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Dev Blog: Fleet Warp Changes - Coming in August Release

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Corvonax
Doomheim
#141 - 2015-06-25 13:41:10 UTC  |  Edited by: Corvonax
TLDR: Herpa Derka he’s from the CFC! Null sec blobber thinks change is good post ignored due to being a nobody.

./throws brick.



Input from a Nobody. The average line member (AKA F1 monkey) and proud member of the CFium AKA: The Imperium!

Good afternoon every one, I’ve been playing eve off and on for a very long time its had periods of time where I’ve loved it and hated it depending on what changes have been made etc.

As of late I’ve been enjoying the game again and with the upcoming fozi sov (hurry the **** up) that’s not looking to change. I’ve been tagged with the CFium (CFC / Imperium) for a modest amount of time now. During which I have attempted to be an active participant in fleets and special events.

The only ones of note were the most recent invasion of fountain if it can be called that and the burn Amarr event as well as home defense fleets and a few odd ball roams / pos grinds. I’m your average line member playing a few hours an evening and juggling a wife / kids / mortgage / job etc. I’m not “bad at eve” but I’m not great at it either.

As such I wanted to chime in as I feel very strongly on some of the upcoming changes, and be honest here your average line member is the bulk of your subscriber base.

*Fleet warp changes and fleet participation for your average line member.

I personally am glad these changes are being talked about. Every one claims that “eve is hard” while this is true on general understanding of the game (there’s a lot of content given to you all at once) This is not true for other aspects of game play.

In fact compared to most other MMOS out there EVE’s fleet participation is in fact substantially easier for the average pilot than even World of Warcraft’s LFR play. Low blow I know but im being honest here.

This is why I feel this way.

In an average fleet, I sit down behind my keybard log in buy a ship off contract fully fit if I’m lucky, or at worst take 10 or so min and purchase a “doctrine” ship, fittings and ammo from my local market hub. What is optimal is already decided by the fleet and I generally follow it as I want to receive the SRP (Of which the Imperiums is pretty decent) I insure the ship and double check that I have water / food and ****. I assume every one does this as your average line member wants to do well in the fleet and not be “that guy” who goes afk on a gate holding every one up. Granted this is an assumption as i am only one man. (^_^)

(Talent specs / rotations / builds are optimized in other games etc so this is not uncommon to me and in general Raid / fleet / group preparation doesn’t change much between games.)

After that I join the fleet hop on coms and chill till its time to launch (this is why I go to fleets and play eve to BS with friends). Once in space the FC generally links a rally point or destination. From this point on one of two things occurs. We either free burn or go as a group gate to gate. I always pray for free burn as I like to “race” other members lol silly I know but eh. Coms are usually entertaining and things are often linked in fleet / local or both and its always good lulz.

Once we are on the final outbound gate “Gate is red, gate is red, gate is red” we regroup and from this point forward my game play basically ends. My only function is to press F1 or “Jump gate” when told to. This is where eve becomes boring still for me.

I anchor up, ensure modules are online and lock what ever is broadcast pressing F1.

The fight occurs, the FC does stuff I press F1 on what ever he or she broadcasts till it dies etc. I don’t warp my self. I don’t move my self. I don’t really do any thing at that point. My character is basically controlled in large part by the FC or one of 5 people in fleet.

In other games you are at least responsible for “Not standing in fire”. In eve you simply anchor up and the FC or designated anchor (logi / Ewar / Fleet etc) and they are responsible for you not standing in fire.

I’m probably going to get hit with a brick but frankly eve WHEN IT COMES TO FLEET PARTICPATION is so easy I honestly think my 5 yr old could do it…. Wait.. .. Yea new Imperium member huzah! I bet she will even enjoy becoming one of mittens kittens.

NOTE: Eve is still hard don’t get me wrong but this aspect of eve has had its game play placed on one person. For all intensive purposes 2 FC’s could sit down work out ahead of time on a spreadsheet who’s going to win based on what they are bringing and just skip the whole process. There’s no room for “Hero moments” or even creative thinking in larger fleet engagements.

I personally would love to be able to control “MY” own character in fleets again. Instead of just pressing F1 / anchoring up and drooling at my keys, but in order to do that a few things need changed.

