Lessons: Take a Chance

A lot of Eve players operate under the principle that losing a ship is somehow a negative, and should be avoided at all costs.  These players view it as a negative ledger item, a debit in the overall accounting books of their character.  That’s one way to look at PvP, but it completely misses the point.

Ultimately, PvP is about squeezing enjoyment of the game.  I view it as the end game because it’s the only activity in Eve (other than giving your isk away or buying plex) that consumes resources by nature, when done effectively.  Everything else accrues assets, but without something to spend that money on, there really isn’t a point to that exercise.  Getting rich matters because of what it enables.

And the best PvP enjoyment happens on the edge, when you’re facing long odds and still manage to pull out a victory.  Not only is the victory sweeter when it isn’t certain, but when being defeated by greater numbers or stronger ships, you can avoid the “regret” and “anger” stages of the process and get right to learning what you did wrong and improving.  After all, if you take a fight you should probably lose, you can’t very well get mad at the result, right?

Sometimes, you have to take a chance, like I did in my Harpy.

Lessons: Being the One Getting Shot

Normally, when I’m engaging in PvP, I’m the pilot traveling from system to system, hunting for targets.  Deciding what fights I want to take and hoping my target’s still there when I land.  A lot of that happens in faction warfare plexes.  Bring the aggressor, I tend to slide into a lot of situations that are marginal engagements at best.  That’s how you end up losing some ships.  But it’s great fun.

Normally, I’m a big proponent of the importance of aggression.  If you take the first action, you force your opponent to react to a situation of your creation, not his.  Many times, you can take the tempo of the fight and keep it the whole time.  That is, if you’ve chosen your fights well and accurately understand your strengths and abilities.

But recently, I’ve started to explore – and really enjoy – the pleasure of being the target who other people choose.  With my faction warfare alt, I’ve really enjoyed being the “victim”.

And I’m starting to see some advantages in giving up the initiative.  Or, rather, understanding that one can set up the circumstances favorably before the first action is taken, stealing the tempo by good preparation.

Being Proven Right

Yes, this is going to be a smug post.  I tend to use a lot of words to try to make myself clear.  I I’ve been pretty harsh on players who engage in aspects of the game in ways that actively, passionately, and exclusively eliminate the possibilities of interacting with other players in non-consensual ways.  The whole warp core stabilizer thing is just one example.

In other words, all the people who want to play the game without interacting with other players.

I’ve said before that Eve is an MMO and solo play is contrary to the purpose of an MMO.  Now, not every element of gameplay MUST be multiplayer, and players aren’t wrong for engaging in solo activities.  Rather, I’m referring to an error of intention, not action.  You’re playing Eve wrong if you log in with the explicit, overt desire to not interact with anyone and you view other players as ruining your game.

Folks have complained that this attitude is exclusionary.  Not at all.  My goal is to condition players towards enjoying emergent, sandbox activity.  To view player interactions as challenges, not ruinations.  To accept player-induced losses as the cost of doing business, not as a reason to rage.  To view interactions with other players as challenges that serve to help you grow, improve, and become educated, not as interruptions or distractions.

This approach to the game makes players less inclined to rage-quit when they suffer a setback and more inclined to become more passionately engaged with the game.  CCP’s data on player retention confirms this.  My goal, then, is player engagement, retention, and interaction by setting expectations correctly and modifying player attitudes to accept and adapt to what Eve offers, not resist and condemn it.  And this is good for everyone.

And today I won.  I quote from CCP Fozzie’s summer null-sec sov announcement:

“Playing with and outplaying other human beings is the core of Eve, and putting players in contact with each other is a big part of that. If people can fight over an asset without ever coming into contact with each other, we’ve lost something very valuable.” -CCP Fozzie

Smug looks good when you're right.

