Jita Park Speakers Corner

Something I said in one of the anti-Mittani threads that probably bears repeating here: his actions as head of the goons do NOT reflect on his CSM position because he would be choosing those actions anyway. They aren't ganking miners because Mittens is CSM, they're ganking miners because it benefits them (and is fun). Take away the CSM tag, they're still ganking miners. Don't confuse his decision as an alliance leader with his role as CSM chair.

Lest you think I'm a goon alt or just stroking his e-peen, I've been critical of the CSM and Mittani in the past. I call it how I see it, and in this case the dude has done nothing wrong. There, got that out of the way.

Since my group started our campaign against these isk factories a week ago, I've heard from a lot of people who support what we do because they see incursions as detrimental to the rest of the Eve landscape. I'm hearing that C1-C4 wormholes are largely being abandoned in favor of the security and conveniences of high sec. Others are saying that lowsec exploration and nullsec ratting have been dropping off, and there's a general sense among the guys who have contacted me that this is due more to incursions being so profitable than incarna ragequits or any other reason. If this is true, Incursion has damaged Eve more than Incarna, in that it is diluting the rest of the game with the draw of low-risk iskmaking equal to that of wormholes and k-space nullsec.

So my questions:
What's your take on highsec incursions?

If you think they need to be rebalanced, do you have any ideas on how to do so?

edit: y u hate wromhols?

I think Incursions are superior in all ways to L4 missions. They generate content, socialization, and in some cases PvP. They're a great way for corps to form and recruit. And, unlike a L4, they can't be botted into being an endless fountain of isk.

So I'm in favor of Hisec incursions being profitable, as at least humans are profiting from them instead of bots, and they drive social interaction between players rather than being a mindless, boring, awful solo activity. Missions bore the hell out of me and I can't imagine doing them for any length of time. Hell, even Incursions get repetitive, but at least you can chat while you do them.

The forums ate my reply. I'm very much against the fact that the new forums devour posts and 'get ganked' all the time. What a pile of crap.

I'd be willing to settle for bullet points.

or a picture of your dog.

My personal take on the "get ganked" bullshit is that we're looking at 2 or 3 nodes (or more) in a loadbalanced cluster, and one of them is down. The fact I'm redirected to another URL so I can't just refresh is also annoying as all ****, and I've lost count of how many posts have been eaten because I didn't copy them before doing post or preview, and apparently took more time while writing them than some arbitrary session timeout or something.

It would be awesome if someone on the forum team (with their awesome track record so far) could get a hard kick up the behind, for it is, as you say, atrocious.

Do you support an immediate and forceful crackdown to deal with the ongoing Bring Stabity question?

whats your suggestion for fixing nullsec isking?

CCP recently stated that the NEX store should have been filled with stuff current players wanted - ship skins and corp/alliance logos - rather than clothes and monocles ( http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6339021/microtransaction-missteps-in-eve-online )

Once CCP make good progress through, or complete the V3 upgrade process for ships they will be able to begin to implement custom ship skins and corp/alliance logos. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J42F4WkeFQ4#t=203s )

Where do you stand on this functionality being available through the NEX store - I.E. someone has to pay AURUM at some point. If CCP don't introduce this via the NEX, arguably they will have missed the opportunity to ever do so. There are really 2 angles to consider here, so I will ask 2 separate questions:

1. Where do you stand as a player on requiring AURUM for shipskins/logos? High cost but 'indestructable' - ala current NEX items? Low cost but destructable? Would not stand for any AURUM cost?

2. How or when should CCP approach attempting re-utilise the NEX store/AURUM for a purely vanity feature like this?

Oh ffs. Forums ate my response, too. Seriously, CCP...there have been really good forums on the web for more than a decade now. Why did you have to reinvent the wheel?

To sum up my thoughts:

I'm all for incursions. I have been since they came out. I think anything that teaches people to work in fleets and deal with other players more is a good thing.

I agree that wormholes are fine the way they are. The problem is that highsec incursions pay about as well as wormholes now, with much less risk and investment. That's a problem.

I disagree that the L4/Q20 buff was significant. "Serious" mission runners were already using the highest quality agents, the only people who saw increased income were casual missioners and players grinding their way up to Q20 on a new faction...and they only got there a few weeks early. It's not a huge difference.

There seems to be a common theme around here that something should be done about botting. Bot miners, bot missioners, bot ratters....clearly the consensus is that bots are putting too much into the economy. CCP needs to find ways prevent bots from doing what they do instead of trying to detect them. Things like putting ore into grav sites would at least slow the bots down and require more effort by their owners.

I have an idea for correcting the imbalance that exists with highsec incursions:

The idea behind incursions is that the Sansha are invading and Concord needs our help pushing them out. Concord pays us for this help. When we spend days opting to wait for more Sansha to arrive so we can shoot them and collect more bounties, does it make sense that Concord just accepts this? I would expect them, at some point, to say "Would you hurry up and just get rid of them?"

So I would suggest two things: First, that vanguard sites have diminishing returns. The longer an incursion is active, the lower the payout gets for vanguard sites, down to roughly 60% their current rate. This makes farming less profitable and creates a compelling reason for finishing the incursion and getting a fresh one started elsewhere.

If that doesn't work, the second idea is to do the same with the mothership payout: increase the base reward for winning the mothership battle, and then reduce it over time as Concord grows impatient. The reward would be in quickly dispatching the invasion rather than sitting in the middle of the invasion and shooting the smaller ships so you get more bounty.

edit: A third idea: highsec incursions shouldn't be available all day, every day. There needs to be a break in them so that people can't run from one incursion to the next doing nothing but farming them.

There should definitely still be a sec status hit, so lowsec. Or maybe just significantly drop the concord response so that it would be possible to gank the shiny battleships, but you would be concorded for it.