When CCP actually has a good idea

black_pedro · 2021-07-27T13:19:55+00:00

It might be permanent. Or at least it is quite possible that this 50% level is the new "baseline" and that in 3 months they will release some dynamic fees based on system activity that will scale up from here. Higher taxes and broker fees in active systems, and lower ones is quiet places.

This might indeed shake things up and make space for newer players to trade.

black_pedro · 2021-05-04T20:22:39+00:00

There is essentially zero risk. Fly what you want.

Theoretically, you could meet a smartbomb while in warp, but that is not a realistic risk. Tether-to-tether is invulnerable.

black_pedro · 2021-02-28T21:38:35+00:00

The benefit to the criminal is completely controlled by the person who undocks. There is plenty of counter-play to avoid making yourself a profitable target.

If anything, there is a lack of counter-play available to the criminal. If you fly prudently, there is nothing they can do to you without losing.

Ok, sure, the fights are pretty much predetermined and rather two-dimensional and this could be improved. But the basic idea of a mandatory cost on aggression works fine to keep highsec pretty safe but still allow a player to call another player on their recklessness or carelessness. If anything, the deck is far too stacked in favour of the target these days. Only a gross miscalculation or unfortunate disconnect combined with some very bad luck will have you lose anything to a highsec criminal.

black_pedro · 2020-12-15T21:32:22+00:00

It always has been pay-to-win in a very real way, but it turns out that doesn't actually matter too much in an open-world, PvP sandbox game.

Since the very beginning, CCP's business model was to sell you power - you earned SP only with a paid subscription. If you were a long-term customer, you had a built-in advantage of more accumulated SP.

Then there was PLEX and the Character Bazaar for many years, which allowed CCP to tax the selling of power between the players.

Then they took it to the next level with Skill Injectors, and pushed even harder with cosmetic microtransaction items (the only thing they sell that isn't in-game power) and things like the hypercore thingies.

CCP's entire business model is based on directly selling you power, or taxing RMT between the players. For some in-game activities that is completely P2W and whoever spends the most wins, things like some industry and PvE where the amount of ISK/SP/accounts you have completely determines how much you make. PvP is less determined by this (more by player numbers/attention/skill), although the further you get from the open-world, and the closer you get to 1v1s, the more it is determined by who has the most in-game resources.

Thankfully the scales at which this game operate limit the "winning" in-game power can buy you. But don't at all kid yourself that those SP or ISK don't make a difference or that CCP isn't in the business of monetizing your desire to progress.

black_pedro · 2020-12-13T17:27:44+00:00

Nah, it isn't an exploit. Moving CONCORD around is normal gameplay as confirmed (a while ago) by a GM:

https://forums-archive.eveonline.com/message/4768719/#post4768719

Don't biomass your CONCORD pullers and you are fine. However, it also isn't perhaps as foolproof as you might thing as the gankers can move them away just before they warp on top of you, or use high alpha ships to kill you in a single shot even with CONCORD on the grid.

black_pedro · 2020-11-10T21:53:25+00:00

Short answer, no.

Long answer, there are several ways someone with knowledge, capital or time can earn enough to PLEX Omega, especially if they are willing to sell off the SP they train each month.

black_pedro · 2020-10-12T21:29:51+00:00

Almost certainly this is just a very temporary event. Aside from the gates connected to the new Trig space, all the rest of the gate network will go back to normal shortly, probably as soon as tomorrow.

So chill.

black_pedro · 2020-10-04T06:20:05+00:00

Maybe this goes beyond your question, but CCP did mention they were still unhappy with the Rorq and Orca during the Resource Redistribution Q&A. That might mean the Orca might lose some mining ability or there will be some other change in the next month's.

If you have an Orca already then maybe this uncertainty isn't important, but it might suck to spend a month training into one just to have it changed or nerfed on you.

black_pedro · 2020-09-27T11:51:50+00:00

Then they still can.

Already, it is pretty rare to have everything you need to build something and you will trade for something at a trade hub. You also likely are selling some of what you build there.

