Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Then you sir, are not an asshat. You are also correct. I usually go with Mouth Breathing Baby Eater, but it gets cumbersome to type when I'm on my phone. I apologize for the Asshat name calling.

It's actually a specific mindset that gets me naffed. There are many who are not looking for a fight, they are looking for a way to make my playtime miserable because the game allows them to do so. These same type of people are the ones stealing mission objectives, ransoming them and then not returning the items when paid. Yes, it happened a long time ago, I know better now and was a newb to fall for it then. I'm sure that sort of thing was fun for them, but fun at anothers expense is poor game design for the guy paying to get trolled. There are countless examples of this sort of behavior in EVE in all professions from ganking combat pilots to scamming station potato traders.

Honestly, in many ways it is what we signed up for. If you are not of that mindset you had better be prepared to tolerate those who are since the game is heavily weighted in their favor. All I want is a little parity so that when violence comes to my ship, I can give it back in a competant manner without having both arms and a leg bound behind me.

But I rant...and I don't really mean too.

A few additional comments on this:
1.) "I'd rather see all EWAR simply made useful against rats"... Regardless if Points and Scrams are useful against rats... I don't think rats should prioritize that EWAR.... at all....

2.) "Half the whining in this thread is about the difficulty of finding someone to fight with. That would be greatly allieviated if the targets could fight back with at least some likelyhood of surviving"... As pointed out earlier... When player's feel safe enough to min/maxing their fits to get the most isk/tick, they will never be fit for PvP.... If they aren't fit for PvP, they will not have much success in destroying their opponents, and thereby discourage fighting... Several things need to happen to change this situation:

Nullsec needs to become riskier... The ONLY way to do this is to alter local chat. I'd prefer it gets replaced with an actual intel tool... but I could settle with an actual delay between when a person comes into local and when they appear in local... I've seen many proposals for both of these, and posted a few myself. Regardless of how, when nullsec becomes riskier, people will start flying ships they can afford to lose...

Nullsec will need it's rewards buffed... In general, losses should be expected, and reward less losses should still be more profitable than "safe activiteis" (Highsec Incursions, LvL 4 Missions, etc). At least.. this level of rewards should exist in fully upgraded systems, even if they have mediocre trusec.

PvE should encourage group behavior... Working as a group should just be more profitable than flying solo... ALWAYS... People in groups can fight other groups... I actually think that the whole risk vs reward paradigm should also include an effort vs reward paradigm... It takes effort to get people to work together, and this should be rewarded (it's why HS incursions should pay much better than solo LvL 4 missions). This same paradigm should be encouraged in nullsec.... Perhaps anomalies ought to have Concord like "pay outs" like incursions, where if you run them with too few people, you don't get fully paid.

The Moment you attack a PvE ship in a site the NPCs should get the hint that you are helping them and stop shooting you.
For all they know a friendly capsuleer just came and attacked the guy that had probably destroyed several of their bases already.

So why would the NPCs attack the pvp ship?
In fact: killing another player in a site should improve your reputation with the NPC fraction defending that site.

Like I've said, feel free to put in whatever aggro mechanics you want as long as the rats warp off to a safe and cloak if their tanks are breaking and they're untackled.

Please realize that when I want the "removal of local", I don't want the "removal of viable intel mechanics". In a WH, there are no automated intel tools, and if you don't continually spam scan you don't have ANY warning of danger until it lands on grid with you. People like to point at WH's "Delayed Local" and suggest extending it to nullsec, which is straight up a mistake...

In general, you should have some automated "warning" that there is a potential threat entering system... long before they decloak on grid next to you. That will easily provide the illusion of safety for most PvE'er's to operate comfortably. Then make sure the rewards are comparable to the risks, and people will absolutely still PvE in risky situations...

