Player Features and Ideas Discussion

From what I have read, there were some rumblings at fanfest about wormholes becoming stale and CCP not being happy with the way c5/6 capital sites are farmed. This was then blown "slightly" out of proportion on the wormholes forum.

I would like to propose a rough idea I have been kicking around which could either supplement or replace capital escalations depending on final effort and compensation balance.

Proposed change #1
Sites in upper class wormholes are made to have different difficulties. There would still be some that require a fleet of 5 to 10 like there are now, but new sites would be added that could be done with 2-4 players that spawn more frequently. This would increase small gang PvP because stumbling across a site running fleet would not demand bringing a full bhaalgorn/guardian/T3 response fleet.
Some sites in lower class wormholes are added on the converse side - needing a duo or trio of people.

Proposed change #2
Completion of any site has a good chance to spawn an escalation which can be initiated by the corp or corps involved in clearing it. These escalations would be spawned in a random wormhole system, and would have a comparatively long time (2 weeks? Month? 3 months?) to complete. Rewards would be larger than completing the simple site, and would likely take more players to complete.

These escalations could then escalate on themselves several times, each more difficult and with more rewards. I am envisioning forth or fifth escalations requiring the deployment of capitals to a foreign wormhole to complete with tens of billions of isk as compensation for finding and completing each escalation in series as well as the logistic difficulty of deploying and risking capitals for several hours.

This would A) reduce the farming of the first wave of sites, as there tangible rewards for immediate completion. B) reduce the benefit for farmers to flash crash. C) provide a reason for PvE WH corps to do more than turtle in their systems

It's a rough set of ideas, but I think it would certainly make WH space more interesting and get more people out and about.

Why not just one simple thing :
Keep everything the same but if a site is fully escalated it doesn't respawn at downtime.
Should be easy to do and removes farming in one system.

And then you can later add new sites or different gamemechcanics.

In any case if the use of capitals isn't a bonus(more isk, security,...) , then no one would use them.
And i like to kill capitals in w-space!

What ever the changes will be, the typical or even overkill fleet used to do sites in c5/c6 should be able to get killed by a fleet coming in with or without 1 capital.
It shouldn't be necesairy to always get a a full bhaalgorn/guardian/T3 response fleet. But there still should be capitals to kill.
If capitals aren't used in pve, they will be a lot less kills/targets in w-space.

The escalation you sudgest is similar to anomaly escaltions in k-space(wich also needs a bit work) but in w-space people would do the escalations even less. Because they have to find the hole with the escalation in... .
Many k-space escaltions are already not being done just because some people don't like to move far away.
And this is with a clear route to it.

I drew the idea from the framework of k-space escalations. The differences are as follows: 1) in k- escalations, there is no guarantee of any sort of meaningful payout. 2) they are (to my knowledge) all or almost all solo endeavours 3) they take people away from their preferred hisec transit. They are generally done by the risk averse who cling to hisec.

My proposal will 1) be based on corp effort (so the team who escalated doesn't need to be the ones online when the escalation j Sig is found. 2) they will stick around much longer. I am envisioning anywhere from 30-100 target systems for first escalations to 4 or 5 cap escalation systems that your corp would be looking for. 3) people in w space scan anyway, and what is 50 jumps through hisec today could be 3 jumps tomorrow. 3) using the blue loot award system would ensure more people doing it. I doubt I am the only person who would rather get a (almost) guaranteed 30-60M than a small chance of 600M, but more likely just 2M.

Additionally, this would get the caps (and subcap siterunners as well) out in space MORE, not less.

Bump

Ok, so I'm not opposed to changes to spice things up. The C5/6 escalations are so scripted they are stale. People get tired of doing the same thing over and over again, but the income/risk factor needs to remain. Smaller sites already spawn, and their reward is much lower. Having them potentially escalate is an interesting idea, but how would that be balanced across the board?

However, deploying capitals out of the home C5/6 would not fly. Wormhole mass restrictions are in place for a reason, and increasing the amount of mass that can fit through a wormhole would unbalance things quite a bit. The risk of -.9 space has to bring some security with it, and the assurance that a supercap fleet will not drop on a logistically limited POS trapped in a C5/6 is a balance factor to this issue. As it stands, a cap fleet siege is logistically difficult (and very well balanced currently) as it takes commitment to siege a large POS with multiple caps in a C5. With most wormholes out of a C5, sending a cap through so greatly reduces its mass that it could potentially get stuck very easily should someone in a neighboring wormhole move even a small fleet. Plus, any supporting ships coming along with the cap would be limited to, let's say, a carrier's maintenance bay size.