While introducing PvE content would be a great thing for CCP to do through out all of New Eden it has never seemed to be something they’ve actually focused on.

Sure they’ve introduced new stuff of course and missions in the old days too, but it’s generally been as you’ve posted a bit half assed.

I guess it’s easier to create content for other MMO’s as people play on PvE servers for that aspect and that aspect alone, people play on PvP servers for a bit of this and that, but mainly to duke it out with other humans. The trouble with Eve Online’ PvE is that it becomes farmed and is seen to be an isk faucet for this level of player with these skills, or with incursions a person who can do this, this or that. Saying that, there have been opportunities for alpha characters to join the incursion SIG and take a share in the beautiful ISK generation.

This is probably why CCP doesn’t want to introduce more content. Fear of further increasing the isk income of the player base.

Sadly they content they’ve got so far is woefully under used to the point that in null sec at least there’s only three or four sites worth doing for their speed and or ease of completion. Out of about ten different types less than half is worth doing. That’s bad game design right there. The sites with triggers offer the same or less reward than sites without triggers. The sites that jam are just plain annoying.

CCP, and let’s say the player base too, has to decide what they want the PvE experience to be. Is it a farmed upwardly scaled with infinite alts wealth generation, or can it offer more to divergent groups of players?

I’ve always wanted a tutorial that gave you the nearest null sec npc system with a station as a destination, when you got there you were given a racial frigate fitted for combat and told to attack a player. It wouldn’t matter if you won or lost as long as you undocked and tried to aggress someone.

It’s a long topic and we have to remember that our preferred play style isn’t the only play style while it’s important to remember you have the option to be aggressive if some one is trying to stop you from playing your way it may not be the default state of the individual.

My personal opinion is that CCP needs to change how they think about the game in quite a radical way. I think the idea of “providing fun” is hard because it falls to them to be a Game Master and keep feeding new ideas and stories to the playerbase who will eat them up.

I think they should instead start building a more diverse ecosystem by building smart NPCs.

For example they could have rogue drones which fly to asteroid belts, mine ore to make more of themselves and fight anyone who interferes in that process. Then they could just set a few loose around new Eden and see what happens.

If each rogue drone had slightly different ai and slightly different weapons then over time natural selection would take hold and they would become very strong. Moreover they wouldn’t be farmable because their behaviour and population would change over time.

The same is true for NPC mining fleets. Have them spawn in highsec with a certain composition of ships and then head out into lowsec to look for ore to mine. The fleets that made it back with ore would make more, similar versions, of themselves and those that didn’t make it back wouldn’t be replaced.

By using natural selection like this CCP could ensure continually changing PVE content and setup a PVP foodchain (pirates would hunt the NPC miners and then pirate hunters would hunt the pirates etc).

Anyway my broader point is they need to change how they think about the game. Structures are pointless.

It does indeed feel ccp often doesnt finish story lines or uses them too the max. The idea of drifters or wh inhabitants invade highsec like an incursion is often mentioned. Where the new ia could create a bit more then farming experience. Forcing high sec dwellers to form larger groups and getting too make new frends. Ending with a drifter citadel to be destroyed which anchored when they came out.
Same goes for buildable stargates, new space, or even closed space , jove , remember ? Amarr throne events and so on.
At the same time i know ccp and they are passionate and have to make choices, for us its easy, we type our feelings and barf out some crap. While they work this 40 hours a day, year long in a team. Thier income and futures connected too the grow or demize of eve. So i give them alot of trust and credit. Yet i hope they keep reading forums, and threads like this. For us i feel we shoudl stay positive and not say, ccp sucks, but , ” he this would be fun” . Co creation works.
I hope the new team finishes the tiericide, reduces pointless varations, introducing story and faction being better then t2, therefor giving low sp a change to beat t2 training wih a bit more isk, alos good for bussinss. Faction ammo still below t2 ammo, wtf, makes faction rats shit still. I hope thye finish tiericde as a base for future items and new ideas and mods. So nee mods and gear dont ofthrow eve, but are a logical spreadsheet like followup. Faction t2, why not.
A new war breaks out, player created content, ultimately i believe in the teamwork, a sandbox with challenge, not a all inclusive resort, fuck that go play wow

I suspect you are not really grasping the essence of the game. You keep talking about these PVE aspects, and practically wishing for some on rails experience. I hope that is never going to happen, because the day CCP chose that direction they might as well pack up and close the servers. CCP have zero advantage in creating PVE on rails games, there are tons of developers out there doing just that and a million times better.

