在《星战前夜》最新的PvE中寻找乐趣

2019-10-15 913

所以在过去的几周里，我在《星战前夜》中的大部分时间都花在了探索最新的PvE内容上，即最新的补丁《入侵》。对于大多数mmo中的玩家来说，玩PvE内容并不是什么特别的事情，但EVE是一款专注于PvP的游戏。我是一个总是深入参与这方面事情的人，在过去10年的游戏中，我只做了足够的PvE来满足我炸毁别人的宇宙飞船的欲望。希望这能提供足够的上下文，使以下句子具有适当的意义:

在《星战前夜》中，我从PvE中获得了比PvP更多的乐趣。

这些入侵提供了主要内容,作为球员必须联合起来对抗Triglavian集体的力量,一群人已经切断了与其他文明在深海空间一段时间,开发了一个痴迷于3号,所以玩家的昵称“三角形”。有一些神秘的暗示，他们甚至可能没有正确入侵，只是测试玩家的角色，以对抗《星战前夜》中的其他新派别，如漂流者或三沙的国家。不管怎样，这些入侵系统已经出现在hisec和lowsec的地图上，迫使玩家穿越游戏世界参与其中。

在最初发布的版本中，根本没有实际的目标要完成，入侵只涉及5-10艘护卫舰和驱逐舰出现在受影响的系统中。虽然这在当时可能有点让人失望，但玩家最终找到了在盖茨身上培养这些怪物的方法，并让开发者了解到玩家是如何在真空中处理npc的。

两周后我们进行了跟进，我们将最初的两个站点添加到游戏中，以完成那些被入侵的系统，包括次要的和主要的管道。这些都有相当简单的要求，你只需要去到网站上，杀死大量的npc，但同时也能促进小规模的社交PvE。小联盟似乎是被设计成3-5人，而大联盟则是5-10人，这远远低于10人的最低人数，而这是唯一的其他容易进入的PvE组合。

这确实有一些值得注意的初期问题，AI经常会在变形后卡在风景上，迫使飞行员在100公里的范围内跑向他们以获得完成的奖励。然而，负责该特性的开发人员出现在了一些社区冲突中，例如Roleplay是Primary和Malevelon Roe，他们很快就注意到了这种情况。这些问题在接下来的几周中得到了解决，参与的开发者通过这些渠道继续与社区保持健康的关系。

一段时间之后，《入侵》的内容被扩展为一个新的，更核心的挑战。这是一群玩家——从10到20人不等——与《星战前夜》中加入的最大船只——宽59公里的科洛萨尔号世界方舟展开的较量。这融合了深海基地和入侵的一些元素，同时团队需要处理高能力的npc和AoE效果，这些效果可以彻底摧毁一艘船，同时还要处理试图协调这样一群人的通常问题。

大约一个月前，我们看到了更多的新网站，因为新的渠道开始出现在系统中，而这些系统并没有受到入侵的影响，这给每个玩家都能进入的内容带来了单独的变化。这些网站可以有效地运行在几乎任何战列舰或以上，使它很容易开始。然而，由于需要完成战斗和救援任务才能获得全部奖励，对于那些想要充分利用时间的人来说，这是一个有趣的优化挑战。

这终于把我们带到了过去的一周，以及该功能的最新添加:网站关注一种名为“恒星加速器”的新Triglavian设备。如果不加以处理，这种结构显然有可能将整个太阳系拖入深不见底的死亡空间，而且还会增加全球效应，改变飞行员应对该地区其他地点的方式。这个地点也被封闭到特定的舰船等级，只允许1级及以下的巡洋舰进入。

现在，我并不是这个特性的早期采用者，我对最初几个补丁的关注主要集中在nullsec上，在那里漂流者们正在发动一场他们自己的入侵。然而在关注世界方舟网站的预告片之后，我便开始询问游戏中的一些朋友到底发生了什么，因为我在过去拥有一些关于入侵舰队的经验。很快，我发现自己在结束了对《星战前夜》的一些传说的讨论后，就被拖入了与阿什特罗瑟蒂(Ashterothi)的游戏中。阿什特罗瑟蒂负责管理公共舰队以应对入侵站点。

当我们穿过我们的第一个主要站点时，我很快就有了一种感觉，是什么让Invasion PvE与我参加的其他项目如此不同。npc所使用的战术与PvP中所使用的战术没有什么不同，他们在回到自己喜欢的范围内战斗之前，会进行一段短距离的扭曲，阻止玩家将他们赶走，并对他们进行零零碎碎的处理。他们也使用能量中和者和快速切换目标来扰乱和迷惑与他们战斗的治疗者。特里格莱维亚人甚至可以发出求救信号，从入侵区域周围召集四处游荡的团伙来帮助他们，这给本已充满挑战的局势增加了更大的压力。

