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PVE - Fewer, tougher, and more player-like

Author
Cade Windstalker
#21 - 2017-04-19 18:21:46 UTC  |  Edited by: Cade Windstalker
Serendipity Lost wrote:

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.


Now I'm almost certain you've miss-read something somewhere. You're talking like I'm the OP and arguing in favor of the idea being presented, I'm doing neither of those things...

I am *explicitly* against the consolidation of NPCs for more or less the reasons you're hinting at here.

I'm pretty sure we're agreeing with each other actually...



So, let me re-state this just to be 100% clear.

I am all in favor of harder or more interesting PvE content being added to the game *as new content*. I am not generally in favor of replacing missions in a way that would adversely affect new-bros and certainly not in a way that mostly benefits old-bies, and *ESPECIALLY* not at the expense of new-bros.
Daichi Yamato
Jabbersnarks and Wonderglass
#22 - 2017-04-19 19:38:52 UTC
Level 1 missions are tediously easy for an out of the box char. Remember they have a ton more sp than when they did when the missions were made. I'm not sure you appreciate how unengaging they are.

A cat with a days training will alpha most rats in l1 missions at lock range. Most mission time is spent flying between groups of rats and between gates. Not doing the more interesting shooting parts. The threat is so anaemic that you can passive shield tank missions without even fitting a tank mod.

We can afford to up the ante, and get players engaged and making meaningful decisions sooner. They are after all, post tutorials.

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
#23 - 2017-04-19 19:39:30 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:

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.

So for the lighter DED rated sites, you use fewer rats. For example, where a flat consolidation would have resulted in 3 rats, but it's a say 1/10 site, make it have 2 rats or even 1 rat.

Cade Windstalker wrote:

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 effectiveness of the rats need not scale at a 5:1 ratio for both EHP and DPS. For example, 10 rats with 100ehp and 50 dps need not scale to 1 rat with 1000 ehp and 500 dps. It could easily scale to 1000 ehp and 400 dps, or 800 ehp and 500 dps, or really any combination you can think of. "Tweakable".


Cade Windstalker wrote:

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.

And if you start with a 5:1 consolidation at 1/10 and go up to a 10:1 consolidation at 10/10 you end up with a scaling difficulty that matches where a player's fitting, skill, and experience should match up. That way the simple stuff is still simple for new players, and the hard stuff is harder for experienced players. The rewards obviously scale, the difficulty is intended to scale, so why wouldn't the curve remain?

Cade Windstalker wrote:

Old Pervert wrote:
EWAR bit.


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.


Yes, except you can't neut them, and there's zero point in ECMing, RSDing, or using tracking disruption on one of 10 rats on grid. You've neutralized 10% of the effective strength. Change that down to 3 rats on grid, and now that one ship you're affecting has just neutralized 33% of their effective strength. Amp it up even more, 1 officer rat, ECM the bugger out and laugh your way to the bank.

Since the Rook can have decent damage with a jam or two, imagine I took that out to fight a site that I know tends to have webbing frigates. The jam now prevents that frigate from webbing me, which in turn allows me to speed tank the battleship and active tank the cruiser.

You highlight the burner missions as being the use-case for EWAR and what I'm talking about is EXACTLY like the burner missions... no blob of rats, just 1-2 tough ones. At least we agree on that Big smile
Cade Windstalker
#24 - 2017-04-19 20:12:58 UTC
Old Pervert wrote:
So for the lighter DED rated sites, you use fewer rats. For example, where a flat consolidation would have resulted in 3 rats, but it's a say 1/10 site, make it have 2 rats or even 1 rat.


At which point you've either just significantly nerfed payout overall or made one stupidly valuable rat.

EHP, DPS, site payout over time, and site difficulty are all mutually linked values, you can't move one without affecting the others in some way.

Old Pervert wrote:
The effectiveness of the rats need not scale at a 5:1 ratio for both EHP and DPS. For example, 10 rats with 100ehp and 50 dps need not scale to 1 rat with 1000 ehp and 500 dps. It could easily scale to 1000 ehp and 400 dps, or 800 ehp and 500 dps, or really any combination you can think of. "Tweakable".


This is not what I was suggesting, I flat out said further down that *any* adjustment will have an impact on site difficulty.

Also you keep using DED scaling after I specifically said my main issue was with changing Missions.

Old Pervert wrote:
And if you start with a 5:1 consolidation at 1/10 and go up to a 10:1 consolidation at 10/10 you end up with a scaling difficulty that matches where a player's fitting, skill, and experience should match up. That way the simple stuff is still simple for new players, and the hard stuff is harder for experienced players. The rewards obviously scale, the difficulty is intended to scale, so why wouldn't the curve remain?


Except that these sites already have that sort of scaling through ship type and other factors, AND you're still going to be making the sites generally harder than they are now for newbies.

I literally just explained with math why the curve changes no matter what you do if you start fiddling consolidating EHP and DPS in *any* way.

On top of that if you consolidate rewards as well you mess with the reward curve as well, and if you end up buffing both rewards and decreasing difficulty for older players (the likely result of a consolidation of rat EHP) then you're just flat hurting newbies to the benefit of older players.

