EVE General Discussion

I play the game to have fun, yes. Up until 3 years ago, I played it for killmails - pure highscore hunting. Getting a KM just satisfied me and I wouldn't get to sleep without at least 1 kill.


I made my isk elsewhere and used my other sources of income to fund that.

But that's exactly what's wrong with the game - people fly around in lowsec in expensive ships with absolutely no purpose, running high sec l4s, production chains and market alts to fund it, which renders the pvp entirely meaningless.

From a tactical/gameplay perspective, there's almost no point in running small gangs.

Call me a moron, but I think that's just a terrible design flaw in a so-called 'pvp-focused game'.

I don't know what you mean. I have no issue with leaderships skills. You are the one resorting to nonesense in order to support what is obviously a bad mechanic.

The OP is right these are alt accounts. It doesn't matter how many are in your gang somone better be dual boxing an alt or you will be at a severe disadvantage.

If they had to be on grid then people would have their mains use their leadership skills and use command ships in battles. It wouldn't be relegated to alts.

So this is you basically admitting that it's not zero risk? Cool, glad we could clear that up.

-Liang

Nah, it's not as bad as I described, I shortened it a bit to make a point. I explained that to be good at any one thing (especially small frigates) it doesn't take that long. He still didn't feel it was worth it, waiting months or perhaps even years to see some content. At the time I was aiming for a Marauder for L4s, and he asked how long my skillplan was, and I had about 180 days left. And he said that on average he plays an MMO for 3-5 months tops, unless new content keeps being addes. It's how most players are these days, which is why I maintain that until CCP stops and smells the 2012, the game isn't going anywhere good. What worked questionably well 9 years ago just doesn't work now.

And realistically, the cap you speak of, the absolute one, still takes a couple of years to train for even for a frigate, if you want to absolutely max everything, including targeting, capacitor, navigation, gunnery, drones, etc., to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of a ship. If you only go to IV, yeah it's quick. But all those 5, 10 and 20% do add up compared to V. That's the second major minus for most new players.

The point I was trying to make is that most people are not willing to commit to 3 months, never mind 3 years. Let's face it, there hasn't really been an MMO recently where to max out something the time frame is measured in years. Last one I can think of is Lineage II, where at higher levels you would maybe make 1% of a level in an hour. But even so, with some EVE skills even at 2.5k SP/hr you are still only gaining 0.13% of a "level" an hour. This may have worked in the good old days, when MMOs were few and far apart, and there wasn't much choice. But in today's MMO market, it just doesn't fly.

But back to the topic - it's true that not everyone has a booster alt. But there's a pretty huge difference between having one and not having one. And yes, it can be dealt with - such as bring more friends, bring your own booster alts, etc. But there's a concept from other MMOs that people also understand very well, called a "pocket healer". That is, a dedicated healer character attached to your main, usually played by another person and not an off-grid alt sitting at a POS like in EVE. And everyone knows that going solo or even 2v2 against someone with a pocket healer is a losing proposition most of the time. And in EVE, this is done with an alt. An alt means a second account. A second account means $30/mo instead of $15. Which isn't a killer by itself, but when you add to that the huge minus that is the skill system and a huge handicap a totally new player starts off with, it becomes too much for most players. Hence EVE's "growing" 450k subs, most of which are alt accounts. Not healthy, IMHO.

Yes - I'd call figuring out the distance at which your T3 booster can be probed to a warpable result by an all V scanner in a fully t2 grav-capacitor-rigged T3 and a full lg virtue-set along with Poteque hardwirings and using the value in dscan whilst hitting that on the second screen every now and then basically risk-free.

That's what I meant with 'zero risk if used properly'.

Must be my bad English, I beg your pardon.

[edit]: I'm a little confused though - would you consider determining the value and hitting dscan risky?

So we can agree there's no risk in fielding the T3 booster using the methods above.

And yes - I use 3 screens, triple box and am actually quite used to frequently hit D-scan on all of them.

Comparing T3 OGB to a miner in lowsec are we now?

I don't think anyone mines at a belt in low sec? I was assuming they were at a grav sig.

-Liang

I don't mine much, but I guess you're right on that one.

Doesn't change anything about the fact that using a T3-booster is basically risk free, and noone but a drunk+afk+sleeping imbecile would ever lose one.

i know it happens - it's because there are some drunk+afk+sleeping imbeciles playing this game.

Probably being drunk, afk and an imbecile is risky - using a T3 booster is not.


Small gangs need goals and benefits, but T3 offgrid boosters have to go.

Again, you mistake my intent. I'm fine with off grid boosters going... after they fix the problems that's going to cause.

-Liang