CCPs unique selling point is the PVP sandbox. The problem with EVE these days is that sometime back in the era of 09-11 someone in CCP started believing that CCP could do a League of Legends, MOBA, or even on rail game development, and they have been undermining and destroying the USP ever since. WE are now in the Titans4Everyone era, whether its from SP injections, or from free resources everywhere. That is why EVE is declining it is no longer “special” and the only group remotely playing the EVE experience is the Imperium, the rest seem unable or unwilling to even muster up competition. Sure I can understand that, because in the current eco-system, there is no way to challenge the “Blob”, since infinite resources, raw materials, isk, etc is basically just a faucet outside someones window.

What EVE needs imho is proper balanced scarcity and dynamic and responsive faucets and sinks, ideally the game should be “sustained and closed loop”, but at least it needs see saws feedback systems that makes emergent content possible. Right now it feels a lot like when a pen and paper campaign have “Outlevelled” itself, and a reset is needed. The reason being that if the sinks and loss does not proportionally affect the game, “inflation” and hoarding becomes unsustainable, and when one player owns all the plots in Monopoly, the game is really at an end.

#GoonsWonEVEnowwhat ?

I’ve always thought it would be interesting if resources actually ran dry. Like what if all ore mining in Delve had to stop because it had been completely mined?

Obligatory comment:
I do wish there was more dev continuity, as part of the fix is there, including lore, content, etc.Ultimately though how we play the game is the important content, and that’s where I put my stock and my own efforts, be it closed activity, small group hangouts, solo roaming or massive public events.

I would like to see some data from CCP about how much use different segments of the PvE content in the game get already. Did, for example, burner missions increase interest in PvE, or do they just get farmed by the specific group of people who have all the missions down pat?

We get some data on that from the monthly economic report, but what it says is a bit grim for PvE. Anoms win overwhelmingly. Is that because there is no “more interesting” alternative or because what people want out of PvE is a consistent payoff for time invested?

Spot on about finishing a story line.
Remember that one empire lost it’s friggin’ Empress? What effect did that have on the game? Zero.
Unless it changed in the last week or so, the show info box at the home (Emperor) station in the Amarr system itself, literally the seat of power for one of the NPC empires- hasn’t been updated to indicate the death of Jamyl and the ascension of a new monarch.
How sloppy is that, CCP?

They don’t even create really new enemies when farting out yet another faction. Just more ‘versions’ of human colonists. If you are testing new, difficult AI or superweapons, why not a truly alien species? A new threat emerges. In the entire galaxy there is us….and fedo.
Why wouldn’t CCP resurrect other ‘lost’ empires instead of creating new splinters of ones we already know (Drifters are Sleepers, everyone is a Jove, etc). When making the hacking content and Ghost Sites, CCP could have brought more focus on Takmahl and Talocan. Lore they already had in game but abandoned.
Whenever CCP wants to drop new content or events, it feels tacked on to whatever random faction they assign it to. Like they throw darts at a list of lore factions and that is who the event is based around rather than making any storyline progression.

And lastly farming as content. Incursions, endless ratting on industrial scales, mining fleets that blot out the sun– and none of it has any effect. The pirate factions are regular people, so hundreds or thousands on each ship- and we kill ten thousand of their ships a day. How many trillions of people are really Blood Raiders? It seems like Sansha have more mindless drones than the Empire has citizens to convert.
There is virtually no immersion into the factions you fight. You fight whatever is in the space you happen to be in, and factions boil down to resistance and damage type. EWAR to a lesser degree. You never have any personal investment in WHY you are shooting this group and not that group. I don’t even know what kind of rats are in Delve, but if I join an Imperium alliance, they are suddenly my sworn enemy. But no matter how many I slaughter day after day- there can only ever be more spawned.

You’re spot on about them starting things and not finishing, but where you lose me is some of this conspiracy type talk about creating game play for one select group of people and your assumptions about what is possible. I think the salt has caused bitter-vet syndrome and where you could have made a lot more good points you let yourself go into that extreme ranting angle instead of making solid points. I do, however, agree there is a need for CCP to create and follow through with interesting content. We can generate a lot of our own but that’s only if the mechanics behind it are solid and they’re still fighting issues that haven’t been repaired after years of complaints.

