Octavio Santillian
Damage Unlimited Inc
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Posted - 2007.10.30 04:15:00 -
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PvP has degraded woefully since I've been playing. ItÆs not really this module or that fitting, itÆs due to an overall shift in attitude and player base. As some have pointed out, it seems to be part of the life cycle of an MMO, but I still lay a lot of blame on CCP. I say that with sympathy because CCP is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Untimely, CCP has made the shift from developing Eve as the realization of their personal gamming dreams to developing Eve as a business.
CCP must bring in new content and provide new challenges and avenues of gameplay. CCP has a stake in expanding its player base. You canÆt blame CCP for attempting to expand on the game and grow its player base, but I do feel they have gone about it the wrong way. TBH, they have probably done it exactly right as a business model, but what is good for business is bad for the kind of PvP that made Eve different in the first place.
1) Farmers are paying customers.
One way or another, farmers are paying CCP to æworkÆ the game. As the ærecreationalÆ customer base grows, there are naturally more æcustomersÆ for farmers. Having more farmers makes it easier for recreational players to have fun without much effort and hence more appealing to more people. Now recreational players make a distinction between farmers and themselves, but CCPÆs bottom line doesnÆt. As such CCP doesnÆt have a lot of stake in squashing the farming market; they just have to make a keep up appearances. People like to think that the mix of real currency and virtual currency is the demise of a game, but in reality it only chases away a few types of players, while the æzombieÆ gamers out there will continue to pay for accounts, and employ farmers, who also pay for accounts, for a long time. In other words, it doesnÆt make good business sense for CCP to make it hard on farmers, because farmers ultimately augment the player base even if they cause a few æhard coreÆ gamers to quit.
BTW, it makes little difference if someone is farming for real currency or farming to support their alliance, so I just lumped them all together as farmers.
2) New content creates imbalance, and imbalance discourages combat.
Chess, Go, Pente, checkers, etc. These games havenÆt gotten ænew contentÆ in forever, but millions of people continue to have fun playing them after, in some cases, millennia. Obviously CCP has to make new content, but as many have pointed out, the game just isnÆt as fun as it was when there were basically only T1 ships and mods.
When you have ships of drastically varying potency, people are naturally going to want to fly the more potent ships and setups despite the cost. So people tend to use more potent, and more expensive ships and mods. Now loosing those ships, coupled with the ignominy of a loss on the killboard, creates a strong incentive to place victory over fun. I do it too, so IÆm not pointing any fingers. Back in the day, you really didnÆt care if you got blown up, and it wasnÆt going to be a mark against you for all timeà
à Oh heck, IÆve done it again. I was building to a point but IÆm sick of typing and only a masochist would have read this much as it stands. Anyway, most of what I was going to say has basically been said in this post or somewhere else.
Basically Eve combat (in 0.0 at least) has dwindled down to Metagame POS warfare or ganking. A reasonably fair fight is nearly impossible to find. I donÆt know, maybe some of you are finding them, but IÆm sick of game sessions that consist of a 100 jumps and nothing but a few unsatisfying ganks to show for it.
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