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New NPC AI, how about no?

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Morrigan LeSante
Perkone
Caldari State
#501 - 2013-01-31 20:14:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Morrigan LeSante
Mathrin wrote:
Bedlin wrote:
Mathrin wrote:
This change should have happened along time ago. Now drones have a negative side like all other weapons platforms.


What is the medium or heavy drones positive side?

Or are you from the camp that you don't rely on drones and so others shouldn't need to either. (Btw I don't use drones on my Tengu either.)



I can't fly a tengu. I'm amarr. Positive side of drones is: you can choose damage types. You don't need ammo. They don't rely on cap. Other weapons have these perks but none have them all. Additionally if you were smart before the ai change drones didn't get ECM, TD, damp, or neut aggro all of which can cripple other ships. So before drone users didn't have to worry about much. Now I think it's balanced as they have to react to what's on field.



And the drone drawbacks? What about those?

Travel time?
The the damage selection comes at a price?
That the weapon can be destroyed?


And that's before the new 'feature':
That any medium or heavy drone deployed more than 10km out is almost certainly dead?


You see even as a missile boat driver, rather than speculate, I took a myrm out (at BC V) to test and I can tell you now, even in level 3's, mediums are dead beyond approximately 10km. They're like really expensive chaff. Very quickly, I found myself spending ALL my time watching the overview for reds stopping flashing and little grey bars blinking deep red quickly and mashing the return key. That's all I could do if I didnt want to lose drones and even then there's only so fast they recall and still sometimes they die in spite of my watching them like some sort of OCD crazy.

It's simply not a fun mechanic, it's ridiculous. Remember, this was on a drone boat with the HP bonus, its not even worth considering on an unbonused hull save at absolute minimum range.

Later I took a sentry drone boat out for jollies and can again confirm that sentries are just fine.

Lights are borderline, but medium and heavies? That's a point blank weapon system, but nothing. An expensive, temporary, lacklustre, point blank range weapon system. Tough crap if the NPCs orbit at middle distance.

I don't think that was the aim of the change.
Chi'Nane T'Kal
Interminatus
#502 - 2013-02-01 10:13:35 UTC  |  Edited by: Chi'Nane T'Kal
Morrigan LeSante wrote:



And the drone drawbacks? What about those?

Travel time?
The the damage selection comes at a price?
That the weapon can be destroyed?


And that's before the new 'feature':
That any medium or heavy drone deployed more than 10km out is almost certainly dead?


You see even as a missile boat driver, rather than speculate, I took a myrm out (at BC V) to test and I can tell you now, even in level 3's, mediums are dead beyond approximately 10km. They're like really expensive chaff. Very quickly, I found myself spending ALL my time watching the overview for reds stopping flashing and little grey bars blinking deep red quickly and mashing the return key. That's all I could do if I didnt want to lose drones and even then there's only so fast they recall and still sometimes they die in spite of my watching them like some sort of OCD crazy.

It's simply not a fun mechanic, it's ridiculous. Remember, this was on a drone boat with the HP bonus, its not even worth considering on an unbonused hull save at absolute minimum range.

Later I took a sentry drone boat out for jollies and can again confirm that sentries are just fine.

Lights are borderline, but medium and heavies? That's a point blank weapon system, but nothing. An expensive, temporary, lacklustre, point blank range weapon system. Tough crap if the NPCs orbit at middle distance.

I don't think that was the aim of the change.


So, returning from a RL break, I find that situation...

The 'fun' part is, there is nothing to be done about protecting heavy drones other than (maybe - I could not test that because of a lack of skills) running a heavy dual spider rep setup with sentries and using heavy drones only when NPCs get too close for sentries.

Last night i ran a couple of LVL3 missions to test if my old Tank+DPS setup might be still useable once i upgraded from Drake to SNI and mounted 2 Target Painters on my Drake . They didn't generate enough threat to keep my Alt's heavy drones safe (not even to prevent NPCs from switching to my ALT once i returned drones to bay).

I tried again with 2 Tracking Disruptors - the result wasn't any better, possibly even worse.

