The Proving Grounds, as they are now, are an Utter and Complete Failure

Good day, Capsuleers!

Today I’d like to discuss the current state of the Proving Grounda and why I think that they completely betray the reasons they were created in the first place, and even worse that they are a complete backward step from the original Proving Grounds.

To put it simply, CCP has removed a moderately accessible, short-session friendly, and community-building activity, to replace it with an heavily dependent-on-others, time intensive, and private club activity.

A simple example of that, the accessibility. The previous Proving Grounds asked for a solo pilot to go through 3 Abyssal pockets before accessing the Proving Gate that would lead them to the Proving Ground. The sole requirement was making it through the third pocket. And then you’d directly enter the Proving Grounds and if an opponent was there already, you’d get a fight, if not you’d get loot and a run. You were not dependent on the matchmaking.

Now let’s do a little exercise, let’s go back to what were the goals of the Proving Grounds as initially stated by CCP and examine them in light of my observation.

  • Many pilots want the ability to enter the Proving Grounds directly instead of being required to complete an Abyssal Deadspace run first.

Well, they got what they wanted. But now the Proving Grounds are chained to a matchmaking system that makes them dependent on a population. And from my own experience, that population is becoming more and more select as events go on.

So where we had a system that allowed you to do a run whenever you wanted (during population times) and get content, either it was a completed (or failed) run or a fight, now we have a system that ask you to wait and can result in you not getting anything at all.

  • We have also heard that the existing Abyssal Proving Grounds meta has been “solved.”

Sure that was true, the Ikitursa was the solution to this meta, without a doubt.

Yet people managed to beat Ikitursas from time to time, a bad pilot in a Ikitursa would just transform into a juicy killmail when faced against a skilled pilot even in a T1 or Faction cruiser.

Now, even though the meta had been solved, I do not think the solution was simply to make it so that there is no meta at all!

Pretty much, the solution to that that CCP came up with is to spring up a totally new format every event to never have a meta, and even worse, to not give enough time for people to figure out a meta!

An event with a particular format only lasting one weekend is pretty much forcing people to forget about the meta, and then get rethrusted into another one a few weeks later.

The solution to a meta was certainly not to not have a sitting meta. The solution to a meta is obviously throw new elements that shake up that meta, not unravel it each and every time!

  • We have also received quite a few requests from players who would like to compete in Proving Grounds style PVP engagements with their friends

Sure, I was among those people who wanted a place where you could do tournaments-style match with people you know. But I wanted that because I wanted a community to form with people recognizing each other and offering each other matches, like it was with the previous Proving Grounds!!!

The Abyssal Community channels in the game are well known for being a great example of a community arising from a common activity, and the previous iteration of the Proving Grounds participated in creating such a community! The PRIMARY reason why we have a new CSM member arising from this community is because this one was a community that created content and opened up people to that content.

The current iteration of the Proving Grounds fail horribly at that. And I take as an example the fact that the same place that used to be used to arrange fights, to boast about said fights and banter at each other is now barely capable of even being used to arrange teams and rarely see talks anymore. You guys can see for yourselves in-game by joining those channels, in particular “Abyssal Arenas”, and see how dead they are PvP-wise even during the events.

The time limited availability of the Grounds, and the instauration of ranking are heavily to blame for that. Whatever groups or friends you’d made during an event was not guarranteed to be available several weeks later. And rankings obviously encourage people to stick with each others instead of reaching out to less skilled pilots.

My hope was that Corportations and Alliances would form around that new activity, around the Proving Grounds.
But how can you build a corp around a feature that is available only from time to time? What is the corp supposed to do during that time? PvE Runs???

It’d think that CCP would realize that, with their mention of how EVE helps people form bonds and fight solitude, that a feature in this game ought to be able to create and nurture corporations and/or alliances!

And at that, the current Proving Grounds fail miserably!

  • Finally, we have heard from players that the system for finding opponents could do with some improvements.

Yes, it could be frustrating to come up against someone who has put more ISKs into his Ikitursa than you have seen on your account. But it was perfectly fitting with what EVE is about. That guy being able to do that mean that one day you could be the one dunking on noobs with your trillion ISKs Ikitursa and pod.

Introducing Matchmaking and T2 limitations made it easier to find skill-appropriate opponents, but it also destroyed the ladder that the activity provided to people as a reason to get ISK (or better organisation). Now what we have is a Ranking, and if you have seen the kind of state a Ranking puts people in other games, it’s not pretty.

More importantly, at least with the ISK game if you managed to beat that higher “ranked” guy, you not only set him back, but you racked in an awesome reward through his loot and killmail!!

That pretty much eliminates the balancing factor that EVE was built around, ISK, out of this activity. And that for the sake of an accessibility that is not even helped by the rest of the features this Proving Grounds was built around.

