Hello everyone, this is my first time posting in the general discussion. I joined EVE around a month back and have been bouncing between various bits of content, i’v found much of it fun but also difficult and at times esoteric. The latest thing i’v gotten into is Pochven and the miniature community within it, but I have some pretty serious critiques of the design that I would like to share.
The most glaring and obvious problem is tied to the Triglavians and standings themselves. If you’ve been around Pochven then you’re probably familiar with the infamous grind required to use stargates and services within it, as well as the difficulty of penetrating Pochvens content. While a lot of EVE is difficult. often obtuse, there’s a certain satisfaction when you learn some new mechanic or understand how to fight a player/NPC in a specific way that maximizes your gains. This isn’t really true of Pochvens design, more then anything I have it mentally and physically taxing to go through the process of grinding in a safe way that would allow me to do the basic content of the zone. This is for two reasons primarily.
The actual way standing ticks work in and of themselves. When you kill an NPC that awards standings it often takes quite awhile for them to kick in, and they are only awarded for your highest kill, meaning that the process is by nature an insufferably slow grind. Even if you have the tools to kill NPCs en mass rather then tag them individually you’re rewarded a very tiny amount of standing, regardless of the size of the group you just slaughtered. As a result the most ‘optimal’ way to do this kind of thing is kill one big thing, warp out, wait ten minutes, then warp back in to kill another big thing. To say this is somewhat mind numbing would be an understatement, but to stretch it out even over the basic 3.0 standing is soul crushing.
The barrier to entry for the content: Anything short of a souped up Assault Frigate is going to have a hard time soloing things reliably, making the standing grind largely relient on either the aforementioned mind numbing task of tagging and warping, or having a group that’s willing to do content in Pochven or doesn’t mind tanking their Edencom standings in K-Space. There are certain tools, like Battleships, that you could risk to do soloing but i’m not comfortable taking that into Pochven given the zero sec status without backup, and Edencom NPCs tend to be pretty durable and hit hard, so even if you’re willing to go that far it’s an expensive risk and one that imo isn’t worth it given how slowly Edencom increases your standings.
Now, i’m not here just to offer critiques, I also have potential solutions that would making accessing Triglavian content a lot easier in my personal opinion. Some of them more difficult then others to implement, but all of which would alleviate the burden of standing grinds specifically.
Triglavian Agents: This is by far my favored option. Putting NPCs, potentially ones with very lucrative rewards, would make standings a lot more bearable. On the small scale you could have level 1 missions with small payouts, but till award standing and are reliably soloable inside Triglavian space, this would give some variety to grinding gameplay and significantly speed up the process. Larger missions would give more rewards and more standings, which would then inject more life into the system as people form up fleets to do agent missions. As a bonus it’s a nice way to inject lore into a faction we haven’t had much personal interaction with.
Re-scaling the difficulty and frequency of dynamic events: having combat anomolies show up more often in T-Space with weaker variations to grind for newer players. This would allow people to get into the action easily, and it would potentially provide interesting pvp content in Pchven itself. After all T-Space is still basically nullsec and it would create zones for people to fight over.
Boost the standing gain from killing Edencom: This would probably be the easiest to implement and would have interesting implications. After all the invasions were pitched on choice and consequence, what has more consequences then tanking the standings of one faction to bring the other really high? making dual positives rarer and easing the transition to either side.
That’s all I have for now. But I just want to end by saying that this doesn’t mean I don’t like Triglavian content, to the opposite I find it quite compelling and the faction itself is pretty interesting. But it’s very obtuse, and the design could certaininly use some ironing out.
Perhaps it’s not meant to have a low barrier to entry?
I might be super slow but I’ve been playing for just over a month or so and Trig stuff just feels way too complex for me. I DID go into pochven this morning to get some basic standing, using a really good guide, because people sometimes complained in Rookie Help about being killed by trigs in high sec. Easily done but anything more than that is probably not going to happen nor would I expect that to be the case.
Well, a medium barrier to entry would also be appreciated. Fundamentally the problem is that it’s hard to get into, and if you’re part of a group that operates inside of Pochven that can make life pretty difficult. Or, at the very least, somewhat frustrating.
I also somewhat dislike it because it’s a very anti-fun type of barrier. It would be one thing if the Triglavians were part of some sort of Epic Story arc with a high rewards payout or the zones were extremely profitable, but much of the money comes from Dreadsites specifically. beyond that players make their own content ot in that zone. So the standing grind is not so much symbolic of some elite status to the zone so much as it just slows your progress down.
Edit: To further elaborate, a lot of EVE is risk vs reward, but currently Pochven experiences a deficit of both regarding standing grind and immediate rewards. Really you can do much of the standings by taking a cheap vigil and tagging targets, the main problem is just that it’s ungodly slow. I have the tools to take more risk for more reward, but the venue isn’t there unless I take the MOST risk for…moderately better rewards.
So the tiers of reward vs risk are all messed up at the moment.
I would consider it medium effort, about a week to get to 3.0, maybe two weeks now with the NPC reductions. Plenty of NPC stations to base out solo, and a couple groups there you can get part of. Which helps to have some blues and access to citadels.
