Missions & Complexes

Just find a way to counter what's making you die.

I don't have enough experience to make a very competent comment since i just started doing lvl 4 missions two days ago. Now I'm At 2.5mil SP.

I did complete some. Hardest so far was The Blockade. Completed and salvaged (with an AB frigate) in two hours. Made 30mil ISK in total (not counting LP).

I'm flying a Dominix with sentry drones. No skills in gunnery, i can't even fit large guns. With this particular fit my wardens have 85km optimal 25km fall off and 100km control range. I pick targets 1 by 1 from smallest to biggest. Range is my strenght so I try to keep them off me at all costs. I had to warp out a couple of times due to heavy sensor dampening.
Sentries are awesome, because they have reasonable tank, have massive range and there's no delay if they get targeted and you need to scoop them in. They never stop shooting even if i can't target anything. The only reason I actually had to warp out is because they kept cherry picking battleships at 99 km instead of frigates closing in while my targeting range was 9 km or so.

I bet i'll get in to trouble at some point but then again i'm only at 2.5mil SP.
This evening i'll have the skills for micro jump drive. That should help me get in to range.

So for me this is working so far:
*Read missions report at eve survival.
*Fit required resists and chose damage type
*Dictate fighting range to your advantage
*Pick targets by how much threat they pose to destroy your current advantages and how fast you can kill them

I'm hoping MJD will be handy in those missions where you can't choose the warp in point

I was told the big changes had much to do with people flying mission bots.

I'm a bit more skilled than the OP but I figure half my combat skill became useless for doing level 4's with this update.

My old level 4 strategy was to fly two accounts with a Raven and Shield Repper drones on a 2nd ship, but now i guess those drones won't work.

I now have enough skill to fly a Tengu, but i've been advised not to try solo'ing level 4's in that ship.
Of course some people who have replied to this thread are suggesting that the Tengu can do it.

My corp-mates have pretty mad skills, and even they are feeling kinda stumped by the changes in the AI.

I always figured that my mining skills provided a more significant income than mission running, now I guess that's more true than ever. But running some PvE missions made a nice break from mining. Still I considered PvE Mission running to be just about as dull as mining, so I can see the need to improve the difficulty of these missions, but maybe it was overdone a bit. If they're making the Rats smarter it only makes sense to reduce their numbers a bit, for the sake of balance.

As a player who has never used macro'ing software to play an MMOG, I feel as if i'm often being penalized because some other players do use bots.

Beware because 20% of EvE's players have done that in the past and for CCP it hasn't been pretty. Layoffs and stuff.

As a 8m skill point pilot as well, gallente/drones, I find odd how CCP released new AI that simply in most cases will target drones, which have been a broken mechanic for years (A single skill, Drone Interface increases Drone Damage by 100%, just because its easier to remove 5 drones and add it as 100% damage).

Did CCP's devs actually tested this and came to a conclusion that it would benefit anyone? Can't you already see that the whole mission content is already a "themepark" mechanic that needs revitalization or a good revamp but instead you ignore it and make it more dull with a change that does not increase difficulty but just makes newbies like me have to juggle with drones for extra dullness.

Last time I subbed you added 60 dollar monocles and promises of gold ammo, now you dull mechanics already broken and call it a feature.

Yeah one thing indeed is take care of frigates first, possibly warp out. Go back and finish mission.

I was doing Enemies Abound just after patch. Got it offered twice and started the first time as if nothing changed. Sit still, take care of first aggro and go on. Well there was full aggro.
I had to align out and sacrifice a flight of small drones to be able to survive. I warped back in an the ship were still at the position I kited them at. Full aggro again but due to frigs being at long range I was able to kill them before they could do true harm. After that tank was struggling but I managed.
Second mission I knew what was going to happen so I aligned out, locked drones farthest away (knowing I'd get full aggro anyway. Killed those. Deployed drones and retracted immediately. Relaunched and for some reason they weren't instapopped. Killed last frigates while still aligning. Tried clearing as much ships as possible before I needed to warp out again. This time there was less sweat due to the scramming rats not being there. Warped back in and finished mission.

So yeah one of the tactics would be to take care of the frigates and forget all about 'old' trigger mechanisms.
I have to admit right away that I'm a 42mil SP non-cross trained BS pilot. So I can very well imagine that with 'only' 8mil SP missions are very hard to do and not realy frinedly to 'new' players.

However, the full aggro thing is a bug, will be worked out, and I can't imagine CCP not adjusting at least some of the E-war from rats. Lvl3 mission would be a better option to do untill things are better.


TL;DR: Wait till things are restored, do lower level missions for now, team up, adjust mission strategy and if wanting to go solo expect to take some more time.

T2 fit Tengu can still do most 4s as long as you are careful, its quite surprising how much incoming damage it can speedtank. Not had a problem with Blockade/WC4/The Assault...............yet.

How about waiting a few days / a week. How is a game designer supposed to make an informed decision before people actually interact with the content for a bit?

Did you read the threads leading up to the change? It was discussed a lot. ALL rats got changed. In all missions, complexes, etc. It effects a huge amount of content. CCP asked ppl to test it out on the test-server, few people did though.

So the first week after the patch IS sort of a trial run.

I can almost guarantee you that changes will be made, but obvs. not immediately. Nor should they be, decisions made in haste aren't usually good.

So be patient and don't immdtl. threaten to unsub because your MMO is a bit more difficult for three weeks.

I would normally agree here, except CCP saw the outcry it had when they put the changes on the test server, and that did not stop them from rolling it out anyways.

I'm going to bring up Bioware here as an example. Their script for ME 3 leaked and, prior to release, there was a massive outcry from fans to change it. Bioware ignored these pleas and released it anyway. I was a pretty hardcore fan of ME. Now I won't buy Bioware games (there are other reasons though).

I'm not saying I'll do the same here, but some will. Especially since CCP had the changes on the test server, saw the feedback, and decided to move forward with them knowing that it would upset a lot of people. So being patient only goes so far, and I can understand why this is happening.

Actually, the feedback was mixed. :)

I got the impression that it turned out to be more of a change than anticipated by the testers and CCP though (, which is why I also expect that changes will be made).

And actually, most of the complaints about high difficulty didn't center on lvl4 missions, but high-end complexes, etc..

Part of the problem I think is that testers on the test-server are mostly highly skilled players, (both SP and actual game-skill). Newbies and casual players don't usally go onto the test server. So that might have skewed the whole testing effort a bit (both in what content was tested and under what kind of conditions).

I don't think this is a bad example of an MMO expansion. Blizzard excepted (who simply have the money and position to do so), most MMO-companies deliver much rougher expansions. And Retribution was pretty solid overall, imho.

(Don't know what kind of programmer you are, but games are usually subject to less QA-testing, just because it's not a critical program and the effort/money saved can be invested in development effort. So gamers usually are a bit of QA testers on the side .... just how the industry works. If you are a programmer in a more serious environment, the QA targets are obviously different, but then so are those of your competitors and its simply priced in everywhere).