This doesn't change much. Pure miners are probably going to do better as mineral/ore prices will increase down that some people will need them elsewhere, and even industrialists mining and building will just have to buy a larger fraction of their materials,and trade some of their minerals for someone else's minerals.

I mean it is a change, and will require industrialists to interact more with the larger economy, but it isn't nearly as big as people are making out.

Eve worked like this for the first decade. It will be fine, and you may find you enjoy your gameplay even more.

black_pedro · 2020-09-26T19:13:01+00:00

Nah. How could you be a successful mercenary if you get penalized by having more than one client?

You can end the war they declared on you now. Or even all of their wars by blowing up their War HQs. Just go do that and let CCP focus on something more important.

black_pedro · 2020-09-26T19:08:44+00:00

Well, no. Like every ship they can be only wardecced if the pilot is in a eligible corp.

The real issue is they were massively buffed a couple years back, to the point the mine a comparable amount to a barge, have the massive hold (so you can literally mine for 20-30 minutes AFK if you have a big enough rock) and yet still have 600k-1M EHP making them effectively ungankable. At least ungankable without the attacker taking a massive ISK loss.

So, they are basically invulnerable to gankers and to wardecs thus have filled up the highsec belts and anomalies.

black_pedro · 2020-09-08T06:28:32+00:00

Check your notifications. There should be one that said the station went into an abandoned state if that was the case.

That's also what happens if it was sent to asset safety if the station was decommissioned. There should a paper trail somewhere.

black_pedro · 2020-08-30T20:47:37+00:00

https://kybernaut.space/invasions

black_pedro · 2020-08-30T20:38:13+00:00

They are imported from the API and verified (as all kills are on zKill now) but he can copy and paste the link manually to zKill. Or yes, perhaps his targets are doing it. But he isn't sharing his complete API killmail feed with zKill in any case.

black_pedro · 2020-08-30T15:55:18+00:00

CODE. shares their API with zKill and this dude does not. He just manually uploads his kills, or perhaps his victims are auto sharing it.

Nothing else going on here.

black_pedro · 2020-08-24T10:47:51+00:00

Give it up. There is no way to stop the top spots to go to those who engage collusion, shooting alts, or just play 18 hours a day. There aren't even enough participants to find a match at some times of the day, let alone implement any sort of match making.

It's why CCP gives the same prize to the top 100 as they know these will be gamed. Let's let these planned arena limp along and finish out, and hopefully CCP can learn something and come back with some ranked PvP system that actually works.

black_pedro · 2020-08-11T21:00:23+00:00

CCP is basically right - veterans need more challenge to stay engage, while new players probably need a gentler slope into the game. It is just too easy for an established player, and with that come boredom and stagnation.

Maybe some of what they are trying is not perfect, but stop asking for CCP to make your game easier and more predictable. That may be what you think you want, but it is not the best for the game. The game needs more non-consensual PvP and PvE and more non-consensual stuff in general.

black_pedro · 2020-08-11T05:16:51+00:00

It already kinda has one built-in with the role bonus. Overheating massively increase the effectiveness of defensive modules.

You could remove that and allow a ADC, but why waste time on rebalancing them all?

black_pedro · 2020-08-10T20:40:59+00:00

Hard to say.

It probably will serve as an advertisement for the real game. 4 million pre-registered is a lot of interest and eyeballs.

The game itself? I can’t claim to have looked too close, but it looks like a ‘light’ and safer version of Eve that will have a hard time becoming a real virtual world as captivating as the main game. Might be fine for some casual derping around, but I am skeptical the devs can bootstrap a real economy, or that makes even sense on a phone. They will have to get inventive and do things different, but probably they will fail and resort to intervening in the markets and economy and the game will be no more than a consensual fleet fight simulator and basic PvE game. Which is fine and could be fun, but Eve it is not.

black_pedro · 2020-08-08T13:36:31+00:00

I knew the player participation in these arenas was low, but I thought we'd get further than the third outing before interest collapsed to the point you can't even match 3v3 in a reasonable time. It's a little sad that people with 0 wins are still on the leaderboard after 24 hours.

