Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Learn to live with Sleeper AI in k-space.

Or you can :getout:

Your choice.

Wow there's a lot of bitter carebears itt.

The way I see it 90% of you still have no idea how ship fitting or PvP works. Consider that to be effective in PvE a ship needs to do two things:

- tank the NPC damage (which conveniently only comes in two flavors for non-angel rats)
- deal a lot of damage

To kill a PvE ship (now), a PvP ship needs to:

- be fast enough to close distances quickly (targets don't usually sit right on warpins, and being able to warp across system to your target as fast as possible is of paramount importance)
- have high enough scan resolution to lock a target almost instantly (usually you don't even get to this phase, since your target has warped out before you can land on grid with them because local chat is op)
- have free midslots for tackling gear, so your target doesn't just shrug at you and warp to the nearest station
- have enough of a tank to absorb the damage from the PvE ship long enough to kill it (coincidentally, the damage output from a PvE ship is usually extremely high, since they're almost always very DPS-focused fits)
- have enough of a tank to absorb the damage from the rats as well!


Prior to the AI changes, the fact that you didn't have to tank the rat damage meant that you could fit a ship to do pretty much all of the remaining things (be fast, lock quickly, do damage, tank the ratter) pretty competently. Now though from a fitting perspective you're asking PvP pilots to deal with every requirement they had to previously and have added a PvE tank to the requirement list in addition-- most ships simply don't have the slots or stats to be able to do this. Period.

The problem with carebears is that they look at the question of balance from their own-- usually extremely shortsighted-- point of view: "If I have to fight a PvP ship, I will lose 90% of the time." They take for granted that the PvPer has magically appeared in tackle range of them and pointed them, and it's from there that their analysis as to "what's fair" proceeds. They forget that an actual fight is the last stage in a long and convoluted process that usually involves them making poor choices at nearly every juncture. They forget what's required from the PvPer just to GET to the point where they're tackled.

Essentially, if you're bad enough at EVE online to end up tackled in a ship that has no hope of surviving a PvP engagement because you're incapable of paying attention or making reasonable piloting descisions, you deserve to die.

Let that sink in for a moment. You ****ed up and you deserve to pay the price for your poor decision making. What you DON'T deserve is for the very dudes your were just trying to kill a moment ago to do their damnedest to bail you out of the trouble you've gotten yourself into. It's like deciding one day to climb Everest alone with zero mountaineering experience, no gear, and no guide. It's poor decision making, it will get you killed, and noone's going to feel bad for you when it does.

EVE game mechanics-- on a very fundamental level-- are such that it is basically impossible to lose a ship if you wish to avoid it. You guys talk about the old NPC AI "feeding PvPers free killmails," but the reality is it wasn't the game mechanics that did that, it was your own ignorance or ill-advised risk-taking. This is kind of indisputable.

Now that I've actually read the comment I have a few direct statements to make...



Sooo, wait... before the changes it was cool that the pve player was forced into a fit for that mission and was therefore hendered before the fight even began, but not that the pvp player has to worry about the rats as well, that's unfair?

That's a very hypocritical way of thinking.
You just basically said "their life should be harder, not mine"



No, the problem is actually that you're looking at balance through your own very shortsighted POV.
See, you assume that you put forth all this effort that the pve player didn't have to.
Yet you fail to realize that many pve players have spent months, if not years, training for that ship, weeks to build up standing with the mission provider, and piles of isk to purchase the ship and fit.
Then they must build a fit specific to that mission.

All this effort and massive amounts of isk was put in just to have some jack@ss spend 10 minutes fitting a ship worth less than 100million isk and 5 minutes locating you, come in and blow you up with little effort because you have no defense against pvp.



Bad enough?
Before the changes you could come in with an untanked stealth bomber, assault frig, or really any type of untanked, semi fast moving ship and take down a bs worth over 1 billion isk.

Now, you have to consider tanking npcs and are incapable of doing so while pve'ers have been doing so for years, and we're supposed to be the ones bad enough?



No, you ****** up by thinking that an npc gives a crap about who's been and who hasn't been attacking them.
Before the changes, if you were on grid when the npcs were engaged, then reguardless of who attacked them, they would engage whomever they felt like engaging. Typically the weakest looking ship.

You're not one of the npcs, therefore, they don't like you. They shoot people they don't like, therefore, they shoot you.

