Player Features and Ideas Discussion

If you want PVP-free PVE, there are exactly two places for that. They are the Singularity test server, and the rookie systems. Highsec PVE is balanced around there being both obvious warnings of potentially predatory players, and significant repercussions for the predators. Highsec PVE is not and has never been 'safe'.

EVE is balanced around a risk/reward paradigm, where 'effort' is rewarded with minimal income and putting assets at risk allows you to drastically increase that income at the cost of needing to be vigilant and protecting yourself. Highsec incursions utterly break that paradigm right now.

Balance matters. The incursion grinder farming ISK at negligible risk distorts the game market just as an RMT cheater or item duplicator would.


As for your idea - have you even considered the economic consequences of allowing incursions to spread across multiple constellations or regions? If an incursion landed deep in sovereign nullsec, the sov holders could allow it to spread, then move thousands of renters into a region that is under a semi-permanent incursion and is surrounded by capital-seeded systems protected by Sansha cyno jammers. They would be able to run sites 23.5/7, with capital fleets able to mobilize to select gates/incoming wormholes if anyone tried to steal the system from them. This would be the biggest buff to sovereign nullsec (particularly renters) in memory, possibly in the game's history.

No that's not it at all pal, i have 100 million skill points and i can fly any ship required for incursions. My reason for wanting this change was clearly stated (i.e. a lack of risk).

But null incursions pay a little bit extra for massive risk. You're asking us to risk losing billions worth of ships for less than 50% increased payout.

Are you serious?

Go fly with WTM. They are newbie friendly. They don't require all shini pirate BSs.
I saw ships with meta guns there, i saw T1 BS hulls there. They are still using T3s (from what i hear).

TVP it's also getting non pirate BSs hulls in fleets. It's not going to happen in weekends probably
but i can see them almost every time i run in week days.

Indeed, everyone requires T2 tank and some cheap EM ward DED mods.

Yes, you can't do incursions 3 weeks after you joined but after 3 weeks but you can make a lot of isk in FW with a 3 weeks old char :)
And they don't provide PvP either as all you need it's a stabbed condor.

And by the way, i saw a lot of incursion ships lost to gankers when traveling or on gate after the fleet went in and somebody decided to stay 30seconds more waiting for something :)

The risk is there, the problem are the gankers who are crybabies when they have to shoot something that will shoot back or have some tank on them.
Shooting miners and freighters it's easy and all they want is doing the same with the multi-billion pirate BS hulls.

He's not advocating removing CONCORD nor is he advocating to remove ganking from incursion systems. He wants to keep it the way it is currently. You can gank people in incursion systems, or when they're travelling through 0.5 systems. Seriously, it isn't that hard to do some homework.

If you wanna talk about risk/reward, let's take a look at FW stealth bomber grinding. I'm sure we'll have lots to discuss about how "dangerous" it is afking in a bomber and sig-tanking the rats.

Meanwhile, there's still risk in incursions. Niarja spawn jamming the logi while the rest of the Sansha target a battleship will kill one; same with the Outuni spawn with their Capital Neuts that will insta-drain you to zero, turning your tank off and letting the Deltoles rip you open like a birthday present.

And while I sorta do like the idea of Sansha incursions in low/null sticking around longer, you just contradicted yourself when you complain about how it affects the market.

Believe me, if there was a semi-permanent nullsec incursion, I'd be the first one at the jump bridge / titan bridge to bring my butt to null.

e:



While I agree that they need to make Sansha less predictable, I would also like to point out that incursions aren't the only PVE activity that needs cooperation. See: C5 escalation sites. But I digress.
Many of us in the incursion community have agreed that we'd like to see Sansha change things up in site from time to time.

It is not a fix, it is actually a bad change since it doesn't address the issues with the site in any way, shape or form. Since you can't stack up NCNs this way, there is no tool to convince another channel that can't do them to move up to HQ or drop down to VGs for channels that are actually willing to do them. All it will archive is that one of the HQ channels is more likely to drop down to AS when they get to much contested in HQ, taking up the good sites while smaller channels that might have to run low on players or work with more new players have to do the NCNs because they might have issues to compete with the HQ channels.

Halve the sites of 5 means up to 3, what means 1 site is on re spawn timer while the other is done by 1 fleet, forcing the other fleet to wait or do the NCNs(since you can't switch in and out of the NCN setup every single site, you have to do them all). Even if you do the NCNs, you will run out of them quick with the lower re spawn rate, what means you have to compete over 2-3 sites with another channel and if you don't run a full HQ style contest setup you will run into a lot of issues and it prevents more innovative solutions(like CM platforms) to be viable for faster site times and better results in NCNs, because you would lose most of the contests and lack the proper tools to force the other fleet down to NCNs yourself.

It just takes away tools from the FCs to deal with other channels in the same system. The NCN should be the fastest site for the FC if he does bring the right setup(same as NCO vs OTA in VGs), that creates the opportunity to gather interest for such a fleet and to make it viable. However this specialized fleet will never exist if even with the right setup the NCN still takes longer, when the biggest advantage of being able to do NCNs is free up good sites for yourself is no longer there(because another fleet that doesn't have to make that compromises will be there and run those in the meantime) and if that setup that you have to bring will not work in a contest against a HQ style contest setup, same as the HQ contest setup doesn't really work well for NCNs.

