Missions & Complexes

yea because obviously, you can fly lvl4 missions without a tank, cap, drones or weapons.

You mean frigate 3 -> destroyer 3 -> cruiser 3 -> battlecruiser 3 -> battleship ?

Jen aSide I agree, I don’t think the new BS’s can’t complete missions. But I do see them not doing it as well, especially when combined with a tracking enhancer tweak, the last missions AI tweak, the bounty tweak, and loot drop tweak (drone ORE), all these tweaks keep making missions more difficult and less profitable.

I do incursions pretty much exclusively for PVP ISK nowadays, and I use a market toon to generate most of my extraneous ISK needs. I personally don’t have difficulty doing missions, but I do hear from noob corpies that they are having problems making enough ISK as well as completing missions before the wrecks de-spawn. I attribute this to Noobness, and offer assistance in fittings and techniques, as well as the occasional fleeted missions to show and tell as we go. But bitter vet syndrome might be blinding me to a more underlining problem, is PVE getting to hard to be economically viable for a noob?

I don’t think the new ship attributes are going to stop PVE but it would seem PVE has taken a lot of hits as of late. And PVP? Well they lost 15% and 10% respectively from the tracking enhancer that allowed some ships to kite. (Yes I know they lost other things but some sarcasm was needed here)

PVE creates ISK, ISK stimulates the market and provides incentive to build, and building provides ships to PVP and PVE in, which in turn destroys ISK. But if you keep turning down the ISK faucet the whole enchilada fall apart. (‘Enchilada’ seemed funnier than macro/micro economic model)

Am I the only seeing these posts about how hard L4s are as ridiculous?

A purely meta 4 fit Maelstrom or Raven can run L4's and barely touch a shield booster with a properly used MJD.

Raven might even be torp viable with the extra mid, and faster on top of that.
Domi looking strong as ever.
New Phoon could be nasty.

Can't personally speak to those gold phallic things as I don't fly them... but to the damage selection arguments, there are several groups of NPCs that are weak to lasers, it it really that hard to run missions in the space these NPCs inhabit?


Seriously PVE in eve is not hard. Basic tactics and reasonable SP make L4's trivial. Anyone saying it's near impossible, as stated earlier in this thread, is quite literally doing it wrong.

Granted, it might take a while to run a L4 at 3-4 million SP, it should.

Legions are still the staple of armor VG fleets. Navy geddon, which hopefully won't change, is also fairly popular.

The issue is not that CCP is trying to "balance" geddon. They're not. It's already balanced, pvp or pve, and if anything they're throwing off balance.

CCP wants to introduce a potentially highly unbalancing OP version of the old Domi neut droneboat, and instead of just making a new hull, replaced the geddon.

We lost a perfectly balanced boat for a potentially highly unbalancing experiment.

I don't see that at all, and I spend a LOT of time bringing new corp members up to speed on pve (im the unoffical PVE guru and trainer). every one of the things you meantioned were simple problems to be solved. For instance the tracking enhancer change just means more usefulness for tracking computer/armor tanked fits (or reworking our shield based mission ships, lvl 4s don't require much tank, just good management and fitting)

The AI is nothing to deal with, it's litterally easier than the old AI, the loot nerf is offset by the salavge drones (salvage drones is the FIRST thing i have a new player train after training for a minimally useful drake, so they still tag along in missions, giving fire support and slavaging support with the drakes missles and salavge drones + tractor beam).

I'm serious, it easier to get new folks making isk that it was when i started. When I started it took me 2 MONTHS to earn enough for a Navy Raven....

....My last Trainee when from brand new to the game to flying a Scorpian Navy Issue in incursions in 4 weeks. 3 months into the game he's flying a rattlesnake as fleet Tank or his drone bunny vindicator in incursions, lvl 4 missions were soooo 2 months ago for him. He did this without buying a single plex and with only my 100 mil isk loan to get enough to the rattlesnake because he was impatient (he's my IRL cousin so I know where he lives lol).




Not at all, see above.



Just like the old "nano nerf" that everyone predicted would kill pvp, this TE nerf isn't going to hurt to bad, it simply means less "omg" range for autocannons (which really shouldn't be kitting weapons to begin with) and more people using properly ranged weapons for the job.

