Assembly Hall

Fixing PVE with Incursion therapy.

What I am about to suggest here is incredibly radical. I mean the text book definition of the word, not the, “That’s totally radical man!” version. If your happy with PVE the way it is in EVE do not read the rest of this post because what I’m suggesting will drive you nuts. Just back out and forget you saw this.

TLDR: ALL RATS ARE RACIAL INCURSION RATS WHEREVER YOU FIND THEM

Ratting Changes
Instead of offering racial incursions have each system be as if its under a racial incursion all the time, minus the whole control penalties and warning sirens etc.

System security status no longer determines the size of the rats, but the frequency a racial incursion rat will appear in a system after its destroyed. 1.0 noob systems will have 0% chance of rats spawning. Considering if an Incursion style rat appeared in a belt it would wipe out anything there. There DPS and Tank will be equivalent to sanshas. Yes omni damage as well. These rats will also be smart enough to warp off if they’re loosing a fight to encourage players to pack tackle.

This takes care of ratting bots because these rats wont be able to be solo’d any longer.

This is the big change to missions.
Each Mission will be like a small incursion that can be run by 5 -10 people. Gates will be present at all of them to limit ship entry type just to make it interesting. This means lvl 1 – 4 will be less about quantity of rats and more about what size ships get used to run them.

How do you make t1 frigates not suck in these mini incursions? All though assault ships will be preferable for dps and survivability. The incursion rats that would appear in these lvl 1 missions would have bad tracking so a t1 frigate could still evade their fire. Merlins and Punishers people will dig for these. Similar adjustments must be made for other t1 ships like cruisers and BC. Clearly BS can handle incursions of all sorts we’ve seen this.

Lvl 0 missions old school lvl 1 missions nubs have to cut their teeth on something they can solo

A lvl 1 mission would be like only taking down a hand full of ships in a single wave with maybe one trigger for an additional wave. Frigates, Assault ships, t1 t2 logi. Destroyers.

A lvl 2 mission would be like taking down two waves with a couple of triggers for additional waves. Frigates, Assault ships t1 t2 logi + recons and t1 cruisers

A lvl 3 mission would be like taking down three waves with a couple of triggers for additional waves. Frigates, Assault ships, Hacs, Battle cruisers t1 t2 logi + recons t1 Cruisers.

A lvl 4 would essentially be a full on vanguard. Anything you’d use for a vanguard.

Other then Isk and faction standing each type of mission lvl 1 – 4 must have unique rewards. Maybe in lvl 1’s there’s a very small chance you might get a really rare implant or BPC dropping like 1 in 10. Maybe in lvl 4’s your likely to get a decent implant and BPC more often 1 in 3. Lvl 2 – 3 could be in between these in varying degrees. Or maybe mission rewards you can exchange for Aurum. The idea hear is lvl 1 -4 missions aren’t about you work through one to get to the other, but to offer different kinds of missions for people to fly. You want a big BS fleet fight, great run a level four, you want to tear it up with assault ships do a lvl 1. Each fight will have a different feel to them. You know how people say which makes more isk, faster lvl 3 or steady lvl 4’s, people should ask themselves these questions about ALL these types of missions. The only thing that should limit a groups income from group missions should be the ships they fly in them, and there technique, not the mission level.

Agro will have to be managed in most of these. Who ever warps in to the incursion first gets agro is how incursions currently work then rats cycle their targets. That may have to change with these. Where every one gets into position the tank gets in position pulls agro reps start up and people start laying on the dps.

If it doesn’t already exist there needs to be a threat table for Ewar like: 1.ECM, 2. Sensor Damps, 3.Tracking disruptors, 4.Target Painters. Anything that makes a rat loose their lock clearly would make their group go ballistic, If sensor damps set to range disruption could potentially make a rat loose their lock this would pull agro from rat groups.

If CCP increased the number of agents in null sec their wouldn’t be a need anomilies at all, because the rewards would be comparable. DED complexes would have to be probable incursion missions essentially that are static.

Some people are saying at this point its impossible for noobs to figure this out. I say with the right NPE teaching them about transversal and ewar etc you could. Lets face it PVE in hack and slash MMO’s is already that complicated. Run a 5 or ten man dungeon in any MMO and there’s tons of steps and dos and don’ts to win sticky fights, its what makes PVE relatively interesting in those games. Were merely applying the same philosophy to our game, and ours happens to have a more complicated interface. Face roll left click doesn’t win the day all the time in eve.

These changes could clearly increase the relevance of mission running corps.

These missions need to have multiple objectives. Destroy a prototype Battle ship and blow up the ship yard that built it too. To do that you have to move explosives to a can next to it. Or farm them off spawns till those explosives drop. Something along the lines of that.

I do agree. With the wrong kind of NPE new players will find even in groups these missions impossible, but with the right NPE experience and a little player given guidance they will apply the same things they have learned in hack and slash party MMO’s to ours. Your not corrupting eve with the features of a on the rail hack and slash MMO, your giving players from those games a reference point into our Vibrant Dynamic world.

^^ ditto from me.