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PVE - Fewer, tougher, and more player-like
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Old Pervert
Perkone
Caldari State
#1 - 2017-04-18 20:12:17 UTC
So PVE will probably always be boring, but that doesn't mean we can't make it a little more interesting. At the very least, remove the predictability of it all.

Thus, my proposition.

For missions, anoms, and belts, far fewer rats... consolidate 5:1 or even 10:1. In return, increase their capabilities 5x or 10x.

My main lives in drone lands, so I'll use a Drone Horde anom as an example. The site starts with 4 groups of ships, generally 3 or so ships in each group. A few destroyers, a few frigates, a couple BC, and a half dozen battleships typically.

Replace said group with a pair of frigates, a BC or cruiser, and one battleship. Add in NPC logistics too. Vary the NPC fittings to include webs, scrams, points, neuts, along with occasional faction-appropriate EWAR. And for god's sake, make sure there's a disco battleship possibility to really mess with the afk 100mn vexors.

Their capabilities would be in line with the burner missions. We know how the current frigate burner missions are, scale that up for the other ship classes.

For example, the drone battleships have 10k shield/armor w/ 49% resists on their resist hole... that gives them 20,400 EHP. A player BS has 150-200k EHP, if they're buffer fit. More is easily possible. Increasing their capabilities 10 times over would put them in line with a player-fit battleship. Or give them a smaller buffer... 80-100k, with an active tank that you'd have to work to.

In addition to this, however, one would need to ensure they're vulnerable to neuting. For example, said NPC battleship getting capped out would result in its hardeners turning off, dropping its tank in half. An active tank would pop even faster.

Lastly, let them warp off like officer rats if they aren't pointed. Eve is a PVP game.. we should be playing under the same mindset every time (not shooting at dimwits that don't know how to warp off when they're about to die).

Of course, there would be an appropriate increase in their bounties to match this consolidation.

I'm putting this at the very bottom, so that it's easily noted. Damage would not scale at the same rate. No player would willingly take a fight against 4-5 other players. The incoming damage would be roughly the same as it is now (for example, the now-1 BS would do the same damage as the then-5 BS).
Do Little
Bluenose Trading
#2 - 2017-04-18 20:44:34 UTC
Have you watched the PVE presentation from Fanfest? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zho8nopiluc&t=27s&index=6&list=PLQvKSs1k6DLOoOfYu2KajQcbsu1OubQfS

I think you'll like the direction CCP is taking although they will be spending several months dialing in the AI behaviours with special events like the Blood Raider shipyards before extending it to missions and anomalies. That is expected to be part of the winter expansion.
Jonah Gravenstein
Machiavellian Space Bastards
#3 - 2017-04-18 20:57:01 UTC
Do Little wrote:
Have you watched the PVE presentation from Fanfest? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zho8nopiluc&t=27s&index=6&list=PLQvKSs1k6DLOoOfYu2KajQcbsu1OubQfS

I think you'll like the direction CCP is taking although they will be spending several months dialing in the AI behaviours with special events like the Blood Raider shipyards before extending it to missions and anomalies. That is expected to be part of the winter expansion.
It's about time too.

Cue some hilarious lossmails when it goes live

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

New Player FAQ

Feyd's Survival Pack
Cade Windstalker
#4 - 2017-04-18 20:57:22 UTC  |  Edited by: Cade Windstalker
I could have sworn we literally just had this thread last week... ah it was part of this thread from three weeks ago.

So, same thing I said then, not a fan and here's why in brief:

This massively increases the barrier to entry for existing content. Anything that would be challenging to an older player will be impossible to someone with bare skills and a Meta fitted Battleship.

Consolidating ships like this inherently makes the missions harder because the player can't remove DPS as quickly, so a mission that before you could tank by killing three Battleships before your tank breaks you now can't tank at all because 5 Battleships became one but you have to burn through 5 Battleships worth of tank before *any* DPS gets removed.


I'm all for tweaks and reworks of existing PvE, I'm not in favor of dramatically increasing the difficulty of existing systems.

I'm all for more interesting and dynamic missions, but not with replacing every incompetent High Sec pirate ship with an elite doom-ship.