It actually creates more problems that it solves in my opinion, same as the Incursion changes 2.5 years ago, that did banish medium hulls from the field and did lead to the mono culture in ship fittings and hulls to use over the years without much options for innovation being viable, because a contest setup that works for most of the sites(while it doesn't produce the biggest ISK/h, it makes this up with contests and gives the FC a lot more control over the system and ways to deal with other fleets) will beat you all day long or force you to do sites they don't want to do.

Mike, Here's a small thing you could light a fire on, drone assignment by drag and drop from Drone bay to Watchlist.

The lack of a consistent definition of this insult makes things very confusing.

Carebear; Someone that attempts Solo-play in a sandbox and gets attitude when confronted with reality.

Or is it Carebear; Anyone that doesn't conform to your limited viewpoint of what the game is about and how it is 'All about you'

Actually doesn't that make you like an 'Extremist Carebear'

Goonswarm Federation actually has an incursion running community (one of the few I believe?) and we are currently gathering up our thoughts so we can put them forth here in a clear and concise manner. Having said that, some of my personal opinions to ponder:

Even though we control/have access to about a third of 0.0 space, currently spawns are such that it does not allow us to reliably run incursions. Those that DO spawn usually have to be finished fast due to the detrimental effect that they have on logistics and such. As much as we would like an increase in the amount of sites that spawn, increasing our chances at being able to run them, such a change might have to be accompanied by a change in the effect that incursions have on things like jump bridges. Either I or someone else from our community will be posting more about this as soon as we've had some time to gather our thoughts.

Risk/reward wise incursions in 0.0 are currently so-so. The risk: Running these incursions requires either a good intel network (which works for an area where people are actively living) or a good spread of scouts (in areas where people do not actively live). As the incursion rats deal omni-damage, the tank required to run these incursions combined with the fact that you need to prepare your fits to be able to hit frigates fairly well makes us fairly prepared for PvP situations. The fact that cynos cannot be lit inside incursion systems and covert cynos require some effort to be lit means that hot-dropping 0.0 is a difficult but not impossible task. The reward for running these incursions is so-so, currently a squad running VG sites in 0.0 makes around 90-100 million isk per hour. This can be increased somewhat if the fleet is running more expensive ships (pirate hulls) since that will decrease the amount of time it requires to run a site. Compared to high-sec incursions however, the increase in reward for 0.0 incursions does not feel like it is properly compensating for the added risk and inconvenience that they bring. Someone who is ratting actively in a much cheaper ship than one requires to run incursions can make similar amounts of isk. Admittedly, these numbers do not take the LP into account, for the very simple reason that the only reason Concord LP is currently so much more valuable than other LP is the relative scarcity of Concord LP in comparison to other factions' LP. If incursions become more interesting to run, the market will stabilise itself and Concord LP will be devalued.

In a similar vein, the fact that the incursion community of one of the larger entities in 0.0 space is still running VG sites and is having a hard time getting enough people together to run the higher sites should be a good indicator for the fact that the rewards for 0.0 incursions could probably use a boost.

Currently, the skill requirements for running incursions doesn't feel like it is compensated for by the rewards. If we posit that incursions are one of the high-end PvE activity of EVE (a view which I support) then I would say the rewards should probably be increased. This doesn't necessarily have to be an increased payout, another option could be to add more valuable drops and/or salvage to incursion rats.

On a separate note, I feel that the way incursion sites are at this time does not offer smooth scaling with regards to the number of people required. VG sites are interesting to run and HQ sites are interesting to run, but anything lower or in-between the two is not really worth the additional hassle.


TL;DR: In my experience, 0.0 incursions are not completely terrible but the risk and detrimental effects that incursions currently represent does not get adequately compensated by the rewards. Factor in the fact that incursions are supposedly one of the high-end PvE activities in EVE and as such require fairly high skills, there are plenty of other activities that do not require as many people and give similar if not higher rewards. Also, the progression between low-end incursion sites and high-end incursion sites is not a smooth one, even if you have the numbers for sites in between VG's and HQ's it is still better to just run multiple VG groups instead.

the "Leet PVPers" are having an issue where they are confusing their self interest with the betterment of the game, while incursioners want to fix the things which suck and are broken, and let CCP figure out if they want to nerf bat our payouts. you want to complain about risk free isk, go talk to scammers and station traders. these guys will rarely if ever undock, generate nothing for the game as a whole, and don't even add the fun of being a loot pinata worth 4 to 8 billion.

The goal of EVE is not PVP. it is not ganking. it isn't making the maximum isk. there is no goal. the idea that you have to push one of these above the others is ridiculous. no one will ever go to bat for something that makes their life worse. not to mention that the people who make the most isk, and take the least risk, are those parked station traders. guys like gevlon (may bob rot his soul), are the ones who don't risk anything. Incursions don't advert beyond about 150 M/H, because no one gets there except in ideal conditions. station traders, OTOH, will say that with enough invest you can beat 200M/H, with some people citing the ability to get up to 500M/H. and they don't undock at all. hell, they fund in some cases, the very guys bleating at incursioners being risk free.