Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The Issue

It would seem that the original design of Incursions had a central “escalation” theme.

The idea was to add in negative effects so that pilots would work on the easier Vanguard sites first, then build up to Assault, then HQ and then climax in a desperate fight to remove the mothership!! Ideally this should take a few days so lots of people can get involved.

Sounds exciting doesn’t it… what has happened? The Vanguard sites have become the site of choice, earning lots of pilots lots of isk for relatively less organisational effort than the higher class sites. The Assault and HQ sites sometimes have the odd fleet running them, but they take more effort to arrange and maintain the fleet numbers so it’s just easier to run Vanguard sites. The Vanguard sites are also the most basic fleet; close ranged dps and logis, the others require more types of roles which makes forming and maintaining a fleet even more difficult. There’s also the debate over the Vanguard sites being easier to complete therefore netting better reward per unit time, but that’s a slightly different balance issue.

The Incursion meters are filled within hours, so the negative effects against damage and resistances aren’t in effect at all for most of the Incursions time. Linked to this, the only reason high sec Incursions aren’t completed within hours of them spawning is because we, the players have (mostly) agreed to farm them for a few days rather than blitz them, as we like the isk and don’t want to trek across the regions of New Eden every day.

In short, the escalation part of the mechanic is broken.


The Proposal

The basic premise of my proposed change is to alter the way in which the Incursion meter and the sites interact.

At the moment the interaction is linear. Every site moves the Incursion meter by the same amount, whenever it is run. Every site gives you the same reward, whenever it’s run based on fleet member count.

Change that interaction so that running Vanguard sites at the beginning of the Incursion has full effect for full reward, but as the Incursion meter approaches 33% the rewards and Incursion meter amounts per site begin to reduce, with the Incursion meter amounts per site dropping to zero by around 35%. If you continue to run them you’re no longer pushing back the Incursion you’re just holding the first line so you only get paid the lower amount.
Note, isk and LP don’t drop to 0, only the effect the sites have on the Incursion meter.

As the Vanguard sites begin to lose their effect the Assault sites come into their own, they let you push the Incursion meter up to 66% before they start to lose their effect, and their rewards drop. The second line is held.

After the Assault sites the HQ sites come into their own, you kill off a few of the henchmen big ships and finally the mothership spawns. The Incursion is repelled.

Obviously the numbers for when the transitions between each period occur are up for debate, the “vg 0-33, as 33-66, hq 66-100” is a straight split, but a “vg 0-50, as 50-90, hq 90-100” might be a nice spread given the organisational effort Any thoughts on the spread for the transitions between periods.

Why do the sites drop to lower rewards? Running a Vanguard when the Incursion’s negative effects are high early on in an Incursion is harder so it needs a good reward, once the Incursion has been pushed back further they get easier and the reward shouldn’t be as high. You should always get paid, but not as much.

Transitions could be sudden steps or smooth curves or whatever. Personally I’d expect fairly steep curves.

The knock-on

There would also need to be balancing for the overall duration of each Incursion as getting to the mothership requires a bit more from the players. It should be a challenge to ensure an Incursion completes and the LP pools aren’t lost, but it shouldn’t be impossible. That challenge should be organising players rather than “how many Vanguard sites can you run before dying of boredom?”.

There would need to be a look at the negative effects in each site class during each period. During the Vanguard period running Assault sites should be a ballsey move for the well-organised and equipped, running the HQ sites should be suicide, similarly for the HQ sites in the Assault period. The mechanic shouldn’t arbitrarily stop players from trying, but a collusion between the negative effects and the high dps of the higher class of sites should make it practically difficult/impossible. This might already be working, but at present you don’t see it much as the Incursion meters fill fast and the negative effects are removed.

The rewards at different times of the Incursion’s life across each of the classes of site can be used to push different behaviours. In general the idea would be to incentivise the current highest class of site (Assault over Vanguard after the first transition, HQ over Assault after the second) so that the pilots are gently pushed towards completing the Incursion, whilst allowing pilots to farm the lower classes if they want to, but for (slightly) less reward than when that class was at its height. You could add in a short term boost to the next class’ reward as the Incursion approaches each transition, to “push” pilots into the next class. Any thoughts on how the rewards should be structured.

The limiting factor on the Incursion’s duration becomes how well organised the pilots can become, not some gentlemens’ agreement to work the game for isk. Not that such a thing is bad, but I don’t think it should be greed that decides things, but organisational skill and networking.

Problem: Too many of us love the ISK faucet that is Incursions and would really rather not see it changed. The cooperative nature of not blitzing the mothership makes that pretty obvious. And the fact, if anyone tries to organize any kind of fleet to break that pact of cooperation, half the universe wardecs them instantly and drives them into basically staying docked for the next month to teach them a lesson.

Out of curiosity, how many Vanguard sites have people run where the Incursion meter wasn't at 100%?