In Part 2 I discussed the definition of The Sandbox, quests and raids (EVE Online's analogues to them), the end-game (or lack thereof) and the all-importance of user-generated content.
In Part 3 I discussed the psychology of stuff, to give you, the new capsuleer, the proper mindset with regards to the stuff you own. Don't get attached to it, your stuff will be destroyed eventually.
Player versus player combat [PvP] is a vital component of EVE Online. Don't let carebear arguments, that EVE is what you make of it, sway you. Conflict is everything in EVE, whether you wish to participate or not. You can do all the mining, all the industry, all the manufacturing you want, but without conflict and the losses that come with it, there's no market for industrialist gameplay. People will not replace items that they have yet to lose.
The Importance of PvP
As discussed in Part 2, EVE Online is a game that relies heavily on player-generated content. Whereas there are some examples of interesting player content that has little to do with PvP (the Arek'Jaalan Project, as an example), the majority of player-generated content evolves from confrontation, or a desire to instigate such.Even if you have zero plans to be a PvPer, it is still in your best interests to learn PvP. Your best defence is to know your enemy. There are no PvP-free zones in EVE Online, nor should there ever be. You undock, you're implicitly agreeing that PvP may be in your future (until you dock up again), whether you want it or not.
People can and will attack you for any number of reasons: to name only a few, because you were a jerk on Twitter to them, because they see profit in your ship, modules, and/or cargo, or for their laughter and your potential tears. Folks aren't going to leave you alone simply because you want to be left alone (that will actually make you more of a target, especially if you express this sentiment publicly). People won't leave you alone because they obviously have the upper hand on you (most PvPers are looking for kills, not e-honour.) People won't leave you alone because your mining is of great and noble service to the community (unless you're giving away all your ore for free, you're playing EVE for personal gain, the same as most everyone else.)
So, don't end up one of those theme park players who start screaming on the forums for CCP to change EVE Online into something you're more familiar with. Learn to embrace the core concept of conflict in EVE Online.
If you're still not convinced, here are some stats: during the month of April 2012, 158000 ships were lost to PvE (including losses to police), whereas 249000 ships were lost due to PvP. 138000 of the 158000 PvE losses were in highsec, many of those the result of ganks and other attacks that ultimately end by death to police and CONCORD. Newbie deaths are also a large component of highsec PvE losses. The majority of PvE losses are not high value losses.
The PvE in EVE Online is predictable and manageable (even wormhole sleeper sites, which have an unpredictability built in to them). So as players become more experienced, their PvE losses decrease over time (as can be seen by the number of lowsec, nullsec and wormhole PvE losses.) Thus, PvE cannot sustain the player-market economy alone. Without PvP, industrialists cannot turn profit, and if they are not profiting, they are not playing the game for long.
Fair and Balanced
In theme park MMOs, you're familiar with PvP as something the developers take great pains to balance. Battlegrounds with equal numbers of opponents on each side. Arena contests against combatants of similar skill and equipment. Or mutually agreed upon 1v1 duels.Fairness is not a design consideration of EVE Online. The lead designer of EVE Online, CCP Soundwave, said it best:
Why would I want to balance a fight? That's never really been the goal in EVE. Fairness ... isn't really a design philosophy in EVE.If you expect fairness and balance, there are a plethora of MMOs already out there that promote just that. You probably came to EVE from one of them. So embrace what makes EVE different from the rest of the MMO marketplace, rather than hate that it's different.
Types of PvP
1v1: this is as fair as it gets in EVE Online. When you and another party agree to duke it out, one on one at some planet or other celestial body. Except, that either side can always reneg on the social contract. There are no game mechanics that hold either side to a fair fight. Fair fights are easy to find, but always expect that they might not be. Assume your opponent has an off-grid booster alt.Ganking: this usually occurs in high security space. The ganker hopes to kill a target before CONCORD hits the grid to blow them up. The death of their ship is inevitable, but their goal is to kill before being killed. Gankers are motivated by profit, laughter and/or tears.
Small Gang: this form of PvP usually consists of small groups of PvP ships (three to ten) roaming space looking for prey of equal or lesser numbers. They are sometimes looking for fair fights, usually looking for smaller gangs to beat up.