I did not try ECM yet, that's still on my agenda.

So..Sentries being fine? Possibly - my Alt has the skills now but not yet used sentries.
But what if i don't want to be a sitting duck?
What about Ishtar/Gila? Both are not really designed to being used stationary.

So right now I'm sitting on not one but two more or less unusable 12M SP chars, which were specifically skilled for the aggro system that i was presented with when i started playing this game last year.

The tank char might be upgradable into a solo Tengu pilot (surprise surprise...and yawn) given a bit of time, but that will more or less kill my Alt where 7 of 12M are in drone skills.
Varus Praetor
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#503 - 2013-02-01 13:04:28 UTC
I tried to "adapt" to this change by training up Amarr BS (which I've wanted anyway) and switching from drones to turrets. Sansha TD killed that idea. So, I tried the MJD Domi.

Verdict is:

Light drones are mostly useless and have to be micromanaged so much that they're not worth my time. Hitting recall every two seconds is not enjoyable. Mediums are now as equally pointless as heavies have been for as long as I've been playing. Sentries are all over the place. Some missions I get no aggro and others they get instant aggro when used at "normal" ranges based on warp in and spawn locations.

However, with a MJD every mission I've run has become completely trivial. I usually don't even have to turn my tank on and if I can't kill everything before it gets to me I just MJD back the other direction and kite them some more. This is even more boring than missioning used to be, but it's effective. My drone boat is now a true one trick pony.
Chi'Nane T'Kal
Interminatus
#504 - 2013-02-01 13:56:10 UTC
Varus Praetor wrote:
Mediums are now as equally pointless as heavies have been for as long as I've been playing.


Heavies were great on my DPS alt with the old NPC behaviour. 1-2 drone navigation links were the trick that changed them from awful to very nice.

Quote:

However, with a MJD every mission I've run has become completely trivial. I usually don't even have to turn my tank on and if I can't kill everything before it gets to me I just MJD back the other direction and kite them some more. This is even more boring than missioning used to be, but it's effective. My drone boat is now a true one trick pony.


What happens if you're scrambled before your MJD activates? Never happened?
Zor'katar
Matari Recreation
#505 - 2013-02-01 15:50:30 UTC
Chi'Nane T'Kal wrote:
What happens if you're scrambled before your MJD activates? Never happened?

NPC scrams apparently don't affect MJD activation.
Claire Raynor
NovaGear
#506 - 2013-02-01 19:29:51 UTC
Yeah - But we all agree that the design intent of what CCP are trying to do is great - yes? They don't want to screw missions - they are trying to make them better - obviously. (I just don't think it's quite working out right now though).

I'm given to understand - That they actually want to make missions more like PvP, (Eventually). Super hard limited numbers of enemy ships that actually will be affected by Neuts - that will try and warp away to deprive you of the kill - that will suffer from ECM - etc. Which all sounds fun and challenging. It actually sounds totally awesome - and would move PvE on enourmoulsy.

I just think - I really think - that they shouldn't make all missions like this - that they should leave the old content as is - and create this new content as something different and extra - maybe one day it will displace the old stuff completely - but do them in parallel to see if the old stuff still has value - I belive it does have value, (I used to enjoy it soo much).

I love your direction CCP. . But. . .

At the moment - I feel that CCP, (please!!!!), really really - need to calm down NPC E-War and do something to fix drones. Now the only reason why I feel this needs to be done is that at the moment - being jammed and disrupted is simply no fun. And permenantly, (and permenantly actually isn't much of an over statement - it's silly ATM), watching drone aggro - or else you lose the drones - is also no fun - I love my little drones.

Fun!
Chi'Nane T'Kal
Interminatus
#507 - 2013-02-02 00:48:17 UTC
What bugs me most is that there is no discernable pattern to the AI's aggro switch.

Today I tried both ECM and RR (even bought an Osprey for that).

