Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Lucas, if the guy ratting away goes and takes a dump and then the hostile comes in, catching the ratter takes literally no skill. You keep talking about how skill is some sort of equalizer, when in fact is is not or its effect is minimal. Hell, even in your perfect play all around (i.e., everyone plays perfectly) the PvE guy always win. Skill is NOT a significant factor for the PvP guy. Either he gets lucky (the PvE player did something dumb) or he does not.

Nikk and I find that sort of dynamic....problematic. You don't, great.

Of course you do. If you don't have yourself set up properly and react near instantly, a good hunter will catch you. This is what happens every single day in null. People who are not reacting fast enough get blapped. It's not a timer, it's another player's speed at locating and getting to you. If they warp in and have a poke around a few planets and then think "oh actually, I should probably d-scan to see where these people may be", then you can take your sweet time. If they come in flick their dscan and hammer straight towards the likely location of your ship, you need to react substantially faster.

FFS, it's a theoretical question. If the best hunter in the game can always win against the best PvE player, then he can guarantee kills, since it's impossible for someone to be more skilled than he is, and thus PvE is dead. You continually avoid it because you know this to be true, which is why when I ask you a dead simple question you throw a page of hurf instead of a simple answer.

Simply put, it's fine as is and your suggestions would be the death of null PvE by making an already overpowered class even more overpowered.

I never misunderstood that.

That was directed at this comment:


I try to anticipate the most likely counter arguments / points that will be made, and random probabilities had been mentioned.

In my view, random elements exist purely because the detailed math formulas are too tedious and can be emulated for smaller details more efficiently. (Things like gun damage per shell use, etc)
These factors would average out rapidly enough, so the random replacing it gives the same net result.

The context here, is that player skill would not be subverted by any random process at work.
A potential argument that I wanted to preemptively counter before it wasted time.

Then you're not very good at anticipating since I had no intention of suggesting they add random. I agree that it would detract from the current skill based system. The point I was making is that because there is no random, the outcome is predictable, and so if the best aggressor can beat the best defender at the peak of their performance then he will always win.

I understand, you may not be considering my response to be directed at anyone but yourself.

The irony, which you missed, was that Teckos beat you to this point, and I was correcting the idea that it was directed just at him.

It was not aimed just at you either.
You were simply the one who voiced the quoted section, and brought up the point as a potential concern.

This preemptive counter was placed as a benefit to any reading the thread, who might have been wondering over that detail.
You may not be considering this, but I suspect far more view this thread, than simply post in it.
Similarly, I monitor a number of threads which I rarely comment in.

Why would we be assuming second or third rate players are sitting in null sec?

If they don't already have the experience, they certainly expect to grow into it by moving out into the null section of space.
They may not have the experience at first, but players who don't learn tend to not stay either.

(Seriously, what alliance doesn't train or at least pre-qualify pilots, and still have a competent reputation?)

We have to consider circumstances for many of these kills seen, which would disqualify them as being meaningful to this discussion.
(Traveling between systems at just the wrong time, an AWOXer involved or aiding hostiles, etc.)
Our discussion involves PvE who are staying in system, behind border systems providing reasonable intel, with infrastructure in place for get-safe destinations to run to.

Preemptive counter: the presence of intel, which has little to no excuse to not exist here, should shift players out of being careless or overconfident resulting from extended periods of safe operation.
Players SHOULD be playing defensively, and have at least a suspicion that a hostile is in the neighborhood.

To your first point, regarding the belief that PvE kills on the boards support the idea that they happen despite skilled players efforts to prevent them.

Yeah, while anything is possible, that is simply not proven here.
If anything, it demonstrates an existing subset of players not able to work out how to avoid being hunted.
Perhaps you do have a point, that cloaked hunters and interceptors are culling the less experienced players...

As to the second point, invalidating actual data...
No. I am rather giving players the benefit of the doubt, which you do demonstrate as perhaps being too kind.
Experience has taught me that PvE ships are most vulnerable in transit, rather than on site actually operating.
You are more likely to be caught at a gate, than in a belt or rat spawn.

As to the third point, I have trouble understanding why you insist on comparing any intel change to a complete absence of existing intel details.
I feel the need to point out that adding vulnerability to intel is not the same as removing it.
Although, to be fair, I believe Outposts should not provide more than what is on grid with them in overview range, not necessarily every pilot in the system.

As to the fourth point, it's null sec.
The expectation of safety should be greater in high sec.
It isn't... mostly because it seems you can't clear systems of non-allied ships like null often sees possible.
So, unlike null, you can't have PvE without accepting the direct presence of potential hostiles in system.
In High. if you stayed docked until things were clear, it is unlikely you would find much time to actually PvE.

Devs noticed this, and placed the higher rewards where the higher effective danger was.
I would try to avoid suggesting the devs are out of touch, or badly informed, to the point where the rewards poorly match the risks present.

I completely disagree. Each player is going to have different actions in the situation to take. For example, the PvE pilot can take actions a1-a5. Whereas the PvP pilot has actions b1-b5. It might be the case that if the PvP pilot takes the following actions:

(b1|a1) => kill
(b2|a2) => kill
…
(b5|a5) => kill.

But for all other action combinations the PvE pilot successfully evades. So now how many combinations are there? Now, just based on this (and assuming I calculated the number of combinations correctly) the chance of getting a kill by randomly selecting an action will be 20%. This is a highly abstract and stylized example, the it highlights how player actions determine the outcome where each side has a chance of obtaining their desired goal (kill/evasion). The current mechanics also depend on player actions, but the outcome is much more skewed. If the PvE player is playing “correctly”, they will almost surely get away. The PvP has to hope for a mistake on the part of the PvE player which mainly boils down to the player being distracted from playing “correctly” (e.g. wife/kid agro, watching porn, taking a dump, getting a drink, etc.).



No it does not. Every game has a Nash equilibrium, but many of those equilibria are based on mixed strategies—i.e. each players best response is randomized over the actions. In fact, I’d argue that a game that leads to players picking pure strategies (i.e. they always do the same thing) are boring/bad game play.



Lucas, what you wrote does not in anyway undercut what I wrote. Sure a player can get kill after kill that takes little or no skill other than dodging other PvPers and possible being somewhat quick with scanning. Why? Because there are a lot of people out there ratting in AFKtars. Catching an AFKtar is not exactly the pinnacle of PvP skill…because for all intents and purposes the player in question is AFK. It takes about as much skill as killing an AFK cloaked ship if they were to become scannable. Killing an AFK ship is not hugely dependent on skill. That a player can rack up such kills is not an indicator of skill.

It is called Minimax. A strategy where you minimize the maximum potential loss. It has wide spread use in decision theory, game theory, etc. Particularly when there is uncertainty involved.

Again, I completely disagree with this. Nikk is right. The PvE player does not need tremendous skill to evade. All he needs in tremendous endurance to stare a local/intel channels. Even if you are a bit late spotting that hostile you still have a good chance of getting away depending on how long the lapse was and what ship the guy is in, and which anomaly he is warping too. If the hostile figures speed is his best option he might randomly pick an anomaly and see if he can get lucky. If he thinks he might have some time, he might try some quick d-scanning. Or possibly probes. But the latter two strategies will increase the time interval from first appearing in local to warping to the PvE guy—i.e. it gives the PvE guy a better chance of surviving even if there was a lapse in staring at local.

And you do not know what happens “every single day in null”. All you are seeing are kills on a kill board. BFD. Those data points tell you very little about the exact circumstances of the kill. Was the ship an AFKtar? If so, then there is even less reason to believe there was much skill involved.