*drops the mic*

WCS: Add Consequences, Not Restrictions

Over at Evoganda, Rixx Javix has consistently made compelling arguments that warp core stabilizers are the devil, both in general and as they relate to FW low-sec space.  In theory, I tend to agree with him... I believe that specifically joining faction warfare only to stabilize your ship so you can run from every possible fight is cowardly and shameful.  You lose the right to complain if someone calls you out about it.

But, even when I spent a lot of time around Tama and surrounding systems, I didn't notice it as being such a massive problem.  My experience was that blobbing, and not WCS, ruined most of the fun.  And I'm okay with when people blog me... it means I should have killed the other guy faster, and good for him for having a bunch of friends nearby.

And then Sunday night happened.  I left from Tamo with a drone Tristan and headed towards the Ashitsu constellation, hoping to find a few pilots to fight.  A few jumps in, I saw another Tristan at a plex and slid in.  He was about 20 km away, so I dutifully applied my point and dropped my drones.

And then he warped away.

I tossed a mere, "Are you kidding me?" in local, but of course, he didn't respond.  I followed him around as he warped between the novice and small plexes in the system, caught him twice and managed to give the "attack" order to my drones, only to watch him warp off again.

Annoyed, I moved in, and found a Federation Navy Comet in the next system and warped to him.  Landing and sliding, I saw him 10 km off, applied my point, and began to damage him.  I watched as he locked me back, and gleefully hoped for an actual fight.

Nope.  At 60% shield, he warped off again, still under point.  Apparently, he was teasing me with his slow reaction time.  This time, I grumbled a bit more loudly in local.  He rightly pointed out that even with a Comet, he had no chance against a character created in 2009 when he was only a month old (I didn’t check his age when I engaged him).  But it didn’t change the fact that he still flew with a WCS.  Even if he wanted to fight, fitting that module would reduce his lock time to the point that he’d be spotting his opponent at least two volleys before he could lock.

So I moved on again.  And found a Merlin sitting in a plex.  Again, I pointed him.

WCS.

I moved to the next system and found yet another target, an Incursus this time.

WCS.

Rainmaker

In times of low activity, stresses appear.  Alliances crumble because weaknesses within become that much more apparent.  Corporations find their reason for existing isn’t sufficient to satisfy their members.  Sometimes, corporations can even find that they don’t have a reason for existing, only an enemy to fight, and crumble once that fight ceases to drive them.

In the best of cases, you simply get bored.  When this happens, leadership tends to respond with, “So, make your own content!”  They forget, of course, that the whole point of joining a specific corp/alliance is to participate in the content provided by it.  If a person wanted to exist solely on his own content, he’d go it alone.

But, all slow periods end, and it’s always wise to measure the value of a corp/alliance by the length of your experience.  For myself, Razor is somewhat low on meaningful activity right now (we still have inty roams, honor fights, and thunderdomes).  It’s a pervasive problem throughout the entire CFC.

But, I love my corporation, and I realize that Razor itself has done well by me over the past two and a half years.  So I consider all of that history in giving the benefit of the doubt, and I’m not going anywhere because of a temporary lull.  So I’m going to take them up on the, “So, make your own content!”

But this can be hard.  We don’t all have the time to scout out twenty systems to find a target.  Some of us have only a couple hours a day to play.  Some of us don’t have the resources to spend organizing a fleet.  We play Eve for immediate fun.

So here are a few ideas to generate immediate fun, regardless of the alliance you’re in.

Lessons: Cop Killer

I have to admit, but the minimal premium of 9 million the Police Pursuit Comet is over the price of a standard Comet, I just had to fly one.  Sure, it may not have any stat advantages over the standard model, but it was just fun to wander around pulling folks over.

Let’s cut to the chase… I actually found opponents were more eager to engage me than they were a standard Comet.  Something about “fighting the power”, I suppose.  If you’re looking for a good fight, try flying a cop Comet around faction warfare space.  Folks take fights they never should, just for the chance to kill one of them.

My night began with a quick roll through Black Rise.  I chased a few folks away from sites – particularly in Kedama – without being able to pin them down.  In one instance, I warped after the same guy seven times, from site to site to sun to planet, only to lock him and realize he was stabilized.

