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LvL 4 FW Mission Imbalance: Issue?

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exiik Shardani
Imperial Spacedrill and Logistics
#81 - 2014-06-06 15:29:25 UTC
L4, L4 run run run ...... , but you all forget, how much work it is mean for militia's who off plex, shoot iHub's and donating there LP to reach fu... Tier 4 -> only then farmers (null players alts -> contribute nothing to reach Tier 4 or help militias bro with something) start farm...

Missions can only be good reward for ppl, who actively support militia faction and help reaching tiers!

sry for my English :-(
Deacon Abox
Black Eagle5
#82 - 2014-06-06 15:29:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Deacon Abox
Miriya Zakalwe wrote:
But like I said, meh. Go for it. It only tangentially affects me via my FW alt anyway.

So, you have a farmer alt. How is your farmer liking the plexing changes?

Oh btw, the distinction is not between Gal/Cal v Min/Amarr, but between Gal & Amarr v Cal & Min. But I suppose your farmer alt is Cal or Min so you really don't care to read this thread precisely, and basically like things the way they are, right?

Back to the OP, personally I'm a bit meh, but for different reasons than the guy above. I haven't done a single FW mission since I've been in FW. Plexing has stocked me just fine with pvp and lp. Missions are sorta stupid imo, since they don't affect the warzone but only a personal lp balance.

Also, I don't know whether or not to be thankful for the difficulty of Gallente missions. Never appealed to me to go up against ecm and missile spamming rats. But that has kept mission farming hordes out of Galmil.

I suppose if fairness between the militia missions becomes the goal then I'd rather have them adjusted up for the Cal and Min (while getting rid of the ecm-ing rats, the dumbest mechanic in a computer game). This would provide more chances of juicier Tengu kills than piddly bomber kills.

Oh, also, having my own militia rats swich off of the caldari mission runner I'm attacking and shoot me instead is incredibly ********. CCP needs to fix that asap.

CCP, there are off buttons for ship explosions, missile effects, turret effects, etc. "Immersion" does not seem to be harmed by those. So, [u]please[/u] give us a persisting off button for the jump gate and autoscan visuals.

Veskrashen
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#83 - 2014-06-06 15:33:44 UTC
Miriya Zakalwe wrote:
Charlie Firpol wrote:

Why reduce the gains from lvl 4s when you could just do lvl 3s instead? There is no reason to decrease the income from lvl 4s, just make them harder.

I dont understand why you try to defend that so hard. It makes 0 difference for you if your lvl 4s get nerfed or you get "forced" into lvl 3s. But making lvl 4s harder would open a new playstyle, for the guys with enough balls to do the harder lvl 4s ini more expensive/slower ships for the old income.


Ahh, I think I see your confusion, I might not have been clear. I never said "reduce the income of the L4s to be the same as current L3s". I suggested making them more sane, instead of the current crazy top tier scaling factor. They should still be lucrative, more so than highsec L4s or the current L3s, even if doable quickly in frigates. The risk is substantially greater even if the rats are easy. The rats have little to do with the danger here, after all.

The *only * reason I care about this is that they do draw players out to, frankly, be targets. If you take away the ability to solo L4s what I see happening is far fewer players doing missions in general, which I think would be unfortunate, as it pulls them all over the warzone.

I agree with everyone that the risk/reward is currently out of whack. Completely. With plexing too, for that matter.

Now I understand a bit better what you're looking for. It looks like folks are pretty much agreed on the following (and correct me if I'm wrong...)

1. Risk / reward for L4s is currently way out of whack.
2. Part of this is due to the ridiculous rewards at high Tier levels.
3. Part of this is due to the ease of completing assassination style missions when racial EWAR and weapon systems allow sig tanking in bombers / AFs.
4. The assassination style of the missions is good because it keeps exposure time to run the mission to a reasonable level, given the general hostility of the warzone environment.
5. Keeping them soloable is good because it means more folks out and about as targets.