On a more personal experience level I'm not in favor of trying to make pirate ships perform on the level of player ships or anywhere close outside of special circumstances like Incursions where you're still massively outperforming the pirates but only because you've had to step up your game to match. To a large extent a lot of Eve PvE is reinforcing the badass capsuleer aspect of the Lore and that's fun to have in the game. Being able to plow through dozens of poorly trained crews in poorly built ships is fun. Not everything needs to feel like a nail-biting PvP brawl.
Nevyn Auscent
Broke Sauce
#5 - 2017-04-18 21:19:46 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:


Consolidating ships like this inherently makes the missions harder because the player can't remove DPS as quickly, so a mission that before you could tank by killing three Battleships before your tank breaks you now can't tank at all because 5 Battleships became one but you have to burn through 5 Battleships worth of tank before *any* DPS gets removed.

Except this is actually the older player doing missions in this way. The newer player is normally overtanked and slow.
The barrier of entry is almost identical assuming the DPS & EHP in the mission remains the same.

And fewer tougher rats mean that you can also use Ewar effectively (assuming CCP fix how NPC's are invulnerable to certain types of Ewar) which actually lowers the barrier of entry if you can fit a single correct ECM, Damp or Disruptor and effectively take an NPC out of the fight with it, because you are taking the equivilant of 5 NPC's out.

Not to mention it further prepares the PvE player better for PvP since they are used to fighting more realistic targets as not only is the EHP more comparable to players, but the AI can be improved (much like they are talking about the BR AI being), so that it is a more responsive feel.

Could an edge case occur where someone can't do the content, almost certainly, but the same is true the other way around. Due to Ewar being more effective it might be easier in some cases.
And provided that a T1 BS can roughly do all lvl 4's still, it's not a big deal if the odd edge case does appear also for the other value improvements we get.
Serendipity Lost
Repo Industries
#6 - 2017-04-18 21:20:06 UTC  |  Edited by: Serendipity Lost
Cade Windstalker wrote:
I could have sworn we literally just had this thread last week... ah it was part of this thread from three weeks ago.

So, same thing I said then, not a fan and here's why in brief:

This massively increases the barrier to entry for existing content. Anything that would be challenging to an older player will be impossible to someone with bare skills and a Meta fitted Battleship.

Consolidating ships like this inherently makes the missions harder because the player can't remove DPS as quickly, so a mission that before you could tank by killing three Battleships before your tank breaks you now can't tank at all because 5 Battleships became one but you have to burn through 5 Battleships worth of tank before *any* DPS gets removed.


I'm all for tweaks and reworks of existing PvE, I'm not in favor of dramatically increasing the difficulty of existing systems.

I'm all for more interesting and dynamic missions, but not with replacing every incompetent High Sec pirate ship with an elite doom-ship.

On a more personal experience level I'm not in favor of trying to make pirate ships perform on the level of player ships or anywhere close outside of special circumstances like Incursions where you're still massively outperforming the pirates but only because you've had to step up your game to match. To a large extent a lot of Eve PvE is reinforcing the badass capsuleer aspect of the Lore and that's fun to have in the game. Being able to plow through dozens of poorly trained crews in poorly built ships is fun. Not everything needs to feel like a nail-biting PvP brawl.



I think the opposite. Take wh as an example. Low end for lower skilled players and higher end content for higher skilled players. Not everyone should be able to do everything instantly. And if a player really really feels need to lose ships in high end pve - let them. If they buy injectors to short the experience part of skilling - let them. Your line of thinking post skill injectors has zero merit.

Scale the sites from easy and low profit to very difficult and high profit. Add more and more scrams/webs and other player commitment features to pve. Look at WH sites. Landing in a C5/C6 site means at least one of the ships involved is pointed until the last sleeper was off the field (more or less). Solo high end pve should require motherships/titans to warp into bubble traps and be prepared to stay there until they or the site gets completed.

Everyone shouldn't get a trophy and everyone shouldn't be able to farm (dare I say survive) ALL pve situations. Put some decent scale in pve so folks have something to work for. Put some decent commitment in pve (webs/scrams/bubbles - and not just one scramming frigate that races into smartbomb range - decent commitment) so that players actually have some risk while they gobble up their rewards. Put some game in the game!
Matthias Ancaladron
Imperial Shipment
Amarr Empire
#7 - 2017-04-18 23:17:30 UTC
Only if they drop tens of millions in loot and bounties.
Otherwise you're just interfering in farming.
Matthias Ancaladron
Imperial Shipment
Amarr Empire
#8 - 2017-04-18 23:20:16 UTC
Serendipity Lost wrote:
Cade Windstalker wrote:
I could have sworn we literally just had this thread last week... ah it was part of this thread from three weeks ago.