Blobbing: this consists of gangs of many tens to hundreds of ships, roaming space looking to squash anything they come across. (There is no agreed upon definition of a blob, though I like to think that any fleet pouncing on another fleet that is 1/10th its size is blobbing, for all intents and purposes.) Fairness is never a consideration in blob warfare. Overwhelming odds are the name of the game. You can often find blobs gate camping systems.
Structure Bashing: whether POSs, sovereignty structures, customs offices, or iHubs, these are relatively stationary battles. Due to timers and the like, you know when the bash is to begin, as do any defenders. The attack and defense thus becomes a war of attrition, who has the most manpower, the most ships available nearby, the best supply lines. Big and bigger ships versus each other. This sort of PvP used to be the domain of nullsec, but you can now find it in w-space, lowsec, and to a lesser degree even in highsec.
Faction Warfare: this is about as theme park as it gets in EVE Online. Fairness and balance are not design considerations of faction warfare, but you do get points and rewards for your PvP.
Where to Learn PvP?
EVE University: a great place to learn the fundamentals of the game. They will teach you the rudiments of PvP, though their focus is mainly on blob warfare. If your desire is to be an industrialist in EVE, learning how to avoid PvP is something you can learn successfully through EVE University. They operate in the Metropolis region, five jumps from the Hek secondary trade hub.Red vs. Blue: two corporations, perpetually at war with each other. They take in and train new players all the time. This is a great environment if you wish to learn about small gang and blob warfare. They operate just a few jumps north of the busiest market in New Eden, Jita.
Agony Unleashed: these guys run one of the premiere PvP classes in EVE Online, though it can be very difficult to get a spot in one of their classes. They have a strong focus on small gang PvP. They are based out of Syndicate, NPC nullsec.
Test Alliance/Goonswarm: these guys treasure their newbies. If you're a member of Reddit or Something Awful, respectively, you can get into their main corporations, otherwise you can often find entrance into the alliances via many of their other ancillary corporations. Both these alliances operate out of player-controlled nullsec.
Pirate Corporations: there are many lowsec pirate corporations that are more than happy to accept and train new players. There are far too many of these to name, and many come and go frequently.
Faction Warfare: many faction warfare groups are more than willing to take in new players. Fweddit, of the Amarr militia, are such a group. There are others for Gallente, Minmatar, and Caldari. Look around on the forums and in the corporation recruiting interface in-game to find what you are looking for.
Everything is PvP
Competition is everywhere in EVE Online. Some view market trading as a form of PvP, since you are actively engaged in screwing over other market traders for your own profit and benefit. This is certainly not the traditional definition of PvP, but it is a valid view. Any area of the game which has players competing with other players for profit and resources can be considered to be PvP in the loosest sense. Again, EVE is driven by conflict and competition.
Next Time . . .
Part five will, likely, be the last in the series. As I see it now, it will be a collection of random, small topics that have yet to be covered. Money is one small topic to be covered. A short glossary, perhaps. And I have a few lurking in the comments of previous Theme Parker posts. If you have any ideas of your own, post them to the comment section.These articles continue to evolve. If you notice any inconsistencies, or have a suggestion on how to explain a concept better than I have, then please add your notes and opinions in the comments section. They will more than likely be incorporated into the article in short order.
The Entire Series
Part OnePart Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
fair enough post - I'll reiterate that everything *is* PvP. The smallest of market transactions, building that rifter, mining that asteriod - you are directly or indirectly engaged in PvP.
ReplyDeleteYou're buying a module of someone who is making money to fuel a war machine.
Or you are selling a ship to someone who needs it to fight a war.
Or you are mining minerals to go towards building a fleet of capital ships...
I think that is something that many players struggle to come to grips with. You cannot play eve and state that you will never be involved in PvP. You're involved in PvP from the beginning. The only sure fire way to not be involved in PvP is to do nothing, and spin your ship.
I personally consider your numbers to be a bit out of whack - a 20 man gang isn't really a blob. I've recently seen large scale wormhole fights first hand (100 ships fielded total etc), and its really not at the realms of blobbing..but I guess its how you chose to define it.
