EVE General Discussion

Duly noted

Solo [CLDMN] = always bait.

Did everyone miss the Fanfest video of the people there trying this feature?

GOD WHAT THE **** HAPPENED TO YOUR FACE!?!?!

TL;DR: There doesn't seem to be an advantage to actually bringing more people to a hacking site. Instead, make the flying piñata cans move more slowly for each player ship beyond the first.

Okay gang, I've watched the relevant Twitch TV video segment, and read through the middle of page 13 of this thread. So unless the below suggestion has already been posted, or a dev has said something to affirm/counter the below, read for my opinion.

The dev giving the demo mention to "bring a friend" to scoop the loot piñata cans that couldn't otherwise be grabbed by a single player, but I can't see the benefit in this. If they've tuned it to look for a solo player using the new system to be the same as the existing system, then two times the loot split between two players nets you the same loot you would get by just doing it yourself. The only benefit is abating the feeling of "there was extra loot to scoop but I couldn't get it".

As an example. Let's say for the sake of argument that CCP sets four flying piñata cans as the average that a player could scoop before the rest fly off into oblivion. Brining a second player, that person being an average player such as yourself, will only be able to grab an additional four cans. In the end, you've got the same loot you would have gotten if you or he/she hacked the site solo.

My solution? Make it such that for each player ship beyond the first within the vicinity of the hacking site slows the flying piñata cans down. Using my contrived example, that might mean both players can now scoop an additional can each, netting an extra 25% loot. If we need a role-play excuse, then let's say the combined mass of the two ships instead of one exerts a stronger gravitational pull on the piñata cans, thus slowing them down.

Now there's a real benefit to bringing a buddy with. Want to fly solo? Fine, you'll get the same loot you'd normally get. Fly with a buddy? Hey, you get 25% more than you'd normally get. This can scale with more pilots, but of course CCP would need to determine the upper limit, etc.

Playing devil's advocate, multi-boxers/accounts could probably see a small benefit. But then, if ISBox or a similar program can automate this process, they'll be getting a lot more than a single player would anyway. alt-tabbing between two account might be able to pick up a couple of extra piñatas, if there truly is a four second average to clicking on cans and the person is reasonably adept at the process.

This gives some real teeth to the notion of bringing a buddy with. I mean, if I want to travel to low-sec where the sites are better, why bring anyone with me? Yeah, a second pair of eyes watching local, using the d-scanner is great, but if we know there's a better payoff for the additional risk, especially with rats gone in the hacking sites, there's a lot more incentive.

Anyway, if this has been mentioned as an idea since page 13, or subsequently shot down, please ignore. Or feel free to poke holes in it. Just my US$0.02.

If you feel inadequate for not having grabbed every single container then that's not anybody's problem but yours.

The benefit of bringing a friend is that you have an activity that you and your friend can do together. Bringing a friend makes mining and mission running infinitely more interesting. If the loot piñata mini game encourages more people to try exploration in a group with other players (i.e.: not multiboxing), I will consider this feature a success despite the lack of "makes sense" in the "ancient relic spews contents when opened."

Sure, there's the Skylab thing from a few pages back where astronauts complained that contents of drawers would spring out when the drawer was opened. One might expect that a future civilisation might have adjusted for stuff flying out of drawers in zero gravity, but then what happens after you get artificial gravity? Do you keep catering for zero gravity? Or do you take advantage of the availability of a gravity field to go back to stuffing drawers full of junk in order to conserve space?

So there. We've made sense. Now it's just a matter of not liking the mechanic. I will wait and see but I already know that when it comes to pointing and clicking at things moving on a screen, I suck. Hell, I can't even click the insertion cursor into the middle of a word in my word processor accurately.

True enough. And while scanning a system faster is certainly a benefit, in the end, the loot is still the same. Sure you can move from system to system scanning a bit faster with two pilots, and ultimately the ISK an hour will be better, but I'd speculate on a very slim margin. Social interaction is great, and I'm all for that, but a large part of this thread is concerning the solo player.

How do you feel about improving the loot for 2 or more players, per my suggestion? I think that'd be a much greater incentive for the solo player to become more interactive with their fellow pod pilots.

Too lazy to read the thread but isn't there an obvious way of making hacking and arch more interactive by increasing the payout per person.

Ie. you find a site solo, but there's a neut in local. If you did the site solo you'd get say 5 million isk alone. If you say to the neut "hey wanna run this site with me" and then you both get 10 million isk, by, I dont know, the AI seeing that two people are grabbing loot so the can spits out more loot after it detects multiple players at site?

This incentives interaction coz it means more profit per person. For the neut friend it's free money, for the explorer it's more money. Of course either could get ganked by the other so one gets all the extra loot of 20 million to himself, and there's your risk side of equation. But then you could persuade not to gank by saying you will find more explore sites for the neut, and it's even more free money to him, he wouldn't want to kill the goose laying golden eggs.

This could be solo play coz you don't have to marry the guy. Say you as an explorer ride into town, start finding free sites for the locals to cash in on. Then one day, you leave, never to be heard of again, off to explore new lands. The locals just remember the explorer who passed through town that weekend and then went off into the sunset. Looool.

But I've had fantasies about this exploration pve before and in the end the game mechanisms **** it all up and made it boring. But there is still a month before oddysey so make it happen please ccp.

This could be a really good way of getting noobs money aswell, and to get them interact. You find a week old noob and bring them along as an archeologists assistant to grab loot. They can build up some starter isk this way. With an exponential increase in profit per person this could be an incentive rather than just pure charity like mission salvaging is. Plus with no rats and no need to change out of scan ship, you could show the newb assistant employee all over the galaxy and deep into 0.0 in his velator or burst to the sites without him getting popped by rats.

God there's so much potential with exploration and I bet ccp won't do any of it.

Yea why is being on comms held up as the only way to interact? Huuuuh? Running a mission with someone is interaction. Negotaiating a bulk market deal with someone is interaction. White knighting a miner being ganked by ecm'ing the ganker is interaction. Being a pirate amd helping some faction warfare peeps blob their enemy is interaction. Going on team speak with corpmates and listening to them drone on about their tedious home life 5 nights a week while we mine is not eve interaction endgame.

Lots of people say they are solo or say they don't want to interact but the truth is, they just don't want to be tied down in one corp in on region of space for 15 months at a time. Ccp would do well to encourage more short term interactions and nomadic interactive play styles as alternative to the perma corp mates play style.

And? So what?