I'm really not sure how else to explain this to you without actually showing you the graphs I'm talking about. There is no way that consolidating rat EHP and DPS into fewer ships does not hurt newbies unless you nerf the DPS to a ridiculous extent to the point that any sort of experienced player will find the missions a cakewalk.

Old Pervert wrote:
Yes, except you can't neut them, and there's zero point in ECMing, RSDing, or using tracking disruption on one of 10 rats on grid. You've neutralized 10% of the effective strength. Change that down to 3 rats on grid, and now that one ship you're affecting has just neutralized 33% of their effective strength. Amp it up even more, 1 officer rat, ECM the bugger out and laugh your way to the bank.

Since the Rook can have decent damage with a jam or two, imagine I took that out to fight a site that I know tends to have webbing frigates. The jam now prevents that frigate from webbing me, which in turn allows me to speed tank the battleship and active tank the cruiser.

You highlight the burner missions as being the use-case for EWAR and what I'm talking about is EXACTLY like the burner missions... no blob of rats, just 1-2 tough ones. At least we agree on that Big smile


You've been able to neut NPCs for something like six or eight years now. The lower their capacitor pool gets the lower the chance that they fire their guns or use effects like self repair or EWar. The reason no one bothers with this is because very few ships can actually afford to fit neuts and the fitting space is better used on something else in basically every case. The one exception is Marauders, but they have basically every reason not to bother with a short-range attack like a neut and will generally kill even quite strong rats before the neut has a chance to significantly impact the fight.

You also seem to be assuming that these modules are going to be 100% effective when that's *never* the case, even against another player. Neuts and ECM don't completely shut down a target, never mind Tracking Disruption.

The only thing a Rook or similar EWar cruiser has decent damage in comparison to is a poorly fit T1 Cruiser. The Rook has 5 launchers and a nice 7.5% Kinetic damage bonus but only three Low Slots. In comparison the Caracal has the same 5 launchers, a 5% RoF bonus, and 4 Low Slots and costs something like 1/10th of the Rook. It's also faster and tanks *almost* as well as the Rook does if you fit it with a 5-slot Shield/prop tank and leave those 2 other mids for ECM. So, the Rook does almost as well as a T1 Cruiser but not quite in terms of DPS and only tanks about as well. The Cerberus in comparison just hands down wins in every way in terms of DPS and Tank.

The only reason EWar gets used on the Burners is because they have ridiculous stats and there is literally only one of them and people have determined that against *some* of them EWar lets you win the fight fairly easily. Not all EWar though, and not all of the rats.
Cade Windstalker
#25 - 2017-04-19 20:17:36 UTC
Daichi Yamato wrote:
Level 1 missions are tediously easy for an out of the box char. Remember they have a ton more sp than when they did when the missions were made. I'm not sure you appreciate how unengaging they are.

A cat with a days training will alpha most rats in l1 missions at lock range. Most mission time is spent flying between groups of rats and between gates. Not doing the more interesting shooting parts. The threat is so anaemic that you can passive shield tank missions without even fitting a tank mod.

We can afford to up the ante, and get players engaged and making meaningful decisions sooner. They are after all, post tutorials.


Yes, I'm aware, I'm not really talking about L1 Missions, I'm talking about L4s with very very basic fits.

L1s don't really need to be any harder either though, they don't exist to be difficult they exist to be the absolute bunny-slope of PvE ahead in difficulty only of belt ratting in a .8 system, and I think these days even that has a better chance of killing you.

Level 4s though are a lot more punishing for the average player, and have a pretty wide variety of difficulty for someone in a basic T1 BS with minimal skills. You're rarely going to be at risk of losing a ship, unless you do something like forget to kill scrams, but you will likely have to warp out and spend far longer on the missions than is needed.

Increasing the difficulty further for these newer players is going to see them cut off from what is basically the lowest tier of "good" income in the game, and the one that is easiest to access for someone still getting the hang of the game.

IMO that is in no way a good thing. There are other things that could be done to make the missions better and more engaging that do not involve adjusting the difficulty the way a consolidation of EHP would.
Old Pervert
Perkone
Caldari State
#26 - 2017-04-19 21:37:08 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:

At which point you've either just significantly nerfed payout overall or made one stupidly valuable rat.

You're right, you can absolutely move them in tandem. The question is, how is that a problem? 10 rats, 100 ehp, 50 dps, 5k bounty each. 2 rats, 500 ehp, 200 dps, 25k bounty each. The exact values are moot, they're tweakable. The concept is what matters, and I fail to see how the concept is not sound; worrying that the sites become too easy, too hard, too much like an isk printer, or too much like a waste of time is all in the exact numbers used, and that would be decided by CCP on-the-fly.

Cade Windstalker wrote:

This is not what I was suggesting, I flat out said further down that *any* adjustment will have an impact on site difficulty.

Also you keep using DED scaling after I specifically said my main issue was with changing Missions

Oh okay... if that's really a sticking point, equate DED 1-2 with Level 1 missions, DED3-4 with level 2, DED 5-6 with level 3, DED 7-8 with level 4, and DED 9-10 with level 5 missions. So hard, I know, the concept changes completely doesn't it?Roll

The impact on site difficulty is moot. You're making some things harder and some things easier. As in all things, balance will be achieved by carefully evaluating the specific numbers. In concept, it's not hard to balance. In practice it should not be hard to balance.


