These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
12Next page
 

Want more interesting rats? Take A out from AI.

Author
hmskrecik
TransMine Group
Gluten Free Cartel
#1 - 2014-08-18 17:59:13 UTC
This is a long shot and not a fully baked idea so please try to bear with me.

A long time ago there was a game (already cancelled in development phase) with interesting twist: a multiplayer one but providing single player experience. It was named "The Crossing". Something kind of first person shooter/action with the main player progressing through the story. The twist was in the shape of opponents, they would be controlled by other players and while inherently weak (the hero has to succeed after all) they'd provide the cunning and unpredictability of real humans.

And it struck me, what would it be like if such principle was applied to EVE's PVE?

HOW?

Possibilities are many but two come to my mind:
1. Allow a player to board given NPC ship during PVE encounter. Possibly allow to 'switch' to another taking part of the same fight, either upon former ship's destruction or just at will.
2. Make such player an overseer which would take control over some NPC ships in a manner similar to controlling POS' guns.

Mind you, this wouldn't be a change in power balance, only in NPC behavior (and you thought sleepers were pain in the ass...).

WHO?

This is where things become interesting (in the "may you live in interesting times!" sense). I think they should be selected and vetted group of volunteers (not unlike ISD maybe) who want to and agree to devote their time for others' fun.

WHEN? WHERE?

I believe it safe to assume that number of PVE encounters happening at any time would be much greater that number of such... well, let's call them animators, and honestly it would be overkill to guarantee every such encounter was human-handled. Thus probably the simplest and possibly the best solution would be to match a pool of active animators and randomly drop them into PVE actions out there.

On the other end of gun, maybe add a safety switch, which would control whether player consents to such extra spice during their activities.

POSSIBILITIES OF ABUSE/GRIEFING.

Still present though rather limited. Apart from actual brain, NPCs don't get any extra superpowers. Running away (with mission goal to prevent its completion) can be guarded against by teleporting ship back if too far from initial position. Maybe some safeguards against podding should added too. Everything else seems to be fair game and after all, this aspect in one of reasons why animators should be somehow vetted.

FINAL NOTES

That's it. Flame if you wish but if you have any refining ideas, counter ideas or just want to point out some glaring weaknesses/issues with it, you are more than welcome. Mind you I do not propose anything of such kind must be implemented, rather, it's more in the "what if" spirit.

Discuss.
hmskrecik
TransMine Group
Gluten Free Cartel
#2 - 2014-08-20 14:55:12 UTC
No love? I could understand. But no hate? This I find a bit... offensive. ;)

(Also, stealth bump).
Velicitia
XS Tech
#3 - 2014-08-20 15:54:41 UTC
No.

How about you just go shoot another player.

One of the bitter points of a good bittervet is the realisation that all those SP don't really do much, and that the newbie is having much more fun with what little he has. - Tippia

Aquila Sagitta
Blue-Fire
#4 - 2014-08-20 17:00:37 UTC
I take control of npcs in l4 mission.
In warps golem. Put everything on him
Barely scratches it.
Watch for 10-15mins as he kills each one of my npc ships.
Wooo so much fun
hmskrecik
TransMine Group
Gluten Free Cartel
#5 - 2014-08-20 19:56:37 UTC
Aquila Sagitta wrote:
I take control of npcs in l4 mission.
In warps golem. Put everything on him
Barely scratches it.
Watch for 10-15mins as he kills each one of my npc ships.
Wooo so much fun

Or if this mission happen to be in busy mission hub you may wait for sudden ninja. Decision to make whether to go after ninja (may be interesting if scrambling frigs are still alive) or keep putting pressure on missioneer.

Or trigger full aggro on missions which do not aggress automatically (Assault?).

Or if guy brings friend(s), you may try to make their lives interesting.

Or if he happens to have drone boat you may coordinate attack on their drones.

Or you may employ spiraling trajectories to actually avoid being instapopped.

