Missions & Complexes

Discussions shouldn't be private. Obviously certain individuals are experienced in the topic, and these forums are terrible for productive debate, but the key points need to be acknowledged to be recieved by CCP, less they just keep getting repeated in every vaguely related thread.

Damn this wasn't the evening to start drinking and then have this thread appear.
Some other points from my experience & observations:

• Min-maxing will happen. AFAIK it is accepted for missions, nullsec player vs rats isk sources, and sleepers. And those things can be run be each specific character near 100% of the time for their max rate, while incursions do move, have wait-lists and most importantly Contests.
• Running the min-maxed channel of players & fits is effort. Most people happily give some of their reward back to those running these, of course they are also benefitting from the higher isk rate of their existance, but paying FCs, booster alts and ore droppers is a thing.
• Disconnects happen, suicide ganks happen in and between incursions, hauling ships about highsec is more effort than earning isk in null & w-space.

Solo ratting tengus/machs/(super)cap ships in null are terrible gameplay. Group sleepers farming is mechanical but at least a fleet op and with the unstoppable risk of sieged/triaged blinged-out cap ships being caught out. Incursions were the best PvE content I've ever experienced in Eve.

Running a 20man fleet is harder to create & sustain than 2x 10man fleets. Reward for all should reflect this. Reward balancing still needs sorting for all site types as well as each site per size grouping. No more lol scouts, and NCOs being mini-assaults. As said, bad sites will pile up while better ones exist to be run.

What happened to the idea of Scout sites spawn first, then VGs, then Assaults, then finally the Mom? Giving all sized ships & fleets an optimal time to attend the incursion, keeping more people moving aboud the different ones in highsec, and reducing the total access to VGs/the best blitzable site.

Why the hell is there only 1 lowsec incursion? Lowsec's terrible enough as is for doing anything but passing through or being a risk-averse pirate. If there were 3+ lowsec incursions at a time, a channel could at least run without 1 spy letting some gankers know the 1 place to go each time to ruin their day. Nullsec incursions could be run by whoever lives near, highsec ones are chased about by all, but lowsec is just the worst place to put only 1 bullseye for PvEers to sit in. I understand people would take cheap PvP fleets to do them, e.g. armour hacs, but still, just 1 incursion at a time seems blind to the realities of Eve.

Thanks! Feel free to post again ;)

For the most part, this is working I feel. Just tweak some sites/rewards and revamp the noob Scout sites

If I didn't say it already, also add my thanks to reading & responding promptly. Especially with things like post being repeatedly edited & rushed.

Can you give a shortlist of points accepted/high on the consideration by CCP? Detailed things, like the NPC RR in a given site, or range of things spawning, or hull classes/fitting choices that are being promoted/restricted?
E.g. do you design sites expecting people to learn to go with AB + medium weapons, or almost-stationary BSs, or try to permit both fleets?
Some admitance that Scout sites (apparently, never had the incentive to try one) don't jive with the general level of difficulty & reward of incursion content.

Lyron-Baktos, re: site size progression being directed, my understand of the idea is that it's only per each incursion, and there'd still be multiple incursions up, so those that can/want only to do specific site classes just move to the next incursion at different times to others. They're out of phase with each other but working as a whole.

My personal feedback on this specific concept would be: incursion current level of similarity with pvp is more than enough (maybe add ship that have to be scrambled) if someone wanted to do pvp he would go to null sec.

I think it's much more important to evolve the storyline aspect and the progression aspect, like titles or clothes or other barely useful stuff like that.

I know this idea will seem awful to most people (thinking about tf2 or wow hats/pets) but it's the easiest and surest way to enhance pve content without screwing over the market and pvp.

Also i think in eve there's a chance it would not be too bad: going around with the title "Bane of Sansha" would be a gank magnet .

Just an idea though.

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Implenting the current incursion changes wassent a panic desision then ? since you are now considering changing the 10% payment back. little wierd you wanna tweek incursions again on such a short notice.

No changes had been made on the VG sites while people where testing them on SiSi and those same sites are live now. seems like you are using the live servers as the testing ground now feels like i have been wasting my time on the sisi server.

Sad thing is that the most important thing these changes had really effect on is the shrinking of the incursion community since a knee jerk panic decision was made. Now you need to ''iterate'' them again to stall a shrinking community.

High risk content and a PvP like style gameplay will only come from fully opening up Incursions to PvP. It's stating the obvious, but it needs to be said, as your current High Sec Incursions completely fails in this regard.

Storyline would be great, but what we have is PvE Raiders farming for shinny loot, and little else. There needs to be a real chance of an Incursion winning and that having real consequences on everyone. Players ought to be able to fight on the side of the Sansha.

Short term you should remove Incursions from High Sec or nerf its income even further. Long term, you really need to go back to the drawing board. Give us dynamic story/lore driven content intertwined with player conflict that works with the Sandbox nature of EVE, not against the Sandbox and player conflict driven nature of EVE.

I'd also recommend contacting Electric Shoe ( https://gate.eveonline.com/Profile/Electric%20Shoe ). He was our de-facto logistics coordinator, theorycrafter, and prime FC for the last few months when we still did lowsec/nullsec incursions. We prepared for the changes, anticipated it, swapped for shield fleet, gathered our wits for patch day, and a few days later we were all done with them. Vanguards took as much time to complete as assaults, so we tried assaults, which were okay-ish... until a system was poisoned with Nation Consolidation Networks, those sites took nearly an hour each on their own, even with a specialized fleet. All that time for 40 mil ISK/hr (on average, accounting formup times and downtime between sites from people dropping, etc, vs 100-110 mil ISK/hr pre patch, or even a consistent 60 mil ISK/hr ratting in forsaken hubs, without any faction spawns taken into account) PLUS placing your (very expensive and specialized) ship at high risk PLUS the backbreaking logistics required the move the ships just made it terrible to do.

But yeah, Electric Shoe was the one organizing us in those last days. We thought we'd be able to continue post-patch, but it proved to be otherwise. Lowered income, slower speeds, the higher man-power requirement, and the more expensive ships required all made it very difficult to justify. I'm sure he appreciates the break from his role, bit I for one miss the community running them made within the CFC, it was pleasant to be able to chat with people while making ISK for once.

Side note: An incursion spawned in CFC space last week and we got a broadcast on out jabber about it asking the incursion group to run it. I got a broadcast a little later saying how worthless we all are because nobody was running it. We won't even run them in own own space, whereas before we'd carrier jump across the galaxy to do a lowsec one. That's a drastic change in interest level.

Also, incursions are comparable to wormholes without the commitment of going into a wormhole, I'm not sure if that's good or bad. Pre-patch wormhole dwellers made more, but it was all indirect through the sale of loot, which made incursioning look more profitable.

But yeah, I'd like to see incursions respawn as something that's once again for fun and profit. (Unlike ratting in anoms which is strictly for profit... and boring.)

Couldn't agree more. Not enough risk in the Incursions atm. You've probably already figure this out but most of the "Incursion community" are only concerned with farming tons of isk for no risk. You're going to have to burn them down and start over with a new community.

If you really want to add pvp aspects to Incursions then make a mechanic such that players can take control of rats like we can take control of pos guns. Only so much you can do with a script before it becomes known and farmable and no risk.