This whole thing is “blue is red because I say so, and everyone who disagrees with me is a stupid”.
It starts confrontationally and continues so.
At least PvP is alive and well on the forums, even if its only being done for fun and not any actual gainful purpose.
Gosh, heaven forbid that something in EVE starts out confrontationally!
I state objective, measurable facts, provide references and numbers, and draw my own conclusions from them. Although the conclusion that “activity is down across the board” isn’t really much of a stretch here.
The PvP crowd is basically all going “I don’t like your facts or what they imply, so I’m going to throw in my opinion here and say they’re all wrong”.
If you’ve got any actual facts or data that support the conclusion that EVE is getting healthier or more balanced, that players are engaging in a vibrant range of opportunities for all players, or that economic health in the game is improving, please feel free to provide them. I’d be happy to discuss.
it amazes me that these discussions always turn into verbal brawls between pvp fanbois and so-called carebears. the issue is obvious. just look at the advertising with each plex sale. Get what you want by buying plex and selling it game for millions. (not a direct quote but close). The ineffectual tries at forced pvp and starving out industrialists simply isnt working and people are not playing to the degree they were before. login counts stay decent because of the giveaways, not because content has improved. CCP needs to stop meddling in the name of economic repair and let the players drive the economy again. people will play the way they like or they will leave. no amount of namecalling will change that.
Then your objective is to have an argument, because you know what the reaction will be simply by calling people out.
Given that, I fail to see what your point is other than “themuns are wrong”. The facts of your point speak for themsrlves.
Would you like someone to do something about that? What is it you want? You arent going to stop anyone saying the things you dislike/disagree with by starting with “people who say this are stupid”.
Otherwise I dont see the point in basically making this case in this manner unless you just want an argument.
And as I mentioned before, forum PvP is a perfectly traditional sport here, just trying to figure out how you would change a polarised situation by being more polarised than you usually seem when you post.
No, I think your analysis is valid, and Im weighing it against my own experiences and other information before I decide. I just feel your delivery is wrong unless more division is the goal.
So if you ponder it for a few moments, you might come to the conclusion that any discussion revolving around “CCP is doing PvP wrong in EVE” is never going to be non-divisive. You might also realize that any “change PvP” topic is going to provoke all the exact same responses from Solecist, Daimyo, Scoots, Destiny et al. as they have here. They have only one song to sing, and that is “My ability to hunt noobs in safety in high sec makes me great, and must be protected at all costs”.
Then you might ponder whether a reasonable, let’s all work together, heal-the-rift, suggest-a-new-approach thread would result in any interesting discussion at all. You’re welcome to give it a try if you like.
My one disappointment so far with it is that only Scipio even attempted to use actual analysis (although he actually went nowhere with it), and the rest of the crowd basically broke down into “Hyuk, yer wrong, destruction is obvious good. Lol!”.
Oh well. You can’t have all of them be Black Pedro’s, I guess.
Ok you could have just said “Im doing it for forum PvP” then.
Which is a shame, I would have very much liked to see it from your point of view, but the point scoring even in your response makes that very difficult.
Ah well, good hunting o7
And Merry Xmas
Scoots isn’t actually looking to interpret what he reads correctly. He actively seeks to cast anything he can in the worst light. Presumably to cater to psychological needs of his own. He can safely be ignored, he’s generally got no meaningful input other than to claim everyone else is wrong.
You are correct. The objective is not to do PvP badly and profit regardless of the outcome. The objective would be to structure PvP in such a way that most participants can at least perceive there’s a reasonable chance they will come out of the encounter with some sort of benefit obtained. Perception should, but does not necessarily have to, match reality (as you say, people need to dream).
The objective is not even to alter any game features for me, since without a complete mechanics and engine re-write, EVE PvP is far too boring and mechanical for me to waste my time on, regardless of the profit potential. I can look at a game design and evaluate its likely consequences without regard to their effects on me personally.