Cade Windstalker wrote:

Except that these sites already have that sort of scaling through ship type and other factors, AND you're still going to be making the sites generally harder than they are now for newbies.

No, it'll be making them different. Instead of blapping 5 rats you'll be fighting 1. Who's to say that the 1 rat will do enough dps to matter? Will that 1 rat have enough active tank to matter? Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on the difficulty of whatever it is you are running. Even if you're right and it is marginally harder, so what? They're all so pathetically easy that even a newbie can do without trying. Is a boring game a good way to get subs? Not really.

Cade Windstalker wrote:

I literally just explained with math why the curve changes no matter what you do if you start fiddling consolidating EHP and DPS in *any* way.


And as I have been saying, the exact numbers are moot. The math is moot. The curve is moot. The concept can be adapted to fit whatever vision CCP desires. If they want newbie content to remain easy, then they scale the rewards and the difficulty to remain the same. Heck, they can leave the newbie content exactly where it is. Level 1 missions = rat spam.

Oh... level 2, rat spam except for the last wave which is a much tougher dude. Interesting! I just fought a single ship one on one and it got my heart pounding!

Ooh level 3, second last wave had a tough dude, and on the last wave, two tough dudes!

Level 4, holy crap my raven just got RSDed. I can't sit out at 150km with cruise missiles anymore. Apparently now I have to play the game, not just sit back and F1 the rats. Hmm.

I ran out of quotes, otherwise I'd keep going. I will answer the criticism about the EWAR, by saying that you rebutted your own argument...again.

3 tough rats. Say you're used to ratting in an arty mach and you can blitz missions like a pro. Cool... except that frigate is now orbiting you at 2k and your arty can't hit it. It has you pointed, and you can't track it to save your life. If only you had less DPS and some utility! Time to call in some help. And NO, I'm not talking about rats pointing newbies in starter systems. I'm talking about content for more experienced pilots.

My point is yes the Rook's 550 dps (totally doable with drones out, with ECM modules included) is far lower than that of your mach above... but I can ignore the frigate where you can't. It's no longer about blitzing missions, it's about running them.

Ultimately, the argument here is that ECM becomes a utility that actually makes a difference. Neuting could make a difference. Imagine ratting in your 300 dps curse... except you can turn off their invulns and active tanks. You know what the impact of neuts is so I won't bother elaborating, beyond saying "player level impacts" to being neuted.
Daichi Yamato
Jabbersnarks and Wonderglass
#27 - 2017-04-19 22:21:43 UTC
So split levels up. Rather than scaling 1-5 they go 1-10. Weak level 4's become level 7's.

Missioning and how agents work could do with a complete overhaul anyways. I think they are going to as part of the big pve revamp. What they are bringing out now is experimentation with pve in general. Once they have a better idea of what the players respond best to, I'd hope they do a ground up revision of missions.

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
#28 - 2017-04-19 22:28:44 UTC
Daichi Yamato wrote:
So split levels up. Rather than scaling 1-5 they go 1-10. Weak level 4's become level 7's.

Missioning and how agents work could do with a complete overhaul anyways. I think they are going to as part of the big pve revamp. What they are bringing out now is experimentation with pve in general. Once they have a better idea of what the players respond best to, I'd hope they do a ground up revision of missions.


Well no... I was being facetious, equating DED ratings with mission levels for the sake of trivializing that point in his reply. That said, I do agree that one could certainly scale the mission on a scale out of 10 to allow for more granular increments in difficulty. If it was needed. I don't personally think it is, but maybe if my proposal were implemented it would be a wise idea. Not sure.
Cade Windstalker
#29 - 2017-04-19 23:03:00 UTC  |  Edited by: Cade Windstalker
You are, I feel, either not reading or not understanding what I'm saying.

First off, a point of clarification in your assumptions here. DED sites do not correspond in difficulty to mission sites in any meaingful way. As a rule a DED site with a comparable ship restriction will be *much* harder than a similarly restricted mission. A DED 1 is harder than most Level 2 missions, a DED 3 is harder than most Level 3s, and similarly a DED 5 which is the first to allow Battleships is harder than any Level 4. They also tend to throw significantly more ships at you at one time.

For comparison the DED 5 Angel Redlight District's second Room contains 8 Elite Battleships, 10-11 Elite BCs, 5 Elite Cruisers, 8 Sentries, and a smattering of smaller stuff. In comparisons the Bonus Room of the mission Angel's Extravaganza, one of the highest DPS single rooms of any Level 4 mission, throws you against 5 of these Battleships, a smattering of sentry towers, 4 regular BCs, and 3 Elite Cruisers. Less than half the total DPS of the *second* of three rooms in the Redlight District.

So yeah, DED sites in no way correspond to Missions.

quote wrote:
And as I have been saying, the exact numbers are moot. The math is moot. The curve is moot. The concept can be adapted to fit whatever vision CCP desires. If they want newbie content to remain easy, then they scale the rewards and the difficulty to remain the same. Heck, they can leave the newbie content exactly where it is.


It's not moot and you're not getting it...