It seems like the only area of contention, then, is whether to tune the missions to require shinier stuff - HACs / T3s / etc - or whether to rune them all down to be doable in Stealth Bombers. Given what CCP Fozzie was saying during FanFest, I'm betting that the latter option is probably not viable in CCP's eyes. And let's be honest here - even making 100m/hr essentially risk free in a bomber is kinda out of whack. My personal feeling is that if they tuned down the ECM a tad, Gallente missions are pretty well tuned risk/reward wise in the mid Tiers.

So, points for discussion:

1. Where should mission rewards be balanced towards? Roughly Tier 2? Tier 3? Somewhere else?
2. What kinds of ships should be needed to run them?
3. What kinds of things could be added challenge-wise to prevent or minimize bomber alt abuse or similar shenanigans?

We Gallente have a saying: "CCP created the Gallente Militia to train the Fighters..."
Veskrashen
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#84 - 2014-06-06 15:35:30 UTC
Deacon Abox wrote:
[Oh, also, having my own militia rats swich off of the caldari mission runner I'm attacking and shoot me instead is incredibly ********. CCP needs to fix that asap.

Known issue, and CCP spent a couple weeks trying to track down the bug and fix it. Was apparently a complete nightmare.

I'd expect it to remain until such time as the content tools get released.

We Gallente have a saying: "CCP created the Gallente Militia to train the Fighters..."
Miriya Zakalwe
World Wide Welp
#85 - 2014-06-06 15:42:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Miriya Zakalwe
Deacon Abox wrote:
Miriya Zakalwe wrote:
But like I said, meh. Go for it. It only tangentially affects me via my FW alt anyway.

So, you have a farmer alt. How is your farmer liking the plexing changes?


No, mission runner actually. It's just not very important to me, hence tangential. I'm the first to admit the current rewards are crazy.

As for the plexing changes - I see those more as a whack to Astero bot hunters than anything, but that's another story :)

Deacon Abox wrote:

Oh btw, the distinction is not between Gal/Cal v Min/Amarr, but between Gal & Amarr v Cal & Min.


I'm actually just saying Cal/Gal in terms of the Cal/Gal FW area, which I know almost nothing about, because the Amarr still seem to do fine, but now that you mention it, I have never flown missions as Amarr so I don't really know there either. My knowledge of mission running in FW is indeed purely TLIB.

Deacon Abox wrote:

This would provide more chances of juicier Tengu kills than piddly bomber kills.


Agree that this would be an upside :)
Charlie Firpol
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#86 - 2014-06-06 15:44:35 UTC
Miriya Zakalwe wrote:
They should still be lucrative, more so than highsec L4s or the current L3s, even if doable quickly in frigates. The risk is substantially greater even if the rats are easy. The rats have little to do with the danger here, after all.

The *only * reason I care about this is that they do draw players out to, frankly, be targets. If you take away the ability to solo L4s what I see happening is far fewer players doing missions in general, which I think would be unfortunate, as it pulls them all over the warzone.

I agree with everyone that the risk/reward is currently out of whack. Completely. With plexing too, for that matter.


Hunting stealth bombers doing lvl 4s is even harder than hunting plexing alts. There is really no risk when doing lvl 4s in a stealth bomber. True, you get more people out there doing missions when they are this easy and this lucrative but they could just as good be not there. They´re not more than another name in the local channel and you basically never have any interaction with them unless you hunt them and they start trolling you in local.

The Butcher of Black Rise - eve-radio.com
Miriya Zakalwe
World Wide Welp
#87 - 2014-06-06 15:49:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Miriya Zakalwe
Charlie Firpol wrote:
Miriya Zakalwe wrote:
They should still be lucrative, more so than highsec L4s or the current L3s, even if doable quickly in frigates. The risk is substantially greater even if the rats are easy. The rats have little to do with the danger here, after all.

The *only * reason I care about this is that they do draw players out to, frankly, be targets. If you take away the ability to solo L4s what I see happening is far fewer players doing missions in general, which I think would be unfortunate, as it pulls them all over the warzone.

I agree with everyone that the risk/reward is currently out of whack. Completely. With plexing too, for that matter.


