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FW: rebalancing NPCs and you

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Hiro Protagonisti
Brightstar Manufacturing
#421 - 2012-09-04 17:09:58 UTC
The FW system lacks immersion.

Timers:
Running down timers feels artificial and takes me out of the eve universe.
If you made taking over a complex like taking an Ihub it think that's fun way at least for me to gain Points if you have to hit a certain level of concerted damage you will be armed and able to fight also it will be very difficult to do AFK when I have fought and defeated something it gives a great sense of victory.
Potential Abuse Large gangs of ships could take down complexes quickly making complexes maintain captured status would help limit farming.

Arm The Stations:
These complexes are in Lo-sec a very dangerous place from a story point of view any complex manager with half a brain will be looking to arm his station with something look at any war and you will find all kinds of field modifications arm these stations guys it just feels right that they can fight back and story wise if i were running one of these spots i wouldn't trust some hot shot pilot to protect me instead of running off after some tempting target.

Loyalty Point Awards:
Static LP awards encourage farming and i think should be changed to better reflect the nature of warfare I think if it were based on the challenge encountered for instance say i take a complex in a condor and i was able to stay out of the range of the guns and took no damage then its not much of a challenge and a small amount of LP should be awarded however if I was in said same condor and was damaged into structure by a defending player before defeating him and the Plex then I should be given the equivalent of a combat citation and a subsequently larger LP award . The same applies for defensive plexing.

Benefits:
When you frequent a place you get to know the people that live and work there to represent this if you consistently defend or even capture a location you should get bonuses not based on LP spent to bump an artificial tier but based on the number of times you saved their butts there should be npcs that send a message for help to their favorite capsuleers when they are being attacked thats how direct messages should be sent maybe only while your within a region after all recapturing and freeing a friend will make for good stories. and with that level of gratitude maybe when you are in a favored system you would get bonus to sensors or perhaps a timely ecm jam of an enemy.

The Payoff:
This is how to build immersion for those playing the game without making it too slow and boring for the non Rp-ers it makes the adrenaline rush of combat primary and then gives the reinforcing payoff of reward plus recognition based on the quality of work not just allowing someone to do boring iterations also this allows you to do story-line changes easily for instance an often fought over Major complex lets say Deep Space 69 has a surprise weapons upgrade because the commander was frustrated with the local pilots not doing their best to defend the complex thus making it more challenging.

Mechanics are fine but story will help smooth over many of the rough spots.

Recoil IV
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#422 - 2012-09-04 17:17:53 UTC
CCP Ytterbium wrote:

  • Think a FW NPC is plain broken, crap or annoying? Post its exact name here, and explain why and what. Again, please remember, this discussion is about FW NPCs, not mission / deadspace / Incursion / Sleepers or whatever (we know there are a lot of them to fix in other features as well, but let's not get lost here shall we?).
    • .



    i wish missions were more challanging a more rewarding.why not take a look at those while you still in this area?
    Cearain
    Plus 10 NV
    #423 - 2012-09-04 21:15:00 UTC
    Lili Lu wrote:
    Cearain wrote:
    Syzygium wrote:
    I do get it. It is just my opinion, that there are quite enough chances to avoid being caught in case someone don't want to fight. The plex being 70k off the Accgate just shifts the balance way too much in favor of the one being inside because he needs zero attention and can still evade all and every combat.

    Since I am a fan of good balance, I like the proposed change. The one wanting to make the catch needs to be quick, the one wanting to escape needs to be careful. Good thing.


    Did I mention that I run plexes when there are allot of wts in system? Because I plex hopeing for pvp your comment about looking at local misses the point entirely. I want pvp I don't want plexing turned into another blob mechanic where the enemy lands right on top of you.

    As far as your comment about being to lazy to use the dscan. I do use the dscan. But I don't need to constantly spam it the way it is set up now. Moving the button closer to the warp in just means I have to constantly mash the dscan like a korean kid on a ninetendo. I am not interested in that. That is the point.