If we take those points one by one, the current Proving Grounds failed at:

  • Being a short-session friendly activity. The current Proving Grounds tie you to Matchmaking and Teammates searching.
  • Being a commuity-building activity. The current Proving Grounds do not last enough and are not reliable enough to build a community around.
  • Being accessible. The T2 limitations do not help when you only have a couple of days to enjoy the fights and during those days if you are ■■■■■■ by the population you have just wasted your gaming nights.

All-around, I see the current implementations as an absolute failure, whose sole possible saving grace is being a test for the different possible formats and the kind of events possible around the feature (the changes to the arena for the Winter Nexus were awesome).

From what I see, the current iterations needs the following things to be saved and not end up as yet another feature like Ressources Wars where “they have tried everything to make it work”:

  • Stop the format changing, choose one, two, or three formats and let people organise themselves around those. Look at the most popular formats and make them fixtures or at least make them last long enough so that people can actually build their communities or lives around them.
  • Do away with the event format, the Proving Grounds should be available ALL the time, when someone feels like having some PvP and is limited on time, that was the intended purpose of those, have you forgot??
  • Do away with the T2 limitations, give less rewards to the winner and more rewards through indirect means (either through the number of runs done, or though challenges in the Grounds), make it more profitable to down a blingy and powerful opponent.

This feature has been given enough time to come to a conclusion about whether peple enjoy it or not under its current form, and personally, after participating in it and observing it for long enough, my feedback is that if it continues in its current form, the feature will become extremely unpopular before the end of the year.

That is it. Thank you for your time.

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You know what? :slight_smile: with your own understanding speed :wink: took 7 Month for you to come to the point …

Also currently RVB produces more content than your prooving grounds or those arenas… Only one of the systems we become active produce %100 times more content than WHOLE ■■■■■■■ Pochven ! … Populist things and DEv Made theme park contents comes and goes … Traditions LIVES… by their nature

Check the market for RvB skins … and next time … think twice when you had been shitting on an institution part of the EvE lore and history…

We do fight for the sake of the fight… we shed blood for the sake of PVP … We don’t fight for catch or profit … that what has made grow best pilots of New Eden…

Love From RvB!

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AAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAA :smiley:

Huh? Not going to rag on him for stealing your bizarre posting style? That’s a little out of character.

Mr Epeen :sunglasses:

hmph, what can i say OP…

There were many that said this crap does not really belong in EvE…

a niche thing within a niche game style within a niche game…whou would of guessed?
now get off your ASS and go play EvE the way its meant to be…

or idk…go play WoW or some other game with this arena garbage. maybe League of Legends is more your style.

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Is that good? Pochven isnt very popular… I suppose everything is better. :woman_shrugging:

  • Delete arenas.

  • Make random abyss chains connect to eachother so players can encounter eachother.

  • Develop group abyss content.

Hurray! :man_cartwheeling:

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The fundamental issue with arenas isn’t that they “don’t belong” in EVE, but that CCP created a game about grinding PvE in which less than 10% of the population seeks out PvP willingly, and of that 10%, only a fraction would be interested in an arena feature (this is normal and to be expected), so arenas in EVE basically have no real market when we consider that only a few hundred people out of the whole population might be interested in them.

EVE players love making fun of WoW. Well, in WoW, arenas are literally 1/3 of the end game, and like a solid 40% of the players you’ll encounter will show some level of arena ratings/activity. That’s right, in the game that’s popularly derided as the carebear’s paradise alternative to EVE, a much bigger percentage of the player base is interested in PvP.

So here’s the deal: you’re not going to solve the arena issue by playing with the “metas” or the timing of the events or anything like that (although these things would very much improve the feature once the core issue is solved). You’re going to solve arenas by fundamentally restructuring the kind of game that EVE is, and ensuring that 90% of the player base isn’t so focused on the singular goal of grinding ISK and/or being afraid of their own shadow that just the concept of arenas seems as distant as a dream you had as a seven-year-old. Coincidentally, this would solve a whole bunch of other problems with the game as well.

Here’s another major flaw with arenas: it’s a consensual PvP mechanism that’s tied to a nonconsensual PvP world. These two things don’t mix. They need to be two separate, stand-alone functions. Here are two examples why:

  1. Arenas pollute your stats. A player who likes keeping a tight kill board can’t do arenas, because in arenas, you’re reasonably expected (if the matchmaker works well) to win about half of the matches you play. Then if you’re really good, or really bad, you’ll be able to edge out a slightly higher or lower victory ratio, respectively, but any Elo-based system will ensure that the ratio normalizes at around 50%. Well if you’re a player with a 1,000:100 kill record in EVE, and you do 1,000 arenas, your stats are going to become something along the lines of 1,500:600, essentially wrecking your kill board efficiency ratio.

