache.

Now you are authorized to kick my butt outta here, enjoy. Let’s try to not get this closed?

4 Likes
2

Eve isn’t at all designed for solo pvp (outside of niche interests like FW frigates and abyssal challenges). The simple reason why you can’t go out and get consistent reasonable quality solo pvp is that eve is meant to a true sandbox where players have the freedom to combine however they want. A large proportion of pvp in eve happens before the shooting, trying to create a situation that’s favourable for your group and bad for your enemies.

It would be near impossible to make regular high-quality organic solo pvp possible without ruining the sandbox environment that most people play for.

You’ll often get dunked in unrewarding fights, but if you want to get into doing solo pvp stuff it’s probably best to first talk to experienced people in NPSI communities and get a few buddies together to roam around in a small kitchen-sink gang. Once you’ve got some experience in these small, impromptu skirmishes and learned where you can head to find people that undock reasonable responses, you’re in a better place to undock a nice fit solo.

3

I agree with you.

It may be the time to say I’m cheap, T2 is my limit.

Just putting this out there, for the sake of completude.

4

Golden rule number X. You have done something wrong in advance if you have fair fight.

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5

I can’t argue with that, I guess my frustration about not getting this Cane FI fitted right got the best of me.

I cant figure out between the 3 pillars: ECM / DMG and Protection. It should be a no go take DMG and ECM, but for some reason I cannot.

Then I realized the game has zero opportunities to teach me about it, the game taught me fine how to do PvE, hell I can do L4’s with a Stratio.

Feel me?

Edit: the critique about ECM not being a choice is valid. It’s just about how much you gonna spent.

6

Solo pvp is for creepy loner types with issues. Sane emotionally balanced ppl pvp in company of at least 2 alts.

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7

Try frigate, destroyer or cruiser duels at trade hubs. Probably still gonna lose most cases but at least it will be as fair as it can get and might have a good amount of fun for your wasted ISK. After a while you will develop relations with the locals and might even gain experience to get better at duels and fitting.

You could also try RvB though not sure how feasible it is for you to join a pvp alliance, but you can do that on an alt too just for the pvp similar to FW but in opposition with that you can decide the terms beforehand in RvB so can do sort of duels or even prearranged small gang stuff vs the sister alliance if I understand correctly how they operate. Can also join their or public roams as well, I assume newbro friendly roams won’t require expensive stuff and despite you probably will lose your stuff still could be a fun experience if you go cheap.

8

Eve travel mechanics are at the root of these issues.

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9

Or just ordinary people with perfectly understandable trust issues gained by experience. Or those who find most other people rather annoying for perfectly understandable and rational reasons.

Join a corp full of people I never met? Doesn’t sound like a game. Sounds like torture. The forums can be bad enough, but at least I can wipe my hands of other forum users rather easily.

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10

Yea, terrible, all those helpful people that you then can interact with, such as flying in fleets with them or worse, talking with them. Glad it’s optional.

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11

It must be bliss to be blind to how mistaken, scatterbrained, irrational, misinformed, incompetent, needy, self-important, and in denial most people are. I am not so lucky. I can only tolerate a few people at a time, and its loads better if I am familiar with their idiosyncrisies from prior experience.

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12

Almost all people have all the qualities you listed to some degree (the tiny minority that don’t have some form of pathological mental illness). It’s human nature.

In my experience with public fleets 99% of the people I’ve talked to have not been anywhere near as catastrophically neurotic as you portray them. They’re not perfect but accomodating the tiny minority of fools has given me the opportunity to fly with a varied array of interesting competent people.

The key aspect of dealing with the more ignorant or idiotic players you find is that you demonstrate your own capability in a charismatic way so they work with you, not against you.

1 Like
13

This is why I recommend flying with some small public groups first, to connect with people who can provide mentorship and advice.

It is possible to learn how to get into solo pvp without learning from other players, but most humans simply don’t have the motivational drive and capability for abstract creative thought to learn to navigate such a complex system without external input, as well as understanding with no practical experience areas of the game that require you to band together.

On the subject of people only taking fights they think they can win: the key word is “think”. A lot of success in solo pvp comes from subverting the enemy’s expectations of what you can do. This is why both top quality piloting skills and blingy/unconventional fits are a hallmark of amazing solo fights: they push the boundaries of what a ship can do outside of how they’re expected to perform in most situations.

