Very interesting read, thank you.
Really opens the mind on the key points you had made.
1 Like
Bladewise
Interesting (and realistic) post.
Sadly it’s the kind of post that highlights that it would be possible to get the environment right for everyone - but only if there was a way to negotiate, so the correct balance could be found.
If (in the extreme case) PvEers become unwilling victims (e.g. due to “sandbox (i.e. no) design”) their only practical response is to walk away. Of course they’ll stay if they’re having enough fun to make up for the hassles and induced boredom, but it’s a fragile state.
Make it too annoying and their best move is to leave the game.
Flip the perspective: if (as seems to be happening) the unwilling victims gain enough power over the environment (with CCP as its “Deus Ex Machina”) they have no reason to consider the interests of PvPers, because they gain nothing they value from the presence of PvPers.
Their best move is to demand “no-PvP” zones.
Yet … PvE in MMOs is more fun when there’s a reasonable amount of “random drama” from the environment. And EVE’s (rather theoretical) vision was for the drama to come from other players.
There’s definitely room for compromise. But probably not in EVE Online.
Most EVE PvPers present as radical reactionaries: “rather destroy EVE than provide PvE scum with the smallest concession”. And since PvE players need PvP a lot less than the reverse, they will keep asking for dedicated zones with no PvPers: “rather destroy EVE than put up with more harassment from PvPers”.
EVE is far from dead of course. IMO it’s not even dying. But “Winter Is Coming”. And with it, change.
2 Likes
Good game design does not run on a series of players saying “I want it this way”, “No, I want it this way!”, “Screw you both, this is the only way to play!”.
It’s an ecosystem. For any part of it to be viable and long-lasting, the ecosystem needs to support that part, but it also needs to support and provide the resources for that part.
PVE design is not so hard. It requires one ship, one player, and an automated framework in the game (the ‘E’), for him to interact with. Generally, a PvE player can interact with this framework whenever he chooses, on his own schedule, suited to his play needs.
PvP is tougher. If all the game is PvP (combat games, shooters, World of Tanks, MechWarrior Online etc etc), no problem. If the game is mixed PvE and PvP (like EVE, which is actually something like 70% a PvE game and less than 30% PvP, no matter what the PvPers like to say), then the actual, average, PvPer wants two things:
- He wants a target he can beat, that will be both satisfying (‘Another kill for me!’) and rewarding (“Hey nice loot”).
- He doesn’t really want to run too much risk in order to attain that goal. He wants to be able to evaluate his target, decide if the odds are in his favor, pull the trigger if it is, disengage or just continue lurking if it isn’t.
This is why PvPers are always arguing about ‘carebear’ safety and high sec… because only high sec provides (potentially) the environment they want to work in.
The PvEer doesn’t need you, doesn’t need your style, and makes up a greater portion of the game. PvE can support all the destruction and markets he needs - it does so in the vast majority of MMOs out there.
You need other people to be your victims, to be your loot piñata, and to not put up any consistently fair fight - otherwise the whole piracy for profit becomes too much of a gamble.
So, back to ecosystem… if your style is to be viable, then clearly, being a potential victim has to be a supported, nurtured niche in the ecosystem. Else, you run out of prey, the remaining prey are annoyed and agitate for prey-favoring change, and everyone gets frustrated and yells and points fingers at everyone else for ‘ruining their playstyle and killing EVE’.
So, lets turn your question around: What change would you make to EVE, to make the ‘potential victim’ style of play, supported, rewarding, and worth it for a PvE player to continue doing it even though he is sometimes being preyed upon?
Note: as before, I can outline an ecosystem for EVE where the activities, development path, rewards systems, and challenges support this. CCP would not do it unless they were forced into a drastic game re-structuring. They won’t be forced into changes when most of their income comes from subs of players who want the status to remain quo.
But I already know what my ideas are… what are yours?
2 Likes
I’ve been away for some years, but Eve has always been a game I wanted to get back into.
Tempted to download if for nothing else log in and scare whoever is living in my old ratting system.