So, same thing I said then, not a fan and here's why in brief:

This massively increases the barrier to entry for existing content. Anything that would be challenging to an older player will be impossible to someone with bare skills and a Meta fitted Battleship.

Consolidating ships like this inherently makes the missions harder because the player can't remove DPS as quickly, so a mission that before you could tank by killing three Battleships before your tank breaks you now can't tank at all because 5 Battleships became one but you have to burn through 5 Battleships worth of tank before *any* DPS gets removed.


I'm all for tweaks and reworks of existing PvE, I'm not in favor of dramatically increasing the difficulty of existing systems.

I'm all for more interesting and dynamic missions, but not with replacing every incompetent High Sec pirate ship with an elite doom-ship.

On a more personal experience level I'm not in favor of trying to make pirate ships perform on the level of player ships or anywhere close outside of special circumstances like Incursions where you're still massively outperforming the pirates but only because you've had to step up your game to match. To a large extent a lot of Eve PvE is reinforcing the badass capsuleer aspect of the Lore and that's fun to have in the game. Being able to plow through dozens of poorly trained crews in poorly built ships is fun. Not everything needs to feel like a nail-biting PvP brawl.



I think the opposite. Take wh as an example. Low end for lower skilled players and higher end content for higher skilled players. Not everyone should be able to do everything instantly. And if a player really really feels need to lose ships in high end pve - let them. If they buy injectors to short the experience part of skilling - let them. Your line of thinking post skill injectors has zero merit.

Scale the sites from easy and low profit to very difficult and high profit. Add more and more scrams/webs and other player commitment features to pve. Look at WH sites. Landing in a C5/C6 site means at least one of the ships involved is pointed until the last sleeper was off the field (more or less). Solo high end pve should require motherships/titans to warp into bubble traps and be prepared to stay there until they or the site gets completed.

Everyone shouldn't get a trophy and everyone shouldn't be able to farm (dare I say survive) ALL pve situations. Put some decent scale in pve so folks have something to work for. Put some decent commitment in pve (webs/scrams/bubbles - and not just one scramming frigate that races into smartbomb range - decent commitment) so that players actually have some risk while they gobble up their rewards. Put some game in the game!

Your talking about him not having any merit and youre suggesting brand new players be required to buy skill injectors just to start the game aka pay to win.
Cade Windstalker
#9 - 2017-04-19 02:36:38 UTC
Nevyn Auscent wrote:
Except this is actually the older player doing missions in this way. The newer player is normally overtanked and slow.
The barrier of entry is almost identical assuming the DPS & EHP in the mission remains the same.

And fewer tougher rats mean that you can also use Ewar effectively (assuming CCP fix how NPC's are invulnerable to certain types of Ewar) which actually lowers the barrier of entry if you can fit a single correct ECM, Damp or Disruptor and effectively take an NPC out of the fight with it, because you are taking the equivilant of 5 NPC's out.

Not to mention it further prepares the PvE player better for PvP since they are used to fighting more realistic targets as not only is the EHP more comparable to players, but the AI can be improved (much like they are talking about the BR AI being), so that it is a more responsive feel.

Could an edge case occur where someone can't do the content, almost certainly, but the same is true the other way around. Due to Ewar being more effective it might be easier in some cases.
And provided that a T1 BS can roughly do all lvl 4's still, it's not a big deal if the odd edge case does appear also for the other value improvements we get.


For a current Level 4 mission it is *far* easier to get enough DPS to remove things from grid than it is to get enough sustained local tank to tank the DPS in some of the harder missions without warping out. This is because T1 battleships tend to be *very* cap restricted compared to Pirate Battleships, Marauders, and even Navy BSes and with T1 or T2 modules tank is *easily* the biggest drain on cap.

