This is what I’d call pvp without agency. Few options.
Two teams running separate dungeons doesn’t make for a great single shard sandbox does it?
If one team gets reward, and second doesnt, and they can see each others progress, then it would be like in EVE essentially.
In EVE it is very interactive thing as the dungeon is the same. EVE is a bit better than proposed in link, as in EVE it is very direct competition and it engages people more.
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I disagree that this is all there is to it. For it to be like eve there would need to be a way to break into the others dungeon and either steal their stuff or blow the other players up.
E.g. When walking in stations was brought up as a concept, a frequent request from the players was ‘as long as i can mug other players in station.’
Because that’s eve.
The other thing about competitive dungeons is matchmaking. If two teams are supposed to start at the exact same time and compete against eachother. That means they have to both be ready and online at the same time…and then I suppose players will want a ‘fair chance’ so both teams will have to be somehow paired based on ability. And how do you do that in eve?
This may be where i disagree with Kezrai_Charzai as well. Eve is fundamentally designed for asymmetric warfare. You aren’t meant to have a fair fight. You are meant to exploit weaknesses, strategic, tactical or organisational. He who dares wins. Go for the jugular.
As I wrote, these are essentials that are the same. Of course there are minor differences that people can be pro or contra. Like that directness.
I don’t actually say that EVE should be ‘more symmetric’ or encourage ‘fair fights’, because that would be hard to manage and probably somewhat boring. Also, there are tons of games out there that already do it better.
I would even be fine with EVE’s ‘dog eat dog, bigger dog wins’ design philosophy, if it was working. But it isn’t, and hasn’t been for ten years, and probably never did - it’s just that back when EVE was growing there was little ‘space game’ competition, and the game niches hadn’t already been filled with 10-year vets.
EVE’s ‘fundamental design asymmetry’ isn’t encouraging new players to sign up, it isn’t retaining new players who do start, and it isn’t even keeping old players. It’s a bankrupt design approach that throws away hundreds of potential players for every one it keeps, and it’s not really even ‘keeping’ those.
The actual ‘design asymmetry’ problem with EVE is that the reward/risk/play balance is way too skewed against new players and way too favorable for old existing players. This cuts down on the flow of new blood into the game, and leaves older established players bored because there’s little new for them to do except contest against other old established players. And there’s fewer of those with every passing year.
Having a couple hundred new players per month actually engaging in the game and committing to working their way up the ‘EVE ladder of success’ simply will not support the game going forward.
EVE can be dog eat dog, and EVE can be asymmetric, fine. But don’t eat the puppies, and don’t skew the risk/reward so badly that there is little desire to compete for the underdogs. EVE promotes too much passive gameplay (set up training queue, update market orders, log off), too much passive grinding (farming in the safest location), and too much boring, exploitive PvP (gate camps, ganking) exactly because the development path for newer players is too asymmetric.
You don’t put little leaguers up against major league players and expect to see a good or entertaining contest. EVE needs a progressive introduction into the no-holds-barred competition in various niches before they cut players loose and toss them out into the wild.
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I strongly agree with the wording here.
But i disagree with many with the nature of the ‘bad design’. I think most people would day pvp’rs are ‘eating the puppies’. Even though the vast VAST majority of new players never encounter pvp before they quit. I’d say the nature of bad design is that there is so little opportunity for the puppies to grow (gradually) into wolves (or foxes amongst the sheep).
But because the opportunities to do that have been greatly reduced, players join the game and see the only way to progress is to out sheep the vets (almost impossible for a new player) or join an existing group of wolves.
I sound like a broken record, but when they nerfed wardecs they weren’t protecting new players (whom are specifically not the targets of wardecs) they we’re taking a tool away from new players to try out pvp in a somewhat controllable environment. They were taking a tool away from economically weak players to fight rich players with an exploitable weakness. They were taking away agency.
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You are mixing two different things.
The personal growth of a player, that is the assets he amassed over time, including the SP, makes him able to invest more in an activity that has higher profit.
I have ATM like 90B just for my struture bpos. of course the money I make with them, someone with less funds to invest can’t make it for the same activity.
The design asymmetry in eve, means that a player can select how he engages another one, and that choice can give him an edge in a fight.