Again, for the average player, PvP in EVE results in a loss. People are very good overall at guiding their long-term behavior towards activities that gain them things, and away from activities that lose them things. So having EVE populations trend steadily away from PvP and more towards wealth accumulation is an absolutely predictable result that anyone with a grain of sense could have predicted over a decade ago.
Players learn how to avoid PvP. Players learn how to farm better. PvP players get disappointed and leave because they’re not getting the easy gratification they’re looking for from easy kills and profits. More wealth accumulates because people are avoiding getting killed better, and fewer PvPers stick around.
The “carebears are ruining the game” crowd are clueless and unable to see the forest for the trees. Wealth is accumulating exactly because the “grow my wealth” crowd is better at what they do than the supposed “warrior elite” are at warrioring.
PvP isn’t being ruined because of the ‘carebears’. The carebears are wealth-building because PvP sucks.
PvP in EVE mostly takes the form “I like PvP, so I’ll train my skills, fit my ships, plan my targets, then seek out an easy target that I most likely won’t lose to and should make a profit from, and kill it”. A small percentage of the population do this, and even less make a profit of it, but every player who’s successful at it will result in multiple unhappy players who didn’t want to take part it in it. The math is pretty simple over time: players who lose from this will find other things to do, players who profit from it will do it more and more and drive even more players away, and eventually you’ll end up with a population that’s either good at avoiding PvP or have left the game, and a small percentage of frustrated PvPers screaming that “carebears” have taken over the game and ruined it.
If you want PvP, you have to make it an appealing proposition, not a losing one. There are multiple ways to do this: reputation, permissions, access, rankings, accolades, benchmark goals, random rewards. It also wouldn’t hurt if it was a little less of a sucker’s game and a little more accessible for people who are starting out on the path, rather than 10-years vets in gank fits looking for easy wins.
HEY! LEAVE ME OUT OF THIS MADHOUSE! 
EVERYONE’S ■■■■■■■ INSANE AROUND HERE!
@Black_Pedro Ooooohhhh look!
She has a crush on you 
Kezrai and Pedro …
… sitting on a tree …
… K - I - L - L - I - N - G! 
You post some graphs, and then derive a negative interpretation from the data they present. Well, we look at the same graphs, and we see positive things happening. “The economy is slowing down? Finally! Took them long enough!”
You’re going around and constantly attacking the intelligence of everyone who disagrees with you, but you’re guilty of a big debate faux pas: not establishing causation between your claim and your viewpoint.
If we go back to my earlier hot-dog example, it’s like you’re saying that we shouldn’t eat hot-dogs because they’re bad for us, and then you post a chart that shows that hot-dog eaters have higher death rates, but you’re not explaining the link between the two, like by saying that certain chemicals used in hot-dog manufacturing processes have been scientifically linked to increased rates of cancer, et cetera.
In terms of this debate, I guess you’d have to explain why it is a bad thing that the economy is slowing down. Just because it sounds like a negative thing, doesn’t mean that it is, and the onus is on you to prove otherwise, because we have already provided our arguments with regard to this, such as:
You’ve been conveniently glossing over these arguments, and trying to get people to subscribe to your viewpoint that’s based on blind sensationalism (“the economy is slowing, and slowing as a concept is necessarily a bad thing, so a slowing economy is going to be a bad thing too!”)
And you also keep consistently straw-manning us like that, even though no one’s doing the same thing to you. People have been generally respectful in their replies to you, and sometimes even played along by throwing in some self-deprecation to lighten the mood (as I have).
But obviously you don’t care about that, so why waste the energy? It’s easier for me to just call you a bitter little carebear snowflake wussy, and I’ll get some likes for it to boot.
You sure you didn’t mix that one up?
Last I checked inflation didn’t cause things to become cheaper …
… and money can’t become cheaper, only worth less. It’s not the same.
Your view of pvp is too simplistic.
