Are Dev's Bad, or do MMO PVP Games Not Work?

[Slayerik]

Subspace:

Death Penalty? No
Item Loss? No
Item Dependant? No
Dev kill? No
Indy or AAA? Indy

It worked. Not a huge player draw though playing asteriods in space. Still alive today, still fun.


UO:

Death Penalty? Yes - Put out of fight as a ghost until able to be resurrected by players or wandering NPC/shrine
Item Loss? Full
Item Dependant? Slightly
Dev Kill? Dev's ripped the soul out of the game.
Indy or AAA? AAA

Player skill mattered in UO, exploits hurt the game badly though. Was , and still is, considered some of the best MMO PVP ever. Still alive today, I guess.

Neocron:

Death Penalty? Yes, you were removed from the fight and taken to (sometimes) far away bind point. Had some item drop
Item Loss? Varied throughout game life.
Item Dependant? Yes
Dev Kill? Only do to some major bugs and poor PVE design.
Indy or AAA? Indy

Bad initial grind to get to the fun. Small group outpost battles were win. Good PVP

Shadowbane:

Death Penalty? Yes, backpack drop and trip to the tree
Item Loss? Backback only
Item Dependant? No
Dev Kill? Sb.exe , glaring bugs, extremely poor PVE design. Diku PVP failure.
Indy or AAA? Indy

Planetside:

Death Penalty? Minor
Item Loss? Full
Item Dependant? No
Dev Kill? No. Yes. No. I don't know really...
Indy or AAA? AAA

The concept is awesome, but sluggish FPS game lost its luster. Graphics were dated when release. Good try, missing the hook.


EvE:

Death Penalty? Yes, full item loss. Insurance makes this less painful
Item Loss? Full
Item Dependant? Somewhat
Dev Kill? No. Game survives and thrives to this day.
Indy or AAA?

EvE PvP is niche. There are heavy grind aspects, but is a good alternative to all Diku games and is a different setting.

Lineage (1):

Death Penalty? Yes. Loss of XP, possible to de-level and lose abilities.
Item Loss? Yes. Limited by alignment.
Item Dependent? Somewhat.
Dev kill? Too grindy for fat lazy Americans. Still big in places where they speak funny.
Indy or AAA? Indy that became AAA PDQ.

Lineage 2:

Death Penalty? Yes. See above.
Item Loss? Yes. See above.
Item Dependent? More than above.
Dev kill? See above. And then some.
Indy or AAA? Very much AAA now.

AoC:
Death Penalty? Very Minor.
Item Loss? No.
Item Dependant? Yes
Dev Kill? Yes. Game was prematurely released and devs failed to address the glaring holes in the game.
Indy or AAA? AAA

AOC stood out for a while with a different combat system, but the bait and switch chafed many asses. The PVP was fun, but the grind was not. Another Diku PVP failure.

Warhammer:

Death Penalty? Minor
Item Loss? No.
Item Dependant?
Dev kill? Verdict is still out.
Indy or AAA? AAA

Signs aren't looking good, pointing towards another Diku PVP failure.


I did not play Guildwars.

From looking at these, the most common thing I see is Diku and PVP don't mix. Skill based, non-item based seems to be key for what I find to be a good PVP system. This is a lot of games (and there are more like Fury) that have failed. What is the MMO genre missing when it comes to massive PVP? It's hard to believe it is the infrastructure these days. Bandwidth is readily available. Why is it no dev house can seem to make a game with that Counterstrike kind of replayability and grab? Are we closer, or farther away than 1997?

[Venkman]

I think the better question is: do MMO PvP games have broad appeal in the way some pre-WoW DAoC-RvR fans thinks it could. I contend that conventional wisdom considers this a risky territory not worth of the sort of development resources really needed to even try and do it right by itself.

Entire genres exist with more solid and more specific PvP, like every sports, RTS and FPS title out there. I get the sense these days that the sort of escapist immersion people seek is roughly akin to getting sucked into a good casual online game where you can occasionally interact with other people to share the achievements or get help from them to do so. PvP that gets in the way of that has largely only appealed to the people who try to get in the way of others, or the smaller subset of players who are truly seeking that totally accountable immersive world. I personally believe that the deepest immersion in an MMO is only possible with full-on PvP. But I also know I won't like that game. And I suspect not enough others do anymore to make a serious (as in, lots of budget) try at it.