Your basic idea is to consolidate multiple rats into single rats with more HP, and every example you have provided represents a significant consolidation, and your general desire seems to be for each rat to be very strong and a significant threat on its own.

At no point on *any* possible set of numbers is this not worse for new players than it is for veterans.

The numbers I've used are an example, nothing more, the general concept holds regardless of the numbers you use.

if you put more EHP and DPS in fewer rats you make the content harder for newbies.

If the DPS is lower than the total of the old individual rats then the newbie still has to burn through more of it to remove any of it, while the older player can simply fit less tank and more DPS and kill things faster.

If the EHP is lower than the total of the old individual rats then the older player can burn through the rats faster and thus mitigate DPS that way, thus fitting less tank and decreasing mission times.

If both are lower than the individual rats then you might *possibly* get it to the same level for newbies, but the older players have a much easier time and the harder fight you seem to want here disappears. Oh and the older players get a buff to rewards as well.

If you reduce the rewards on any of these to compensate for the buff to older player incomes you nerf the income of the newer players, and thus hurt them.

There is no way to consolidate rat EHP and not make missions harder for newer players or otherwise disrupt their balance, and the more you consolidate the rat EHP and shift things away from the current state the more the balance will be thrown out of whack. This can not be avoided by being clever with setting other numbers, the bigger one change the bigger the other offsetting changes have to be and the bigger the overall shift in gameplay.

Your comments here make me seriously question if you even accurately remember what running missions with a T2 fitted T1 BS is like. I recommend you take a few minutes on the Test Server and try it out until you manage to pull something like Worlds Collide or Angel's Extravaganza. MJDs have made it easier these days, but long range weapons like that have poor DPS and can't even break the tank on some rats with the more basic fits and low skills.

On top of all of this the assumption that "easy to say, easy to balance" is going to hold up is laughable. Creating a system that works well and provides good fights for older players without killing newer players outright is like the pipe-dream of Eve PvE. Always theoretically possible, but yet somehow no one ever has numbers showing that it actually is.

As for the EWar and neuting thing, CCP already touched on the whole "NPCs and player modules" thing over at Fanfest in the Phenominal PvE presentation and it's just not feasible at least in any literal sense. Running modules on rats would be far too expensive, as would running their fittings in any realistic way. The only reason they were able to put anything like that in on the Bloodraider Shipyard was because there's literally only one of those as opposed to the tens or hundreds of thousands of rats present in the game at any one time.

If you're in an Arty Mach and you're being orbited by a Frigate you put drones on him and call it a day. Considering this works even on a reasonably fitted player Frigate I see no reason why it wouldn't work on any version of vaguely balanced rat Frigate.

Lastly, to a large chunk of the playerbase Missions will *always* be about blitzing, and if you try to take that away from them they will scream bloody murder.
Daichi Yamato
Jabbersnarks and Wonderglass
#30 - 2017-04-20 00:28:02 UTC
Err cade, you are overestimating mission rats. By a lot.

A state Shakuro nagashin, the toughest mission npc i can think of, has less than 500dps tank on its toughest resist. This is the absolute beefiest a tank can get for a single ship in a mission, a rare mission at that. Non-faction missions you're talking about half that from a mordus mammoth. That's supposed to be a tanky bs in a mission. Created in a time when ships did less dps than now.

Used to run missions in a domi with t1 drones, no guns and before drone damage mods. Thats low skill as well. You were able to activate tank, get entire room aggro and then let your drones clear a room whilst you went afk. Since then dps in missions has not gotten any higher.

Yeah things could be tougher. And i doubt noobs will die in droves.

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

Cade Windstalker
#31 - 2017-04-20 02:14:30 UTC
Daichi Yamato wrote:
Err cade, you are overestimating mission rats. By a lot.

A state Shakuro nagashin, the toughest mission npc i can think of, has less than 500dps tank on its toughest resist. This is the absolute beefiest a tank can get for a single ship in a mission, a rare mission at that. Non-faction missions you're talking about half that from a mordus mammoth. That's supposed to be a tanky bs in a mission. Created in a time when ships did less dps than now.

Used to run missions in a domi with t1 drones, no guns and before drone damage mods. Thats low skill as well. You were able to activate tank, get entire room aggro and then let your drones clear a room whilst you went afk. Since then dps in missions has not gotten any higher.

Yeah things could be tougher. And i doubt noobs will die in droves.


I seem to have miss-stated my emphasis here, I'm not terribly concerned about how much these ships are going to tank, I'm concerned about how effective reducing DPS by burning down rats is and how much EHP they have per rat.

Without knowing when you used to run missions it's hard to evaluate your Domi experience, but I'd guess it was around or before 2011. They did actually make some changes to missions that made some of them harder around the end of 2011 or start of 2012, and they've made various tweaks to the balance of ships and modules as well as tweaking things like Drone Agro in the interum. These days running an AFK Domi isn't quite so easy.

You can still run a semi-afk mission domi, though it isn't quite as effective as it once was, and there are some things it's not particularly effective at doing, especially at low skills. It's also pretty easy to lose one running completely AFK since there are several missions that will flat out eat one if you AFK. That's something of the exception to the rule though, and obviously only applies to someone with Gallente ship skills.