You’re ignoring longterm goals like controlling resources. Ignoring reputation and intimidation. Ignoring almost all the personal motivations for pvp aside from isk/h. And of course ignoring that many (most) people encounter pvp without actually meaning to.
Players don’t need much incentive to kill one another. We established that a long time ago. CCP just need to stop nerfing the ways in which it happens and let the players drive the game.
You also completely mischaracterize the ‘destruction is good’ argument. It’s mostly people saying destruction should balance with production, which it didn’t for nearly a decade.
Yes and no. It gets kind of convoluted.
If goods become inflated, they become cheaper (e.g. mineral supply doubles, each unit costs half as much). Money is susceptible to the same rule (e.g. print twice as many bucks, each buck can only buy half as much as it did before). If you inflate both, they both become cheaper, but you have to evaluate everything from a different baseline perspective, such as some kind of standard time unit of labor.
In EVE, money is a raw resource, just like Tritanium. ISK isn’t a fiat currency, and it isn’t backed by any other tangible assets or resources. It’s generated from thin air (vacuum of space?) just like minerals, PI products, and faction modules. Because ISK isn’t regulated and/or backed by anything, it doesn’t act like a traditional currency, and our standard understanding and application of conventional currency doesn’t apply to it.
I think the closest thing we have to a conventional currency in EVE is PLEX. It’s a derivative currency that’s both controlled (by various levers CCP pulls), and is also backed by a tangible asset (the subscription time that it is guaranteed to purchase).
Just out of curiosity though, I’m wondering what it is you find so confrontational and “calling people out” in the OP? The only two negative phrases in the entire post are “poorly informed opinions” and “people simply re-state their preferences and opinions and the mindset they’ve frozen into”. Since both of these can be amply demonstrated in virtually any active thread, I’m wondering what I may have missed that you (and others) found to be so entirely divisive and confrontational?
I am not asking to provoke argument from you, but just to see if perhaps I missed some random comment in there that calls people out or targets any particular group for insult or denigration.
No no that was just it. Your position is fine in its own merit, I just dont feel the need for the reminder that people disagree, or that the position stems from a need to prove others are intellectually inferior. I know that this is a counter position to that held by others, inherently, but I fear that some may read an emotive bias, intentional or not
But like I say, if the goal is forum PvP, my opinion on the delivery is nothing more than casual observation, really, and not intended to interfere with that.
Certainly it gets the thread alive.
But the goal isn’t forum PvP. It is literally to do exactly what it says: to point out that CCP has stated they are trying to improve the health of the game and the economy, and to highlight the patterns that I think show they are going about it wrong.
I understand that you and some other posters feel that I am somehow flogging “I’m smarter than you, you’re an idiot” here. And I will be the first to admit that my discussion style is provocative - it’s meant to be, for reasons, and “scoring points” isn’t that reason.
I literally use kid gloves, I think the worst I’ve accused anyone here of is needing to have complex issues broken down into baby talk to make it clear. Which I think is kind of justified when they completely ignore any facts presented and simply resort to asking “What do you even mean anyway?”.
But yes, if that’s me being an intellectual bully, slandering and brutalizing everyone who disagrees with me on factual data representing the actual state of the game (not what CCP says but what’s actually happening), then I suppose I will make an effort to dial it back it a bit.
Thank you for reasonably pointing out your take on the matter.
But you never actually back up anything you say to try and support these claims.
You throw out wild nonsense like:
Despite the fact that CCP is actively trying to address the “wealth-building setups” that you claim remove reasons to incur losses.
CCP saw how self-sustainable it was to have rapidly respawning anomalies with high 10/10 escalation drop rates.
So they nerfed it.
CCP saw how easy it was to just constantly farm a single system.
So they introduced DBS.
CCP saw how safe it was to take all of the rewards of krabbing.
So they revamped the ESS.
THESE ALL HELP ADDRESS THE HEALTHIER ECOSYSTEM.