“Now we have the new advanced AI being used for pirate mining fleets and the Blood Raider Shipyard that brought the idea back that the universe would feel more alive and interactive. From what we have seen in the EVE news media realm, this concept is regulated to the enjoyment of one particular group of players and we have no real warm and fuzzy when/if the rest of the player base will reap the rewards that this PvE content gives. ”

Your problem is your timeline. The advanced AI was introduced with pirate mining fleets then expanded upon with Blood Raider Shipyards. Your comment on the “one particular group of players” ignores the upcoming release of the Serpentis and Drone region shipyards expanding this content to more regions. CCP is very much advancing the use of their AI tools. It is now on the developers to use those tools and we all know what state EVE’s developer load is in. I’m sure you will express distaste for “wait for it” and Soon(TM) being the answer but to look at CCPs work and state or insinute that they aren’t building the immersive NPC environment you’re basically asking for is somewhat disingenuous. And with the winter expansion being about empire space, the expectation, at least to me, is that there is the distinct possibility of this AI showing up in critical places possibly enhancing or replacing content such as missions, DED anomalies, and others.

“What have you done to find content lately”
I think this is the crux of it all. It is so hard to put into words what you’re trying to get across to people who don’t share the same idea of entertaining content within EVE. Some of the best times I’ve had in EVE was with a few good trusted friends trying to accomplish the impossible.

For example, 4 guys and I evicted a 30-man corp out of a C2 wormhole purely through hole control and pod eviction. While this was the most entertaining content I’ve ever experienced in any game, it was also the most time demanding and exhausting content generation in EVE I’ve ever experienced. However, it’s one of those moments in EVE that is on the top of the list as the most entertaining moments in EVE to date. A bonus is those pilots I flew with that weekend are now long-lasting friends that I will know the rest of my life.

Another example is back in 2010 I used to live out of my carrier logged out in space in Outer Ring running combat anoms alone. People say EVE PvE is one of the most boring aspects of the game, and I would agree for the most part. However, I challenge anyone to grab their main and a couple scout alts, load up a carrier with a cloak, loaded with scout ships, bombers, cynos, and a combat site running ship. Then place yourself by yourself in NPC 00 with no stations and hostiles everywhere. Then try to run sites in the area without docking for 30 days. Granted the dank ticks don’t exist, but the rush you get when hostile fleets come hunting for you and having to rely on your knowledge of EVE mechanics and proper scouting was worth every missed tick.

A final example, which was another solo operation. I got into the drug game. I had my dickstar setup with all the reactions ready for manufacturing drugs. Once I learned that you must get Cytoserocin that only exists in SOV null I started planning how I would infiltrate their homes and steal their gas. I started getting blops cyno chains setup, (this is before prospects) and I would bridge my covops hauler and a custom gas cloud mining rapier deep into SOV 00 alone. If I was successful in mining their gas I would only need to be there for a few game hours to get what I needed to run a strong BPO. But the process of infiltrating a large 00 blocs space and running their sites was quite exhilarating and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Now let’s take this story in another direction…
I used to watch those big 00 fleet battles on Youtube. Being new to the game, I remember saying to myself, “I want to be there one day.” I spent MANY years and man hours building a lowsec corp with good PvP pilots, and worked my way up the ladder of politics and got this corp into a well-known lowsec alliance. Every political move I made felt like progress, and when I sat in a 256-man fleet with 2 other blue 256-man fleets, and successfully defended a Titan from the entirety of EVE, I knew I had accomplished what I set out to do.

“One doesn’t simply leave a corp you help build from the ground up.”
What I found over the years is I became worse at the game (mechanics wise). I became a desk jocky for all intents and purposes, managing many alliance level programs and spreadsheets. I spent more time worrying about how other people enjoyed the game more than how I enjoyed the game. It turned me into what could be called a “bitter vet”. This process is natural however, but not what I wanted to turn into. I remember trying to “take a break” from leadership and go do those things I stated above, and I failed miserably due to being so rusty. It was heartbreaking and I felt I was locked into the world I created for the sake of getting into the big battles.

That was the day I retired from EVE, and my name entered the long list of burnt out CEO leadership types that EVE supposedly needs to survive. Or does it?
In my opinion as an ex-CEO and ex-alliance leader of a larger lowsec organization, a return to playing this game with a few good men, and not worrying about how I can make someone else’s game time enjoyable is exactly what SOME people need to be reinvigorated to play the game again. The effect of this would in turn create the small gang atmosphere that once was so prevalent in EVE and created many memorable micro engagements that will stay in your memories years to come.

Winter is Coming! Hopefully it will bring the change that people in similar situations like myself have long missed over the years in the ever evolving EVE environment.