Hunting stealth bombers doing lvl 4s is even harder than hunting plexing alts. There is really no risk when doing lvl 4s in a stealth bomber. True, you get more people out there doing missions when they are this easy and this lucrative but they could just as good be not there. They´re not more than another name in the local channel and you basically never have any interaction with them unless you hunt them and they start trolling you in local.


Actually they are pretty fun to kill and one of my (my main that is, this toon's) favorite challenges. I just got one the other night.

But you have a good point here. How would you feel about them being doable in AssFrigs or cruisers, but there being a bomber deterrent of some kind?

I basically just want to see them effective in pulling good numbers of small solo-ish ships around the warzone.
Charlie Firpol
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#88 - 2014-06-06 15:56:19 UTC
Miriya Zakalwe wrote:


Actually they are pretty fun to kill and one of my (my main that is, this toon's) favorite challenges. I just got one the other night.

But you have a good point here. How would you feel about them being doable in AssFrigs or cruisers, but there being a bomber deterrent of some kind?

I basically just want to see them effective in pulling good numbers of small solo-ish ships around the warzone.

I guess anything that can´t fit a covert ops cloak is good. Well, if someone uses a 600mil cloaky T3 for those missions thats okay for me too.

Oh and no stabs! God I hate stabs

The Butcher of Black Rise - eve-radio.com
Veskrashen
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#89 - 2014-06-06 15:58:24 UTC
Miriya Zakalwe wrote:
But you have a good point here. How would you feel about them being doable in AssFrigs or cruisers, but there being a bomber deterrent of some kind?

I basically just want to see them effective in pulling good numbers of small solo-ish ships around the warzone.

AFs would be ok I suppose, but balancing that would be tricky I think. The easiest way to prevent Bombers from being able to run them is to include fast webbing frigates. Which means your AF wouldn't be able to sig tank either, and it wouldn't take long for an AF to melt under a room full of fire.

I'm all for solo targets, and generally run missions solo in a Proteus. Putting 200-400m on the line to make 120-300m/hr depending on tier seems about right in terms of investment. AFs, being in the same league as Bombers in terms of skill and isk investment, would still be way out of what risk/reward wise. Hell, there was one guy talking about how he runs Caldari L4s in a T2 fitted Merlin ffs.

We Gallente have a saying: "CCP created the Gallente Militia to train the Fighters..."
Miriya Zakalwe
World Wide Welp
#90 - 2014-06-06 16:06:45 UTC  |  Edited by: Miriya Zakalwe
Veskrashen wrote:
Miriya Zakalwe wrote:
But you have a good point here. How would you feel about them being doable in AssFrigs or cruisers, but there being a bomber deterrent of some kind?

I basically just want to see them effective in pulling good numbers of small solo-ish ships around the warzone.

AFs would be ok I suppose, but balancing that would be tricky I think. The easiest way to prevent Bombers from being able to run them is to include fast webbing frigates. Which means your AF wouldn't be able to sig tank either, and it wouldn't take long for an AF to melt under a room full of fire.


There's other ways. One that comes to mind is that you would substantially increase the risk to bombers by applying the recent cloak changes in plexes to the FW missions too, for example. They would not be able to cloak up once off the button in the mission and would have to immediately blitz it, instead of closing cloaked first. This would work in some but not others.

You could also make the mission despawn if you leave the system, killing the trick of popping all your missions before running them. If the beacon was only up when the player was in the system it makes a much more prime target for other players.

The reward scaling would obviously still need to be fixed as well.
Verlyn
Kill'em all. Let Bob sort'em out.
Ushra'Khan
#91 - 2014-06-06 16:22:39 UTC
CCP, if you go ahead and put a damp on my current way of being able to make enough isk to bring PVP to FW,

Then consider this option as well:

Up the LP reward considerably for PVP kills in FW.

I would welcome any change done to FW missioning to balance it out, only if that change above happened in tandem.

