Player Features and Ideas Discussion

How about this for an idea...

You have max (1.0) down to null (0.0).

Sec Rating * 100 = % chance that Concord and/or Navy will show up to help you out.

So in 1.0 they are guaranteed to show up and take out the person that attacked you.
.9 is 90%, .8 is 80%, ....., .1 is a mere 10%.

At .4 concord ceases to be (Only the navy will show up and even then it's only 40% of the time) and then in null, the navy ships cease to be.

Makes low sec a little bit safer, but at the cost of making high sec less safe to an equal degree. Leave null unchanged

It is common knowledge that better opportunities for making ISK exist in low and null.

Any miner who ever pulled up an ore comparison chart sees the high value items are located in dangerous space.

The ratting enthusiasts know the truly high value targets can be found in dangerous space.

Risk vs Reward is a mantra that gets tossed about like a popular advertising slogan.

Well, the reward side has been tweaked already. Obviously the pilots who have not considered leaving high sec were not moved by this. Repeating the tactic is a bit like following the same cooking recipe and expecting different results.

The risk side needs to be reviewed, if people are serious about making low sec more popular.

Obviously NBSI has not helped the situation. If pilots in low were NRDS oriented this would not be an issue. Devs can't change that, and frankly war decs already let you shoot targets that should be red in high sec.

Too many want these pilots to come over just so they can be shot. That is exactly why they don't want any part of it.

Return fire should *never* result in "legal enforcement", that's the part that makes it terribad. By making it so you just make mission-fit BS's into loot pinatas for pirates in HACs, T3s, or command ships.

best ideea ever

There is no game change which is going to get most skill-centric non-griefer players to venture into gank-ridden world PvP areas short of removing the world PvP.

As a long time skill game player.. I enjoy the personal challenge of PVE and structured PvP games, such as chess, go, SC2, LoL, etc. In these structured games, winning (PVE or PVP) is about personal (and small team) skill. I don't enjoy griefing players, nor do I enjoy being griefed. I don't see the point. It's just bullying. I don't see the point to hitting the little guy while he's down.

In an open world-PVP situation, winning is not about tactical play skill. It's about superior-rp-progression (aka entitlement), superior group size (aka gangs), and kill the little guy mentality (aka griefing).

Die hard EVE players are going to look at this and wonder why anyone who feels this way plays EVE. That's fine. Just recognize there is nothing you can do to lure players like this into the pointless world of gank-dom, because they don't care for it no matter how much lipstick you put on it.

Instead you might think about creative ways to get actual tests of skill into the game without disturbing the sandbox feeling too much. Things like 3v3 frigate tests of skill. That is something I could get into.

Alert: strange 6 month noob carebear visitor from another thread. (I don't cry carebear tears, ever)

First let me say that even though i am a care bear 1)miner, 2) mission runner and 3) manufacturer, I do NOT want low sec to look like high sec any more than I want low sec to look like null sec (which it does now).

I like the basic concepts. Yes, refinement would likely change them a bit.

My concern would be from a programmer viewpoint.

If this did develop support in EVE and did get CCP approval it would likely take quite a bit of programming/development time. It is a structural change. There does not appear to be any EVE engine mechanics in place that work like this. If i am accurate in this assessment, then it would take quite a while for CCP to develop, test and implement. That pushes it WAY down the line.

However the idea of letting faction navies respond in low sec, in much the same way that Concord responds in high sec is merely an addition to already existing game mechanics. Which means that if it did get support it could be a patch after Retribution hits in December.

Please keep in mind that it is us care bears that you are trying to entice down into low sec to live and work but where you guys have a chance to kill our mining ships and industrial ships and then pod us (a thank you to those of you that don't pod us), while we have a decent chance to survive. The PVP oriented players will gravitate to low sec naturally as their skills, experience and equipment improve.

So I really like the idea that Nikk included of beatable faction navy response.

As a care bear i like one poster (different thread i think) that said the navy response time would be similar to .5 Concord response but with a graduating reduction in spawned force down to maybe a battleship, a cruiser and a few frigs in .1. I believe that would get carebears all the way down to .1. But by the time we got to .1 we would have to be much better organized and smarter on tactics and that makes us almost ready to jump into null sec.

This would give the PVP'ers a much more target rich environment instead of the virtual desert that low sec very much is now compared to the teeming with life high sec or the teeming with life null sec.