It may just be me, but I personally feel that I am at least of modest intelligence capable of maneuvering my character in a space combat game around the field and participating and even contributing to the engagement. I honestly think a lot of other people feel the same way.

If you allow fleet warps to continue even to other members your just going to raise the bar for what it takes to be an FC. Honestly I don’t think a fleet’s success should rest squarely on 1 person’s shoulders. I play eve I should and want to be able to control my own character in these large fleets. I understand that I’m but a lowly cog in the great grinding gears but even that one cog should have a purpose and contribute.

IMO every player should be responsible for "their" characters and not rely on the FC to baby sit them. I honestly cant believe people want others to basically "control" their characters.

This leads me to the next Topic. Tools for the FC and other ideas.
Corvonax
Doomheim
#142 - 2015-06-25 13:41:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Corvonax
-------------- IDEAS --------------

A) MS paint in space plz!

These may seem silly however I find it odd that FC’s have very few ways to communicate with their fleets inside of the game. We are in a future space ship game. Where are the HUDS / Markers / Waypoints etc should be all over the place.

I under stand eve has the ability to add tags to specific objects in space and that’s useful. But its currently impossible to designate a place on a grid as a “Fleet go here” point. Or a line for “move along this path” Or even the ability to measure from one object remotely to another.

I would literally like to see a tool where you place a few “markers in space” and or various other nonwarpable objects in space. You could even go as far as to be able to connect various markers with lines etc.. Straight or arched if you wana get fancy. Hell if you want to get really useful allow for a distance number associated with the path etc. Allowing for travel times etc to be calculated between the 2 points on a grid.

Eve constantly shows all these fancy visual effects on huds etc but the only thing we have to represent this in game is a flat plane with distance circles (ok that’s useful) and some number / letter tags that are bugged to hell and back. If you expect an individual pilot to do more you have to allow for better communication between the FC’s and the line members.

B) Remove orbit function but add something cool (TM?)

Anchoring up is boring I get that its easy etc and keeping a group together is a big deal. But why not allow for something new? Formations / maneuvers, I don’t know something? You guys are CCP surly there is something cool you can add to make the “orbit the anchor” portion of a fleet more interesting.

A simple and probably stupid idea from this nobody would be Squad formations. (effectively allowing anchors to only exists up to the squad leader level)

Defensive, Offensive positioning.

In the defensive formation you can designate 1-2 members of the squad to receive a bonus due to “over lapping shields or armor screening or what ever RP reason you want” to help boost either weaker members or protect more important ships.. Hell you could get really detailed with this adding skills etc under leadership if you wanted etc. If the squad goes into this formation it sets the “keep at range distances between various members” etc and roughly makes it look like they are in a formation instead of just flying around 1 **** all wily nilly.

C) Buy fittings / hulls from your pree saved fitting window. Lets face it every one for the most part uses doctrine setups which are distributed to each member.

Eve has the ability to pree save that fitting set up on a hull and “quick fit” from that saved template. Why not allow us to “quick buy” from that same spot? Have it list each item your about to buy in a list similar to the bulk sell list with prices and markup % etc. Allow us to limit it to “in current station / jumps etc”

Most people shop at a market hub anyways meaning every one has all their **** for sale where your probably at anyways. This is just a quality of life change but still.

1 click buying. Simple.. IMO.

D) Get rid of allocated stats and remaps.

Leave implants alone just set every ones stats to a pree determined number and remove the ability to change them around. Remapping is an unneeded complicated mechanic that needs to die. Skill training should not need spreadsheets to optimize your SP / hour. There’s no reason for it to be this complicated. I would say remove learning implants but personally I kind of like those as they allow people to purchase an edge over the guy next to them.


-------------- Closing --------------

I hope this wall of text is actually read as I put a good bit of time trying to lay my thoughts out on this subject. I love eve and hope in the future to be able to play it for a long time.

I personally enjoy the way eve is heading, Sov / structure changes etc are all things that needed worked on. These and the previous changes you have made on the new an improved release cycle were what made me come back and want to play eve.