Lessons: “But That Sh!t Ain’t the Truth”

Last night, I was roaming through Minmatar FW space in my Firetail when I came across a Slasher in a small complex.  I dutifully enter the site and saw him fairly close to the beacon, so I immediately webbed and scrammed him and began to attack.  He naturally locked me first and tried to pull range, but I overloaded my AB.  To keep him close.

Just then, I saw a Harpy appear on a 1 million km short-scan, indicating he was sitting on the other side of the gate.  I started to worry a little, so I overloaded my guns to end the fight faster.  By this point, we were both webbed and I was at around 2,500 m from him, so I aligned out slowly.  I figured that if the Harpy came to help him, I could warp immediately, provided I had time to kill the Slasher.  A quick look at the info of the other two people in system suggested that the Harpy was not friendly to the Slasher.

100: A Review of the First 100 Posts

My last article was post number 100 of this blog.  100 posts in 8 months.  An average of 2.4 days between posts. Nice round numbers are a great time to look back on what went well, what went poorly, and – of course, generate lots of wonderful lists and summaries.

Committing to write a blog that provides new content every couple days takes a lot of work.  While we all have plenty to talk about in corp chat or on TS while we play, recalling the small revelations and lessons for a broad audience takes a little getting used to.  At times, it’s easy to feel completely tapped out, particularly since I don’t fall back on relinking fits I find on the Internet or rehashing losses of the day.

The Experience of Flying a Kestrel

I’ve already written about the importance of afterburners in any deadspace site, particularly FW sites.  And I’ve shared my thoughts about the shift in enemy ship compositions towards the T1 variety.

Obviously, I’ve been spending a lot of time fighting faction warfare pilots with my corp mates.

Now, at first glance, it may seem strange that a Razor Alliance pilot – let alone a significant amount of them – would spend a lot of time roaming through faction warfare low-sec space.  First of all, we’re deployed to Venal on a punitive campaign against Triumvirate. and Black Legion.  And null-sec alliances aren’t really known for their individual and small-gang skills; they tend to rely more upon fleet doctrine discipline and coordinated actions across a whole fleet, or sometimes several fleets.  And then there’s the security status requirement (all Razor pilots must remain above -2.0 sec status so the entire fleet can travel through any area space to support alliance operations).

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the T1

So, during my last post, I mentioned how afterburner fits are essential when hunting faction warfare pilots (ie. about half of low-sec).  The natural starting point of any pilot in applying this thinking is to take your usual fits and adjust them by swapping out for an afterburner.  For me, this usually means T2.

Tiericide really annoyed me.  I personally believe pilots who have shown enough dedication to the game to be able to fly T2 ships well should be rewarded with ships that are better across the board, not simply in one specialized area.  Don’t get me wrong, I understand what CCP was trying to do with the effort… making PvP accessible to the newer players in the game.  But it still takes something away from the game.

What makes combat in Eve exciting?  How does Eve differ from any other game we could play?  Every single loss represents either time, isk, or effort.  Every single loss hurts.  When I’m flying a faction-fit Cynabal, my heart beats faster, my mind is whirling, and – most importantly – the dopamine goes drip, drip, dripping into my bloodstream.

Lessons: I Welcome Our New Afterburner Overlords

After a couple weeks’ absence from our Friday night low-sec roam, I was finally able to participate again.  Two weeks doesn’t seem like that much, but my fleet mates had dropped sec status by about 1-2 points each.  That sounds like a lot of missed fun.

So, I was eager to jump right on in.  And this time, I brought a artillery-fit Rifter that cost a whopping 10 million.  Though it matters little when it comes to how well you fly, there’s something intensely satisfying in being the top damage dealer on nearly all my kills.  And that’s the situation I was in with this fit.  In an artillery Rifter, your optimal + falloff is about 12 km.  Fighting at around 7500 meters gives pretty good damage, though your alpha strike is far better than your dps.

