Eve is a PvP game. I have heard that yelled often enough by so many people trying their damnedest to be loud enough to make it true. Except . . . it isn’t. Eve is a living work of science fiction where we play. Yes, you can shoot someone else and take their stuff but you also can mine, build, play successfully for years without killing or being killed by another player. Now understand that I define PvP as direct person on person violence and none of the namby-pamby ‘if I mine then it is pvp because I deny someone else those same rocks’. Bullshit. The same goes for MOST market transactions. (Although I will make an exception for major market manipulations).
So we have a game with PvE in it and the PvE is considered the low end, predictable, safe. (Until the pvp folks drop in to say hello) Some of it is also needed. I honestly would love to see what would happen if players actually did stop mining. Yes, there are reserves but they would run out. But I am chasing a distracting squirrel. PvE is changing.
Some if it comes down to newer, better coding. The AI has improved three times over the past few years. Sleepers were tough, Sansha was tougher, and now the Drifters who WILL pod you, will follow you into warp, will call for reinforcements. Cool. I almost think we are ready to see even stronger regular forces who run when overwhelmed or get more help proportionate to who is hitting them. The there is the idea that we are in a living universe and not the only space jockeys out there. So NPC convoys and caravans roaming the spaceways. Space will happen even if nobody is there to hear the trees fall.
But part of space happening is other players as well. So enter the tribute system. Encouragement to be in the game, if only to do a mission or two. An extra thing for the average casual player who doesn’t play for 5 hours straight. I already can hear some of you screaming ‘Oh God, he is talking about dailies’ Yup. But before you follow that cry with the suggestion that I go back to WoW (which I have not played) think about what dailies are and WHY they are. Think about number of people online and the user count. The people who only log in for Pap links and wars. Think about the ‘one more turn’ habit of gamers and rell me how many will just log on for the daily.
A lot of this came from the Eve Vegas PvE roundtable with CCP Affinity. Things like NPC’s that will follow you, system to system. Drifter Capital ships. Fleets that react to the size of the force facing them. But all was not sunshine and roses. Standings may change . . . you cannot be friends with everyone. (darn it) Sansha will not keep throwing bodies at us forever.
Affinity has a 2 year plan and I, for one, am looking forward to blogs from her as well as plans for the short range. She knows as well as we do that PvE is part of the game and that it needs a solid jolt to make it more alive. This is not a theme park where we can put in a new ride and call it an expansion. Tools have to be made, coding done to make the NPC’s dynamic and interesting. It has to fit with the play in place and not suddenly start handing out isk like there was no tomorrow.
Bottom line? There is still hope for PvE and incentives for the casual player coming soon(tm). Now if we could just make mining interesting.
fly it like you won it
m
A Missioneer in Eve 
Take your themepark and fuck off.
Nope
To compete is to pvp and therefore since everyone is competing with everyone else even indirectly, then eve is first and foremost and always will be a pvp game. So I’m afraid Mike you are wrong because that is how I define pvp.
No, I am not wrong nor are you. Definitions are individual, to a certain extent. As I have said before. Eve is a game where PvP happens but also where PvE happens. Or is tunning missions PvP for you? Mining? Manufacturing?
m
So far, you’ve received a useless obscenity by a dubiously named oxygen thief & a “I disagree, and I’m right”.
Great write up, Mike. And for the trolls… Stick to Reddit. They’ll except your infantile comments. Whining and crying as they are.
I actually chose to allow the first comment. Just to show the reception pve types get in discussions of the game.
m
Hell, if we make PvE better aren’t those players more content for the PvP’ers?
Don’t you think how it’s funny that CCP Affinity haves a plan for PvE without as much as talking to PvE players before designing it? Maybe she’s clairvoyant? 😛
Sugar Kyle got an amazing answer when she used her blog to engage the highsec community. I wonder how do those asnwers compare to CCP Affinity’s plans…
I for one, will be sad if being friends to 1 empire means losing access to 3/4 of highsec. Run a couple missions for Gallente and say good-bye to flying your Apocalypse or your Golem since Amarr and Caldari no longer want to hire you? What does that add to the game?
“What does that add to the game?”
Consequences, and the current standings system is already a step in that direction. Yes, it could mean that you no longer get to see all the content (unless you employ alts), but I see that as good thing: It individualizes the play experience.
It’s a niche EVE could easily occupy: a game where your actions have irrevocable consequences. A game where the emphasis is on playing the game, but not ‘beating it’.
How much close to reality can a game become without stop being a game? Currently standings have (little) consequences, and yet there is a ingame mechanic to counter those consequences. Because EVE is a game.
CCP Affinity just wants to make consequences a bigger stick without a carrot so PvE would become a worst experience to those engaging in it.
Which leads to my first question, who has she talked to?
Actually, I replied to Sugar’s thread, responded with my own blog post just before Vegas, AND sat in Affinity’s roundtable. Sugar came up to me after the Roundtable and said ‘Aba, whaddya think?’ and I replied ‘I think I can go down my wants list and start checking things off.’ Affinity’s discussion hit most of my major wishlist items, and where we diverge I can certainly learn to get by.
I’m no Affinity fanboy, but the types of things that are being discussed are things I thought I’d NEVER see getting discussed for EVE. My biggest concern is that the 2 year plan will become a 3 year, then 5, … then never.
What goes around comes around…remember this little things DAILY we did to boost our research points, and how all the null sec players laughed and laughed as we industrialists raged at Soundwave for killing us?
Guess those daily missions are making a comeback. Unfortunately, it will not be enough to get people to log on. According to Chribba’s site, the PCU last week was 19K, even lower than the depth of the summer doldrums.
People in high sec are tired of being ganked by the alts of rich bored null sec players, and I don’t just mean code idiots. I am talking about the meta war that has been orchestrated by the null sec cartels that has trashed high sec income relative to null sec by at least half in the past 4 years. Those players will not be won back with some trivial boost in LP or SP or whatever form it comes in.
They will only come back when the backs of the cartels are broken, where the blue blanket is wrecked forever, and new groups that head into null don’t need permission from goons or the russians to exist.