I concur. There is no actual definition for blobbing. It is often in the eye of the victim. Twenty is probably a minimum, but by no means very blobby if going up against other 20-man gangs. It's the twenty-man gang dropping on the lone frigate that might make the 20-man a blob.
DeleteBlobbing is much less about a fixed number of ships and much more about the number of ships relative to the task at hand. It's about overkill.
DeleteIf you're setting up to catch one vaga coming through a gate, then you'll need a bubbler, and a minnie recon, and maybe two other ships between a logi/dps/fast point frigate. But if you just keep adding more ships it becomes more than you would ever need for the task.
If the target dies before every ship in your fleet can lock it, then you are a blob and you're wasting the time of your own pilots.
And this scales. Against 2 ships, or 5 ships, or however many, there is: not enough and you die, the minimum possible gang to win, to win without losses, to win when every friendly ship can contribute, and beyond that is blob.
Well it scales to a degree. 2x 500 man fleets in 0.0 is blob vs blob - there is a point (which I'll be honest I don't know what it is) where it appears to become a pure numbers game. Fleets cease being diverse and are made up primarilly of one type of ship with one type of fit. Alpha fleets, drake fleets, tengu fleets..etc etc.
DeleteI tend to look at blobs based on fleet comp more than anything. If the fleet is diverse (using my wormhole fights example, the fleets are made up of guardians, bhaalgorns, falcons, proteus, lokis, legions, dreadnaughts, carriers, hictors, dictors, and a smattering of other ship types), its probably not a blob. Of course that is another gross generalisation...
3 of us in Agony a week or so ago got accused of blobing one guy :/.
ReplyDeleteLove these posts Poetic, they are by far the best introduction to Eve for new players that I've found. If I ever have a RL friend pick the game up, I'll surely direct them here.
One suggestion though, a glossary of Eve terms would be helpful to brand new players. You say a lot of words like grid, CONCORD, ect... To someone who has never played the game, some of the words we take for granted might be slightly confusing to them. It would help to put the advice you give into context I think.
Good point on the glossary. A section for Part 5 ... or at least a link to a good glossary, like the one on E-Uni's wiki.
DeleteWant to add:
ReplyDelete1v1: Explain that most players actually have an off grid booster you don't know about.
And if you define 20 man already as a blob, get into null-sec. 20 man isn't even a fleet, it's a gang.
I'll change it to 40. Though a blob is really just any fleet that pounces on some other fleet 1/10th of its size (or thereabouts.)
DeleteSmart 1v1 pilots fleet up with their opponent to avoid this.
DeleteI think you need make sure to differentiate between the use of "balance" to mean that two sides are made equal before a fight in order to assure an equal chance at victory for each, and the use of "balance" to mean the way that game objects and mechanics are designed behind the scenes to interact or compare with one another in relatively even or complementary ways. CCP doesn't do the former. They don't fix fights in battle arenas to ensure that numbers of participants are equal, or that ship fits or skill points are roughly equal. But they certainly do the latter. The recent T1 frigate rebalance is a prime example. I don't think they looked at those individual ships and said, "You know what? Who cares if there's parity between them? Let's just do whatever the hell we want! However it comes out will be fine, because we don't care about balance!"
ReplyDeleteThe reason why this sticks in my craw is because, all too often, people read those sorts of statements from CCP to mean things that they likely don't mean at all (for example, that it's a-okay for miners not to have any recourse against suicide ganking in high-sec, other than to dock up indefinitely).
But Soundwave has stated in the past that he's not particularly concerned that all ships of a certain class are balanced with each other. He's perfectly fine that one frigate is perceived as "better" than the rest in certain styles of play. When they "rebalance", the perception of what's best changes, and it drives players to re-discover the game. Rebalancing, sort of, reboots the game. I would expect that ship classes go through "rebalancing" every 24 months or so, simply to keep the game fresh.
DeleteSo you believe that when they looked at the T1 frigates recently, they didn't compare them with one another when tweaking the stats and fitting slots? If you believe that, I think you're delusional. There's no way that they're designing these ships in isolation from one another, outside of a "balancing" context.