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14

The main reasond you don’t see the “chivalrous solo pvp battles” is that Eve has meaningful loss along with it being a sandbox. People don’t want to lose stuff from being killed and there is nothing stopping people from using every advantage at their disposal. Then there are tons of ways to avoid combat and run away. This is how the game is by design.

Because of this, in order to get an engagement you have to present an appearance of weakness to the enemy so that they will be willing to engage. You also have to fight on your terms and avoid being lured into a situation on your enemies’ terms. Like others have said the battle is mostly won before it even starts from Intel and perpetration.

So yeah if you want to win, which most people do, it ends up being about finding easy targets from some standpoint. Either from your ship being superior or the enemy being potentially lower skilled than you if they are in a better ship. Who goes into a fight they are certain to lose in a game like Eve? You engage because you did some calculation in your head to where you think you can win.

If you want the chivalrous pvp maybe try the arena filaments.

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15

Totally understood, this is the total opposite of WoW arena pvp.

And that’s the point where I cannot fit my ship without a repair module 'cuz I don’t want to lose it, but meanwhile I’m not being aggressive enough.

I kind not looking for chivalrous pvp, just looking for meaningful, since it looks like the only purpose is to sink others ISK.

Maybe I’m too much arena/BG driven. I gotta look into this another time.

16

Maybe look at it differently.

What is your intended target enemy. How much HP and DPS on average do they have?

Then you look at your DPS, ewar, neuts, etc, how long of an engagement might it take to kill them? So throw in a cushion and now you know how much tank you might need.

So you know you need to withstand X dps for Y seconds/minutes, etc.

Do you need a repper? Maybe not. If you have a buffer large enough then the straight HP will be enough to win vs their damage until you kill them. If you have a repper, then think about over the course of the combat how many rep cycles will you get, which equates to the total HP provided by the repper. Compare to buffer and many times buffer can win in total HP over fight. Plus buffer can withstand alpha strikes better whereas reppers can sustain over long battles. Time is not your friend though. The longer the fight, the more chance of the enemy having friends to come help them. Reppers also introduce more micro management during combat which can lead to more mistakes when you are new. They also use cap and/or charges which you also have to deal with.

Then you can also look at implants/drugs. Drugs will give you more repping power. Implants can give more buffer.

Next is controlling range and speed. Can you outrange your enemy? Can you get under their guns or increase transversal to reduce damage? If it is hard for them to hit you then you don’t need much tank or a repper. Conversely if you can web/scram them they are slower and easier to apply damage to, and fast ships that are a wet paper bag for tank are dead if they make a mistake and are caught.

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17

But fitting a ship isn’t about shoving all possible kinds of modules on it… It’s about fitting the right modules. A fit is made to support a certain kind of engagement that exploits the ship’s strengths.

Take the omen NI for example. It’s super fast for a cruiser but its cap sucks. This doesn’t allow it to active ​tank well. It does have many low slots, so you could fit a good buffer, but then you waste all that speed. What’s the ship’s bonuses? Range. So… speed and range… How should you fit that? It’s a frikking kiting monster, probably one of the best in its category and price. And a cap booster takes away the cap issues.

Now the hurricane FI, as any minmatar ship is versatile. What kind of playstyle do you want? Do you want to brawl? Then fit autocannons, a scram and a web to tackle your enemy and a cap booster to sustain the armor repper(s) in the lows. Do you want to kite? Fit arties, a long range tackle (warp disruptor) and obviously mwd in the mids, along with some shield buffer and put speed and damage modules in the lows. But then what do you do if a small pesky frig catches you and goes under your guns? Well you have empty high slots. Fit a neut and drain it in a few cycles to shut its prop and repper off so that you can pull some range and shoot it, or to drop its point so that you can escape.

When you have the fit that you like and it’s viable, taking advantage of the hull’s strengths, then pick your targets. Don’t just go and fight something that counters your ship.

Also go on zkill and see what people use to get ideas.

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18

Yep, @Spruillo nailed that one!

19

the best way of getting a solo fight is to bait, in my experience. everyone likes an easy target. no-one wants a fair fight.

20

I’ve had the most luck soloing in kite fits. The blob can’t kill you if they can’t catch you.

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