Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Yeah, that's the impression Iv'e got/ Thsi has now been confirmed by Fozzie on the GRN show somewhere around the 1:45:00 mark. So they aren;t happy with them as they stand but have no concrete plans to change them. So in all likelihood they will change one day. I think the difficulty they'll run into is finding meaningful gameplay without just breaking PvE.

The truth is that most players don't achieve perfect play. That's why some people get away with ease and others don't get away. The worry I have whenever changes are proposed is that most of them result in "if in doubt, aggressor wins" which should never be the case as it means that no matter what the defender does, if the aggressor is good enough, he will kill you.

It's not quite that simple, It's not always possible to be aligned in every activity, there's always preemptive decisions you make - such as your ship choice - which also matters, there's intel channels for seeing things come in, making sure you don't over commit (like taking on an anom at close range, getting disrupted by multiple rats then being unable to escape twhen a layer arrives). And let's face it, there's no way to force an error on the aggressor either.

But what if both play to the best of their ability? At the moment, if an aggressor plays better than the defender he wins, that's why people die. This always comes across to me with a hint of "the aggressors have more opportunities to play better, thus can always win if they play their best".

There's a lot of suggestions from a lot of people but it all boils down to the basics in the end. If those mechanics can be used to give you a certain victory over you opponent if you both play to the best of the ability, then they will be overused and abused and kill off the opposing playstyle. If you can hide yourself from local for example you will always have the advantage over a PvE player, so everyone will use that tool to hide and PvE will drastically decrease.

A deadlock? Where else do you usually see this outcome when two players oppose each other, outside of this context?

When you have two ships controlled by players, the resources have either finite presence, or sustainability.
It can be armor / shields / ammunition or even speed.

This is not describing two players chasing each other in circles, like the mythical tail eating snake, but one trying to ambush the other. Which one is the ambush user, and which is the victim? That depends on who was better prepared and informed.

Both ships should start out ready to have the encounter they expect.

What if the OA is usable only by the people who put it up. If it gets intel back to current levels, but only the sov holders can see that intel...well that is a huge advantage.

Why all the resistance in this case to removing local?

I can entirely understand why you'd be concerned about that, and I'll readily admit that a large percentage of the 'nerf local' suggestions are unbalanced. I think finding a solution that is balanced is just as important as avoiding the suggestions that aren't, though, and from where I'm standing it looks like you're focusing so much on the latter that you've given up on the former. I'd suggest that there are a few people on the 'AFK cloaking isn't the real problem' side who you could work with rather than against (although obviously I'm somewhat biased...). I promise we'll return the favour by helping you shout down the 'turn null into WH space' crowd.

The best of who's ability? If a middling-to-poor defender plays 'to the best of his ability' should that be enough to escape from the most skilled attacker in EVE playing at his best? If it is, then how much worse can a defender play and still beat an average hunter playing at his average level?

This is why it's important to distinguish between 'very good play' and 'perfect play'. The first is a perfectly natural and healthy result of someone trying to play as well as they can. The second is a mathematically-proven unbeatable strategy, and renders a game utterly pointless if one player is known to be able to actually achieve it.

"Be aligned and watch local" technically isn't a perfect play algorithm, but it is close to a dominant strategy (and becomes an actual dominant strategy if you assume that A) an attacker will only start fights they're guaranteed to win and B) the defender is trying not to be killed, and not just figuring that he earns enough ISK to replace any losses).

There's more I could say in response to some of your other comments, but this is really the only point that actually matters. Dominant strategies should not exist in a PvP game. Period. I'm open to debate on literally anything else, as long as that stands. The defenders need to feel reasonably secure while PvEing? Fine. I agree entirely. Long-term safety while AFK shouldn't be possible? Fine. It's currently too easy for PvP players to guarantee victory over any PvE player they successfully tackle? Give Hulks the DPS of a Command Ship and Jump Freighters a full wing of fighters, if that's what it takes. Just make sure your mechanics don't degenerate into a single ******* dominant strategy.

