Player Features and Ideas Discussion

ants killing the bee. I like it ;)

Exhumers have a fair amount of drone bandwidth, chuck in an orca to refit lows to drone damage mods and replace dead drones and you've got a not totally incapable combat platform... or more realistically increase the drone bay as someone sitting an orca or rorqual on grid with their mining ships is just going to attract massive amounts of gank.

Short of reworking the exhumers to fit a full flight of large drones, preferably T2 sentries, just being able to field a flight of mediums has proven to be insufficient.

Yes, I am sure we can work up scenes where a couple of exhumers banding together might pool their drones against a common foe, but in real game play you remember you aren't PvP pilots right now.
The guys you are with are probably either aligned for a fast exit, or AFK and expecting you to fleet warp them in the event of trouble. You can find countless threads where they complain about flaws in their intel tool in this forum. (Apparently AFK Cloaking messes them up)

It's simply considered a bad gamble, and the perception won't be changing any time soon without a good reason.

Now, the concept of adding the previously safe orcas and rorquals to this, (for on grid boosting), it doesn't fit the current play style well at all.

Not to overstate the obvious, but PvE is usually on it's own for defense. There seems to be little interest in the game for defensive forces on standby guarding them.
I guess we can blame thumb twiddling not being fun for PvP pilots, who don't want to sit around waiting in case an attack might happen. Ship spinning beats thumb twiddling I found, and we can even see the counter after ten spins now.

Despite all your wonderful ship changes and the great potential of armor changes...
This right here brings me theoretically in range of an emotional reaction that has the potentiality of me perhaps having sufficient distaste to **** in your cheerios.

Stop them from working in a Tower's shield and all problems are solved as they ARE already probe-able, they ARE already easy to kill and they already HAVE a hard time fitting.
Except for the obese carebears and lazy people that proclaim that my +10mil SP investment (10months training), and my ~1bil isk investment in JUST my alt account is "unfair" and "unjustified."

It's not like I've worked hard and patiently to earn this, it's not like all other players couldn't have it either.
People are just too dumb/lazy to do it themselves, so they're mad that I have it and they don't. They are even more mad when I thrash them with it and they weren't intelligent enough to try and fight back.

Lose the shaping mechanics to player's whinging and make players adapt.
Evolution didn't warp the world to humans, humans were warped to fit the world.

Putting a boosting loki on grid in a small nano gang is like handing your opponents a free loki kill.
the small of gangs (read: fleets) that I used to lead are getting fisted in the face with this. we wont be able to engage **** without a ridiculously high lose:win ratio because blobs will remain blobby and the advantage that used to keep us in the fight is gone.
No, i will not just add more idiots to my fleet. No, putting the links on a combat fit command ship is hardly an option, as most pilots are taxed as it is flying a nano/tanked setup with an OGB, can you imagine trying to manage 2 of these? It is not effectively possible and simply gives more power to the idiots and lazy kents that are unwilling to work to get where we already are.

Solo condor arguments are just like the RR arguments used to be, there will always be douchecanoes that abuse mechanics. That does not mean we need to nerf something into the ground so that scrub blobs dont have to TRY to be better in PvP.

This removes a strong element of time/ISK investment and work that EvE is built around. SP is a major advantage to an extent and this minimises the gap in a way few people recognise.

I used to be a fan of nerfing OGB as well but then all that changed when I realized something.


In all those instances where I lost to a pilot who had an off grid booster, I would have lost worse should he have brought his OGB as another PVP ship.


They're command ships for a reason, and they provide good incentive not to blindly attack fleets without a good bit of tactics. I still don't have a booster for myself if/when I eventually do get one I will use it for PVE and I'd like to not have to have him on grid if possible.



However, I do think that they shouldn't be invulnerable as well, either make boosting not work inside of a pos, or make poses much easier to kill with the revamp. (Looking at you Reinforcement timer)

ok ok ... whatever. It will be removed, it's already sealed. Deal with it.

Honestly, there are some aspects where a home field advantage is expected, even taken for granted.

With others, particularly this boosting issue, it is somehow taboo.

I am just curious how they intend to handle everything, especially with the rorqual and similar vessels not designed for either fighting or easy avoidance in siege mode where they get the bonus to boost.
It is going to be horribly inconsistent unless they do something interesting.

But also if your fighting someone in their home system (ignoring stations for a moment) they can warp to their POS and be safe in the mean time inside the FF whereas to escape combat you'd have to bounce safes or use a gate/wormhole to exit system - I don't really see how boosting from FF is any different to other home system advantages personally.

If you force someone to boost outside their FF they will likely swap to boosting from tankier fits, especially with the coming changes they could stick a damnation outside the FF and theres no way you'd kill it without a big enough fleet to engage the POS rather than just sniping from range.

CCP.
As several posters above me has pointed out, off-grid boosting is one of the most effective ways for small gangs or solo pvp pilots to even comprehend taking on huge blobs. This argument is coming up again and again.
Yes there will always be d-bags in 8km/sec Dramiels but do you nerf a major feature requiring months of SP training for the actions of some who abuse it?

I totally agree with the argument of Zeus Maximo (a brilliant post) Eve is all about acquiring advantages that eventually increase your chances. None of these advantages ensure 100% win but all are valid approaches that can be pursued, thereby increasing the depth and complexity of gameplay.

So just like it has been pointed out before in this thread, your removing Off Grid Boosting means the people who use blobs as a fighting tactics only become stronger, since the power of numbers always belonged to them.

Adding to those points, some more observations: The leadership skills are very out of the way for training path of a pvper. A typical pvp pilot will focus on tank, weapons, spaceship command skills moving from smaller ships to larger and horizontally across races. For example one will prioritize learning all t2 guns of one's starting race followed by t2 guns of another one.
Its very hard for the same character to have a lot of combat SP and then also have the SP for t2 links, within a reasonable period of time.
So the solution: Alts. Create alts and dedicate them to leadership roles. Which also explains one of the common phenomenon that most leadership characters are flown in multibox setups.

Of course removing off-grid boosting will make it harder for people to multi-box. Lets be frank its extremely difficult to pilot two ships on the same grid. For people who have multiple accounts with your game, who have spent months training up characters, preparing a specific setup so that they can take on bigger numbers or fight solo, this is a clear removal of a gameplay choice they had.

Lastly examine how much of a negative impact does off-grid boosting really have? Will you guide your decisions about nerfing a major game mechanic based upon the tears of some disgruntled players that lost a 1v1?

Is that lone Dramiel moving about at 8km/sec or having 16km scram range really creating a significant negative gameplay experience for dozens of players populating a given system?

Sure FW has a lot of link active, but shouldn't rival corporations having membership in the hundreds all have links by now sitting in their POS?
Isn't that true also for huge null sec blob fights all of which have active links for every fight.

Guess what I am saying is that the negative impact of off-grid links is hugely overblown and don't go by the whine and tears of people in this forum when deciding on removing a major feature.