Most of the really effective T1 or Navy BS fits that aren't stupidly expensive tend to run light on tank and heavy on DPS, relying on either a MJD (these days) or a cap-light undersized tank module to get barely enough of a cap efficient tank to survive long enough to remove DPS from the field.

This is because Faction and Deadspace tank modules are *much* more cap efficient than their Meta and T2 counterparts and this can be compounded with faction or deadspace resist modules where as DPS bonuses are largely from skills, ammo, or stacking penalized modules.

ECM and Tracking Disruptors already work on NPCs, they're just almost worthless without a bonused ship. Most missions by the way rarely put even 5 Battleships on grid with you at one time, and several have one big battleship as a main threat in at least one room. Even in these situations you're *far* better off with something other than EWar. Again, without a bonused ship it's worthless and by using a bonused ship you give up way more than you gain, even if there were only 5-6 ships on-grid, a Scorpion being able to take one out of the fight 50% of the time for 20 seconds at a time probably wouldn't be worth more than just using a Raven and dealing more damage and ECM is very cap hungry further exacerbating the newbie in a T1 BS cap problem. Damps and Tracking Disruption are even more worthless because they rarely if ever significantly reduce the incoming damage.

There is no way for entry level PvE to every in any way prepare a player for PvP because in order for that to be the case there has to be a reasonable chance of the player losing his ship. If that's the case then the PvE content doesn't work because it can't be completed reliably for a reliable income.

If a T1 BS can still do all Level 4 missions effectively then you've done nothing but buff mission blizting for high end Battleships. By consolidating HP you reduce overflow damage and allow a DPS heavy Pirate BS or Marauder to quickly burn through the target before its reps, which have to be tuned to T1 BS damage, can do much. This is already the case but it gets worse with a larger HP pool where the reps have to be relatively less effective so as not to overly punish the T1 BS player.
Cade Windstalker
#10 - 2017-04-19 02:42:29 UTC
Serendipity Lost wrote:
I think the opposite. Take wh as an example. Low end for lower skilled players and higher end content for higher skilled players. Not everyone should be able to do everything instantly. And if a player really really feels need to lose ships in high end pve - let them. If they buy injectors to short the experience part of skilling - let them. Your line of thinking post skill injectors has zero merit.

Scale the sites from easy and low profit to very difficult and high profit. Add more and more scrams/webs and other player commitment features to pve. Look at WH sites. Landing in a C5/C6 site means at least one of the ships involved is pointed until the last sleeper was off the field (more or less). Solo high end pve should require motherships/titans to warp into bubble traps and be prepared to stay there until they or the site gets completed.

Everyone shouldn't get a trophy and everyone shouldn't be able to farm (dare I say survive) ALL pve situations. Put some decent scale in pve so folks have something to work for. Put some decent commitment in pve (webs/scrams/bubbles - and not just one scramming frigate that races into smartbomb range - decent commitment) so that players actually have some risk while they gobble up their rewards. Put some game in the game!


No one is talking about everyone being able to do everything instantly. I specifically said I'm in favor of new and harder PvE options. What I'm not in favor of is significantly changing the difficulty curve on Missions which are literally the lowest rung on the PvE ladder. Even Belt Ratting is higher these days due to overall lower pay while still having things like random faction rat spawns, Sleepers, and Mining Fleets.

No one should ever be required to buy Skill Injectors to do a Level 4 mission. That is ridiculous. Right now you can be in a ship capable of doing Level 4 missions inside of 3 months if you're fairly fast or 6 if you take your time. In neither case will you be at a sufficient skill level to beat many missions without at least one warp out due to tank. Anything that makes that harder just pushes the lowest run of PvE out of reach of new players.

Wormhole Sites are pretty explicitly not new-player friendly. They can be done by a dedicated newbie, but they're *way* higher risk and consequently way higher reward than anything in High Sec. Pointing at these sites and saying that's what missions should be like is ridiculous.

I'm honestly wondering if you read anything below the dotted line here, I explicitly say that I am against these changes being made to *basic* PvE, not that I'm against the general concept as something new.
Agondray
Avenger Mercenaries
VOID Intergalactic Forces
#11 - 2017-04-19 11:19:05 UTC
no, there is rats as is if you don't drop your tank a great deal you just don't have the dps to kill. and while you think 5 to 10 times less rats in trade for 5-10 times more powerful is a great answer. I think you would disagree when every rat starts having the tank of a cap ship. some of those ships have tanks to shrug off 400-500 dps to a slow death and you want to give them 2000 dps tanks at just times 5?

