Don’t know about the Coverts. CODE does a fair job of hunting belt miners, though. As for for drifter hives… enough that I’ve got a small library of doctrine fits for them. High-sec incursions have a few notable groups, and it’s likely most of the other null groups have them, as well. Our own incursion group has a few hundred people in it, and that’s among people primarily focused on PvP, in one nullsec coalition. If we’re to believe that high-sec has more people than null, and those pilots are more PvE focused, the extrapolation should speak for itself.
The reality is that reduced uptake due to poor reward structure doesn’t represent content that isn’t ‘interesting’ (which was your descriptor), just that it isn’t something people will choose as how they make their money.
What kind of argument is people still doing anoms and missions and not other pve activity? Yes they do, just anoms and missions are quickest to hop in. People still doing sleepers caches and ghost sites (added post 2009). It’s not as popular as anoms because they are rare.
CCP is good at making pve and abyss space showed that it is possible to make it. CCP is bad as listening to playerbase. Last Jin pve roundtable was a joke. He was circling around “how to make fun group pve”. Nobody cares about group pve because it’s hard to balance the rewards. Most people doing pve for gathering money. Solo. What was the first question when RW hited TQ? how to solo them? Same with FOBs. It’s been that for years and for years CSM keep asking for group content. CCP thought CSM=what playerbase wanted, wrong. Another lack of perspective. What NS CSM want for pve is not what HS dwellers want for example.
“The Judge hopes to see this tech becomes a replacement for missions in the future. CCP Burger adds that if missions were to be properly addressed it would require all of EVE development teams for a significant amount of time.”
this is dishearthening. When abyss mechanism was first announced there was a premise CCP may use it into other aspects. It would be huge gamechanger. Maybe one thing at the time? Relics and data sites first? Loot is already there, nothing have to change in that matter.
Edit: recipe seems delicious, but my cholesterol level says “NOPE”.
When I first started playing eve in a large gaming community, the high security corporation I was in got war declared. Our CEO’s plan was to move into null. The majority of people didn’t want to move into null, they wanted to run missions and mine. Maybe times have changed since 2009, but there will be people who don’t want to PvP, ever. When I next went to log onto that account, I couldn’t remember the password ( it was like 3 years ) so I started again.
Because the new PVE is all but crap? FOBs are annoying; RW are glorified mining missions without the perks of missions; Incursions pay well but are a nuisance in null sec, which is why they are mostly run where they don’t affect navigation; Drifter incursions were a disaster because you wasted tons of ships and time for weird rewards.
One of the biggest reasons for new PVE being mostly fails is that you lose your ships regularly against your will when you really want to earn ISK for the activity where you want to lose ships.
Another thing is that CCP fails to expand on new PVE activities, for instance, in ways that I have described above and in the past multiple times.
That’s because CCP wants to experiment instead of create PVE that people want to use. CCP would not have to experiment a lot to create new and engaging PVE with existing mechanics and features. The fact that they ignore that and outright dismiss the potential in favor of wasting their oh-so-precious-and-limited developer time goes to show that CCP doesn’t know what they are doing.
Epic Arcs and COSMOS are also missions, just in a more structured environment and with some sort of overall goal. EA are limited by the fact that you can only run them once every 3 months, and COSMOS are skewed and CCP has been delaying improvements and expansion of the system for years although users keep asking CCP continuously.
I too do hope they will at least start implementing new AI in areas then dont require all hands on deck there is many warp to sites/beacons that should be places that provide such content for players to engage in instead of current situation.
When one open a map and select those sites map explode with amount of information a stark contrast of real state of those sites they are empty no content there…ok some lame content can be found in some of them barely worth a fresh nooby attention.
Think that could be a good starting point instead poking directly to everyone favorite never ending farming preference.
So what? The latest attempts of changing things half-heartedly haven’t been a success either. Maybe CCP should try and put all hands into one project for a year or 2 to change it, but don’t ruin it. Personally, I do not need all missions with new AI because I want to earn ISK for PVP, not keep replacing PVE ships with the money that I wanted to earn for PVP. This defeats the purpose of PVE and this is why most of the new PVE activities fail.
