Player Features and Ideas Discussion

In my original post i suggested a system similar to the 'Integrated' and 'Augmented' drone creation style. Do you even know how those are made? And if so, why do you think that is a bad idea? This also does bring up a big question about Drone regions and module drop balance don't you think?

Second, I don't believe it's "forcing" anyone to do anything. Currently mission running and ratting are the most profitable profession. Nobody is "Forced" to do it, but because of the opportunity the vast majority of people do that. Fixing this would give more opportunity to the people that want to mine and/or produce. In fact the reason so many people stop mining is because its profitability is so lacking compared to mission running.

Saying people are going to quit the game is so cliche. And what information leads you to believe bot operations are the problem? How do you know they're bots and not afk or non-english speaking? It's not our responsibility to fight botting, it's CCP's. You can't create or stifle content because of how it maybe be affected by botting.

Obviously drone poo and the previous levels of meta reprocessability were way out of line, and they were pulled down quite a bit. The overwhelming imbalance was addressed, the issue itself was not. Any amount of "gun mining" you do still impacts mining. And any amount of desirable modules you loot, lets call it **"Combat building" impacts production.
**Terms like "Gun Building" don't really work there because it can be misinterpreted as building guns etc.

With Odyssey they didn't buff mining so much as they buffed Capital ship production. I do agree with the BPC stuff in place of invention failures. But I also think they need to remove Tech II BPOs. As far as meta0 loot drop, no. If you want meta0 modules go buy them from a player or make them yourself with minerals you mine.

In the first part you're comparing two different things. You're comparing module drop to ore. Dropped modules are good to go, where as ore needs to be refined then produced with a blueprint that needs to be researched to be profitable only to make an item that is not as good as the dropped module. If the module didn't drop then you still get an Isk bounty potential salvage and if you're doing a mission you also get mission reward isk and LP. If you still can't "figure out what the issue is." then you're probably not really thinking out of the box, you just have your head up your ass.

Unless their role in "invention" required no skill whatsoever and would allow players with no training towards R&D/invention to make named weapons that much would change. That would in turn reduce, potentially significantly, the customer base from anyone who might want to use/reprocess the named items to only those with the skills to do something with them. If the consumer base gets small enough while the provider base remains the same it could potentially create a scenario where it's a buyer's market and the manufacturers set the price for all items and not just the low-meta items.

I'd say that that's some pretty significant change right there even if it's only a couple things.



From a moral perspective it's about as much our responsibility to do something about botting as it is for a person to do something if they see illegal activity IRL. Here's another cliche for you, "All that evil needs to succeed is for good men to do nothing." Players have just as much right to want to stamp out botting, and take reasonable actions to do so, as CCP does.

Introducing or attempting to introduce new or altered content with a complete disregard for how it might be misused or abused is irresponsible bordering on stupidity.



While a perfectly valid point for the most part it does ignore the fact that when it comes to modules where there are only T1/T2 variants and named variants are either extremely rare or completely non-existent item and ore drops are both identical. "Mine," reprocess, build. With the introduction of named capital modules that group took a hefty population cut, but it's still not something that should really be entirely ignored.



Personally, it'd be better to significantly reduce the isk payouts rather than reduce or remove NPC drops. It's a lot easier to remove those excess modules/minerals from the game than it is to remove the excess isk. It might up the learning curve a bit for new players and force them to train up some trading skills and learn the market, but I'd rather lose liquid isk than realism/loot.

You aren't given the tools to file petitions and report potentially bot-like behavior? You aren't given the tools to get into a cheap ship, sacrifice your security standing, and blow them up?



If you think that people run bots only because they're lazy then you don't know much about people.

That said even if it's just a 1:1 shift from mission/rat bots to mining bots it will still make for a larger impact on straight up miners as they have to compete with more bots and it will make the botting, or its effects, more visible to players at large with either or both likely result in more people complaining about it.

Whether that's good or bad I'll leave up to anyone reading this topic.