But the fun part is how little I care about dying in it.  I typically fly T2 Minmatar ships that run between 200 mil and 500 mil each.  Suffice to say, it took a bit of time to adjust my thinking.  Defense and “maybe I shouldn’t…” simply don’t exist.  We didn’t even bat an eye when we found a Vexor (typically a frigate killer when fit with webs, particular T1 frigates).  To our surprise, it dropped extremely quickly.

Fear, the Great Motivator

In my last article, I talked about how fear can paralyze your decision-making process, and suggested a procedural approach to coping with unfamiliar and fearful situations.  But fear serves critical purposes, such as encouraging innovation and intelligent flying.

It’s important to distinguish between at least two different kinds of fear, panic and paranoia.  Panic is sudden fear that interrupts your decision-making process, such as what I discussed in the last post.  But paranoia is a type of fear born of the knowledge of all the things that conspire to obliterate you in Eve.

In the real world, paranoia is the belief that everyone is out to get you.  I suppose paranoia doesn’t really exist in Eve, since everyone IS out to get you.  But the common element – suspicion of everything – still holds true, so I’ll use the term fairly.

Fear, the Great Paralytic

Space is a big place, and in Eve, every session affords you plenty of threats you should genuinely fear.  Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that this is ultimately a game.  Maybe you’re jumping that low/high gate for the first time wondering what you’ll find.  Maybe you’re participating in your first tidi grind and worried that you’ll face soul-crushing lag and lose all control of your ship.  Maybe it’s your first time hitting that “jump to xxx” button in your new carrier.

Fear is natural.  Fear is useful.  But fear can also turn to terror and leave you unable to make rational decisions.

Everyone who has ever entered low or null has faced the familiar scenario.  You load grid in your Drake only to find a dozen ships orbiting the gate with drones out.  If you’re in null-sec, they’ll even have a Sabre to trap the pods of any unfortunate victims.  Maybe one of those interceptors is starting to get pretty close to decloaking you.

Lessons: Two Incursuses Walk Into a Bar…

Occasionally, you come across one of those real-life examples of a thought exercise.  Teamspeak servers across New Eden are filled with people discussing fictional fights, the tactics each side should use, what would be an equal fight for each ship type.  How many and what type of ships would a Sleipnir have to face for the victorious pilot to have bragging rights?

When you have the opportunity to experience one of those theoretical fights in real life, it’s something special.

We Don’t Want You Here

I haven’t posted much in the past couple days because of a really big RL opportunity I’m handling.  I’m not ready to say what it is yet, but if things go the way they’re heading, I’ll be losing my EU TZ play time, and that’s a very good thing.

But in the interim, let me talk a little about Eve’s long-term future.  There’s a great article that just posted to TMC by Tubrug1 talking about this very problem.  He tends to focus on mechanic changes, but I’m going to go off on a slightly different tangent.  His is worth a definite read, though.  It’s truly insightful.

In order to survive long-term, Eve must maintain a certain number of players to keep its bills paid.  I don’t much care whether these players pay with PLEX or subscription fees, though others do, because both mean revenue for CCP.  And ultimately, revenue is all that matters to CCP.  Every decision is tempered by whether it will generate additional revenue or not.

Lessons: My Little Pony Fleet

I give Eve players a lot of credit when it comes to being willing to fight.  Now, I’ve mentioned before how faction warfare seems to be populated primarily with risk-adverse button-orbiters, and we certainly come across our fair share during our Friday night roams through FW low-sec.  But we do find the occasional FW gang ready to defend their space, and we also come across plenty of other pilots willing to fight us, both on gates and in FW plexes.  Sufficient numbers, as it turns out, to make a routine thing of our Friday night roams.

Our Friday night roam was delayed until Saturday because of some ::serious business:: of a non-logistic nature, but on Saturday, my wife decided that she wanted to play, so she controlled the keyboard and I instructed her, answered her questions, etc.  So, Talvorian didn’t actually fly.

