group-pve
Latest
EVE Evolved: Ghost Sites and PvE goals
PvE in most MMOs revolves around killing hordes of NPCs for currency, XP, tokens, or loot, and EVE Online is no exception. Players can hunt for rare pirate ships in nullsec asteroid belts, farm Sansha incursions for ISK and loyalty points, or team up against Sleeper ships in dangerous wormhole space, but most prefer the safe and steady income of mission-running. Missions are essentially repeatable quests that can be spawned on request, providing an endless stream of bad guys to blow up in the comfort of high-security space. Completing a mission will earn you some ISK and a few hundred or thousand loyalty points, but most of the ISK in mission-running comes from the bounties on the NPCs spawned in the mission sites. Similar deadspace sites with better loot are also distributed randomly throughout the galaxy and can be tracked down using scanner probes. But what would happen if the NPCs in these sites were a dangerous and unexpected interference that could get you killed, rather than space piñatas ready to explode in a shower of ISK? This is a question CCP plans to test with the Rubicon expansion's upcoming Ghost Sites feature, which promises to introduce a whole new form of high-risk, high-reward PvE. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at EVE's upcoming ghost sites and explain why I think its goal-oriented approach to PvE should be adopted in other areas of the game.
EVE Evolved: Get ready for Odyssey
With just two days to go until EVE Online's exploration-focused Odyssey expansion goes live, players have been scouring the test server for information that can give them an edge. Some have been practicing moon surveying techniques for the upcoming redistribution of tech 2 minerals, and others are hoping to get rich quick by speculating on battleship price changes. Explorers are kitting out new exploration ships, theorycrafters are working on new setups for rebalanced ships, and pirates are setting up base in lowsec areas that are about to become fertile hunting grounds. Odyssey isn't quite the Apocrypha-level expansion I've been hoping for, but it certainly seems set to shake things up. Changes to moon minerals will throw nullsec into chaos and hopefully ignite some big territorial wars, and battleship buffs may change EVE's popular fleet compositions. The Discovery Scanner Overlay will make exploration much easier for new players to get into, but will also give pirates another tool with which to hunt down explorers. A new co-operative hacking minigame will also make exploration more of a team sport. But how can you make the most of the expansion from day one, and what can you do today to prepare for it? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the new exploration system and other changes you can expect when you log in on Tuesday, and what you can do now to make the most of them.
EVE Evolved: Adapt or die
When EVE Online was first released in 2003, it sold mostly based on its future potential. Everyone I played with in those early years got into EVE in order to be on the ground floor of an awesome space game that was getting more awesome by the month. Features were undergoing continual revision, and new content was released regularly, making EVE a radically different game every six months. Players met this design strategy of continual iteration head on with an "adapt or die" attitude, and it kept the game interesting for years on end. Fast-forward to 2011 and the story looked very different. The Dominion, Tyrannis and Incursion expansions introduced new gameplay but didn't heavily iterate on any other features. By the time Incarna released, most of EVE's gameplay and content had been the same for two years and players had nothing new to adapt to. For the Crucible and Inferno expansions, CCP finally iterated on hundreds of small features and even introduced new modules to reboot EVE's "adapt or die" PvP ship design metagame. With a lot of the small things now covered, I think some of the game's big features are due for iteration. In this week's EVE Evolved opinion piece, I look at how EVE players adapt to new challenges and explore several areas of stale gameplay that are in dire need of iteration.
EVE Evolved: Incursion guide -- Combat strategies
With the final release of EVE Online's Incursion expansion, Sansha fleets began invading constellations across New Eden. Hell-bent on revenge against the empire nations that rejected him, Sansha's unholy army of borg-like cybernetic soldiers is united in a singular goal -- to bring his disturbing brand of order to the galaxy. The incursions have been running for several weeks now, and players are quickly adapting to EVE's latest group PvE challenge. In last week's EVE Evolved, I began a series of guides to tackling incursions with an article on fleet composition and group tanking strategies. Even with a well-composed group, it's still possible to fail encounters if the fleet doesn't exercise good target-calling and combat strategies. With some Sansha ships fielding remote repairers and others throwing ECM, energy neutralisers, and massive torpedoes at players, taking on an encounter isn't just a matter of tanking it and flinging missiles in all directions. Fleet commanders must be able prioritise the enemy ships in order of the danger they present to the fleet. Clear target-calling will help a fleet to focus fire and get targets down quickly, and good prioritisation of targets can mean the difference between victory and defeat. In this week's second part of the EVE Evolved guide to incursions, I explain two popular target-calling strategies and look into prioritising targets in order to minimise the risk to your fleet. I end with a list of high-priority NPCs with special abilities that you'll need to keep an eye on.
