The CSM 13 Winter Summit Minutes are out

EVE Information Portal Dev Blogs
442

As far as the situation with wardec’s, this is obviously something that’s been going on a while. However the fact that CCP brought this means it has come on to management’s radar. Look at some of the phrasing:

“CCP Fozzie says that at this point they are waiting for a more detailed request from the senior management to see what the business goal is in this case, but are still investigating the potential mechanic changes.”

“CCP Fozzie goes on to clarify that the metrics for the current system clearly show that it’s in a state that CCP is not happy with. The current system is extremely skewed in the favor of aggressors. There is also the fact that people involved in wars will simply not play whilst the war is ongoing.”

“CCP Larrikin pulls up activity data for players of corporations that have wars declared against them and it shows considerable activity drops in all activities during the war. They also show that the low activity continues after the war ends. Brisc Rubal noted that the numbers here were so stark, it would justify immediately removing war decs as a mechanic and promising a fix after the fact. The CSM in general were surprised at how stark the numbers were and noted it was clear this mechanic was having a significant impact on player recruitment and retention.”

For everyone thinking there is a simple ‘fix’ or ‘we need to just change one thing’. Guess again, the last sentence is quite damming. For everyone comparing today to the 2012-2013 heyday, guess again. Highsec demographics has changed significantly in the last 5 to 6 years. Where before you saw senior players in highsec all the time, and corp’s led by senior players actively flying with, recruiting, and teaching new players, those people have left highsec (or EvE) to a large extent. What was a minor inconvenience 5 years ago, has become ‘significant impact’ today. I know quite a few people love this style of gameplay, and it pretty much goes back to the roots of EvE, but if this style of play is ‘significantly’ hurting the game, to expect CCP to sit by and do nothing, is pure folly.

CCP works for a gaming company now, a company that (quite correctly) has shown a strong respect for the ‘bottom line’. Needlessly losing new players (in significant numbers, it seems) won’t sit well with any company looking to grow. I have my own ideas, but that’s not important now. I expect drastic and significant changes are coming. Whether I agree with them or not is immaterial if the intent of the change is to ensure EvE grows and thrives for another 15 years (at least).

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443

It’s not defeatism, no matter how much you try to twist and mangle people’s words. You want defeatism? Defeatism is abandoning everything that makes Eve good in some pathetic half-arsed attempt to make it palatable to the crowd that functions better in the themepark MMOs etc. That’s quite simply not what Eve is nor what it should be. The very foundations of this game are wrong, and you can’t build that sort of thing upon what we have here. It’s just not made for it.

“Defeatism”, really? Embracing what Eve does best out of everyone, embracing what Eve can be and shifting the focus towards opening up all of these things to the people who we’re trying to retain is defeatism?

At least just spin your own words, instead of other people’s, hmm?

444

But why screw it up for everyone who doesn’t have a Carrier/Super Carrier when Carriers/Super Carriers are the problem?

445

Its only messed up for those who don’t want to get out of their cosy pocket systems.

446

That’s nonsense. Capitals would just pogo around on their jump drives to systems with fresh anoms (jump fatigue means jack to a ratting carrier/super alt). Those of us who don’t rat with caps would get screwed either in waiting for respawns or gate to gate travel times (which lowers income) while the capital pilots wouldn’t even notice the difference and would be just as safe as they are now.

Is it really that hard to think past step one with this stuff?

447

Insisting CCP can’t learn to provide engaging PvE in EVE is defeatism, yes. It is conceding that the challenge cannot be met and overcome.

Nobody’s saying ‘abandon everything that makes EVE good’. That’s just what you want me to be saying, so you can be pissy at me. First you accuse me of not arguing in good faith, then you tell me I’m ‘twisting and mangling peoples’ words’. Consider the snide judgmental nonsense to be taken as a given, and get over yourself enough to stick to the discussion of the topic, please.

What makes EVE good is the sandbox, the fact that what drives the majority of the game is the interaction between players. The issues causing problems vary based on regions and play-styles.

In high-sec, wardecs that encourage people to dock up are a problem. If the game is a sandbox, where people can pursue whatever playstyle they prefer, then that includes playstyles where they don’t need to fight other players. It means choosing not to fight shouldn’t be something you’re punished for over and above the costs involved with lost time, loss of activity, and potentially loss of structures.

Punishing people for saying ‘this is a sandbox, this is the way I want to play’ just drives people off. A lot of those people will be perfectly happy to keep doing that for a prolonged period of time, and then find pathways into more PvP-oriented content. But they don’t get there if you try to force them into it. Carrots work. In a world where there’s plenty of other games they can play, sticks don’t.

Meanwhile, in null, a lot of the issues are things about game balance and figuring out a way to produce more destruction while reining in the ISK faucets in a way that doesn’t instantly disadvantage everyone who’s already trying to play catch-up. Game balance is something—according to Sort, Brisc, and Jin’taan on Open Comms either last week or the week before—that CCP doesn’t actually have a full team devoted to. It’s just 2 guys (Fozzie and Rise) who’re primarily working on other things with different teams (Five-0 and Size Matters, respectively). So that means ‘balance’ isn’t something we can put a whole lot of pressure on to ‘fix problems’.