Things went very well.  A couple times, I actually had to run up to take care of one of our daughters, or go to the bathroom, or get another drink, and she only managed to get lost once.  All in all, not bad.  She even got to choose the ship-naming convention of the night.

Terrorizing Lowsec

I’ve stated before that there’s nothing quite as enjoyable as small gang PvP.  It combines the coordination of fleet combat with the emphasis on player skill that solo PvP requires.  Those kinds of fleets tend to be looser and more social.  They offer the best chance to get kills, too.  Gangs of 10-15 don’t scare potential targets as much as fleets of 50 do.

Quite simply, if you want a fight, go in a small gang.

One of the corporations in my alliance, Repercussus, runs a weekly small gang roam every Friday night.  The composition usually changes, but this week they ran assault frigs, and I joined them.  Being in assault frigs, the objective was to catch folks in FW sites and running missions – anything away from gate guns.  I brought a Dramiel for some speed (I’ll probably write a quick guide on how to fly – and survive in – a dual-prop Dramiel in the near future).

Did I mention it was a drunk roam?  As with many things in this world, sometimes, a little alcohol can sooth the nerves.  Our minds are cluttered places, and a little buzz can actually help your flying by clearing all the extra junk out of them.  It forces you to live in the moment, and that can be a very good thing for Eve.

Our roam began much as assault frigate roams do… moving quickly while searching for targets.  Individual members would go off and check various FW plexes for targets, using dscan to pinpoint possible locations.  It’s very much a “swarm of bees” situation.

I joined late, so the fleet had already taken down a Deimos earlier in the night.  My first engagement was when one of our pilots caught a Tempest Fleet Issue on the gate of a medium FW site and called in the cavalry.  We were all orbiting at around 7 km in case of smart bombs.  As we got it down to about half shields, a Cyclone arrived to “save” it.  We switched to killing all the drones, then took the Cyclone and TFI out. 

It was a long fight – about five minutes – and at one point my close orbit against the Cyclone took me to about 30 km out from the TFI.  He saw my distance and began to lock me, but I was able to recover transversal as I closed range again.  It was a close call made because I was focusing too much on a ship that I didn’t need to worry about. Orbiting the Cyclone was irrelevant with his missiles.  Lesson #1: keep transversal against the more deadly target.

About an hour later, we entered our second engagement, which consisted of a fight in a small FW site against a Kitsune, Incursus, and Hawk.  I pulled the duty of engaging the Kitsune, and managed to get my drones on him before he perma-jammed me.  Ultimately, those drones forced him from the field, but we had enough dps to kill the Hawk and Incursus easily.  I feel like it was a missed opportunity… a couple more points and we could have taken that all of them down.  I honestly don’t understand why the Incursus and Hawk remained for the fight… they were vastly outnumbered, but they flew well enough to last longer than they had a right to expect, perhaps 3 minutes or so against our entire fleet.  Well done!

But, I made up for the Kitsune getting away by catching a Brutix at the sun a few jumps away.  He was about 40-50 away from me, so I had to burn towards him quickly before he could escape – in a Dramiel, that’s about 5 km/s.  Naturally, this brought me into web range.  But – since I was dual-prop fit, even webbed and scrammed, I was still going 600 m/s until I escaped web range.  I was never below 90% shields.

Fixing Null-Sec Pt. 1: Sweetening the Pot

Many people decry the filth and horse poop being suggested in the Eve-O forums as a pubbie wasteland, but they ignore the larger issue: a landslide of Eve characters and many Eve players choose to live, die, and regenerate solely within high-sec.  This is a problem for Eve as a whole.  A society that doesn’t encourage its children to leave the cradle finds itself incapable of going about any serious business.

As a premise, I assume CCP wants Eve to be a game that rewards the intelligent, aware, and careful risk-taker, while allowing human nature to punish the stupid, the lazy, and the ignorant.  Miners often complain that gankers are overpowered, when – if they had spent any time in null-sec, they would have learned the aligning tactics that would keep them safe if a half-dozen Catalysts warp into their belt.  Wardecced corps complain about denial of service as a result, but fitting their ships with basic PvP in mind would allow them to make a choice other than to dock up and hide.