Just an additional note on me. I mine in a .2 system (off and on) and I sell products in a .2 system. I'm not afraid of low sec but the guaranteed lose vs maybe sort of kind of reward is for crap.

Oh and just in case you didn't know it, mission runners can blitz a low sec mission and get out, miners need time.

So give me faction navy support that you have a chance to beat and I'll be more than happy to do without the gate guns.

I think the most obvious way to promote small and medium ships would be to add more gate and station guns, but to give them tracking (issues). Their range should be increased too. Maybe with 150 km optimal and 100km falloff.

Cruisers and below could avoid and tank their damage for reasonable amounts of time, just like bigger ships can right now. It would also nerf sniper BS (or tier3 BC) gate camps.

But I think you overestimate the tank of a PvE fitted battleship if you think that promoting small and medium ships and nerfing large ships will do anything noticeable for their survival rates.

A gang of two or three Assault Frigates and or Cruisers will kill any mission battleship within a very short time, not to mention HACs, Pirate Cruisers and T3s.

If you want to attract carebears to lowsec, you must offer them a big enough carrot. They must be able to come to lowsec and earn more than in highsec incursions. Significantly more.

I have never experienced faction navy npc ships first hand, but I heard so many people say how bad they are, that I think they could just replace CONCORD in lowsec (with increasing response time in line with the CONCORD response times). If you really want a more gradual step in system security status. They should be able to tackle agressors and have impactful dps and tank while still being defeatable in a PvP fitted ship. If only the faction police frigates can tackle, even the most modest pirate should be able to handle or escape them if he flies well. Of course, they should spawn on a per capita basis, so that the challenge scales with the number of agressors. System sec status should impact the number of spawned faction police ships too.

Maybe the faction police spawns could also be tied to system upgrade status and warzone control of FW, like conquering and upgrading a system makes it safer for your carebears and riskier for "opposing" carebears.

Could be epic, could be complete b******t... Everyone agrees that there is a too big cliff between 0.5 and 0.4, and some would even go as far as to say the same thing about 0.1 and 0.0. I have yet to see an elegant and simple solution to this that doesn't just move the problem from 0.4 to 0.0 and also doesn't nerf non-consensual pvp beyond reason.

Ok, to clarify:

The reward side is already tweaked. The high sec pilots are not lemmings, and they are often avoiding low because of risk exclusively.

In order of consideration:
QUESTION 1 >>> Can I survive there if I go to do things there?
QUESTION 2 >>> Is it worth the effort?

You need to get past the perceived answer to question 1, in order for the reward to affect the answer to question 2.

Perhaps this explanation may help the understanding of philosophical differences. (Mission runner as example)

PvP logic: Don't fly what you can't afford to lose

PvE logic: fly the best ship possible so you can beat your mission, grab your reward, and move one step closer to your goal.
(Goal is a issue often unique to the pilot)

Q: Why isn't PvE trying to stick to ships they can afford to lose?
A: This would downgrade the type of mission they could attempt. They went to a lot of effort to build and learn the ship they are flying so they could tackle challenging missions.

Q: Why don't they gradually build up instead, grinding out lower missions with ships they can afford to lose?
A: They are playing it safe already staying in High Sec. Flying low sec in disposable ships to do missions repeatedly that you mastered long ago is boring.
The reward they want is not measured in ISK, it is measured in FUN. Challenging missions where they have their best ship, and the results are not guaranteed, this is what they seek. The fun penalty is not ship loss, but losing the mission.
Losing the mission often means hours of play for nothing, which is what is considered an acceptable penalty for failure.
Ship loss is reserved for avoidable and foolish mistakes.

Q: Why is this PvE dynamic so far removed from the PvP one?
A: Only the devs can explain why, but mission running uses different types of challenges than PvP fights. Often mission running is about active tanking long term fights, with predictable NPC reactions. PvP fights tend to be opportunistic, and unexpected to the target, with the aggressor having an obvious advantage on some level.

Good point, I tweaked the OP.

OP, this is a good example of why I think at most only part of lowsec should be affected. Also, if the bar was lowered for entry into lowsec, you could increase the amount of lowsec right? There's too much highsec already. If 0.5 and maybe 0.6 were some sort of sub-lowsec that was a lot easier for highbears to get into, then they wouldn't have to stay out at all costs. They'd just have to stay alert and fit accordingly.