So that points more toward ‘how do you promote destruction?’ Is it a question of incentive, or removing obstacles? Right now, absent an overwhelming force, the advantage in nullsec warfare is heavily skewed toward defense. That’s an impediment to destruction.

The difficulty in that, though, is that without skewing it toward defense, you end up with the question of ‘why bother holding space?’ There’s a lot of structural factors inherent into the nature of aggression that gives the aggressors the advantage in a campaign, so some defensive bonus is needed—especially for smaller groups attempting to hold space against larger ones. But at some point, a defensive advantage in order to get people to actually hold and use space turns into an overwhelming advantage, especially in a sov system that makes it directly advantageous to focus on population density, rather than controlling vast expanses of territory.

The nature of any arms race is that the people building up the huge stockpiles of weapons are leery of actually risking them, because if you blow your wad and don’t win… you’re exposed, and vulnerable. And people don’t like doing that. So they become risk averse. It’s not that they don’t want fights, or they’re cowards, it’s just a simple and easy look at ‘how much work did it take to build this stuff up? How much will it take to replace it? Do I feel like doing all that for this one moment, or do I kick this can down the road some?’

That’s normal. That’s even pretty reasonable. And it’s what needs to be overcome in order to really get any significant increase in the asset sinks in null, and by extension, smooth out the curve of player interactions to a healthier position.

As for lowsec… ugh. Until CCP can tell us what lowsec’s actually supposed to be in and out of FW, who the hell knows?

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448

Well, not always.

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449

I don’t much care about what you two are arguing about, just here to say that realism isn’t defeatism. Unlike most of the people who talk about it, im an actual PVE player, and there is good reason why people are STILL doing missions (and anomalies) that have been around since the dawn of EVE rather than the newer stuff.

With the exception of Abyssal Deadspace and Burner missions, most of that stuff gets ignored. Look on Zkill, see how few FOBs are being killed for an example.

Can CCP make “interesting PVE”? I don’t know. Is there any evidence to suggest they can. I personally don’t think so. It’s not for lack of trying probably, I’d guess that it’s that EVE Online’s ‘game system’ (ie ships that are spherical bags of hit points, omnidirectional weapons, submarine physics and such) just isn’t conducive to ‘interesting pve’.

450

Hello Again Steve,

You might remember me from last CSM Summit Notes…

Still waiting for CCP do “DO” something or will wardec mechanic changes be deferred again and remain a contentious issue next year?

451

Not really, because its just a matter of asking the right questions.

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452

Well, adding a new structure that follows citadel mechanics isn’t necessarily ‘introducing’ flaws, yet there is the problem of citadels being time-zone-tanked.

453

CCP even have done this. Resource wars was engaging. Most of their content lately has been engaging.
It’s just had gimmicky at best and negative income at worst for rewards rather than classic reliable rewards. The content isnt lacking, it’s just coming pre nerfed for fear of highsec making isk.

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454

Opinions appear to vary, @Jenn_aSide

And, you know, for the record… yeah, I still do PvE. Including missioning, mining, AD, and RW.

455

I don’t understand, nothing that poster said had anything to do with what I said.

456

How to determine a defenders constellation? What about structures owned by alts of null security alliances residing in a NPC 0.0 region miles away?

457

Red Frog won’t be seen in space much, the clue is when you do a contract they don’t like you wrapping containers so its easy to re-contract to neutral alts.

458

You said, as a conclusion to the stuff quoted there:

Nevyn’s statement directly refutes yours: CCP is making ‘interesting PVE’, they’re just not getting the effort/reward balance right.

459

With higher plexes and lower yields? Then we can focus on the presumed issues that the CSM jumped to even in this CSM. Congrats next year they might be right.
…asks if they could have a breakdown of the ships generating the most bounties such as
Vindicator Navy Issue or Gilas. CCP Larrikin says that the largest portion of bounties come in from
Super Carriers and Carriers…
But starting no where gets us nowhere.

460

I know what he said. I think it’s not true and again, it has nothing to do with what I was saying. Individuals can think what they want, what people actually do is what matters.

RW might be good pve with a rewards problem, but other post 2009 PVE offers great rewards and gets ignored. Whatever the cause, you can’t ignore the fact that anoms and missions still get done WAY more than the newer stuff, despite years of CCP adding PVE.

Even though it’s not scientific, since you PVE, how many people do you know hunt done nothing but Besieged Coverts? or Hunt belt mining fleets, or dive into Drifer Wormholes for the content. How big is the Burner community or the incursion community or the Epic Arc community or the COSMOS community compared to the Mission Running community?

The reality is that CCPs PVE efforts have largely been firmly in the “miss” category on the hit or miss scale.

Maybe they can do better, I do’t know, but recognizing that CCP isn’t very good at making PVE (because most PVE being done is from the pre-2009 era) is not defeatism, it’s a rational reading of the state of PVE.

461

Listing a bunch of intentionally limited PvE does not make your argument true. Especially when most of these examples do have a dedicated and consistent community, showing that the PvE in question is engaging.