Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Do it.

Having read nearly every post in this chain it is surprising to me that so many have a narrow view of what kind of gameplay they can perform to exist in wormhole space and the amount of anger thrown at those who play with different goals.

Wormhole space is not *only* a PvP arena. If it was, it would have zero PvE content. One aspect of PvP is avoidance of combat. If a PvE organization can, through in game information, remove themselves from a PvP fight with no losses, then thay have won they day from their PvP point of view.

I will not argue whether it is too easy for PvE groups to avoid combat. That is not at issue here. The issue is entirely about automatic out of game intel. It should stop for all the reasons CCP has put forward.

As for those groups looking to PvP on PvE groups, it is time to expand your thinking. You complain about groups that log off in carriers and care not for their POS after you burn it to the ground. Is there a reason you cannot occupy, or otherwise take ownership of that same PvE wormholes when you find them? Can you not field a force in a known occupied wormhole for periods of time to eventually catch them returning?

Yes, it would mean moving beyond this single hole occupation meta that dominates wormhole space. Do large k-space entities occupy only one system? Is there something fundamentally impossible about it in wormhole space? If so, perhaps that could be the focus of gameplay discussions, not out of game intel. No one would say that it would be the easy route, but dominating large portions of space should never be easy. It is ironic that it seems WH PvP entities seem to only want to dominate large portions of space from the confines of their single system and the relatively small numbers of pilots that occupy them...

TL;DR Kill the API. Let's see then if WH space residents can come up with fundamentally new ways to use WH space other than what has been the status quo for so long...

the fact of the matter is that what you are considering the "norm" of w-space is partially the result of an oversight in the API

now that this is being corrected, you will have to stop relying on this crutch

it is not going to kill PvP

if something like this kills PvP, how the heck does anyone kill anything in nullsec

And the Discovery Scanner should also be fixed due to it giving instant unearned intel.

PvE has always been exceptionally safe out here if you're doing it right and that's something that CCP should probably look into sometime.
I said a while ago that the WH CSM should find out who on the Game Design team are full time w spacers and make them their primary point of contact. Ideally there should be two devs who are exceptionally familiar with our way of life, a low wh and a high wh. There are changes being made without the understanding of the effect on w space and having someone on the inside who can point these put early is important.

That the only danger to any wh pve is data crunching via the api is an issue and complaining about it's removal is not the right path. It should be fixed at the source.

Talk about poor signal to noise ratio. This thread needs a moderator to delete the crap.
Then between the one liner crap there are postings with content


CCP position still seems confused. What is the logic of reporting player kills but not NPC kills if nobody has exited the wormhole? If it is destruction of a capsule then you have the medical clone activation to trigger a public ship kill report. For validation the details have to be verifiable via the API and CCP is forced to publish all player ship kills. What is the game logic that says all player ship combat gets verified but not NPC. Combat in space should leave some trace and if PvP combat gets reported then NPC combat should be reported via the same mechanism into the API. If there is no wormhole player ship kill data in the API then the NPC data should not be reported for consistency. Therefore CCP just needs to be consistent and if that means the data should be removed let the players have their wails and we move on.

Combat in space (nuclear explosions from ship destruction, munitions, etc.) should leave detectable traces in space for some time. If the NPC data is removed from the API the ship scanner should be enhanced to detect the traces of combat within the wormhole. The accuracy of the scanner's report should be like PI planetary reports where skill determines accuracy.


'Local' still exists in wormholes, it is only the relay function that is disabled. In a wormhole I've used Local regularly to communicate with other players.


So what, these are unrelated nerfs.

Wormhole groups looking for PVP will find it much harder to find their fights within the wormhole environment. So I'm not surprised there are protests from wormhole dwellers. The nerf will encouraged wormhole PvPers to boil out of their wormholes into low and null sec systems to perform hit and run combat. Gets them some cheap kills then they disappear before retribution can be organised. This promotes great small gang PvP deep into Alliance areas as you can pop out at random and choose victims at leisure.

