There’s more than enough pvp content if you join an alliance and head into 0.0
Maybe you didn’t notice, but EVE simply isn’t just a pvp game. Yes, that’s an aspect of it, but it’s not all that is there or it wouldn’t be populated with missions and other non-pvp related content.
This game would be boring as hell if it only had pvp content. Ok, our turn to chase you 50 jumps to your home system only to watch you dock up from our 50 man punk stack. 
While Eve as a whole is a PvP game, it’s drastically more complicated than that. Until you can PvP other players for rat like isk bounties (not player supplied bounties) PvP is not self sustainable. A new player not only doesn’t have the skill or skill points to stand a chance in PvP, they do not have the funding to do so.
A new player will not find getting their face kicked in over and over fun.
If they think losing is “getting their face kicked in” they are taking it too hard emotionally.
Losing is nothing, gf in chat, get a new ship, learn.
People act like it is some personal defeat.
This is what separates PvPers and why they continue, they don’t let the loss of a ship become an emotional defeat.
They are not DEFEATED EMOTIONALLY by the loss of a pixel object.
Well, new players used to be able to hunt miners and mission runners, or wardec other new players.
But we know what happened there.
The gentrification of hisec was inevitable the moment CCP decided to chase the mythical players that wanted to play internet spaceships, but were turned off by Eve’s reputation for skullduggery and mischief.
New players can still do novice/small FW sites. Fly in, hang out, get in a fight and/or get paid LP.
There should be a new player mission for that.
It’s very much watered down.
A new player being a serious threat to miners or other new players or anything like that is a perfect example of agency. They can see/feel the effect they have on the game/players around them when they destroy someones mission ship or make miners scatter and rage in local. They can see the sandbox at work when miners call their pvp mates to take revenge on them, or when one side opens chat channels to the other for diplomacy or smack talk. Or any of the million things that can happen during non-consensual pvp.
Low sec is not really like that. It’s missing a lot of the impact and emotion.
Mostly its wandering or sitting in sites with the hope that someone will be interested enough to fight. And even if they do, all that happens after is ‘gf’. When you kill someone in low sec it produces less memorable moments for the attacker or the victim, you’re not ruining somones day (the corner stone on which eve was built)
“The NPE should be centered around PVP and emergent gameplay”.
How many of awesome people trying to force people to play game one correct way actually hang out in help channels or rookie help?
How you want teach new players PvP in NPE where many of them fail to read career agents missions descriptions? Cant understand to probe while following yt videos guiding them by hand how to finish missions? And those are one of hardest issues. Some don’t know how to load ammo, fly ships, sell stuff etc.
NPE is to try learn people basic mechanics of them game to show them what to do next. And from my experience, years in help channel I know that learning PvP is beyond capabilities of most of new players especially in few first hours after first login.
Idea is good - show people how to pvp and how fun it is. But not as part NPE.
Sorry, but you’re clueless about the ‘benefits’ of non-consensual PvP.
Hot Tip #1: Just because you enjoy doing it, doesn’t mean it is good for the game.
Hot Tip #2: People who know and have proven they know worlds more than you do about creating, designing and running open world PvP games say, “Non consensual PvP was a mistake.”
Except it was splitting the servers for ultima online between pvp and non-pvp that killed ultima online. People from ultima online went on and made another pvp sanbox where players were very deliberately not split between servers and the vast majority of pvp was non-consensual. It went on to become eve online. Here we are nearly two decades later.
It’s like the original devs of eve had learned the lessons from ultima. Single shard. Player freedom to be ‘bad’. ‘FFA PVP’. And now that eve is chipping away at the latter two, look what’s happening…
It’s not just because i enjoy it, others enjoy it. The players that are sticking around in eve longer are the ones being killed illegally. We know agency and having an impact on your surroundings are very big drivers for retention. Forcing pvp onto others is the very pinnacle of agency. Being able to influence others by force or threat of force.
New players in this very thread are complaining about how they don’t stand a chance against others, but there ARE targets that even new players can kill, the miners, the haulers, the mission runners. The perfect targets for new players to learn how hunting and pvp mechanics work are the ones not consenting to pvp. It’s just much harder to hunt them than 10 years ago and we’re suffering for it.
The article you link says:
In fact, when asked what they learned and wanted to apply to SOTA , it’s consensual PvP. All agree that PvP as it was originally implemented hurt UO financially. The metrics are there, and neither Long nor Garriott would backdown from hardcore PvP players trying to argue pro-FFA PvP.