Because defenders already have a strong advantage, why give them more advantages?

I simply don;t see what benefit it would bring. Regardless of what the idea is, if they were to put in any system which replaced it, the overall aim of the system would have to be to provide players with at least some intel on players when they arrive. Without that you are just handing PvE players to hunters on a platter. So with that in mind, what would be gained from replacing the system? Dev time would be much better spent improving and building upon mechanics which are entertaining rather than adding in more one choice mechanics.

I mean the theoretical best possible abilitty. As it stands a moderate PvPer will not outrun a highly skilled PvPer as is shown by the thousands of kills every day.

But then that isn't the entire strategy. There's a lot more to it than that which is why there's a hell of a lot more which goes into keep yourself alive in null against actively hunting aggressors. Besides, how would replacing that with "Be aligned and watch [replacement intel system]" be any better?

In order to replace local in a way significant enough to matter you'd need to completely revamp null, remove power projection, are reconsider risk/reward in a way which would be easily abused for max reward by the blobs. Overall if they were to try to put in a system which didn't make everyone outside of null scream about all the buffs you were giving to null PvE and actually be a significant enough change to be worth the dev time, you'd probably just see a null exodus. then we'd be back here with all the same hunters crying about how there's nobody to kill.

Two things to think about:

1. Post Fozziesov these structures will be vulnerable to the entosis link.
2. The OA is NOT a sov structure. In case the possible implication is not clear here...this and other non-sov related structures may be vulnerable outside of the vulnerability window.

One possible reading of the Fozziesov Devblog was that SOV would be vulnerable for a 4 hour prime time window...all other stuctures.... v0v

It would just be the equivalent of AFK cloaking when it's turned off. People would be right back here whining "waah, when the intel is turned off everyone runs and hides". And at the moment the advantage is shared by both parties, pretty fair.

That it can be attacked doesn't make it any less of an advantage for the defender. It's yet another structure an attacker would need to hit, otherwise the defender sees all while the attacker sees nothing.

How does that make any sense? Even if local were removed and replaced with another system, the strategy for a PvE player would still be "be aligned and
watch intel" and that would still be classed as much as the current one is as a dominant strategy, which is to say not at all, since there are other viable strategies.

Or of course you can have a combat fleet on standby and be brick tanked for example.

Definitely wrong. There are plenty of players disrupting PvE every day in ships not capable of cloaking. They do it by shooting the ratters. SUAC is only the strategy if you're aiming to get no ill and want 100% safety.

He's correct that dominant strategies should be avoided, he's just incorrectly identifying these strategies as dominant. The fact that other strategies are actually used is proof in itself that they are not dominant.

And most importantly, being the part you seem to have skipped over, probably because it's a strong point: Even if local were removed and replaced with another system, the preferred strategy for a PvE player would still be "be aligned and watch intel", so how does replacing local solve the issue?

Of course there are other strategies, such as fighting back which people do.

And again, what's with your refusal to respond to that last point? I imagine it's because you can't counter it and are giving up, and so I accept your admission of defeat.

That's entirely separate from the PvE. Like right now you could say "look at intel and safe up, but then your in-space assets are vulerable", it's no different. For a PvE player, the most popular strategy will always be "monitor intel and get safe if a hostile arrives", because a PvE player is at a disadvantage in combat..

Again, irrelevant. That's a separate activity entirely from what the PvE player is doing so it's not part of that strategy. and again, it;s exactly as it happens now. People turn up and blow up your station services, you have to undock to fix them.

There will never be a more popular option, since a PvE player is going to be disadvataged. If you do fight it will generally be after safing up and switching to PvP, which happens now.

You can keep quoting him as much as you like, it doesn't change the fact that it's not a dominant strategy, it's simply the most popular. You're like "I have a problem with this mechanic and this guy said it's dominant, therefore I agree, even though there are clearly other viable methods of responding to a hostile in system". So no, I don't think the game should allow dominant strategies (in some areas) but luckily enough in this entire situation there are no dominant strategies.