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New NPC AI, how about no?

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Josef Djugashvilis
#561 - 2013-02-25 17:32:07 UTC
Duke Atreus wrote:
Thanks CCP Yttcerbium.

TBH NPC AI shouldn't have been implemented until you revamped the PVE system seeing how the EWAR was too rampart with the number of ships and how drone users got the short end of the stick but I am glad you know there are still issues and are working on them.

Obviously it seems it might be a while yet before we see changes which is understandable so how about you revert it till then *wink wink* :P

Take care.


This.

This is not a signature.
Bryla Jax
AeD Corp
#562 - 2013-02-26 12:06:21 UTC
Josef Djugashvilis wrote:
Duke Atreus wrote:
Thanks CCP Yttcerbium.

TBH NPC AI shouldn't have been implemented until you revamped the PVE system seeing how the EWAR was too rampart with the number of ships and how drone users got the short end of the stick but I am glad you know there are still issues and are working on them.

Obviously it seems it might be a while yet before we see changes which is understandable so how about you revert it till then *wink wink* :P

Take care.


This.



Sadly, it's not gonna happen.
Admit a mistake or a incomplete feature is a too hard choice for some unskilled developerss.
Dark Reignz
Four-Q
#563 - 2013-02-27 02:45:12 UTC
I started off a mission runner in high sec and I'd be facinated if Missions were to become more dynamic and closer to pvp.

However, my experience of being in low and null and being raped 1 v 1+ tells me that either NPC's will have to be dumbed down drastically or each room of missions / exploration sites will have to have npc numbers nerfed to 1 per room. That said, I guess it depends how close to pvp you want pve to be heh.

Make mission locations and content inc NPC's dynamic and throw in a few new ones altogether. Then add in the chance of escalations to faction (similar to exploration escas) and then mish running becomes exiting again.

Risk vs Reward through out the game also needs a major revamp. Even living in high sec, going into low for esca's. the reward is absolutely pitiful.

my 2p on that one :)

Troll Mode - ON
Sturmwolke
#564 - 2013-02-27 11:28:14 UTC
Just dropping a note to say that both Sansha Centii Loyal Savage and Loyal Slavehunter elite frigate AIs are broken (from Amarr epic arc "Cowardly Commander").
These lazy bum elite frigates don't seem to prefer chasing drones, barely even acknowledging my drones even exist.

Won't bother to bug report, I *like* them being kind to my poor drones ... after all that abuse.
If it's intentional, good ... if not, forget what I said, move along - nothing to read.
Dante Uisen
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#565 - 2013-02-27 11:39:46 UTC
Bryla Jax wrote:
Josef Djugashvilis wrote:
Duke Atreus wrote:
Thanks CCP Yttcerbium.

TBH NPC AI shouldn't have been implemented until you revamped the PVE system seeing how the EWAR was too rampart with the number of ships and how drone users got the short end of the stick but I am glad you know there are still issues and are working on them.

Obviously it seems it might be a while yet before we see changes which is understandable so how about you revert it till then *wink wink* :P

Take care.


This.



Sadly, it's not gonna happen.
Admit a mistake or a incomplete feature is a too hard choice for some unskilled developerss.


I don't think it has anything to do with the developers, it's company policy.
timmaeh
United Mining and Hauling Inc
The Initiative.
#566 - 2013-02-28 12:45:40 UTC
CCP Ytterbium wrote:
Hello folks,

We have been (silently) following several threads about NPC AI changes deployed in Retribution and we wanted to let you know of our stance on this.


    NPCs target and kill my drones all the time in PvE after Retribution

  • We want PvE activities to require active participation and mirror PvP more closely than just bland launch drones and forget about they exist until all NPCs are dead. Having NPCs engage your drones if they are your primary source of damage is to be expected and we expect play styles to adapt in consequence.

