PVE in Eve seems to be getting a lot of discussion these day's. A lot of the talk is good. A lot more of the talk is sitting in a very grey area. At least in my view. That view is based on my casual carebear, solo, non pvp centric style of gameplay. That and the fact that I ignore the views that say "PVE is evil and PVP is all that counts".
Two good articles about the state and hopes of PVE are:
Portfolio of PVE from crossingzebras.com
&
The Passivity Purge from nevillesmit.com
The passive nature of some area's of PVE I think are vital, more so than others. I've found my time in Eve more constrained which limits options. Doing an in game activity that already has dangers and enforcing it to be more actively grindy in nature is only going to be a method to make people quit. I've heard a lot of people both in and out of the game and within the meta say that Eve Online IS a second job. That it IS spreadsheets online. It is all perspective. I've said before that Eve Online has a fine balance and it is constantly being tweaked. A player can only take so much of that tweaking however, before their own personal playstyle and time limit make the game unplayable.
Take something small and passive, PI. Planetary Interaction.
When introduced to the game PI was free after initial setup costs, so importing and exporting materials was free. Then it was NPC taxed. Then it was player and npc taxed. That player taxation was related to the markets so materials that were needed the most had their source planets taxed more. Sometimes you would find a friendly Corp that set their tax lower but most times not. As if that wasn't bad enough CCP changed the markets via the introduction of Citadels. So selling in an npc station included increased taxation. Finding a new Player run station to sell was then a pain. Would you have a station live long enough to sell the items, would other players be able to buy your items etc etc... Having Jita 4-4 as a main trade hub was so easy. But that is where Eve does it's "thing". Tweaking multiple area's eventually cross each other and that cross over only makes for compounding complications.
Eve really, really does know how to make life complicated and hard. If not considered hard today it will be tomorrow and then you'll be taxed some more on it for good measure.
I'm glad I'm out of the Omega class. There is freedom in the thought that living as an Alpha will let me view my main's and alts on both my accounts to "keep in contact" with them. But to also fly care free with some older alts with which I can act almost without care. Its very appealing. My play styles will be so radically different when the game brings back to life my old alts. The "old" 21 day trial characters were disposable for a reason. Now they are being given new life, they get to live on as they were and then some. Lots and lots of options are being opened up.
The ongoing debate on the Clone changes are bringing up clear ideas on what should be included and what should be limited.
http://nevillesmit.com/blog/2016/9/3/turn-alpha-safeties-on
http://nevillesmit.com/blog/2016/8/31/the-caste-system
http://crossingzebras.com/safeties-off-gloves-off/
A great podcast that is really worth listening to is "On Grid". Their second episode has lots of informative content on the upcoming F2P/Freemium feature that will hit Eve in November.
http://crossingzebras.com/on-grid-episode-2/
It will be interesting to see what kind of jump there will be in long term player numbers and where things will stand once the new Alpha clone states have "normalised"...
I've dabbled as I've said with the liberation of playstyle using a trial account so I won't waffle on further about it here. I will say that I'm not the only one. More recently sandciderandspaceships has just started a trial a few weeks before the news of clone states.
Interesting reading:
http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.ie/2016/08/starting-over.html
http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.ie/2016/08/my-new-toon-is-now-week-old.html
http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.ie/2016/09/60-million-isk-and-loving-it.html
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