I don't know why any translation would be needed. With regards to producing items where named variants might be a bit on the rare side (capital mods) or utterly non-existent (warp disruption field generators, T1/faction ships) there is no functional difference between "mining" NPCs and mining asteroids. Shoot something, loot it, reprocess/refine the loot, build something else. With the recent changes to exploration the analogy fits even better given that you can more easily mine zydrine (haven't seen anything bearing megacyte yet, don't expect to either though, at least not outside of an odd L4 mining mission) in high-sec now.



I never said a thing about increasing drops though. I said that minerals and items, especially non-production items (named weapons, etc.) which specifically pertain to this topic, are more easily removed from the game than isk is. The modules and minerals invested in a ship can, and do, get removed from the game environment when a ship is blown up, but the isk used to purchase the ship and the modules on it do not leave the game. In fact more isk enters the game via the insurance payout.



Of course on the flip side every meta 1+ module dropped is one more item that doesn't need to be made by minerals which in turn means more minerals used to build capital ship parts, ships in general, ammo, T1 items for faction item conversion, and the aforementioned T1/T2-only and named-poor items.

Yes, it means T1 items are less likely to be used and subsequently that making them is less valued, but part of the problem is with the concept that T1 should be bottom of the rung when it often has a higher "value" than any sub-meta 5 item. I just looked at tachyon beams which would "cost" roughly 1.5m apiece to make, are being sold for 2m in Domain, and compete against the named variants which all have a sizable stock in the 800k-1m range.

There are a few ways to help with that though. Bump T1 items up to meta 2 and the meta 1/2 items down a grade with corresponding stat reductions. Then lower the drop rate of meta 3/4 items as a percentage of the whole, not an absolute value, to help drive up their price some due to rarity. Afterwards it might also be worth considering to increase the percentage of their total "value" that is devoted to rare minerals thereby making them more likely to be reprocessed rather than used, though I'll admit that this last idea could have some balance issues in devaluing no/low-sec mining more than it already is.

As for wrecked ships I believe we'll have to agree to disagree. I see it as an all or nothing issue. Either PC and NPC ships function the same in that they drop a randomized assortment of modules that were in use, or presumably in use in the case of NPCs, or they all drop nothing, and my vote's on all ships being able to drop modules. In the event that no wreck drops anything and can only be salvaged I would imagine that even PvP'ers would scream bloody murder. Likewise it would rather fly in the face of probability which the New Eden universe has, more or less, if no ship wreck ever had a remaining module or two that were (almost) functional. I'm willing to cop to some, perhaps even most, of the modules being damaged, and in fact I'm even willing to cop to a secondary "repair" method for meta 3/4 modules needing a bit of salvaged materials thrown in with the isk to repair them to help drive up their price in excess of T1 pricing while retaining "realism."

I just don't see that entirely removing module drops from NPC wrecks would be good for the game though. Removing them from just NPCs breaks realism, and removing them from everyone will just tick off a lot of people.

Shameless self bump.

Also think we need a new megacyte sink. Add this to meta building!

You would have to what...increase the yields or amount of minerals in the game somewhere between 5-10 times what they are now to keep prices at what they are (which are stupid high compared to years past). If you simply took away meta loot from rats then you'd be looking at all prices on the market going up a significant amount.

This is besides the point because making it so rats drop absolutely nothing is a stupid proposition. If EVE were reality the people fighting Guristas and the like would be salvaging loot off wrecks in the first place. What I've always thought Meta loot to be, is modified Meta 1 gear, illegal modifications or otherwise. This fits with why pirates would be carrying such things.

"But we aren't making it so it shouldn't exist." Who said you had to make it? Obviously the industrial arms of the Pirate groups are making the gear that we loot off the ships, OR its been previously stripped off Naval or Capsuleer vessels and then adapted to suit the pirate's needs.

This is a non-issue, because if you take away loot from NPCs you're going to cause a bad reaction in the market and lore does not support this.