CCP is actually addressing the parts of the game’s overall ecosystem. You’re trying to make a tangential argument about “PvP this” and “PvP that” to stop CCP from making the changes because these changes are actually working.
Obvious the problem is the economy and the massed wealth because that’s what caused CCP to pull drastic changes like Blackout, and rapid series of minor changes, like warp-disable on Carrier NSAs, nerfing the ability of Titans to krab entire sites with a single DD, and now the DBS, ESS, etc.
You keep claiming that EVE is “not designed” to support PvP, but never actually explain what that means, which part of the design doesn’t support it, or even what it should look like other than the subtle implication that you want to make as much if not more isk in PvP than you do in PvE.
I see it this way:
Someone reaches for the top in some field. Achieves a level satisfactory, then wonders if there is next level, works on achieving it, then wonders about next… then achieves it.
What if the person starts losing those levels?
I think the people resign, because of time. The time cant be reversed like levels can, and you would want to keep the levels. Its time to stop then.
Also destruction is not good indeed, especially in space.
Actually I just derive straight-up, factual reporting of what the data indicates: that all aspects of the economy are headed downwards, and that they were doing so even before CCP announced they needed to “fix” the supposedly overheated wealth-building apparatus.
I could have gone on to indicate that prices and the CPI have been reasonably stable since 2014, and therefore no inflationary catastrophes were looming, but it doesn’t matter. The data is either clear to you, or you refuse to see what it implies. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
The difference here is you’re offering an opinion. That being “slowing down the economy is good”. You offer no support for this, other than vague notions that “things were too cheap and I would prefer to make one kill for 100 million than 10 kills for 10 million each”. Funnily enough, Scoots accuses me of wanting to make more ISK with less effort from PvP, despite my saying repeatedly that I don’t PvP in EVE because it’s not very engaging.
My position is quite clear: less economic activity means less opportunity overall and fewer people engaging with the game, including PvPers (destruction is also headed down). You’ve offered no link between “all economic activity is down” and “we’re all going to derive benefit from this”. You just assume that “down is good”. You haven’t even shown that PvPers will benefit. Since all your ships, modules etc will become more expensive, and since there will be fewer targets flying around with less cargo (that’s what “less activity” means), I honestly don’t see how you’re drawing the conclusion “this will be good for us”.
I don’t see how newbros will benefit from entering the game and finding they have to grind 16M ISK instead of 10M to get into a Vexor, especially since the grinding will now be slower and harder. You also make the curious claim that “Inflation leads to goods being cheaper, which causes players to grind more to compensate”. Come again? Things are cheaper so I have to grind harder to buy them? Not to mention that again, as mentioned, the CPI has remained fairly stable so there actually isn’t that much real inflation. (FYI: If prices increase by 10%, and earning power increases by 10%, there has been no real inflation.)
What it actually sounds like you’re saying here is “I grind ISK to plex my accounts, and I want an easier, faster grind so I can Plex more”. I mean, Plexing is really the only place you’d have to grind more to compensate for, and even that’s gotten cheaper.
And then you get back once again to “it’s not fun for PvPers to have engagements without meaningful risk and profit opportunities” - still stuck in that “I deserve to make a good ISK income from PvP no matter how many people it drives out of the game” mentality. As said before, every happy PvPer, plexing his account (usually by sitting safely in High sec and ganking actually productive members of the economy), leads to dozens/hundreds/thousands of unhappy producers. The math isn’t sustainable seeing as EVE only retains a few percent of the people who log in.
The core issue here is that you consistently only look at things from the viewpoint of the successful PvPer, making a profit by blowing up other players stuff. CCP says less than 15% of players engage in PvP. Your own estimate is that actual percentages are in the single digits. If you want to know the real reason CCP has catered to wealth-building for the past decade and more, it’s because they’re not entirely stupid: their own data shows there are 3-4 wealth accumulators in the game for every PvPer, and the wealth-builders pay them more money.