Wonder how confused I’d be and how steep the learning curve would be if I had a go again.
See you miss the point. The PvEer DOES need me. The health of the game DEPENDS on the PvEer having risk, because without risk the PvEers activities have no VALUE.
The changes I would make do not matter because they all hinge on remote assistance to suspects not being removed. Remote assistance is the only way for a suspect to escalate a fight, without it there’s really nothing left.
Also you can end it with the silly “high-sec PvP is no risk” business cause that’s a load of ■■■■■■■■.
Gotcha, you have no ideas and no suggestions beyond “My play style must be supported by other people”.
I did not miss the point. I addressed your issue clearly and completely. You skipped literally everything in my post to say “PVE must be my victims because without me to prey on them they are nothing!”. You are deluded, self-centric and clueless. I do not say that in anger, or even disappointment, simply as a fact. It is the same reason people can’t see beyond their own needs to address the larger issues, all over the world.
Here’s a hot tip for you: PVE does just fine in the vast majority of MMOs out there today. You know, the ones more popular, bigger, with more players, making more money than EVE? Those guys.
PVE doesn’t need you. It only needs decently designed ‘E’. You need victims, but you have no ideas. You need other people, but you want them to fall over and play patsy for you so you can get your “I am eenveencible!” jollies.
Step aside, needy weaksauce pseudo-PVPer. The game is evolving past you.
2 Likes
No actually you skipped MY entire post and most of your reply was already answered. I simply responded in kind.
PvE does fine in other MMOs that do not have a player driven economy.
Your entire post consisted of various ways of saying “I need victims in high sec and ways to attack them for my playstyle to be viable, because I don’t want to PvP anywhere but in high sec and against anything that can kill me (ie. caps).”
I addressed that. And gave a framework for making design decisions based on providing you victims. But you can’t see beyond your own little pocket of “me me me I need victims you must supply me with victims only my playstyle is valid!”
This is just part of the fantasy.
PvPers aren’t exactly useless, but they contribute very little to PvEers. PvP vs PvE players is different to e.g. belt rats only in that they participate almost exclusively in one-sided (i.e. relatively boring) combat.
Before you’re tempted: destruction of “EVE stuff” provides a market for new stuff, so it absorbs raw materials.
But:
- Destruction is useful, but it’s not necessary
- “PvEer” doesn’t mean “no PvP, ever”. PvEers also destroy stuff.
1 Like
No my post explained in GREAT DETAIL WHY the game cannot continue to remove risk from PvEers. Your posts have not explained anything in great detail because, given your narrow perspective, you do not understand how the incentives and mechanics interact.
Fine, as already requested, suggest your idea how the mechanics and incentives should be adjusted so that it is actually reasonable and profitable for a PvE player to hang around in high sec and be your potential victim.
Oh, right. I already asked that. And your reply was “They need to be my victim or they are nothing!”
Yep, good, wide, detailed perspective ya got there.
@Bladewise You should answer that.
At this point I am in hisec, I have been here about five months since leaving my nullsec alliance. Three weeks I was de-subbed. I like having lots of fitted ships at my disposal, I like making ships and structures, since I have been back in hisec I have built two structures and three Capital ships. All of which are for my own use.
I have done a little bit of structure bashing on some alts but most of the time I have just made stuff for my own use. Currently I don’t need you or your play style, I am quite happy chugging along building stuff.
Oh and I have had some quite stonking fights with Diamond rats too because I started skirmishing with them with HAC’s and AF’s, in fact the fights can be better than fighting players. As they don’t run away.
I have debated putting a structure down, however the value of it is not enough in terms of benefit in hisec for me to put it down as I have very high standings with the NPC corp in which station I have based my corp. The benefit does not justify me taking the risk.
The question is an important one, because I do not need you to be around for me to have fun in Eve.
1 Like
No my response was that there’s no point in me suggesting anything if remote assistance is removed.
