Missions & Complexes

Grumble, damn forums eating my poasts. Here goes again.



Absurd. I've clocked a 16-man fleet doing assaults in 12-15 minutes. That'd be 240m isk/hour. And people complain that the Vanguards are too big an isk faucet?

Drop VG payout by 30-40%.
Leave Assault payout as is. However, drastically rebalance the NCN. As it stands, it contains 2-3 times the EHP** that you need to burn through. Possible fix - remove the third separated pockets, and add a focus completion trigger in the final wave. This will bring it closer in line to the other sites as you'll only have to kill ~10 BS.
Buff HQ payout to Mothership payout level.

Effect? Vanguards are capped at 60m. Assaults pay 80m. HQ's pay between 100m and 140m depending on the sites that spawn. Proper incentive, risk/reward, and requirement for skill.

*The NCN contains 4-5 BS in three separated pockets and the same in the joint pocket, so there are 16-20. Most of these you'll be engaging with a split fleet. In comparison, the OCF has 10-12 BS and the NCS 9 with similar support fleets.

IIRC it was 5 Mares, 2 CNRs, 3 Tengus, a Loki, 2 scrub t1 BS, and 4 Logi. Tactics consisted of...well, kill everything. Nothing special. However, the theoretical 240m is what that fleet would've pulled if the assaults were buffed to mothership levels, as suggested in my quotation of Shawn. Under the current scheme, they pulled about 80m.

Cheers.

At the risk of pissing off any of my fellow pilots who enjoy incursions (carmelos53...cough). I'll just toss on a few thoughts (3) as I've spent the last couple weeks coming back to incursions a little (~1mil LP or there abouts).


1. We've seen dilution of incursion knowledge to the point where people now understand exactly what to bring/how to fit/what types of fleets do well in what sites. This has of course made it almost trivial to run the basic incursion sites.

Of course VGs were always easy. They weren't meant to be 50/50 live or die 'missions', just a group activity in eve, a primarily pvp game.

I would more-or-less enjoy the developers to possibly make the 'incursion game' more pvp centered as the entire of eve's universe. Right now between BTL and TDF, every .5 or higher incursion sees hundreds of pilots and the top earners are seeing 300-800,000 LP in only a few short days. That goes to show just how 'farmable' the content is to well-trained or connected groups of players.

http://incursionguide.wordpress.com/

http://incursions.nexsoft.de/

http://forums.eve-incursions.net/index.php

http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/

http://mikeazariah.wordpress.com/

All have incursion-related content to the point where a completely new FC can understand incursions in an hour or so of perusal. This is not a problem. Lets not be elitist about 'knowledge' in the case of NPC encounters in a PVP game... I don't think this can be helped, but it CAN be tweaked.


2. People are bringing ships and fittings tailored specific to incursions. This goes along with the dilution of knowledge but is also related to the quantity of incursions people are running. Seeing 500-1.5B in fittings on cruiser-sized hulls isn't uncommon. People fitting officer webs/abs on ships they wouldn't dream of otherwise fitting with such mods is an exciting proposition and will eventually get the attention of k-space ganking groups, but for the moment its allowing people to run incursions at blindingly fast speeds.

With properly fit T3 (legion/loki), proper boosters, and proper RSB and TL'd logistics pilots, armor fleets can run NCOs in just under 2 minutes from warp in. That's an absurd pace if the spawns can keep up (which they can't). What ends up happening is that well-equipped groups of players end up racing each other for the mass of OTA or NCO sites in the same or neighboring systems.

This is a good thing (ship/module inflation), but it doesn't help with the NPC aspect of the difficulty, only the 'pvp' side.


3. There is no diversity in incursions once they're 'found out'.

While #1, the dilution of information, means that public incursion groups, and other random 'pug' fleets have much greater chance of success, it exposes the underlying problem with incursions... the lack of actual diversity in the sites.

Between VG, Assault and HQ sites (the ones that I run), there are only a few things to know in order to 'blitz' every site as efficiently as possible. These can be gleaned from looking online for 20 minutes or by stopping into public channels and asking FCs.

While it wouldn't significantly alter the difficulty of the sites, why not provide a 10-20% chance of an escalation or other variable within each type of site for an increased payout (IE: in a VG have a 10-20% chance that an NCO spawns X additional quick, very-high dps and low HP ships after trigger ships are killed, the plus side being a 10-25% increase on the rewards for completion????

Project that out into OTLs, where you could have an extra deltole or a named bs with increased DPS output and ecm burst tower which is untargetable (a la mothership with immediate targeting thereafter, pulsing every 20-30 seconds, for a 10-15% increase in pay on the site).

NMC (or the citizen assault site) you could apply an escalation to the 'drop' of civilians or ore, where a 'surprise' spawn is spawned rather than the mission trigger, the spawn targeting the 'drop' ship amidst some ecm cover in an attempt to burn through that ship.

Maybe the The Kundalini Manifest could have a siege or triage-mode variant, requiring dynamic thinking by the FC in prioritizing targets. The mothership could have dynamic triggers at intervals where she could increase the dmg or resistance of the ships on the field for the next spawn. Seeing bombers with 90% omni resists and extra HP, or a flight of BS/cruisers with some hot guns would allow for that particular encounter to be more than the current "bring too much of everything" that it has become.