What is leading people away, can be many things, but to attribute it specifically to the asymmetrical fights in Eve, needs some specific works, especially when you are mixing this with the personal growth that is a basis of MMOs.
lol. And the moon is flat !
ROFL. And the sun is wet !
Except that’s not at all what they’re saying. They’re saying “EVE is not a PvP game, most people just want to PvE so we need to reduce PvP and make farming safer”. The only “improvement” to PvE they want is for mindless 23/7 AFK farming to have less risk and more profit.
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All you saw was wardecs being used to stomp not-new players.
Wardecs were used by all sorts of groups including new players looking to become up-and-coming pvp’rs.
For a new player, what looks better as pvp in ‘training wheels’? Wardecs against miners/mission runners/groups of manageable size or age? Or low sec with veteran pvp’rs in advanced ships and capitals?
I mean Kezrai_Charzai said it here:
Even faction warfare pits tech 1 frigs against pirate ships flown by vets.
Wardecs were so much better for starter pvp than anything before or since.
CCP may go with certain strategy with game. What is better? Thousands of new players that will pay maybe one month in subs and resign after someone steals their cookie? Or only few players that will buy alts to compete with the established ones, to steal theirs? Sort of “sharks vs. herrings” dillemma.
If the game is so inclusive as to give enough space and rewards to herrings, then sharks also will have a good time.
I have seen, and it was proposed even here, that game really needs new mechanisms of PvP, with rankings, arenas and tournaments.
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A false dilemma falacy !
lol².
I started with FW and it was fun. Then I ran out of money and I created my own corporation (out of FW), and people decided they wanted to wardec me for no reason (and no effect because I left the corp and created another one). I also noticed as people were wardecced, they thought “nobody is gonna catch me” and then blobbed by T3C and killed while ratting, then left the game because they were noobs and could not do a thing.
war decs are a tool for stronger corp to oppress the weaker. Nothing more. The “david versus goliath” is just story telling, never happens in real life.
Well thanks for demonstrating both that wardecs were completely optional and good for killing afk mission runners.
Indeed, that’s what they were good for. Unless the runners did decorp and then they were useless, but also the runners did leave the game.
Which is exactly the reason why CCP decided to remove them as they were.
Except these mission runners were already leaving.
Otherwise, where are they now?
lol³
1 - Why except ?
2 - if these missions runners left of course they were already leaving
3 - source ?
4 - if they have left , that means by definition that they are no more here.
So if wardecs were causing significant amounts of players to leave, the nerfing of wardecs should have had some kind of effect on retention. But they didn’t (or they did but more players were leaving after the change lol)
You know we’ve been here before.
Either the amount of players leaving from wardecs was insignificant. Or the wardec changes didn’t achieve anything to stop players leaving.
again, source ?
Again, the goal was not to make the people who had already left come back.
When you ask “where are they now”, that is only a strawman.
Actually the design asymmetry I was referring to wasn’t specifically referring to player combat, or to the notion that a newer player using the right technique can successfully engage an older player in a fight (although that last part, though often mentioned, is rarely ever seen in my experience).
Rather, it is the fact that from pretty much their first day in EVE, new players are competing directly against established players in every niche of EVE. This occurs in exploration, mining, manufacturing, trading, PvE and PvP. In every form of competition in EVE, the new/intermediate player is left to compete against players with more SP, more ISK, more experience, more knowledge of the game.
The only option for new/intermediate/more casual players is to simply grind away at something like mining or missions or FW or exploration, all the while being casual easy prey for anyone who decides to steal their lunch money. Yes, EVE is a harsh and unforgiving universe, and personally I’m okay with that.
Unfortunately, a small core of players who are ‘okay’ with the design philosophy of EVE as it is aren’t enough to support the game going forward. EVE needs to find ways to become attractive to two or three times as many players as it currently does, or risk continuing to decline.
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What makes you feel like vets are not in competition with other vets ?
What do you propose ? That every player makes the same exact amount of money, that his SPs are no matter, that the time and resource invested in the game do not matter ? That any new player can sit in a titan ?
Csm minutes. And you…here:
You said wardecs were changed because it made people leave. Therefore nerfing them (effectively) would have changed that.
But player activity did the opposite (see eve-offline.net). Where is the boost in player activity now that players aren’t leaving due to wardecs?