I have a suggestion that I believe could significantly enhance our PvP experience in EVE Online. What if we had designated training zones where alliances can train their pilots without the risk of real losses?
Here’s the idea:
Safe Practice: New pilots could improve their skills without the fear of losing ships and resources.
Increased Confidence: Pilots would feel more confident in their abilities and be more willing to participate in real battles.
Boosted Activity: More pilots would engage in PvP, creating more dynamic and exciting fights.
Improved Coordination: Alliances could practice tactics and strategies, enhancing their coordination and effectiveness in real battles.
This feature should be available only for player-run corporations with more than 200 pilots, excluding NPC corporations. It would encourage more alliances to engage in PvP and take greater risks, knowing they have a safe space to train and hone their skills.
What do you think? Let’s discuss and see if we can bring this idea to the attention of the developers!
TL:DR: It’s the players not interacting and being invested. Not that there isn’t options available and opportunities for this out there. And the problem is deeper than that it would require something safe, which is something we actually need less.
This is, for sure, something that the game needs but…
There is a underlying “problem” with the player base and community that relates to what you’re trying to ask here. Getting new players or unexperienced pvp players more in to pvp is that it’s the players who don’t want to engage and be invested rather than that there isn’t a place or opportunity for them to learn.
Corporations and alliances that are (or want to be) relevant for the community and helpful for the players wanting to learn already have their training programs or events for fun that “train” you. There are also multiple player run tournaments with low threshold to participate with free ships and often only with tech 1 modules. I would argue that simply joining in for pvp fleets teaches you way more than a simulated scenario ever will.
The safe zone would need to be active with enemy pilots actually hunting you or trying to evade you in multiple adjacent solar systems to make it as close to reality as it can be. This would require corporation and or alliance players to waste their gaming time warping around as actors. No one wants to do that. Player vs player is complex and is so much more than just the shooting. Awereness of surroundings, scanning, intel to name a few.
In addition majority of the NPSI fleets & groups welcome new players with no problem at all. https://npsi.rocks/ Overclockers, Bombers Bar, Spectre Fleets…
Even Eve Uni is still active with classes.
In WoW when you duel someone the fight is over when one of you hit 1 HP. If eve had this mechanic, there would be more PvP options in high security space, though that would remove the ‘destruction’ component normally implicit with PvP.
What stops you from training combat practices in cheap ships?
A fleet of T1 fit frigates or destroyers teaches a lot about fleet combat and EVE combat in general with near-zero risk for everyone involved. It can punch up, allows you to have fun killing real enemies and if the fleet dies in a big explosion you just reship and go again.
Not really, with SRP you can afford to lose it, since it does cost 0 ISK for you. Thats the whole point. Only the SRP giver has to make sure he can finance the program, but that isn’t hard if you begin with cheap ships for training purposes.
But it’s not exactly “other people’s money”, because it’s a service of your group, which you paid for in taxes/fees or whatever financial concept your group has. So the SRP is a tool to equal out losses over the wide member number, reducing the fear to lose and grinding effort of the individual, enabling them to train, have content, fun and establish some group-coherency.
And of course such trainings need to be guided by some experienced veteran, to make sure the tools aren’t just “thrown away”, but that also is the responsibility of the group.
Really don’t know why you argue against it, because literally every successful group does it, because it works well.
SRP is like a gym membership, not everyone who pays for one uses it, that’s how it makes money. Unlike a gym membership, SRP is not usually something one can opt out of.
In the OTEC days SRP was a form of space welfare and indentured servitude to bind you to the will of the POS isk printing owners. A handful of elites could run hundreds of reactor tower and farm billions of ISK. It enabled entire alliances of players who were never active in space unless there was a fleet ping, which was not healthy for the game at all.
Turn the SRP tap off and see how long the coherency last. Over a decade ago I saw over 128 billion in SRP payouts in a single month go to a corp of PvP numbskulls who dropped their dreads in a loosing engagement. When they were told their SRP would be denied if they did that again, the whole corp left, with one particularly condescending individual saying that we should be paying them to PLEX their accounts for ‘defending’ us.
No, SRP is and always has been about control.
It worked well until it did not. When manual mining became the status quo, many of the smaller independent groups were forced to join the bigger blocks to maintain ready access to SRP. It further concentrated people into the big blocks and furthered the balkanization of space into blue doughnuts.
Less SRP would mean more people in space, and more content, more independent groups. The technetium empires allowed a concentration of wealth in the hands of the few which for which the game to this day suffers the consequences of.
I don’t understand where this apparent hatred of SRP is coming from.
SRP is just a way for alliances to financially encourage their members to sometimes fight for alliance causes and to help new players fly and lose ships more often at lower costs.
Over here we just hand out doctrine ships to anyone attending the fleet.
The SRP thing is scam run by the nullers, where industrialists usually charge significantly more isk for doctrine fitted ships via contracts then these fits are priced in popular markets, while the SRP price is based on jita trade averages.
Also if you think ships are overpriced you don’t have to buy the ships at that price. You could build or import your own!
I’m lazy and don’t mind paying a regional price that sometimes is higher, sometimes lower than Jita. I just buy the cheapest available nearby and don’t bother comparing it to Jita or delivering it from Jita.
The only exception is if I’m trying to find some niche modules that happen to be unavailable or sold for prices hundreds of millions more than I expect and much higher than in Jita - for that price I can be convinced to fly my hauling alt to HS and back.
SRP is like EVE insurance and covers a part of the cost of a new ship. For some situations it may cover the whole ship, in others it only makes it a lot easier to buy a new ship.
If you think it’s a scam you don’t have to ask for it. Often I don’t even bother, but if I lose a couple of ships for the alliance it’s nice to get some ISK back for it.