For most mission fits though you still risk warping out, and tons of people get well into missions before they start looking at optimal ships or do anything other than fit something up on their own and warp into the pocket.
Daichi Yamato
Jabbersnarks and Wonderglass
#32 - 2017-04-20 10:39:11 UTC
2010-2011. The drone aggro changes have pretty much killed the afk domi, but there are few missions that can break its tank today. None if you pay a modicum of attention. Its just drone aggro that you have to manage.

Are you under the impression a t1 fit bs cant perma tank most level 4's? Cause they can. You know drakes, myrms, cyclones and prophecies can tank level 4's right? You're rarely going to suffer more than 400-500dps in a level 4 mission and even with a drakes wet tissue worth of dps you can still kill battleship rats. Things can get harder for noobs before it gets difficult. And when rats have larger ehp pools and stronger active tanks then dps tanking becomes less effective. What becomes more important is dps mitigation (read: not just about dps and tank).

I dont at all understand where your concern is coming from. 80% of players level up their raven for a few months and then quit the game. They are bored and completely unengaged by highsec pve.

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

Serendipity Lost
Repo Industries
#33 - 2017-04-20 11:59:27 UTC
Cade - much of your argument revolves around boxing new players out of content. I'm telling you that new players NOT being boxed out of content is the problem. If content doesn't scale steeply enough (current state of pve) then it is accessible to everyone almost immediately. That's not good. PVE goes from combat training that moves a player from noob to vet to isk farming and becomes all about isk/hour. Once it becomes isk/hour it turns into blitzing, skilling into a mach and maxing isk/hour.

The current path for the HS pve guy to get through L4 mission content is just too easy. L4 missions are just too easy. Players end up in a blinged out mach inside of a year and start complaining that mtu tractor beams aren't fast enough. A one year player should still be working to survive L4 missions, not figuring out how to cut 20 seconds off of his Angels Extravaganza average completion time. A lot of things have crept towards more (which is understood and a natural progression for games), but missions haven't changed.

Annoms were introduced because belt ratting wasn't bringing in isk fast enough. A good idea at a glance, but null anoms are all about isk/hour and how fast a player can solo them. SOV null anoms (the high end ones) should require some amount of team play to get through them and also include commitment and risk on the part of the folks running them. Multiple points, bubbles, webs, neuts akin to higher end sleeper sites.


HS - pve is just too easy and all content should not be playable by a newbro - specifically because he isn't good enough to do it yet and it should take a year at least to barely survive L4 missions.

NS - pve is both too easy and has no commitment/risk for the players running the sites. That also needs fixed in a big way. Am I talking about making it easier to gank a farmer in null? Heck yes. SOV null is about owning and policing your own personal corner of the sand box. Currently it's about renting from some dude with a big stick. I really believe putting risk back into pve will aid an reducing the farmer/renter aspect of SOV null.


Content needs to scale to give the newbro something to work toward (really work toward) and something to add interest and excitement for the seasoned vet.
Cade Windstalker
#34 - 2017-04-20 13:29:02 UTC
Daichi Yamato wrote:
2010-2011. The drone aggro changes have pretty much killed the afk domi, but there are few missions that can break its tank today. None if you pay a modicum of attention. Its just drone aggro that you have to manage.

Are you under the impression a t1 fit bs cant perma tank most level 4's? Cause they can. You know drakes, myrms, cyclones and prophecies can tank level 4's right? You're rarely going to suffer more than 400-500dps in a level 4 mission and even with a drakes wet tissue worth of dps you can still kill battleship rats. Things can get harder for noobs before it gets difficult. And when rats have larger ehp pools and stronger active tanks then dps tanking becomes less effective. What becomes more important is dps mitigation (read: not just about dps and tank).

I dont at all understand where your concern is coming from. 80% of players level up their raven for a few months and then quit the game. They are bored and completely unengaged by highsec pve.


This is incorrect, a 500 DPS tank will get you through the easier and significantly less rewarding half of Level 4 missions but quite a few deal 1k or more DPS easily, and IIRC the last room of Angel's Extraveganza runs almost 2k with everything on field, it's just mitigated somewhat by the ships needing to burn in for the first minute or so of the room.

The Domi has less of an issue because drones take no fitting space and use no cap.

My concern comes from spending a good several years helping out new players, including a fair bit of running missions with them or helping them with missions, as well as spending a fair amount of time in a T1 Battleship myself playing around with missions when I had little time for much else.

Yourself and several other participants in this thread seem to be *severely* under estimating how much DPS some missions put out, and how bundling EHP together would affect site times. I suggest you grab a T1 BS, preferably one other than a Dominix personally, and jump on Sisi and give Worlds Collide or AE a run and see how you do.

Believe me, I'm well aware of how boring missions can be, and I'm all for things to make them more interesting. I think the sort of setup from the Bloodraider Shipyards has a lot of promise. What I'm specifically against is consolidating EHP in lower level PvE content. I think it will only serve to hurt new players to no real benefit in fun to the older ones and will remove one of the few good things about Mission PvE right now, the power fantasy and the feeling of blowing through ship after ship with impunity.
Cade Windstalker
#35 - 2017-04-20 13:59:00 UTC
Serendipity Lost wrote:
Cade - much of your argument revolves around boxing new players out of content. I'm telling you that new players NOT being boxed out of content is the problem. If content doesn't scale steeply enough (current state of pve) then it is accessible to everyone almost immediately. That's not good. PVE goes from combat training that moves a player from noob to vet to isk farming and becomes all about isk/hour. Once it becomes isk/hour it turns into blitzing, skilling into a mach and maxing isk/hour.