There are many ways to add imperfections to the intel system (local chat) that will still uphold these values:

The simplest implementation would be to reduce the time players get to react to a threat... which I'm not really a big proponent of (though it's marginally better than nothing). The truth is, good PvE practices make it virtually impossible for you to get caught in the current system, and that won't change even if you get a few seconds less time to react. Never warping to zero, ratting aligned, primarying scrambling rates, and/or having eyes in the adjacent systems all make it very difficult to get caught, although also somewhat pigeonhole ratters into certain style ships, which is less than ideal.

In my opinion the ideal solution is obfuscation amongst a crowd: If there are 20+ people in a system, regularly coming and going, people won't be as likely to notice a neut entering system. This also results in the locals potentially having the critical mass to thwart an assault, and is generally makes a better PvP/PvE environment. To make this happen, we NEED group PvE activities, ideally in the form of respawnable anomalies. Before local displayed standings, busy systems with lots of "friendly" traffic were always somewhat susceptible to a hostiles because you didn't immediately identify a neut as hostile...

We could also Limit the intel.... most commonly suggested by range... Where you don't get pilot identification as friend/foe until a ships is within "scan range" of your ship.... Counterbalanced this with intel being shared automatically between fleet members, and perhaps intel bonuses to certain ships (covops), there is a viable system that still balances the in & outs of intel, providing tools to be "safe," with imperfections that can be exploited.

I am not Gizznitt, but I believe I have a pretty clear grasp of this issue.

To understand your question, you must first answer what kind of players we have.
There are two groups for this question:
Those who are ONLY in null because it is safe,...
versus...
Those who would be in null regardless, but are forced to use this mechanic to be competitive.

Mining and ratting are both PvP, they simply involve less direct combat. Having ISK and resources is a major factor to any corp or alliances PvP direct combat ability.

Now, the first group detailed above, they are only present because it is safe. If you remove the mechanic used by them to stay safe, they will leave.
This is desirable, because they will not participate in PvP, AND their presence reflects the lack of danger present for their occupation. This translates to rewards comparable to other risk free occupations. Like the same tasks in high sec.

The second group, who simply uses the mechanic because it is practical, would adapt. They would also represent a group willing to accept more risk, so they would deserve a reward rebalanced to reflect this added risk potential.

Is it added risk? Not exactly. It simply means added effort to compensate, as opposed by those competed against.
Unlike the stalemate routinely created by a cloaked vessel in a PvE system, the PvE pilot's efforts to avoid hostiles would be in a contest against the PvP pilot's efforts to attack.
Without mutual intel given out freely, the stalemate is far more likely to be resolved with either violence or the attacker leaving.
The high probability indicates the winner will be whoever makes the best effort. Either simply by being smarter, or by just trying that much harder.

+1. The 'new AI' protects ratters (and carebears in mission pockets), and defies logic. If I jump in on someone in a mission pocket and I am not agressing the rats, it defies logic that they switch their DPS from the guy already there and shooting them -- to switch fire to me who isn't even targeting them...

if your going to implement 'better NPC AI', it needs to be *realistic* in that sense; otherwise it is what it is, yet another move by CCP to protect the carebears and nerf play for them IMHO.

This is a dumb idea, however, I can see CCP making changes to the system so that the rats would not engage a player who has a naturally high standing with their faction.

So for example, if I were the PVE ship fighting Serpentis rats and you happened to have a high enough standing with the Serpentis faction (Say 5.0 or higher) then there is justification for them not shooting at you.

This would allow PVPer's who want to hunt ratters a way of doing so without getting the agro from the rats that is logical. It would also mean that said PVPer would first have to spend countless hours doing PVE for that pirate faction prior to hunting the ratters.

Seems like a fair in between to me.

Why would they attack you? Because the crap you're saying is just desperate attempts to create some excuse for them to help only you.

Why not think of it this way: They're a gang of asshats/lunatics, they have their own turf. They don't care if you're there to shoot some outsider, you're BOTH encroaching on their territory. You're BOTH outsiders.

I've seen player groups act the same way, turning a one-group-vs-one-group into a big free for all as other entities show up.