Or you may use EWAR where it counts. Same with remote repping if available.


Of course if someone uses blinged Marauder or compatible then there's not much what can be done. But on the other side, 'animating' a mission would be purely optional. When set up, you are given a choice whether to mess with given encounter or to pass it, and when taken you can 'abandon' it at any time which would mean it would take its own course. When you relieve control of POS guns they keep shooting as if you weren't there.

Velicitia wrote:

How about you just go shoot another player.

Good point, however I'm writing from the perspective of spicing up PVE, not of sneaking into PVP.
Bohneik Itohn
10.K
#6 - 2014-08-20 21:03:47 UTC
There is some merit behind the idea of giving players control over NPC's.

LOTRO does this with it's PvP. A single player goes up against a single monster controlled by a player, the monster player gets abilities and attributes appropriate for challenging the player and it's up to the two of them to see who uses their abilities more wisely.

There is plenty of room in Eve's PvE for this too. Burner missions are about to be added, which while not wholly different are a departure from the standard. You could make a system where people could queue up to be an elite in someone's mission while they're sitting in station, and if someone pulls a mission of that description and there is a player available, they get an extra reward for killing the elite. If the elite can survive until all of the NPC's are dead and warp out, or destroy the mission runner, they get the reward.

Or... Other things. There are a lot of ways for it to work, and it is fun. Some games base their entire PvP experience around it. If you don't like the OP's suggestion, then improve it, because there is precedence for this and it works very well, and there are plenty of people who would rather do this than compete for #1 ship spinner while waiting for their fleet to get their **** together or corpmates to log in or the scouts to make contact with hostiles or whatever.

Wait, CCP kills kittens now too?!  - Freyya

Are you a forum alt? Have you ever wondered why your experience on the forums is always so frustrating and unrewarding? This may help.

NEONOVUS
Mindstar Technology
Goonswarm Federation
#7 - 2014-08-20 21:12:56 UTC
Become the burner and destroy your friends with small weapons, offgrid boosting, and officer fit pirate frigates.

Sounds like a fun plan, would love to see it.
Bohneik Itohn
10.K
#8 - 2014-08-20 21:34:13 UTC  |  Edited by: Bohneik Itohn
NEONOVUS wrote:
Become the burner and destroy your friends with small weapons, offgrid boosting, and officer fit pirate frigates.

Sounds like a fun plan, would love to see it.


Assuming you have the ability to fit the ship you use, fleet up, and match appropriately.

Use some logic... Roll

In the case of you having NPC support an appropriately balanced ship would be provided. It's not about smashing them solo, it's about controlling the engagement and playing the objective. The mission runner can't just show up in a Golem and expect to press the iWin button, because you have the option of maintaining distance and warping out when everything else is dead. If they show up in a ship that can chase you down and the mission ship you're given really is appropriately balanced, you should be able to kill them, or complete the secondary objective, if you are the better player. These wouldn't be the first missions to restrict the ship type either, if that was necessary.

This is why you put in multiple win states. It makes gaming the system harder. You can take and switch it up from mission to mission also. The elite's secondary objective might be to give an NPC he's escorting enough time to flee, to maintain a perimeter, to stay within range of a certain point in space for a period of time, or whatever. Lots of different things to do that will make both the challenger and the mission runner play in a variety of different ways.

If you want 1v1 matches, you can just give the challenger a 120-180 second window to fit a ship of the same isk value as the estimated value of the mission runner's ship.

If the issue is the mission runner using an OGB? Simplest solution I can think of is forcing the two opposing players into the same fleet. Twisted

Wait, CCP kills kittens now too?!  - Freyya

Are you a forum alt? Have you ever wondered why your experience on the forums is always so frustrating and unrewarding? This may help.

Paranoid Loyd
#9 - 2014-08-20 22:43:47 UTC
Velicitia wrote:
No.

How about you just go shoot another player.