但真正吸引我的是那种危险和混乱是可以预见的。这些增援部队可能会被侦察和摧毁，然后才开始尝试和运行一个网站，拒绝任何未来的增援部队，同时应对来自敌对舰队的压力蔓延，只需要每个人都注意，并喊出他们遇到麻烦。这一切都是为了让你在与npc的战斗中败下阵来，而不是因为你激怒了RNG众神，而是因为你无法与一系列怪物战斗，这让你觉得自己搞砸了。这是一种我从EVE PvE到现在很少有过的感觉，一种明显的被控制和被控制的挑战感。

然而，随着熟悉感的到来，我产生了突破界限的欲望，我很快就做到了。管道的一个小方面我没有提到的是,所有的地方对抗Triglavians有巨大的腰带入侵特定的矿石,既是装饰,邀请尝试和我同时被一些可怕的npc射击游戏。所以，我决定碰碰运气，看看会发生什么，如果我决定带9个独立的帐户，使用系统中允许的最大的采矿船，开始挖掘我能挖掘的一切。

发生了什么事吗?我解锁了ARG的下一部分了吗?遗憾的是。但我确实因为尝试了一些在《EVE》中可能从未尝试过的东西而感到兴奋，并做了一些不太理想的事情，只是为了看看这个功能会有什么反应，而这一切都是在和一群朋友玩得开心的时候发生的。随着CCP(《星战前夜》的制作公司)透露他们计划再花一年的时间来改进和增加这一功能，似乎未来只会有更多的探索机会。

现在，我的重点是直接在恒星加速器网站，因为它带来了一系列新的挑战，尝试和思考。对T1巡洋舰的限制极大地降低了你必须使用的原始力量的数量，但同时也移除了许多在PvE中最常用的舰船，如果你想要更有效率，就必须跳出固有的思维模式。还有一种隐含的欲望，那就是想要尽可能快地前进，因为在你开始战斗后，那些正在组装摧毁恒星结构的飞船就开始了。到目前为止，还没有人能够以足够快的速度杀死它们来阻止它的部署。

目前，我正致力于一个基于幻影的概念，有一些鱼鹰来支持它们，以便能够尽快通过它，看看如果我在所有装配的飞船上线之前杀死它们会发生什么。如果——通过某种奇迹——我成功了，我不知道它是否真的有用!但我想走出去，找到答案。

在我看来，这是一些优秀游戏设计的标志。

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原文：

So for the last few weeks, the majority of my time in EVE Online has been spent exploring the newest PvE content that came out in the last patch, Invasion. For players in most MMOs playing PvE content wouldn’t be particularly unusual, but EVE has a reputation of being a PvP focused game. I’m someone who’s always deeply involved in that side of things, only doing enough PvE as strictly necessary in the past 10 years of playing to support my desire to blow up other people’s spaceships. That hopefully provides enough context to make the following sentence appropriately meaningful:

I’m having more fun with PvE than PvP right now in EVE Online.

These Invasions have provided primarily group content, as players have to band together to fight against the forces of the Triglavian Collective, a group of humans who’ve been cut off from the rest of civilisation in Abyssal Space for some time and developed an obsession with the number three - Hence the player nickname of “Triangles”. There are some cryptic hints that they might not even be invading properly, but merely testing the player characters for an alliance against the other new factions in EVE Online, such as the Drifters or Sansha’s Nation. Either way, these invasion systems have shown up all around the map of hisec and lowsec, forcing players to travel across the game world to take part.

In the initial release, there were no actual objectives to complete at all, with the Invasion just involving roaming gangs of 5-10 frigates and destroyers appearing in the affected systems. Whilst this might have been a little bit of a letdown in the moment, players eventually figured out ways to farm these spawns on gates, and gave insight to the developers as to just how players were dealing with the NPCs in a vacuum where anything could be used.

Two weeks later came the followup, and we had the initial two sites added to the game for completion in systems that were being invaded, Minor and Major Conduits. These had fairly simple requirements, with you just needing to go to the site and kill the various waves of NPCs that spawned, but are balanced around facilitating small scale social PvE. Minors seem to be designed to be run by 3-5 people, while Majors by 5-10 - which is far below the 10 player minimum that running the only other easily accessible group PvE in Incursions.

This did have some notable teething issues, with the AI often getting stuck on the scenery after warping out, forcing the pilots running the site to burn out towards them for 100’s of kilometres in order to get their payout for completion. However, the devs responsible for the feature were present in several community discords such as Roleplay is Primary and Malevelon Roe, and were quickly alerted to the situation. These problems were smoothed over during the course of the next few weeks, and the devs involved continue to maintain a healthy relationship with the community via these channels.