Group PVE content is already there: High level DED, Level 5 missions, Burner Teams and Bases, FOBs, RW, NPC miners. Guess what? They are run in capitals or with your alts because sharing income with other people and depending on the readiness of other people to do PVE is anything but frustrating and a waste of time if the rewards are not appropriate. The measurement for appropriate rewards are Incursions. Every other form of group PVE has fallen short of that income level and is thus not run by groups.
Even L5 missions have fallen short in that department. I have found out about that a couple of years ago when we ran a few of them and they not only took longer than many L4 to complete, the 4 or 5 people we ran it with also got a significantly less income from the missions than from L4s.
Judge was talking about abyss mechanism introduced into other types of pve. Abyss is still solo, still have a good ISKs and don’t become stale so fast because of random aspects.
It’s true what you are talking there are bunch of pve types currently ingame that can be made in groups but people tend to do it solo because of increased income. I tried to find another explorer for group content but everybody declined me at the less income argument.
Edit: just some idea hitted me. In-game Bulletin Board. Where people can post announcements, services etc.
I don’t think broken is the right word, but there are enough things that could be improved. I hope changes come soon, as I’m way to bored right now. Changes mean chaos for a while. And chaos is new Eve content.
A lot of war deckers are going to be very concerned and will lash out at people they perceive as being on the other side, which is quite understandable when their gameplay is under the spotlight. I for one want war decs to continue within the game, but it needs to be adjusted so it is not a green killboard farming exercise for high SP and ISK rich old players some of which bot in nullsec to fund it, aka PIRAT. (Not all of the PIRAT players but the CEO of PIRAT.)
The times indeed did change, in 2009 people started in hisec then after a bit moved to nullsec, there was none of these entities taking new players directly into nullsec. So we had people who wanted to PvP in hisec and saying this could be fun. Now it is people who don’t want to at all, many of them are indy alts of nullsec players so of course they do not want to move and that would have been the case three years ago.
That being said when I was in hisec for an extended period, which I left two years ago, I came across quite a few people that wanted to fight but saw no way to do it without feeding or seeing the war deckers dock up. If CCP change that part which is what I am hoping for then war decs will be interesting.
The worst thing CCP can do is to end war decs.
The data that CCP was looking at corresponded to what I had seen talking to people, and the issue is not so much with the brand new players but those who are six months to two years into the game who have focussed all their training into their main character and have no options apart from dropping corp with that character.
This is not a sob story, it is human nature, just as I understand that some people feel elite doing turkey shoots for a nice green killboard. But watching two war deckers go at each other is actually pretty damn good stuff.
What the system needs is consequences and a way to fight back, as long as CCP do that then we will see something more interesting develop but it is truly important to enable the people war decked by an aggressor to more effectively gang up, so for example instead of removing RR as such, they should go the other way and make it so different corps in the same alliance can rep and more importantly that any of the entities aggressed by a war decker can rep each other. Then let us see just how good they really are. And let me be clear some of them are very good players, and this is what players should be going after to test themselves.
CCP should focus on the Jin’taan suggestion and better options for people who are decked by the same aggressor to work together as in repping each other without going suspect, it might take time to develop, but it will and the game will be better for it
The deciding factor for mass adopted PvE has always been the reward. I am sorry, but if you think you can get mass adoption of any PvE without it having the possibility for “phat loot”, then you are delusional and you haven’t learned anything from Game Development in the 15 years of established MMO-History.
For eve, you have to make the rewards worth it and you also have to make it repeatable and sustainable (I.e. it must be farmable one way or another) If something isn’t worth it, people won’t do it. It is that simply and you can see the picture clearly.
The “mass” adopted PvE content in eve is: Repeatable, sustainable and yields good isk. If you then make it easy, you have made something that get’s abused.
The used PvE in Eve yields good isk, can be repeated frequently and you lose few ships while doing so. This is true for:
Missions (incl. burner missions)
Anoms
Incursions
Abyssal Space
Yes, when those features started, they were a different beast, but you can see the pattern => stuff gets Min/maxed and better knowledge yields to less ships lost, more people do it. No matter if we use burner missions, incursions or abyssal space as an example.