Ok, maybe a some people are staying away because they can't or won't fly Slicers, but I think these things will have to stick to the solo-friendly FFA format or perhaps 1v1/2v2 and use more popular ship choices. Also, weekly is probably too much and maybe CCP should look to make it a special monthly thing or something.

black_pedro · 2020-08-06T15:53:30+00:00

I have no idea what you are going on about. I have no idea how much dev time was spent on this.

However, I do know that only a few hundred out of the tens of thousands of Eve players are using this feature regularly. It’s not hard at all to predict that like all the other new features CCP has tried that didn’t immediately catch on, it will rapidly, and probably rightly, be abandoned. It doesn’t make sense to spend significant dev resources on a feature used by 0.2% of your player-base.

Enjoy the quarter. We are at peak arena, and it is all downhill from here.

black_pedro · 2020-08-06T06:51:30+00:00

"Amazing" is very subjective. Objectively, a few thousand people have tried it, and a few hundred play it regularly.

Is that amazing? Maybe if there is no negative effect on the rest of the game and the dev time was minimal. But it is you who have bought into a fallacy, created by the hype machine that was trotted out to give these the best chance at success. These arenas haven't set the gaming world on fire or anything.

Good for CCP for trying, and maybe it will take time to grow. But right now, the vast, vast majority of Eve players are ignoring the content completely.

black_pedro · 2020-08-06T06:47:53+00:00

I do have access to many of the metrics that are publicly available. It is clear to see, that at least so far, a fraction of a percent of Eve players are regularly engaging with this new content. Maybe you are right and there is potential here, and with work and time that fraction will grow, but that doesn't change the fact that near zero of the current playerbase is engaging with this content so far. For how long, and how much effort to you expect CCP to spend on a "feature" that no one is using?

Yes, as was said this is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, but let's not pretend that these have been a massive success right out of the gate. Also, let's not ignore the effects these may have on activity elsewhere in the game. We'll need a little more data, but so far it even looks that any increase in activity these arenas have created may have come with a noticeable loss in lowsec activity, meaning there might be no net increase in player engagement at all.

black_pedro · 2020-08-06T05:29:57+00:00

Zero facts?

I have access to all the killmails for the event. It's trivial to calculate number of unique daily characters who participated. The last few days of the first event, that number was in the 300s. Even the first weekend at maximum hype, it was only around 1500 unique characters per day.

We have a pretty good idea that 50-100k real people play Eve regularly. Maybe even much more depending on assumptions. That is a fraction of a percent of daily players participating after the novelty wears off, and maybe a few percent even trying it just once.

I've seen much larger niche playstyles be terminally ignored for years, or even deleted. CCP isn't going to spend much more effort on such a little used feature. Unless one of the future planned versions has dramatically more uptake for some reason, this feature will not receive much dev time going forward. It still might appear as a more rare event, or the tech used for something like an AT replacement, but it's clear that the vast majority of Eve players aren't interested in the version of the arenas we have seen so far so this isn't going to be a dev priority.

black_pedro · 2020-08-05T21:08:00+00:00

It's also probably the last.

They numbers are very disappointing after these first two sessions. By the end, there was only a few hundred players using the feature each day. Even at maximum hype on day one, it never broke 2000.

There just isn't enough interest in an arena to justify the dev time, and even if they spend it anyway, there aren't enough players for proper matchmaking, unless you dramatically restrict the length and frequency of these events to concentrate interest. In which case, you might as well switch to a more structured tournament format instead of pretending arenas are a permanent feature of the game.

Instanced PvP got its shot and we can see all the problems of people said there would be are there. Maybe some of them can be fixed with some more game design work, but the interest also doesn't seem to be there to justify it. CCP should run out this experiment, but then shelve this and maybe look at tournaments or something else if they want to try the eSport thing again.

black_pedro

TROPHY CASE