As for PVE, I don't see any nerf at all. The Typhoon is getting the BEST cruise and torp damage application you can have short of a Golem with TPs, the Domi with sentries or even heavy drones is going to be able to chew small NPCS way better (hammerhead IIs agasints npc faction frigs is going to be epic) and the other ships aren't losing anything really significant except the 'Geddon.



I simply don't see any problem, our noobs only obstacle is training time to get into battleships and for support skills and THAT seems to be about to change with skill changes making some ships easier to get into.

Our pipeline is mission -> incursions ->null sec pve (in our null space we use, a meta 4 Tach fit Oracle will make a noob good steady isk ratting belts and sniping anoms, not incursion level isk at 1st, but as skills progress it gets better) and within a very few WEEKs of starting the game they become financially self sufficient...like my Cousin who is probably at this moment being tank or drone bunny for someone's incursion fleet lol.

it's so ridiculously easy that it points to MORE isk generation stuff needing nerfed, not less...although if anyone tells CCP I said that I will deny it lol.

I have no doubt that PVE will survive, similar to PVP (someone would try to figure out how to ram each other to death if all we had were Shuttles) Missioners will continue to persevere and by extension successfully manage their PVE.

I know I used to make a lot more in missions than I do now, either from boredom and me not staying interested, or from new Expansions natural evolution, there is noticeably less ISK to be made.

The Noctis has reduced the Salvage goods market to a fraction of what it was before; but I would not want to give up the Noctis.

Reduced bounties added to depressing the expected and actual profits of mission running.

The loss of Drone ORE made the ‘mostly useless’ Drone missions now ‘totally useless’.

The runaway Inflation, no facts just perceived, has placed the penultimate Mission running ships at the same price range as Carriers.

The Tracking disruption from Sasha makes the idea of not dual Boxing Vengeance and Blockade rank up there with taking on a blob with a Rifter.

Tracking Enhancer nerf will also require some manipulation possibly a whole new setup, or tactic, to deal with the range issues inherent in some PVE.

There is nothing here so bad it can’t be handled with a little ingenuity and additional training. (Except possibly the Sansha TD) But it is an obvious trend by CCP of nerfing PVE. I don’t believe it is intentional, so much as reactionary. And I certainly hope the trend stops soon or the only mission runners in the game will be the ones that didn’t get into an Incursions fleet.

Even Marauders and Mining ships and industrials and covops, etc... all need to be balanced around PvP. Just because a ship is designed around it's functionality doesn't mean people won't use it in out-of-the-box ways. Case in point:

Helios vs Taranis
Helios vs Slicer
Helios vs Auto Wolf
Helios vs Arty Wolf
Helios vs Jaguar
Helios vs Harpy
Helios vs Thrasher
Helios vs Sabre

Another example: the mining barge changes were needed, as a max-tanked exhumer was still very low on EHP. Unfortunately, IMO the changers were too appeasing by not emphasizing/enforcing a blatant tank-vs-yield trade-off...



lol.... You missed the reason PvP hurts PvE.....

PvP hurts PvE because it forces the PvE'er to consider threats above and beyond a dumb, predictable, and easily manageable NPC threat.

Lasers dealing only EM-Therm.... Caldari missile boats only getting a damage boost to Kinetic... Hybrid Turrets dealing only Kin-Therm... all of these make each race unique and different. They add flavor to the game, and they all come with pro's & con's. Blasters have great tracking but poor range... Pulse lasers have poor tracking but amazing range.. Missiles have consistent dps, but lack "wrecking shots". It might be underwhelming to attack Minmatar NPCs with a lazor boat... but they are ideal for taking on regular Sansha... Your "lets balance ships for PvE mantra" comes across as really short-sighted. Balance does not mean... we should homogenize weapon characteristics, fittings, etc... balance means that each entity has it's pros, which results in ideal niches for each, and cons, which result in blatant inadequacies in other areas, while still creating viable vessels that are capable even if not optimized.

As long as there are differences between weapons types & ship types, FCs will attempt to optimize their fleets with optimal ships/fits. Balance is NOT about allowing every race an option to partake in these specialized fleets... Balance is about having other fleet doctrines that can destroy them!

If CCP 'touches' the Navy Battleships like they 'touched' the T1 BS's all you'll see in Incursions are is Pirate Faction BS's, Marauders, logi's & T3's (eg: no more T1's & Navy BS's ) it'll make breaking into incursions an INCREDIBLE hump for those newbies to incursions