  • However, there is a fine balance to be reached here, and while we want more challenge in PvE, we don't want drones to be insta-killed without you having time to do anything to prevent it. The changes deployed during Retribution were too extreme, which is why we deployed a patch on December, 19th to alleviate this issue.

    • Quote:
    NPCs will now only target drones in their size category.
  • Elite frigates and cruisers NPCs will go for small drones and above.
  • Frigates and Cruisers NPCs will go for medium drones and above.
  • Battleship NPCs will go for large drones.




    • NPCs tracking disruption is too strong since Retribution

    This is another bug which should have been fixed on December, the 12th. If you still are having issue with Tracking Disruption NPCs please let us know by filing bug reports with the implied NPC names.

    Quote:

  • Corrected the chance percentage that an enemy NPC will use tracking disruption on a player's ship.


We hope that helps a bit.


What i take from this is, i should dump by drone skills and never look back... Why would i EVER! risk loosing drones/isk by doing missions, when i could fit a gun to a ship ?

It IS making drone boats 100% useless. To anyone besides those people who are so bored with the game, that the only thrill they can get out of the game is to live in the edge! with no noticable advantage of doing this stupidity..

I can for the life of me not understand why this is a good thing. All you will get from making these changes is less drone boats. First thing i will do is start training gunnery,, since you have been nerfing missiles ever since i started playing this game like non stop.

Why would anyone continue using drones, i dont see why. It is less dps terrible gameplay ( the drone ui is horrible ) and now you run the rish of loosing millions of isk by your drones getting owned instantly or atleast before you can react.

The dev did say that alphaing drones was not working as intended, but that doesnt really change the fact that when 8 elite frigs spawn and they all focus a heavy drone, it is going down.

I fail to see the upside i do. They nerf missile boats, fail to release more missile boats really limiting the use of them, they buff guns and now they nerf bat drones..

CCP seems to only want gun boats, atleast that is my analasis. I for the life of me cannot see why this would help the game at all..

on a mission where i get 1.5mill isk as reward and 1,5 mill as bonus and me loosing a heavy and a med i am down to only 1 mill reward in total..

2 secs while i start training guns lol.. This **** is gone for good.
dexington
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#567 - 2013-02-28 13:16:20 UTC
timmaeh wrote:
It IS making drone boats 100% useless.


I would say they are less reliable, half the time they are okay and half the time they are not worth the trouble.

At the moment my biggest problem seem to be the e-war heavy missions, especially missions where you have multiple elite cruiser doing the e-war. Once you have 2-3 tracking disruptors on you, and you can apply any dps with guns, all you can use are light drones. The elite cruiser are going to target the light drones before you can kill them, and then recall/deploy game starts and with the heavy rep and high resist on elite cruiser it takes forever to kill them.

I'm a relatively respectable citizen. Multiple felon perhaps, but certainly not dangerous.
Chi'Nane T'Kal
Interminatus
#568 - 2013-02-28 13:18:45 UTC
dexington wrote:
timmaeh wrote:
It IS making drone boats 100% useless.


I would say they are less reliable, half the time they are okay and half the time they are not worth the trouble.

At the moment my biggest problem seem to be the e-war heavy missions, especially missions where you have multiple elite cruiser doing the e-war. Once you have 2-3 tracking disruptors on you, and you can apply any dps with guns, all you can use are light drones. The elite cruiser are going to target the light drones before you can kill them, and then recall/deploy game starts and with the heavy rep and high resist on elite cruiser it takes forever to kill them.


You're talking about drones on gun boats though. Drone boats are boats that use drones as their primary weapon.

(Which are not 100% useless btw., but pretty much limited to sentries now.)
dexington
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#569 - 2013-02-28 13:34:05 UTC
Chi'Nane T'Kal wrote:
dexington wrote:
timmaeh wrote:
It IS making drone boats 100% useless.


I would say they are less reliable, half the time they are okay and half the time they are not worth the trouble.