This game has soo much potential you just need to make aspects of it more engaging. (not fiddly but interesting which is a hard line to walk down.. No one likes fiddly mechanics. )

When people say EVE is hard.. They don’t mean eve is hard to play. Functionally eve is rather simple for a MMO you can play even with less than 15 keys and do modest at it. What’s hard about eve is coming to grips with the HUGE well of information and content that is very poorly documented and never fully explained. You can do almost any thing in eve that’s hard to process.

Opportunities were a good start. Keep working on those, they have helped my wife a lot as she's recently started playing with me. You may even consider covering more advanced game play etc.


Corvonax
The Nobody.
FT Diomedes
The Graduates
#143 - 2015-06-25 13:59:06 UTC
baltec1 wrote:
Arrendis wrote:
baltec1 wrote:
Or you could use your noggin and work out warptimes and guesstimate warp times. Frankly I would just fleet warp to a cov ops scout, I have no idea why you people are making this harder than it needs to be.


Dude. You're better than that. C'mon. Don't make the troll so obvious that you go with the 'use your noggin' nonsense I cut to shreds in the old thread. Just go straight to the 'duh, use a cloaky' and be cool.


Garpa will have a tool for this if it becomes a thingBlink


Which is part of the reason this change is bad - it is yet another Quality of Life non-improvement which will benefit the largest and most well-organized coalitions. They will find ways to overcome the tedium, those with worse out of game support structures will suffer.

CCP should add more NPC 0.0 space to open it up and liven things up: the Stepping Stones project.

FT Diomedes
The Graduates
#144 - 2015-06-25 14:06:01 UTC  |  Edited by: FT Diomedes
Corvonax, if you want to take a more active role in fleet, take it. Nothing is stopping you. Fly a prober, tackler, logistics, etc. ships of the line take their place in the line of battle and shoot what they are told to shoot. Eve is naval warfare in space.

CCP should add more NPC 0.0 space to open it up and liven things up: the Stepping Stones project.

Corvonax
Doomheim
#145 - 2015-06-25 14:13:17 UTC  |  Edited by: Corvonax
FT Diomedes wrote:
Corvonax, if you want to take a more active role in fleet, take it. Nothing is stopping you. Fly a prober, tackler, logistics, etc. ships of the line take their place in the line of battle and shoot what they are told to shoot. Eve is naval warfare in space.



Please don't misunderstand me.

I am not unhappy with being a line member I just think there is a lot that can be improved upon. I personally am for the changes coming to fleets and sov and structures etc.

Also..

I just finished training into dictors \ (^_^) / up next is T3's then logi 5 and min 5.

Eve has a very slow progression. It takes MONTHS to get into specific roles. Im working on it but it still takes time. Something you cant speed up or slow down sadly.

Up until joining the CFium i had been an indy guy. Probably should have just bought a combat pilot but i like my toon and dont really want to fly under another name.


Naval warfare. I partly agree with this however a few additional points that can be made.

Range to Logi.
Range to Target.
Range to Tackle.

These positional requirements are currently carried by 1 man.. while in naval warfare they are carried by every ship on the line.

IMO CCP is trying to make your position on the field matter again.. By making every person responsible for their position. Currently position isn't really a factor as a lot of your Macro movement is handled by 1 person meaning every one is always together all the time, while the micro movement (on grid) is handled by 1 person.. "the anchor".

Someone's prob going to throw a brick at me.. But Honestly i hope they remove the ability to "anchor up".. Or at a minimum reduce it to squad level anchoring.

As to the macro movement i personally feel i am more than capable of hitting "warp to X" when broadcast.
Dersen Lowery
The Scope
#146 - 2015-06-25 14:56:34 UTC
Corvonax: clean that stuff up and post it in Features & Ideas. I love it.

Proud founder and member of the Belligerent Desirables.

I voted in CSM X!
Captain Semper
Fusion Enterprises Ltd
Pandemic Horde
#147 - 2015-06-25 14:58:33 UTC
Corvonax wrote:
FT Diomedes wrote:
Corvonax, if you want to take a more active role in fleet, take it. Nothing is stopping you. Fly a prober, tackler, logistics, etc. ships of the line take their place in the line of battle and shoot what they are told to shoot. Eve is naval warfare in space.



Please don't misunderstand me.