DeleteIn that quote you printed, Soundwave was talking specifically about balancing a fight in the game. CCP isn't going to restrict whether an ally can suddenly appear on-grid and turn a fight from 1v1 to 2v1. They're not going to restrict or determine fittings such that everybody can pretty much have an even chance in battle, no matter what they've equipped. But they certainly do spend a lot of time balancing ships. Which isn't to say that every ship class will be more or less the same across races, just with a different skin, but rather that their advantages and disadvantages are indeed weighed against one another.
The beauty of EVE Online, though, is that really, this sort of balancing, while it does occur, is ultimately overwritten by skill points. A ship is only as good as your ability to fly it, and your ability to fly it is only as good as the number of pertinent skill points you've dedicated toward flying it. The ships are, in a sense, merely wire frames that express certain parts of our skill trees. That said, there is still balancing that goes on in the background. If you believe otherwise, you're playing yourself.
I'm not referring to the Soundwave quote in the post. It's something he said during an interview somewhere. (I don't have a link.)
DeleteBalancing in EVE is not done to make all frigates equal to one another, it's to make sure they each have specific roles, and that they are capable in those roles. They aren't concerned that frigates have 50/50 chances of overcoming each other in 1v1 battles (with people of relatively equal skill points.)
A Tristan is still inferior to an Incursus in a 1v1 fight, a Tristan is still inferior to a Rifter in a 1v1 fight, but the Enyo might be more useful than either of those ships in other roles (perhaps larger fleet configurations.) That's what CCP ship balancing is all about, its not about ensuring that all frigates are equal to one another in any situation.
That's the argument I just made. The ships aren't balanced to be re-skinned copies of one another. That's not really what balancing is, even in "theme park" MMO's. The ships are definitely balanced to weigh their differences against one another, though. It would be silly of CCP to base ship balance on 1v1 scenarios, because there are so many different combat scenarios in the game. What I'm saying is that one ship might have an advantage as an in-your-face brawler that can pack a decent armor tank, while another ship might gain more of its tank from speed and be more of a glass cannon type. These roles are certainly compared when the devs are working on ship updates and the like. And that's what we call balancing. In the quote you posted, Soundwave was referring to the type of balance you get in, say battlegrounds matches in WoW, not to the balance of ship roles.
DeleteMan, I was tired last night. When I wrote Enyo in my reply to you, I meant to write Tristan.
DeleteGood guide, however wars at structures are completely missing. They are the only "fair" fights as the timers force parties to be present in a pre-announced time.
ReplyDeleteYou are correct. I added a section for structure bashing.
DeleteGevlon: I've never *ever* been at a 'fair' structure fight. If you are the attacker and you know your enemy will be there in numbers, you blob the living shit out of the tower.
Delete@Anon That is why I made no mention of fairness when I added Structure Bashing to the PvP Types section. ;)
Delete@Poetic: noticed that - was simply pointing out that Gevlon's assertion that they were the only "fair" fights was manifestly incorrect, on the basis that they are not fair at all.
ReplyDeleteon a side note, this blog is coming along nicely... has come a long way from the early days and is right up there along side Jester's Trek on my daily must read list. Keep up the good work.
To be fair to Gev, I think he was referring to fairness in the OK Corral showdown at noon sort of thing ... both sides know when and where the fight is going to be, thus there's really no surprises in store. Both sides are going to bring as much as they can to do their job.
DeleteOh. And thanks for the kind words.
DeleteActually, EVE is what you choose to make of it.
ReplyDeleteIt's just that everything--everything--you can make of EVE is, at some level or another, informed by non-consensual player-vs-player conflict.
That's what makes it great!
You are correct. I will adjust that section of the post to more accurately reflect this sentiment.
DeleteVery good and well written guide articles Poetic!
ReplyDeleteBeen playing for years, and still learn new things when i read articles like this :) Saving this series into my EVE guides folder and sharing with my friends. Thanks
Open University of Celestial Hardship [0UCH] teaches Basic PvP and Null Survival, along the lines of Agony's PvP Basic and Wolfpacks classes. It's free to students who join the corp. They'll take a day old newbie, rusty bittervet or a reformed carebear. Pretty sure they are linked on Azual's and Toterra's blogs, too.
ReplyDelete