Missions & Complexes

I think this is the only beef I have. I respect you want to make PVE more engaging and PVP like. The problem isn't as much the change you have made to the NPC AI, but that the missions and other PVE sites are not very well designed for it.

People bring up Wormhole AI all of the time. Wormhole anoms however were designed for his AI.

As an example a C3 anom (I think is closest in difficulty to a level 4 mission) such as the Fortification stronghold, has a total of 13 NPC's between 3 waves.

Damsel in distress lvl 4 has a total of 35 NPC's over a total of 4 waves.

Serpentis Phi outpost (4/10 DED) has a total of 59 NPC's in multiple rooms.

This seems to exascerbate the NPC AI changes. It's one thing to have 2-3 NPC's target your drone. Its entirely another to have 10+ NPC's take a liking to your

You can absolutely compare them in some fashion. The point being that sleeper sites were designed for the AI. that being harder hitting NPC's but lower numbers

Put it this way. they want PVE to feel more like PVP. When was the last time you soloed a swarm of 30+ ships in PVP? Sure in PVP people shoot my drones. But it is usually 1 guy. I can manage that.

Take 15 NPC frigs webbing and shooting your light drone. He goes pop. Hard to keep the buggers inside the short small RR range too.

what about sentry drones?

They count as large.

Not the original communicated intention of the AI?
*tinfoil off*
ok, jokes aside
That the AI had to be hacked so heavy-handedly really showed that it wasn't quite ready for the masses yet.
I would really love my PvE be closer to PvP if it meant I wouldn't have to kill over 60 ships in a Mordus headhunter room alone, but say 5 that are hard, or someone mentioned 13 sleepers in one of their sites over multiple waves?
And even then, it feels a tad bit like going with a maxed toon to gank some "lower level" chars.
Or T1 armor cruisers in a Deadspace-fit Sleipnir if we want a more realistic and EVE-related PvP scenario?

On a sidenote, not the smallest and saddest frigs shooting at your lights, but the elite frigates (some moving 900m/s scrambling and webbing) plus the elite cruisers (that can have railguns/ect for 30+km orbit), and still can pop a frig when they spawn.
But it's toned down, and haven't had it happen to me yet.
In the luckily easier missions I got (where easy = lots of battleships, and less support for them, like Scarlet).

Quite.
Picking elite cruisers as primary with even greater zeal than ever before.
But I need more guns.
Never 'nuff Dakka!

Thank you letting us know this is being looked at, sorry on my part for being such a loud PITA but it often seems the best way to get noticed.

The current issues are outlined in the updated thread I'm running here

Could you confirm whether of not you believe that the current strength and stacking is how you would like them?

Not all of the issues could be considered bugs some are more just how the changes seem to be a little too strong for the current PVE styles (many ships vs one)
I personally and many others are not looking for brain dead gameplay and look forward to the days where PVE and PVP are closer together. I would ask that CCP remember though that for a lot of players grinding anomalies and missions is the only income we have for PVP, we want challenging and engaging but we also want efficient and rewarding. I would say the current effects of Tracking Disruption falls under enraging, I have actually been spending less time playing EVE because of how irrigating it is to sit in an anomaly without being able to actually fight the NPC's

There are modules to overcome the effects of tracking such as tracking computers but for shield tanked ships like my Nightmare that's not always viable. The Tanks needed for PVE are pretty strong which doesn't leave much room for EWAR counters. Most PVP doesn't used active tanks any more for the reasons that they are just not strong enough to counter the incoming DPS and relies on logistics, that requirement for a simple level four mission or anomaly seems somewhat extreme though.

As a more broad approach I would say that the entire area of the game in regard to NPCs needs a looking atl. If your aim is to have NPCs act more like player ships there needs to be a lot of updates to them to reflect that, many weapons and ships have changed over time and the NPCs have (to my knowledge) remained the same.
As I mentioned before active tanks are rarely used for fighting multiple opponents like PVE pits you against, if you wish to bring PVE and PVP closer I would recommend you look at how ships are required to be tanked so we can have free slots for Anti-EWAR.

"Maybe this would be a good spot for CCP to fix the most unrealistic part of PVE.
The enormous amount of NPC villains in mission. In LVL4 missions, one solo ship kill more than 40 ships.
Make NPCs as powerful as capsuleer's ships and decrease the number of them in all missions."


I would like that personally.

Well to be fair, if they want missions to truly be like PVP a mission would start with one ship. Once you tackle it, 15 of his NPC friends warp in and blap you

Well, well. Maybe you should actually try some of your sites and missions more often. The problem isn't the change by itself, its the fact that a lot of your content was designed with the old AI in mind. Let me link you one of your lower tier complexes. There's 18 elite frigs in there, more spawn if you shoot the non-elite NPCs. Fully spawned its 25 elite frigs, a bunch of elite cruisers and some battlecruisers + sentries. Try this in a noob Drake, by all means bring a friend it's hysterical.

Look at all those raiders!

You are right about one thing, people will adapt and bring the hard counter. So it is not a big deal?

Oh, right, your goal was a more PvP like experience, a more engaging and fun PVE content! IMO, some drone aggro won't do, neither does some tracking disruption, what you need is more random spawns, (Whoa its Sansha but they have damps fitted. Them bastards!1), someone needs to tackle the overseer or he legs it, in general smaller skirmishes not this boring EHP grind we have today. Oh well, one can dream.