EVE Evolved: Incursion guide -- Fleet setup and tanking
In last week's EVE Evolved, I gave my first impressions of EVE Online's newest group PvE activity based on a cautious first night spent at an incursion in Obray. The Sansha incursions have been running for over a week now, and players have come up with some clearly effective strategies for clearing the sites. Many groups are now tackling the incursions in relative safety, and yet every incursion still sees several ill-prepared fleets decimated at the hands of Sansha's ships. Incursions throw some difficult challenges at players, with focus fire melting vulnerable targets, energy neutralisers and ECM disabling your support ships, and bomber frigates wreaking havoc on large hulls. In some encounters, Sansha's Nation will even use deployable remote repair platforms and other structures to its advantage and will call in random reinforcement waves if your group is too slow. With the right fleet composition and strategy, however, all of those challenges can be overcome with ease. It seems that what players need most right now is a solid guide to tackling incursions. Over the next few editions of the EVE Evolved column, I'll be smashing my way through EVE's incursions to compile a comprehensive guide from the ground up. In this week's first part of the guide, we get the ball rolling with vital information on incursion fleet composition and tanking strategies. This part of the guide is aimed mainly at those interested in Vanguard-level sites, but the fleet setup and tanking strategies described are fundamental to all encounter sizes. In this week's EVE Evolved, I tackle the fundamentals of incursion fleet design and tanking, which should be enough to help your group jump right into 10-man Vanguard encounters.
EVE Evolved: Incursion in progress
In a blaze of fire and glory, Sansha Kuvakei's fleet clashed with players in a major offensive in Yulai. Although his AI-controlled Sansha battleships numbered in the hundreds, the sheer force of capsuleer defense initiatives was brought down on Kuvakei's fleet like a hammer. With the Sansha ships under heavy fire, the fleet opened additional wormholes to call in reinforcements. Amidst the busy buzz of lasers scorching hulls, capsuleers hurling missiles, and CONCORD rescue operations, space itself warped as several massive Sansha supercarriers emerged from the incoming wormholes. Sansha Kuvakei played his biggest and most fearsome card as a show of the incredible forces he now commands. And capsuleers burned them to ashes in defiance. Since the battle in Yulai, Sansha's Nation has begun launching full-scale occupations of constellations across New Eden. Many players dove straight into the fray without adequate preparation, and Sansha's forces were not forgiving. While most NPC pirate ships found in EVE Online are weak with a very basic AI, the new Sansha ships are both smart and deadly. They use everything from ECM and energy neutralisers to stealth bomber technology and logistic support. Thousands of player ships were destroyed in the first day of fighting as people worked out, through a system of trial and error, how best to tackle EVE's latest supervillain. As the dust settled, I began to get a solid impression of how well the feature is working and whether it really is the breath of fresh air EVE's PvE has been sorely lacking all these years. In this week's EVE Evolved, I give my first impressions of the Sansha incursions in an attempt to demystify some of the discussion surrounding them and share some basic tips for getting involved.
Sansha incursions have begun in EVE Online
The moment EVE Online players have been waiting for has finally arrived. Sansha's Nation has begun its plan of regular incursions into known space. Using terrifying advanced technology suspected to be of Sleeper or Jovian origin, the Nation has begun sending masses of troops through controlled wormholes into constellations across New Eden. The powerful new Sansha ships found in these sites are controlled by a borg-like hive mind composed of the millions of citizens abducted from planets during last year's Sansha raid events. The Sansha ships are even named after the system their crews were abducted from, an eerie reminder that we could do nothing to prevent the Sansha raids. To find out where the nearest incursion to you is, open your mission journal and go to the incursions tab. If you can't see any incursions in the global report after refreshing it several times, you may need to clear your cache. To do this, press the escape key to open up the game options, go into the "Reset Settings" tab and click the button next to the text "clear all cache files." This will restart your game and the incursions will be visible. Once you arrive at a constellation that's under siege, a new chat channel will automatically open to help coordinate resistance efforts in that constellation. Players who are thinking of getting into the incursions are urged to proceed with caution and use only ships they would be willing to lose, as these upgraded Sansha ships are deceptively powerful for their size classes. If you'd like to take part in the incursions with other Massively readers, join the Massively channel in-game for instructions on how to get involved with the official Massively Mob corporation. To give some background to the events taking place right now all over EVE, CCP has released a new video trailer putting the Sansha threat in context. Skip past the cut to watch the video, embedded in HD.