    You don't have 10 seconds from the time you see someone laning on grid. Sorry.

    Look plexing is currently a good way for small scale pvp. This moving the button closer to warp in just tends to decrease that. Now people in t1 insured ships looking for pvp will just have more of them lost to tech 2 ships because they weren't spamming the dscan like someone with a hand tremor.

    This change demonstrates that CCP seems unable to understand there can be more to pvp in eve than pirates/blobs looking to gank carebears.

    There are other ways to promote pvp in plexes that promotes quality fights. Those methods would include a timer countback if you warp out after an enemy or neutral lands on grid and some way militias could know where plexes are being attacked. But ccp decided to leave that out.

    Instead they are just making this another mechanic where helpless carebear trys to run from blobs and blobs try to catch carebears. You know like everywhere else in eve.

    70+ km as it is now may be too much distance, but on the flip side Cerain is right that 10km would be ridiculous. And yes dscan mashing is one of the most ******** requirements in the game atm. One of the reasons I won't bother with wormholes even though on the whole they are attractive.

    So there has to be some distance between 70 and 10 that would present some danger for inattention while at the same time not make the person in the plex instant gank meat for the attacker(s). Oh look, 40km, a midpoint between those two values. So If one wants one could mash the dscan or one could just pay attention and be quick on the fight or flight response. And on the flip side the attacker needs some fast tackle to enter, some of which he might lose in order to get that tackle. Seems like a decent solution.

    40km Question



    If you do allot of plexes you will find that even if you pick busy systems with allot of wartargets you will only get someone to fight enter every 40 minutes or so of plexing.

    I tend to hit the dscsan every 30 seconds or so, I mean I still want to see if there is an ecm ship on scan etc, and if I see someone that can come in the plex, I will hit it more intently at shorter ranges.

    So doing plexes right now requires a reasonable amount of dscanning. I don't think it should require even more. That will just make what is often a boring activity boring and annoying.

    Make faction war occupancy pvp instead of pve https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=53815&#post53815
    Kuehnelt
    Devoid Privateering
    #424 - 2012-09-04 22:30:20 UTC
    Cearain wrote:
    So doing plexes right now requires a reasonable amount of dscanning. I don't think it should require even more. That will just make what is often a boring activity boring and annoying.


    Another thing that happens is that you scan someone at the gate and don't know if it's friendly or not. Currently you can wait and see, and not to have run away too early from a hopeless fight with a Dramiel or something. I expect in winter to see a lot more chatter in Militia like "is the ship named 'Floris' in Sahtogas friendly?", and more complaints about blue intel: "don't ask if my Redeemer is friendly, ffs"

    If you really want to promote ambushes, an acceleration gate inside the plex that leads back to the acceleration gate outside it, that would see some use.
    Cearain
    Plus 10 NV
    #425 - 2012-09-04 22:49:47 UTC
    Kuehnelt wrote:
    Cearain wrote:
    So doing plexes right now requires a reasonable amount of dscanning. I don't think it should require even more. That will just make what is often a boring activity boring and annoying.


    Another thing that happens is that you scan someone at the gate and don't know if it's friendly or not. Currently you can wait and see, and not to have run away too early from a hopeless fight with a Dramiel or something. I expect in winter to see a lot more chatter in Militia like "is the ship named 'Floris' in Sahtogas friendly?", and more complaints about blue intel: "don't ask if my Redeemer is friendly, ffs"

    If you really want to promote ambushes, an acceleration gate inside the plex that leads back to the acceleration gate outside it, that would see some use.



    Excellent point. Often I have figured I would get a fight only to find the guy entering is friendly. Now I will have to be aligning much more often possibly outside the range of the button and hoping the lag gods favor me.

    Why can't ccp just do what the people who plex want them to do instead of screwing everything up in random ways?

    The whole being on grid stops the timer sounds like they are actually legitimizing what used to be considered an exploit. Or will they make sure you can't stop the timer by cloaking?

