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Seeding complex modules

First post
Author
Caleb Seremshur
Bloodhorn
Patchwork Freelancers
#1 - 2015-06-07 11:35:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Caleb Seremshur
I have done a forum search and asked around.

Currently CCP does not seed faction or complex modules on SISI. I have been told its because it's unbalanced, or something. Let me explain to you why I think this policy (or lack thereof) should be changed.

1. We can buy faction ships and faction ammo already.
2. In order to test certain features such as exploration sites, the burner missions etc where better fits are required.
3. Broader feedback on cost effectiveness can be given (the shield booster rebalance left many people confused).
4. When server mirrors are made, certain people rush off to whelp caps and then buy out the whole market on SISI - ergo they're not 'unavailable' per se at all and are infact the result of manipulating a loophole in sisi server design.

5. A rising tide lifts all boats. With these mods available to everyone noone can say its unbalanced.

Testing with t2 or meta items becomes the specific exercise of testing their viability, the same is true for complex and faction modules. People use sisi as a test bed for new ship they can fly and allowing them to see how the whole spectrum of possibility functions from dirt cheap t1 meta0 fits to the most heinously expensive 5bil tengu fits. How can people worry about the scaling of balance when high-grade implants and boosters are also readily available?

CCP Rise would say that people need to take more risks. That's interesting. I'd be more willing to risk 500mil on a cruiser if I knew its practical limits.
Athraws
Rising Thunder
#2 - 2015-06-07 21:24:13 UTC
There's at least one every mirror...

Lets assume, for a moment, that faction/complex mods are seeded. Let us also assume you have fit a nice shiny Tengu that you have some interest in testing, to ascertain if it's worthwhile to acquire on Tranquility. You warp your Tengu into ca1, and are immediately greeted by a deadspace-fit insta-lock Vigilant, and his accompanying fleet of 2 deadspace Bhaals, a deadspace Archon, and 1 or more deadspace Naglfars. If you get caught by the Vigilant, of course, you soon die.

What have you learned about this Tengu, whether you get caught or not? You can't fight an small fleet of maxed out fit ships? Does this mean you shouldn't bother with this Tengu on Tranquility, or does it instead say something about why deadspace and faction modules aren't seeded?


The problem fundamentally is this: you appear to assume that people will still fly less than completely min/maxed ships. Which is false. Sure, someone may want to test his t2 fit, or even slightly shiny, Deimos. But after he gets pointed, webbed, and capped by a Bhaal at 40km, or scram/webbed by a Vindi 20km away, he will do one of two things: leave, or fly a totally deadspace ship himself. And once HE'S now in a deadspace ship, the next semi-T2 fit pilot he engages is going to be in the same position. The end result: EVERYTHING is fully deadspace fit, and no one learns anything useful (including CCP, since maxed DED-fit ships aren't exactly the 'norm' on TQ).

None of this is hypothetical, either. CCP HAS seeded all modules in the past, and what I describe above was the result. Nothing more, nothing less, than a complete Complex/faction fit debacle.

Faction ammo and ships are seeded because they DON'T have this result. If they did, you can be sure they'd be cut from the next mirror as well.

I do have sympathy for those testing the burner missions. It's necessary in nearly all cases to 'pimp' the ships used for running those sites out a bit, and the inability for the pilots to do so is essentially the only valid reason I see for making some of these module available, even on a limited basis.
Caleb Seremshur
Bloodhorn
Patchwork Freelancers
#3 - 2015-06-08 01:30:25 UTC
Considering that CCP consider ogb as non-combatants and as I said before the common thing to do is fraud insurance and then buy out jita I don't consider the notion that the power creep you describe as being especially dangerous or the foregone conclusion. Not everyone spent all day every day flying tournament ships (just the special snowflake kids).

If it's a social issue then trust that people should be able to work it out for themselves. You will never stop those people who want to dogpile others. You will never stop people who cantt handle the concept of 1v1 and thus run double ogb setups. You will never stop the multiboxers or the guys who dump caps on your battleship skirmish.

I'd rather not go down that slippery slope of banning more and more things. I'd prefer to have the options there and make the choices for myself. It's intellectually unsound to limit people to "testing" only 1/3rd of their available arsenal especially when they are available to use just for those 5 people who get on and self destruct enough naglfars
Ghaustyl Kathix
Rising Thunder
#4 - 2015-06-09 02:21:33 UTC
Caleb Seremshur wrote:
If it's a social issue then trust that people should be able to work it out for themselves.
When have people ever not abused something abusable in a video game? Before they removed fighter-assist, people assisted fighters to interceptors from carriers that were sitting on station, despite CCP explicitly saying that was against the rules.