The days where PvP mattered to ones own holdings in the world seem to be pretty far behind us. Nobody wants to lose their shit, especially to another player. And no other genre really makes you lose your stuff and have it lost forever. You win or lose and the world resets.

Trying to apply that here is a contradiction to the RPG roots. But it also works very well (in the form of WoW BGs and WAR Scenarios) because nobody goes into those caring beyond whether they advance a little by losing or advance a lot by winning.

So it's not that MMO Devs aren't good at it or haven't tried their hardest. It's that the potentially limited appeal narrows the resources put against the goal at all.

[Mrbloodworth]

Item progression/time investment + Items with Stats that determine outcome + PvP = fail.

Planetside out of all you listed, got this right. EXP/Time/Whatever does not increase your power, it only expands your options.

[Ingmar]

You left off DAOC. Love it or not, it was clearly a successful PVP MMO, and it was Diku-based.

[ahoythematey]

I'd say further than ever before.  Too many of the people in charge seem to be intoxicated by the ideas of subscription dollars they can gamble towards by trying to be a watered down dog-turd that the carebear majority will like.

The closest I ever saw a DIKU get to fun PvP that didn't have sb.exe was the Darktide server in Asheron's Call, and that was mostly due to the community driving it and Turbine giving them the choice, without any tools beyond letting the players attack each other without restriction.

Well, I suppose you could say they provided little carrots to fight over later in the game with the allegiance manors...

[schild]

Funny that you were making this thread: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=15082.0

[wuzzman]

meh DAOC is a failure by modern standards, the only real successful PVP mmo is Guild Wars, it took at least 2 years for Guild Wars Pvp scene to truely tank, and it wasn't even the complete fault of the devs when it did. Planetside is liked a polished version of Age of Conan by modern standards, but again it was far too sluggish for people to keep playing with problems the Devs made worse. Its not a matter of people funding a pvp based mmo, Age of Conan, WAR, EVE all games with money behind it, not indy titles at all. But it is a matter of development sitting down and actually removing some of their vision crap, stop comparing their features to WAR, and actually measure their game up to successful PVP games like CounterStrike, Team Fortress, Company of heroes, you know games where PLAYERS COMPETE AGAINST OTHER PLAYERS (notice I said compete and not "ROFL GANKED YOUR FACE OFF NEWBBBIIE!!"). Guild Wars based their game off Magic the Gathering, and they did extremely well by any standards, actually making their main competitors (WoW) pvp look like monkeys flinging crap at each other. In fact Guild Wars didn't really die until the devs started bending over to a very small portion of the playerbase that figured that their entitled to make fun killing changes to the game because they can spell pre-prot.

[eldaec]

DAoC:
Death Penalty? Very Minor - ten minute travel time to get back into RvR.
Item Loss? No.
Item Dependant? Yes
Dev Kill? Yes. Killed by bizarre expansions which added ever more pve grind. Attempts to resuscitate by removing grind were too late.
Indy or AAA? AAA

Guild Wars
Death Penalty? No.
Item Loss? No.
Item Dependant? Yes
Dev Kill? Yes. Excruciating PvE, wasn't even very long, but so unbelievably painful. Also the sport pvp endgame stops new players ever having a way in.
Indy or AAA? AAA

[wuzzman]

DAoC:
Death Penalty? Very Minor - ten minute travel time to get back into RvR.
Item Loss? No.
Item Dependant? Yes
Dev Kill? Yes. Killed by bizarre expansions which added ever more pve grind. Attempts to resuscitate by removing grind were too late.
Indy or AAA? AAA

Guild Wars
Death Penalty? No.
Item Loss? No.
Item Dependant? No
Dev Kill? Yes. Excruciating PvE, wasn't even very long, but so unbelievably painful. Also the sport pvp endgame stops new players ever having a way in.
Indy or AAA? AAA

just had to correct that, guild wars allowed you to create a max level (with armor and weapons) toon in 5 secs. also there was RA and TA for new players, later AB....what killed the high competition for new players was simply rank discrimination that was 90% player driven (community fault)  and 95% dev fault for even implementing a ranking system not based on win/loss ratio....but even at that PUG groups were very successful (when their builds weren't hit with the nerfbat by the 2% of the pvp community wanking on the forums.).

[eldaec]

what killed the high competition for new players was simply rank discrimination that was 90% player driven (community fault) 

Sorry. But no.

It's not 'community fault'. That's a pointless way of looking at things since the 'community' is not a collective intelligence capable of choosing how it reacts to given circumstances.