It would actually be more appropriate that the npcs attacked either the weakest/smallest ship, or the biggest threat reguardless of whether or not they're engaging each other.

For all they know y'all are fighting over who gets to blow them up.



lol, again, a hypocritical statement.

You talk of the npcs as if they're a non-factor and the fact that they're engaging the pve pilot is irrelevant.
However, now that the npcs will also engage you is a huge balancing issue.

You seriously need to take a step back and really look at the grand picture and quit thinking in a way that is specific to yourself.

I'd also like to point out for the record that I do plenty of PvEing (not full-time, like some people, but enough) and haven't lost a ratting ship in literally years because of how stupidly easy it is to avoid being killed while PvEing.

Also, your argument about "what about the time and money carebears spend on their ships" is totally irrelevant. Do you think PvPers don't have to train skills and buy gear to do what they do? Come on...

RP arguments about rats ideological motivations for either shooting or not shooting a new player who shows up on grid are dumb. NPCs are not players. Missions, anomalies, and complexes are ONE HUNDRED PERCENT PREDICTABLE. I can literally find any site you can imagine in space, go to a wiki, and within ten minutes I'll know exactly what I'm up against-- what ships, when they spawn, spawn triggers, etc.

By way of comparison, the PvPer descending upon you now has to guess at your fit (it could easily be a bait fit rather than an actual PvE fit), how you will react to them appearing, what state the site itself will be in (which dictates how many NPCs will be on the field, whether new ones are about to spawn, etc) and how the NPCs will react to their ship's presence. For the PvPer the entire equation is full of unknowns, while the PvEer simply has to read a damn wiki article to know exactly what's ahead of them.

"But the PvEer also has to plan for PvP contingencies," you say? Well, actually, no, they don't. If you're paying attention while PvEing its next to impossible to get caught out. Hence my position that if a ratter consistently makes mistakes (be they in fitting or strategy-- IE ratting with hostiles in local or watching netflix instead of local) then someone who is quick enough on their feet to catch the PvEer shouldn't find that the NPCs then bail the ratter out.

You all think I was kidding? give rats carebear detectors, make their aggro so stupid easy I can abuse the holy crap out of it again in hisec l4s (5 mins, 45 seconds record on a l4 ;) ) .

After all, killing ships 100% not built to fight back is fair, but rats having aggro to be more realistic isn't.

The pathetic desperation of people who dont know how to really pvp amazes me... Come on guys...

I mean, you can flail about bleating and impugning my character or whatever it is you think you're trying to do if you like, but it's not going to make your posting more persuasive or relevant.

I still contend that game mechanics are extraordinarily skewed against attackers in this game. Are the problems posed by the mechanics surmountable? In theory they are not, but in practice people are usually dumb enough to be killable. The current mechanics do encourage several things carebears detest though:

- "blobbing" (if one ship can't deal with tanking the ratter and the rats, send a multitude of ships)
- AFK cloaking (since the time it takes to locate a ratter after jumping into a system is so long that the ratter will ALWAYS get away unless they're braindead, AFK, or both, it's much easier to just idle a character in system and wait for someone to go ratting despite your presence)
- "dishonourable" tactics like cynoing on top of ratters to gank them

...to name a few.

Basically, my complaint is this: ratting keeps getting safer and safer (conversely, PvPers find it harder and harder to catch ratters). Finally, the icing on the cake is that now, in addition to ratters being nigh-uncatchable without AFK cloaking them hard-core, once you DO catch one you need a small gang just to hold down and kill a single ship because the rats actively try and kill you as well; it's completely ridiculous.

Let's see what ratters have gotten since the good old days of pre-Dominion sov:

- anomalies to farm in that can't be warped to without a lengthy scanning process and present no visible beacon in space

- sovereignty upgrades that both A. make almost all space in a region bountiful for ratting, and B. allow single systems to support far more people than belts ever did. This has the effect of giving people more places to go if any given ratting system is shut down AND allowing ratters to cram themselves into a small number of systems, making it MUCH easier to gang up and bait PvPers than when belt ratting was a thing and people were largely spread out over whole regions.