    Make faction war occupancy pvp instead of pve https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=53815&#post53815
    Garviel Tarrant
    Beyond Divinity Inc
    Shadow Cartel
    #426 - 2012-09-05 09:11:55 UTC
    Squatdog wrote:
    I've been known for running the odd plex or two in Faction Warfare, so here are my recommendations:

    Quote:
    * Capture beacon location: first, we want to move the capture beacon closer to the room entrance (0-10km instead of 60-70km) to promote fights next to the acceleration gate exit point and being able to intercept incoming hostiles more easily.


    TERRIBLE idea.

    The last thing players want is to have their ranged ship dumped at scram range to the button and it doesn't give plex-runners enough time to react to inbound hostiles.

    Moving the warp-in 10km-20km closer would help, though.

    You know you can use a thing called Dscan right? Its not hard to keep up a close range, with the time it takes to land on the plex and get in you would be safe keeping up a 20mill scan every 15 seconds or even more... HTFU


    Quote:
    * Unify capture range: having 10, 20 and 30km range depending on the complex size is confusing and not needed anymore if we move the beacon closer to the room entrance. Thus we would like to have a capture range of 30km for all sized sites, so it's easier to remember for everyone.


    Pointless, really.

    The difference in capture range reflects the difference in engagement range and mobility of the ship classes.

    Not really..

    Quote:
    * Increase contested range: at the moment an hostile pilot will only contest a capture timer if he is within capture range (whose reach varies depending on the point above). We want to move the contested area to the whole complex range, which would mean as long as hostile pilot is within your room the capture timer would be paused.


    TERRIBLE idea.

    This would invariably lead to defensive plexes being perma-trolled by MWD Condor alts orbiting at 150km.

    This wont be all that common, people generally don't do that many things that don't get them isk or kills. It will happen, but it won't be a huge problem..

    Quote:
    * Complex size and name changes: current complex sizes are confusing as some major sites have no acceleration gates, while others do. Plan is to revamp sites to 4 sizes: rookie (only tech 1 frigates allowed, no navy, pirate or tech 2 variant), small (all small ships, including navy, pirate and tech 2 variants - essentially all frigates and destroyers), medium (all cruisers, including navy, pirate and tech 2 variants - battlecruiser variants are not allowed) and large (unrestricted access).


    TERRIBLE idea.

    'Rookie' plexes would force people to ship down to T1 frigs they might not even own, instead of the faction frigs and destroyers that are typically part of a small gang.

    So its a bad idea because it would force people to buy a 12 million isk ship? Ohh dear.. Stop being bad.

    'Medium' plexes would be a a magnet for Logi/Falcon faggotry, while (farcially) not allowing the BCs required to counter them.

    No. Just no.

    BYDI recruitment closed-ish

    Squatdog
    State Protectorate
    Caldari State
    #427 - 2012-09-05 11:41:02 UTC  |  Edited by: Squatdog
    Garviel Tarrant wrote:


    The last thing players want is to have their ranged ship dumped at scram range to the button and it doesn't give plex-runners enough time to react to inbound hostiles. Moving the warp-in 10km-20km closer would help, though.

    You know you can use a thing called Dscan right? Its not hard to keep up a close range, with the time it takes to land on the plex and get in you would be safe keeping up a 20mill scan every 15 seconds or even more... HTFU

    Pointless, really.The difference in capture range reflects the difference in engagement range and mobility of the ship classes.

    Not really..


    This would invariably lead to defensive plexes being perma-trolled by MWD Condor alts orbiting at 150km.

    This wont be all that common, people generally don't do that many things that don't get them isk or kills. It will happen, but it won't be a huge problem..

    'Rookie' plexes would force people to ship down to T1 frigs they might not even own, instead of the faction frigs and destroyers that are typically part of a small gang.

    So its a bad idea because it would force people to buy a 12 million isk ship? Ohh dear.. Stop being bad.