The current path for the HS pve guy to get through L4 mission content is just too easy. L4 missions are just too easy. Players end up in a blinged out mach inside of a year and start complaining that mtu tractor beams aren't fast enough. A one year player should still be working to survive L4 missions, not figuring out how to cut 20 seconds off of his Angels Extravaganza average completion time. A lot of things have crept towards more (which is understood and a natural progression for games), but missions haven't changed.

Annoms were introduced because belt ratting wasn't bringing in isk fast enough. A good idea at a glance, but null anoms are all about isk/hour and how fast a player can solo them. SOV null anoms (the high end ones) should require some amount of team play to get through them and also include commitment and risk on the part of the folks running them. Multiple points, bubbles, webs, neuts akin to higher end sleeper sites.


HS - pve is just too easy and all content should not be playable by a newbro - specifically because he isn't good enough to do it yet and it should take a year at least to barely survive L4 missions.

NS - pve is both too easy and has no commitment/risk for the players running the sites. That also needs fixed in a big way. Am I talking about making it easier to gank a farmer in null? Heck yes. SOV null is about owning and policing your own personal corner of the sand box. Currently it's about renting from some dude with a big stick. I really believe putting risk back into pve will aid an reducing the farmer/renter aspect of SOV null.


Content needs to scale to give the newbro something to work toward (really work toward) and something to add interest and excitement for the seasoned vet.


I have to disagree with a lot of this.

Level 4 missions are supposed to be easy, they're meant to be the first stable and high-end income source for a newer player. They are no where near the pinnacle of High Sec PvE though. A new player who takes their mission Battleship into a DED 5/10, which is a High Sec site, is going to leave the site in their pod, pretty much no question. Similarly Incursions require both team-play and more strict ship fitting and skilling requirements than Level 4 missions.

I'm all for adding more and harder PvE to High Sec, and Low, and Null, but Level 4 missions are a good baseline and have been for years now. For longer than I've been in the game a player with some reasonably focused training has been able to run most Level 4 missions within 6 months of starting the game. Forcing them out of this does nothing more than extend the duration a player must train their skills before they can potentially earn enough money to PLEX their account and/or PvP regularly in something larger than a frigate on their own dime.

I just don't see the benefit in cutting off the first chance a newer player has at getting some decent income in the game by putting Level 4 missions behind some arbitrary gate of SP and fittings or anything like a "you should play for at least a year before...".

I'm also personally all for harder, more group focused, and generally more interesting Null content. I think we're far more likely to get something a tier above anomalies and/or belt ratting rather than something that forces these things to not be done in a Carrier, but personally I wouldn't be opposed to it.

I don't think you're going to see it get significantly riskier though, at least not without a consummate increase in the rewards provided, and it doesn't seem like that's what you want either.

If it becomes too easy to lose a PvE ship in Null, essentially if the equation becomes too attacker biased, then we'll see a return to the oh so fun and engaging days of people owning space and PvPing in Null and 'living' in High Sec because the ISK in Null wasn't worth the risks for most players.

We might see the meta-game of protecting assets in Null get more complicated. Stuff like Player Stargates and Sensor Array structures potentially replacing Local intel functionality offer some interesting possibilities there, but I don't think you'll see a major shift in favor of hunters and attackers in Null. I do want to stress here, I don't really have any strong feelings about it personally, I just don't see a good justification for it happening based on past game data and CCP's own comments.
Old Pervert
Perkone
Caldari State
#36 - 2017-04-20 15:04:47 UTC
Okay Cade, so then for the sake of progression what if:
- Mission "difficulty" (which we disagree about whether it would notably change) could be ignored by leaving the rats alone. Blobs away, no changes to their format at all.

- New sites are added with uber-rats in them, per my OP, so that new players stop getting bored in HS

- Null Sov anoms are replaced per the OP (since team-play is encouraged, and if you're in sov space you'd best be in an alliance) but with a greater scale of difficulty

- NPC null anoms can be left up to someone who actually lives in NPC null to comment about. Probably replaced with easier versions of Sov, since you don't really HAVE to be in an alliance out there



Your argument revolves around missions, and it revolves around exceeding the capabilities of a new player. You cite math, but honestly it just sounds like Chicken Little screaming that the sky is falling; I do not believe it would be any harder in practice.

You are very right that you can't clear the mobs as quickly which results in them having more DPS up-time on you. What the rest of us are saying is that this fact is moot. If you can tank it for a little while, you can tank it for a long while. You also have much more flexibility in terms of how you mitigate that damage. If you can't tank it, that's because you've gone and tried to min/max your clear times.... get more tank and less gank.
Serendipity Lost
Repo Industries
#37 - 2017-04-20 15:25:54 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:
Serendipity Lost wrote:
Cade - much of your argument revolves around boxing new players out of content. I'm telling you that new players NOT being boxed out of content is the problem. If content doesn't scale steeply enough (current state of pve) then it is accessible to everyone almost immediately. That's not good. PVE goes from combat training that moves a player from noob to vet to isk farming and becomes all about isk/hour. Once it becomes isk/hour it turns into blitzing, skilling into a mach and maxing isk/hour.

