It occurred to me as I was chasing a Hookbill in my Atron. It also happened to pop into my mind as the thirty or so Logi-supported Afs and Cruisers ran from two of us in Stabbers. And again with the cloaking, stabbing, warping, chasing and generally avoiding conflict going on this weekend.
Granted, weekend Eve is different than Eve during the week. But this isn’t something new. This has been building for some time. And it suddenly hit me, as yet another Atron ran from my own Atron. So this is it then, this is how Eve dies.
It won’t be because of CCP, or lack of modular POS towers, or the failure of WIS, or lack of cool new ships, or the CSM, or any number of other dumb reasons – it’ll be simple. Quiet. A whimper and not a scream.
Eve could die simply because no one plays anymore. Call it what you will. A lack of engagement. Risk aversion. Or pure apathy. Is this where Eve is headed?
Not yet of course, but are we seeing the beginnings of a trend? Has the player base become so wealthy, in general, that risk is now something to be avoided. At all costs?
Eve exists on the basis of a universally accepted pact between all players. It isn’t complicated, but it boils down to this – Eve is a game that we are all playing together. It is a conceit surely. An unconscious expression of virtual tomfoolery, a common agreed upon action that we all take each and every time we log in to play.
But what if? What if the majority of players simply stopped engaging in space? They could. Or at least enough of them to make an impact. Enough to start a trend. Enough to kill Eve.
Are we already seeing the wind blowing in that direction? Look to Null as a pre-cursor of what is coming. When was the last large-scale movement in Null? The last epic story, the last crushing Alliance defeat? Didn’t someone just cancel such an action simply because it was too much work? I think they did.
Avoidance has become so entrenched that people see it as a viable play-style to attach cloaks to ships that have no business, or no aggressive purpose, to have them attached. Combat ships with low-slots loaded with WCS.
People are arguing over consensual and non-consensual PvP in every area of Eve. Including high-sec for goodness sake. I’ve got news for those engaging in such mealy mouthed debates, you are not expressing a viable opinion – you are feeding the beast of apathy. There is NO debate between consensual and non-consensual PvP! You log into Eve and you are agreeing to participate. Simple. You want to avoid PvP? Don’t play.
Consider this fair warning. This is indeed a trend. Perhaps you are too blind to see it, but I’m not. This has been building for years and it seems to be picking up speed. Null sec is static. High-sec is entrenched. And low is increasingly full of avoiders and big hammers. ( Big Hammers are those that will only engage when they have far superior numbers, yet another risk aversion tactic )
To much has been invested in “the way things are”. The wealth is building up in station. The ISK is easier to acquire. The benefits of taking risk have been mitigated to a nominal result. The biggest rewards fall to those that take the least risk. This is backwards thinking at its worst.
If this trend continues Eve will peak and then slowly, very slowly die.
Not screaming and kicking. But mired in wealth. Spinning in station.
Rixx Javix is a null and low sec PVPer. He has seen some heavy warfare in the Providence region in the years he has been playing. His blog can be found here.
The problem being pointed out is eve is like modern day warfare: It's all about the win loss column. If attacking x might result in a loss then no one attacks. What eve needs is medieval warfare. Bravery and honor needs to mater more than isk and survival. Instead of large centrally controlled null sec alliances we needed small pockets knights and lords. Take those mass limits used in WH space and apply them to gates in sections of null sec. Let people create small and large kingdoms that while they can be taken, they can't be taken through bruit force and numbers. Honor people for their guts in fighting out numbers and out gunned instead of their win/loss and efficiency. Break up the centralized trade hubs and have people to trade with their neighbours instead of shipping everything to jita.
People only roaming with blobs is a valid concern, people running away from equal(iah) fights? Not that i've ever seen
*equal(ish)
eve isnt dying. the pendulum is just swinging away from pvp to pve (industrial stuff) at some point it will swing back. lots of people play this game to make isk. then they can afford to get license extensions to keep on playing. after they make some isk above what they need for a PLEX they then spend it on ships to go and get blown up in. not everyone in this game wants to go and get in a fight continuously, some dont even want to fight. i personally like the exploration aspect much more than pvp. eveyone needs to realize that this is a SANDBOX and they can do whatever they want, that includes (BUT IS NOT LIMITED TO) pvp. if i want continuously pvp i can always go play counterstrike where i dont have to wait for a certain weapon to become available.
EVE isnt dying – its dead.
If "people" not engaging are killing eve, then "people" only engaging when they have a blob behind them (be it next system or cyno) are equally if not more at fault for the state of EvE PvP degrading (if degrading is even an appropriate term here).
I love to PvP. I've been pretty good at it in most games, and in EvE I've often been called 'lucky'. A corp mate said once though when the word lucky went out, "luck is mostly skill and preparation".
I also love to occasionally carebear mindlessly over music and coffee while working on fits in PYFA and generally learning things be they directly related to EvE or not. I'm also a programmer and spend a lot of time watching educational videos; there are quite a few good how to not suck as much at pvp videos out in the wild too. Carebearing while listening to a lecture more or less is simple, easy, mindless, and for sake of funding corp ventures also necessary. It also funds any PvP ships I might want to buy. Also, when I do PvP I try to fly a ship that is at least somewhat in alignment with my skillpoints; as in not a 45mil cheap ass atron pilot, I'll bring out my astarte tyvm even if the 'uber-elite' don't think its the best possible ship ever. I also bring ships that are appropriate for the fight I expect as I imagine any half brained eve player would, as in I'm not chasing your tengu with my astarte, I have T3's of my own.
