Missions & Complexes

Very few people run in lowsec because you would be ******** to bring anything but T1 battleships into lowsec, doing even that will prob get you killed. New incursions nerfed low-sec incursions harder because now T1 battleships can barely run OTAs at all, let alone do it in a profitable fashion.

*One of the most attractive things about highsec is that you can build on a ship and improve the same ship over time, make it unique, and be proud of it, not just have 100 stock ships in a hanger. It's that whole *gear hunting* thing other MMOs have.

Nice sig no you don't troll at all

Incursions are more than "Themepark PvE", they are the path to get solo players invested in the EVE community. Again, you need to look at Incursions as the draw to get asocial PvE players to participate in and get invested in the EVE community. Running the PvE to PvP bridge under the dubious protection of CONCORD can be justified. Not everyone that joined EVE did so just for PvP.

I'll bet you consider wormholes as "PvE with the risk of PvP" and a good example of high end PvE content. I disagree. Taking a solo PvE player and sharpening his paranoia of others just so he can join a wormhole corp and compare who's got the shiniest tinfoil hat is not my idea of a healthy evolution for the EVE community.

And yes, a 3B ISK ship is a huge investment for players coming from high sec PvE. Most save a over a month's income of incursion earnings just to get into a 1B faction battleship. Remember, only the Elite Shiny fleets are dragging in mad cash - the new pickup group members are doing slightly better than L4 missions.

Yes but the game shouldn't be balanced around the newbies, it needs to be balanced around the rich players abusing the system and refusing to leave the protected confines of high sec.

High sec is not intended as the end game, high profit risk free isk faucets are damaging to Eve as a whole. They funnel ISK into the economy, they fail to increase the velocity of money, they fail to create sufficient demand for new ships and quite simply are the primary cause of mudflation.

If Eve had a voluntarily terrible economy, and wasn't driven by war and competition, incursions could have continued the way they were going. Unfortunately the reality is that the way they were going ended in hyper-inflation, stagnation, mudflation and the complete heat death of the Eve universe.

What a load of rubbish. High Sec Incursions community, if it can be called that at all isn't the "EVE community", It's a foreign community of Themepark PvE raiders like Daftnefarius, joined by others purely for the ISK. That's the real Incursion going on in EVE, it isn't the Sansha it's WoW/EQ type PvE raiders coming to EVE and trying to change the game into Space WoW.

Let me tell you the logistics of moving every few days across the empires, ESPECIALLY after that homogenization patch that distributes them almost evenly.
They used to mostly spawn in Amarr (due to empire size), now it's like clockwork - a regular incursioner will be slapped with a 30+ jump distance, at minimum once per week.

This means several things :

* using freighter alts to move their ships (BS & cruisers), going through the hassles of plastic wrapping them into freighters (why overcomplicate this?). This is the slowest mode of transport even when you're active piloting. In addition, there's the inherent risks of getting it ganked along the way if you cargo's very juicy.

* using Orcas (whether piloting directly or with alts), fastest mode of transport (thank god for the MWD trick). However, you can only cram 3 cruiser hulls, plus a travel frigate.
The incursioner's will be using cruisers exclusively for the incursion duration. He/she will have to make a double-trip or use another freighter alt to cart off the BS.

* some folks might be using Red Frog freight, but I've never seen or heard many of them using this service. May or may not be worthwhile long term.

* if someone's FCing, that means going through buying/mining and then carting off the Lyavite using Orcas (mostly). Some even includes their own personal OGBs. All of these requires a certain amount of handling - even if you assume afk travel.

* anyone who's an active industrialist/trader on the same char may have to tone down their activity or make several trips druing the course of the incursion back to wherever their home bases are to put several things in order. Stuffs to manufacture and move, stuffs to buy, stuffs to research yadda yadda.

*waiting for hours sometime to get into a fleet, idling away doing nothing. It's more common than you think, even at peak US/EU TZ.


So look at the above, and guess what it takes people to run incursion. So far, what I've described are exclusively for high sec incursions - I'm sure there's a couple more things involved for the low/null sec counterparts. There might be even some folks who simply builds multiple bases at central location for each empire which requires multi-billion investments just to minimize the logistic hassles.

For 50-70mil/hr, no thanks. I'd rather do something else with my time.
I have only to match that level of income with L4 or other activity (which isn't that difficult if you max-min) sans all the back-breaking logistics and hassles.
You only need to set it up ONE-TIME.

P.S The incursion newbies have it even worse (with T1 guns and T1 ships). Some of them can advertise for more than half-a day without getting into a fleet.
The whole incursion content is now firmly in the domain of well skilled pilots with shiny dps ships.

Oh wow, thank you. I hadn't laughed like that in a few days.

Let me tell you about the logistics of moving hundreds of ships from Aridia to Molden Heath.

Heres my 2 cents on it.

I have ran incursions since December , Both Pug groups ,elitist groups. and i have ran my own high end incursion channel. Through out all this ill admit the amount of is i was getting Was Insane. In which i was able to turn around and spend that isk to pay for my accounts and buy some damn nice pvp ships. Now ill be the first to admit that the amount of isk The High end groups would make in Vg;s was a bit un balanced, But I also believe that you took the Nerf way too far CCP.

As has been stated many times before currently its just not worth it to do it. and honestly it could have been a really easy fix but was beaten till as stated its not worth it with exploration wh's and lvl 4's being a more viable option for people. Some claim they ran incursions for the social aspect of it and that's great. Some was only in it for the money. Which ever case it may be It made it possible, at least for me to plex my accounts and pay for my pvp.


TLDR;
What i believe would be a decent fix for incursions is the following

Scout sites: Make them worth it to do them Ie lvl 4 payouts for all fleet members

VG:'s Make sites take around 5-8 Minutes 5 Being Shiny fleets 8 being pug fleets. and remove the payment reduction

Nco: Pretty decent as they are may remove some augas

NMC : Bring the mara in closer

Ota's: Take the mara and the hacking unit out

Assaults: These need to drastically increase in payouts. IMO around 25 mil per site And take around 10-16 minutes to complete

NCN's : Completely overhaul the site remove cruiser side make it multiple gate room. ( lighten up a bit on the neuts)

OCF's : Remove the ninja nerf where you put more spawns in there.( Fyi you didn't make them faster)

NCS's : Same as above.**

HQ's : Make them pay around 35-40 mil And take 23-30 minutes to complete: Now i dont know much about the sites but i do know one was ninja nerfed like the ocf's and ncs's Come on ccp Really we do see when this happens.

Anyhow there's my 2 cents


Edit : One of the biggest gripes pre escalation was how crowded the vg systems was I believe that Focusing on Buffing the Scout assualt, and Hq sites will do alot more for the game And incursion runners as a whole Then just slamming a nerf bat down

You don't; you jump it into a system next to it.

OMG!!! OMG!!! Please let this post not be a figment of my imagination! SOMEONE GETS IT!!!!