I am not unhappy with being a line member I just think there is a lot that can be improved upon. I personally am for the changes coming to fleets and sov and structures etc.

Also..

I just finished training into dictors \ (^_^) / up next is T3's then logi 5 and min 5.

Eve has a very slow progression. It takes MONTHS to get into specific roles. Im working on it but it still takes time. Something you cant speed up or slow down sadly.

Up until joining the CFium i had been an indy guy. Probably should have just bought a combat pilot but i like my toon and dont really want to fly under another name.


Naval warfare. I partly agree with this however a few additional points that can be made.

Range to Logi.
Range to Target.
Range to Tackle.

These positional requirements are currently carried by 1 man.. while in naval warfare they are carried by every ship on the line.

IMO CCP is trying to make your position on the field matter again.. By making every person responsible for their position. Currently position isn't really a factor as a lot of your Macro movement is handled by 1 person meaning every one is always together all the time, while the micro movement (on grid) is handled by 1 person.. "the anchor".

Someone's prob going to throw a brick at me.. But Honestly i hope they remove the ability to "anchor up".. Or at a minimum reduce it to squad level anchoring.

As to the macro movement i personally feel i am more than capable of hitting "warp to X" when broadcast.


W/o option to warp at scan result how will close armor-tank ships reach shield snipe ships?
They have less speed, less range and niw cant unsta warp to do some dmg.

Who will use close armor? Nah dont answer. I know. Nobody. Nobody will use it. Like 4 last years before (or even more).
My megathrone realy forget how to fit blasters.
Hendrink Collie
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#148 - 2015-06-25 15:07:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Hendrink Collie
Just to more formally state things from earlier post:

I understand what your going for with these fleetwarp changes, and honestly I can live with them if they go through; however, I believe there is an easier solution that won't break lots of other things along with avoiding adding un-needed layers of complexity.

Solution: Not allowing fleet, wing, or squad warps to scan results IF the squad members affected are either on grid or within 500kms of the scan result. This way we can still do all our traditional fleet warps to pings, gates, etc and even allow fleets warps to scan results a significant distance off-grid without breaking the current experience for wormhole gangs. The 500kms (or even 1k km) is important because sometimes grid-foo happens, and if the restriction were JUST on-grid... people could take advantage of grid-foo.

Thanks to Alexis Nightwish for the idea, just expanding it a bit. Big smile
Invisusira
Escalated.
OnlyFleets.
#149 - 2015-06-25 15:18:45 UTC
Honestly my main concern here is that it will now take over twice as long for massive TiDi fleet battles to warp from one side of the system to the other. And that's enough to turn me off of large fleet combat for life.

EVE Music
Alexis Nightwish
#150 - 2015-06-25 15:54:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Alexis Nightwish
Corvonax wrote:
Lots of good stuff from a nullsec line member who can see that his EVE gameplay will not be improved by the fleet warp nerf.
While I don't agree with some of your proposed solutions (removing orbit for example will make an interceptor's job all but impossible), I thank you for the candid feedback of someone that CCP claims this change will directly benefit.

Players and CCP Larrikin have stated they don't like the "anchor on FC and hit F1" style of gameplay that's prevalent in larger fleets, yet bombers, which I thought were introduced to discourage that style of gameplay, are the target of repeated nerfs.

Ironically CCP nerfs fleet warp rather than iterating on it which would give the FC options other than "the whole fleet warps in at X" resulting in a clustered blob of bomber food.

CCP approaches problems in one of two ways: nudge or cludge

EVE Online's "I win!" Button

Fixing bombs, not the bombers
baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#151 - 2015-06-25 15:59:02 UTC
Cypherous wrote:


Work out warptimes for a fleet that involves fast tackle and a carrier that doesn't involve you sititng on a gate waiting for ages for the carrier to be far enough away that the rest of the fleet doens't arrive a decade before it, because you'll be sitting there for a while if its a long warp and you might have to fight


Make the carrier warp at 3au. Problem solved.
baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#152 - 2015-06-25 16:03:00 UTC
FT Diomedes wrote:


Which is part of the reason this change is bad - it is yet another Quality of Life non-improvement which will benefit the largest and most well-organized coalitions. They will find ways to overcome the tedium, those with worse out of game support structures will suffer.


