Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Mush as I am enjoying the namecalling . . . I never made bones about being a carebear. But that is not relevant to this discussion. Improvements to Incursions is on the table for ME to choose what to take to CCP.

So I stated my position on things I will choose NOT to take.

Deal with it

m

Incursions are PVE, they are not PVP, deal with it.

They have more risk than missions, due to the easier access to the sites for anyone wanting to gank, not to mention you rely on Logi's to save your butt, and there have been cases, especially in VG's, where a group of Logi's decide to whelp a fleet to get loot. Any time you add in groups of people the risk goes up.

Now I would not object to buffing the payouts for Low and for sure Null incursions.. Low's are getting run on a semi-regular basis, but Null incursions are still mostly only run to get rid of the cynojam. More incentive to run them would be nice.

Low level WH's suck, they are crap payout.. it's like running lvl1's and 2's.. They really should be buffed.. no one lives there, aside from a few one and two man corps, and the odd person using it for their POS's.


According to CCP's little report a while back, Incursions are not a significant factor in the Eve Economy, so payouts need not be nerfed.. But making all the sites viable would improve things a lot.. Less congestion in HQ's and VG's if the AS's were worth it.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'd like see more disincentives to ragepoping all incursions over some hurt feelings.. Be if making the spawn time for the Mom take longer, ala not until it's Mobilized, or making it so if you pop the mom, the respawn timer still assumes the incursion will last it's full time.. (ala if you have an incursion spawn that's slated to last for 5 days, it gets pop'd day two, the 24-48hr respawn timer still wouldn't start till the end of day 5).. Though this idea does punish everyone..


Honestly, CCP, just fix Assaults. Star with that. One step at a time. Fix them, see how things work, then look again. Incursions for the most part work well. We don't need DRASTIC changes.. we need some fixes, then we can look at the result and fix more if needed.

They should not be truly partitioned and discrete from each other in a sandbox game, that is why. They are a travesty currently, and pretty much ruin the risk/reward paradigm that the game is built around. Rewards should be in line with the risk involved.

Areas other than Hisec aren't for pvp anymore than hisec is for pve.



Fantastic idea.

I feel that the risk+effort for nullsec incursions is out of balance with the hisec version of it. I'll let the hisec people complain about how bad some of the incursion mechanics are, and I'll bring in my perspective as a person who runs nullsec incursions for a few months and hisec incursions for about 2 years. I do nullsec incursions not because they are better isk then hisec incursions, but because starting up a new incursion group is interesting. For me nullsec incursion running is terrible isk/hr. I think our best hour so far is doing 6-1/2 minute sites for about an hour or so... and that's when we ran nearly perfect, and put out ~138m/hr, with a ton of risk on our part. My best hour in hisec has been 7 HQ sites in 1 hour, about 215m/hr, with near 0 risk. Also, I don't have to pay taxes on my hisec alt. I do have to pay taxes in nullsec.

Deployment logistics:
Hisec: Dual-buffer tank my vindy to bring my hull. AFK Pilot it while I'm at work to the new incursion spawn. Use an alt Blockade Runner to make a trip with all my bling. I have seen hisec fleets relocate from one incursion to another and be up and running in about an hour, with 0 risk.
Nullsec: Find a friendly station near the incursion. Use a 1B isk ship to get my other 1B isk ship into place, requiring the use of my cyno alt. I then fit WCS to make the remaining few jumps into the system. Just deploying can cost 100M, and takes many hours to coordinate, because you need a cyno chain, and not everyone has a carrier to move all their ships around. Still takes about the same amount of time because you have to coordinate cynos, etc.

Life being deployed:
In hisec, there's a station in almost every system. Worst I've had is to do 2 jumps to get from the staging system to the HQ system. 100% easy and safe. I've only heard of 1-2 people ever getting ganked traveling between the staging system and getting with the HQ fleet.
Nullsec stations are much less common. CFC has managed to get stations all over Dek... but check out Venal. When we did an incursion out in the back-end of Venal, we had to live out of a pos. No way to have a market for selling supplies or contracting stuff to people, we had to do the whole thing using cans for storage, and leaving ships in SMAs, and hoping they didn't get stolen. It made reshipping a very challenging task.

Influence:
In hisec, Influence is normally handled by multiple groups, and it goes down in a few hours. For example, http://evemaps.dotlan.net/incursions/139 Took 6 hours from when people started running it.
In nullsec, we've done our best job ever! http://evemaps.dotlan.net/incursions/143 We did it in under a day, barely, running 2 squads non-stop. I'd really like a nice multiplier for lowsec/nullsec. instead of 1/2/4 influence drops for finishing a site, maybe 2/4/8 in non-hisec?

Safety:
Several hisec fleets tend to runs ~23/7, with 40+ people, in 3B+ BSs. They are well established, and everyone knows about them. From what I hear they have less than 1 ganking loss per month on average. And that's usually people who have officer mods and far more isk then common sense, and aren't worried about risking a 20b ship. I would say their risk is very low.
CFC Incursions has done a total of 4 major deployments. Almost no one knows about us. Half the people I mention it to says "CFC has an incursions group?!?" and so far, we've lost a NM & a Rokh to pvp that I know of due to pvp action, and had several close calls. Every time someone enters local, we quickly clear scram rats, and start getting ready to warp off to a safe pos until we have more intel. This kills our isk/hr.
A blops drop could easily wipe our fleet. See https://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=24107924 as proof. I know how the blops drop was done, and the BS had no chance with how it was done, it was just lambs to the slaughter.

