Yinmatook kindly commented on the last post and provided a link to the EVE Vegas presentation relating to PVE / the new Forward Operating Bases.
https://go.twitch.tv/videos/181166320
The more interesting bit starts at 10:42.
It wasn’t mentioned how many sites would appear in Hi-Sec at the same time. I assume there would be lots more than Incursions / Shipyard sites.
Hi-Sec will be divided up, so one part will get Blood Raider Forward Operating Bases, the other part will get Guristas bases.
They will be a bit more common in systems with a security rating towards 0.5, a bit less common in systems with security ratings towards 1.0. Regardless, they could turn up just about anywhere in Hi-Sec. (I assume specific systems are excluded, like the big trade ones.)
You have to scan them down, but there will be clues they are there. The NPC Mining Operations in that system will instead be the Pirate Faction. You should also see special ships flying around.
If they are not addressed after a few days, they will head out and shoot players with bad standings towards them (that would be almost everyone), and attack vulnerable structures. I didn’t hear any specific reference to gate camping, or how many people would be required to deal with these roaming ships.
The actual Forward Operating Bases are designed to be tackled by between 10 and 50. By comparison, the Shipyards are designed for a minimum of 75 players and scale up as required. Apparently up to 1500 have tackled one before.
There will be no capital BPC drops – as you would expect, but there will apparently be some new special drops that will occur from time to time.
Most of the reward will be in Concord bounties placed on the actual Forward Operating Base. The Fleet doing the most damage attacking it will get the bounty, scaled and spread equally across the fleet members. That would mean if contested, only one fleet will get paid for clearing the site, the rest get nothing.
It doesn’t sound quite as bad as suggested – but again, I need to wait for more concrete information.
While obvious and already apparent – it was made quite clear in the presentation that the goal of these sites is two fold. First, to get Empire Players together into fleets and hopefully trigger in them a new, co-operative based passion for the game. Second, to train players in PVP like tactics through the new NPC AI, in the hope they will then go out and fight other players.
This is apparently the only solution CCP can find for retaining players in EVE. It seems us solo players just don’t hang around long enough..
Evehermit 
“This is apparently the only solution CCP can find for retaining players in EVE.”
Did you also miss the information about the Resource Wars feature? While it will be group oriented, it will be treated more like a public quest where you can join in without having to join a fleet and help meet site goal by either mining and loading the harvest on NPC haulers or by defending NPC haulers from pirate spawns. The sites will be available in various ranks, akin to the way missions are, so you have some progression in both ship sizes and difficulty. They will be findable via the new interface for The Agency, which will be a consolidated PvE “things to do” finder with Life Blood. Resource Wars seemed pretty neat in theory at least. I plan to give them a try.
There are two videos posted about that from EVE Vegas in the CCP video library on Twitch. Maybe you should take a look at that as well before going for the absolute negative pronouncement. https://go.twitch.tv/ccp/videos/all
Seems somewhat harsh, but we all have our own perceptions.
CCP have previously stated Resource Wars are designed for new players – to get them used to fleeting and working around other players, and introducing them to some of the skills required for PVP. The lite version of Forward Operating Bases, which are the lite version of Shipyards.
It is their stated solution for long term retention of players, and they are being consistent with it. I’ve never thought it would be as effective as it could be, particularly as by its nature it excludes the type of player I try to represent here.
I will look at Resource Wars – and might find something in it I particularly like.
I appreciate you calling me out on not looking at CCP’s announcements for myself, but I was looking for those on the forums and in Dev blogs and on Youtube all week without much luck. They had their twitch shows up – but they were up to 6 hours long each, with no table of content or description on most aside “Day 1” or “Day 2”. I didn’t have the time to watch them all. Since I last looked however CCP have dissected the Twitch Videos into sessions which make them much easier for the casual player to consume.
Luckily I find myself up at 4am feeling unwell – so I looked at the segment by Team Event Horizon, about their 5 done and 5 to come Events, and Team Psycho Sisters on the Agency interface update. The later I am actually a bit disappointed by. As I have previously stated I like the Agency concept, and was enthused about the approach of making nearby content more readily accessible through it. I wasn’t pleased to hear it will only show 12 random content items. Filtering should help that, but I’d prefer the list to be more complete to be honest. Surely they didn’t need to show belts separately for example.
First time I heard about this, I thought: ” this wasn’t designed by anyone that had played in High Sec in the last 3 years…”
I’m going to be keeping my eyes out for blog posts from High Sec players talking about this… should make for interesting reading.
Are there any Hi-Sec players (apart from Hermit) still blogging…? I’m curious to find more if there are any.
An interesting question. I don’t view myself as representing Hi-Sec. I’m not sure I even know what a Hi-Sec player in EVE is now. My blog list is mostly made up of very old players. The bloggers who like me through circumstance (work and family) have had to become casual / solo pilots, only tend to post sporadically now. There seems to be both an effort to find a place in the game, and a lament (as you would see here) that the game doesn’t seem to throw much in their direction any more. When they do remark on that, they tend to get chastised for not being more appreciative for the scraps of content that others view as being appropriate for them. It is sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy I guess. CCP feel the longest paying customers are those who do the PVP / Fleet game, so they focus on them. That makes the casual players leave, which reinforces CCP’s view. If you come across any enthusiastic Hi-Sec Player blogs that have lasted a while, let me know!
True – but I think you represent very well the thinking and drives for the solo/casual… and a majority of them I suspect would be High Sec based. Not trying to tar anyone with a particular brush though 🙂
I do not blog often really. But I am high-sec based, solo and casual. Been meaning to post about the Resource Wars, but tempus fugit. By the I get around to it, it might already be released.
https://easyesky.blogspot.com
Sisi review of the Resource Wars, latest posting.
Interesting. I wonder how new players will find them.
Do they impact your standings? (And if they do give positive standings for one faction, do they drop other faction standings? )
CCP answered thus here; https://forums.eveonline.com/t/lifeblood-resource-wars/29167/4
It would seem no. But it does look like some of the social skills will have influence. I will look at training Connections to 5.