Wormhole PvE and mining will be riskier for HiSec or LoSec dwellers as they won't know if a system is active or quiet therefore the risk increases, effectively increasing the chances of being ganked making the activity less profitable. This does add up to a nerf, increases complexity and makes wormholes less attractive to enter.

Established wormhole dwellers will find this nerf makes their life more difficult but I expect they will adapt. It will be harder for new players to become established within wormholes and will increase the pull of the established wormhole corporations.

I`ve been reading all of the posts for a while now and I suggest we do a little thought experiment here.

Please if you are in a WH PvP corp that is directly affected by this changes write down your own version and line of thought with reasoning behind it as this provides better feedback for a developer than throwing the "You have no idea of WH PvP Bullshit" at everyone.

Version A)

The change will be made, BU & QEX and the rest of the bigger WH Alliances cry in outrage like they already do and continue to blame CCP and its developers to have ruined their prefered playstyle of sitting around in POSes and waiting for WH activity to show in the chain they scanned X Days / X Hours ago and keep blaming the Dev`s and their votes WH CSM not knowing a thing about the game they develop.

Some people will quit over this, the rest adapts as we players usually do when there are big changes to a speciifc playstyle we enjoy and keep going. How, remains to be seen.

As the bigger WH PvP entities said themselves with the change and the W-Space Risk / Reward structure out of balance now new people will stream into Wormholes across the board C1 - C6 to make ISK, saturating the W-Space landscape with new opportunities for the established WH PvP Corps to PvP and giving them a better chance to find new prey in a more reasonable time as there is a lot more activity in all over W-Space right now. But they have to actively work for it now, making it a much more satisfying experience to actually kill something.

CCP monitors the aftermath of the changes closely, with blue loot prices dropping and WH Farmers outsmarting WH PvP groups because of the way they can protect their holes ( Closing & Instant Signature Monitoring ) CCP decides that the changes rather drastically alter the wormhole experience for both groups ( PVE & PVP ) as Farmers get less ISK for the same amount of time spent in W-Space shooting sleepers because a lot more people are farming blue loot now.

Therefore CCP Fozzie's idea of delayed signatures comes into play and CCP decides to implement the feature to support the WH PvP groups in having a better chance to create content and a lot more Risk for the PvE groups.

WH PvP entities suddenly praise CCP for their awesome vision of the Game, send beer, hookers and chocolates in Proteus shape to Fozzie and build corbexx a monument right besides the one we already have from the secret wormhole PvP RMT fund showing his middle finger in the direction of north north-west.

Rolling holes for targets is now a much more rewarding and easier task.
With a lot more targets now due to the changed Risk / Reward structure by taking away the NPC API kills and implementing delayed signatures the WH PvPers squealing in joy like little pigs and patting themselves on the back for all the "awesome Marauder & Capital kills" they are getting left and right with their 20+ T3 gangs that sit right next door to the farmers.

And life for WH PvPers was good once again.

This change essentially meant three things:

A) Everyone can be attacked by something cloaky at any times and most likely he`ll have a bunch of friends in warp already when they do.

B) The boring times of sitting in a POS and waiting for Siggy to show activity are over, a much more active playstyle got enforced and with the changes CCP implemented after taking away the NPC data from the API

C) The risk / reward ratio gets raised significantly

But when there is light, there is also shadow.
PvE groups crashed back into reality when they realised that the holy land of ISK farming turned into hell with 20+ T3 gangs constantly ripping them a new one.

So they adapted.
As we learned countless times before if people adapt they do things differently but the most important is they`ll fly different ships.

People will fly in cheaper ships and most groups will stop using capitals at all probably, they will come up with new ideas and doctrines to replace their dual boxing marauders and battleships in C4s with cheap and easy to replace stuff if they can even afford to loose them at all over and over again.

Farming fleets will get bigger and plexing baits will become a much more effective and usual thing because it`s way easier to bait and counter-drop in your own system than rolling holes all day to get PvP.