The current path for the HS pve guy to get through L4 mission content is just too easy. L4 missions are just too easy. Players end up in a blinged out mach inside of a year and start complaining that mtu tractor beams aren't fast enough. A one year player should still be working to survive L4 missions, not figuring out how to cut 20 seconds off of his Angels Extravaganza average completion time. A lot of things have crept towards more (which is understood and a natural progression for games), but missions haven't changed.

Annoms were introduced because belt ratting wasn't bringing in isk fast enough. A good idea at a glance, but null anoms are all about isk/hour and how fast a player can solo them. SOV null anoms (the high end ones) should require some amount of team play to get through them and also include commitment and risk on the part of the folks running them. Multiple points, bubbles, webs, neuts akin to higher end sleeper sites.


HS - pve is just too easy and all content should not be playable by a newbro - specifically because he isn't good enough to do it yet and it should take a year at least to barely survive L4 missions.

NS - pve is both too easy and has no commitment/risk for the players running the sites. That also needs fixed in a big way. Am I talking about making it easier to gank a farmer in null? Heck yes. SOV null is about owning and policing your own personal corner of the sand box. Currently it's about renting from some dude with a big stick. I really believe putting risk back into pve will aid an reducing the farmer/renter aspect of SOV null.


Content needs to scale to give the newbro something to work toward (really work toward) and something to add interest and excitement for the seasoned vet.


I have to disagree with a lot of this.

Level 4 missions are supposed to be easy, they're meant to be the first stable and high-end income source for a newer player. They are no where near the pinnacle of High Sec PvE though. A new player who takes their mission Battleship into a DED 5/10, which is a High Sec site, is going to leave the site in their pod, pretty much no question. Similarly Incursions require both team-play and more strict ship fitting and skilling requirements than Level 4 missions.

I'm all for adding more and harder PvE to High Sec, and Low, and Null, but Level 4 missions are a good baseline and have been for years now. For longer than I've been in the game a player with some reasonably focused training has been able to run most Level 4 missions within 6 months of starting the game. Forcing them out of this does nothing more than extend the duration a player must train their skills before they can potentially earn enough money to PLEX their account and/or PvP regularly in something larger than a frigate on their own dime.

I just don't see the benefit in cutting off the first chance a newer player has at getting some decent income in the game by putting Level 4 missions behind some arbitrary gate of SP and fittings or anything like a "you should play for at least a year before...".

I'm also personally all for harder, more group focused, and generally more interesting Null content. I think we're far more likely to get something a tier above anomalies and/or belt ratting rather than something that forces these things to not be done in a Carrier, but personally I wouldn't be opposed to it.

I don't think you're going to see it get significantly riskier though, at least not without a consummate increase in the rewards provided, and it doesn't seem like that's what you want either.

If it becomes too easy to lose a PvE ship in Null, essentially if the equation becomes too attacker biased, then we'll see a return to the oh so fun and engaging days of people owning space and PvPing in Null and 'living' in High Sec because the ISK in Null wasn't worth the risks for most players.

We might see the meta-game of protecting assets in Null get more complicated. Stuff like Player Stargates and Sensor Array structures potentially replacing Local intel functionality offer some interesting possibilities there, but I don't think you'll see a major shift in favor of hunters and attackers in Null. I do want to stress here, I don't really have any strong feelings about it personally, I just don't see a good justification for it happening based on past game data and CCP's own comments.



I just took a moment to re read all of Eve. I couldn't find it. Where specifically does it say level 4 missions are supposed to be easy? I can't find that anywhere official.

My long view of null is that it has to get worse before it gets better. As long as the renter mentality exists that part of space will remain dull and risk averse. To break the renter mentality CCP has to hurt the feelings of the few groups that do the renting. Carrier ratting right now is too lucrative for it's almost zero risk. THAT has to be the starting point to getting SOV null back on track.
Daichi Yamato
Jabbersnarks and Wonderglass
#38 - 2017-04-20 15:30:20 UTC  |  Edited by: Daichi Yamato
On the contrary, I think you are drastically over estimating mission dps. Whilst some missions have paper dps of around 1000, You will not actually experience that kind of dps unless you aggro the entire room in a harder mission and then sit and do nothing for ages whilst they slowly get into range. And the bonus extravaganza room is a BONUS room. Completely optional. Why should it be runnable by a low skill player?

I have recently run a few level 4's in a mega. It's not hard. Like i said, people do them in battle cruisers.

[edit- Just ran some level 4's on the test server in a Tempest (Worst mission runner i can think of save a scorp). Less than 400dps tank, meta 3 guns, 350dps @40km, T1 drones. Doubt it would do well in missions like assault, but i lost more than 3.0 standing trying to get harder missions. The hardest i got was vengeance (mediocre) which didnt even test the tank at all. Much time was spent getting into good range with guns. Killed **** quick enough to get an 8.7mil tick.