Because right now, getting kills in FW is purely fun value, but the actual skill and real experience it takes to be successful at it is given way less ingame reward than it deserves, imo.
Veskrashen
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#92 - 2014-06-06 16:24:13 UTC
Miriya Zakalwe wrote:
There's other ways. One that comes to mind is that you would substantially increase the risk to bombers by applying the recent cloak changes in plexes to the FW missions too, for example. They would not be able to cloak up once off the button in the mission and would have to immediately blitz it, instead of closing cloaked first. This would work in some but not others.

You could also make the mission despawn if you leave the system, killing the trick of popping all your missions before running them. If the beacon was only up when the player was in the system it makes a much more prime target for other players.

The reward scaling would obviously still need to be fixed as well.

None of these actually raise the difficulty of completing the mission, or increase the risk of losing the ship to the mission NPCs. While they do marginally increase the risk from PvP, I don't feel that's nearly enough to balance things. It still leaves SBs as the primary mission running boat for 3/4 of the factions.

In short, if the mission design doesn't raise the risk of losing a small, fragile ship that relies on sig tanking, it's not a decent fix in my opinion. Unless that risk is from the mission design itself - i.e. not requiring any PvP intervention at all - the status quo won't adjust.

Scaling down the rewards would work to a point, but plexing puts a floor on it. Anything more than about a 30% or so decrease in mission rewards makes plexing more attractive from a time / risk / ship investment. And, of course, it wouldn't change ship selection or mission running behavior.

Unless the mission design itself increases the risk of loss, nothing changes.

We Gallente have a saying: "CCP created the Gallente Militia to train the Fighters..."
Miriya Zakalwe
World Wide Welp
#93 - 2014-06-06 16:27:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Miriya Zakalwe
Verlyn wrote:
CCP, if you go ahead and put a damp on my current way of being able to make enough isk to bring PVP to FW,

Then consider this option as well:

Up the LP reward considerably for PVP kills in FW.

I would welcome any change done to FW missioning to balance it out, only if that change above happened in tandem.

Because right now, getting kills in FW is purely fun value, but the actual skill and real experience it takes to be successful at it is given way less ingame reward than it deserves, imo.


So much this. I think they didn't because it is too obviously easy to game, though, by making an alt in the other faction.
Veskrashen
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#94 - 2014-06-06 16:47:12 UTC
Miriya Zakalwe wrote:
Verlyn wrote:
CCP, if you go ahead and put a damp on my current way of being able to make enough isk to bring PVP to FW,

Then consider this option as well:

Up the LP reward considerably for PVP kills in FW.

I would welcome any change done to FW missioning to balance it out, only if that change above happened in tandem.

Because right now, getting kills in FW is purely fun value, but the actual skill and real experience it takes to be successful at it is given way less ingame reward than it deserves, imo.


So much this. I think they didn't because it is too obviously easy to game, though, by making an alt in the other faction.

They can't increase the PvP LP past where it is for Tier 5, because Goons.

They have looked at potentially smoothing the LP payout across tiers for PvP kills, so that on average it's higher than at the moment.

We Gallente have a saying: "CCP created the Gallente Militia to train the Fighters..."
JAF Anders
Adenosine Inhibition
The Chicken Coop
#95 - 2014-06-06 17:15:52 UTC
DJ FunkyBacon wrote:

1: Do you feel this issue is important to you or people you fly with in FW?
2: What do you think is causing the imbalance between the faction missions where some factions can run their missions with SB while others need to bring a "bigger boat."
3: If some balance were to be brought across lvl4 FW missions, should it be geared towards everyone needing a "bigger boat," or everyone being able to run in stealth bombers?


1) Yes; I earn most of my FW LP through missions, LP availability affects many individual income streams and contributes to what resources are available to LP-dependent pilots.
2) The most significant factor is EWAR, followed by NPC damage application
3) I'd prefer the "bigger boat" philosophy in conjunction with better payouts

Notes:
- I'd prefer less EWAR influence and better NPC damage application so that future iterations on EWAR may go forward with less impact on FW.
- I'd prefer that missions represent high-end PvE content rather than another kind of low-end.