What if the metrics for eve don’t show that non-consensual pvp hurts retention? What if they show that players that are killed illegally tend to stick around longer? What if less than 1% of players are citing ship loss as the reason for leaving? What if 80% of players that aren’t getting killed are leaving in the first two months anyways?
Show me anything that suggests reducing non-consensual pvp has made things better for eve. Financially or otherwise.
Ultima online may not have got wow-like growth because of its non-consensual pvp. But it had a hardcore following just like eve. And then taking away what made it special killed it off. Read:
Before I had to leave for another appointment, Long said something we should all consider: You don’t need “massive” worlds anymore. As Ship of Heroes’ Casey McGeever argued in another interview, chasing the next World of Warcraft is folly, so developers should aim for a niche. The problem with modern MMO design is that everyone is trying to “out content” each other when, really, you should aim to give content to those who will consume it.
However, you don’t need to go out and get a million people. 10,000 is fine. Their advice is to take small MMOs and that we don’t need giant MMOs, which is interesting since the MOP writers recently talked about how much size matters to us. Look to EVE . The EVE we have today isn’t the EVE we originally had since it’s been picking up its community as it rolled along.
Sharing advice McGeever also said, Garriott once again warned people, “Don’t go head to head” with WoW since you’ll be forced to make something “cookie cutter.” If you say you’re making the next WoW , “You’re in for trouble.” Pick a niche.
Well the niche for eve is fulltime pvp sandbox. The skull-duggery. The player driven market frankly needs it to function properly (look what happened to ultima onlines market after the server split). This is what the players have been consuming and will continue to consume.
Meanwhile the latest direction of ccp has people so bored they don’t want to log in.
FTFY.
Heh, I always get a giggle out of Eve PvPers that look back on the “glory days of Eve PvP in Highsec” because really it’s akin to the nostolgia of any other game’s early years. It’s the same reason a WoW Vanilla is being stood up, and people will go “wtf is this ridiculous hard and tedious crap”. Eve PvP evolved to what it is today for a reason, pure and simple. CCP money motivated changes or not, if players are willing to pay for a certain style or not that motivated the company to go that direction. Highsec evolved to what it is today because PvP simply became too predatory and the players that did it simply because their own worst enemy. Opening this up to the “way they use to be” would be a frenzy of Code and Pirat syle players obliterating on the PvE and Mining base of the game within 24hrs. They wouldn’t adapt or die, they’d simply quit playing. Then you’d have to recruit people that enjoy an uphill battle learning PvP in a 16 year old game and pray your sub numbers don’t crash past a point of critical mass. If you look around at the market PvP centric games only have a certain half-life because hardcore PVPers chase the latest greatest and where all the action is… it’s the reason FPS change out like underwear.
Anyhoo just my two cents. To PvP in Eve you have to have an underlying source of Isk and a knowledge of the overall dynamic of the game. Pllllleeeeennnnnty of carebears, miners, and industrialist fine a taste for blood after a while as they learn the dog eat dog mentality of Eve.
Well, TBH, the whole ‘non-consensual PvP in high sec’ thing is only of importance to lame PVP wannabes who need fat weak dumb targets to hunt in a space where they themselves are safe.
The problem and issue with player retention in EVE is due to poor game design throughout the entire game, to boring mechanics and uninspiring combat, to a truly stupendously ridiculous divide between the new players and the old, trained, rich players trying to hunt them, and to CCP having no idea whatsoever (apparently) about what motivates and retains players within their game.
PVP is not bad for the game. Even non-consensual PvP is not necessarily bad. Non-consensual PvP in the starting areas, between new players, intermediate players, and 15-year old veterans is what is bad.
But it’s not actually ‘the problem’ with EVE, it’s a minimal side-issue that the PvP wannabes who need weak targets while they themselves stay safe keep harping on because it’s the only PvP they can win.
PS: I don’t possess the metrics, but clearly, the Ultima Online people did, and repeatedly stress that years of metrics prove their point. CCP has the metrics, and they have repeatedly steered the game away from non-con PvP in high sec. It’s only people like you who need to live in a little fantasy world of ‘non-con PvP is good’ who don’t get it.
So why aren’t these players staying and paying?
They’re quitting anyways. Honestly have a look. No nerf to pvp has brought more players in. It’s only ever done the opposite.