But let’s assume it isn’t removed and they simply require the remote assistance to come from a member of the same corp (which would still be good for the “victim” [that’s actually is the aggressor because HE’S the one that chooses to engage]).
I would reduce bounty payouts and increase either the value or amount of drops. This has a lot of big advantages. First it pushes PvEers to take steps to actually defend their assets. Second it gives new PvPers a way to make isk as a “bad guy”. Third it slows the creation of isk, making isk more valuable and plex less expensive. But you’re going to say “er mah gerd yer nerfing my isk faucet”. But that’s not true, the LP and isk from bounties are worth MORE with less total isk in the game. It’s a great compromise really. PvPers can do their suspect thing, PvEers engage on their own terms, PvEers still have the same BUYING POWER with their returns on their PvE activities, and it provides a path for new PvPers.
Now why is neutral assistance such a big deal? Well who’s going to train these new PvPers? How will they even know this path exists? If I have no reason to have friends what makes you think I’m going to train my competition? Furthermore if my competition is suspect why wouldn’t I just kill him?.. Well, given I know he can’t receive remote assistance that’s what I’ll do. However, if remote assistance was a possibility it’s suddenly more beneficial for me to assimilate the new player and train him to be on my team because if I don’t he’ll be on my competitions team.
Okay. I can’t really say this would help, but at least it’s somewhat worthy of trying. I know you PvP guys like to assume that everyone who doesn’t start their post with “PvP YAY!” is an anti-everything-PvP ISK farmer, but since you obviously either don’t read or can’t process most of what I write, I have written, at least 8 times in the past month, that EVE desperately needs more ISK sinks and fewer/lower ISK faucets.
I would modify your idea to maybe include more LP with the PVE’ing, maybe even add some generic Concord style LP to non-mission PvE (ratting, mostly), and then adjust the LP stores to have some more products but also require more ISK and materiel trade-in (sink ISK, increase turnover of produced goods). There would need to be some other infrastructure added in the way of incentives/risks, both for the PVEr and the PVPer.
Basically, high sec is the least profitable area for any PVEr (other than market traders) to operate in. So if they are going to be PvP prey there, they need incentives to do so. Incentives that apply to them, personally, in their daily activities… not just “well PvP is part of the game so they need to be PvP targets and just suck it up”.
Edit: Just thinking, on the ‘increased drops/drop value, make them want to defend their assets’ thing. I would probably consider making any LP granted either part of a final mission drop (when missioning), or attached to an object or something that drops (like the dog tags we already have) - so that bounty ISK was reduced, and if they want the value from the drops/LP items they would need to fight for it. This would likely also reduce the value of pure bot-farming for things because more steps are required to cash in than simply sucking up bounty ticks.
Yeah that sounds like avoiding the system, but you’re evading the people.
Because it is completely irrelevant to the discussion. Much like comparing water polo to eve was.
You babble nonsense like to this in half your posts.
So originally you spoke about avoidance being some out of game action or not logging in at all. And evasion as actions during an encounter.
There is nothing they can do at a tactical, gameplay level, to EVADE the consequences of their decision to rat with a neutral in the system, mine in a poorly tanked barge, blind jump into low sec, fly a freighter with too valuable a cargo through a high sec ganking chokepoint, etc. There is no “play”. The only winning move is NOT to play. The only way to win, is to deny the enemy battle. That’s not EVASION.
I took these definitions and the metaphor of being in the ring with a boxer and tried to get you to think ‘bigger’. Since eve is a persistent game, everything within it is part of the ‘ring’ and almost any action could be considered ‘tactical’ and ‘reactive’, like looking up killboards to see where a gate camp is.
But the true definition of avoidance isn’t that it’s predictive and the true definition of evasion isn’t that it’s reactive. Avoidance can be reactive and evasion can be preemptive. Truly the words are pretty much synonymous. It has been described to me that avoidance is an action taken for a specific instance. However evasion is behaviour, especially involving being cunning.
You avoid a bullet. But you evade gunfire.
But even that definition doesn’t hold in all uses.
