Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The current condition
Ever since the release of the Incursion expansion, this portion of EVE has been relatively un-touched, apart from NPC balancing it is almost the same as it was when new. Although not entirely bad, it does seem that this activity has been neglected by CCP Devs. Over the years that this activity has been out, many communities have sprung forth and thrived in the enjoyment and possibilities Incursions present. However, from all the good that is seen in Incursions, there is always going to be a bad side. That in this case is the mechanics it operates on and how the "communities" exploit that.

The Problems
As mentioned above, many communities have been born from Incursions; The Valhalla Project, DIN and The Ditanian Fleet, these being some of the most well known communities* out there that new comers tend to go for. *Other communities are available.
And as always, this being EVE, politics are sure to follow suit. Which brings me on to the first problem.
1. Childish Behavior: This is an issue I wish never existed as I thought we were all civilized and respectful to each other. Sadly that is not the case. Although not inherently witnessed within HQ communities, this is a major cause for concern as they have the most power of the whole incursion. They can choose weather or not they want to keep the incursion going; of course the mother ship must appear but with the skill and rate they run at that doesn't take long. So for example, if say DIN were in a site and TVP contested and won, DIN could therefore choose to simply make a fleet and take down all the incursions, which in turn would alert the other communities and in knowing that they may come to their constellation, they would take that one down to deny the others getting "their" isk. I am not saying that any community is responsible, mainly the issue arises due to certain individuals, most notably those with power and influence within these communities that don't respect everyone else outside their community. People easily forget that we are playing a game, not the government. When one community decides to ruin the fun/ income of the rest of the communities simply for giving them a weird look make the whole thing tedious. Not everyone has all hours of the day to play EVE and sometimes they wish to just spend an evening running incursions. Which isn't possible when there are non up due to silly disputes. Its really childish and needs to stop.
1. Spawns: Although this isn't a huge issue, I still believe this needs to be addressed. The total number of High Sec/Low Sec spawns at any given time, is only just enough for all the communities, were as Null Sec, which gets 3 incursions at any given time are untouched and are quite frankly pointless. Lore wise it doesn't make sense and is just an inconvenience. Yes there are is the off Null sec group that runs but not enough to justify the number of spawns. Another issue to note that is similar to this is the rooster of Incursion constellations, most importantly HS islands. Just why are incursions spawned there. Only in the very very rare cases when an incursion in open HS isn't available that one community will go there and just do Vanguard sites. The odd incursion in a HS is cool for those that wish to risk it and run but when there is one pretty much every two days, it gets kinda silly. Finally the last point in this issue is the spawn time from when an incursion pops, to when the next one that replaces it spawns. 24-48 hours is too long, and when there are no Incursions up a lot of people who don't enjoy the other aspects of EVE too much end up sitting in stations for a day or two, and when they get there for the incursion to be popped due to stupid disputes within the communities, it becomes very frustrating. And before the normal trolls come and say "EVE is a PVP game not a PVE one", just stop it seriously. Not everyone likes to PVP and some play EVE for the extensive PVE side, weather is be Incursions or Mission Running, so stop thinking everyone should be like you.

Solutions
1. A possible solution to fix this issue is to spawn the mothership when the Incursion go's into a 'Mobilized' state. Currently the mothership site appears when the influence bar reaches 0%. The Influence of the incursion affects the various cosmic changes to peoples stats and ships; Reduced shield HP and DPS for example. Incursions have 3 different stages; Established > Mobilized > Withdrawing. When an incursion is Established, that means its newly spawned. Mobilized means its been around for a day or two. Withdrawing means that the incursion with disappear within the day. My proposal is that within 36-48 hours of the incursion spawning, it should go into its 'Mobilized' state, at the same time the mothership site will spawn in the HQ system of that constellation. If the mothership site doesn't get attacked within 24 hours of its spawn, the incursion will go into its Withdrawing state where the mothership site must be done or the incursion will naturally pass. This will give everyone a chance to run incursions without the childish behavior getting in their way.
2. A simple solution one would give for this is to remove Null sec incursions entirely. I don't think that's entirely fair on those few that do run them. I propose having one Null sec incursion up maximum in NPC Null sec space, not sov space. It makes more sense lore wise and also reduces some risk of interfering in the business of null sec players. The slots that the other Null sec Incursions would have taken should be spread across High sec and Low sec. The High sec island issue also needs attention. This is due to the rooster of incursion constellations that the client randomly chooses from. I would change around the HS islands on the rooster to be the unluckily picked ones. This would aliviate this issue. Also changing the time from one incursion to another to 24H.

