Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So this sounds a touch similar to incursions... but it is on a much smaller scale, and much more rapidly generated.

My suggestion is to generate more NPC conflict, with players being given the opportunity to assist.

The idea is to have dynamic events that broadcast to players within X number of jumps saying that something's going down.

The overall process would be this:
1) Distress signal "sent", information viewed in teh same style as the incursion/FW stuff. Displays:
a) The value of the event (either reward from NPC, or tags from destroying the NPC)
b) The age of the event, as of the time the first player landed on-grid
c) The number of players who have responded
d) The difficulty rating

2) A player indicates their participation to receive the system name and warp-in point
a) In high-sec you will be unable to warp to the location in any fashion without indicating your participation (no friendly warp-in, no combat scanning)
b) In low-sec you can indicate participation or get a warp-in from someone in your fleet, but not by combat-scanning
c) In null-sec you can combat-scan without indicating participation or getting a friendly warp-in

3) A player may either:
a) Assist the NPC and get an ISK reward, split between all pilots who are On-Grid assisting (not cloaked, etc)
b) Attack the NPC and get an equivalent tag reward (no matter what the reward is the same in value... but this way you don't share!)

In all cases, the "conflict" between the NPCs does not start until the first player lands on grid or a timer expires (and the event despawns).


Content idea 1 (very common):
Pirates attacking Indy ships
- Scales in difficulty with the size of the Indy ship and the number of pirates attacking it. Indy ship may have an escort engaged in conflict with the pirates.
- You can attack the pirates and get a share of the reward relative to your performance (relative to other players)
- You can attack the NPC indy and get the tags (ie pop the indy, scoop the tags, and run)
- The higher the difficulty, the larger the visibility range
- Pirates will have warp disruptors/dictors/anchor bubbles
- Any hostile actions against the indy ship would prevent you from getting the reward (ie no double-dipping)

Content idea 2 (less common):
NPC cap/super requires jump fuel transported to them (reward taking into account the price of jump fuel)
- Visibility range depends on the quantity of fuel required
- No conflict, assuming players do not interfere with other players
- You can either bring it the needed fuel qty, or bring a fleet to kill it for tags

Content idea 3 (far less common, and only in constellations/regions with a large number of active players):
NPC citadel/station/installation under attack, needing defenders (or attackers....)
- Constellation-wide visibility, ranging up to region-wide visibility depending on the size of the installation
- Would likely involve NPC capital ships on both attacking and defending sides, giving players a reason to bring capitals if they dare
- Could very well involve NPC sub-cap fleets on both attacking and defending sides, meaning player capitals cannot go un-supported (which lets face it would be pretty silly in any neck of the woods).


How I envision it working is this:
1) a player is sitting in station spinning around their ship because they're bored
2) They get a notification of an event nearby
3) They go to participate, with the hopes that others will participate
4) They can either work together and share the reward or fight each other for the tags.


The biggest question I cannot answer is:

Can you make the ISK reward compelling enough for player participation? IE "we can go either to get the isk or to get PVP content if someone else shows up, but either way we will not regret going unless we lose the fight".

You want content, make these sites CONCORD free zones. It only makes sense that if you can't combat scan down the players that are in it, then neither can CONCORD. The pockets would be treated like a WH system - lawless. And for once make the instance based on a real time countdown clock. When the first dude lands on grid - the countdown starts. When it's over - the instance is over. No way to extend and farm them.

I like the idea of these. Would be fun and easy to access for hi sec pvp. As long as they were made lucrative and rewarding enough, could get some good fights.

The difference between these and existing sites/anoms/etc is that there is a range-based indicator which shows whether or not someone is participating. You get something in range, you see that someone's running it from say, 5 jumps out, and now all of a sudden you have somewhere to fly to find a fight.

It's like FW sites, where you can see the activity from X jumps out. The FW sites are a good concept in that you can see which ones to fly to in order to get a fight, but they're in-system only and odds are you'll wind up getting jumped by a gang. These, being random and everywhere, mean that a gang can't just hang out in one spot with their bait ship in the FW site.

Regarding performance:
- Damage done to rats as a percentage of all rat damage taken
- Reps done to "friendly" NPC as a percentage of all NPC damage taken
- Nobody rats in an EWAR ship... you take those you're expecting to fight other players and scoop the tags

I agree that player-driven content is where it's at... but players need a reason to get out there. Right now consider the average roam:
You get a group together and you go through a route looking for a fight. Maybe you find one, maybe you don't. Maybe they blue-ball you, maybe they drop on you.

Now, you get that group together same as before, but along your way, hey look, there's a site with people in it. Someone scout it out. Only 3 jumps? Give'er! Or you see a region-wide citadel event a short ways away... bring a fleet right there and get in on the action.

With the variety of encounters, such as the citadel encounter, there exists reasons for large fleets to go there... maybe they'll be blue to each other, maybe not. It could turn into a nice big fight very quickly.

The difference is that players need a reason to get out. Going out to wait for someone to find and fight them is boring.... it's called gate camping.

Edit:
The performance-based rewarding was simply to encourage people to do more than warp in and whore on things. Though there would certainly be ways of dissuading that, namely a point and a few turrets. It could well be that anyone who assists the friendly NPC would get an even distribution, much as it is with current bounty payouts.

That's what i mean. You can see people running pve using the map already. People can do this on a roam already and what's better is the hunter does not have to reveal themselves several jumps out.


So you don't get a reward for repping dps from players ships. In fact you dont get rewards for pvp at all it seems. And i thought the whole point of this feature was to generate pvp. And now you're surprised i want to bring e-war?? FW seems to do it better.



Or running amoms. Running fw sites. Missions outside of hi-sec.

Many players duck out the moment someone enters local. Thats precisely what will happen with your idea. People will duck out the moment someone else becomes a participant.