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Naughty Social Words


I was poking at a conversation just to and I said something a bit naughty.

The conversation was about running level four missions.  Now, I know I should never join in a mission conversation.  Well, almost never. I really have nothing valuable to say about them because I'm pretty clueless about running missions in any type of productive manner.  However, I don't let that stop me.  I'm a confident and bold woman willing to throw down in chat!

Not really.  However, sometimes I feel mischievous and like to say naughty, naughty things.  While discussing the absolute need for T2 drones to run level 4 missions due to their value at killing frigate sized NPCs and freeing the battleship I said, "Fly something else besides battleships?"

"They are fastest and most powerful at the missions," I was told.
"Fleets?" :D

I had to drop in the possibility of doing something so dark, and sinful that it might ostracize someone from their community and have them kicked from their corps and perhaps banned from the game.  I had to suggest that they fleet up to do a mission instead of attempting to shoehorn themselves into a one size fits all package.

I was told "No" for several reasons.
1.     Battleships are easy for new players to get into.  They don't require a bunch of skills to get into and use.
2.     Loss of many ships in PvP and desire to acquire as much income as possible, personally to replace this.
3.     Being a team of one is enough.
I think the biggest blow to group play that Eve has is the fact that the reward for fleet operations is split.  Yet, I think that not splitting it and each member getting an equal and complete share would also be bad because it would encourage group farming and blitzing of missions.  No easy answer there.  It is frustrating that people can work to the point of soloing the content and rendering corporation to be the subpar choice for the situation.

With later, higher content corporation becomes mandatory and the rewards are a lot better to compensate.  Still, each time I watch another new player work around Dagan in the Sister's of Eve epic arc and it always takes a moment for someone to suggest that they ask for help.  "Really?" is the clueless response.  "Yup."  There are people that hang around and just help new players with that particular mission.

I do love new players.  Vov commented on it as I was babbling inanely to him about something a new player had said.  I had to agree.  I adore true new players.  They are my favorite flavor.  Not that I don't love my salty, bitter vets too.  

But new players are something that I enjoy.  I like rookie chat.  I like it a lot and gave spent a lot of time in there answering questions and helping people to get their feet under them when they first start.  If I get tired of it I take a break. Normally it is more along the lines of my attention being diverted to other things at the time rather than me getting tired of answering the same question over and over.

And although I will blow a newbie up in a moment I really enjoy them and want them to stay in the game and become a part of what makes Eve great and enjoy being here/there (not sure which one to use tbh).  Because so much fun is in the social stuff and I am learning as I play other games that the social interaction isn't an automatic consideration of new players, ways to help them acquire the knowledge of the importance of fleets in Eve sooner than they do would be a good thing and go further towards retention.

Comments

  1. This particular problem (and it is a fundamental Eve PVE problem) results from the fact that Eve copies the PVE framework of MMOs that offer character advancement in XP for beating PVE content, while completely dispensing with XP.

    In games with XP-for-monsters, it is quite feasible to increase the reward for group play directly, because XP cannot be transferred -- tune up the exact reduction for XP sharing and you're golden. In Eve, the major rewards for beating NPCs are bounty ISK and loot, both transferable resources, which means that increasing them for group play makes group play an unwanted faucet, and not increasing them for group play makes group PVE suboptimal. Only greatly reducing the number of individual enemies and forcing players to band in fleets to even take them makes it work, like in incursions and wormholes.

    I'm afraid there's no easy solution to this one without redoing all the PVE content eventually. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I was always playing games together with my girlfriend. I lured her to EVE, she minds her skill queue but she barely does anything. At the beginning we tried to play together but quickly realized that we are better off playing separately. So despite perfect communication, same level of XP, we couldn't play together because EVE PvE is so unrewarding to group.

    I'd have a solution though: put active tank on the rats. Not unbreakable of course but significant. Let's say the mission is designed for 100 DPS destroyers and the rats have 2000 HP passive tank, so you kill one in 20 seconds. Replace this with 1000 HP passive and 50HPS active. Alone, with 100DPS the rat still takes 20 seconds (your effective DPS is 50 as you damage 100, the rat reps 50). If a group of two arrives, their effective DPS is 150 (100+100-50) so they kill that rat 3x faster than alone. The mission still don't force grouping (you can solo it) but encourages grouping.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So... you've just doubled the difference in isk/hour between a geared veteran doing that mission (who will probably optimise to volley the rat, and negate the active tank completely), and the newbie (who will face the full hp as intended). On top of the factor 2-3 DPS difference that was already present.

      Delete
    2. I don't know how long it is since you last ran a mission Gevlon, but many mission rats already do have active tanks.

      Just as an example I picked the first rat listed for my current mission (Gistatis Primus), and according to Chruker's NPC ship database (http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/npc_ships.php) it has an active shield tank with a 60% chance to regen 150hp every 5 seconds.

      Delete
  3. I've run into a different aspect of this problem. New players hear too many stories that they assume strangers wanting to fleet up are running some sort of scam.

    I've had other players tell me that if we fleet up I'll be allowed to shoot them. *sigh*

    ReplyDelete
  4. I to try to help noobs when and where ever i find them, and I also think they should change missions to be a less lone wolf ocupation.

    ReplyDelete

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