Predictability:
HIsec: There's sometimes incursion drama, but I'd estimate that there's a good hisec incursion up about 95%+ of the time. The remaining 5% are either when there are only Solitude incursions up, or drama happens and someone pops all the incursions, and 48 hours later, all the incursions are back up and running. I can run hisec incursions almost any time I want to.
Lowsec: Any spawn is a huge variance, making it very unpredictable. Logistics is already hard, we can't just jump to any lowsec system we feel like and start running. What are the locals like? Are we in hotdrop range of PL?
Nullsec: Let's start by excluding any red space. I don't think we'd survive long running in PL space. NPC Null tends to be full of hostiles... and they can bubble you on top of all the lowsec risks... so instead of running in npc null, you should run in lowsec. This only really leaves blue space as a logical choice. Next, exclude any systems right near a hostile group, because they'll just camp you, and the number of incursions worth deploying to are very low. Our group has been around for about 4 months (since the incursion squad redex thread came out), and we've had about 5 1-week deployments. So we're able to run incursions about 25% of the time. We spent the bulk of June complaining that there kept on being Cobalt Edge spawns, in b0t space. Oh, and sometimes we get nice spawns in the middle of dek, where it'd be a nice safe spot to run... and it's blocking the Jump Bridge network. Pop it ASAP! No farming. Perhaps unblock the JBs and remove the gate rats when influence is at 0? We worked to clear the sansha up, we should get some reward for it. But leave the cyno jammer in place. Those help incursion fleets in general.
I know a player who had to not re-subscribe several of his accounts until we have another incursion he can join us for, because otherwise we might not get a spawn for a whole month and he'd be broke. The lack of predictability in lowsec and nullsec are basically another form of risk.

Not to derail this, but I am always buffled that most players only version of the understanding of risk is the opportunity to risk free blow up another ship (flown by the risk taker).

Risk is so much more then that, and blowing up a ship, though the center around which the EVE galaxy revolves, is so infinite small compared to all the other activities next to or in support of it.

If only the possibility of shiploss to another player is risk, then what does that loss mean ? Because all ships have value and its in the end the value that is lost, therefore everything that has the possibility to take value (ISK ) or prohibits one getting it is a risk .. or not ?! Just counting wrecks into this is truely ignorant, as well as saying "you don't play PvP (and they mean how they define PvP), get lost.. or you got no voice".

Other wise I already posted my suggestions and would like to voice my support for Mike in his effort.

Yes. I understand. You have built up a community to reap the rewards, and you do not want your work trivialized.

Many may feel the same way about incursions. Even when low/null/wh groups are very organized, there is still risk inherit from other players when trying to attain those ISK/hr ratios. Perhaps we do not want the risks we take trivialized by incursion income. Either players should be allowed to interfere more such that the risk is proportional to the isk, or the isk tuned down. HS incursions drain other areas of content because low/null people don't generate their income locally, rather they flock to HS incursions, as that's where the best risk/isk ratios are, leaving desolate areas even more desolate.

Problem: Most seem under the impression incursions were meant to be farmed.

Solution: Burn highsec incursions, pop everyone kundalini as soon as it spawns

i think this is really the problem, incursions were "hard" and interesting content, now its down to a science. there's no surprises and losing ships 99% of the time is due to gross negligence or a mass server disconnects. regardless of how much people dislike this being brought to a discussion, im pretty sure at no point the intent of VG sites was to have people finish them in 5 minutes.

banning pirate hulls and limiting them to Navy would be a start. also limiting VGs to BC hulls or lower. after the tiercide VGs are easily doable in T1 Bcs... in fact, thanks to 125sig guns they can be done faster at low SP levels.

the so called "isk/h" would go down, but by no more than 20% - 30% and the entry level barrier would go down as well. the reduced DPS and tanks would help greatly in bringing back some of the difficulty.

if not, they should add more systems to NPC null, move Null incursion only to NPC space and buff they payouts. currently lowsec incursions are fine, people that ask for low incursion to be buffed have never done them. i can tell you they are perfectly fine. so long as you are not stupid and dont run them with pirate hulls.

or a better idea would be to make the current NPC region for sansha have a permanent incursion, (this way incursions wouldn't annoy the weird NPC null people who seem content in shooting each other), a player incursion of sorts. this would create a pocket of space for pve/pvp like FW is now.

having Nullsec incursions spawn in SOV was a bad idea, a really bad idea.

or maybe add more interesting drops? currently you can get them only off the mom, an only in LS you can get uroboros. adding a few random faction spawns to all site types in LS would help greatly in bringing more incursion fleets to low. on its current incarnation Null incursions deserve to die, they are a gift to alliances with huge Sov, where they can be safer than hsec incursions.

The LP stores make sure the faucet on liquid being injected is at least somewhat under control.They still generate an amount of personal wealth beyond anything else in hisec.

If this were a simpler, less organic universe, yes simply buffing the lowsec and nullsec incursions would work entirely to restore internal cohesion among incursions, but it still wouldn't rectify hisec incursions vs other income streams in terms of risk/reward.

Take people who run data and relic sites, for a case study. If they want to have the higher end sites, they have to go to places where players are free to engage them, but on the upswing, they create content for themselves and others, as well as potentially enjoy increased rewards if they are successful. Hisec Incursion income shouldn't even come close to this, yet it is at least equivalent to it, and at much lower levels of risk.

When you no longer have residents of low and null coming to to run hisec incursions, then you know you have fixed the risk/reward ratios. You could buff all of the income sources out there to fix it, or you could just tweak hisec incursions and add a minimal amount of player driven risk to put it in line.

Start another thread, requesting the Nul Sec leadership reduce the tax burden on their subjects, that should balance it out nicely. Problem solved, that was easy.

Or a counter to that set Incursion income as a completely different bracket, so it can be taxed at a reasonable rate rather than the 75% I was subjected to years ago.