I do understand the issue with burner missions, though, but I think that's a fundamental flaw with how those missions are designed. You're supposed to run those missions to make money, but since they downright require a blinged-out ship (a differently-fit, blinged-out one for each burner mission) to even run them, there's kind of a disconnect there between theory and practice.
Caleb Seremshur
Bloodhorn
Patchwork Freelancers
#5 - 2015-06-09 02:30:22 UTC
Rule breakers breaking rules break the rules because they will break the rules.

There are still people who fight on station.
Last night some peanut was boxing his battleship to bait people in to eating a cyno'd carrier.

Another guy was showed me how he had literally every high grade deadspace and officer mod except one specific mwd. Exactly as I said earlier this thread - these guys exist and they whelp caps for 20 minutes before rushing off to buy out the market.

The mods are still there. People have them and use them.

You can't fix broken people. Punishing the masses for the crimes of a few is unfair.
Athraws
Rising Thunder
#6 - 2015-06-09 02:50:45 UTC
Caleb Seremshur wrote:
I don't consider the notion that the power creep you describe as being especially dangerous or the foregone conclusion. Not everyone spent all day every day flying tournament ships (just the special snowflake kids).

As far as I understood it, tournament ships are irrelevant to both our arguments.

Personally, that you don't find what I described dangerous strikes me as foolish, but that's your opinion, and you are, of course, entitled to it.

And it is true, that what I described in turn is not the foregone conclusion; its merely the one that has presented itself in the past. I suppose, intellectually, that its possible all the players who aggravated that are gone, and that another attempt would succeed. Given human nature, however, I strongly doubt that, and its ultimately CCP's decision one way or the other.

Caleb Seremshur wrote:
If it's a social issue then trust that people should be able to work it out for themselves. You will never stop those people who want to dogpile others. You will never stop people who cantt handle the concept of 1v1 and thus run double ogb setups. You will never stop the multiboxers or the guys who dump caps on your battleship skirmish.

Of course not. That's my point. You cannot beat them without playing their game, and they will make up the majority of people that are available to test against. The other 'good-spirited' players will ALSO have been driven away, leaving primarily the dogpiling, 1v1 dishonoring, multiboxing, cap dumpers behind. Sure, there might be one or two 'legitimate' testers/players online, but how long will they stick around when every time they undock they run into what you've described above?

Its all well and good to trust that people will work it out for themselves, but they can't. The pilots who want to play 'fair' and actually test things are sadly outgunned by the people that do not. As I said, the only way they can fight against them is to become the very thing they're fighting against.

Caleb Seremshur wrote:

I'd rather not go down that slippery slope of banning more and more things. I'd prefer to have the options there and make the choices for myself. It's intellectually unsound to limit people to "testing" only 1/3rd of their available arsenal especially when they are available to use just for those 5 people who get on and self destruct enough naglfars

First off, this isn't 'banning' anything. The modules are allowed, and you may, as you know, acquire them from the market, other players that have them, or their original sources.
Second, its not a slippery slope, since the sequence of events I described previously actually happened. I'm not spouting theory; I was in fact one of those Deimos pilots.

If Singularity were made up solely or even mostly of so-called 'honorable' pilots, who would not fit their ships for the sole purpose of dominating everything else, perhaps what you describe would make sense.

Unfortunately, reality has a hand, and there are more than enough of the bad sports to cull the opportunity for everyone else.

Caleb Seremshur
Bloodhorn
Patchwork Freelancers
#7 - 2015-06-09 03:10:32 UTC
Tournament ships used to be on the market, now they're not. Because people were taking the **** with them. So their situation is exactly the same as deadspace modules and are therefore relevant to the discussion.

There is a dedicated 1v1 channel, also, the test server is really more about finding bugs than it is about arena bloodsport. CCP surely trust us to be able to organise our own fights in one of the NINE dedicated combat areas, or celestials, or safes or just move to another system. The escalation of grievances that would result in everyone using deadspace gear is only relative to the ability of people to fit them and use them. If your purpose is to test a ship on SISI for use on TQ in pvp then flying some tricked out 20bil ship is probably not going to be terribly indicative of what you can do especially if you can't afford said ship.

For posterity I'll mention again that there are NINE combat areas as well as other methods of avoiding the weenies and their sparkle-ships.

Quote:
If Singularity were made up solely or even mostly of so-called 'honorable' pilots, who would not fit their ships for the sole purpose of dominating everything else, perhaps what you describe would make sense.

Unfortunately, reality has a hand, and there are more than enough of the bad sports to cull the opportunity for everyone else.


