Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I clarified my position on the matter somewhat in my second post on the subject, which you might have missed. It is here.

To be completely explicit, my issue is that to discuss any possible solution, you need to have a clearly defined problem, not simply know that a problem exists. You need to know what the problem actually is to be able to solve it correctly. Any other approach makes me cringe inside.

Not knowing what that problem is will, more often than not, lead directly to that solution you mentioned which is simple, neat, and wrong.

I would have said the actual problem is fairly clear but that is open to discussion i guess

Right now i think it is fair to say most combat happens on gates, which means one side is jumping into the other, at this point there is a distinct advantage in terms of having an off grid booster for the side not jumping. as the aggressors most get their boosting ship through the gate and away to safety.

should this happen your then in a situation where both sides have booster than are close to invulnerable. and will essentially cancel each other out. It is fairly uncommon for a t3 or command ship to be scanned down, until the main battle breaks down.

currently command ships are designed to be very high tanking ships. which as i said previously makes them undesirable primary targets. so for them to be on field isn't a major issue, however, because of this there is still no strategic value to consider as both sides would have them on field not being shot.

this is why the additional 'solution' to have their effects interruptable would make sense. this way their is a valid counter to the bonus' rather than only being able to cancel it out.

by going with the concept of leaving it off grid, it becomes dependent of each side having players removed from the battle for the sole purpose of chasing these boosting ships around the system, which can still easily evade being captured.

I dont really care how they fix it, as long as they fix it. ASAP.

I am so tired of gang links. I resubbed like 3 weeks ago, and 2/3 of my deaths since then has been due to gang links. I dont understand how CCP can let such a blatantly OVERPOWERED mechanic exist.

For example, do you think its cool that a t1 frig can enter a novice plex, get in a fight with another t1 frig, but the other t1 has boosts from a T3/t2 battle cruiser/Titan? Is that working as intended?

I am an avid solo roamer, I enjoy trying to take o multiple guys at the same time. But right now I dont have a chance in hell because of the endless stream of gang link scrubs. So I am done with solo roaming until they fix off-grid boosting.

It shouldnt be to hard to fix. You call yourself Game developers. DEVELOP SOMETHING.

I am fine with gang links aslong as they are for gang, on grid.

At the moment. they dont have a counter. You cannot kill a gang link alt, unless the other guy really isnt paying attention. If they are on grid, at least they are counterable (READ: you kill it) and they wont be able to give game changing boosts to ships in plexes not meant for them.

By fix, I mean, make it so they only work on grid. CCP problem is they cant figuire out how to do that, some coding issue or whatever. I think they are just being lazy.

I am no code writer or game developer, but how hard can it be to write abit of code that is simply:

If target is: within 300km + in fleet then gang links will be applied.

What is so difficult about that? It is the most simple and seemingly easy fix.

And eve isnt a sandbox when you need a gang link alt to pvp effectively. They basically force you to have one right now.

I also considered grid fu as a weakness, but I am less familiar with it's details.

Another point I am seeing is that the benefit of more cooperation is being treated as poor playing unless it is crudely reflected as increased blob size here.

I read the first page and skipped reading the second page.

It has come to my attention that allegedly CCP says the smallest unit they can break the universe into for calculations is the system-wide level. They cannot currently process only a portion of a solar system; either you're present in the solar system at all or you aren't.

So the true "solution" for off-grid boosting is new code that allows for breaking a solar system down into parts for separate computation and hardware with enough overall throughput to support it. Except of course that this then means the hardware and software would have to be able to break a solar system down into grids, which could be horribly and terrifyingly taxing on both. As such, I can easily see why CCP hasn't come up with a fix to something they've expressed such an open dislike for.

As I write this, something else came to mind. Old-style titan DDs did AoE damage to everything on-grid and if you were off-grid you were safe. Perhaps gang links could be rewritten to use the old grid-wide DD AoE instead of simply "on" or "off".

So now you have two boosting ships (or if you've only got one boosting ship, add another low sig ship as a target) sitting in a safe spot targeting each other so that their bonuses can be applied.

Oh, I see. I missed the meaning of the "new target" part because the only thing that does this at the moment is a tractor beam on a wreck. Not sure if the same code could be applied to ships given the amount of uncommented code that lurks deep in the codebase, but who knows.

Also, you want it to effectively be an aggressive module too (the TP part), adding complications of turning on this module by a gate and gaining an aggression timer (sorry, the rest of your fleet can jump out but the command ships have to stay if you want to keep getting those bonus resists). Alternatively, a player could target a hostile ship and get an added TP effect.

Still not really liking the idea.

either you're doing it wrong or you and I have different definitions of "require players to cooperate"

it is stupidly simple to fly a T3 ship around with a covert ops cloak and a bunch of gang links, and dual box them into place when fighting "solo"

Having someone off grid who is able to effect the fight on grid from complete safety is not only moronic, it creates a bigger gap between the "haves" and the "have nots"

The best part is that they dont even have to commit to the fight, all you have to do is look over at your second monitor every so often to make sure you dont have to cloak!

This is the reason DDs through cynos got removed, it was the reason drive by DDs got removed, Off grid boosters need to be the next thing to go.

There's no way to get around the possibility that one player could be multiboxing all 30 ships in a fleet (obviously exaggerated number to make the point, you get the idea though). If they're going to go to the effort of setting up isboxer to do that and control them all then good on them. Still, one vaguely competent group of players with similar composition will beat a single player managing multiple accounts at once. So perhaps "require" was a bit strong, but this is an emergent sandbox where players are supposed to figure out how to get the best benefit and use it.

Even with the example you give of dual boxing with boosts, one dude in a Cynabal with off-grid boosters is going to struggle against a bigger gang of almost any composition if they can get a scram/web (made all the easier with boosts of their own). One Rapier, one Falcon and some T1 cruisers and a whole gang for the same price and that Cynabal should be going down.

The main issue I have with this proposal is that it goes against the principles of emergence. To quote Adams and Dormans in their book Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design: “We use the term emergence because the game’s challenges and its flow of events are not planned in advance but emerge during play.”

This proposal seeks to plan the way the game should be played in advance, rather than creating basic tools and allow emergence to do its thing. Designing for emergence can be really hard because sometimes the effects are not desired, particularly in such a complex system that is EVE Online. However, if you want a pre-planned gameplay experience, there are plenty of those out there that are not EVE.