Now, CCP can see they’ve painted themselves into a corner. There’s so much wealth hoarded in the game that it’s becoming meaningless, and so people are starting to quit playing because there’s little reason to PvP, and little reason to acquire yet another hundred billion ISK you’re not going to use. This is on the game-wide population level, not the individual level. Individual examples of every behavior and playstyle will always exist.
Personally, I would have tackled this by giving people reasons and incentives to expend resources. To take risks, engage in combat, and lose assets in a struggle for some potential rewards. CCP has tackled it by crippling the economy and assuming that people will carry on as always, and eventually the excess (literally trillions and trillions of it) will bleed out of the economy. I feel a substantial portion of the playerbase will bleed out instead.
To be fair, CCP has actually started doing some of this: Abyssal proving grounds and filaments being an example. However these efforts are a drop in the bucket compared to the impact of their economic changes.
That’s what I fear. Plex prices and log in numbers seems stable last I looked though.
Apparently no matter how many times you point something out, certain people won’t get it. I’ll try to break it down for you.
So in a nutshell, the EVE cycle goes something like this:
“EvE is a PvP game, and PvP is lossy, meaning loss is real and costs you. Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose, etc. So my best strategy is to build up lots of wealth, which acts as a multiplier for other activities, so I can do anything I want. So I’ll go build wealth so I can afford any losses that may happen through PvP, plus the freedom to do anything else”.
So people create wealth farms. And since the wealth-farmers are much better at wealth-farming than the “warriors” are at destructioning, we have 3 times as much production as destruction, for years. We have wealth hoards built up that make Midas look like an amateur. And then… then, players start to realize “You know what? Now that I’ve built literally billions and trillions of wealth in the game… I’ve got nothing to do with it. If I just PvP with it, I’m basically just throwing it away to somebody else’s benefit. I don’t need PvP. It takes too long to find, it’s chancy, and I mostly just lose assets, not gain them. So why do it?”
There’s a small percent of players who do it anyway. Mostly because they’re the ones who need asymmetric (unfair) combat situations because they need that sort of ego-boost. Or perhaps they find it challenging. For most players, other games offer better combat experiences. If EVE combat was better, you’d see more than a few percent of players engaging in it.
So to be clear, one more time, for the hard of reading, I’m not suggesting nerfing PvP, removing PvP, or making it more ISK-profitable.
I’m suggesting increasing the amount of PvP engagement and destruction that occurs by making improvements to various aspects of the PvP process. That involves making it more accessible, less one-sided, less costly to lose (hence, “less active economy with more expensive items” is bad) and increasing the range and type of rewards that simply participating in PvP might open up, even if you aren’t one of the few who focus on EVE’s clunky, awkward combat system to be a consistent winner.
Side note: not everyone can be a consistent winner. Since only a small percentage will, if everyone else loses out via PvP, they will stop doing it. It’s as obvious as the sun coming up. This is why the PvP crowd keeps angling for “force everyone to be a target everywhere at all times” angle, because it’s the only way they can envision having targets.
CCP’s approach does nothing to address truly stupendous hoarded wealth. CCP’s approach does nothing to address “rich get richer and poor get beat”. CCP’s approach (so far) does very little to increase engagement with the game. I’m not saying every initiative they’ve undertaken is wrong - for instance the bounties in null sec are heading in a healthier direction.
I’m saying that the overall direction is too much towards “take things away”, and not enough towards “give them new and interesting things to do so they will take risks and undergo destruction”.
Designing a game to encourage losses, means you make the risk of losing worthwhile, in some aspect, even if you lose. Hence, you don’t need the “guaranteed win” setup in order to participate. You don’t need to avoid PvP like it’s the plague. There are more potential benefits to be derived than ISK profits. You also try to make it somewhat less one-sided, and somewhat more entertaining (see filaments and Abyssal proving grounds) as opposed to the sad grind of FW, or the thrown away opportunity of Resource Wars.