Definitely room to split level 4's into separate levels. And less rats would mean less faffing about getting into range]

Where we fundamentally disagree is that level 4's should be noob friendly. Missions are not beginner pve, they are pretty much the only pve in hi-sec that has a decent pay and can be run with less than ten players (incursions have a stupid difficulty jumps). Missions are THE main pve activity in hi-sec. And by the time most of us reach level 4's we know how to fit a ship, how to manage aggro and how to clear tackle. I'd expect anyone wanting to run level4's to be competent after running about 100 missions.

Might there be any chance the noobs you have in level4's with you are struggling because you've rushed them into it/held there hand too much? I just can't believe they are scarcely getting by. What fits are they using?

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
#39 - 2017-04-20 15:31:56 UTC
Serendipity Lost wrote:

My long view of null is that it has to get worse before it gets better. As long as the renter mentality exists that part of space will remain dull and risk averse. To break the renter mentality CCP has to hurt the feelings of the few groups that do the renting. Carrier ratting right now is too lucrative for it's almost zero risk. THAT has to be the starting point to getting SOV null back on track.


Carrier ratting is bad enough... but supercarrier ratting is worse... so much worse.

They clear an anom in but a few minutes. The amount of isk they generate in an hour is incredible. As soon as they land on a site they align, just like any other carriers, and they obviously keep eyes out to watch for neuts. They warp off at the first hint of trouble, having still cleared more in 20 minutes than I can in 2 hours.

I don't begrudge them the isk... but I do think the risk needs to be there.
Cade Windstalker
#40 - 2017-04-21 15:18:26 UTC
Old Pervert wrote:
Okay Cade, so then for the sake of progression what if:
- Mission "difficulty" (which we disagree about whether it would notably change) could be ignored by leaving the rats alone. Blobs away, no changes to their format at all.

- New sites are added with uber-rats in them, per my OP, so that new players stop getting bored in HS

- Null Sov anoms are replaced per the OP (since team-play is encouraged, and if you're in sov space you'd best be in an alliance) but with a greater scale of difficulty

- NPC null anoms can be left up to someone who actually lives in NPC null to comment about. Probably replaced with easier versions of Sov, since you don't really HAVE to be in an alliance out there


Sure, sounds great, as I've said about half a dozen times in this short thread alone I am all for more and harder PvE in the game, especially anything that encourages or even forces players to group up to complete it. I'd even say throw some of the AI from the Bloodraider Shipyards into the mix eventually, using EWar to counter other NPC EWar and Logi has fantastic potential.

The one thing I probably wouldn't do is make NPC Null any easier than regular Null. It's not now, I see no reason it should have to be in the future unless there are literally no sites available to a solo player anymore, but that has potential issues for all of Null and could be fixed with more granularity in difficulty, ect. Overall this is a minor quibble.

Old Pervert wrote:
Your argument revolves around missions, and it revolves around exceeding the capabilities of a new player. You cite math, but honestly it just sounds like Chicken Little screaming that the sky is falling; I do not believe it would be any harder in practice.

You are very right that you can't clear the mobs as quickly which results in them having more DPS up-time on you. What the rest of us are saying is that this fact is moot. If you can tank it for a little while, you can tank it for a long while. You also have much more flexibility in terms of how you mitigate that damage. If you can't tank it, that's because you've gone and tried to min/max your clear times.... get more tank and less gank.


Emphasis mine. This is not correct, especially for a newer player. I started out running missions and over the years I've come back to them repeatedly as the time I've had available for Eve has waxed and waned. Something like half the missions I run are "tanked" by removing on-field DPS if I'm in a T1 Battleship. That's with basically maxed out tank and DPS skills on whatever ship I'm flying. For a newer player it's worse, for someone flying a Marauder or Pirate BS with about 1.5b in fittings it's much better.

The two primary issues are the lower tank on most T1 Battleships, and the amount of cap required to sustain the tank. As I said earlier Faction and Deadspace tank mods are *much* more cap efficient, and an older player will have much better cap skills. What a player in a T1 BS needs to do is drop the incoming DPS not just below what their tank can handle but what their capacitor can handle. This is one of the primary reasons the Drone Domi is a bit of a snowflake, because it's incredibly cap light outside of its tank and therefore does much better for a player with low cap skills and a cheap fit. For reference a Dominix has the same max cap and a better recharge than the Megathron, and a better max cap and/or Recharge rate than any of the Caldari or Minmatar Battleships.

In recent years the MJD has improved things a fair bit for newbies, but it's still a form of delayed tanking, and higher HP ships will have more time to burn into range since long-range guns have substantially lower DPS and can't even break the active tank on some current mission rats if used by a low enough SP pilot. This is one of the primary reasons the Drake has fallen out of favor since the Drake and HML nerfs years ago, the ship can still tank many L4 missions but it doesn't put out enough DPS to even complete some Level 4 missions, let alone do them in a time efficient manner, you're better off sticking to L3s and doing them quickly than upgrading.

I understand the skepticism here, L4s look ridiculously easy and quick to an experienced pilot with high SP and a good ship fit, but a new player can and will struggle with them with low SP and a T2 fitted BS. There are even already missions that use this sort of balance scheme and they tend to be among the hardest missions available, especially for a newer player, for exactly the reasons I've gone over here.
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