Finally it will also not only become quite a bit harder for the lower class WHs to constantly generate income with PvE content but also for Corps in C5 / C6 as the only time efficient and effective way to run sites in there are capital escalations.

Who just became a lot more risky. I think most of the C5 / C6 groups are able to fleet a proper composition that fits through a 3B hole and massacre a small escalation fleet.

But as I said before, the defending group is at advantage and can bring whatever size of capital fleet they want while the attackers have to take care of mass issues.

The consequence, suddenly large groups / corps will gain a huge advantage over smaller ones and will be the only one running capital escalations properly shifting the wealth of all WH inhabitants a large percentage in the direction of the big WH PvP corps.

For PvE people it`s simple. If you can`t beat them, join them. So a lot of these carebears and farmers you despise so much would end up in your corp doing a bit of pew while silently farming your escalations with their solo quad account setup.

In the end the ripple effect you set loose by constantly nagging and distrusting the game designers in the future of the sandbox will not make any good changes for your WH PvP at all.

Farmers will either join your corps or put together large groups themselves to safely escalate.
The lower wormholes will be infested with stuff you don`t want to shoot because C3 Drakes are a lot less fun to shoot than C3 T3s farming.

And finally you`ll be only doing PvP against shiny targets with each other.

See - for me the solution is simple - remove the instant sig overlay spawn thing and make everyone have to use probes to find/see signatures and I wouldn't have a problem with the changes.

But as it is the PvE guys in WH space have it too easy and this will only make things easier for them.

Post of kill board link was removed.
Post of attack on CCP personnel was removed.

Forum rule 34. Posting of kill reports outside of the Crime & Punishment forum channel is prohibited.
Forum rule 30. Abuse of CCP employees and ISD volunteers is prohibited.

stop whining please

just rollin' holes as it did before

On a more serious note. I support this change. CCP has a history of altering mechanics that is considered broken even if they are cause of emergent gameplay. From the very beginning. Emergent gameplay is not a valid argument for leaving broken mechanics broken. m0o and jump api in wh is but a few examples. Furthermore this will have very little impact on wh's as a whole. Spreadsheets will be made in overlords and things continue as always.

Another reason I support this change is because the api data make people lazy. You dont need dscan to check if a wh is active with this api data.

Furthermore. Everyone claiming the majority of wormhole players in wspace is in favour or disfavour of this change is just plain wrong. Majority of players dont care. They have this data already through 3rd party and really dont use it in the same way as i.e. BU. Majority of players dont care enough to make a forum post even. So for most people this wont matter much. BU/QEX will still find targets and people will still fear them.

An example of why this change is a good thing.

Yesterday evening I found a target in a c2, 4 or so jumps down the chain.

I didn't find it by seeing a green dot on tripwire. I found it because of the following chain of events:

1. I was in losec, there were 2 sigs (one of them my entrance) and +2 on local chat. Checking d-scan there were probes in the air.
2. the probes vanished and 30 seconds later, so did one of the characters in local. He didn't go through my exit because I was there watching it.
3. I quickly scanned out the other sig, finding it to be a wormhole.
4. jumping in, I saw probes on D again. They were there for a while so I figured he was scanning out all 10 sigs. This either meant:
4a. he was a forward scout for a wh pvp corp (but character info didnt fit)
4b. he was looking to work in sigs rather than anoms to be safe (a good sign)
4c. he was just being thorough.
5. once the probes vanished (eventually), there was a pause - patience is important at these times.
6. and then there was a drake on d-scan, and wrecks started to appear.
7. now using d-scan I had a fairly good bead on where he was, one quick combat probe cycle will get a drake to 100%
8. sure enough, found him in a relic site in one scan. none the wiser to my presence.

And that, children, is how you will get w-space ganks when the pathetically easy free intel has been removed from the API - by actually being there and putting in the work.

I predict that Darwinian principles will eventually force lazy, whinging w-space gank-monkeys out of w-space, leaving it to the pros.

w-space will be better for it. We might even start to get some reasonable fights.