"Sarcasm is the Recourse of a weak mind." -Dr. Smith
Alderson Point
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#12 - 2017-04-19 11:33:48 UTC  |  Edited by: Alderson Point
There may be a little disconnect here.

Players ARE crying out for more interesting PVE, more room for thought, improvements that reward developing tactical gameplay, reward improving skills and mission running methods.

The one thing that Players who do PVE are NOT asking for is harder.

They are not looking for new and glorious ways to be destroyed.

And whilst improving the ways rats fly, is interesting, and requiring a bit more thought is worthwhile, they certainly do not look for a PVP experience.

There are many examples in the real world, where people believe "insert bigoted assumed personality defect here" can be cured with a good dose of "because I think so"

You must realise that PVE players do not wish to be cured by a good dose of simulated PVP.

Many people are QUITE happy with their lifestyle choices without it being assumed they are in some way deviant.

THEY DO NOT WISH TO BE CURED.

And aversion therapy doesn't work either, Making PVE total shite, isn't going to turn them into Pirates.
Althalus Stenory
Flying Blacksmiths
#13 - 2017-04-19 12:51:50 UTC
Alderson Point wrote:
The one thing that Players who do PVE are NOT asking for is harder.

They are not looking for new and glorious ways to be destroyed.

This is almost why people never run Drifter Incursions.

EsiPy - Python 2.7 / 3.3+ Swagger Client based on pyswagger for ESI
Old Pervert
Perkone
Caldari State
#14 - 2017-04-19 14:33:39 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:

This massively increases the barrier to entry for existing content. Anything that would be challenging to an older player will be impossible to someone with bare skills and a Meta fitted Battleship.


Not everything is a C5 or a 10/10 escalation, is it? There exist DED 1/10 all the way through 10/10.

A 1/10 could easily be a single frigate, like the current burner missions... perhaps even easier, to reduce that barrier. I'm not asking for "harder", I'm asking for "more interesting". The difference here is that by making it a meaningful fight, I can enjoy it more than counting off 6 volleys and tabbing over to the next target while my drones finish it off (as the 7th volley would have wasted application, and I'm in no rush to remove them from the field).


Alderson Point wrote:

The one thing that Players who do PVE are NOT asking for is harder.

Never said it should be harder. I combined an increased individual toughness with a reduced quantity of rats. Which means that the difficulty doesn't really change, you just have a bigger fight. Same time investment (you can spend 20 minutes blowing up 50 rats or 20 minutes blowing up 5). By making it more sophisticated, it doesn't make it harder unless you're a scrub of epic proportions. It just means you have to play the game rather than just F1 away the rats and collect your ISK.


~~

EWAR is only effective in small gang... I love flying EWAR, and if I could clear a site in a reasonable amount of time with an EWAR ship, I totally would. You can't with the current sites because they brute force it by just adding a mob of rats to blob you with.

If there was only a few ships (susceptible to EWAR), something like a Rook or a Curse would become a viable ratting ship... which would be fantastic because I truly enjoy flying both. Would you get max ticks from it? Probably not... the fastest and most efficient way to clear a site is to blap the rats as fast as possible.. but I could pve for something closer to fun rather than tedium.
Old Pervert
Perkone
Caldari State
#15 - 2017-04-19 14:44:15 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:

If a T1 BS can still do all Level 4 missions effectively then you've done nothing but buff mission blizting for high end Battleships. By consolidating HP you reduce overflow damage and allow a DPS heavy Pirate BS or Marauder to quickly burn through the target before its reps, which have to be tuned to T1 BS damage, can do much. This is already the case but it gets worse with a larger HP pool where the reps have to be relatively less effective so as not to overly punish the T1 BS player.


By that logic, all PVP should happen in battleships because they have the highest damage. Easiest just to blap things off the field right?

Except battleships don't apply worth **** against small targets. Even my nightmare with tracking computers and a domination grappler has trouble with frigates in certain circumstances. Heck even destroyers can be a pain in the backside... I leave them for my drones currently.