    .


    You aren't even in Faction Warfare. Take your trolling elsewhere.


    This is my favourite part:

    "people generally don't do that many things that don't get them isk or kills."

    With Faction Warfare defensive plexing, YES THEY DO.
    Garviel Tarrant
    Beyond Divinity Inc
    Shadow Cartel
    #428 - 2012-09-05 12:01:48 UTC
    Squatdog wrote:
    Garviel Tarrant wrote:


    The last thing players want is to have their ranged ship dumped at scram range to the button and it doesn't give plex-runners enough time to react to inbound hostiles. Moving the warp-in 10km-20km closer would help, though.

    You know you can use a thing called Dscan right? Its not hard to keep up a close range, with the time it takes to land on the plex and get in you would be safe keeping up a 20mill scan every 15 seconds or even more... HTFU

    Pointless, really.The difference in capture range reflects the difference in engagement range and mobility of the ship classes.

    Not really..


    This would invariably lead to defensive plexes being perma-trolled by MWD Condor alts orbiting at 150km.

    This wont be all that common, people generally don't do that many things that don't get them isk or kills. It will happen, but it won't be a huge problem..

    'Rookie' plexes would force people to ship down to T1 frigs they might not even own, instead of the faction frigs and destroyers that are typically part of a small gang.

    So its a bad idea because it would force people to buy a 12 million isk ship? Ohh dear.. Stop being bad.

    .


    You aren't even in Faction Warfare. Take your trolling elsewhere.


    This is my favourite part:

    "people generally don't do that many things that don't get them isk or kills."

    With Faction Warfare defensive plexing, YES THEY DO.


    I do actually agree with you that you shouldn't be able to contest a plex with derping around in a 5k m/s dramiel.

    And while i may not be in FW i do spend most of my time in eve in plexes non the less ^^

    BYDI recruitment closed-ish

    chatgris
    Quantum Cats Syndicate
    Of Essence
    #429 - 2012-09-06 03:57:47 UTC
    Squatdog wrote:
    This is my favourite part:

    "people generally don't do that many things that don't get them isk or kills."

    With Faction Warfare defensive plexing, YES THEY DO.


    When I defensive plex I do it on an alt while playing League of Legends.
    Garr Earthbender
    Imperial Shipment
    Amarr Empire
    #430 - 2012-09-06 04:27:04 UTC
    chatgris wrote:
    Squatdog wrote:
    This is my favourite part:

    "people generally don't do that many things that don't get them isk or kills."

    With Faction Warfare defensive plexing, YES THEY DO.


    When I defensive plex I do it on an alt while playing League of Legends.


    Wait, don't you play EVE in general while playing LoL? I kid ,I kid, but I had to go there. Sorry Chat. P

    -Scissors is overpowered, rock is fine. -Paper
    Kalicor Lightwind
    Garoun Investment Bank
    Gallente Federation
    #431 - 2012-09-08 21:32:54 UTC
    To encourage working in a group, the payout should work like incursions in that other militias don't reduce your payout (unless you have far more than should be required).

    Real life equivalence would be that soldiers don't suddenly get less pay because they have fellow soldiers in their proximity...
    Kesthely
    State War Academy
    Caldari State
    #432 - 2012-09-11 05:36:47 UTC
    The biggest problem that i have myself is that its to predictable. You know what kind of npc´s your going to face in a plex, where the´ll aproximatly start and how the´ll behave. Due to this an experianced person has NO troubles whatsoever with npc´s, be it for pvp, or running the plexes. The solution to that is verry easy. Don´t make it so static

    Make different plexes and randomize them so we don´t actually know what to expect. Randomize the button distance, randomize how the button is taken (only orbiting is silly mechanic anyway) eg button is taken after a certain amount of waves is defeated, once something inside the plex is picked up and brought to the plex or the standard orbiting one.