^This

"There is only one authority in this game, and that my friend is violence. The supreme authority upon which all other authority is derived." ISD Max Trix

Fix the Prospect!

Gully Alex Foyle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#10 - 2014-08-20 22:59:00 UTC
OP, do it this way.

Allow players/corps/alliances to join pirate factions. For example, Guristas.

The players in the Guristas faction can be legally attacked anywhere, including highsec.

BUT... any player that attacks a Guristas NPC gets a 5min LE with all Guristas faction human players.


Would be awesome.

Make space glamorous! Is EVE dying or not? Ask the EVE-O Death-o-meter!

Zan Shiro
Doomheim
#11 - 2014-08-20 23:30:57 UTC
hmskrecik wrote:
Apart from actual brain, NPCs don't get any extra superpowers. .



ummm, you do know rats are vampire proof...and have infinite cap, right?

Unless changed go test this. If changed, please correct me as I have not retried in quite a while.

Run nos/neut on a rat. If it works it will stop working after a few cycles. Nos will for sure. I tried this in the past. You get a few pulls then nothing. Nos will still run mind you, but at that point its just drawing activation cap from your ship, not getting any back from the target. Reason for this: ccp didn't want rats being abused to run permarun ships nos'ing rats. It also be the reason why long ago billboards were moved. As I hear it they use to be a lot closer to gates....campers would nos the billboard to boost the cap. This why they are all the way in left field and not really in your face visible.



Infinite cap is seen In that even the inty rats if you let run wild in your mission....just keep burning and burning and burning and burning. "boss" rats like trigger BS also have a permarun tank, they can rep/shield boost all day long. You see this when low sp running and your dps not strong enough to break the tank. YOu have enough to knock off a few hp but the reps are eternally getting it back to where it was.

I could also be nitpicky and point out rat e-war stronger. Even with ECCM II, sensor boost array II , electronics sub 5 and diss. sequencer,, grav sensor 4, AND HG talons (used to be my unprobable setup, now I am jsut hard as hell to find) I still get jammed from time to time by gurista in my tengu.
Bohneik Itohn
10.K
#12 - 2014-08-21 00:47:57 UTC
Zan Shiro wrote:
hmskrecik wrote:
Apart from actual brain, NPCs don't get any extra superpowers. .



ummm, you do know rats are vampire proof...and have infinite cap, right?

Unless changed go test this. If changed, please correct me as I have not retried in quite a while.

Run nos/neut on a rat. If it works it will stop working after a few cycles. Nos will for sure. I tried this in the past. You get a few pulls then nothing. Nos will still run mind you, but at that point its just drawing activation cap from your ship, not getting any back from the target. Reason for this: ccp didn't want rats being abused to run permarun ships nos'ing rats. It also be the reason why long ago billboards were moved. As I hear it they use to be a lot closer to gates....campers would nos the billboard to boost the cap. This why they are all the way in left field and not really in your face visible.



Infinite cap is seen In that even the inty rats if you let run wild in your mission....just keep burning and burning and burning and burning. "boss" rats like trigger BS also have a permarun tank, they can rep/shield boost all day long. You see this when low sp running and your dps not strong enough to break the tank. YOu have enough to knock off a few hp but the reps are eternally getting it back to where it was.

I could also be nitpicky and point out rat e-war stronger. Even with ECCM II, sensor boost array II , electronics sub 5 and diss. sequencer,, grav sensor 4, AND HG talons (used to be my unprobable setup, now I am jsut hard as hell to find) I still get jammed from time to time by gurista in my tengu.



I believe he was trying to say that the player who takes control of the NPC ship doesn't get anything special, just a ship like any other player could fit up. The fact that a player is flying it immediately removes all NPC quirks from the picture.

Wait, CCP kills kittens now too?!  - Freyya

Are you a forum alt? Have you ever wondered why your experience on the forums is always so frustrating and unrewarding? This may help.