These aren't complicated ideas. There could be 3-4 possible escalations for each site, varying in difficulty and reward (say a 10, 15, 20, or 25% increase in payout as compensation that makes the site approximately 110% 120% 130% or 150% of the ehp or incoming dps (or in the case of the NMC/OCF, the attempt of the site to 'burn' your trigger ship).

Having the possibility of double spawns or killing a particular type of 'blitz' ship first only to see 3 of them spawn and immediately lock the same target would provide at least a nice 'dynamic' to the sites we all know and love.

In the end I think some balance of the NPC and PVP aspects of incursions will be the answer.



Finally...

I'd love for there to be sites designed as 'races' between 2 fleets, though I doubt mechanics will allow for that to actually be the case. I think the NCN is a good model for this, though again actual implementation of this sort of site would obviously create problems. I'm sure this is a wall of text, but I guess I'll live with people calling me out on that in the interest of being a semi-complete thought.

I still think OP is a troll posting with multiple characters.

just my 5 cents.

Yep, we are all the OP's alts.

Of course, this includes you.

:)

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Just for the record, I did actually say that giving Assault fleets the current supercarrier kill rewards would probably be a little too much. It was even in the quote that somebody called absurd. They should definitely be giving bigger rewards though -- say, 40M ISK and 9K LP.

Basically, the rewards that Assaults offer should make pilots want to "graduate" from Vanguards and actually do Assault sites ... and right now, they don't. The only real reason to do Assaults is to avoid the competition that goes on for Vanguard sites.

Due to the amount of time necessary to organize a fleet, any sane limit number would make vanguards not worth running at all. Set limit number too high, and it would be meaningless. It might not be possible to find the balancing point, since the time it takes to get a fleet varies greatly from person to person. This will end up just locking out anyone flying anything less than a pimpboat.

This whole nonexistant "problem" is created from the same fuzzy math that made highsec lvl4 income seem "high" - time wasted on various necessary supportive activities, travel, organization, etc, are not taken into account, and maxed SP pimpboats are used as the rule instead of the exceptions that they are. Any attempt at nerf as "solution" to the nonexistant problem will lock lower SP non-pimpboat flying people out of the game.

There are small percentage of people with maxed out skills and pimp gear in any mmo. It's normal. They get out of what they invest. Game breaking nerf attempts out of thinly disguised jealousy will always just hurt the noobs, while the vets move on to the next best thing.

Those numbers are actually far off. 10 vanguards per hour means 6 minutes each, including warp time, bounce from taken sites, potential contest, etc. even for only ncos. If you do otas, running time itself can go past 6 minutes. For HQs, I don't know what kind of fail fleet you got in, but it should do at least 3, sometimes 4 sites per hour. 2 is far too slow. So yes, you do get more LP, and more isk, for higher sites... but only if ignoring formup times. In reality, formup time is the single factor that kills higher lvl sites, and it kills them badly.

The amount of time and effort it takes to form hq sites makes them not worth doing. Not just in comparison to vanguards, but just not worth doing, period. Nerf vanguards, and hqs are still not worth doing. You won't magically fix something by breaking something else.

Make a real pug system with usable fleet finder would be a start.

Lvl5s are rewarding too in theory, yet nearly no one does them anymore once they've been moved to lowsec. It has nothing to do with reward amount.

Do you feel like organizing a hq fleet? Neither do other people. Buff rewards, and some people may be willing to join pre-formed fleet, but the rewards will have to be astronomical to prompt people to fc it.

People are not paranoid for no reason. Mmos without mechanics enabling griefing also has no paranoia. Either fix mechanics, or deal with it. Pointing fingers at player behavior without acknowledging the source of that behavior - game mechanics, won't solve a thing. Don't blame the players, blame the game.

For someone whos "had their fun" and made your billions I find your argument mostly bullshit. As long as you continue to have fun, why should I validate anything you have had to say? I agree with most some tweaking is in store and assaults and HQ's need to be reevaluated but as soon as players provide competition in the VG systems that 100/mil hour ratio goes down. And where do you think a good chunk of that isk generated goes? Im guessing it gets burnt and blown up for the most part. (After your pimp boats good to go)


"yeah... i've read stuff like that... incursion fleets as is can obliterate most roaming fleets, even well organized ones... because most incursion fleets are very well organized already." You must roll with some pretty ******* gimp roaming fleets/friend/pilots guy.


That quote dosent even make sense, an organized fleet will obliterate an organized fleet because their organized already?

IIRC C5s pay more than incursions, and tbh I'm not quite sure why people get so upset over 100m/hour in incursion fleets, a good mission runner can make that if he knows how to sell LP properly. That said, I would agree that there is a balance problem wrt the isk being made, but it's moreso the lack isk in low/null than it is the isk in highsec. As it stands, getting 10 people together in faction fit pirate BSs SHOULD generate more isk per person than someone can reasonably make on their own, that much makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that CCP decided to nerf most of nullsec, and the fact that the isk being made in highsec is currently on par with what you can expect to make in low/null.

If CCP made it possible to force incursions to spawn in certain systems/constellations, than said balance would be restored (because the payout difference between high and low/null for incursions is HUGE) But no, group pve paying more than solo pve is not a problem, it's common sense.