Are you avoiding them instead? 
No i didn’t.
I said being punished for bad decisions was like any game.
Whilst I’ll agree both water polo and eve punish players for bad decisions, inferring that means i think they are alike is poor reading comprehension or down right stupid.
The sun and a basket ball are similar shapes. But you infer that I’m saying they are alike. 
So? In the context of this discussion, what’s the difference?
Almost any game will punish you for both wrong guesses and bad decisions.
I’d say rolling two dice and looking at the result wasn’t ‘most games’.
How many possible outcomes does snakes and ladders have?
36 out comes per roll for each player. Numerous rolls for each player until their is a winner. And thats not even including the snakes and ladders. For two players there are thousands of outcomes. Exponentially more with additional players.
And that’s a game i WOULD consider has limited uncertainty. Computer games and in particular eve are indescribably more complex. And that’s a big part of their appeal.
Quote me where i said we couldn’t affect the outcome in eve.
In fact it was me that said we could mitigate risk in eve. It was you that suggested the only option to avoid gate camps and freighter ganking was to not play. Avoidance you called it.
More nonsense or deliberately obtuse.
What you’ve been talking about isn’t about whether you CAN play or CANNOT play. It’s only about whether you’re happy or unhappy with your options. Do you WANT to play or WON’T play.
This depends on your personal situation and desires. Eve isn’t for everyone but that doesn’t mean you don’t have options both in and out to deal with ganks and camps.
(watch he’ll now move the goal posts again and say he was talking about people without Internet connection).
Are you avoiding them?
Whilst they may have subtle differences, they are synonymous. The difference between the two certainly isn’t predictive vs reactive genius.
So back to your original definition where avoidance is to not play. Yes?
Except there are gameplay ways to counter the actions of other players. And this would be evading yes? Thanks. Now look back at my original post where this started.
Bladewise gave you advice on how to evade (i.e. in game ways to actively counter camps and ganks. It is gameplay). But you’ve been confusing it with avoidance all this time.
You have it out for me because you screwed up and confused yourself. So we’ve gone down a road of oil tankers, water polo, boxibg rings, rolling dice,
Because you thought bladewise was telling you how to avoid when he was teaching you how to evade.
1 Like
It’s very possible to get the climate right. The great thing about the suspect system is that the PvEer has to decide to engage for there to be any combat.
No their best move is to learn from their mistake (because they have to make a mistake that is unrelated to actual combat to even die) and either prepare better for next time or avoid making that mistake again.
The funny thing is we had the exact system I’m asking for 5 years ago. It worked great, PvEers weren’t leaving, and we had twice the player numbers that we have today. If they don’t want to be a victim they don’t engage, if they think they can win they do engage. If they engage and lose they learn a lesson.
This is not what I mean, and if it came accross that way then I apologize. What I mean is PvEers do not understand that the changes that they ask for make them no more safe and also destroy the game. Of course they do not WANT to destroy the game but in essence, that’s what their asking for with 100% immunity in high-sec. Furthermore, you can already be 100% safe in high-sec by simply doing a little study and preperation.
Given we have lost 10k-15k logins over the past 5 years even with adding alphas and having a huge influx of bots I’d say the game is a lot closer than you think (I bet you half or even less of the logins are subbed accounts played by a human and not a script). Furthermore, how willing are people to pay real money when we have less players but higher plex prices? Wouldn’t a lower amount of players at least keep plex prices the same? This means we’re relying on a handful of whales to pay for the game. I highly doubt people who make isk for fun (PvEers) are trading cash for isk. So it’s likely PvPers that want to participate in the really high-end content without having to farm for isk (ever wondered why CCP caters so heavily to Null-Sec?). Remember that whole conversation we just had about the PvP climate being complete ■■■■? How long do these PvPers stay? Likely the only reason they’re here is because their cash is so valuable but how much more expensive does plex get before we start losing swaths of PvEers too? It’s very likely that CCP is 1 wrong move from going bankrupt. These changes in April could even be that 1 wrong move.