EVE General Discussion

I dont understand all the minutiae of this, but I do like the trend towards more dynamic NPC involvement into EVE, such that the environment reacts to player behavior.

Its an area of development that has been largely overlooked, but has a lot of potential.
I understand the argument that EVE is a player driven sandbox, and that this can be perceived as upsetting that principle. But without it, EVE as a systemic environment, is largely static, inert and unreactive.

An analogy, would be that EVE currently, from a systemic environment perspective, as a sandbox, is actually a vast, largely flat featureless tundra wasteland, where very little happens, very little changes, and which doesnt react to player behavior upon it.

I dont think these two concepts are mutually exclusive. Both can co-exist and feed into each other.
Ideally so that player interaction becomes even varied and complex, as adapting to a changing systemic environment that reacts to their behavior within it.

If we think of EVE, in totality, as a contained biosphere populated by Human and Non-human participants, it makes sense that there should be a dynamic, consequential interaction between them. That Human action affects the Non-human, and vice versa. The next evolution of that would be interaction between the Non-human participants of EVE too, to introduce an even more granular and environmental dynamic.

EVE as a system, first and foremost, provides a virtual environment for player v player interaction.
However, as a virtual environment in and of itself, it is currently a vast, largely inert and unreactive "space".
It makes eminent sense, to work on improving that virtual "space" to be dynamic and reactive to players.

Would you prefer EVE is a flat frozen tundra wasteland environment, or a dynamic topographically interesting rain forest environment of non-human "life" pursuing its own agendas in conflict/collaboration with yours and other non-human entities?

I applaud Remiel for bringing this angle of discussion up, though he risks a lot of flak for it.
If CCP is going down the line of NPC dynamics, there will be oversights and design/balance issues that need community addressing.

If this is the premise of the rest of your post, you might want to try again. If you believe this is what I'm saying, that I'd rather not adapt to it, then you also need to go back and re-read what I've written here, because I've already adapted. I already know how to handle it. I addressed this criticism directly in my OP because I knew someone would pull this crap. If people around here can't form an argument without beating a poor strawman to death, we're gonna have to start holding tribunals for war crimes against strawmen.

I don't actually disagree with most of this, except in one small detail...choice.

It may sound odd coming from someone who should know better, but as far as NPC interaction goes I do think that choosing to interact with NPC's rather than having them thrust upon you is important.

Better Ai, more interesting fleet composition, target prioritisation etc. are much to be desired in NPC's, and in some respects the new mining fleet defence forces actually do rather well. However if I choose to interact with NPC ( and I do through mission running/ ratting) then a more interesting experience is much to be desired, but when I choose (assuming I get a choice) to interact with players, then I resent NPC involvement on either side.

It's not that I can't adapt, I can and will, it's more my dislike of the direction this may head if it's deliberate. My personal feelings towards NPC's can be summed up as "The minimum amount of NPC interference, to allow for the maximum amount of player freedom."
In this respect, Concord are required. In order to have a High sec there needs to be consequences for illegal activity. Otherwise you may end up with something along the lines of enforced safeties in high sec allowing for war dec only aggression, and that's something I would certainly not like to see.

As well, we have faction warfare. In this I think CCP have done reasonably well (speaking as an outsider as I have never been part of FW). The tying in of PvP and PvE in FW seems to of been thought out rather well, although there may well be FW players who disagree with me on that. Of course FW in entirely optional, and something that will only affect you if you choose to participate.

Standings themselves are rather a grey area as far as I'm concerned. As someone who spent rather a lot of my early Eve life as a mission runner ( and still do missions today on occasion) I'm ok with the effect it has on faction standings, as it's an optional activity and managing my standings is reasonably simple. If I wreck my NPC standings through NPC activities then so be it. But wrecking my NPC corp standings because I engaged a player who is "hiding" in an NPC corp strikes me as silly. Up until now this has not been an issue simply because ( concord and faction standing aside) there was no real reason to care about NPC corp standings other than JC/ mission access. The new NPC fleets are going to change this dynamic.