The issue isn’t so much that they complain about the inconvenience, but rather that their minds don’t immediately recognize the easy methods of mitigating these inconveniences.  Quite simply, they never learned them.  And why not?  Because they were comfortable enough in high-sec to never have needed to travel into low or null, where necessity would teach them these tricks.

That, my friends, is the problem.  High-sec is too comfortable; it’s too easy to make a comfortable living running level 4 missions in high-sec.  That results in two- and three-year-old characters who don’t understand how to handle themselves in PvP – in a PvP game.

I’m not saying players shouldn’t be allowed to do industry, mining, missions, or trading.  I’m saying you shouldn’t be able to make enough isk in high-sec to pay for PLEX each month while still holding down a full-time RL job.  It shouldn’t be that profitable.  Otherwise, we get the status quo: many players learning nothing, gaining the highest rewards without risk.

People will only accept risk if the reward is sufficient to justify it.  Right now, it simply isn’t.  While CCP is eliminating “tiers” with their ships, they cannot apply this same principle to play styles.  Tiericide for ships ensures that everyone can play any play style they choose.  Tiericide for play styles themselves keeps people in high-sec.

Why should CCP care about this?  The more risky play styles result in increased losses, and increased losses result in more PLEX sales.  Null-sec is stagnant, especially in the recent months in which TEST lost half its membership, a strong, worthwhile fight is hard to come by, and small gangs are dying.  Remember: large fleet losses are paid by alliance reimbursement, which has no interaction with PLEX.  Only small-gang and solo PvP, travel, and losses result in hits to individual wallets.

CCP should be very concerned at the loss of small-gang warfare.  A lot of these players solely PvP, and very rarely rat.  They sustain themselves off of other accounts, loot, and bounties (though they’re pitiful).  These are exactly the type of customers CCP wants.

But how would I go about improving the risk/reward ratio in Eve?  Here are a few modifiers I’d change.  Keep in mind the rules I stated in my intro... I'm suggesting equation and modifier changes requires little-to-no CCP development time (other than testing).

Missions

Mission locations should be changed so level 4 missions and agents only occur in deep low-sec (at least 2-3 jumps from high-sec).  Level 3 missions should be located in shallow low-sec, with agent locations in high-sec and those low-sec systems (same as mission). Technical change: adjust location of some agents, ownership of some stations, and modifier on mission spawn systems (from, say, 0.6-0.5 to 0.3-0.2).

Requiring the highest mission runners to enter low-sec will bring life back to this region, while still offering the protection of gate guns and sec status decreases.  This should give pirate corps a shot in the arm.  I predict we’d see a drop in level-4 mission running for a couple weeks, until mission players realize they need this riskier mission income.

A side effect of this change would be a vast decrease in pimped-out mission ships.  High-sec players would have to learn to fly what they can afford to lose and understand the importance of the value vs. cost relationship in a way high-sec mission runners don’t currently.  This will reduce the value of null-sec mission loot, particularly modules like the Pithum A-Type Medium Shield Booster and Pithum A-Type Adaptive Invulnerability Field (800 mil and 1.6 bil respectively at present).  Keep this in mind for later.

The argument against this one will be, “Why are you forcing people who just want to run missions to PvP?”  I’m not; I’m forcing people who want to get rich to accept some risk.  You say you have no goal but to mission?  I present you with level 1 and level 2 missions.  All the dopamine rush of completing a task, none of the risk.  I’ve never known a rich person in real life who didn’t take risks; why should a multiplayer sandbox game be any different?