2 ECM were not reliable (though subjectively better than TP and TD, but numbers are too low to be sure).

5 shield transporters took a while to grab aggro, seemed reliable (albeit too slow, had to rep drones for ages) and then i lost the remaining ship to the Myrmidon shooting with 3 light arty? WTF.

I'm somewhat hesitant to train both chars towards spider domi unless i'm completely sure it'll work.
Flying Apocalypse
#508 - 2013-02-02 09:15:47 UTC
Claire Raynor wrote:
Yeah - But we all agree that the design intent of what CCP are trying to do is great - yes? They don't want to screw missions - they are trying to make them better - obviously. (I just don't think it's quite working out right now though).

I'm given to understand - That they actually want to make missions more like PvP, (Eventually). Super hard limited numbers of enemy ships that actually will be affected by Neuts - that will try and warp away to deprive you of the kill - that will suffer from ECM - etc. Which all sounds fun and challenging. It actually sounds totally awesome - and would move PvE on enourmoulsy.

I just think - I really think - that they shouldn't make all missions like this - that they should leave the old content as is - and create this new content as something different and extra - maybe one day it will displace the old stuff completely - but do them in parallel to see if the old stuff still has value - I belive it does have value, (I used to enjoy it soo much).

I love your direction CCP. . But. . .

At the moment - I feel that CCP, (please!!!!), really really - need to calm down NPC E-War and do something to fix drones. Now the only reason why I feel this needs to be done is that at the moment - being jammed and disrupted is simply no fun. And permenantly, (and permenantly actually isn't much of an over statement - it's silly ATM), watching drone aggro - or else you lose the drones - is also no fun - I love my little drones.

Fun!


Tbh, if npc's will just warp away what would stop me from just blitzing them? Atm im fully running missions(silly me) but if my they warp away if I don't scram them, I'll just blitz the **** out of missions...If missions are even still possible at that moment, I fear the next update to NPC's will make them even stronger.

Yesterday I did the mission "The Assault" by guristas in a paladin. Since I saw it was guristas I decided to switch my web/tracking computer both to ECCM, and due to 45 sensor strength didn't get jammed, however there were a few problems even without jammed-to-death for example: I had 15 light drones when I warped into the mission, I left with 7. Due to NPC's just instalocking and shooting them instantly into structure when I launched them. As well as the insane NPC ship abilities, ravens,moa's,ferox with 120km lock range, heavies/torps hitting me from 120km away(cruises aren't that weird to hit at that range) as well as the missile damage not being mitigated by moving. In usual cases you just move and you mitigate some damage from missiles, but that just doesn't work because they still hit for full damage(while even turret based npc's damage is mitigated slightly by moving)

For some reason I can't delete my signature o.o
Knorkor
Ministry of Silly Walk
#509 - 2013-02-08 08:44:40 UTC
CCP Ytterbium wrote:
Hey folks, here is an update on our earlier post.


NPC Tracking disruptor update:

After looking at this thread feedback this issue has been reopened internally (we thought it fixed a few weeks back). No promises on a resolution yet but we are currently looking into this.


A bit of further explanation on our previous post as well, since there has been quite some conversation about it:

EVE PvE systems, mainly mission running, are terribly outdated and are due for a change. Exactly how and when is not something we can state on the paper, but we had having several internal discussions on how this could be done.

One of them is to bring PvE closer to PvP as mentioned before. What does that mean exactly? It means significantly reducing NPC numbers and bringing their attributes, AI closer with what you would expect from a PvP encounter. NPC bounties could be merged, or moved on progressive secondary objectives that require more and more skill from the player to achieve, while possibly having more risk. For instance, saving the Damsel could pay less or the same than it does today, but you could get extra rewards for completing special, more difficult objectives like rescuing her in a specific period of time, or blowing the evil Zor up before he runs away with her sister in his ship cargohold. Keep in mind this remain just an theoretical idea though that is most likely going to change if and when we start work on this particular point.

Reducing NPC numbers also allows us to better scale EW player faces on a regular basis (mainly, we are referring to missions like the Blockade here). Assigning strong EW effects to few NPCs is fine, but it becomes horribly frustrating when faced with 5 full waves of NPCs sensor dampening you, as there is little the player can do to counter it. We should be relying on gameplay players can overcome if they are smart instead of brute force mechanics.

