Missions & Complexes

It's late, so perhaps I wasn't being clear, and I admitted that it would likely be a bit... much. Not trying to break the economy, so maybe x2 or 1.5x would be better. In any case, it is clear the the activity is not profitable enough (because no one is doing them - period). Nerfing High Sec side of this won't change that.

But I was talking about the "super alpha fleet" which has 11 people (at least - which would slip that payout and lower it significantly) and several offgrid boosters while using about 30billion in ships to do so. Don't forget that Sansha also scrams many of these people, so they wouldn't be able to disengage without killing the sansha first (meanwhile, their logistic chain is incredibly vulnerable and the reps must flow for them to all not die)

I don't think it would be unreasonable for your as-well-put-together-as-anyone-dares fleet to make about 100mil, and the exceptionally shiny to make a bit more than that.

I think what would be more likely is people take 15-20 ships into the 10 man site if they could.

Failing that, just letting decent loot drop from vanguards, so that they have the occasional massive boost rather than a high sustained income, would be a good carrot.

Sure - first-hands experience doesn't matter when we have feelings which are easier to express, interpret and much more important than facts and opinions of small minority of actually involved players.

But at least having opinions of involved players CCP could know what shouldn't be done - to finally destroy incursion activity. Which is already barely alive and will be dead after 5-7 capable FCs will lose interest.

We were talking about giving people a reason to risk their ships in Lowsec/Null sec group stuff. I really would not mind doing low sec incursions, but there's just... no one that does them, because they're too risky for their supposed reward, or there are other activities which provide much more profit for much less risk.

What a pile of BS... instead of listening to pilots that actually run a part of the game ignore them for people that have nothing to do with the communities???
Problem with asking people in forums for real input is you get alot more BLATANTLY biased troll posts like the ones that have come from Simi... CCP DEVs I hope you take pride CCP in the communities you have destroyed by listening to these trolls that don't know a stat from a hole in the ground ( or a worm hole in a C2 )
CCP your **** poor communications with your HI SEC community is going to bite you in your arses again but don't listen to me actually listen to the real numbers comming out... CCP Affinity before she unceremoniously locked her thread said CCP wanted to with Incursions install PvE community but instead we're seeing deaths of multiple communities with the Escalation NERF...

Darth I think by now everyone knows your point of view, join the discussion with some calm, logical arguments or stop posting.

Repeating the same angry rage posts every few pages is just getting boring, and I doubt it matters anyway its unlikely anyone high up in CCP will read this far into the thread.

Just posting to confirm - rage posts aren't helpful. I have already received a lot of really valuable feedback from both high and low sec players and shield and armor communities and I locked my thread when the posts stopped being constructive and turned into trolling and tears.

lol you are wrong again someone is listening Simi Care to recalculate how many characters live in Wormholes again Simi?

Sorry for the rage posts but at least I'm posting dunno how many in my old community just gave up & unsubbed thier accounts & alt accounts... ancedotally there seem to be quite a few & the decimations of the communities which I had fun in are the source of my rage.

Here's some specific suggestions w/o the trolling or tearing:

VANGUARDS
The NERFs here especially made the OTA site more tedious then missions IMHO: More & more people are leaving because of the tedium. TBH I only occasionally did OTA's due to the shield fleets superiorty there but the shield fleets have abandoned them the most part.
I've seen quite a few comments on fixing them but I think it'd take more testing then is possible right now to the DEVs and a short term fix is needed before more communites die while fixes are tested & coded & won'tbe implemented for over a month according to CCP Afinity's thread.
One suggestion I'd like to make is to have dynamic payouts: make the OTA's payouts triple what they are now becuase of thier difficulty & tedium and keep the NMC's & NCO's the same payout in Vanguards (the armour fleets are doing them still) . I doubt I'd personally FC many OTA's myself becuase I tend to accept alot of newbies into my armour fleets who'd die quickly in OTA's but maybe the shinier fleets then would take them down & we'd not have this WALL of OTAs before downtime that kills fleet formups.