It’s all about the ISK.
If you want to make PvE for the masses, ignore all the PvP’ers that ask for “Engaging stuff” and “non-repeatable” stuff. They might try the content, but since they play the game for something else to begin with, they will not mass adopt any new PvE unless it is quick and good isk with minimal losses.
Not saying that’s a bad thing but Players that do see grind as a bad thing are not the target audience for PvE.
With that said, I don’t think PvE is a failure in Eve. Mining is by far the most used PvE. Missions and Incursions and now Abyssals and Burners are being used.
You could expand on that. However, me personally? I think PvE needs another purpose besides ISK. I’ve mentioned standings in some other thread as an example.
That sets a bad precedent. There are no safe spaces in EVE, and it’s important to make sure new players understand that. Making wardecs require consent just sets them up for more issues the first time they’re ganked. False expectations are bad things to bake into the mix.
Putting something like that into the Agency interface would be a good idea.
I don’t think the real disconnect there is ‘nullsec v highsec’. A lot of us in null also do things in highsec, after all. I think the real disconnect is that nullsec people—including the CSMs—tend to do social activities. Most of their gameplay in space is social. Even when they’re ratting or mining, they’re often on comms, talking with people.
When you combine that with the data CCP has that basically says ‘player retention hinges strongly on forming connections with other players’, it’s no wonder that they’re looking to encourage group content. The more people there are playing, the healthier the game is. So while yes, a lot of the people running PvE content are doing it solo, that’s only one part of the picture. It’s important to remember that when CCP and the CSM ask about ideas for group content, they’re not doing it because they think that’s what the HS PVErs are clamouring for, they’re doing it because it’s a stepping stone to helping people make connections with other people.
It’s a circle that I’m not sure there’s a way to square. Reconciling the two sets of goals is a difficult thing. In most games, you’d have solo content lead into group content, but random groups in EVE, like a ‘Looking for Fleet’ tool, is basically asking to be awoxed just as the rewards drop, if not before.
Try 21. And that’s just going back to UO, and ignoring the fact that UO and EQ were basically just MUDs with a level of graphics slapped onto them. But beyond that… yes, exactly. MMOs are Skinner boxes. PVE doubly so. If you want X behavior, then X behavior needs to provide sufficient reward to overcome all of the difficulties. If Y behavior is only slightly more onerous, but has much better rewards, subjects will go for Y, just as soon as they realize it.
That doesn’t mean the content can’t be engaging. If you give people two options with relatively similar tangible rewards, they’ll trend toward the one that yields a more satisfying experience. You can even make the tangible rewards for the more satisfying experience slightly lower, and as long as the players feel the overall reward (ie: tangibles + ‘fun’) is worth the effort. While people like being able to stick to a routine, they also enjoy being able to explore new options and vary that routine, from time to time.
That’s not necessarily true, either. There’s always going to be some level of grind, but there’s a limit to how much grind you can really expect before it becomes a drag on the amount of satisfaction someone gets from an activity. And that’s very subjective. As soon as your PvE makes the switch from ‘mildly satisfying or at least neutral but hey, there’s loot/payouts’ to ‘I log in to be bored because I need to make money in-game’, that PvE is the wrong kind for that player.
Mining’s a good example of this. Some people really hate mining. It’s boring as hell. For others, it’s relaxing. It’s reasonably predictable. It’s low-intensity stuff they can do while they have to do other stuff, too. When I was in a j-space mining corp, we’d have a half-dozen guy multiboxing, with 1 combat pilot either cloaked up on one of the wormholes in the system, watching their probe scanner and/or d-scan, and an alt helping with the mining. And then we had the CEO’s wife, who was a total pacifist PVEer, but she liked socializing with us. So she’d just mine. And for her, mining in wormholes was an absolutely calm, relaxed, no-stress activity…
… because the rest of us were stressed over it.
Different people get different things from the same PvE, and it’s important to remember that the degree of grind and repetition you can put up with in your content is extremely subjective, and if the PvE is meant to help keep people logging in, you do need to make sure it’s not too boring.