This particular bit really gets me. So you've been successfully terrorized in to obeying a particular mindset. Congratulations.
Athraws
Rising Thunder
#8 - 2015-06-09 05:00:21 UTC
Caleb Seremshur wrote:
Tournament ships used to be on the market, now they're not. Because people were taking the **** with them. So their situation is exactly the same as deadspace modules and are therefore relevant to the discussion.

The last 3 'generations' of tournament ships are stiil seeded. They removed the previous generations more because testing was no longer necessary rather than their being OP. I mean, yeah Adrestias are monsters, but Mimirs? Nobody ever complained about somebody in a Mimir.

For reference, the Etana, the Moracha, the Chameleon, the Cambion, the Chremoas, and the Whiptail are all seeded.

Caleb Seremshur wrote:

There is a dedicated 1v1 channel, also, the test server is really more about finding bugs than it is about arena bloodsport. CCP surely trust us to be able to organise our own fights in one of the NINE dedicated combat areas, or celestials, or safes or just move to another system. The escalation of grievances that would result in everyone using deadspace gear is only relative to the ability of people to fit them and use them. If your purpose is to test a ship on SISI for use on TQ in pvp then flying some tricked out 20bil ship is probably not going to be terribly indicative of what you can do especially if you can't afford said ship.

I'm aware what Singularity's primary function is. I also know there are nine combat areas, of which only maybe 3 or rarely 4 are actually used at any given time. CA1 and CA2 are givens, I've sometimes found people in CA9, and I occasionally spy someone in CA3-8.
As for the rest of your statement, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "the escalation of grievances that would result in everyone using deadspace gear is only relative to the ability of people to fit them and use them."
I'm going to run on the assumption that you mean the situation would only escalate if people were willing and able to then use the modules on Tranquility. Like many of your other arguments, this assumes people won't tend to use modules above their financial means, which like I have mentioned before, I feel is wrong. In the end, though, I feel there's no point debating this; our opinions on the nature of people differ too widely to reach any agreement.

Caleb Seremshur wrote:
Quote:
If Singularity were made up solely or even mostly of so-called 'honorable' pilots, who would not fit their ships for the sole purpose of dominating everything else, perhaps what you describe would make sense.

Unfortunately, reality has a hand, and there are more than enough of the bad sports to cull the opportunity for everyone else.
This particular bit really gets me. So you've been successfully terrorized in to obeying a particular mindset. Congratulations.

Terrorized? Far from it. I usually don't fit my ships much different than I would be willing to on TQ, I honor any 1v1's I take, and I'll usually leave other 1v1's alone if I know that's what they're engaged in. My ships and fits usually come out quite well in my engagements. Even when I lose, I get a feel for what my ship is capable of.
But if the ships I fight are deadspace fit, my gauge of my own ship's performance becomes skewed. The difference between being dogpiled by standard fit ships and dogpiled by deadspace fit ships is tremendous. In the 1st case, I learn something about my ship. In the 2nd, I learn nothing, because the chances of being engaged by a fleet of deadspace fit vessels on Tranquility is much much lower (and the fight is usually much much shorter).

As you say, I could just arrange 1v1s in channel, and for testing a solo ship, that's fine.

My real interest in most cases lies in testing small scale fleet actions, and there's not any great way to set those up except to stumble into them in the CA's.

If these high meta mods were seeded, my ability to test these small fleet concepts would be all but gone, as the T2/lightly faction fit vessels would be destroyed in short order, forcing me to either give up, increase my fits' meta-levels, or arrange a fight.
I've got no interest in running around in chat channels for some time trying to find another group of pilots looking for the same thing I am when as things are now we can usually just warp to CA1 and get an engagement.


Like I stated before though, I have sympathy for those trying to test burner missions and the like, and their is some legitimate limited use for pilots to test faction/deadspace mods on their ships.

Many faction modules are rather simple to acquire by farming LP using Faction Warfare with alts, if a bit time consuming on a test server.

As for Complex mods, I could see CCP increasing the spawn and/or drop rates of DED sites. This would accomplish multiple goals: players wanting to test the modules could acquire them more easily, and CCP would get more testing data on running the sites.
Zaryte
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#9 - 2015-06-09 14:27:49 UTC
There's actually a very simple solution to this.

Seed faction/deadspace/officer modules, but at a higher cost than 100isk. You can make about 800m from insurance on capital ships very quickly, so price these modules accordingly - ie, not their true price but an elevated price to match the income level on SISI.

Perhaps 5b for a single officer module? i'd need to lose 7+ dreadnoughts to make that money. This way you can ensure people wont fit fully officer fit rifters, the time investment to do that will keep everything balanced.