Assaults:
I'd like to suggest the same dynamic payouts for NCN since they aree rarely touched instead of tripling though maybe 1.5 to 2X
NCS's & OCF's keep the payouts the same I guess but bring the old NCS preload spawn back for more excitment so its not so tedious and a lil bit quicker.

HEADQUARTERS
The TPPH's take too damn long. Its a POS bash?!?!?!?! Where else in PvE is there a POS bash? Since I doubt you're going to let us bring in Dreads to takeit down faster how about shortening the distances between gates?
TCRC is in many ways more difficult then the MOM ( Kendalini Manifest ) if there is asite that should pay more in HQ's its the TCRC.

The above are bandaids that can be changed quickly. Long term I'd love to see a finally to Sansha's Incursion & a new Sleeper incursion with ribbbon drops instead of ISK payouts or a Jove incursion

Hello!

I've been trying to avoid posting here for a while now, but let me express my impressions post-Escalation about incursions. In short, it has not been easy, to the point that it became a tedious grind for most of us. I'll explain.

The changes made included the influence bar being modified. Makes sense to some extent, as it is hard to drop it. One can argue that it is Sansha actively fighting to regain control - fine, I can roll with that. It was harder, but still doable - up to this point.

There has always been 3 high-security constellations under an incursion. Normally a bit spread, but 3 nonetheless. This is great, choice for the average incursion runner, you can go to either one and enjoy it, be this the closest or the empire space the pilot can fly in...well, this WAS the case. For those who know, there are 2 large communities, shield and armour. An "agreement" was done some time ago to organise people and maximise the farming of an incursion so that the same casual/average runner could get there on his free time, fly with a fleet or two and then when he can come back do it again. This has changed now, as this same "agreement" was changed so that both communities are focused on only 1 constellation.

Now, if I'm not over-complicating my explanation too much, let me be more clear. Only 1 constellation has it's influence downed. Not all 3, not 2, 1 where shields are focused and the other one where armour is focused. Now it is only 1 constellation where the average pilot can go to. There are 2 effects to this; the positive one is that the influence issue is being handled quickly, dropping fast and actually reaching to the point of the Kundalini Manifest spawning, so that we can end it - this is great! Less horrid grinding at high influence, with sites taking twice as long, fleets being twice as hard to form and people not willing to fly. Why would they? At high influence, in an HQ fleet, resists and tank is dropped and DPS is halved, making sites last up to 1h for the "fast" ones. Now let's add the downtime between side to reform the fleet, half an hour. That's already 90 minutes per site! At high influence we're breaking our backs, logis need to work harder, it is tiresome. That is kinda fixed now.

The second effect of this "all go to one incursion" is the negative one. I'd say I'm sorry, but it has got to be said. Having 1 incursion "active" has effectively ended the choice of the pilot. We're either all going, or not flying. For example, as I type this, I'm sitting in Maddam (Amarr) constellation - people in incursion local: 90. Fleets effectively flying: 0. The main chunk of incursion runners are all focused in Erada (Minmatar). So for those who can't do the 30 jumps to the other constellation, they can't fly. For those who can't fly in Minmatar space, they can't fly. Those 90 people in Maddam are sitting here, waiting for people to come, that same people that won't come because the rest went to the only other one. That's around 100 people not doing anything, slowly killing the communities as more and more, they log in to find that they need to travel, to run for 1-2 hours, trying to find a fleet, then have to log off.

On that note of killing communities. There was a low-sec incursion community. That died too. The reward is not worth it compared to the effort. Influence won't drop, so sites take longer, plus the added dangers of low-security system. How do I know? My former corporation was based around that low-sec incursion running - that's gone. Why bother anymore?

On the other hand. the high-sec vanguard community took the biggest hit. Normally I'd say that it happens, but what with the influence issue, we need everyone to actually achieve anything. With the latest changes, we lost a lot of people not bothering anymore with running sites; those of us who stayed, are struggling to achieve anything. We fight the influence for days to no avail. Even I have come to ask the question, why bother anymore? It's horrid, wears one down and the reward is not nearly rewarding enough to compensate for the time sink.