I don’t know if that’s really a good idea. You would then have the top dog being even more top because they would be able to pay that premium to have their shit moved around New Eden practically unscathed all while knowing how easy it will be to gank the little guy who just wants to move his small bit of fortune to low/null for the first time. Then you have that cycle all over again of the new kid on the block never being able to compete with the old guys. That would be totally demoralizing to a new player realizing that the older players have such free reign of the market and the content wouldn’t it?

There’s been a woeful lack of follow-thru on some rather promising new shinys that have been tossed into New Eden. I look at the Drifters, burner missions, the epic mission arcs, changes to UI, etc. and I’m left going ‘…and? Where’s the rest, not just the demo release?’ The failing of finishing what’s been started is becoming more obvious as each mini-expansion/release/patch/redo comes out. I’m sick of the trite answer of Soon (TM) when I point out promises made but still not filled. Does CCP have a direction for the game, other than mini-Plex transactions, Alpaca account login number padding, and ignoring asked for SiSi feedback to release a buggy update that’s more obtuse than what UI function it’s replacing?

I dunno. There’s a lot of nice ideas in the mix, but all that shows is a company running in circles scattering glitter all over the place. Does CCP know where they are going when it comes to Eve? Or has the best parts of the brain trust been channeled into a VR future that might not be profitable in time?

I want that follow-thru. I want promises made and then kept in a timely manner. When the game client is less of a jumbled mess of random shinys, bugs that stick around for months/years finally get well and truly smashed, a roadmap that doesn’t look like a demolition derby is available, then maybe myself and others will have a better idea for moving forward. ‘Cuz right now, we’re doing donuts in the mall parking lot (badly). Today needs to get patched up before tomorrow stands a snowball’s chance in Hel.

A sandbox is a sandbox, if that makes any sense.
As far as I know CCP is working hard on providing content, specially for new bros but also more advanced stuff like the net worth indicator.
Having limited resources lets see what focus they set:
Balancing ->Seems quite important to me
Improving graphics (suns, stations..etc) -> Nobrainer for a space-game
Adapting game mechanics -> Upcomming moon mining.. we will see how it works out but focussing on game mechanics seems like a valid goal.

Quick “content creation” -> ” The agency” This is what you actually can do with limited resources and it is only entretaining for one or two days and that is the problem with “content”. It requires enormous effort to implement and it is boring as hell after one or two days, focusing on it doesn’t make a lot of sense, unless you are completely out of ideas and dont have anything else to focus on. The only selling point is making players aware that they could potentially do things like killing rats in asteroid belts.

Advanced “content creation'” -> “The AI”. This is a major commitment for the company in terms of effort and hopefully it really can add to the game at some point. As it stands no one likes AI that is smarter than human pilots. If we now tell the guys to make the AI do random stuff a human player would do there is little point in it because that what you have the human players for. Having the AI outsmart you is even more boring than bots in the long run, like in chess people like to play vs other players and not versus the computer.

Adding cinematic storylines is extremely costly and is only entretaining one or two times; from time to time CCP can add some eye candy to support the lore for sure, but its not like absolutely needed.

The key content of the game is living in space, building and tuning spaceships, waging war, defending your stuff, exploring and having fun in a team if that is your thing.

Thank you for this perspective. It is encouraging to see there are still commentators and players who have not completely given in to the “make your content” bandwagon that has seen EVE transformed from a content-rich universe of a decade ago into the time-killing pastime of ISK farming, min-maxing players brandishing their newest bling titans.

The roots of the “make your content” drive are, in my view, much deeper and go outside the EVE community. The neoliberal capitalism has raised a generation over the past 20 years through an intense propaganda of individualism and private profit, to replace systems of social benefit and people creating mutually valuable structures. The same dynamic has happened with CCP and EVE over the last 7-8 years or so – instead of constantly reinforcing the story-generating structures enabling players to forge their evolving narratives in the game, the devs have completely abandoned any effort of shaping the game to its best interest.

A good example of this is the Faction Warfare system. While the super-rich lore of the game would have you believe it is a grand effort of universe factions clashing for control of star systems, the actual reality of ISK-farming frigs in artificially limited complexes with no overarching narrative of conflict quickly dissolves that illusion. Why do you fight in FW? Why do you take this side, or that side? Is there a constantly evolving, daily narrative from participants that one would read and become interested to follow the activities or join them? This has all become irrelevant in the absence of a valid, sustainable, immersive, relatable structure in FW.

You only need to read books like Empires of EVE to see how attractive the game was in from 2003 to circa 2010 and how much it has degenerated over the last decade while being solely left in the hands of player corporations.