By forcing the player to get into fights where that frigate no longer has a trivial 500 EHP, those optimized battleships will need to have answers for meaningful frigate fights, before they can trigger the next wave. Which means less blap and more utility.




Something else to consider is that warping in on ratters when you're pirating now becomes a lot more interesting. If a ratter needs a point to keep ships from warping off, now all of a sudden the pirate gets pointed too. More risk for pirates. They can't just say "nope" and warp off if they bit off more than they could chew.
Daichi Yamato
Jabbersnarks and Wonderglass
#16 - 2017-04-19 15:31:16 UTC
Umm this is a recurring thread. If you dont think players are looking for harder and more pvp like pve then you need to open your eyes.

Burners were born from the demands of harder more pvp-like missions. Thats why they have capsuleer resist profiles, not npc faction resists. NPC gangs roaming systems with logi support is also because players asked for npc encounters to be more pvp like. Players want the ships they fight to be more like the ships they fly.




That doesn't mean level 1 missions need to chew you up and spit you out. But rather than having 20 rats with 55hp (not an exaggeration), they could have 3-4 rats with about 500hp each (noob ship with no skills), a bit of an active tank and meager dps.

When there are fewer rats against you, keeping transversal against harder hitters becomes a useful tactic. Clearing tackle/e-war/logi/dps first becomes a meaningful decision when you have fewer more-specialised enemies rather than the generic blob we have now.

Tougher active tanks (or logi) encourages group play and focusing fire to make missions take less than half the time.


Stuff like that.

EVE FAQ "7.2 CAN I AVOID PVP COMPLETELY? No; there are no systems or locations in New Eden where PvP may be completely avoided"

Daichi Yamato's version of structure based decs
Old Pervert
Perkone
Caldari State
#17 - 2017-04-19 15:37:10 UTC
Daichi Yamato wrote:

Stuff like that.


Yes, this. A thousand times this.
Serendipity Lost
Repo Industries
#18 - 2017-04-19 17:21:33 UTC
Matthias Ancaladron wrote:
Serendipity Lost wrote:
Cade Windstalker wrote:
I could have sworn we literally just had this thread last week... ah it was part of this thread from three weeks ago.

So, same thing I said then, not a fan and here's why in brief:

This massively increases the barrier to entry for existing content. Anything that would be challenging to an older player will be impossible to someone with bare skills and a Meta fitted Battleship.

Consolidating ships like this inherently makes the missions harder because the player can't remove DPS as quickly, so a mission that before you could tank by killing three Battleships before your tank breaks you now can't tank at all because 5 Battleships became one but you have to burn through 5 Battleships worth of tank before *any* DPS gets removed.


I'm all for tweaks and reworks of existing PvE, I'm not in favor of dramatically increasing the difficulty of existing systems.

I'm all for more interesting and dynamic missions, but not with replacing every incompetent High Sec pirate ship with an elite doom-ship.

On a more personal experience level I'm not in favor of trying to make pirate ships perform on the level of player ships or anywhere close outside of special circumstances like Incursions where you're still massively outperforming the pirates but only because you've had to step up your game to match. To a large extent a lot of Eve PvE is reinforcing the badass capsuleer aspect of the Lore and that's fun to have in the game. Being able to plow through dozens of poorly trained crews in poorly built ships is fun. Not everything needs to feel like a nail-biting PvP brawl.



I think the opposite. Take wh as an example. Low end for lower skilled players and higher end content for higher skilled players. Not everyone should be able to do everything instantly. And if a player really really feels need to lose ships in high end pve - let them. If they buy injectors to short the experience part of skilling - let them. Your line of thinking post skill injectors has zero merit.

Scale the sites from easy and low profit to very difficult and high profit. Add more and more scrams/webs and other player commitment features to pve. Look at WH sites. Landing in a C5/C6 site means at least one of the ships involved is pointed until the last sleeper was off the field (more or less). Solo high end pve should require motherships/titans to warp into bubble traps and be prepared to stay there until they or the site gets completed.

Everyone shouldn't get a trophy and everyone shouldn't be able to farm (dare I say survive) ALL pve situations. Put some decent scale in pve so folks have something to work for. Put some decent commitment in pve (webs/scrams/bubbles - and not just one scramming frigate that races into smartbomb range - decent commitment) so that players actually have some risk while they gobble up their rewards. Put some game in the game!

