Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Really, nobody gets anything out of PvE? Ever?

Ahhh blooo blooo blooo, I made 2 billion ISK last month, but lost my 600 million Tengu!

Mike, I think your sarcasm meter is broken.

And yeah, I have ratted with hostiles in system. Back when we lived in Cloud Ring. Of course I knew he was Euro TZ and I'm...not. So I happily undocked and ratted away secure in the knowledge he was tucked into bed dreaming of rifters.

My point was that you get something. In fact, PvE pilots get quite alot of something...1 trillion ISK/day.

This discussion is ging in circles again, and one of the reasons is that different people use different basic assumptions on how the game should work, but without actually telling them (or maybe without even being aware of them).

Here is a very basic assumption that I use, and already mentioned several times:

Ratting in sov 0.0 should be more profitable than ratting in high-sec.

The reason is very simple. It requires a greater investment. It requires more attention. It has a greater risk involved. If the game is supposed to be belanced by risk, investment and reward, it MUST be more profitable.

So this argument is based on another assumption:

All pve activities should be balanced in terms of risk, reward and investment

This one should be self-evident.

Under these assumptions, many of the arguments made simply do not work. It is not important if you get something you need to get more than in high-sec.
A pvp fit is not a viable alternative, this makes high-sec ratting much more efficient.
The same goes for a defense fleet.
It doesn't matter if you made 1.4bil and "only" lost 600mil. What matters is if you could have made more isk in high-sec (or somewhere else) with less risk and without the loss (hint: you could have, unless you had extraordinary luck with faction spawns).

So which point are you objecting? Dont you believe me that you can make much more isk in high-sec than with a pvp fit in nullsec (of course after factoring in the risk of ship loss both in high-sec and nullsec)?
Or are you already disagreeing that there should be balance? Are you argueing that the distribution of rewards should be arbitrary?

I 100% agree with you here. PvE in nullsec should be much more profitable than PvE in hisec and currently it's not. I think that part of the disconnect here is that some folk see a nerf to cloaking as a way to help fix that disparity. I disagree with this assertion. If the issue is PvE profitability, address that issue.

And before you say "but cloaking impacts PvE profitability", let me point you to the folks making gobs of ISK in wormhole space where not only is cloaking quite common, but there is no local chat to even let you know when someone else is there. Wormhole PvE-ers have adapted, so can nullsec PvE-ers.

It is not simply a question about profitability. That is only part of the issue.

The current enviroment of nullsec is such that the presence of claoky camper means a HUGE difference in the profitabilty of the system. This is not going to change if you just adjust the profitability. Together with the fact that there is currently no way to get rid of a camper, it is not possible to balance both states - system camped and system not camped - at the same time.

Currently the balance is such that a non-camped system is roughly ok, while a camped system is utter crap in terms of profitability. You could change that in a way that for example a camped system is ok - but then a non-camped system will be incredibly overpowered. You could try to find a middle ground, but then the camped system is still not even close to profitable and the non-camped one still too good.
There wont be a satisfying solution, if you just change the profitability of nullsec, then the fact will remain that a claoky has way too much power for such a cheap module that can be used without risk.

Wormholes work because its a different enviroment. The influence of the cloaky is smaller. He cant open cynos. You can NEVER be sure if there might be one or not. Thats why it is possible to balance this enviroment to cloakies, simply by adjusting the profitability.

edit:
@Nikk, your post came in while I still wrote the last response:



Exactly! But its NOT just the players affected, but also ccp. Currently the rewards are balanced towards HAVING the "perfect" safety in null. The players avoiding the danger of a cloaky are not cowardly but doing the only sensible thing. Since their enviroment is balanced towards this behaviour. Taking the risk (or even more) that is normal in wh space is just stupid when the rewards are actually LOWER.
You just cant ask the players to adapt. They already adapted. If they are supposed to show a different behavour, they need a different enviroment to adapt to.

edit2:
To clarify the consequences: As just said the underlying problem is that the difference between a cloaky present or not is too big. So in general the problem can be addressed in two directions:

1. Decrease the danger of the cloaky (to roughly the danger of a system without one)
2. Increase the danger of system without a cloaky (roughly to the danger with a cloaky)

You could choose either on of those, or do a mixture , meeting both sates somewhere in the middle (which is the case in wh). THEN you can adjust the rewards. Either leave them as they are in case of 1., increase them strongly in the case of 2., or something in the middle in case of a mixed solution.
Personally I think 1. is too safe, 2. too unsafe, a mix would probably best.