Some time after this, the Invasion content was expanded with a new, more hardcore challenge in the Proving Ground. This pitted groups of players - anywhere from 10 to 20 - up against the biggest ship ever added to EVE Online: the collosal, 59 km wide World Ark. This merged some of the elements of Abyssal sites and Incursions, with the group needing to deal with highly capable NPCs and AoE effects that could completely wipe a ship out, all whilst dealing with the usual problems that trying to coordinate such a group of people entails.

Around a month ago we saw yet more new sites, as Emerging Conduits started popping up in systems that weren’t affected by the Invasions, bringing a solo variation to the content that every player could get into. These sites can be run efficiently in pretty much any battlecruiser or above, making it easy to get started with. However, due to needing to fulfill both a combat and a salvaging role in order to gain the full reward, it makes for an interesting optimisation challenge for those who want to make the most of their time.

That finally brings us up to this past week, and the most recent addition to the feature: sites focused around a new Triglavian device called a “Stellar Accelerator”. This structure apparently threatens to potentially drag the entire solar system into Abyssal Deadspace if not dealt with, and adds to the list of global effects that change how pilots have to deal with other sites in the area. This site is also gated off to certain ship classes, only allowing in Tech 1 Cruisers and below.

Now, I wasn’t an early adopter of this feature, with my attention for the first few patches being firmly focused on nullsec, where the Drifters were staging an invasion of their own. However after the trailer that focused on the World Ark site, I began to ask some of my friends in the game about exactly what was going on, as I had some experience both running and theorycrafting Incursion fleets in the past. Pretty quickly I found myself dragged into playing with the streamer Ashterothi, who was running public fleets to tackle Invasion sites, after finishing up a discussion on some of the lore of EVE Online.

I quickly got a feel for what made Invasion PvE so remarkably different from anything else I’d taken part in, as we went through our first major sites. The NPCs used tactics which weren’t dissimilar to those used in PvP, with them warping off a short distance before coming back to the fight at their preferred ranges, stopping players from kiting them away and dealing with them piecemeal. They also use energy neutralisers and rapidly switch targets in order to both disrupt and confuse the healers of the players fighting them. Triglavians can even send out a distress signal, calling in roaming gangs from around the invasion area to assist them, adding even more pressure to an already challenging situation.

But what really hooked me was just how much that danger and chaos was predictable. Those reinforcements could be scouted and destroyed before starting to try and run a site, denying any future reinforcements, whilst dealing with the spread of pressure from the hostile fleet just requires everyone to be paying attention and calling out when they’re in trouble. All of this comes to make it so that losing a fight to NPCs doesn’t feel like the result of you angering the RNG Gods, and ending up with a series of spawns you just can’t fight, it feels like you messing up. That’s a feeling I’ve rarely got from EVE PvE until now, a palpable sense of controlled - and controllable - challenge.

Still, with familiarity came the desire to push the boundaries, and I pretty quickly did. One little aspect to the Conduits that I haven’t mentioned is the fact that all of the places where you fight the Triglavians have huge belts of Invasion specific ore there, both as decoration, and an invitation to try and mine whilst being shot at by some of the scariest NPCs in the game. So, I decided to try my luck, and see just what would happen if I decided to bring 9 seperate accounts using the biggest mining ships allowed in the system and just started mining everything I could.

Did anything happen? Did I unlock the next part of the ARG? Sadly not. But I did get the excitement of trying something that probably hadn’t been tried before in EVE, and doing something suboptimal just to see how the feature would react to it, all whilst having fun with a group of friends. With CCP (the company which produces EVE Online) revealing that they plan to spend another year of development time on improving and adding to this feature, it seems like there’s only going to be more opportunities for exploration in the future.

Right now though, my focus is squarely on the Stellar Accelerator site, as it comes with a range of new challenges to try and think through. The limit to T1 Cruisers massively lowers the amount of raw power you have to play with, but also removes a lot of the ships most commonly used in PvE, forcing you to think outside of the box if you want to be efficient. There’s also an implied desire to want to go as fast as possible, as the ships which are assembling the star destroying structure begin after you start the fight. So far no-one’s been able to kill them fast enough to stop it from deploying.

Currently, I’m working on a concept based around the Phantasm, with a few Ospreys to support them in order to try and get through it fast enough to see what happens if I kill all the assembling ships before it gets online. If - through some miracle - I succeed, I have no idea if it’ll actually do anything! But I want to get out there and find out.

That, in my opinion, is the sign of some well done game design.

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