EVE General Discussion

Probably has something to do with the fact that the missions aren't designed for the smarter AI which results in full room pulls and all kinds of stupid. Now if the missions were redesigned like the sleeper sites things would be better.

I guess that is why lo sec is always looking to nerf hi sec.

The joke is old. Lo sec gets nerfed hi sec says deal with it. Hi sec gets nerfed lo sec says deal with it.

Poor CCP Guard probably has a honorary degree in child psychology from having to deal with the whiners on both sides.

If CCP buffed null sec next week, nobody in high sec would care.
If CCP Buff High Sec, the tears from null would fill a pool.

The problem is that missions were not designed for such AI, it became a nightmare to try to use drones.
Sure, compare it to sleepers, but sleepers were designed to have this AI, their numbers and strength were tuned for that.
And did I mention that the rewards for sleepers are much higher?
And before you say anything, I barely run missions, just when I feel like killing stuff in my Megathron, and I never AFK with a Domi or something.
But right now the EWAR is blocking my guns to dust because there are one gazillion ships doing it, and the drones are being destroyed in a milisecond, because they are alpha'd.
Drop the numbers of ships in missions and up the HP of the ships.
But you also have to up the rewards because its like fighting sleepers which reward much more.
But now, why have both exist?
It makes one of them pointless. (Missions or Sleeper pwning)

Dude... you just win "dumbest post of the month"....and its just early december

According this post . Perfectly written. Drone UI and logic are terrible, no mater if you PvP or PvE.

Before the new release I read the upcoming change list. One of the items I saw was the upcoming changes to NPC agro regarding switching of targets. Since I primarily use drone boats I realized what this would mean and immediately switched my skill training to dedicate towards skilling for a T3 cruiser combined with weapons instead of drones. At the moment I'm still short on both sets of skills so I picked up a T2 Assault Frigate and am using that to train my playstyle to fit the upcoming T3 cruiser once the skills are trained.

In the past I used drone platform ships that were tuned with ship bonuses to handle drones. Now I've sold those ships along with the drones, receiving a small percentage of the original cost for the ships and gear - since nobody seems to want drones now. And I've gone from running L3 and L4 missions to running L2 missions in my AF gun boat.

The long and the short of it? The changes made by CCP resulted in a nearly unplayable game due to breaking the drone boat gameplay that bonuses and gear fostered. One small change resulted in a nearly unplayable result. A very simple statement that any drone boat pilot that runs missions will undoubtedly agree with.

Yes, there are ways to deal with it and continue using drones. Drop sentry drones, stay close enough to insta-scoop them the moment you see any of them get damaged and do NOT move away from them. Or launch combat drones set to Passive, only use them to attack targets within a couple of km of your boat and be ready to instantly pull them in the moment you see any damage to any drone. Is this a feasible usage of drone boats? Obviously it is a way to cope with an impossible situation and not a way to actually utilize the drone platforms that the game is designed to foster.

So, I adapt. I'm training skills (both game skills and playstyle skills) for an entirely different type of play. I've written off the time spent skilling up T2 drones (small, medium and large). And I'm seriously having doubts about continuing to play Eve when the developers are willing to make such radical gameplay changes. (And no, you cannot "haz my stuff").

Are CCP designers free to make any change they want? Certainly they are. Whether it's a change to ship spinning and inflated prices for monacles, or whether it's changes to make drone boats dysfunctional. It is the right of CCP to make any change they wish for any reason they choose. However I will also point out that making players write off massive drone training skill training investments and require other skill training prior to continuing to play - may result in changes to the subscription base, the same as when the monacle ship spinning changes resulted in a public apology to the customer base.

CCP, please rethink your ideas and find better ways to vet your ideas prior to testing them on the paying customer base. The economy is tight, companies are hurting for revenue and your decisions are sometimes not the wisest.

There was quite a lot (30+ pages?) of customer feedback on the test server showing how disliked the idea was. Yet CCP did not allow this to influence their choice.

They need a better way to vet their ideas. Currently they make choices and ignore customer feedback until their revenues start going into the toilet. Then they issue a public apology and make changes. My plea is for them to find a better way than dealing with mistake afterwards! My plea is for them to figure out how to discover it's a mistake PRIOR to making it onto the live servers.

Read what people post - don't try to make up ways to try to make them look foolish. The goal here is to address a problem with the game, not to look for ways to act childish.

It's not just about missions.

The fact of the matter is drones went from really bad to completely useless. Drone management is bad (lol carriers?), drone usage is bad, drone performance is bad, drone stats are bad, they've been nerfed (while it was bad server side before loosing a drone since the change the interfacing means more), etc. They only had 2 real viable uses:

1) Structure bashing- Having a lot of drones on pos guns, caps, and super caps did help the killing go faster. (Note only sentries worked on bashing the actual pos with the shields up)

2) PVE- The ai (except in wormholes and sometimes incursions) would generally ignore the drone making them an effective long term applied damage on a target, assuming the target was around for a while and the drone managed to get all the way over there.

Now, the drones are only good at bashing. C.C.P. has said that they're not against drones. That they want to fix drones. But their actions speak otherwise. Whatever happened to that drone thing that would go on your f2 button? Why does CCP never mention a fix for drones except one time once in fan fest almost a year ago?

I think it's time CCP seriously considers the future of drones even if they remove them all together and ships adjusted to compensate. Too long have drones gone ignored.

Where did you get the idea that sleeper sites dont have up to 30 rats?

While i guess the drone mechanics are relevant to the carrier, i don't think it's possible to spawn 30 rats without warping in capitals, and i don't think it's possible except for C5 and 6 class wormholes. As i understand it using capitals to spawn additional sleepers are done i a controlled manner, you don't just spawn all at once.