  2. You have to pay to participate in arenas. The ships you use aren’t free, and you end up taxing yourself without getting anything meaningful in return. Why would anyone do this willingly? If you want to play a few hundred arena matches, you’ll have to drop billions of ISK on it (maybe purchase some PLEX, as all the good goyim do). All for what, supporting CCP’s attempt to break into the e-sport market for the sake of increasing their company’s ROI? No thanks. I can grind a matchmaking ladder in games that don’t make me kill boars for days for the privilege.

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You know, I will happily admit I was wrong about RvB, if you guys are not cannibalizing each other.

However, the point at the time was that people were looking for a time-friendly, easy access to PvP and that open-world PvP did not provide that.
And since the current iteration of the Proving Grounds is not time-friendly nor easy to access, the point still stand that there is a lack of such content that deserve to have its space in the game.

Now, if the point is to say that because I supported them trying to introduce that kind of content then since the feature failed, which I maintain it did, then it means that I was wrong for doing so, then so be it. I was wrong, and the way Abyssal Proving Grounds are right now is a potent fail.

Ok. you had used the word “CANNIBALISM” 7 months ago so many times and I did react. this time yes i use your word and define it.

                                                 **RvB CANINBALISM:** 

Lets take a look at these caninballs:

RvB Veterans currently Training 200 very new to eve pilots into PVP… They do classes and everyday training fleets. They do organize and finance everything. New pilots reship cruiser down freely and unlimited. And even a 1-month-old pilot hitting hundreds of kill mails… fly side by side with vets and every fight we value as learning opportunity They groundy learn fittings mechanics flying strategies and piloting skills…
Those are some of the best PVP veterans in the game and they use their time /sources /energy and they are enjoying doing that … they are very patient full of compassion and all enjoying this adventure …
simply beautiful people.

Also those CANNIBALS…not already used hundreds of billions is for finance all PVP costs of new pilots until they learn what they enjoy most in EVE online to make isk and become self-sufficient… But also Drop all kind of HG pirate implants drugs mostly fly empty pods and use t1 line ships and paying attention that every fight they give and take. LOL and new pilots learning to organize and gang on them …

Lets take a closer look at this player-made content :slight_smile:

A. RvB . 2 corporations 1 eternal war. Concept is … There is a war goin on 12 years… Not only in NULL or LOW or HIgh SEc… actually all over New Eden in this concept … this is a real war… but you cant just meta it and you cant simply solve this meta… RvB pilots hunt and kill each other all over new eden about a DECADE ! Pilots kills each other in other WARS too and fights… that doesnt makes them caninbals right? because they kill enemy ? and enemy is not human ? they dont have to respect them as human ??? or what?? what makes other PVP and wars different ?
let me tell you :slight_smile: they fight for profit… they fight with hatret … they dont know each other and alianise it… DETACHED… that makes them easier to " HURT " each other…

B. RVB pilots cannot lean on fleet doctrines or FC s to survive and win … Meta will never be solved by pilots :slight_smile:
Reason : 2 side is in war against each other but also shares same community and friends… but that doesnt mean they will just sit tight and wait untill get themselves ganged in 3.5 bil Deimos lol .
Only difference than fights in low or null is …
We NEVER look for only fights we are sure to win %100 percent… We seek for thrill and excitement we can take fights even we outgunned and up shipped…We seek oportunities to force our skills and understandings limits …

C. :slight_smile: ight_smile: we are not really patient most cases you know… We want our fights ready and warm on the table… We smack talk despise, trick, bait and do all kinds of psychological manipulations to pull dirty Reds or filthy blues into fight … we seriously pissed of each other OFF… and decharge it with explotions…
We respect each other and love light hearted banters… and never hard feelings …
FIRE CLEANS THE SOULS!

D.
We fight and talk sometimes we talk while fighting even … end up with we learn each others fits tactics eventually. SO you have to change adapt and keep making some new fits develop different tactics … change your styles… THAT BRINGS CONSTANT DYNAMISM. you cannot succeed in RvB by stucking in one style some fits… And in RvB you need to be able to make your own fits too :slight_smile: Everybody knows the corp Fits already … they are just over there as urgent solutions as kind of idea… and there are not many because we fuckin DONT NEED IT! therefore some of the best theory crafters of eve grow in RvB over years.