PvP is different in my eyes. Granted it is an optional activity ( some of the time), but it is not something that should involve the "authorities" outside of high sec, or sentries in low sec (which exist for very good reason). Security standing hits are fine, they are something which need to be regulated by a player if, such as in my case, it is important to maintain access to high sec. However what I really love in Eve are the player consequences. Revenge, best served cold....and preferably by surprise is the ultimate in consequence, and requires no NPC involvement at all.

Kill rights exist, and should be used as often as possible. This is consequence!
Rather than introduce more NPC consequence CCP should really get their teeth stuck into the mechanics surrounding player driven consequence. Kill rights, bounty hunting, mechanics to allow a more viable [MERC] playstyle. (particularly the merc playstyle in my opinion). These are PvP consequences for PvP choices.

Ultimately I can adapt. But I still think a bad idea is a bad idea. This is my opinion naturally, and many will disagree with it. No problem with that at all, debates are a good thing. And I'm always willing to change my opinion based on new evidence or good arguments.

Peace.

Forgive me for not reading through the previous few pages to see if this was already mentioned, but from what I'm reading it seems the problem is that at least one npc "holding" corp is also one of those that has the new mining ops floating around, I assume predominately in Caldari space.

I believe one of the original premise's regarding mining ops was that if someone had high enough standings with the miners in question, they would receive assistance in the event they were aggressed... which seems somewhat more balanced compared to what the OP is describing, in that he can get potentially shafted if there's ever a Minedrill fleet nearby, regardless of the other player's standings, just because he's blown up a few (or a couple hundred) pilots who happen to be in that NPC corp.

Actively blowing up Minedrill miners on a repetitive basis would eventually warrant that instantaneous response fleet. I mean, if someone actively gets their standings up to 9+, then it's logical the miners would help them out. That's not to say active pvp'rs would do the same, but then you could just label and slap them on the naughty list, next to known cyno bait/always-flys-with-a-falcon pilots.

So yes, moving everyone in Minedrill to a different npc corp would help a lot... not shooting anyone who's in a corp like Minedrill won't because you can sometimes go hours without finding something to lay waste to, and passing up on pvp just because you don't want to get rustled by some angry npc miners later on is pretty lame, to say the least.

LS is fiercely competitive, aggressive, territorial and an ad hoc chaos depending on agreements/opportunity and interlopers. Its arguably the most dangerous, fragmented space sector, anywhere.

Mining in LS is fine, as long as you have LS corp support.
LS didnt "need" this scale of NPC intrusion, and if anything, it makes LS mining denizens safer.

Sleepers should stop shooting and warp off when we enter a combat site with players we wish to kill. Its really immersion breaking when we land and they immediately start helping the people who are actively killing them. CCPlease fix this issue.

Also, miners being attacked by NPC pirates is very detrimental to PVP since they are essentially stealing kills from PVPers. This needs to stop. Honestly, I'm not asking for a change in mechanics in favor of miners. Quite the opposite in fact.

No, it isn't. You'd like it to be a strawman. But it isn't. NPC attacking miners in belts is indeed not very player driven. The difference here is that this change doesn't benefit you personally, so it must obviously be a strawman. You're attempting to draw the line at A.I. level when the design "flaw" as you present it in your OP applies to both the same.

I'd prefer the opposite.

Beef up all rats. Make them all the new AI and after any player attacks them, have a response fleet.

That will draw out some tears.

I'll reiterate my real position as simply as I can, for the simple minded, like yourself.

The problem isn't the AI.

The problem isn't that they attack because you're -5.

The problem is that getting to -5 occurred by virtue of attacking players in that NPC corp, not attacking the corp itself.

I'm all for these new fleets doing what they do, but I didn't acquire my bad standings with DCM by virtue of attacking their mining fleets.

If it were up to me, there'd be no players in NPC corps at all. All players not in a player-corp would be in no corp. Corp-less. Because the 'bad standings' you get for attacking players in an NPC corp have been a bad idea since forever in the first place. Now, we're just giving players a reason to stay in those NPC corps. Hey I know, I'll make my PI toon in DCM and leave him there, so anyone that attacks him illegally in low sec now loses standings with DCM. Now they might not want to attack me if it means that their ability to hunt players in lowsec gets gimped by their negative DCM standings.

That's the problem.