The problem was that the sport pvp endgame design gave established guilds no good reason to ever deign to interact with newer players. Developer's fault.

[Nebu]

A Tale in the Desert
Death Penalty? YES, Permadeath
Item Loss? NO
Item Dependant? Situational
Dev Kill? Yes.  Levels added.  Finite game length (not a persistant world).  Popularity contest
Indy or AAA? Indy

It's an MMO and it is PvP.  It just lacks the standard player killing mechanism.  You kill players through reputation, competition, and potentially DP ban.

Note: Edited with help from Eldaec

[eldaec]

Technically ATiTD has permadeath - it has the harshest death penalty ever devised short of reaching through the screen and stabbing you in the face.

Thankfully death is rare, I don't know if there have been any cases of death outside of the 'SotS'/Cabbage-juice mechanic?

[Lum]

meh DAOC is a failure by modern standards

Funny, it didn't seem like a failure to us when we worked on it. In fact, it seemed pretty darned successful, with hundreds of thousands of people enjoying it, making the studio a lot of money, all that. I guess modern standards changed from "profitable and fun", though!

More on topic: slinging phrases like "carebears" and "wowheads" around implies that the speaker doesn't *want* a 'successful' game by whatever standard you use, they want a game that makes them feel better. Included in an elite, "skilled" for playing it, whatever. (Eve is great for this - it's a successful PvP game that is probably the most new-player-inaccessible ever made.) Same reason why some people don't listen to bands that have record contracts, I guess.

UO rhetoric is another good example. "THE DEVS KILLED UO". No, the Devs *saved* UO, because if a firewall vs. unchecked PKing had not been put into place, UO would not have had the subscriber base to continue running. It may not have been the game YOU liked any more, but doomcasting it because you couldn't kill miners and roleplayers wthout consequence any more is somewhat of a short-sighted analysis.

[Venkman]

DAoC was fine at the time, as both a game and a subscription base relative to the size of the genre of the day.

[eldaec]

meh DAOC is a failure by modern standards

Funny, it didn't seem like a failure to us when we worked on it. In fact, it seemed pretty darned successful, with hundreds of thousands of people enjoying it, making the studio a lot of money, all that.

I guess modern standards changed from "profitable and fun", though!

Didn't you get the memo?

By modern standards anything that doesn't involve the developers moving into golden palaces with armies of 1000 servants and 500 concubines is a 'failure'.

Also, by modern standards anything that does involve the developers moving into golden palaces with armies of 1000 servants and 500 concubines is considered a sellout and a 'failure' on an artisitic level.

[wuzzman]

what killed the high competition for new players was simply rank discrimination that was 90% player driven (community fault) 

Sorry. But no.

It's not 'community fault'. That's a pointless way of looking at things since the 'community' is not a collective intelligence capable of choosing how it reacts to given circumstances.

The problem was that the sport pvp endgame design gave established guilds no good reason to ever deign to interact with newer players. Developer's fault.

Sorry. But no. The community chose to use rank as a form of deciding player ability, which created a farming mentality for new players in order to get into HA PUG groups. There have NEVER been ANY reason for Guilds to train new players in ANY game, that is PLAYER driven by its very nature. It doesn't matter if its open world or real competition based pvp, whether a Guild takes new players in is the choice of the Guild. As a whole the guild community was much more forgiving than the PUG community of guild wars. A new player could always use their personal skill or social skills to get their way into guilds. The PUG's hardly ever allow players of lower rank to join their groups, thus limiting the amount of players interesting in competitive pvp by default. It wasn't that there wasn't a market, the playerbase just wasn't mature enough to folster it.

But your right the blame isn't entirely on the players heads because as a whole, they can only make similar decisions but not the same decisions.

The Developers stupidity in even inventing the rank system. You don't design a rank system in a serious pvp game without it be depended on win and loss ratio, Guild Wars rank system only counted wins. Which was effectively counting how long you played the game vs how good are you at it. If the rank system of guild wars was honest (counting wins AND loses) we have a different game. For years new players in order to play HA had to grind the first map, much like WAR makes you grind scenerioes, individual player skill was mute because all anyone cared about was getting that r3 tag and hopefully joining the teams that wouldn't let them in. HA was suppose to be casual gaming experience for those wanting to engage in competitive pvp without joining a group or having a large friend list, one of the perfect avenues for getting new players use to the finer mechanics of high competitive pvp. It turned into a race to see who gets their rank the fastest, no one cared about winning the Hall of Heroes anymore, HA stopped being casual or competitive and thus many players were simply turned off to serious pvp before they even did GvG.


oh and speaking of DAOC, when I say "by todays standards" I'm not talking about how much cash it made, I'm talking about the laundry list of dead mechanics and bad design decisions.