As oppose to hundreds of wow clones that were made and quickly died like the article suggests.
Can you really show me that fps games or pvp games change out anymore than other genre?
And new players that can’t take on vets head on but can use skullduggery to learn pvp mechanics.
People keep on saying this, but where is the proof that 15 year old players are preying on new players in starting areas?
Please show me.
Ccp have metrics that show the contrary of what you are saying. Beyond that is pure speculation. Sure the current direction is to water down sandbox pvp but it obviously isn’t working is it? And hasn’t for 5 years now.
That’s what you’re not getting.
All you have is speculation and faith. Whilst on one hand you slam ccp for unspecified poor game design but on the other ‘oh they are doing the right thing by reducing sandbox pvp’, but neither stance has any basis in fact.
Uh, no. As usual you continually misinterpret what is right in front of you.
I did not say they are doing the right thing by reducing sandbox PvP. I specifically said it’s not a bad thing, except in certain circumstances.
I don’t need to ‘prove’ that vets are hunting noobs in high sec, for several reasons. zKillboard shows it happening any time you care to look. Vets have posted here on these forums that they like to do that. And I already said it’s a non-issue, a red herring, an unimportant distraction from the actual issues of the game.
CCP does not have metrics saying contrary to my point. The best they have, that you and the other weaksauce highsec ‘PvPers’ keep pointing to, is a few minutes of a presentation from years ago that says “Yeah we took 80,000 new players” (roughly 8 weeks worth, a short period), “screened out a whole bunch of them, were left with 1% who got illegally killed, and those 1% were somewhat more likely to stay a bit longer than the other 99%”. That process is so fuzzy, so limited, and so poorly controlled (from the info they gave) as to be statistically insignificant.
If you want a metric, look at the fact that EVE had it’s best year ever following the release of Crimewatch.
I look at the words of the people who ran one of the biggest, open-world PvP games ever, which is also still running btw, and I look at the actions of CCP over the past 10 years, and I draw my own conclusions as to the ‘benefits’ of non-consensual PvP. You are unwilling to accept any conclusion that does not lead to “more weak easy targets for you to prey on while sitting safe in high sec”; that’s your problem.
The game is failing, and has been failing for years. It is failing because of poor design, it is failing because CCP has no vision for it that aligns with the actual interests of players. It is not failing because the tiny minority of weaksauce highsec PvP pretenders has a harder time finding easy safe targets to kill.
That’s just an excuse brought up by those who can’t do real PvP.
You don’t explain what those certain circumstances are though. Your post is generally saying general features are generally bad.
Maybe that’s why it’s difficult to interpret what you actually want.
Which vets? Since killing noobs in noob system is a bannable offense I’d love to know. And zkillboard.com doesn’t show what you say it does.
Then why bring it up?
We know it’s not perfect (are statistics ever?). But they are still metrics and it is infinitely more evidence than has been given by opposing arguments.
Instead:
We have tried and tried to validate the myth that griefing has a pronounced affect on new players - we have failed. The strongest indicators for a new player staying with EVE are associated with social activity: joining corps, using market and contract systems, pvping, etc. Isolating players away from the actual sandbox seems very contrary to what we would like to accomplish.
I mean really? They’ve examined data with the hypothesis that pvp hurt new players but couldn’t find that to be the case. So instead of following data, you’re going to trust the rhetoric of knee-jerking carebears?
Specifically what poor game design?
You keep moaning about this and that, using hyperbole, but have nothing actionable to offer.
And yes, don’t be surprised if changing a games core philophies kills it off. As if eves longest subbing players were supposed to thank ccp for pulling the rug from under them and then trying to replace them with trash players who clearly aren’t here to stay no matter how much you pander to them. Instead they arrive, consume, destroy and then move on like locusts.
Ccp did have a good year after the crimewatch and wardec changes, but it was on par with 2009, 2010 and 2011. And it didn’t last did it? Wardec and crime watch remained mostly unchanged for 5 years and what happened? The new blood dried up in what, a year? And then core players started leaving as well. Much like the trammel server for ultima online. Influx of players but with zero loyalty/longevity added onto core players leaving aswell.
You’ve said yourself that ccp’s upper management are in denial. You’re just wrong about what it is they’re in denial about.
I look at the same words and see how ccp originally avoided the pitfalls that cascaded ultima online but are now chipping away at their own safeguards. Niche game gameplay, single shard, emergent gameplay, player driven, getting rid of community management staff.
