Missions & Complexes

Recently there was a stealth change made to escalation sites. Previously when you received an escalation site you had 24 hours to get to the site. Once you landed on grid the escalation reset that 24 hour timer. This was a great feature in that it allowed your casual player (ratter) to run the rare escalation site that they received at a time of their choosing. This however was not in-line with CCPs original intended design specifications for these sites. These sites were to be completed in quick and rapid succession, and they were supposed to end at any time. Be it due to hitting a dead end, or due to a time limit being reached. They were not supposed to reset. While I personally think this takes away an aspect of the game that was very helpful for the casual ratter, I can also see how this mechanic was potentially exploited and perhaps needed to be fixed. Either way though the change has been made and the issue “fixed.”

My problem with this fix is that it breaks the continuity of the game, and immersion into that game environment. No other site I know of can de-spawn on you when you are actively running the site. Not even Ghost sites de-spawn per-say. These sites have been booby trapped to prevent unauthorized access, and explode causing damage to (or destroying) your ship as well as destroying the site. Even belt rats warp off from time to time, but you see them warping away. They do not just vanish. So why do these sites just disappear after 24 hours? This does not fit into the game the way every other aspect of PVE does. Therefore I have an issue with it.

My purposed resolution is simple… Keep the reset ability, but reset it at 1 hour instead of 24 hours. This allows for the site to be run, in a reasonable amount of time even if you have to warp out and back in.

To expand upon my idea even further I suggest we have the site expire at 24 hours as was supposedly intended, but allow the site to reset with 1 hour on the timer so that the site can be reasonably run when the player hits grid. Frankly have it reset to 1 hour when the player hits grid every time, weather 23 hours were originally left on the timer or 5 minutes. That forces the player to only enter grid when they plan on running the site, and makes any exploit of said mechanic virtually pointless as warping off and back every hour is not worth it to keep a site open. It also maintains game mechanics and continuity as hostiles would not remain in the area when they have been found, but they can’t abandon the site immediately either (i.e. it takes 1 hour). Even resetting the timer to 1 hour after you warp off and back is still in line as the rats trapped in their deadspace pocket have to fight you to get free and continue evacuating the area.

Does anyone else have any additional thoughts on this idea?

Correct me if I am wrong, but I can find no features and ideas forum for the Missions & Complexes thread. That is why I posted here.

Haha. Thats what CCP said - they also branded it as a 'bug'. It has been like that for years and years, possibly since the time when expeds were added. Now, suddenly they had become aware of a 'bug' that needed 'fixing'...

I think what they did is just the easy way out. They got aware of people using the resets to farm faction/overseer rats in the expeds for better loot via cargo scanning and instead of tackling the issue in a more elegant way (like, duh, make cargo scanners just not work on npcs), they dont let us extend the timer anymore.

This 24hrs timer faces the same inconvenience issues that the 24 hrs clone jump timers did, namely that if you have a life with relatively static work/freetime cycles, it fucks you over. We now have skills to get around this with clone jumps. As such i would like to propose (again) to make the exped timer > 24 hrs - i don't know, maybe 38 as a good middle ground, or even only 28.

Link? I won't lie I found it easier to navigate the old forums.

You're kidding, right?

On the last big patch (Rubicon patch I think) I was running an escalation right after the patch and noticed that it didn't reset, hopped over on Help channel and asked about it and there were a couple CCP guys who were there who did indeed brand it as a 'bug' that was 'fixed' so yeah, it kinda made escalations not doable for me because of work schedule as people have said above.

That's what i am thinking why they did it, but it is only my opinion. Since it wasn't even mentioned in the patch notes (lol) and CCP is quiet about this, we can only speculate.

As Battelle mentioned it might have been because you could easily jack up some expeds from anomalies to various DED sites (your 'personal' sites to boot) and go there every day to rescan the overseer until it has something worth your time.

I understand the reasons why it was changed, but i think it could have been done differently.

In my opinion that change wasn't needed. Within my 6 years as an active member of this community, I've never seen a rage thread posted about the expedition timers being bugged until this recent change. I believe CCP just used that as an excuse. If it was indeed a bug, it certainly wasn't game breaking. I'm sure there's a lot of other bugs in this game that required a lot more attention than the expedition timer.

As for the expedition timer, it definitely should be 24 hrs to get to the next site. After landing on grid I think the timer should be reset but only once, not every time you land on grid. The first warp in should activate a 2 hr countdown timer. I think that would give plenty of time to complete the site or to call in help if needed.

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Seems to me there's a lot more trolls jumping into these other sub forums now due to CCL / ISD keeping a watchful eye on General Discussion sub forum.

One thing I've noticed is that forum Trolls never answer questions, they just make sarcastic snide remarks intended to demean and enrage.

In answer to the OP's question, the sub forum - Features & Ideas Discussion - is located in the top of Forum section - EVE Technology and Research Center - which is located near the bottom of the page - Eve Forums..

You could re-post a more simplified version of this thread there in that sub-forum.



DMC