Test Server Feedback

Also I'd argue that the best way to encourage teams to incorporate unique ships into their teams is to make testing with unique ships as similar to testing without unique ships as possible. We all want to see expensive explosions on air and seeding the ships will help bring that about.

BTW unique ships were seeded on sisi in the runnup to each of the last two tournaments.

this is what i've been trying to say the whole time when it was suggested, ofcourse i LOVE using the "new" modules(and the vangel) but if you look at fits, i've only seen a few T2 fits since the seeds, and those people didn't notice faction stuff was seeded. and the server population has increased ALOT(which i don't mind tho, more targets \o/)

I'd prefer this as the minimum.

Here's another idea, in 0.0 where the pirates are faction X, faction X items are seeded in the market. Since these items are somewhat readily available in the real server (as long as you rat enough), why not make them available as seeded items on the test server?

There's no point, no value, no learning, no fun to test any faction module (and ship, btw), if everyone also use them. It just shifts the rules, balance and feeling of the game to a lesser, very small, portion of viable ships and tactics (look at the kills from the last few days on the sisi unofficial killboards, it's not hard to see that there's only a very few ships that dominate the full-faction-fitted world).

As far as I'm concerned, we should be removing stuff from the 100isk market, not adding any new stuff, to try to get some ship diversity back in the combat system.

(imho, *empire* faction ammo & navy cap charges sound ok, they are almost mandatory on TQ anyway)

I beg to differ, this is the *test* server, and therefore players should be able to test nearly every aspect of the game. This includes the harder to find modules. IMHO, the test server is just for what it's name stands for. Testing bugs, fits, and new items/concepts put into the game; not to be a new universe for someone to conquer or to scratch your PvP itch. That said, I firmly believe that pretty much EVERY item and ship (sans Officer mods, super caps, and tournament/special ships) should be seeded on the server. How can we test that which we cannot readily acquire?

Will I settle for all the faction ships and faction ammo? Yes, yes I will. I just had hoped there would be at least faction mods on the test sever.

Sure, that's what I did too for the last few years and it served me well.

Now what kind of valuable lesson you can learn from flying a full faction/deadspace/officer fit faction/unique ship against a cohort of other full faction/deadspace/officer fit faction/unique ships is beyond me.




This argument has an history of translating into "your test server idea is wrong, mine is right". But it actually works against any opinion : the test server is there to find bugs and help with the balancing of new features, not to feed power hungry players or scratch your faction fits itch.

I'm not keeping arguing around much any longer, as I'm not the voice of anyone but me .

In the end it's all about whether the combat system is only a (fun) slugfest hosted because CCP can afford to host it, or if the combat system ever gave relevant insights for game balancing.

We're all laboratory rats, after all

Edit: Never mind I didn't look properly

TL;DR:
1) Faction ammo/cap charges seeded
2) Faction mods given as mass test reward
3) LOGIC

sooooo
Obviously faction ammo/cap charges is a no-brainer.

While I did like being able to test fit some of my crazier EFT experiments, the seeding of deadspace mods is a bit insane.
Not to mention accidental seeding of some officer mods heh

Faction mods, well I'm not so sure they're bad. I mean having IN EANM or faction damage mods isn't exactly gamebreaking, of course the counter-argument is that anybody looking to fit faction mods on regular PvP ships is probably gonna have a stockpile of these already and doesn't need them seeded.

The counter argument to all of the above is that there is very low turnover on any sort of faction/dead/officer mod on SiSi.
The market gets faceraped in the first 2 days of a mirror, and then all the mods die within about a week. After that it's just T2 until the mirror.

Maybe a compromise can be made, keeping a flow of faction modules without turning CA's into a quagmire.
I propose that in addition to SP, faction/dead/officer mods could be given out as rewards for mass tests. Maybe a redeemable can with a set list of mods, eg tackle pack, 5x Fed Webs, 5x TS Scrams. Armour pack 5x IN EANM, 5x Coreli C-type ANP. Damage pack 5x Faction Gyro/Magstab/BCU/HS.
You get the idea. In the future this could be expanded to include one or two officer mods.

The thinking behind this is that SiSi is supposed to have combat like on TQ (a fallacy I know, but this is CCP's take on it), however the relative rarity of high end mods is much higher than on TQ. The population is lower and skewed 95% towards PvP, this means that there is simply no supply for these modules.
A soft introduction like outlined above would be enough to keep things interesting without breaking the server, and generates further incentives for mass-tests.
This is also extremely light on dev resources, the redeem system is already in place for all of this without need of any additional codebase. Once pack templates are made they can be copypastad into the SP reward script already in place.

To save dev time I can even offer a proposed list of module packs ^^

Faction ammo I want to keep (all pvp on singularity uses faction ammo), everything else can go away including faction ships imo.

I dont see what the problem is with faction deadspace mods on sisi. Its a test server and I need to test my pimp fits extensively, because they're my pimp fits. It is NOT "live server #2". There is no KB that means anything. Crap pilots are still crap pilots. It doesn't take away from the Live server because what happens on there is what counts. Everything else is just eve's version of a holodeck.