Which brings another point: Most pvp'ers only fly what they can afford to lose. Don't blame them for running when most pvp fights these days are heavy blob or cyno/hotdrop combat, they're really just being smart.
PvP'ers whine because no one wants to engage. No one wants to engage because most engagements seem to not be fair engagements. I hate using fair because I know the nature of EvE does not allow for it, but what I'm specifically referring to is the idea of that pvp battle where you actually stand a chance, without a cyno being lit, or a blob landing on your head, thus discouraging you from engaging without some kind of blob of your own in the future.
Perhaps rather than calling on the part time PvP'ers or the full time carebears to cowardly 'stop killing eve', perhaps they themselves should consider the cowardliness of only blob PvPing.
I can too point the finger, but it does not address a solution.
Here is a proposed solution to the cyno and covert cyno blob fest combat situation, with a brief point on how I've come to this idea:
Firstly lets look at capital combat. While I'm not a capital pilot yet myself (unless you count an anshar), I do have most of the skills in place (46m sp) and have spent a fair share of time supporting capital fleets in nullsec. One thing that stands out about capital pvp is that the idea of a fleet of caps on the other side of the gate is meaningless without a cyno, they are only coming in one direction (cyno), or you have to go to them. Every subcap can just jump through the gate.
Think about this for a second. What you will never see are capitals blobbing from system to system. Never mind that it is a slow process (possibly fast but for most practical purposes a slow process), the most important factor I think here is actually that it would be extremely expensive to do regular capital PvP.
Which brings me back now to sub-cap blob and cyno pvp: To the best of my knowledge, popping a covert cyno or doing a titan bridge for sub-caps is relatively inexpensive. Because it is inexpensive, I think is the very reason that the cyno strategy is used so frequently.
Fancy math aside (I'd leave that to the community or CCP), I personally think subcap cyno and maybe even covert cyno's should be made in some way more expensive or less enticing to do. Perhaps some kind of penalty for the number of ships being cyno'd in (IE: maybe if 1-2 ships jump in everything works fine but the 3rd ship and after that jumps in might see some kind of module usage delay, thus making the blob/cyno strategy much riskier as the fleet size increases).
I do not think EvE is dying. If anything it rebounds as someone has already pointed out. I've played personally off and on for at least 5-6 years now. There have been periods where I've uninstalled and forgot about any game for that matter, and then there are periods like now when I have 3 clients running at once. I do however agree that something is terribly wrong with PvP today compared to how it seems to have been in the earlier days of my EvE career (2005).
In summation: The carebears are not so much to blame in this scenario as the article seems to imply. Blame your fellow comrades for pulling out bazooka's every time the would-be-solo or super-small-gang 'casual pvp'er comes out wielding a paintball gun looking for some fun, discouraging them from ever engaging without a blobzooka of their own. Assuming they can and do retaliate in the same way, it would have a similar counter effect on yourself.
Just my $2.00
Maybe you need a "Come Fight Me" channel that all like-minded players can join or make better use of the duelling system. The Recruitment forum is full of recruiters boasting about their corp's PvP abilities – why don't you challenge them ?
My experience of PvP usually involves getting frequently ganked at gates or in bubbles while I'm flying around, having haulers blown up as I'm undocking, and having someone jump me while I'm half-way into my armor during PvE.
I accept the risk of my actions and don't bitch and moan on forums about the unfairness of it all, so its a bit of stretch to have any sympathy for someone complaining about a lack of PvP opportunities AND risk aversion among the player community. I bet there are plenty of systems where you could readily find some willing PvP engagements but the risk/reward balance probably isn't there for you — maybe you need to raise your risk tolerance level ?
Not playing for verry long, but i have to say, pvp sucks imo.
Theres no way to learn it. No "NPC-PVP", no training grounds/virtual duelling, nothing.
Also, as a noob, why should i take my T1 frig with T1 guns and faction ammo to low, theres nothing i can blow up with that fitting.
And even if i have skilled my char so far that the fight isnt decided by the char sheet, theres not much else to do than lock on to my target and fire. sure, I can always sensor damp, ecm oder kite my enemy to make pvp even more boring … but i imagined the "shooting spaceships"-stuff would evolve a bit more around flying/maneuvering your spaceship and shooting you enemys, not scrolling through a spredsheet and pressing f1.
so, while i like the whole concept of eve and already made a shitload of money by trading and prodding, the fighting has so boring game mechanics that i probably never gonna pvp in eve, if i want to shoot at something with lasers, i log on to MWO (and there i can kill an modified assault mech with a trial loadout light mech if im good – not if my char sheet says so)
What a load of rubbish most people in eve don't PvP just look at the killboards corp and alliance stats probably less than 20% of toons PvP to any degree.
Eve won't die because of this, eve will not due it will evolve until ccp decide they don't want it any more. That's why it keeps running down to allow new players to come in and compete with the vets.