    PvP is about different ships, different fittings and different skill levels. This is not an FPS where the one with the best reflexes and map knowledge wins, nor an rts with the one that knows best how to counter something and has the best micromanagement wins. Mix it up, sometimes have the same dumb npcs that we have now in there, other times have good sleeper ai ones in it

    Make it so that those going into the plex for pvp don't know what to expect, and those running plexes don't know either. In pvp there is no one fit does all, so make it that in the plexes there is no one fit does all either.

    Here are a few suggestions that i would love for every faction to have:

    If more then one person joins a plex scale the plex appropiatly
    If one (or more person) runs multiple plexes in one system, start responding to it with more intelligent and harder ai, so farmers are getting a bigger challange and tripple stabbed ab buffer fits eventually won't be able to run the sites anymore.
    Allow all the different ewars for all the militia's
    Introduce a lot more capacitor warfare

    Also it would be nice if you allow defensive plexers to do objectives to set the plex to there likeing, eg have "empty" militia sentry towers in a plex wich you can load up with special modules so you can convert it to gun batteries, missile batteries or various forms of ewar - capwar batteries. This can even be linked with skills that allow you to shoot pos guns where you can control an amount of sentry turrets equal to the normally allowed pos modules.
    Garr Earthbender
    Imperial Shipment
    Amarr Empire
    #433 - 2012-09-11 15:09:43 UTC
    https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1907821#post1907821

    CCP Fozzie wrote:
    Garr Earthbender wrote:
    With cruisers not sucking any more, logi cruisers and the like, is it possible that the new FW complex layout (rookie, minor, medium, large) that the idea to have a medium hold all T2 cruisers and below had this rebalance in mind?


    Yup


    Ship rebalancing dev blog + plex reassignment gave me a slight *ding* moment. Well, more like a 3 watt bulb getting a power surge to 5 watt. Seems I was right on track.

    -Scissors is overpowered, rock is fine. -Paper
    Veshta Yoshida
    PIE Inc.
    Khimi Harar
    #434 - 2012-09-11 16:45:58 UTC
    Garr Earthbender wrote:
    https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1907821#post1907821

    CCP Fozzie wrote:
    Garr Earthbender wrote:
    With cruisers not sucking any more, logi cruisers and the like, is it possible that the new FW complex layout (rookie, minor, medium, large) that the idea to have a medium hold all T2 cruisers and below had this rebalance in mind?


    Yup


    Ship rebalancing dev blog + plex reassignment gave me a slight *ding* moment. Well, more like a 3 watt bulb getting a power surge to 5 watt. Seems I was right on track.

    And when T2 cruisers are revised to match some of the changes made to T1 .. then what? Lol
    Garr Earthbender
    Imperial Shipment
    Amarr Empire
    #435 - 2012-09-11 18:03:30 UTC
    Then in a year, that comment will be invalid!

    -Scissors is overpowered, rock is fine. -Paper
    Sorph
    3rd Millennium Group
    #436 - 2012-09-11 23:23:16 UTC
    The whole concept of contested systems only makes sense if it were being fought with freelance mercenaries. If there were enough navy to hold these systems, hard boundaries would quickly be established and held. When you want more systems than your navy can defend, this is when you send out freelancers and hope for the best, and see boundaries constantly shifting. In other words, there should be no navy NPCs in contested space.

    That is from a realism perspective. From a gaming perspective, NPCs simply ruin PVP. Either it is PVP or it is PVE and as we have witnessed, when you try to mix them it ends up much more one than the other. The only way to balance it would be to have donation matching, i.e. if one player ship is donated to the battle, one NPC ship is donated to match. This of course is just silly.
    Ranger 1
    Ranger Corp
    Vae. Victis.
    #437 - 2012-09-12 17:25:56 UTC  |  Edited by: Ranger 1
    Without doing more than skim the rest of the thread (sorry) a couple of points:

    1: Plex's should never be able to be done solo. Instead of removing NPC EW effects, they should have been balanced to be equally effective for all races. There is far too much solo farming going on currently.

