Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I think my examples were a little off... maybe a blarpy shouldn't be encountered in a l2, but certainly a 2-week old toon in a destroyer can fight a couple NPC piloted meta-3 fit t1 frigate and come out on top feeling good about the challenge.

I guess I just don't see the problem with taking {e.g} 5 'frigates' with 500 ehp and making them one 2500ehp object. It's the same EHP chunk to chew through, but at least it feels like you're killing a ship and not swatting flies.

errr...*stomach grumbles* PvE and PvP should be two different elements in a video game >.<

Well, I guess that was relevant and valuable information in some way then. What do you fly in PVP?

its been brought up before, and the devs would like to head in a direction that that blurs pvp/pve fits towards a common setup.

I'll dig out the link to the devpost and link it --> here soon™

This is a pretty interesting point, alluding to what the difference between a pod-pilot and an NPC really is.

For something like this to work it'd really need to be baseline stats distilled down from some kind of fitting with e.g. 'average sansha pilot' skills applied to it. As previously noted, CPU/memory should be considered.

In the end, I'm really just looking for a PVE experience where ewar, cap, mwd mechanics, etc all behave as expected. You should be able to cap out NPC, shut off their MWD and tackle them down, etc. At a minimum, it would allow neuting to be a valid defense vs tackle frigate NPC since drones can/will get popped...

I suppose all of this is academic, but the discussion points are interesting food for thought. Having done some AI scripting in LUA, this sort of thing pops out of any game at me....

I like the idea of making NPC have 'proper' fits and abilties this would go a long way to close the gap in between pve and pvp.

One thing I would suggest though would be the loot table follow player drops and that for missions/belts/anoms the actual number of npc's scale depending on the number of players active in the area.


For example: I'm running a level 2 mission in my destroyer and have to fight 2 decent mets 2-3 fit combat frigs and on attack frig. I'm fully T2 fit this would be a pretty easy task. But the npc's may warp out to a 'holding point' 1mil km from the mission if they are hurt but have time to warp off or if I have no tackle. Now if a corp mate joines me then the npc's call for back up and another couple of frigs warp in from the 'holding point'

This would give them a much more 'alive' feeling and prepare pve'ers more for pvp combat. It would also make pve combat more 'interactive' and ensure you need to really think about your fits rather than having a generic mission fit if solo. Sure you could fleet up with specific mission fits and just burn everything down really quickly.....oh wait isn't that the purpose of fleet composition! wow it really would be more like pvp!

The bounties would have to be adjusted to level them against the meta item drops though.

Scout sites seem almost like some kind of unfinished content. Returns are so low even folks who would be doing level 1 missions don't make any isk doing them, so right now there isn't much point. It's unfortunate, as the slightly smarter/better/faster NPC there would otherwise be good to gnaw on for t1 frig pilots.

When they were first described I thought it would be some kind of thing that continuously popped up and had to be fought down or the system control level would shift. It's too bad, as it's another thing lower level pilots could be doing and currently aren't.

Obviously, the "missionboat" concept would have to change.

The main reason PvE is so different from PvP is that none of the current PvP missions require you to fit a warp scrambler to stop an NPC from warping off, at which point you fail the mission, nor do the current PvE missions require you to use certain useful PvP skills like combat probing, safespots, and breaking gate-camps.

The need to fit a point on a PvP ship necessitates very different fitting strategies from PvE ships. The need to use these other skills require very different playing strategies. If CCP wants to blur the distinction between PvP and PvE, or at least use PvE as a stepping stone toward PvP skills, they should add missions akin to these:

(1) An L1 mission where the pilot must fit a tackler ship and tackle a fast-moving NPC target--one that microwarps back and forth across the complex. One it is tackled, he must survive its drones and counter-fire long enough for slow NPC allies to appear and kill the main ship. (At higher versions, like L3, he doesn't have any NPC allies to help kill the ship--he must bring buddies or kill it himself).

(2) An L2 mission where the pilot must maneuver his unarmed stealthy ship through an artificial NPC gate-camp. Once he hops through the fake gate, he has the normal temporarily cloak, but must get away from a dozen or so NPC tacklers in position and trying to get fast locks on him.

(3) An L3 mission in which the pilot has to use combat probes to locate a single target NPC ship in deep space. The NPC ship has three randomly positioned safespots, and it warps between them every 3-5 minutes. He must scan it down and tackle it--if he engages in combat with it untackled, it warps off and creates a new three safespots to switch between.

(4) An L3 mission in which the pilot is assigned a bounty target to destroy. The L3 version is a NPC located somewhere in the same region and on the move. This mission pays a little extra cash so the pilot can use locator agents to find him. An L4 version is one in which the bounty target is an actual player with an existing bounty--but the player has extra cash in the reward from the NPC agent, since that player has -5 standings with the NPC faction for whatever reason.

(5) An L2 mission in which the pilot must scan down and enter a special wormhole in a cloaky ship. Once he enters it, he is randomly kicked out into deep nulsec. He must get out of nulsec and back into high-sec with his ship intact to gain the cash reward. An L3 version might be one in which he can only use non-cloaky ships to complete the mission.

(6) An L2 mission in which a cloaky pilot must maneuver toward and tackle a target NPC mining barge mining illegally in the midst of a crowded asteroid field--one in which the asteroids and other non-targetted NPC ships are moving back and forth. He must keep his cloak and avoid coming within 2 km of objects until he is in tackling position of the barge, then hold it for ransom and /or destroy the barge.

(7) A mission in which the pilot must not only destroy an NPC ship, he must tackle and capture escape pods emerging from them.

You get the idea.

It might've already been said, but walking around and interacting without using a menu would be nice. What I mean is, instead of clicking a menu option on the couch to "sit" just walk up to it. Instead of a slow walk only, have a medium and fast walk, and pressing shift will give you a jog. I understand the goal of WiS is not to have a bunch of people sprinting and jumping around, that it's to look realistic and sci fi cool, however it's not unreasonable to see some people walking fast, others walking slow, and others jogging to get somewhere fast.