Mining

+5% and +10% ores should be removed entirely, base ore yields should be reduced 20%, and replaced with standardized ores: standard value in high-sec, 125% of standard value in low, and 200% of standard value in null.  Refined mineral sizes should also be decreased significantly, allowing easier transport.  Mining barges should be much slower to align than they are now.  Technical change: all of these are modifiers that can be tweaked: incidence rates, yields per ore, etc.

Mining in null yields targets for small gangs.  By reducing the yields, miners will either be flushed into low or null, or accept and absorb the reduced yields.  I recognize that many miners will simply plug on as they always have; that’s fine.  But this change would give an advantage to those willing to venture deeper into unfriendly territory, secure in the knowledge that the reduced size of refined minerals means they can ship their goods in a cloaky transport that much more easily.  This will create targets, both if miners and mineral transports… and when a mineral transport is caught, as rarely happens for a smart pilot, the killers will actually be able to scoop some of the cargo as loot.  Likewise, the slower align time will make mining barges who don’t know how to stay aligned into scrap, providing content for everyone.

The argument against this change is that it’ll raise prices across the board.  I doubt this very much, since it’ll also allow null-sec and low-sec to generate quite a bit of ore, some of which will be shipped to high-sec.  The rest would be used for the next adjustment.

Industry

Retribution included changes to boost the number of station industry slots in null-sec, and this is a good change, but we also need a reduction in job length for null-sec station and POS industry, too, perhaps 25%.  It’s easily justifiable, too… Ishukone isn’t going to make it’s fastest, most efficient factory slots available for the public while they plug along with rotting assembly lines, but a null-sec alliance servicing its own alliance members should give access to the best lines.

I would also introduce POS modules that can modify various functions; an Industrial Optimizer that would reduce job times by a further 25%, for instance.  That specialization would come with a cost, though: for every one you onlined, you’d be crowding out something else in your POS.  As an added kicker, these POS modules wouldn’t be anchorable in high-sec (they can’t be limited to null, since this would put them only in reach of sov-holding alliances, who are often reluctant to give POS management rights to line members).

Incursions

I know the least about incursions, but I can tell you that high-sec incursions should exist for no purpose but to teach pilots the basics of incursion fighting.  Incursions are a good way to learn countering of neutralizers, webs, scrams, and other ewar in a way other high-sec PvE simply cannot provide.  But remaining in the safety of high-sec shouldn’t be a viable option.

I would argue for a good mix between low-sec, sov null-sec, and NPC null-sec for incursions, with a heavy preference for NPC null.  Right now, NPC null is a good model for the type of null-sec I hope to see, and a good first step might be to shift some (but not all) of the sov null-sec incursions to NPC null as a way of building more traffic and getting people accustomed to null-sec warfare, and only after several months move them back to sov null-sec.  PvE-ers have to crawl before they can walk.

Summary

The purpose of these changes is to incentivize, but not mandate, travel into low- and null-sec.  CCP should allow for each play style to exist in each area of space, but not equally in all areas of space.  Isk-making and Ship-breaking should be heavily favored in null-sec’s favor, with low-sec as a happy medium between risk and reward.

One thing is certain: Eve exists and prospers based on its conflict, not it’s PvE.  There are dozens of games that offer more engaging PvE, and Eve cannot successfully compete on that alone.  All PvE should exist as a gateway to Eve’s basic premise: that you can do anything you want, without forgetting it’s basic business model premise: that players must be incentivized into a domino-effect of engagement, starting with one activity and being drawn in, through connections and progression, to other activities, the mix of which can only be found in Eve.

That’s how Eve will survive.

Next up: Part II: Sovereignty and Force Projection.

RvB is Awesome

A while back, I bought a character that had perfect fitting, gunnery support, armor, and shield skills with the intention of training her to be an excellent Minmatar character for either NPC-null or pirate small gang fighting.  While I’m training her up, I realize I’ll need to build a PvP record of her own – and not try to trade on Talvorian’s record – so I started looking for ways to boost my PvP experience.

I started thinking about faction warfare, but my brief experience of it a few months ago taught me it was actually a PvE enterprise hidden in PvP trappings.  I wasn’t looking to chase button-orbiters around four or five low-sec regions.