    2: Missions should never be able to be solo'd by a frigate (not even a stealth bomber) save for possibly level 1 missions. It is far too easy to evade gate camps in a single frig and does nothing but promote solo farming of the system. Larger ships needing to travel behind enemy lines would change the dynamic (and level of cooperation necessary) by quite a bit.

    3: Currently players find themselves in positions where they are threatened or war dec'd for taking enemy systems... by their own fellow militia members... because leaving them "vulnerable" makes farming easier. This situation absolutely must change, even if it involves making NPC kills pay zero loyalty points and upping the rewards for killing opposing militia members. If you want to limit people abusing this, place a limit of one LP payout per day for killing a particular character. You could also consider LP payouts not for taking plexes, but for taking systems.

    View the latest EVE Online developments and other game related news and gameplay by visiting Ranger 1 Presents: Virtual Realms.
    Rengerel en Distel
    #438 - 2012-09-12 20:01:59 UTC
    Ranger 1 wrote:
    Without doing more than skim the rest of the thread (sorry) a couple of points:

    1: Plex's should never be able to be done solo. Instead of removing NPC EW effects, they should have been balanced to be equally effective for all races. There is far too much solo farming going on currently.

    2: Missions should never be able to be solo'd by a frigate (not even a stealth bomber) save for possibly level 1 missions. It is far too easy to evade gate camps in a single frig and does nothing but promote solo farming of the system. Larger ships needing to travel behind enemy lines would change the dynamic (and level of cooperation necessary) by quite a bit.

    3: Currently players find themselves in positions where they are threatened or war dec'd for taking enemy systems... by their own fellow militia members... because leaving them "vulnerable" makes farming easier. This situation absolutely must change, even if it involves making NPC kills pay zero loyalty points and upping the rewards for killing opposing militia members. If you want to limit people abusing this, place a limit of one LP payout per day for killing a particular character. You could also consider LP payouts not for taking plexes, but for taking systems.


    1) if you increase the rewards based on more players in the plex, you just get more farmers grouped up in the plex. if you continue to split the reward based on the number in the plex, you'll get more solo farmers. plexes are farms, there's really no way of getting around that with the mechanics.

    2) missions shouldn't give lp, and then no one will care if you can solo them in bombers.

    3) this is where reading the threads would have helped, since that mechanic is going away. you won't get lp from vulnerable systems. in the new mechanics, you'll actually want to capture and hold all the systems.

    With the increase in shiptoasting, the Report timer needs to be shortened.
    Valkyriy
    Science and Trade Institute
    Caldari State
    #439 - 2012-09-13 11:51:20 UTC
    Gate camping /// ganking npc. that throw up bubbles, webs and scrams.
    Also afk miners, stealth bombers should also spawn NPCs that hunt them down..


    Will bring balance to 23/7 gate campers or afk smart bombers.


    EVERY region should have at-least one if not a few NPC stations to increase more player interactions.


    Have different factions npcs come to drone sec and fight each other. over npc stations..

    Thsi would bring more mission types null secs and players could side certain faction npc to help them win soverty to get what missions they like
    Rengerel en Distel
    #440 - 2012-09-13 21:46:23 UTC
    Valkyriy wrote:
    Gate camping /// ganking npc. that throw up bubbles, webs and scrams.
    Also afk miners, stealth bombers should also spawn NPCs that hunt them down..


    Will bring balance to 23/7 gate campers or afk smart bombers.


    EVERY region should have at-least one if not a few NPC stations to increase more player interactions.


    Have different factions npcs come to drone sec and fight each other. over npc stations..

    Thsi would bring more mission types null secs and players could side certain faction npc to help them win soverty to get what missions they like


    The FW at the beginning of the thread stands for Factional Warfare. It's not about npcs in general. Feel free to create a new thread for your ideas though.

    With the increase in shiptoasting, the Report timer needs to be shortened.