Forgive me but, shouldn't that be the case? If you want to be good shouldn't you have to put in more effort?
Nanar DeNanardon
Babylon Knights
#153 - 2015-06-25 16:04:16 UTC
If this change is done to limit big fleet, what about removing fleet and wing warp and not squad warp ?

This would have less impact to PVE and mining activity but would still nerf large alliance fight.
Dermeisen
#154 - 2015-06-25 16:12:46 UTC
Corvonax wrote:
-------------- IDEAS --------------

Opportunities were a good start. Keep working on those, they have helped my wife a lot as she's recently started playing with me. You may even consider covering more advanced game play etc.


Corvonax
The Nobody.


Your wife is playing Eve, you are certainly not a nobody to somebody! No, kidding aside I very much enjoyed reading this cheers

Design based on the assumption of unrealised potential!

"Not the Boreworms!"
Dermeisen
#155 - 2015-06-25 16:15:12 UTC  |  Edited by: Dermeisen
FT Diomedes wrote:
Corvonax, if you want to take a more active role in fleet, take it. Nothing is stopping you. Fly a prober, tackler, logistics, etc. ships of the line take their place in the line of battle and shoot what they are told to shoot. Eve is naval warfare in space.


Lol suppression and repression at work my friends, someone has a keen sense of irony! *edit*

Honestly nothing stopping you mate, but wait shouldn't he be expressing his opinion through his local rep, has he no understanding of the chain of command - or is he a spy!

"Not the Boreworms!"
Lady Nadra
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#156 - 2015-06-25 17:08:21 UTC
I really enjoyed reading your fleet ideas Corvonax. :)

MS paint in space part was my favorite. Reminds me of a football playbook with arrows and lines and stuff, too cool.
Ima Spyalt
Doomheim
#157 - 2015-06-25 17:27:06 UTC
Previous quotes are in italics due to formatting issues.

Reagalan wrote:
Crossposting from reddit.

This whole blog screams "Let's miss the mark as hard as possible while remaining in the ballpark."

Following the changes, fleet warps will still be possible but will require greater participation by fleet members, such as getting a scout into position

We already know that this is untrue. Fleet Commanders routinely dualbox a scout alt for a laundry list of reasons. What has happened is now an FC will need to probe on the alt, warp the alt to the result at 10, and then fleetwarp to the alt at 10. Will it be slower? Yes. Will it increase "individual fleet member participation"? **** no. It raises the bar on FCs, making content creators' jobs harder.

The most common long range (defined as +150km) fleets seen in recent times are Slippery Petes. These are specialized Tengus that are fit with lots of ECCM, making them difficult to probe down

Probing Petes is not the issue. A single Virtue prober with a squad of interceptors effectively neuters them using squad warp. The reason Petes are the only workable sniper doctine is their bubble immunity. They are "slippery" because catching them is exceedingly hard. Any other sniper fleet is caught as soon as you land a dictor on them.

The combination of on-grid combat probing and fleet-warps have choked out most other long-range doctrines

On-grid probing is only one reason. Is it too strong? **** yes it is. but fleet warp was never the issue.

The main reason sniper fleets have disappeared is remote reps/Logistics ships. At longer ranges, turrets simply do less damage. Since Logistics ships can easily repair the damage of 3-8 hostile DPS (it varies widely due to resistances) ships at close range, moving to farther ranges just makes it worse. Take two fleets of oldschool battleship snipers and use modern Logi support and the fight would be as boring as ****. Nothing would die at sniper ranges one bit.

Tech 3 cruisers are another major culprit here, since they can easily sig-tank and resist-tank long-range turret fire, and the new meta of TD-covered Armor T3s has rendered all turret doctrines totally obsolete (though the mainstream capsuleer hasn't recognized this yet).

Sentry drones are the other major culprit since they deal a fixed damage amount (often equivalent to turret DPS at close ranges) but with a significantly greater optimal range, with better tracking, and are effectively immune to tracking disruptors.

The ease of performing bomb runs has stifled the use of battleships and battlecruisers in 0.0 space

Bombers are a major factor in the dismal performance of BS doctrines but only one of many, and since the bomb travel time changes, isn't actually the main reason anymore.