Sentamon
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#13 - 2014-08-21 02:19:25 UTC
Bohneik Itohn wrote:

LOTRO does this with it's PvP. A single player goes up against a single monster controlled by a player, the monster player gets abilities and attributes appropriate for challenging the player and it's up to the two of them to see who uses their abilities more wisely.


This is extremely fun, would love to see something similar here.

~ Professional Forum Alt  ~

Nevyn Auscent
Broke Sauce
#14 - 2014-08-21 03:41:30 UTC
Sentamon wrote:

This is extremely fun, would love to see something similar here.

Uh, this is exactly what PvP here is. The 'Monster' is just an alternate ship with a different fitting. It's still PvP. EVE actually has far better PvP to LOTRO.
Komi Toran
Perkone
Caldari State
#15 - 2014-08-21 04:36:31 UTC
The basic problem is in the Who? section: you need volunteers for this. Volunteers that want to add to people's "fun." Well, we have those in the game right now, and they volunteer to be FCs, to head corporations, to sponsor events, to provide necessary services. And the thing is, we don't have enough of them to cover the jobs that need doing. Want another major null-sec war? Well, we need volunteers to run it.

This suggestion is a drain on a limited talent pool. It requires a pretty big expenditure of in-game human effort (there's even a vetting process!) to benefit a segment of the population that is, by nature, interested in solo play. It doesn't seem like a good deal to me.
Raiz Nhell
PeregrineXII
#16 - 2014-08-21 04:53:02 UTC
So I am controlling the NPC's in a lvl4...
I know the system, I know the location...
I know who has just entered my mission...
I know his fit (roughly)...

I know a friend who likes violencing blinged out mission runners... I think you know how this ends...

Also I volunteer all the time to provide content for others... its called undocking... and unlike lvl4 NPC's sometimes I win.

There is no such thing as a fair fight...

If your fighting fair you have automatically put yourself at a disadvantage.

Felix Judge
Regnum Ludorum
#17 - 2014-08-21 09:37:32 UTC
Velicitia wrote:
No.

How about you just go shoot another player.

Rubbish. You cannot shoot "another" player, because most often you meet more than one, who are shooting you. Or are running away because your group is larger. OP's idea would be a nice way to ACTUALLY solo PvP (and by that I mean no offgrid-boosting, alt-probing, logi-ex-machina "solo" PvP).
Felix Judge
Regnum Ludorum
#18 - 2014-08-21 09:41:49 UTC
Raiz Nhell wrote:
So I am controlling the NPC's in a lvl4...
I know the system, I know the location...
I know who has just entered my mission...
I know his fit (roughly)...

I know a friend who likes violencing blinged out mission runners... I think you know how this ends... [...]

Assuming you can choose the location where you are placed in the NPC ship. If you are assigned randomly to some mission somewhere, then good luck to your friend burning to that system. Provided you are being told the system at all, which you as mission NPC do not need to know and thus need not be shown.
Alvatore DiMarco
Capricious Endeavours Ltd
#19 - 2014-08-21 09:47:10 UTC
I volunteer to control Lv4 missions in Sinq Laison.

Now, which trash ship should carry the cyno so I can drop officer-fitted super-long-pointing Core Grand High Admiral Carriers on unsuspecting billion-ISK navyravens, or EOM Soul Destroyer Dreadnoughts on Marauders that are almost out of their Bastion cycle and won't react in time to turn it off before starting the next?
hmskrecik
TransMine Group
Gluten Free Cartel
#20 - 2014-08-21 15:53:55 UTC
Gully Alex Foyle wrote:
Allow players/corps/alliances to join pirate factions. For example, Guristas.

The players in the Guristas faction can be legally attacked anywhere, including highsec.

BUT... any player that attacks a Guristas NPC gets a 5min LE with all Guristas faction human players.

Interesting concept and I sort of like it (though isn't there already something like that in the form of FW?). However this mechanism is totally unrelated to what I have described.
12Next page