Now swap BPC in your post with "broken meta modules" and rethink everything you just typed. Those broken modules could still be refined but will yield much less minerals (1/3rd of current amount or 1/2), then introduce a way to repair broken module where you need meta0 (for spare parts) and it'll become a nifty system. Lets say after repair you get functional meta1+ module and broken meta0 or several metal scraps. Does that sound idiotic now?

Problem: Miners aren't making "enough" from T1 module production when there is an abundance of named modules in the market.
Cause: Years and years of people doing missions with fewer people reprocessing or PvP-lossing these items than have been entering the economy are partly at fault. CCP's nerf to the amount of minerals named modules yield upon reprocessing also didn't help this as people are now unlikely to reprocess all but the worst named modules thereby resulting in an even greater glut in the market for the higher meta modules.

Cause: By incorporating T1 modules into named module construction and/or repair miners will get the profits they so richly deserve.
Problem: T1 modules still won't be any more useful in their given role(s) than they are now. Furthermore by incorporating the cost of T1 modules into the cost of every named module you're going to introduce a significant amount of price inflation over current costs. This in turn could potentially drive the price of named modules up into the realm of faction pricing if handled improperly.

Problem: Removing loot drops will raise the price for any and every T1 item that does not have a named variant on the market or for which the named variants are rare. See ships, heavy interdictor bubbles, and capital ship modules.
Cause: Named modules and ore are functionally identical to one another when it comes to creating these items. The primary difference is in the skills necessary to convert these items into the minerals needed to construct ships, no-named-variant modules, and capital modules. By removing named modules from NPC drops you would effectively cause a significant drop in the mineral inflow for these items resulting in potentially significant price hikes. Even if it's only a massive increase on the short term when the market settles out pricing will still likely be higher.

Problem: By making mining more profitable you will make mining more difficult.
Cause: People flock to where there's money. Right now mining's low enough in profit per hour that while you see miners out in belts and while busier systems often get mined out once you get away from the hubs competition for belts tends to drop pretty significantly. If you increase the profitability of mining enough, beyond that of L4 mission since you'll also be nerfing the profitability of L4 missions in the process of the suggested changes, you'll get a significant increase in the number of miners out there. This will in turn increase competition for resources. This could in turn potentially make suicide ganking for ore a profitable endeavor and boost mining ship losses. All of which will contribute to further increase the cost of minerals, anything made by them, and continue to escalate the problems already outlined until homeostasis is once again reached. Good luck figuring out how long that will take.

The difference between you and me is not that I don't see your problem as a problem, it's that I see more problems than just the ones you're concerned with, and your idea(s) lead to a lot of them.



I don't have a problem with allowing mining lasers to damage ships, honestly. In fact while I'm not sure as to whether or not they should be able to penetrate shields I would most definitely agree that they should be capable of causing some pretty nasty, or at least decent, armor and/or hull damage.



If nobody brings up realism then we might as well let the game go to chaos and anarchy as we fly around in titan-sized replicas of Applejack who has a Hello Kitty logo on both of her flanks that sparkle and flash as she shoots rainbow-trailed torpedoes out of her ass by the thousands.

something like "prototyping" or the like, yes, keep the mineral requirements the same than the T1 version for those named modules and its done. mission runners would only have blitzing for LPs and salvaging for earning their isk, but it would go good for the industrials.

Not exactly. The mission runners would get some new raw materials needed to build named modules. Those mats would be combined with the appropriate t1 module based on the invented BPC. So the mission guys would get the new materials as loot and sell them for isk.

NPC's drop specific loot taylored to their race and ship size I thought? I would lower the reproccesing value but up the % chance for invention, and maybe bring something new to the game like meta level ship hulls which could be used to increase % chance for tech 2 hull invention, this would decrease the mineral wealth of missions but make the loot valuable to true industrialists, especially new and old players frustrated at invention and tech 2 production. (meta level item bpc's could also be nice)

My opinion is that the semi afk professions should stay roughly the same and more content added that would allow more active players to get more out of eve (ie the mysterious ring mining/vien searching), I understand about a lot of players disapointment at Eve's unengaging pve (which is why I made a thread filled with basic concepts).