High seccers won’t fleet up to run mining or home defense sites because successful solo life in Eve requires developing a level of paranoia that is quite high. Any attempt to make people fleet up must address this cultural reality. Perhaps an in-game mechanic to address this paranoia is needed in addition to the site existing, though honestly I cannot imagine one that would work since my alt will join you in a fleet to mine while I line up my shot to blow you out of the stars.
CCP, that’s why so few are doing the homefronts, metaliminal mining sites. That’s why so few group up to run abyssals. Alts as a mechanic make it so that there is no way to ever know who you are dealing with and what they are like. No one is tied to the behavior and reputation of a single character such that you can trust them.
I wonder if this is a fact that CCP is not aware of, because they never experience the game solo. They are never without friends. They are never without a plan B. Some people play the game high-risk as solo, and everyone they see in the game they eventually come to view as the alt of a predator.
I have another theory: All content CCP designs for cooperation or “groups” is so simple that you can make a lot more money by just fleeting up with 1, 2, 3… of your own alts. You can reap all the rewards and need to share them with no one. Max profit per hour. If you want to be social, you can still talk to someone doing the same on your TS.
I dont think the armchair psychology on display here really matches up with the reality. There are groups who run Homefronts, enough that they find themselves competing for instances. You really dont need a fleet to run abyssals or missions. You dont have to address paranoia, you just have to create more content that requires fleets to complete.
Yah OP was way too elaborate about this. This is centered around the blessing/curse that is multiboxing in an MMO.
The idea is that CCP wants players to fleet up to boost interaction and retain players. Happy players are PAYING players. Because face it, solo/ 1 account players are not going to pay the bills. CCP wants to make memories between large groups of alts/real people.
CCP also implemented citadel cores to encourage group defense and group ownership of a citadel. There is a common theme here.
The problem is that people are multiboxing over finding real players to do the content with. Why split profits when I can have ALL the ISK?
Multiboxing is the curse and blessing that CCP is attempting to figure out for years now. It’s hard to be an MMO when a large majority of people are just alts controlled by small group of real players. I honestly think it will get worse and meaningful one account players like me will just get replaced by a alt. It is just inherent in EVE and principles of economics.
It used to frustrate me when others suggested “Just create another alt.”
Handling other people’s alts is quite disgusting, as they often feel confortable and secure hiding behind their wall of alts. Look at the situation in Rookie channels, where someone pretends to be a newbro and then, right after, starts spewing the poison: “I’m just a newbie, could you fit a Venture for me… I hope this year’s Crimson Harvest will, see you all there”
I don’t have patience anymore, we can’t kill players inside the station, can’t kidnapp them and put them in a slave camp
I totally disagree with this statement. On average Eve Rookies is standing up 34 fleets a month, out of those between 30-32 are PVE fleets. Incursions, FOBs, Ratting, LvL 4 missions, and mining fleets of different sorts. We have an average of 70 unique individuals come fly with us every month.
It’s not a matter of people unwilling to fleet up with others. It’s that you have to literally fall over someone running a public fleet. The only in game feature that alerts people to fleets is the fleet finder but for fleets such as FOB, Incursion and Home Front (abyssals as well) that have a maximum number, the fleet finder is totally useless. Especially for groups that thrive on scheduling fleets ahead of time.
So now you have to depend on a PVE player coming across a group here, Reddit, Twitch, a Youtube video or some other 3rd party source.
When people can’t find the fleets, they’re naturally going to solo. End of story.
I would agree if you said it isn’t /always/ because people don’t want to fleet up with others. But in my area of high sec, I’ve tried multiple times to drag people together into a fleet. Talking to them one on one, to a man they all despise the idea of joining a fleet because they assume it’s to gank their hulks and orca in a belt. No amount of reassurances ever breaks through the rigidity of “No way. There’s no way to know you aren’t some CODE. guy.”
I’ve experienced this quite a bit.
I found the info in this thread about organized public fleets pretty interesting. I started playing a decade ago, and I’ve never been in a public fleet.
I hear your frustration. I too despise this mentality. When I bump into it I just move on. I’m convinced it’s some sort of brainwashed plague.
Imagine being able to assess and handle risks – for example downshipping from Orca to Porpoise just in case – when possibly trying to have friends in the game. Totally foreign to these guys – often it is “but my ISK/hr” which is a civil way of them saying “■■■■ you, you nor anyone else is worth my time” and putting their personal greed above all.
Well, I made the experience that if you offer free Mining Boost for the lonely Retriever guy warping into your belt, there is a like 50:50 change they accept a fleet invite and are even thankful. Some even sent a few million ISK to the booster char without me asking them for anything.
I also often offer free bookmarks for looting/salvaging when running L4s or Epic Arcs, these sites are usually full of Battleship wrecks and new players in a simple destroyer can make quite some cash there, but these offers are very very rarely accepted. Most likely because those ships I see salvaging on Dscan are also just alts of someone with little interest to interact with others.
Yep. Even in high sec. When I first came back from hiatus I ran around a constellation near Rens in a porpoise. Collected everyone I could into one system and repeatedly asked the AFK barges if they wanted free boosts. Eventually MMM showed up to gank the AFK barges, our impromptu fleet was fine. Still talk to one of the guys from that experience.
I didn’t encounter the antisocial paranoid mentality at all that day. I do believe it definitely exists.
I’d snatch your arm off to follow in my Noctis, honestly I got sick of asking in my local systems for mission runners to send me the bookmark if they aren’t salvaging so the dscan could be clear, but they don’t even answer
There is still a trust element that goes into it. They’re not going to fleet up with a rando. Eve Rookies started with… the rookies. Vets weren’t going to fork over 250m to borrow a ship. But rookies didn’t have that deep sense of paranoia about everyone being after them. I literally started the group with 8 friends and form months we did 1 fleet a week and maybe say a random person come in every other week.
Like everything in Eve, getting people to fleet up is hard. Especially when they’re already set up with their alts and set in their ways. It’s easier catching the new players than converting the older players.
No, it really isnt difficult at all to make a fleet for high sec content. What paranoia? Whats buddy going to do to you thats worth being paranoid about?
The rework of bookmarks into shared locations didn’t help this at all imo. In some ways is is of course more convenient to use opposed to the old bookmark items trading/jettisonning/contractin, but it is far more annoying to set it up and especially new players have troubles receiving it. The various limits on folders also doesn’t help this - for example I use 3 folders just for my corp, but then I have to disconnect my folder to connect to folder of someone else whose location I want to use. And then back after I am done with that. Very annoying.
So true. I miss the old function of simply creating a “bookmark” item to drop for everyone. I used to do that all the time and just jetission a container (abandoned) in front of the mission running station so every newbie could take them and salvage. Not possible any more.