Why are we considering changing PvE like this? That is because we are running missions and PvE content ourselves, and we are not particularly fond of the stale state PvE is in EVE Online right now, except for the most recent content (Incursions and Wormholes). Missions and exploration should let players gamble with risk if they feel up to it. While people looking for quick and relaxing content should still be able to do so, we also want players to find excitement from accomplishing missions and feel great about it. You should not be forced to shoot the same dull and repetitive encounters if you don’t feel up to it. It is a tricky thing to achieve though, as it does not mean we want you to lose ships every mission either.

This would also be done to put mission runners more on an equal footing with hostile players when moving into hazardous space. People accomplishing missions in low-security or null-security space should not be at a disadvantage when engaged by other players because they have ship fittings tailored to fight NPCs. Ideally, battling NPCs should teach players how PvP works, how to defend and be better prepared about it should they choose to move into dangerous areas.

We often hear "EVE is a PvP game, PvE is secondary". To this we would like to respond that EVE is a sandbox and shouldn’t necessarily favor one side over the other. What you do with it is up to you: all player activities should feel as appealing and rewarding no matter which choice you take, as long as you are willing to live up with the consequences of your actions.


You are murdering our drone ships!

We are aware of the recent changes brought by the NPC AI. As said in our previous post, the first NPC behavior deployed for Retribution was too extreme and has been corrected. However, we are aware that drone ships are receiving the short end of the stick here and have been ignored for quite a bit.

This is especially valid since as the tiericide initiative continues, we are adding more drone hulls, but not looking at the drone mechanics themselves, which do need much love. Again, while we are not in a position to state how or when such revamp will happen, this definitely is on our to-do list not only to rebalance drones in general, but also update their behavior, improve their handling through the UI and finally add more combat options for players choosing to specialize in such gameplay. The need for such drone rebalance will only grow with time as we keep on rebalancing ships, so we do hope this can be done as soon as humanly possible.


Oops, now I've written a wall of text Oops Well anyway, we hope this do help a bit.


I actually came here to ask for such a post, so I am happy to see it has already been made.

Being mass damped in e.g. a Serpentis Blockade is really not fun. I'd rather have 1 or max 2 ships dampening and being able to react to it instead of having to wait for all of them to come within 10 km so I can finally start shooting.

If our anti e-war modules would be actually useful against NPCs, I'd fit them.
But when you are damped by 10 rats, those are pretty much useless.
An immediate fix would be to have rats communicate with each other about who is applying E-War or just letting a max number of E-War enemies spawn at all. Or have it so that E-War applied by NPCs only does something for the first effect, all other effects OF THE SAME TYPE are not taken into account.
Something along those lines.
This way they cannot damp me down to 10 km and I can actually play the mission properly, even with a Navy Mega, which I was never able to fly in a Blockade because the rats come too close for comfort.
Chi'Nane T'Kal
Interminatus
#510 - 2013-02-08 08:51:25 UTC
Knorkor wrote:

An immediate fix would be to have rats communicate with each other about who is applying E-War or just letting a max number of E-War enemies spawn at all. Or have it so that E-War applied by NPCs only does something for the first effect, all other effects OF THE SAME TYPE are not taken into account.


That wold be a bit extreme.

Simple diminishing returns, the same as in PvP, should be sufficient - I would hope.
Knorkor
Ministry of Silly Walk
#511 - 2013-02-08 08:57:56 UTC
Chi'Nane T'Kal wrote:
Knorkor wrote:

An immediate fix would be to have rats communicate with each other about who is applying E-War or just letting a max number of E-War enemies spawn at all. Or have it so that E-War applied by NPCs only does something for the first effect, all other effects OF THE SAME TYPE are not taken into account.


That wold be a bit extreme.

Simple diminishing returns, the same as in PvP, should be sufficient - I would hope.