- sov upgrades that attract complexes to existing ratting hubs-- allowing people to do complexes without having to leave populated areas nearly as often, and providing them with inflated numbers of sites where they're extremely safe from attack (since they have to be probed out by probes that are visible on the directional scanner-- it's basically impossible to be "surprised" while running a complex)

Meanwhile PvPers had not been provided a single additional tool or mechanic for hunting ratters more effectively. That was irritating but ultimately ok. Now though, with the AI changes not only do you have to deal with all these impediments, but once you actually manage to get on grid with a target, the very NPCs that were supposed to be there posing a challenge to the ratter immediately switch into ratter protection mode, lift their DPS off the ratter and focus it on the person who's trying to kill the ship that's trying to kill them. Its nonsensical, causes massive fitting problems (and renders basically everything but T3 cruisers incapable of hunting ratters solo), and makes hunting ratters stupidly difficult compared to either conventional PvP or PvE.

You keep talking about how "PvPers shouldn't complain about things being harder for them," but you don't acknowledge how easy PvE is for you. PvE is an essentially predictable, risk-free, highly-profitable activity that requires almost no forethought or planning (read wiki article on anom, fit a ship according to the guide, undock, press scan, warp to site, acquire bacon, repeat) or exposure to danger of any kind (you know exactly what the site will do to you; local will inform you IMMEDIATELY of impending player-threats, you don't have to travel around, etc). PvP is basically the riskiest and most unpredictable thing you can do in EVE-- roaming around hostile space (no jump bridges, friendly poses, dockable stations etc for you), dodging player dangers the whole way, trying to assess what people are doing all the time, being wary of bait ships and defense gangs, etc-- all while trying to find and land on top of a ratter before they realize you're in system with them and peace out?

Just face it-- the challenges facing a would-be PvPer are on a whole different order of magnitude compared to the "challenges" faced by a ratter. Given that the deck is already firmly stacked in favor of the ratter, I don't think it's a lot to ask that CCP revert the "feature" that turned the very NPCs that are supposed to be ratters "opponents" into their friends and defenders.

If you want to keep this AI and let both parties (the ratter and the ganker) risk exposure to both each other and the rats, then add in another factor to balance the scales a bit. Perhaps anomalies and complexes that have ratters in them should show up as warpable beacons in space the way faction warfare sites do?

Yes this is a fair comparison because ganking without tackle is totally viable. And don't you dare suggest bumping as a tactic, since its essentially the absolute riskiest thing you could ever do in EVE online, not to mention your target would have to be mentally handicapped not to warp out before you could get there to bump them.

Not to mention that even if the ratter had a point, they'd be best served by not using it until they were more or less assured of a kill (either because backup was immanent or because the ganker did something monstrously stupid like flying directly into scram / web range).

Regardless, since you can go PvE in something pedestrian like a Drake and be just fine, show me something pedestrian that a ganker could use to gank ratters that can:

- get from a gate to a ratter and close into point range / lock the target fast enough to tackle the ratter
- tank the ratter's dps
- tank the anomaly's dps
- deal enough damage to kill the ratter (especially when the ratter isn't being shot by the rats)
- is also capable of negotiating the other threats one encounters while roaming (gatecamps, pitchfork-bearing gangs of locals, etc)

Let me give you a hint: about the only ships that can do this are dual-prop Cynabals (just barely) and T3 cruisers. There's a reason that I and most of the dudes I play with have switched to flying mostly exotic bullshit-- traditional, go-to skirmishing ships like the Vagabond simply aren't up to the task anymore. They don't have enough slots and they don't have enough stats. Prior to the AI changes it was hard enough just to tank the DPS the ratter would put on you-- now that you often have to tank a whole room of rats as well it's basically impossible.

e: not to mention that attacking a ratter is never risk free-- there's no way to tell how they're fit from a d-scan result, and it's not like once you land on grid (if you even can get on grid with them) you have a lot of time to luxuriate and decide whether or not to "go for it." Heavy neuts hit out past T2 point range and two will basically alpha the capacitor of a cruiser. Not to mention the possibility that you tackle a ratter, take aggro from him and the rats and a hostile recon decloaks and tackles you while the ratter's gang of friends undocks and warps in on you.

I don't think you understand war. If I wanted to spend my time dueling I hear there's a new mechanic for that in highsec.

Indeed. The OP and the rest of them complaining, are awfully bitter carebears. Maybe you should tell them to HTFU?

Not everyone's elite enough to be part of an alliance whose logo has skulls, crossbones, crossed daggers, shields AND wings...