After spending the past 3 days roaming looking for small gang PVP encounters, I have to admit I'm horribly disappointed at this game. With a few exceptions, PVP in this game only occurs in blob warfare. Random roams into "enemy" beta islands result in the following outcomes.
1) Alt spots you and everyone docks up
2) Alt spots you and everyone undocks in Arkhes to zerg once superior numbers is reached.
3) Alt spots you and everyone undocks in their 1337 ships to sit under the safety zones.Random ganks occur because of luck/bad timing but thats it. Incursions are heavily scripted and predictable. Blob warfare ends up dictating the terms even when more structured organization occurs.
Why you ask?
1) 1000m Radar. Epic stupidity. Even the fastest SpecOps still have a 8 sec close time. One alt toon can watch one of the gates to a beta island. Once someone pops through, its really easy to follow from a safe distance. Thus, keeping track of enemies is stupid easy.
2) "Escape" mechanism is missing. EVE had "warp to" to allow escape and evade to occur. Variable speed engagements are required. People need to be able to "get lost" in a island. Additionally the rather linear movement speed system in this game further limits the way PVP occurs.
3) Cloaks / Passive Radar. Because speed is the only decision point beyond blob, the small gang mechanic suffers without an alternate escape mechanism. Having a mech which could jump and cloak would dramatically add diversity to the game. It would also allow for people to spend time behind enemy lines watching and waiting for the right place and time to strike.
4) Lack of Human skill required. This could very well go with 1000m Radar but I think it is a seperate issue because it differentiates the good pilots from the blobbers. EVE's scanner was something that took Human Skill to operate and understand. Anyone could use it to get directions of incoming people from gates. But the truely skilled could use it to locate people in random locations under the clock. What it did was to limit the radar to only work if the human player knew what to do. Granted, Perpetuum is a terrain game. But similar human skills should be added.
Perpetuum has potential and yes, I know the devs are working on solutions to some of the problems (and others I didn't mention). But I'm not sure a resub is warrented because of the 1 dimensionality of the PVP game. Without the PVP game, Perpetuum is a second job and not fun.
Definetly agree on the escape mechanism. Was thinking about how a couple of us could go hunt players on the beta island. There's simply no good way to do it, it will result in certain death in very little time. EVE had the warp in/out mechanism which allowed you to hunt in enemy territory, if you picked your fights wisely you could last against superior numbers.
Also player owned structures, these allowed a small corp or even solo player to survive in 0.0 (at least until dreadnoughts came along) I really hope when they add terraforming small numbers of players will be able to set something up so they have a chance to live in the pvp areas too - Not just the big corps and alliances.