IMO we don't need officer modules on the test server anyway - but we definetely need faction and deadspace. Seed them in large quantities just as you would any other module or ship and then price accordingly to prevent over-use.
Ghaustyl Kathix
Rising Thunder
#10 - 2015-06-09 16:25:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Ghaustyl Kathix
Zaryte wrote:
Seed faction/deadspace/officer modules, but at a higher cost than 100isk. You can make about 800m from insurance on capital ships very quickly, so price these modules accordingly - ie, not their true price but an elevated price to match the income level on SISI.
That's an interesting idea. I wouldn't seed them in 6-C, though, otherwise we'd have multiple people self-destructing dreadnoughts there and lagging things for everyone else (it happens occasionally as it is, and usually lags the server a little). Any of the other seeded systems should be fine.
hellswindstaff
Syndicate Enterprise
Sigma Grindset
#11 - 2015-06-10 11:36:35 UTC
Caleb Seremshur wrote:
I have done a forum search and asked around.

Currently CCP does not seed faction or complex modules on SISI. I have been told its because it's unbalanced, or something. Let me explain to you why I think this policy (or lack thereof) should be changed.

1. We can buy faction ships and faction ammo already.
2. In order to test certain features such as exploration sites, the burner missions etc where better fits are required.
3. Broader feedback on cost effectiveness can be given (the shield booster rebalance left many people confused).
4. When server mirrors are made, certain people rush off to whelp caps and then buy out the whole market on SISI - ergo they're not 'unavailable' per se at all and are infact the result of manipulating a loophole in sisi server design.

5. A rising tide lifts all boats. With these mods available to everyone noone can say its unbalanced.

Testing with t2 or meta items becomes the specific exercise of testing their viability, the same is true for complex and faction modules. People use sisi as a test bed for new ship they can fly and allowing them to see how the whole spectrum of possibility functions from dirt cheap t1 meta0 fits to the most heinously expensive 5bil tengu fits. How can people worry about the scaling of balance when high-grade implants and boosters are also readily available?

CCP Rise would say that people need to take more risks. That's interesting. I'd be more willing to risk 500mil on a cruiser if I knew its practical limits.


Let's tell you why it shouldnt be changed........CAP BLOBS CAMPING EVERY SINGLE COMBAT AREA IN THE TESTING SYSTEM 24/7/365 Instablapping your frigate and making the server an unrealistic test environment. We really dont need 30 godtanking Bhals , Vindis, Archons and Moroses trying to gang **** a Sviul you are testing. So no this is terrible and the reason to keep those modules off the seeding list hopefully stays intact
Lloyd Roses
Artificial Memories
#12 - 2015-06-11 11:04:02 UTC
The last time they were seeding those mods, it ended up people calling everything OP because no one even noticed if a ship was tight on fittings. Really don't need the return of navy ravens with purple invulns or rifters with three RF gyros.

Also, no one is stopping you from moving your market orders/jita hangar to the testing system.
Caleb Seremshur
Bloodhorn
Patchwork Freelancers
#13 - 2015-06-11 11:45:33 UTC
hellswindstaff wrote:


Let's tell you why it shouldnt be changed........CAP BLOBS CAMPING EVERY SINGLE COMBAT AREA IN THE TESTING SYSTEM 24/7/365 Instablapping your frigate and making the server an unrealistic test environment. We really dont need 30 godtanking Bhals , Vindis, Archons and Moroses trying to gang **** a Sviul you are testing. So no this is terrible and the reason to keep those modules off the seeding list hopefully stays intact


Hysterical posts like this ignore a simple truth:

you can go elsewhere, or organise a 1v1 privately. Your post is riddled with logical fallacies.

Quote:
The last time they were seeding those mods, it ended up people calling everything OP because no one even noticed if a ship was tight on fittings. Really don't need the return of navy ravens with purple invulns or rifters with three RF gyros.

Also, no one is stopping you from moving your market orders/jita hangar to the testing system.


And again. It should be up to the discretion of the player and his opponent to honorrabu duel fairly.

@both of you: Right now how are your condemnations any really different from CA1 presently? What exactly do you feel is even remotely realistic about CA1 or any CA? How many times in TQ have you jumped in to a battle with 2 dreads, 1 carrier and 5 faction battleships with them being from 3 different alliances including highsec carebear corps?

I say give us options. Laissez faire. Nothing either of you have said are things that warrent mechanical limitations on the server. I bet you'd ***** like motherfuckers if your links were banned too.
CCP Goliath
C C P
C C P Alliance
#14 - 2015-06-11 17:02:03 UTC
This is going round in circles so I'm going to lock it. We've been pretty clear on the reasoning for this policy on multiple occasions on the forums, and I don't believe that anything has changed since then that would cause our stance to change. You can pretty easily find answers to this in my post history if you want full explanations. Many posters here have captured the salient points though.

CCP Goliath | QA Director | EVE Illuminati | @CCP_Goliath