Just to clarify, the influence meter on an incursion reduces your DPS and your tank considerably, making ships more vulnerable and our damage output pathetic. This makes sites more dangerous (fair enough) but awfully longer (why?).

More and more I see people not coming at high influence, because nobody wants to put their 1bill hull in risk. We go to the problem that we lack pilots to lower the influence and we have too much influence to attract the pilots. Stuck for days. Now that we can drop it with everyone together, sure, it works, but what about those who can't/won't go? They are being neglected, making the already small community even smaller.

For some background, I've been running incursions for months. High-sec, and low-sec. Tested them before they came out, know all the tricks and tips and how to improve them. Flown both armour and shields before and my focus is in HQs, the hardest sites. I used to enjoy them, yes, they were repetitive sometimes, but the fleet made it fun and it was light after a while. Now it feels more like a job.

As I said before, I still think sites are OK, but perhaps the bigger part of the community didn't agree. I can't speak in the name of everyone. I'm asking for the influence bar to be revised, or try something to appeal more people - like the revision to the reward of vanguards. As for example, the incursion that is "active", Erada, has only 210 people in it, the "inactive" has 90. That's only 300 people on a Saturday...we would have 250 per incursion pre-Escalation at this time. That's almost 1 third!

As of now, all I'm seeing is one of EVE's best features, incursions, slowly dying as pilots can't keep up with the constant move or can't go, or just won't. We're all forced now to be together to actually achieve something other than poking around and then giving up.

So Incursions were too easy after everyone learnt how to blitz them?Unlike mission runners who read the walkthrough guides and blitz them?Let's concentrate on the facts of Incursions.
They paid good isk for what became a smaller risk than was initially intended.
They now pay less isk for a higher risk.
Is the isk worth the Isk now. I think not.But that is my opinion and not everyones
However what i dont understand is the small mindedness and short sightedness of those people deriding the Incursion runners.
How many 0.0 pilots jacked up the prices of their deadspace loot simply because incursion runners had more disposible income.
The deadspace drops should also have been lessened to keep the isk/risk equation balanced there for those that chose to do that.
I dont see that happening or anyone whining they got too much isk for their items.
However it seems that some like to stop other people gameplay simply because it not in line with their idea of fairness.
So was the nefing fair?
I believe that lessening the Isk OR increasing the randomness would have sufficed but to do both was overkill.
Just to get a good understanding of this the kill sites in WH space are exactly the same every time. The same ships the same triggers.But no-one whines about those or shouts its not fair we work out how to do them in an efficient manner.
But let that happen in Empire space and all of a sudden its not fair and its too easy ??
What is good for the Goose is good for the Gander.
But ultimately it is for each player to decide how they wish to play the game.
For me Incursions were fun but its back to the wormhole for me. My CHOICE

I am going to reply to the original post quickly and simply.

"Making NPC groups dynamic and stopping blitzing works as intended for Vanguards."
In general, the Vanguard community is dead until Constellation Control breaches 70% Sansha Control.
You really did stop blitzing, people hardly even run Vanguards any more.
Risk of ship loss is just too high for too long.


"For assaults, I think the NPC groups work fine as well, but the difficulty might have gotten a little too high."
The difficulty is admittedly high when Sansha have high constellation control.
It is tolerable with good FCs and such, but becomes ultimately the worst form of grind.
That is, a never-ending one.


In essence, I think everything is nearly perfect and that a tweak to how much Constellation Control is regained by Sansha over any given time frame would resolve any issues being experienced by Incursion runners. The high danger and difficulty at the beginning is fine, it is a risk, but when you multiply that risk over 100s of runs you start losing ships and thus pilots.

The challenge of high constellation control is not an issue, how long we are in that phase however is.


Source: FC / LC for 4 - 16 hours a day.