[Lum]

oh and speaking of DAOC, when I say "by todays standards" I'm not talking about how much cash it made, I'm talking about the laundry list of dead mechanics and bad design decisions.

The words you are looking for are "I didn't like it personally", not "it was a failure by modern standards". :)

[wuzzman]

oh and speaking of DAOC, when I say "by todays standards" I'm not talking about how much cash it made, I'm talking about the laundry list of dead mechanics and bad design decisions.

The words you are looking for are "I didn't like it personally", not "it was a failure by modern standards". :)

of course DAOC was fun when I played it back in the day, so was runescape...

[eldaec]

The days where PvP mattered to ones own holdings in the world seem to be pretty far behind us. Nobody wants to lose their shit, especially to another player. And no other genre really makes you lose your stuff and have it lost forever. You win or lose and the world resets.

EvE disagrees.

The thing about EVE is that you don't lose everything, you lose the ship you were flying and everything it was fitted with, but any established player will have at least half a dozen ships fitted for different purposes, and it never breaks the game for you to lose a spaceship.


This is something the fantasy mmogs have always failed to grasp, they've generally fluctuated between losing/winning everything (or at least an awful lot) and losing/winning nothing. There is a middle ground out there.

[wuzzman]

The days where PvP mattered to ones own holdings in the world seem to be pretty far behind us. Nobody wants to lose their shit, especially to another player. And no other genre really makes you lose your stuff and have it lost forever. You win or lose and the world resets.

EvE disagrees.

The thing about EVE is that you don't lose everything, you lose the ship you were flying and everything it was fitted with, but any established player will have at least half a dozen ships fitted for different purposes, and it never breaks the game for you to lose a spaceship.


This is something the fantasy mmogs have always failed to grasp, they've generally fluctuated between losing/winning everything (or at least an awful lot) and losing/winning nothing. There is a middle ground out there.

thats the thing that erks me about Eve, how long do I have to be playing the game before my hand can stop baby sitting my cock...

[Ingmar]

The GW assessment is factually incorrect. Absolutely zero PVE is required to participate in PVP with a max leveled, max geared character. PVE is entirely optional (but I kind of like it, especially the later campaigns.)

[Calandryll]

The days where PvP mattered to ones own holdings in the world seem to be pretty far behind us. Nobody wants to lose their shit, especially to another player. And no other genre really makes you lose your stuff and have it lost forever. You win or lose and the world resets.

EvE disagrees.

The thing about EVE is that you don't lose everything, you lose the ship you were flying and everything it was fitted with, but any established player will have at least half a dozen ships fitted for different purposes, and it never breaks the game for you to lose a spaceship.


This is something the fantasy mmogs have always failed to grasp, they've generally fluctuated between losing/winning everything (or at least an awful lot) and losing/winning nothing. There is a middle ground out there.

Technically UO worked this way too. Any established player had a bankload of stuff and getting killed and looted resulted in about 2 minutes of re-equipping.

The problem is getting to the point where you are an established player before you die and lose all of your stuff.

[eldaec]

There have NEVER been ANY reason for Guilds to train new players in ANY game, that is PLAYER driven by its very nature.

 

Wut?

I assume you meant any game except DAoC, EVE, Shadowbane, Planetside, and the metric butttonne of other games which don't put an upper limit on the number of cats you choose to herd in your pvp team?


Or do Goonswarm not really exist?

[wuzzman]

There have NEVER been ANY reason for Guilds to train new players in ANY game, that is PLAYER driven by its very nature.

 

Wut?

I assume you meant any game except DAoC, EVE, Shadowbane, Planetside, and the metric butttonne of other games which don't put an upper limit on the number of cats you choose to herd in your pvp team?


Or do Goonswarm not really exist?

So...having 1000000000000000000000000000000000000 players in your pvp team makes your inherently more likely to let joe new player in your team? well I guess zerg guild always needs to recruit cannon folder...

[Nebu]

There have NEVER been ANY reason for Guilds to train new players in ANY game, that is PLAYER driven by its very nature.