E. RvB vets takes intiative in the fleets and they know when to listen Fc and When to do right thing sometimes to save all fleet… This makes FC s work easier… Also FC s always knows that even they throw the fleet certain death… nobody blame them complain about the isk loss… they dont feel any pressure except for the efort they would like to show to do best in given conditions …

End up with… our first graduate 10 pilots… 3 of them currently FC ing… Next 20 graduates incoming and you would guess the numbers who can sign up to FC because they learn a lot in ■■■■ loads of fighting opportunities … 3-month-old pilots step up for FC 15 years old vets… and they feel happy and proud of themselves… and YESS! they do AMAZING! and it makes us soo happy … there is no other setup in this game that facilitates pilots to start learning Fc ing encouraging and supporting that much smooth

last month our guest teacher was Suitonia this month will be Nova Valentis why dont you drop by and see how is it going ?
we can chit chat…
Its beautifull community…
im not kind of person hold grudges or feed bad feelings and live on it … RvB havent loose its popularity because of its bad concept …it happened because of some peoples wrong decisions and doings… and it happens you know…
we are working crazy to make things right to bring this beautifull concept back to life atm… Lots of love and efforts from vets to pass the tradition to new generations…

3 Likes

Imho preventing metas is a good thing.

image

I agree with a lot you have said about community, but not so much about the accessibility. The accessibility to the proving grounds has depended on the format, with the popular ones (1v1 and ffa) having effectively no queue. Many more people have been doing the current events than ever did the old one.

The team events could do with a match making system and there should be an official proving grounds chat accessible from the leader board and automatically entered when entering an arena.

All I actually want is to have the old proving grounds back. There are several posts on the forums about that. And even in the original thread no one wanted the old arena to go.

CCP vaporized a community that developed around the old arena.

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Would love to see normal abyss made easier pve wise and then made harder by having a 10% chance players instances converge :] then people can do them in cheaper fits and have some pvp out of it arena style every now and then.

Then people interested in only pvp will go create content out in the world and those that like the challenge of abyss can test them selves even more at a much more sustainable cost.

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This is the best thing about them, tbh. It rewards creativity and piloting skill over wallet size and ability to copy fittings from zkill.

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Sure, but it also make sure that you cannot plan your sessions and nights accordingly.

If you happen to enjoy Cruisers and you are stuck with an event that is only Destroyers until the next few weeks, all that hype you had for the next event just vaporized.

There is a place for an ever-shifting format, and that is as a special one that would be separated from the others, classic and fixed ones, and that would have special rewards.

Pretty much, those who want to stick to either Frigates, Destroyers or whatever would know that they have a format waiting for them when they go home, and those looking for novelty would also have a format that mix things up regularly.

However, the best and proven way in many games to shake up the meta is by introducing new elements, either it is new ships or new modules. That’s how it’s done almost everywhere.

EVE could do it in its own way. For example you could have limited-time modules that could only be used in the Proving Grounds and of course drop or be destroyed on ship death. You also have the Proving Grounds themselves introducing new rules every season or so, like in many other games on the market.

Pretty much, forcing everyone to have to change to the ship choice of CCP is funny only to CCP, and the rare people who like novelty for the sake of novelty.

All I am saying is that you guys can do your content only out of the production and logistical chain of other activities.

RvB in itself produces nothing. The lifestyle is funded by activities in other spaces, or just out of the RvB game.

In a game where the first half is about Production, that is a problem!

Also, dude(tte), calm down lol, I’m not saying shot about RvB, I’m talking about the Proving Grounds here, apparently you guys survived well the supposed disappearance of pilots into instanced content, so everything is for the best for you guys!

Thanks man \o/

RvB produces mainly 2 thing:

1: FUN

We are fun per hour.

2: DESTRUCTION

Last time me and Vision went to shopping … we breake the jita market … bought 6000 ships and fits which we nearly totaly breake the meta module market and hulls we couldnt get all the hulls so we have to mass produce 2000 of hulls … i guess some mission runners who try to sell their loots when they saw someone bought normally conditions 400.000 isk for 2 mil isk… thought that who are those idiots pay that amount wtf ? And simply i couldnt fit a serie of amarr cruisers because vision scrub the bottom of jita just before me… we bought materials from small size corps and paid normal jita price and zero tax direct trade… they made full profit . So we also make mission runners indy pilots and miners and explorers happy …

Old abyssals had their own player base and fans… and i have never reacted in the past to that content because simply it wasnt have really meaningfull negative effect or harm to pur ecosystem …

When that instanced PvP inroduced to game … first time i begin to engage forums and begin to write … you can see that on my info too…

That time i had seen what has been coming and what will happen … tried to do my best to open some ayes … i had been incredibly sad and scared… but nothing worked of course CCP havent listen anybody … officially they rolled the ball the way in their head…

And this is where we come …

Also i actually like that idea @Makshima_Shogo shared … why not ? But seems like its too late … dont know … hope more people land on this post and read and support…good luck !

bump

1 Like