Yeah well maybe, it is up to CCP. But I really do think that there must be some diminishing effects to avoid such situation.
What I usually did was just to sit there in a dual repped domi, throw out sentries and wait for the rats to die.
Not fun.
Mund Richard
#512 - 2013-02-08 13:21:23 UTC  |  Edited by: Mund Richard
Knorkor wrote:
Chi'Nane T'Kal wrote:
Knorkor wrote:

An immediate fix would be to have rats communicate with each other about who is applying E-War or just letting a max number of E-War enemies spawn at all. Or have it so that E-War applied by NPCs only does something for the first effect, all other effects OF THE SAME TYPE are not taken into account.


That wold be a bit extreme.

Simple diminishing returns, the same as in PvP, should be sufficient - I would hope.

Yeah well maybe, it is up to CCP. But I really do think that there must be some diminishing effects to avoid such situation.
What I usually did was just to sit there in a dual repped domi, throw out sentries and wait for the rats to die.
Not fun.

Ages ago, dampened below where they were shooting me from, had my sentries pop one trigger after the other in Blocade.
Ended up with drone links in the highs, warping in at 100 from one direction, then the other.
The dps with my at the time poor skills was ludicrious, as was the sub 10km lock range and over a minute lock time.

Now, how good would be PvP diminsh?
Taking a Domi, because why the hell not and T2 unscripted unbonused Damps:
Targeting range: 87->72->62->56->53 and even with 10 you are over 50km
Resolution: 112.5->93->80->72->68 ... with 10 you still have 66

Compared to the 9 km lock range and a fraction of the resolution of a friggin TITAN, it would be quite a considerable blessing.
For TD-s I bet as well, saw last time a screenshot of someone being reduced below 10% range, unable to hit orbiting cruisers with radio crystals with Tachions!

And would fit the "more like pvp" theme CCP is advocating.
Would be about time we don't only get the sucky part of that.

"We want PvE activities to require active participation and mirror PvP more closely." Stacking penalty for NPC EWAR then? Lock range under 9km from over 100 in a BS is not fun. Nor is two NPC web drones making me crawl 10m/s. PvP SW-900 x5: 75m/s.
Tom Gerard
Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
#513 - 2013-02-08 21:05:59 UTC
CCP wanted to **** drone users in the ass, CCP ****** drone users in the ass.

CCP is now smoking a cig, and your ass is still sore, want to cry about it?

Now with 100% less Troll.
Achenar Chertio
Rajatapaukset Oy
#514 - 2013-02-08 21:22:08 UTC
From what I've gathered is that the AI change is part of a bigger change that CCP intends to implement whenever. However, it would seem that the mistake that CCP has done is prematurely changed the NPC AI when in fact they should've waited until they have rest of the PvE reworked and ready.
Morrigan LeSante
Perkone
Caldari State
#515 - 2013-02-08 21:59:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Morrigan LeSante
I'm not a fan of the notion of warp scrams/disruption requirements in PvE for one reason: range. It would put a disproportionate weighting on short range weapon systems.

However the general principles are to be welcomed - BUT a lot more 'parallel' balancing needs to happen. For example the inability to neut rats, their weapon ranges and so forth.

I'm reminded of rats like old Dagan - that was a lot of fun. That however also reminds me that what was once challenging becomes trivial given sufficient skill and experience. There needs to be a finer granularity than levels 1-4
Knorkor
Ministry of Silly Walk
#516 - 2013-02-08 23:01:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Knorkor
Morrigan LeSante wrote:
I'm not a fan of the notion of warp scrams/disruption requirements in PvE for one reason: range. It would put a disproportionate weighting on short range weapon systems.

However the general principles are to be welcomed - BUT a lot more 'parallel' balancing needs to happen. For example the inability to neut rats, their weapon ranges and so forth.