Though it was technically an incentive for individuals to train noobs rather than guilds, both AC and AtitD have/had systems in place to do this.   

[Slayerik]

I didn't play AC either.

For me there seems to be a real connect between good PVP games, and item/territory gains and losses.

[Soln]

need to add Lineage 1 and 2 PvP 

[Venkman]

The days where PvP mattered to ones own holdings in the world seem to be pretty far behind us. Nobody wants to lose their shit, especially to another player. And no other genre really makes you lose your stuff and have it lost forever. You win or lose and the world resets.

EvE disagrees.

There is a reason why Eve is so unique it's a genre unto itself.

[Sir T]

The days where PvP mattered to ones own holdings in the world seem to be pretty far behind us. Nobody wants to lose their shit, especially to another player. And no other genre really makes you lose your stuff and have it lost forever. You win or lose and the world resets.

EvE disagrees.

The thing about EVE is that you don't lose everything, you lose the ship you were flying and everything it was fitted with, but any established player will have at least half a dozen ships fitted for different purposes, and it never breaks the game for you to lose a spaceship.

This is something the fantasy mmogs have always failed to grasp, they've generally fluctuated between losing/winning everything (or at least an awful lot) and losing/winning nothing. There is a middle ground out there.

Eve is only "thriving" because the "established" players all have 6 accounts, a lot of which they bought from people that already quit. I've talked to many people since I quit eve and outside the addicted circle jerk the amount of players that are quitting eve is going through the roof. And no-one really has a good word to say about the wonderful Death experience. Eve is designed to need multiple accounts to play at this stage and to have you buy a character at least a year old to have a hope. No-one really believes its skill based anymore.

You might say that it never breaks the game to lose a spaceship, but I have ground weeks to replace ships I have lost. Literally weeks. That is stupid grind, especially if you are trying to avoid stupid jerks at the time which stop you recovering. Of course I could have bought Isk from CCP, but then I saw though their little pyramid scheme at least a year before I finally found the willpower to finally quit.

Anyway back on topic, the only true PVP- style game that I played was Battlefield 2142. And the thing was it was completely fair. And when I logged off, no matter how much I died I could shrug and be back again the next day. Thats what fun is about. I don't need gaming to be my job

Regarding leveling. Theres 2 types of players really. The first is the type that goes along, enjoys the experience and thinks about what skills he is going to boost max one or 2 levels ahead. The other is the one that maps out his skill progression knows exactly where he is going to grind to get the best items and basically rushes through it to get to the gold standard near the end. The problem is that player type 2 is the most likely to quit when he realizes that the gold at the end of the rainbow is not that shiny or is not the shiny that he wants, or the rest of the world is not as obsessive as he is. Player type 1 is easier to please, but it requires a far different style of game than player 2, Its very very different to satisfy both camps, and player 2 types tend to be the ones screaming the loudest.

And the thing is, despite the fact that Battlefield might be what player 2 says he wants, in reality they done play that? You have to ask why? I think the reason is they want to feel powerful. they want to lord it over people that dont have any real way of winning against them. Thats the seductive draw of a level based system. No fight is ever completely fair, as everyone's equipment and stats are different. And the temptation to game that can be irresistible to a lot of people.

Also you have to remember that in the era of DAOC, the gold farming and skill grinding industries were nowhere near as big as they are now. These days Gold sellers are beta testing their strategies before the game is even live. Its their business to do that. And when you have that no game can really survive.

[Nija]

The thing about EVE is that you don't lose everything, you lose the ship you were flying and everything it was fitted with, but any established player will have at least half a dozen ships fitted for different purposes, and it never breaks the game for you to lose a spaceship.

That is how I, and about 10% of the userbase of Ultima Online played the game pre-trammel. Too bad the other 90% of the people playing didn't see that memo.

[wuzzman]

I didn't play AC either.

For me there seems to be a real connect between good PVP games, and item/territory gains and losses.

I think there is a real connection between games with little grind having excellent pvp and games with time sinks having medicore pvp.

Darniaq the reason player 2 doesn't play battefield is because player 2 is not a pvp'er to begin with 

[Slayerik]

Eve is only "thriving" because the "established" players all have 6 accounts, a lot of which they bought from people that already quit. I've talked to many people since I quit eve and outside the addicted circle jerk the amount of players that are quitting eve is going through the roof. And no-one really has a good word to say about the wonderful Death experience. Eve is designed to need multiple accounts to play at this stage and to have you buy a character at least a year old to have a hope. No-one really believes its skill based anymore.