At the moment my biggest problem seem to be the e-war heavy missions, especially missions where you have multiple elite cruiser doing the e-war. Once you have 2-3 tracking disruptors on you, and you can apply any dps with guns, all you can use are light drones. The elite cruiser are going to target the light drones before you can kill them, and then recall/deploy game starts and with the heavy rep and high resist on elite cruiser it takes forever to kill them.


You're talking about drones on gun boats though. Drone boats are boats that use drones as their primary weapon.

(Which are not 100% useless btw., but pretty much limited to sentries now.)


I'm talking about the myrmidon which i fly on a daily basis, which i consider a drone boat. I know that most of my damage i generated by the drones, but that is not going to stop me from utilizing the high slots. Actually using guns does help you with keeping the aggro, and i like having a few buttons to push while i'm ratting.

I'm a relatively respectable citizen. Multiple felon perhaps, but certainly not dangerous.
Tauranon
Weeesearch
CAStabouts
#570 - 2013-02-28 13:34:16 UTC
dexington wrote:
timmaeh wrote:
It IS making drone boats 100% useless.


I would say they are less reliable, half the time they are okay and half the time they are not worth the trouble.

At the moment my biggest problem seem to be the e-war heavy missions, especially missions where you have multiple elite cruiser doing the e-war. Once you have 2-3 tracking disruptors on you, and you can apply any dps with guns, all you can use are light drones. The elite cruiser are going to target the light drones before you can kill them, and then recall/deploy game starts and with the heavy rep and high resist on elite cruiser it takes forever to kill them.


A "drone boat" ie dominix goes through elite TD cruisers like a hot knife through butter. Takes 25 minutes to full clear sansha blockade.

I also don't understand why people are having this much trouble. 3 of the races have an 8-4-8 layout navy battleship gunboat with 125mbit bandwidth and spare drone spaces (ie they can bring 5 sentries, or at least 4 sentries in the basic version of the ship, and the other race (missiles) is not currently affected by TD.

Tauranon
Weeesearch
CAStabouts
#571 - 2013-02-28 13:34:58 UTC
dexington wrote:


I'm talking about the myrmidon which i fly on a daily basis, which i consider a drone boat. I know that most of my damage i generated by the drones, but that is not going to stop me from utilizing the high slots. Actually using guns does help you with keeping the aggro, and i like having a few buttons to push while i'm ratting.


The myrmidon can use 4 sentries, with no bother at all.
timmaeh
United Mining and Hauling Inc
The Initiative.
#572 - 2013-02-28 13:49:32 UTC
Chi'Nane T'Kal wrote:
dexington wrote:
timmaeh wrote:
It IS making drone boats 100% useless.


I would say they are less reliable, half the time they are okay and half the time they are not worth the trouble.

At the moment my biggest problem seem to be the e-war heavy missions, especially missions where you have multiple elite cruiser doing the e-war. Once you have 2-3 tracking disruptors on you, and you can apply any dps with guns, all you can use are light drones. The elite cruiser are going to target the light drones before you can kill them, and then recall/deploy game starts and with the heavy rep and high resist on elite cruiser it takes forever to kill them.


You're talking about drones on gun boats though. Drone boats are boats that use drones as their primary weapon.

(Which are not 100% useless btw., but pretty much limited to sentries now.)


It doesnt matter.. People are going to play less drone boats, simply because the drone gameplay is less engaging and does less dmg AND! now there is a financial risk..

People will just make an insane tank medium range gun ship and sit still and pwn people..
Chi'Nane T'Kal
Interminatus
#573 - 2013-02-28 14:02:31 UTC
timmaeh wrote:
Chi'Nane T'Kal wrote:


It doesnt matter.. People are going to play less drone boats, simply because the drone gameplay is less engaging and does less dmg AND! now there is a financial risk..


I'm not seeing where there is a major difference between slecting a target for your sentries and pressing 'F' versus doing the same and pressing F1. There is less FLEXIBILITY for attacking smaller targets, because you cannot hotkey-attack with a single drone, that's true (and a bit annoying). When it comes to killing battleships, drones are certainly not less competitive unless compared with pure gank ships like the Mach.

