Assembly Hall

As the more F&I following CSM members may already know, a number of times in the last year I've posted some sketch concept designs for a more interactive PvE design, that could easily expand across all areas of space and bring PvE & PvP closer.

However I also know that the F&I forums have a lot of noise, and a great many good idea's, especially if only in sketch form due to the scope of the idea, get lost in that noise.
So I was wondering if after working along side some of the CSM to create a full design proposal, this is the sort of thing the CSM would be interested in forwarding to CCP.

To summarise the basic points in the concept.
NPC's no longer come in pre defined by name types.
- Instead all NPC's are simply named 'faction' 'class' and use the same ship types as players in most cases. E.G. 'Angels Cruiser' 'Rupture'
- NPC's are created via a dynamic system that takes the input of risk level of the site.
-- Factors affecting creation are crew level, module level, ship hull level, and implant levels.
-- Ships are created with real fittings, subject to the same rules as players for dropping. This reflects increased danger in each NPC most likely with increased drops, ideally keeping overall drop rate almost identical to the current situation.
-- Some NPC's, likely high value NPC's relative to the site, may also warp out if certain sub objectives are completed, meaning
- Ship Bounties are no longer visible, instead are calculated based on the value of the ship when it is destroyed.

Sites are created like anomalies, but in a linked site cluster.
- These site clusters have a primary site. For example. 'Angels Staging Post'. The primary site would be their 'POS' equivalent structure
- These clusters would also have a number of secondary sites. Interacting with these would affect the ships at all sites in some ways. E.G. 'C&C Relay' When engaging the relay, it forces them to switch power to shields meaning their fleet boosts are no longer available.'
- Completing any site, primary or secondary would start a despawn timer, based on the site completed. This rewards team work without forcing team work.
- Each site would have several sub objectives possible also, most of which would be optional, again to reward team work, but not require it for individual income.
- Site clusters may have local environmental effects. These may be damage clouds, buffs/nerfs like WH's. high speed asteroids that will bump ships around, or other such things to make space feel like it's 'unknown'

The NPC generation is meant to stop players being able to look up that for example an Outuni is a Neut heavy ship, primary them first, instead the Outuni would hide in the middle of the other Battleships and you would have to find it by looking for the Neut visuals, or by ship scanning. It is also meant to keep things fresh each site, and avoid the massive database and cumbersome ways of creating new enemies. If ship skins are implemented as a 'slot' device, this makes it even easier to do this as you can then put an appropriate sub faction skin on all their ships also.

The site generation is meant to allow for fleets to do these sites without changing the individual isk/hr ratio in most cases. 1 player could for example generate 50 million/hr (Pure example number). However 5 players spreading across the various sub sites & also doing a few optional objectives should also make 50 mil/hr, or maybe 55/hr to provide a small buff for group content, but should not be less on average, and should not be vastly greater either.
Additionally it should be possible to generate scenario's that actually require several players to work together, but these should not be every site.

In the long run, my idea was also to have these sites replace missions, making high sec no longer capable of supporting an infinite number of pilots from a single lvl 4 agent (in theory, Tidi mechanics would slow it down a bit), while also making it much easier to support a decent number of pilots active in space in a low/null/wh system, and to have PvE & PvP fittings come together much much closer by making Ewar & tackle a relevant part of these sites. However that's a trickier proposal and certainly couldn't be done at the same time as the sites were introduced since the sites would likely need a fair bit of tuning first, however I do also have some notes on various ways to handle replacing the mission system with this more dynamic system that allows & encourages fleets also.

Now, as you can see, even for a very quick overview without even trying to get into any kind of nitty gritty or real details on exactly what ship lines would go under what factions, how you would handle the fittings, how you would scale the crews & implants etc is still quite a long document. So obviously before I write 500 pages I'd like to know they will actually get read by the right people at CCP, and additional input especially from data crunchers (Myanna, I hear your one of those) to try and pre generate some of the values for balance would also be great.

(Yay, the draft actually saved when the forums tried to eat this post)

You obviously have missed the part where the Devs want PvE to be closer to PvP as it keeps things more dynamic, if things aren't strictly scripted you can't blindly follow a mission guide, as well as making it easier for people to get into PvP because PvE is actually a useful learning experience in things like tackle, EWar etc.

Unlike now.

This isn't about 'I want easy PvP'. If I wanted that I'd take up gate camping in a gang or miner ganking. This is about improving the game overall.

Hence asking the CSM to look it over, as a bunch of experienced people who have an idea what the Devs are thinking because they constantly talk to them, and may have discussed something along these lines and not be able to talk directly about it due to NDA.

It may have been discounted by the Devs, who knows, I don't, but I know the CSM will filter.