Player Features and Ideas Discussion

TL;DR version - increase the difficulty and isk/hr for Havens and Sanctums.

The scaling (difficulty, investment, payout) on anoms needs serious attention; the higher-end anoms need to be harder and significantly more rewarding.

When just viewing Anoms (https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Cosmic_Anomaly#Difficulty) , the peak isk/hr is generally at the Forsake Hubs for most folks. Havens and Sanctums lack enough sufficient rewards to compensate for their extra time to run thereby nerfing their comparative isk/hr.

Generally speaking, as the difficulty of anoms increases so should the investment required (isk & SP) as well as the payout in isk/hr.

A couple of things could be done for Havens & Sanctums:
1) increase the number of BSs and decrease the number of frigate per spawn
2) increase the number of waves
3) increase the probability of the faction/officer spawns
4) increased ESS LP for Havens and more so for Sanctums (this may be hard to do)
--Of course, these numbers will need to be tweeked to ensure the appropriate gradient.

Basically, I think Havens should require ~5 people to run them effectively and Sanctums should require ~10. Isk/hr per person should also be buffed.

I agree that SovNull needs some love, however CCP can't do it by just increasing bounty payouts. Those bounties, at least at one point, were atrociously large and caused economic issues. Hence the FH nerf.

However, if you add LP rewards to SovNull you increase earning potential without increasing a faucet. In fact, LP spent in the LP store when including the ISK requirements for items in the LP store acts as an increased sink.

There is a lot of talk on topics of this nature that highsec needs a nerf. I don't think a blanket nerf of highsec achieves the goal of getting SovNull residents out of highsec or giving them the economic incentives to fight over.

In Stoicfaux's most recent mission study, he found that 44m ISK/hr was achievable in HighSec level 4s (this applies ONLY to the faucet portion of his earnings ie. Mission Rewards, Time Bonus, and Bounties).* Even if you were to cut this amount in half or more, say to 20m ISK/hr, the amount a person would still be able to make in HighSec would not be enough to get SovNull residents back into Null. The reason is that the real value of running missions in HighSec is in the ISK value of LP. Even the Loot and Salvage would match the faucet portion of the reduced total take.

And SovNull would still be unable to compete.

If you want to make SovNull better and if you want SovNull residents to be able to make their ISK in the systems they have conquered and occupy or that they rent, you can't do that with a nerf to HighSec.

You do it by buffing SovNull Red Cross Shooting.

Better loot and higher chances of better loot - Maybe. Not being a faucet of ISK is good but - if the chances of loot are higher the value of those items depreciates with the higher supplies. You'll want to consider that.

Higher level of LP acquisition - This is my personal favorite. Not an ISK faucet and actually acts as a sink when the LP is redeemed at an LP store (provided the item being purchased also has an ISK requirement). As a side effect it acts as an indirect nerf to highsec as they see the value of their own LP drop due to higher supplies of the same items they are selling in the market. Ideally, it would be similar to CONCORD LP in that it is universal and can be used at any LP store for any faction/corp.

There is also the matter of industrial endeavors, but with my limited experience in this part of the game I will have to defer to others who can speak more vibrantly on the subject.

*Link to data collected by Stoicfaux

ED: Added link to support assertion made in paragraph 4.

ccp tried this with some other CA content.


end result was running them in tier 3 bc's became real popular. Want to say it was a serp space CA that naga ran quite well. Problem being here it was real low cost to farm some serioud (edit: serious even) isk here.


Basically Snipe at range and plink away. Mix speed tanking with rat falloff damaeg bleed off (if they hit at all) and mix in one of the more cut and dry tanking setups for resists and basically it was like going to an ATM to withdrawal cash.

IIRC it had a few frigates only (at long range which 425 II does real easy even on rokh without any tracking or damage bonuses). Once popped the bs were fish in a barrel basically.

Ok, we got some REALLY good ideas going here IMHO.

I completely agree with Kimmi Chan's analysis and reasoning for not increasing faction/officer spawns ... so if you did increase their likelihood, it should only be slightly. The ESS does help with the LP issue which is great - so perhaps that's the mechanisms to look at how you increase the Haven/Sanctum payout?

So given the ESS paying out LPs, you could then:
1) increase the number of BSs and decrease the number of frigate per spawn
2) increase the number of waves
....
and because the number of chances per hour for faction/deadspace loot decreases, you should also increase their probability (slightly) to compensate.

Maybe there's also an ESS type structure or mode for the existing structure that increase the LP/bounty ratio?


Aliventi, as for your idea - I agree that this would be the best solution but I'm not sure CCP has the time to implement that immediately. Perhaps as an interim solution towards your idea, they increase the number of ships per wave and the number of waves for Havens (adding mostly BSs and a few BCs) For Sanctums they throw everything at you (frigates, logi, erc) but the final reward is much higher (maybe a faction spawn who may/may not drop loot but has a crazy uber-bounty) to account for the lower bounty payouts from frigate rats. I think the idea here is to force some sort of fleet composition for Sanctums - not just all blinged out BSs. I think this would then lead to what you're talking about as a second iteration.

I think you should skip that point. Or it had to be done VERY cautious. More faction/officer spawns will lead to cheaper prices for those modules. So after a few weeks/months when the market gets flooded with them, you would perhaps end up making fewer ISK than before.

Edit: Didn't see that this point is allready covered in Kimmi Chan's post, sry

in all honesty the ESS is a bad patch for both economic issues, and for single player issues, that should go away. Reimagining some content so its group based to begin with, would be better.

I agree. That is why I am not advocating increasing ISK faucets. I am advocating increased income from non-faucet, even pro-sink sources.

Buffing null sec multiboxers is most important thing?

Some Drawbacks
Your faction drops from anoms have less isk value, as the bling fits previously used for ratting are no longer viable.
Ratters will still pos up when a neut enters local, an Improved PVP style NPC AI will simply encourage them to warp out sooner - Who wants to be tanking NPC's that fight like PVP'rs and risk being hotdropped.
Unless you gate every Anom, a multiboxer (or a few friends) with carriers is still going to clean up.
Less systems needed to support more people = More empty systems. I don't see alliances giving up sov because "they no longer need them for income"

In theory I really like the idea of a smart npc AI that really pvp's - in practice it is not practical, except maybe as additional special anoms, like mini incursions with true PVP NPC's.

None of your suggestions is even close to making this part of your proposal a reality.