Thats funny, I keep watching people leave and try games and keep coming back to Eve. Many of them love the rush like I do. I think death penalty is good, when you pop an enemy ship you actually took them out of the fight. It mattered. When I get popped, 90% of the time I go...."Ah fuck, I shouldn't have done that" and learn from my mistakes. You popped their BS in a fleet fight, thats one less BS you have to worry about until they can get reinforcements or run off to carebear in empire. Territory matters. Fight for the good stuff.

You absolutely are off in the year old character thing, but oh well. The skill in the game is your smarts, reaction to situations, and execution of plans. The other side is properly setting up your gang to be effective. Me in my friends often roam in some of the 'worst' T2 ships in the game, assault frigates, and I could link you some killboard results from those. If you think Eve PVP doesn't take skill, then you are fooling yourself.

[Sir T]

Dont give me that BS. (a) I killed roughly 3 -4 bill in crap in my Eve carreer and lost about 1-2 bill. Second. I flew dominixes in sole of the worst fucking hellholes in eve. I thought I was shit till one say I had a bit of spare cash and I though "Hey lets splash on some t2. Should not make THAT much of a difference"

The result was 3 months of utter carnage as I blew everything to hell. Same guy, same skill, same tactics. T2 was the only difference.

So go pounce on some newbies and think you are winning. I had over 40 million skill points and I wound up flying cov ops becasue I would up not believing any of my kills were anything to do with personal skill.

[eldaec]

You might say that it never breaks the game to lose a spaceship, but I have ground weeks to replace ships I have lost. Literally weeks. That is stupid grind, especially if you are trying to avoid stupid jerks at the time which stop you recovering. Of course I could have bought Isk from CCP, but then I saw though their little pyramid scheme at least a year before I finally found the willpower to finally quit.

Are you talking about capital ships or something?

Losing a battleship is 40M? So, 2 hours of ISK generation tops, and that assumes you don't play with an alliance that issues refunds. Which you can

Losing T2 crusiers is what, up to 100-150M?

Anyway, regardless of EVE, my point still stands, looting after pvp is perfectly possible so long as it isn't built around your character losing 8 near-irreplaceable pieces of equipment that define the character more than any other factor.

Anyway back on topic, the only true PVP- style game that I played was Battlefield 2142. And the thing was it was completely fair. And when I logged off, no matter how much I died I could shrug and be back again the next day. Thats what fun is about. I don't need gaming to be my job

But how long did you play it? And how long would you have been willing to subscribe?


I loved Planetside for the two months I played it, but after that, having seen/done everything, I just ran out reasons to play. I was perfectly happy to have bought the game and got two months out of it, but I rather get the impression that the dev team was set up for much longer subscriptions.

There is a reason why Eve is so unique it's a genre unto itself.

When you really think about it, it has an awful lot in common with UO. It just goes a different route to fix some of the core problems that launch-UO hadn't worked out yet.

[wuzzman]

Eve is only "thriving" because the "established" players all have 6 accounts, a lot of which they bought from people that already quit. I've talked to many people since I quit eve and outside the addicted circle jerk the amount of players that are quitting eve is going through the roof. And no-one really has a good word to say about the wonderful Death experience. Eve is designed to need multiple accounts to play at this stage and to have you buy a character at least a year old to have a hope. No-one really believes its skill based anymore.

Thats funny, I keep watching people leave and try games and keep coming back to Eve. Many of them love the rush like I do. I think death penalty is good, when you pop an enemy ship you actually took them out of the fight. It mattered. When I get popped, 90% of the time I go...."Ah fuck, I shouldn't have done that" and learn from my mistakes. You popped their BS in a fleet fight, thats one less BS you have to worry about until they can get reinforcements or run off to carebear in empire. Territory matters. Fight for the good stuff.

You absolutely are off in the year old character thing, but oh well. The skill in the game is your smarts, reaction to situations, and execution of plans. The other side is properly setting up your gang to be effective. Me in my friends often roam in some of the 'worst' T2 ships in the game, assault frigates, and I could link you some killboard results from those. If you think Eve PVP doesn't take skill, then you are fooling yourself.

it takes skill for those who bother to grind for money and get the 3-6 ships. for everyone else  . I mean seriously people go back to WoW after trying new games, does that make WoW arena any less gear based?