And I agree with this too.

Nailed it.

It is all well and good to speak of ideals, such as everyone in the game experiencing a 'fair' amount of risk.
But the simple truth is this, it is a game, and it NEEDS to be fun. Not necessarily fair, but most players expect and appreciate that aspect.

I have, on more than one occasion, pointed out that we need a path to resolution that gives both sides a reason for wanting to invest the time in either PvE, or cloaking, if not doing both at alternating times.

The only genuine reason to not automate PvE, is because it can be a path for content creation. Fun play for both the cloaked character, as well as the one grinding rats or roids.

I want both sides of this.
We will always have the traditional stand-by of fleets and blob play, that's basic stuff unlikely to ever vanish.
I just don't want the basic stuff to be the best anyone can hope for.

I tried to read back as much as I could, this is a long thread. Let me break down what I interpret you to say -

A system has a base profitability based on sec status - lets say -.5
Then lets say you put in a "hostile" cloaked camper. to your theory the sec status would lower increasing profitability by say 2 points so it would take the -.5 to a -.7

Is that the idea in a nutshell?

That is not what I meant, I will try a quick explanation.
I will use made up numbers for illustrations, so please dont argue about the numbers being incorrect.

The current status is roughly like this:
A claoky right now is perfectly invulnerable. You can not remove him if he does not want to.
If a system does not have a cloaky camper you have very low chance of being engaged by a hostile. basically only with bad luck or mistakes on your side. The chance is small enough to neglect it for this example.
If a system does have a cloaky camper, your chance of being engaged dramatically increases, lets say it will be 20% per hour.

In case of an attack by a cloaky you usually have a survival chance of about 0%.
Let us assume a rattingship that costs 1 bil. This means, that someone ratting with this kind of ship will make about 200mil less per hour in a space with a cloaky than in one without.

This means, unless you make the rewards dependent on the presence of a cloaker (which is a bad idea since its easy to abuse, as Amrthis said), there is no way to balance this. No matter how high or low the rewards are (except for absurd amounts that make the 200mil neglectable, which is also bad), either the system with the cloaky will be too bad, or the system without too good. With the current cloaky mechanic there is no way around this. It doesnt matter if you change the numbers around a bit, the underlying problem is the fact that a system without a cloaky is extremely safe, a system with one extremly unsafe.

So to allow balance you could lower the power of the cloaky:
If either the chance to be engaged by the cloaky decreases, or the chance for survival increases, the difference in ISK per hour will get smaller. If it gets small enough, then a suitable reward per hour can be found that makes nullsec ratting profitable and about the same with and without the cloaky.
You could also increase the general danger of a system without a cloaky:
If the chance to get engaged in a system without a cloaky is also about 20%, then a system with and without a claoky will also be similar, so again you can adjust the rewards to make everything balanced. In this example you would have to increase the rewards by a over 200mil/hour for a 1bil ship.
And the third way, which I prefer, is to do both. To increase the risk of a system without a cloaky, while simulatenously decreasing the risk of a cloak. Preferably in a way that increases the chance to survive an attack. And then also to increase the rewards, to match the risk, making nullsec ratting more profitable than high sec ratting.

Then ratters would be willing to take the risk of being engaged, as the rewards would be worth the risk, and there is no way to get these rewards without risking the engagement.


I did not actually say how to achieve this. As I think this would again lead to a derailed discussion, as there did not seem to be an agreement on the goals so far, which makes discussing the way how to achieve the goal difficult.
If one side wants a perfectly safe nullsec with high rewards, the other side wants an extremly dangerous nullsec with even lower rewards, then we can argue all day about which changes would be the right ones, and it would be a complete waste of time, since both sides want to achieve a different outcome.

But "my" solution would have to contain 1. a (strong) nerf to cloakies 2. a nerf to the safety of nullsec 3. an increase in rewards from nullsec