I'm pretty sure that since moving to sentries on my Gila, my expenses are lower than the ammunition cost on my Talos used to be. (I only lost small and heavy drones so far, mainly because I tried to get them to work, where i shouldn't have bothered.)


[quote]
People will just make an insane tank medium range gun ship and sit still and pwn people..


I'm curious as to which ship that would be. Generally i find drone boats superb when it comes to gank+tank, which is the main reason why i'm skilling towards a dual spider RS setup. I couldn't EFT up anything even halfway competitive without spending millions on deadspace stuff (except for dual spider domi, which is in the same league).
Tsukino Stareine
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#574 - 2013-02-28 14:17:59 UTC
dexington wrote:
Chi'Nane T'Kal wrote:
dexington wrote:
timmaeh wrote:
It IS making drone boats 100% useless.


I would say they are less reliable, half the time they are okay and half the time they are not worth the trouble.

At the moment my biggest problem seem to be the e-war heavy missions, especially missions where you have multiple elite cruiser doing the e-war. Once you have 2-3 tracking disruptors on you, and you can apply any dps with guns, all you can use are light drones. The elite cruiser are going to target the light drones before you can kill them, and then recall/deploy game starts and with the heavy rep and high resist on elite cruiser it takes forever to kill them.


You're talking about drones on gun boats though. Drone boats are boats that use drones as their primary weapon.

(Which are not 100% useless btw., but pretty much limited to sentries now.)


I'm talking about the myrmidon which i fly on a daily basis, which i consider a drone boat. I know that most of my damage i generated by the drones, but that is not going to stop me from utilizing the high slots. Actually using guns does help you with keeping the aggro, and i like having a few buttons to push while i'm ratting.


if you're only using drones on the myrmidon you're doing it wrong. It's become a very viable bc for doing level 4s now it can field 4 sentries. Sure it won't be as good as the ships that can field 5, but it's still pretty good.

Art of Explosions
Olga Umame
Kreos Heavy Unified Logistics Technologies
#575 - 2013-03-01 06:51:52 UTC
So you want us to blob level 4 missions? PVP isn't 1 ship against a fleet. I totally understand that in your wall of text that comment about PVE should be training for PVP was a mistake. Because right now PVP is 200+ ships trying to find something to shoot up
Signal11th
#576 - 2013-03-01 08:41:25 UTC
Tauranon wrote:
dexington wrote:
timmaeh wrote:
It IS making drone boats 100% useless.


I would say they are less reliable, half the time they are okay and half the time they are not worth the trouble.

At the moment my biggest problem seem to be the e-war heavy missions, especially missions where you have multiple elite cruiser doing the e-war. Once you have 2-3 tracking disruptors on you, and you can apply any dps with guns, all you can use are light drones. The elite cruiser are going to target the light drones before you can kill them, and then recall/deploy game starts and with the heavy rep and high resist on elite cruiser it takes forever to kill them.


A "drone boat" ie dominix goes through elite TD cruisers like a hot knife through butter. Takes 25 minutes to full clear sansha blockade.

I also don't understand why people are having this much trouble. 3 of the races have an 8-4-8 layout navy battleship gunboat with 125mbit bandwidth and spare drone spaces (ie they can bring 5 sentries, or at least 4 sentries in the basic version of the ship, and the other race (missiles) is not currently affected by TD.




Basically because people just get annoyed with something that used to take 5mins before and now take 15mins. Nobody likes having something take longer than it did before.
Also a moments distraction can basically lose you all your DPS whihc this doesn't happen in a gun/missle boat. Another thing is if you are in 0.0 instead of just having to watch local/D-scan aggroo triggers etc etc you now pretty much have to constantly check drone aggro whilst doing all the above.

It just annoys people.

God Said "Come Forth and receive eternal life!" I came fifth and won a toaster!