Your talking about him not having any merit and youre suggesting brand new players be required to buy skill injectors just to start the game aka pay to win.


No I'm saying PVE should scale from easy (newbro friendly) to hard (vet friendly). I pointed out that injectors provide a method if desired to shortcut from newbro to vet. The only need to be able to farm all pve content on day one would be a self imposed bias by the farming player and not at all dictated by the game.

If a newbro is a panty bunched that he can't be elite on day one, the game provides a way to do it. It costs isk. The game doesn't require it. It's not like CCP is banning players because they've been in game for 3 years and can only complete level 2 missions.

I think your problem is you look at the world all wrong. You feel you deserve to do everything on day one therefore logically (to you looking at the world all wrong) scaled pve would be pay to win. Thinking like this is why I despise kids brought up in the 'everyone gets a trophy' generation.

The game owes you 1 month of playing time each time you pay your subscription, anything after the log in screen is extra.
Serendipity Lost
Repo Industries
#19 - 2017-04-19 17:31:27 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:
Serendipity Lost wrote:
I think the opposite. Take wh as an example. Low end for lower skilled players and higher end content for higher skilled players. Not everyone should be able to do everything instantly. And if a player really really feels need to lose ships in high end pve - let them. If they buy injectors to short the experience part of skilling - let them. Your line of thinking post skill injectors has zero merit.

Scale the sites from easy and low profit to very difficult and high profit. Add more and more scrams/webs and other player commitment features to pve. Look at WH sites. Landing in a C5/C6 site means at least one of the ships involved is pointed until the last sleeper was off the field (more or less). Solo high end pve should require motherships/titans to warp into bubble traps and be prepared to stay there until they or the site gets completed.

Everyone shouldn't get a trophy and everyone shouldn't be able to farm (dare I say survive) ALL pve situations. Put some decent scale in pve so folks have something to work for. Put some decent commitment in pve (webs/scrams/bubbles - and not just one scramming frigate that races into smartbomb range - decent commitment) so that players actually have some risk while they gobble up their rewards. Put some game in the game!


No one is talking about everyone being able to do everything instantly. I specifically said I'm in favor of new and harder PvE options. What I'm not in favor of is significantly changing the difficulty curve on Missions which are literally the lowest rung on the PvE ladder. Even Belt Ratting is higher these days due to overall lower pay while still having things like random faction rat spawns, Sleepers, and Mining Fleets.

No one should ever be required to buy Skill Injectors to do a Level 4 mission. That is ridiculous. Right now you can be in a ship capable of doing Level 4 missions inside of 3 months if you're fairly fast or 6 if you take your time. In neither case will you be at a sufficient skill level to beat many missions without at least one warp out due to tank. Anything that makes that harder just pushes the lowest run of PvE out of reach of new players.

Wormhole Sites are pretty explicitly not new-player friendly. They can be done by a dedicated newbie, but they're *way* higher risk and consequently way higher reward than anything in High Sec. Pointing at these sites and saying that's what missions should be like is ridiculous.

I'm honestly wondering if you read anything below the dotted line here, I explicitly say that I am against these changes being made to *basic* PvE, not that I'm against the general concept as something new.



I'm pretty sure I stated "I think" before all that stuff.... let me check.... ah yes - I did. I think you missed the last word in the forum subsection description. It is discussion. This is the features and ideas DISCUSSION section. It's not the features and ideas I AGREE WITH YOU section. Get it? Got it? Good.

I don't agree with you, I agree with me. You just want more isk faster by raising the bounty and lowering the number of npc's per mission. You're trying to hide that a bit by adding the word tougher in the title. You didn't actually mention HOW npc's would be tougher. On a similar but different note (this would be the discussion part) I'm for scaling difficulty and yeah excluding newbros from high end stuff simply because they are new. I'm also for making the high end stuff truly difficult. SOV null anoms are embarrassingly easy, there is no risk (you can warp out any time) and the chance of getting ganked is just about zero for a competent player. So yeah, it's your idea, but it's our discussion.

You can run C1 anoms in a caracal with a blank clone - add that all up and you really aren't risking anything AND caracals and blank clones are not difficult to attain training wise.
Cade Windstalker
#20 - 2017-04-19 18:18:49 UTC
Old Pervert wrote:
Not everything is a C5 or a 10/10 escalation, is it? There exist DED 1/10 all the way through 10/10.