And the difference between your stance and mine, is that the available data supports my arguments.
Dude, seriously, learn to read what is right in front of you:
‘Hunting noobs in high sec’ is a different thing than ‘hunting noobs in a noob system’. I understand that reading comprehension is not your thing. No worries, I don’t expect it of you anymore.
I’m pretty sure the guys who created and designed Ultima Online aren’t ‘knee-jerking carebears’, but I get that you are now simply flailing around trying to direct the argument in any direction but the fact that the thing you want (easy safe PVP targets in high sec so you can pretend you are a PvPer) is a bad thing for the game in general.
Sorry, but that would be an entire thread in itself, and would derail this thread. Feel free to start a thread on the topic if you wish, or refer to my many previous posts, which bring up specific details and examples, give solutions, and use very little in the way of hyperbole.
That is correct. Because they addressed one issue, with a sort of bandaid (Crimewatch) which gave people the motivation to try the game again and/or for the first time, and to stick with it a little longer. What they failed to do was to provide much of anything interesting to do for those people giving it a shot. For instance, they failed to institute another mechanic which would direct the PvP they had just cut back on into other areas of the game.
Another quote froim 2015, CCP Rise (the same thread you quoted from):
This kind of thing has turned up every time I’ve seen some actual data on retention:
The data is inadequate and doesn’t support any conclusion. CCP Rise clearly understood the difference between correlation and causation though, which would put him in the “statistical elite” in this forum /lol.
NB: People self-select to participate in exit surveys, so they’re not reliable. There’s no way to force 100% participation, and there’s generally no way to adjust for the inevitable bias (you’d need input from the ones who didn’t answer for that).
Social contact is very likely to be significant (it seems to be the case for all MMOs), but:
On the other hand this (same source, same person, a subset of what you quoted) is useless:
This is such a broad definition of “social activity” it’s useless (interesting that it uses the real world definition of PvP though /lol). Even without the “etc” it seems to net out to “trying out core game activities correlates with staying” - which can’t be used to predict anything. Consider the reverse: “not trying out core activities correlates with not staying”: put this way it obviously raises the question - why didn’t they try out those activities?
Of course one answer is that they weren’t covered in the NPE /lol. (Excluding the market - IIRC the NPE had you mine, manufacture, buy, and sell - but it’s a stretch to call “using the market” a social activity anyway)
I’ve always thought it was interesting that nobody has claimed a relationship between player retention and participation in EVE University. It’s the only thing I know of in EVE that might encourage social contact without having a negative characteristic that would discourage new players.
It’s not possible to draw any conclusions from a lack of evidence … but as I understand it, Corp membership is available via an API? If so it would be easy to check.
I know it’s different. That’s why one is a bannable offense, like i linked, and the other is not. New players getting killed by vets in starter systems isn’t happening like you said it was. Look at zkillboard.com.
This thread is a good example of where you haven’t provided specific details or provided solutions to the npe.
Instead you’ve derailed it anyways with lies, baseless argument and hyperbole.
They reworked the wardec system and faction warfare. After that they overhauled sov warfare, force projection and structures changed how pvp worked in all areas of space.
Pvp mechanics have had a few big shake ups the past decade, but it’s not going change how non-consensual pvp is many times more engaging and meaningful than non-consensual pvp is. It’s not going to do anything to address the complaint that nooby mcnooberson can’t beat vets by being smarter or more prepared. That’s what non-consensual pvp is for.
A noob being outmined by a fleet of macks can’t gank them without becoming a global target for a month and can’t wardec them without spending 600mil, if they are in a corp with a structure at all…and the last option, grind harder! That’s ccp’s version of agency.
Out of curiosity, what options would you give a noob in this situation?
I agree with pretty much everything you said. But I’d still add that though the data doesn’t definitively say pvp helps retention, it is infinitely better than any supporting data suggesting the opposite…because there isn’t any.
What are we supposed to do? Follow anecdotes from players on the forums? or data from 80k players plus player activity trends?
I disagree that its that hard. During the eve north keynote, they talk about the difficulty new players have finding ‘helpers’.
I’d like to rephrase this in my own words:
It’s too hard for new players to find non-boring individuals from non-■■■■ corps. Too many crap corps obscuring the good corps and ruining the npe.
Wardecs used to be the cure for this. The only corps left standing were the ones that worked.