TL:DR: Incursioners are having a hard time, need more incursions to make isk, stop putting us at risk, we don't want to pvp, i only play to make isk and do not enjoy any other activity in eve, DIN is killing the motherships and i am very sad. Nerf null sec because they don't do incursions, although i don't really know because i am either sat in station being sad because of no incursions or running incursions.

1) You and some friends make alts
2) Train them into a popular gank ship
3) When DIN or who ever gets butthurt and goes to pop the mom follow them in and gank their logi
4) Do this over and over again until they understand they aren't "allowed" to pop the Mom.
5) profit

FWIW, this is why I run VGs...less political BS.

Hehe yea that is a fun idea, pop their logis, watch the fleet die. I agree that VGs have less politics but are still as bad as lots of them are run by the HQ communities and share the same agendas.

@BlackCanary The problem is that simply War decing/awoxing and ganking doesn't change anything. Lots of Incursion runners are just alts of people to help fund their PVP mains. My view is from someone who doesn't get alot of time to do both and is on the losing end of this dispute. I respect your opinion on the null sec view but as of late I am yet to see people run any of them.

Ninja Edit: We british cant spell

lol, ppl think popping the mom is the emergent behavior here?

Frankly, incursions seem alright to me.

Incursions produce massive amounts of Isk, and I think the ability to mess with each other (by popping the mom early) is an excellent form of emergent game play. This can be countered/hindered by Wardecing, AWOXing, and by Suicide ganking to boot.

As a player that occasionally joins incursion fleets to make isk, I find the politicking very annoying, but believe it is generally good for the game. When these groups pop all the highsec moms, it draws members of their community to attempt lowsec and nullsec incursions, and leads to improved game play.

In short, let the mom popping continue. Several things will result from it:
1.) The Communities will learn to get along with each other.
2.) Conflict between the communities will lead to ship destructions.
3.) Communities will expand to lowsec and nullsec incrusions.

All of these are good, so what needs fixing?

Incursions actually produce nowhere near the Isk people think on a global scale. They are good individual income, but if you assume every incursion site run in EVE per month is an HQ fleet, a single fleet of 40 makes 100 mil/hr (Averaging the 2012 figures per month, 2013 we'll find out at Fanfest maybe). That's the average income across every community, 4,000 mil/hr. Across EVERY SINGLE PLAYER. It sounds a lot, but really, that's the entire of EVE's incursions income. When you consider that there are five HQ communities, at least that many VG communities as well as people that solo multibox VG's also, it's really not much.

However, that said the Op really is off the mark. The only things possibly wrong with incursions are the predictability of the opponents. Knowing the exact composition of each wave and exactly what each named BS does.
If instead all you got was "Sansha Frigate, Sansha Cruiser & Sansha Battleship' you would have to guess and use good fleet tactics to deal with things like Outuni's as players would have to backtrack the Neuts in order to shoot them first. Rather than instant primary on spawn.

I understand your view on the interaction between the communities and the thing you listed, most notably the communities moving to low/null would be great, sadly that is very very unlikely as most are High Sec bears and wont move their precious crystal char to low/null.


Its funny how people seem to think that Incrusions is High sec Isk printing. I would say however that the current pay incursions give out are very fair across all sites. (Except scout, scout sites need love).


I would fully endorse this proposition.

By that admission you may aswell remove PVE from EVE all together. Its single minded people like yourself that are not seeing the imapct and effect all the aspects of EVE have. All PVE has its risks, Incursions more so than Mission running and exploration. However your opinion is noted, thanks.

As with any activity in EVE, the unprepared will end up dieing or get close to it. Even when a fleet has all of the logis on the field and all dps, things can still go very very wrong. I.E: One logi is getting primaryed and the other logi isnt paying attention. Logi goes pop and the fleet enters chaos. Of course that example is trivial and rarely happens but you get the point. Risk is everywhere in eve.
FYI: I'm not asking to change the risks, in fact i'm all for adding some gate rats to High sec. My post is simply a mechanical