Yes, I too think that is true. I don’t think engaging stuff and mass adopted PvE are mutually exclusive, just that you won’t get there by ignoring the really important features that it needs to have. You also won’t get there if you rely purely on ideas of a non-target audience.
Also, it is quite hard to make PvE that is enganging, repeatable and continues to be just that. Even engaging content gets dull after a while so, while I agree with you that both isn’t mutually exclusive, I don’t think ‘engaging’ should be a main priority. If you can make it engaging on top of everything else? Awesome. If not? Well, no Drama either. That is purely subjective though.
And I didn’t include UO for the timeframe simply because MMO’s weren’t as popular as they became later on. I think 15 years is also too high and all around, I think WoW made the market established. So it’s technically more like 12 years. Anyway, Semantics. Let’s not go there.
It is, but it’s something CCP’s been trying to learn to do. And it’s a balancing act, no doubt, but it’s one they can learn. They just need to make sure to remember the effort/reward balance while they try out ideas. And that’s part of what the Agency events are for: the built-in ‘this will be there, then go away’ lets them try some things out, see how they’re received, and then… those things go away. And nobody gets mad when they go away, because they were always temporary.
So that’s where the experimentation needs to be… they can play with gameplay ideas as well as wildly varying loot returns to get experience with one while developing a better sense of where the other needs to be for any realistic uptake.
Into all this, lemme toss out another question that may seem like it’s coming out of left field, but it’s definitely been on my mind a while…
For a while now, we’ve heard a lot about making PvE more like PvP. It didn’t come up in this summit, but that’s because the big tool for it is already in: the new NPC AI that uses actual ship fittings instead of carbon-copy ‘this is the stats on this NPC’, and attempts to adapt to players’ compositions and tactics. That whole idea, making PvE more like PvP, has been a refrain in a lot of things, from the pirate Sotiyos to Drifters to Incursions, and on and on. That’s not my question.
My question is: what if we turn that on its head? What if we make PvP more like PvE? I don’t mean the predictability or the scripting… I mean… what if you didn’t need to PvE to make your operating cash? Totally setting aside FW (because FW is its own weird little beast), what if successfully going out there and blowing people up could reasonably provide for the operating costs of going out there and blowing people up? How do people feel about that idea?
they keep staying on comms farming anoms solo? Solo player is never playing alone, this is MMO there are other players just next to him/her. Expecting pve should be switching to group content because “player retention hinges strongly on forming connections with other players” is false statement. People are not doing pve content for group gameplay but for in-game wealth. All current pve activities can be made in groups. Some would be even safer that way, but it is rarely done that way because of diminishing returns. It’s become really boring to keep hearing that “group pve content” should be added and how CSM backend that for all those years. It was false from the start. Group content only works when it is on demand like raids in wow. You can set a time when group will show up to do it, it would be hard to even place it right in sandbox.
Quite often, yes. And that’s been my experience for years. Just because your ship is alone doesn’t mean you’re not in an environment where people you get along with are all around you.
What part of this do you feel is false? CCP has hard data that tells them that player retention does rely on forming connections with other players—even if the connections are negative ones. So, are you saying you think their reading of the data is wrong? Or are you saying that that statement shouldn’t influence the design of PvE content? I’m just trying to get a clear idea of what you’re saying here.
Well, LFR tools in most theme-park MMOs have demonstrated that it doesn’t need to be at a set time, but I agree that group content requires, you know, having a group that wants to do it. If you don’t, you’re boned, and you can’t rely on having that group all the time. Like I said up above, a ‘Looking for Fleet’ tool might be feasible, but there’s plenty of reason to think that it would just be abused by griefers (which is, you know, something like 90% of all EVE players).
Really? Looking at the killboard it makes me wonder how many actual people go into abyssal space repeatedly and not just once to test it. Would be nice to get some data on that from CCP.
Ganks are probably less damaging than wars for player activity. At least CCP stated that for new characters losing ship in gank (unlawful agression) is not a big deal, but can make player stay longer. Dont know how true it is tho.
Wars can feel like sanctioned bullying. Ganks are still not sanctioned and gankers lose ships. Unlawful.
I dont know what are expectations about security when it comes to new players. Older usually know that ganks happen.