And then I remembered RvB.

A forever war in which your enemies are all two jumps away and eager to engage in fun, meaningless PvP?  What’s not to love?  The only real downside is the dearth of T2 ships.  I was flying a Jaguar and was considered “shiney”, which is quite a difference from null-sec roams, in which I wouldn’t dream of flying a T1 frigate or cruiser, particularly solo.  But T1’s back in a big way, and RvB is turning out to be an excellent way of learning all about these rebalanced ships.

So far, I’ve joined one fleet, killed about 450 mil worth of ships in exchange for my 35 mil Jaguar, and am having a splendid time.  It’s everything I wished faction warfare would be… constant PvP for the sake of PvP.

But it also provides another benefit that I recommend for nearly any player… even though the ships you’re fighting and losing are cheap, they are kills and losses.  The more engagements you’re involved with, the calmer you’ll be during a fight, and in that sense, RvB is perfect practice for other forms of PvP.  I highly recommend that it be the first stop for nearly any player.  You can learn not only PvP basics, but also to control that flutter in your heart when you engage another player.  And it’s better to learn to do that with a 10 mil ship rather than a 400 mil ship down the line.

I’m actually a little embarrassed that I’m only now giving it a shot.  It’s delightful mayhem.  As a veteran null PvPer, I heartily approve.

Oh, dear… I just realized I’ll now show up as yet another “high-sec character” on CCP’s stats… what have I done?

Faction Warfare Represents All That’s Wrong with Eve

Yes, I know that title is harsh, but it really is true.  Go ahead and try to kill a FW pilot.  I’ll wait.

Now you understand how I felt for three hours yesterday, during which I roamed through three regions looking for a fight.  I successfully engaged and scrambled three targets, only to have them either play station games or warp away (yeah, at least two warp core stabilizers there).

On the bright side, I observed very fine flying from one pilot, who successfully kited me – though he didn’t engage – until his FW timer ticked to “Captured”, at which point he warped off.

But I couldn’t find a fight from a FW pilot to save my soul.  They would rather mindlessly circle a button for ten or fifteen minutes to collect their LP than engage in, you know, warfare.  In FW, PvE pays better than PvP.

Eve has the same problem.  Much of both null-sec and low-sec are unpopulated, but high-sec is filled to the brim with PvErs.  Safer activities are more profitable than dangerous ones.  In Eve as a whole, null-sec or low-sec activities don’t generate enough isk to justify the additional risk of entering space that could involve you in *gasp* an engagement.  The only people that go into these areas of space are those who are looking for those engagements.

We need to balance that cost/value relationship.  It was something I was hoping I’d hear about in the Rubicon expansion teaser, but that announcement was filled with garbage, to be honest.  I knew it would never happen, but I was reading with bated breath about the 50% decrease in high sec, 25% increase in low-sec, and 75% increase in null sec of mining yields and mission rewards.

And the solution for Faction Warfare?  Drop the LP reward for capturing sites by 75%, and quintuple the rewards for killing a FW pilot.  Instant PvP-infusion.

But I doubt that’ll ever happen.  CCP seems perfectly content to keep the bulk of their players in high-sec.  I think this is a huge mistake.  Chaos drives industry, encourage PLEX sales, and makes Eve life more difficult for more players.

Difficult?  Is that a good thing?  Yes, it is.

It’s well-known that there are certain thresholds that mark the end of an Eve account’s lifespan.  Owning a supercarrier is one of them.  They all appear to be really good goals that will provide more excitement to an Eve session, but they’re actually a death blow.  The more CCP can extend the period of time needed to reach those thresholds, the longer an account will remain subscribed.  And, setbacks will only make the achievement of all the intermittent goals all the better.

And who knows?  You may get derailed by PvP, which is a self-propagating goal in-and-of-itself that has the side-effect of generating content for someone else, too.

What we achieve too cheaply, we esteem too lightly.