I'm reminded of rats like old Dagan - that was a lot of fun. That however also reminds me that what was once challenging becomes trivial given sufficient skill and experience. There needs to be a finer granularity than levels 1-4


I agree. Lvl 4 are dead easy for me, but lvl 5 requires multiboxing and a lot of money to throw at your ships.
I'd welcome something in between those lines.
La'Krul
HolyTrident
Tactical Narcotics Team
#517 - 2013-02-09 01:46:28 UTC
I just want to say that in the 5 years I've been playing, this AI change is possibly the worst change that has been made to the game (aside from Incarna obviously and the laughable sov mechanics).

I have just got into null sec exploration and fly about in an Ishtar mainly because I love the ship and have max drone skills. I will generally lose a few million isks' worth of drones each night. Oh what fun it is to be stuck out in null trying to find a station with more drones to buy!!!

It's ********. As soon as your drones are targeted you might as well kiss them goodbye - you can't save them by returning them because as soon as you do their mwds switch on and they actually take more damage and die. If my sentries get aggro (even if I am orbiting one at 500m) one will probably die or get low in armour before I can get the thing back in the drone bay. I wouldn't mind if sentries could be returned but had to be stationary whilst firing - then I could pull them back in before they pop.

All of this is made worse by the fact that the drone UI is the most fiddly, unhelpful mechanism you could ever wish for. I mean you have to wonder what is wrong with CCP at times. For years people have moaned about the drone UI so CCPs solution to this is to not do anything at all to improve the UI but instead make drones practically unviable in pve. What an inspired idea!!!

I don't have a problem with CCP wanting to make the game more challenging, although it seems out of kilter with their efforts at dumbing everything else down right now (please see new ship changes devblog for more) but the missions aren't any more difficult as a result of these AI changes - they are just more tedious and annoying. If I get to the third room of a plex and have to warp off to use the station next door and repair my drones before warping all the way back through those rooms to get to where I was 10 minutes ago, it's not more difficult, it's just boring and kills enthusiasm.

Conan edogawa
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#518 - 2013-02-09 16:47:56 UTC
Morrigan LeSante wrote:



And the drone drawbacks? What about those?

Travel time?
The the damage selection comes at a price?
That the weapon can be destroyed?


And that's before the new 'feature':
That any medium or heavy drone deployed more than 10km out is almost certainly dead?


You see even as a missile boat driver, rather than speculate, I took a myrm out (at BC V) to test and I can tell you now, even in level 3's, mediums are dead beyond approximately 10km. They're like really expensive chaff. Very quickly, I found myself spending ALL my time watching the overview for reds stopping flashing and little grey bars blinking deep red quickly and mashing the return key. That's all I could do if I didnt want to lose drones and even then there's only so fast they recall and still sometimes they die in spite of my watching them like some sort of OCD crazy.

It's simply not a fun mechanic, it's ridiculous. Remember, this was on a drone boat with the HP bonus, its not even worth considering on an unbonused hull save at absolute minimum range.

Later I took a sentry drone boat out for jollies and can again confirm that sentries are just fine.

Lights are borderline, but medium and heavies? That's a point blank weapon system, but nothing. An expensive, temporary, lacklustre, point blank range weapon system. Tough crap if the NPCs orbit at middle distance.

I don't think that was the aim of the change.


Totally agreed.
Inkarr Hashur
Skyline Federation
#519 - 2013-02-09 20:36:39 UTC
Looked for the CCP response, found it. Typical post of "we realize we made things kind of worse, we'll get around to un-worsening it later".
Mund Richard
#520 - 2013-02-09 20:51:53 UTC
Inkarr Hashur wrote:
Looked for the CCP response, found it. Typical post of "we realize we made things kind of worse, we'll get around to un-worsening it later".

In fact, depending on which response you look at, you could interpret it as "we realize we made things worse, but it's now fixed".

At least the part they broke horribly, the BS rebalance devblog had a "blaim the weapon, not the ship" for the Domi, so they should have something baking in the oven before the heatdeath of the universe.

"We want PvE activities to require active participation and mirror PvP more closely." Stacking penalty for NPC EWAR then? Lock range under 9km from over 100 in a BS is not fun. Nor is two NPC web drones making me crawl 10m/s. PvP SW-900 x5: 75m/s.