Would any "matchmaking" systems help make EVE players social again?

Let me start off by saying matchmaking implies instances, and I don’t really think instanced gameplay should have a major role in EVE. It directly conflicts with what most players love about EVE, which is that New Eden is a live universe we can actually impact.

That being said, I have noticed a lot of people saying the game feels less social and I feel maybe some matchmaking can help capsuleers find each other and start socializing? A quick place they could be implemented is abyssal sites - say I want to run the abyssal with a frigate but I am a solo player with no friends to play. Why is there no system in the game to help me find other players to run the abyssal with?

It could very well be a queue matches players within a region and parties them so that they can fly to the same system and use a filament. Just an example. I am sure there are better ideas that can be thought of with some iteration.

Typically if you’re looking for people to do an activity with you’d find a corp that takes part in it. There’s not really a “looking for group” status in EVE. You can ask in Local but I’m guessing not many people would bite. There are open, non-corp fleets but I haven’t had any experience with them and they seem to be more about PVP.

It is unfortunate since it’d be cool to just think “I want to do X with a couple people” and broadcast that in the Region where other people looking to do that could join up. Closest to that is open fleets.

Let me ask you this. Have you played games with instanced dungeons and a party finder like WoW or FF14? Have you actually ever talked to the teammates you’ve gotten matched with?

Having played a lot of FF14, I can safely say, that matchmaking does not increase player interaction. Yes, you need to do the dungeon together, but that can mainly be done in silence since, for the most part, people know what to do.

As for your question, why is there no system in the game to help you find other players to run abyssals with. For that you have chat channels and this forum. Use it.

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Your second part contradicts your first part’s correct summation.

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Matchmaking and instances are already in the game! Abyssal sites have it. Never heard about the proving ground? At the end of a T3 or higher Abyss site you can chose to get matched against another site runner for more loot.

In general you can’t force people to communicate if they don’t want to be social.

This, right there. Creating a channel and building up a community around a certain activity you enjoy works much better than just a matchmaking system. Not only do you have a common place to communicate with each other even when you are not taking part in a fleet right now. You also have a lot more control over who you a are flying with.

Take incursions and their communities as an example. While sometimes issues came up in the past within those communities from my experience, they were still doing a good job of getting people with an interest in incursions together. People could have just used the default incursion channels, but making their own channels gave them much more control over their own group.

This control allows them to throw out unwanted elements. As mentioned it also gives them a place to communicate with each other, a place to provide information in regards to setups and “tactics” used in the group or to even have discussion on how to improve things.

As somebody who did run a more private incursion group, I can tell you that if you put the effort into building up a community like that it can make even something as tedious as running VG sites 14 hours per day a lot of fun. Just getting matched with random people and not making bonds with those people I would have gotten bored of that a lot faster.

edit: One of the best things back then for me was… Even though I was in PL back in those days and a few others from PL were flying in the group we also had people from “hostile” alliances in the group and despite killing each other out in 0.0, we managed to overcome all that and had lot´s of fun together. Good old times :).

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Have to agree with @Maekchu here. Matchmaking doesn’t make for great socialisation.

It makes me think of MOBA’s where players generally play in silence until they start blaming eachother for failures and insulting eachother or you have that one guy (usually me) telling the rest of the team what they are doing wrong.

After playing in a community of thousands for about a year, i came out with less than 5 friends who were mostly there for stat comparison rather than socialisation. And then there were a few names that would get a ‘nod’ from me in games for being frequent friend or foe. But that’s it.

When you look at eve, it’s a totally different experience. It is by far the most social game ever made. Friends you make here are friends for life. You talk to them everyday, not just when you’re in fleet, but during down times as well. You enjoy the best of times and endure the worst of times with them right by your side.

Several people that don’t play eve anymore i keep in touch with by other means, and some of them if i saw in the street I’d just run up to them and hug the bastards.

Can you really say you’ve had that type of friendship from matchmaking instances? I doubt it.

Why might this type of friendship not be as common in eve today as before? It’s pretty simple, the necessity of allies is no longer a thing. Players aren’t reaching out to eachother because they don’t need protection of eachother from eachother. Players may enjoy the good times together, but you really know who your friends are when they stick with you through the bad times. You know who your friends are when they can stab you in the back and take you for everything but instead give you and trust you with their own assets. For the vast majority of players though, those bad times are gone. The need for trust is gone. Patched out over the years.

Add to that the expectation that they should be able to play alone is much more prevalent in todays gaming culture. So that’s what CCP have provided safety and independence. Not realising they have very likely engineered their own demise by doing so…

just look at retail wow,… these kind of systems are cancer for any real mmorpg!!

like the others said, just create a channel and talk to other people! matchmaking system that allows for no talk gameplay dont belong in an mmorpg!

the core of any mmorpg is the community of players and u slowly gonna destroy these communitys by adding features like this! this is one of the big reasons why the wow community is crying for vanilla Servers for years now, because the retail/bfa wow became a mindless singleplayer game were noone talks with eachother and funny thing is even if u try to talk to other people in Dungeons or open world, most wont talk back to u or some will even report u for talking/using chat ingame (this is no joke) the whole game is only About using matchmaking, rushing through a dungeon without Talking or saying hello to ur groupmembers and thats it… this isnt a real mmorpg for me!

maybe with the success of classic wow, other mmo devs will see that the majority of mmo gamers still prefer the real mmos and not these boring singleplayer games with coop Option!

the core of a real mmorpg will always be community/group gameplay and talkng to other people!
thats why i love mmos, because i can talk to other people, make friends and share my adventures with them!

if u dont like this why even play a mmorpg? why not just play skyrim?

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