A 1/10 could easily be a single frigate, like the current burner missions... perhaps even easier, to reduce that barrier. I'm not asking for "harder", I'm asking for "more interesting". The difference here is that by making it a meaningful fight, I can enjoy it more than counting off 6 volleys and tabbing over to the next target while my drones finish it off (as the 7th volley would have wasted application, and I'm in no rush to remove them from the field).


My main issue here is with the proposed impact on Missions and with the general idea that rats should get significantly stronger per-ship as this creates a much more punishing environment for newer players while having little impact on older and more experienced ones. I have little issue with the idea of tweaking DED and scan-sites in general, or even with tweaking how missions are structured and NPCs within them spawned.

I think it would be great if Missions and Scan Sites gained more variety and had more replay-ability or ability to be run in fleets, or even if DED and Scan Sites got harder at the high end.

I'm also all for more high-end PvE content like the Blood Raider Shipyards where people out in Null have to fleet up to mount an effective run on the site.

Old Pervert wrote:
Never said it should be harder. I combined an increased individual toughness with a reduced quantity of rats. Which means that the difficulty doesn't really change, you just have a bigger fight. Same time investment (you can spend 20 minutes blowing up 50 rats or 20 minutes blowing up 5). By making it more sophisticated, it doesn't make it harder unless you're a scrub of epic proportions. It just means you have to play the game rather than just F1 away the rats and collect your ISK.


This I flat out dispute. It's flatly impossible to consolidate rats into harder individuals and keep the difficulty curve the same for all skill levels and levels of ship investment. The more significant the consolidation the more significant the corresponding swing in difficulty. If you try to keep things the same for one end you end up either buffing or nerfing them for the opposite end.

You can already see this with certain missions that have harder or significantly easier rats than normal for that rat type and mission difficulty.

The Recon missions are probably the best example. Since the rats are intended more as a hazard for newer players they're much harder than normal rats and there are relatively few of them per wave. These missions are *significantly* harder than a normal mission for a new player to fight through in large part because each rat takes much longer to kill and is therefore on field applying DPS for longer.

You can demonstrate this pretty simply by graphing HP and DPS of hypothetical rats over time and adjusting the values for different levels of rat consolidation.

If you have 10 rats with 20k EHP and 100 DPS and you turn them into 2 rats with 100k EHP and 500 DPS then you have 40 extra DPS on field for 4 old-rats worth of EHP burn-through.

If you tune it down so that the average DPS over that time ends up being the same then you've just reduced overall site DPS significantly which means an older player with a better ship gets even less challenge out of the site and can fit far less tank and far more DPS of his own.

Similarly if you reduce the EHP instead of the DPS then the older player can burn through the missions much much faster because there's much less total EHP on field and the newer player is still at a disadvantage because the DPS is still higher for at least a bit longer, and he can't burn through the rats as quickly to reduce incoming DPS since he's had to invest more in tank.

Make sense?

Old Pervert wrote:
EWAR is only effective in small gang... I love flying EWAR, and if I could clear a site in a reasonable amount of time with an EWAR ship, I totally would. You can't with the current sites because they brute force it by just adding a mob of rats to blob you with.

If there was only a few ships (susceptible to EWAR), something like a Rook or a Curse would become a viable ratting ship... which would be fantastic because I truly enjoy flying both. Would you get max ticks from it? Probably not... the fastest and most efficient way to clear a site is to blap the rats as fast as possible.. but I could pve for something closer to fun rather than tedium.


This still wouldn't be the case because those ships don't deal enough DPS to beat out a ship that can just power through the enemy. This is because in a PvP situation where you can choose not to engage if the fight is unfavorable these ships are extremely powerful in their ability to avoid those bad engagements and quickly burn down an enemy in a favorable one.

You can already use EWar to significantly mitigate DPS on a bonused ship, it's just never worthwhile, even in missions or sites with one strong rat or a smaller number of stronger rats. The one exception I'm aware of is some of the Burner missions where EWar can be very effective because you're fighting a single or very small number of opponents, but that's its own thing and hasn't been brought up in this thread so far.
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