Solving the standing puzzle was a nice challenge, I learned more about NPC mechanics as in 7 years before … lol. The problem now with +7 there is not much more. There is the super highway, some PvP, but else people are waiting what might come. I’m ready to move back in if the situation changes. It’s not a big deal actually with Jita and Amarr always a few jumps away.
I wouldn’t make access easier, but CCP has to decide what content Povchen shall be, at the moment it’s an empty shell.
No offense, but I don’t really consider it much of a puzzle at the moment. More then anything it’s an endurance test of moving from one place to the other, tagging, and then moving to the next space. This isn’t even hard really, just time consuming and tedious.
Technically speaking reducing this requirement would make Pochven easier to utilize, but it wouldn’t make the zone any dangerous. It’s still a negative security system with drifter blobs after all.
What’s the point of playing EvE? When we early adopters started we still had hope that content comes when we are ready … ok, there is no content now, but maybe it will be there when those who start now finish the ramp-up? I don’t know.
Correct, but, they are also awarded per system and per faction, so you can kill a rogue drone and a sleeper/drifter in 15 minutes and get 2 standings ticks and once you can use the gates you can do that in multiple systems which rapidly speeds up the progress, you can also gain a 3rd standing tick if you’re willing to shoot EDENCOM ships but that will obviously lower your EC standing, but should be offset by shooting drones and drifters/sleepers
Naga, Naga is the answer, its how we’ve run fleets and how we used to solo trig content, you can easily hit at over 200km and its T1 and insurable, takes a bit more work but its a solo tool easy enough, and you’re going to have to take risks if you’re not bringing friends
Would only really benefit the people who control the space, and with Pochven being null sec you’re massively putting yourself at risk without local and with people being able to yeet filament straight in to your system bypassing the WH
Problem is, i don’t think Pochven is meant for new players, so i don’t think they are going to balance the space with that in mind
Doubtful, EDENCOM was fighting to defend the status quo, they were fighting to prevent change, they weren’t aiming to gain something from defending space, this event was all about adding more sources for Triglavian materials and salvage for ship production aswell as a way to farm skills and blueprints easier
This self-righteous platitude always makes me chuckle. Perhaps the Edencom capsuleers were fighting against the semi-human, apparently amoral, incomprehensible aggressors.
Next time I hear somebody complimenting firefighters IRL, I will wave my hand and dismiss it because “those guys are just fighting for the status quo.”
Love how players less than a few months old except a new region to be easy, T-Space is meant to be new content to more skilled players with at least 6months or more of game play.
Ever wonder why players get killed so easily when they enter T-Space?
Its because they have no game experience, we see players of years die in there because their only experience is from highsec, never done nullsec or wormhole space.
Pochven (T-Space) is a mix of the worst regions with benefits removed:
No capital ships
No local
No new Citadels
No insurance
Required standings for NPC station services
Required standings to enter locked systems
Required wormhole scanning from outside to enter or exit.
All NPC hostile without standings
NPC friendly fleets random agro.
As you see this region make nullsec and wormhole space seem safe.
And those living in T-Space have become to love it the way it is,and actively hunt any intruder entering. They even hunt each other for fun.
This is not meant to be a safe region of space.
As lore states the region is a trial by fire, you survive or die.
If you can’t handle it as it is you’re not meant to be there yet, go get experience and the skills required to survive.
Right, but the standing grind is not hard, it’s boring and time consuming. I don’t care about the danger, hell the danger is the best part of T-space because it breaks apart the boredom. The complaint isn’t that it’s difficult to get into, but rather that it’s ‘difficult to get into’ because it’s unintuitive and slow.
I also like how you’ve listed:
All NPC hostile without standings, you can beat that by killing a single drone.
and
NPC friendly fleets random aggro, which i’m 1000% sure is just a bug.
I’m not even sure I agree T-space is the most dangerous form of space, it definitely is not if you’re friendly to certain parties who live there. I would say i’v found Syndicate Space to be far more dangerous due to the popularity of pirates and gate camps, where for Pochven most of the danger comes from the NPCs who you eventually learn to evade.
Its always been boring and time consuming, whats new?
Its not meant to be something you spend a couple of days working towards to unlock fully and the people who helped the trigs had an advantage when it came to that, as far as new players go, its not really aimed at them
To be perfectly candid, I just don’t really buy that. Eventually Pochven is going to have to open up or it’ll stagnate and die on old blood, the entire purpose of even having standings that increase or decrease is so that people eventually get into. Artificially making the time lengthier only shows your commitment in so far as your willingness to do unfun content to get to another piece of content.
That’s just poor game design. If the standing grind was hard that would be one thing, i’v actually quite enjoyed the challenge of pitting my Leshak against EDENCOM fleets for standings a thousand times more then target painting on my Vigil, the frustration comes from a lack of EDENCOM events frequently enough, and the standings not ticking fast enough, to significantly speed the process if you’re willing to put in hard(But more enjoyable.) work.
When content is people and only a handfull of people can be bothered to do something there other than kill one rogue drone and get out, there is shortage of content.