Bombers are not the main reason battlecruisers aren't used either. Ishtars are. The matchup is so one-sided it's comedy. Combat BCs have neither the range nor speed to catch Ishtars, and Attack BCs lose the tank/dps game since they have less of both. Sure the cost is different, but BCs are billed as "cruiser-killers" while being utterly ineffective at killing any kind of T2 cruiser that isn't explicitly fit for close-range.

..a group of dedicated and well-coordinated players can still decimate entire fleets

Of battleships. A small group still won't do **** to a modern Tech 3 doctrine, further discouraging BS use and encouraging T3 doctrines.

Look, the whole deal of encouraging sniper doctrines is something I'm very much behind. Variety is the spice of the game. I've lead hundreds of fleets in dozens of large (200+) battles and seen and fought almost everything. With the uttermost confidence I can assert, this fleetwarp change won't do jack ****. The Ishtar "nerf" as it is won't do jack ****.

If the goal really is to bring back the fleet variety that we saw back in the brief period just after the Odyssey and Retribution expansions then we sure as hell need bigger changes. If the goal is to bring snipers back, then remote-reps need a huge dicking. If the goal is to dethrone the Ishtar, then it needs to lose its ability to effectively use sentry drones. If the goal is to make combat battlecruisers useful, then they need a way to project damage farther. If the goal is to make bombers capable of changing the game with small numbers, then they need a fundamental design change to be more effective vs modern Tech 3 doctrines, and less effective vs battleships.

Finally, if the goal is to make fleet members "more responsible" for their ships, then make staying alive much harder to do. Dicking fleetwarp doesn't do this. Dicking keep-at-range or orbit would do it, but at the expense of all playability. Dicking remote reps would do this. Dicking remote reps would make snipers far more valuable. Dicking remote reps means staying alive is more than just flying the right ship and broadcasting for reps, but I don't think Eve is willing to swallow that pill.


For once I can agree with Goons and quoted for validity.
FT Diomedes
The Graduates
#158 - 2015-06-25 17:28:18 UTC
baltec1 wrote:
FT Diomedes wrote:


Which is part of the reason this change is bad - it is yet another Quality of Life non-improvement which will benefit the largest and most well-organized coalitions. They will find ways to overcome the tedium, those with worse out of game support structures will suffer.


Forgive me but, shouldn't that be the case? If you want to be good shouldn't you have to put in more effort?


Eve should not require out of game tools to do basic things. Evemon, EFT, POS manager apps, PI apps, industry spreadsheets, WH reporting tools, etc. each of them is a monument to poor game design and a terrible interface. All that stuff should be built into the Eve client.

When you make changes to the game which are most easily overcome by large blocs, do not complain about large blocs controlling everything meaningful,

CCP should add more NPC 0.0 space to open it up and liven things up: the Stepping Stones project.

Shakaran
Disb4nd
#159 - 2015-06-25 17:49:40 UTC
And as a multibox miner I'm once more ******!
The interceptor change was a big setback and now no fleet warps. I would have no problem to warp all my miners invidually, but if there is a interceptor coming or some other neut, I just don't have the time to warp all my miners out individually!

Yeah, make the miners life a bit harder again...
baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#160 - 2015-06-25 18:15:46 UTC
FT Diomedes wrote:
baltec1 wrote:
FT Diomedes wrote:


Which is part of the reason this change is bad - it is yet another Quality of Life non-improvement which will benefit the largest and most well-organized coalitions. They will find ways to overcome the tedium, those with worse out of game support structures will suffer.


Forgive me but, shouldn't that be the case? If you want to be good shouldn't you have to put in more effort?


Eve should not require out of game tools to do basic things. Evemon, EFT, POS manager apps, PI apps, industry spreadsheets, WH reporting tools, etc. each of them is a monument to poor game design and a terrible interface. All that stuff should be built into the Eve client.

When you make changes to the game which are most easily overcome by large blocs, do not complain about large blocs controlling everything meaningful,


Large, organised blocs adapt to every change better than the disorganized and solo/small. Making the game ever easier is not a good thing, if you want brainless gameplay there are countless other games out there. It about time CCP added more challenges rather than take them away.