The pursuit of excellence and stabbed plexing alts.
Flyinghotpocket
Small Focused Memes
Ragequit Cancel Sub
#96 - 2014-06-06 17:21:56 UTC
Lelob wrote:


This is just plain wrong. I took my phoon and with a cloak, mwd, ec-600s and mjd you are basically uncatchable in amarr/minmatar lowsec. In fact, most of the gates have nobody on them anyways with the exception of the odd roaming gang, so with a cloak+mwd there is no real danger in taking gates. The only danger I ever encountered was with the odd dude trying to beat me in warp to a mission and catching me there for a gang or something.

For some reason the meta in lowsec fw seems to be to not bother with bs despite the massive incomes you can make and the relatively low risk in doing so. It is insanely easy too considering you can just land inside of a l4 mission, mjd off and anyone trying to come into your plex has almost no chance of catching you while you are 100km off.

Obvuiosly the only way we could actually catch you and kill you was on the warp in or in the missions where you cant light a cyno. We camped you 2 or 3 times and each time that we were forced to camp the gate you brought a cyno group. So yeah the current meta is to let battleships go because you just get cyno'ed by PL ironicly. Or catch them and kill them in the mission, like we did with your mission group.

Lelob wrote:


If you want a simple fix to missions, just add webs into the l4 fw missions that can reach out to 150km. Alternatively, add a bunch of elite frigs with mwds that go 3-4k/s that have webs and points.


he nailed it on the head. Proper Ewar balance between the races. amarr missions need the 150km web at least a 100km neut. O yeah and maybe this thing where the amarr npcs actually hit ships would be nice too. That way it can stay RPy and not have amarr ships with jammers and damps orrr we can go the other route and give every race a little bit of each ewar and make it equal all around.

Basically proper ewar balance between all the races up to the amarr mission level because the gallente level is way to hard.

Amarr Militia Representative - A jar of nitro
Veskrashen
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#97 - 2014-06-06 17:31:44 UTC
Flyinghotpocket wrote:

Basically proper ewar balance between all the races up to the amarr mission level because the gallente level is way to hard.

Nah, ya'll are just spoiled is all Big smile

We Gallente have a saying: "CCP created the Gallente Militia to train the Fighters..."
March rabbit
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#98 - 2014-06-06 18:05:59 UTC
Miriya Zakalwe wrote:
Bad Messenger wrote:
just remove fw missions, no point to have those at all.


Actually it pains me to be defending PvE but there is. It incentivizes players to fly much farther into enemy territory than most usually do.

if you do it in SB.... i'm not sure it makes any good for PvP overall

The Mittani: "the inappropriate drunked joke"
Cearain
Plus 10 NV
#99 - 2014-06-06 18:12:45 UTC
exiik Shardani wrote:
L4, L4 run run run ...... , but you all forget, how much work it is mean for militia's who off plex, shoot iHub's and donating there LP to reach fu... Tier 4 -> only then farmers (null players alts -> contribute nothing to reach Tier 4 or help militias bro with something) start farm...

Missions can only be good reward for ppl, who actively support militia faction and help reaching tiers!




This may be a promising idea. What if in missions you could only earn 5xs the amount of lp you donate to system upgrades?

Make faction war occupancy pvp instead of pve https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=53815&#post53815
Veskrashen
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#100 - 2014-06-06 18:25:22 UTC
Cearain wrote:
exiik Shardani wrote:
L4, L4 run run run ...... , but you all forget, how much work it is mean for militia's who off plex, shoot iHub's and donating there LP to reach fu... Tier 4 -> only then farmers (null players alts -> contribute nothing to reach Tier 4 or help militias bro with something) start farm...

Missions can only be good reward for ppl, who actively support militia faction and help reaching tiers!




This may be a promising idea. What if in missions you could only earn 5xs the amount of lp you donate to system upgrades?

Right. Let's add more complicating mechanics that don't actually address the mission imbalance issue in order to not even really in any way shape or form change the perception of some people benefiting from Tier upgrades without contributing.

We Gallente have a saying: "CCP created the Gallente Militia to train the Fighters..."