Monday, November 25, 2013

"PvP Off" Option?

I read another delightfully whiny thread on the forums this weekend. A returning carebe.... erm, I mean player, came back to Eve for Rubicon. He sold all his old stuffz to buy one of the new, and hugely overpriced, SoE ships. This guy then thought high-sec exploration was boring, so he went exploring in low sec.... and can you guess what happened? That's right. He promptly lost his shiny new SoE ship to a gate camp. Apparently he is quitting (again) as it is not fun staying in high-sec to explore, and low-sec needs a mahoosive 'Here be Dragons!!??!!11?!1' stamp on the starmap. This risk-adverse guy wants the option of turning PvP 'off' so he can wander around low-sec without nasty, horrible other players attacking his expensive ship.

Of course all great explorers prefer to stay where it is nice and safe. Lara Croft tends to stick to central London, in the daylight, near a police station and Indian Jones prefers to look for treasure in his spare room. Yes, they are fictional characters but I think I made my point? No? OK then....


Eve Online is a simulation, in fact I'm sure I've seen CCP refer to it in a press release as a "Space combat simulator". It tries to have an element of realism, and like the real world, you are never safe.

Lets say you buy yourself a Rolls Royce and then pimp it out. Get some nice gold-plated rims encrusted with diamonds etc. You know, find some bloke who says 'Yo dawg' before putting something in your something so you can something whilst you something. Then you cruise around in front of people showing it off. In the city centre (high sec) you will have a chance that it will get stolen. In the rough industrial area on the outskirts of the city (low sec) you will be at great risk of losing it. If you go down the underpass by the ghetto then it, and probably yourself, are history.


Eve Online is the same. There is nowhere on this planet you are utterly safe from harm and nowhere in Eve* you cannot get ganked/killed. If you fly around high-sec in a T2 fitted Raven nobody will look at you twice, probably. If you fly around in a 20bn ISK officer-fit, then the gankers WILL find you and WILL gank you.

Anyway, why did he want to go exploring in low-sec? Probably because the rewards are so much better there than they are in high-sec. So why is that? Why would CCP reward people more for doing the same thing but in low-sec? Mmmmmmmm?


BECAUSE ITS NOT AS SAFE! There are people like me who fly around wanting to kill you. Therefore the rewards are much better as the risk is a lot better. We are back to real life comparisons. A guy who welds pipes in a factory gets paid a fraction of what a deep-sea welder gets paid. Why does the deep-sea pipe welder earn so much? Because he's at so much more risk. You generally don't get decompression sickness working in a factory.

I know I'm biased. I'm -10 and tend to blow people up when I can but why are the fundamentals of this game so hard for some to grasp.

1. You are never safe when undocked. You 'consent' to PvP every time you hit that undock button.
2. Rewards scale with risk. Doing something very safe will never net you as much cash as doing something risky.

No matter what security space you are in, these rules apply. CCP will never add a 'PvP opt-out' as that would break the game. Everyone saw what happened to Star Wars: Galaxies when they went down the 'please the vocal minority' route. CCP may make high-sec safer, for example faster CONCORD response or the CONCORD death-laser that Soundwave mentioned at Fanfest. However, they will never make it fully safe. So you need to make your own decision. Live in the Wild West where there are more opportunities and rewards, or stay as a drone in the 'big city' where you'll be ten times safer, but unlikely to even make it rich in the same time scale.


If you want to explore New Eden without risk there is a way. There is a command line you can add to your Eve start up file that removes non-consensual PvP from all but two or so systems in game. I use it regularly when I want to autopilot an alt somewhere in null to get screenshots such as the Eve Gate or a NPC HQ Station. What is this magical command? Look up how to log onto the test server and if you really believe Eve Online should have a 'opt out of PvP' option, please stay there! It's not rocket science people!


*OK, inside a station and also some null-sec areas are so blue'd that you can carebear to your hearts content and you'll hear about any non-blues before they get within 10 jumps allowing you to dock up. However, the risk here is someone will come and take your space and all of your assets.

8 comments:

  1. yup . you really need a proof reader mate

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    1. Where? If you are going to make comments like that at least give me a clue where I cocked up :)

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  2. "CCP will never add a 'PvP opt-out' as that would break the game. Everyone saw what happened to Star Wars: Galaxies when they went down the 'please the vocal minority' route."

    I'm inclined to agree with you on the first half of this, but the second bit struck me as amusingly ironic.

    Based on what I see in Local compared to on the forums/blogs/etc., players living outside of highsec are both unusually vocal and in the minority.

    Just something to think about... ;-)

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    1. I'm not saying high-sec players are a minority, far from it, they are probably the majority. But those who want a 'PvP off' button are a minority (I hope) but tend to be be very vocal :)

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  3. My boys were not gatecamping :) They saw him and chased him across two systems and were able to tackle him because he failed to cloak. He was one warp away from high sec.

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  4. The massive superiority complex and endless whinging from the pro PvP crowd is even more tedious than whiny posts from carebears who died to them.

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  5. "some null-sec areas are so blue'd that you can carebear to your hearts content and you'll hear about any non-blues before they get within 10 jumps allowing you to dock up."

    you forget awoxing ;)

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  6. I guess jet was referring to Indian Jones!

    Regards,
    A_random_pony_00

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