One frequent consideration we have in the Uni is the idea of how much weight should be given to individual needs vs needs of the group. Our mission involves educating pilots in Eve, and we want every one of our students to suceed. However, at times we must make decisions that work for the good of the entire group, or of the majority, and may have adverse effects on some individuals.
We have traditionally limited our students posting in CAOD, for example. This is designed almost entirely to protect the University, as most of the time consequences would not directly come to the individual student (also CAOD is/was a cess-pool). Another example was our policies on who you can fleet with. We limited individual students from PVPing with their friends in other corps in order to prevent diplomatic issues coming to bear on the University.
Yet another example was our WSOP. We made a set of rules and procedures to minimize the length of wars and insure maximum safety for our newest members. We knew that we have some pilots that are capable of surviving during wartime, but also many that would feed into the desires of some of our WTs. Thus, we tried to minimize losses and wartime for the Uni as a whole, even though it might not have been best for individual pilots.
When joining, the students give up certain courses of action in order to be part of our community, and create a shared structure in which we can all benefit. Any particular rule might not be best for you, but it is supposed to have a benefit to the group that outweighs the inconvenience to you. Now, after our month of no-wsop, we are reevaluating where those lines might be drawn, and what is the best balance of group vs individual needs. Bear with us as we work to try to continue our policy of doing what is best for our students and the University as a whole.
You are doing your students a dis-service with this decshield idea that you have come up with. You are taking away part of the game that has always been apparent to anyone playing, ie... Eve is a dangerous place, don't fly what you can't afford to lose.
ReplyDeleteThere of course is more to this game than empire space, but one aspect of empire space has always been war declarations and griefers, by teaching your students the basis of pvp and how to deal with such idiots, and that it is ok and can be fun to lose ships, is how you should be approaching these matters.
Take them all out in t1 cruisers and blob your war targets. You will kill a few that you catch off guard, by sheer numbers alone. And you will have prepared your students for a much more enjoyable eve universe than dealing with the wars by hiding from them.
Teach your students surveillance techniques that any eve pilot should know. How to scope out your path with a noob alt, that wY they don't lose an expensive ship to a gate camp. Some of these things are just common sense to the older player that need to be fought to the new people rather than shielding them from the harsh realities of the game.
Make them want to pvp by increasing their skills on how to follow instructions of a decent fc. How to bring a fleet fitted ship, filling out the roles of the fleet. This will likely keep them from rage quitting the first time they lose an expensive ship.
Zandramus
I couldn't disagree more. There are more PvE centeric activities the game (mining, missioning, Incursions, PI, invention, production, etc.) than just PvP combat. Fail decs by corporations or alliances of one or two people do not teach anything resembling PvP. Especially as many Unistas often drop corp for the duration of the war so they can carry on whatever PvE activity they want to do. If Unistas want to learn PvP we have low-sec, null-sec and WH space close by that we can take day trips too. If you want to teach us PvP, please come and meet us there.
ReplyDeleteZandramus,
ReplyDeleteI've found you've made a couple of assumptions that I want to address.
1) The dec-shield stops wars. First, it raises the cost, but any determined opponent could still declare war on us. Second, we plan to occasionally declare war in order to to gain experience in high-sec wars.
2) Empire wars are a good way to learn PVP. Some of the techniques you mentioned, such as advanced scouting, intel, or proper fleet fits are probably better taught in WH space, low-sec, or 0.0. Empire wars tend to be a lot of waiting, pointless camps, or station docking games. I'd rather just give people a ship and send them to a place where there are always enemies.