Test Server Feedback

First off I want to say that I like your dedication to making eve a better game for everyone, and your zeal for doing it seems to be pretty amazing from what the eve playerbase is used to, so thanks for that.

On the topic of the proposed changes, with regard to tackling ratters in general (and bringing new players on missions/to anoms/etc) have you considered the fact that bar Serpentis pirates, all pirates have something that, when switching to a frigate will either minmatar: target paint (making it basically one shottable by even the elite frigates), amarr: neut (no cap to point or even AB), or caldari: jamming out the frigate (based on the npcs high jam strength vs a frigs low sensor strength). Another point of concern is EWAR and the AIs tendency to prioritize targets who are actively using EWAR (such as scrams, jams, painters, webs, etc) Have you considered the effects of this with tackling frigates in the aforementioned anoms? (example being, warp into a minmatar anom to catch a ratter, scram ratter, instantly locked and painted by all the elite frigs/cruisers in the pocket and killed literally instantly.)

With sweeping changes come a lot of unintended consquiences and I really hope you don't forsake an entire playstyle in this game for what you think is a good (and needed) change right now.

Down the line, making ratters harder to hunt in null simply solidifies the fact that null as it is now, is ironically safer than highsec, simply because people know to be on guard. Making the rats ASSIST the ratters whom they are killing is a fairly laughable solution to this problem.

I suggest making a system whereby if you kill a ratter in any anom, you gain faction standing with said pirates, and at a certain level (+5 possibly?) the rats in said anoms simply will not attack you unless you take criminal action against said NPCs in said anom (along with losing standing for taking a hostile action against said npcs). This would allow you to keep your proposed changes and also alleviate entirely the concerns that face the ratter hunters, while also adding a cool roleplaying mechanic (defending the npcs space as a player, becoming 'blue' with the npcs as you have a long history of having protected them, etc.) I think changes like this are the way you need to take the game to make it a richer experience and I look forward to hearing what direction you end up taking this all, as it has a huge effect on whether or not my alliance exists come winter expansion.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, this is gonna make bots spike in terms of popularity, not only do you have to not worry about awoxers (lol your own awoxing frig will die before you can warp to the rat) but with pocket concord it's just another layer of security in nullsec, which is definitely NOT needed.

Not really.

Imagine you're in a PvP gang, we'll call them "Blue".

Now imagine you are fighting a rival gang, we'll call them "Red".

Now imagine in the middle of this fight, with your overview showing all the neutrals on the right hand side of the screen, someone else flies in who is also neutral, but they are mega easy to kill.

Who will you shoot? You don't know who the other person is assisting, apart from the fact it's not "you" as you're the enemy of that person.

You could argue that, once they attack the "Red" gang they would realise, but again how long would it take a player to realise?

You wouldn't fly a singular PvP frigate into a massive PvP fight when you're on neither side because the players would be smart enough to kill you too. Now the NPCs are smart enough too ;)

Yes and no. If I'm engaged in combat with some dudes and a third party warps in and starts shooting those dudes, I have no assurance that the third party won't turn around and shoot me the red hot second that the field is clear, or won't start looting the wrecks before I can get there, or isn't providing a warpin/cyno for friends who will kill everyone indiscriminately, and so on and so forth. But I might be willing to run the risk of that if the dude is significantly helping me out and I'm losing, or if they have a history of helping me, as would be the case in the idea of gaining standings with a faction as you get on killmails of things shooting at them or what have you. Any decision-making based on anything other than faction standings would probably be tricky to implement, but it would be interesting and far more lifelike.

Soundwave: “I can, with virtual certainty, say that this December we’re going do something about cap and supercap presence in anomalies. That is the biggest faucet we have right now.”

the Ai "advance" will not only "solve" this problem.. we already heard carrier pilots complaining about drones getting abnormal often aggro -> their getting crippled. mission accomplished?

but this "switching targets mechanic" also hits everybody that is playing already in a team..

getting dedicated tanks and setting "guard" mechanics with drones... is something we players loved to do and cant keep after receiving the new NPCs.

There are Drone-friendly Anoms like the Forlorn Hub which where the only Hubs a drone-based Pilot can enter without worrying all time about getting drone aggro. Youre not gettin the best ticks there but have a bit of an "easy modus"
- risk vs reward = ok

i dont support any change to this! Even if this sounds like whine and bad arguments i want to state my opinion about it.

switching targets shall not affect drones! please cpp develope better ideas to nerf carriers in Anoms.

Kind Regards.

It would go something more like

FC "hmm, primary is at 65% and his tank is holding, that new SB can be insta-popped fairly fast and at least we can walk out of here with a kill mail to post. What's that SB doing?"

Fleet member "Hey boss? He's locked the primary, dropped a scram on him."

FC "wut?"

Fleet member 2 "Hey boss, sb also lit a cyno and there are caps on the field killing all of us. but the primary is also dead"

FC " guess we should of taken care of any possible cyno ship first"

That could work, but a nice drone overhaul would be better

any chance we can get more sites to spawn ? especially mazes and Fleet Staging Points

While I am online that is one of the things I will be doing; spawning sites that is. I am going to purposely try and be on as much as possible to do this, but again I will be out of the office on Friday. Bad timing I know, but I wanted the test server up as soon as possible.

Passing your question along to the engineer who will be doing the tracking. Hope to get you an answer soon.

Do higher level missions give more points?