Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I typed this out in another thread and wanted to see if you guys had any input.

The amount of work to make this happen is staggering, what with balance and testing and economic impact and everything on top of the actual development. The number of people it would **** off equally so. I like it. We'll never see it.

I have suggested this kind of thing before.

Eve doesn't really do anything to prepare the average high-sec dweller for the realities of the game, which is apparant for anyone who has ever casually browsed this subforum. Due to this old and deep rooted problem I acknowledge that a sweeping change of this nature doesn't make financial sense from CCP's perspective, as there are a lot of empire pubbies perfectly content to shoot the same red crosses every day in their officer-fit Golems and Tengjews.

Traditionally we've always said that if you want to learn about PvP you should get out of State War Acadamy and join a player corporation, but I'm sure everyone can agree that player corps are a mixed bag. Players need to be taught about the game by the game itself, therefore we should have a new kind of PvE, or a new kind of mission that introduces the players to PvP scenarios. Send the player to find and kill one or two really hard and agressive NPCs, with tackle. Maybe the player will come out on top, maybe they'll die, maybe it was a trap and they get hot-dropped by stealth bombers and recons. Maybe they don't encounter anything and instead get blueballed. It can happen.

Newbies can handle PvP, the people we recruit all the time are proof of that. Evian Drinker got hero-tackle on a Tengu on his first day. Orion Winters got a warp-in for a fleet on the first supercap kill of the year on his second day playing. But the risk is negated in these cases by the fact that we give them free Rifters and take them out on fleet ops, Eve needs to also negate the risk while teaching players about PvP, because the only lesson that most people learn if they suffer a traumatic loss in PvP is to simply stay in empire and work up to a Golem.

In order to negate the risk we can get players who want to do these missions to join a specialized NPC corp, like with factional warfare. Then we give them free ships to do the missions in. Obviously the ships have restrictions like it can't be transferred in any way, it can't even travel outside of whatever constellation it was issued in, and they self destruct if they're ejected from. Player goes out in his free ship, tries to do fake PvP, wins or loses and they're no better or worse off in terms of pure isk.

If you win an encounter you get LP. If you die you take a small loss of LP. More LP gives you access to better free ships and fittings for you to take out, tougher enemies, higher LP stakes. You can cash in your LP for isk or items worth isk, and then return to normal 'civilian' life, and hopefully apply what you've learned against other actual players.

Ideally speaking in an RPG you wouldn't be able to easily tell a player from an NPC, unfortunately we don't have 'Holodeck' type AI available yet.

I generally like the suggestion though. However, there's some things missing. NPCs AI should also react based on player actions and history with the NPC faction. Standings need to matter, pirate NPCs should not attack players with good standings to them that haven't initiated a hostile act like shooting at them. This is also where Sleeper AI fails, if you were being attacked by a bunch of players, and another player jumps in and starts attacking the players trying to kill you, would you switch targets and try to shoot your potential savior instead? Of course not, and neither should NPCs.

I like this idea, but I feel obliged to point out what I see as being it's possible flaws.

For one thing, server load. I think CCP have already explained they cannot introduce sleeper or Incursion AI for all rats because it would increase server load too dramatically.

Also, I presume these boss type enemies are to be found in high sec? Then the rewards cannot be much higher than in current missions, or we just see yet more shifting of the risk>reward balance that originally made Eve great.

The bosses would either have to be relatively easy, and of little/no value, or you should limit players to killing the easy ones only a certain number of times before being pushed onto harder and harder enemies. Also, enemy ship types would have to be randomized and the player should not be forewarned. (E.g. "oh I'm fighting an NPC megathron, I'll fly a dual web loki and kite it.)

Only one person in a site at a time, this is a major issue imho. It means you can't scan down and kill the player if it's in low sec, or ninja salvage etc. if in high. But, if not implemented you will merely see people dual boxing RR battleships and lolwtf raping the NPC.

Anyway, it's a nice idea, and I would like to see high sec PvE become a little more challenging. But essentially what you're suggesting seems to be making bosses that are as difficult to defeat as, say, soloing the 8/10. If the reward was scaled to match, I'd have to object on principle. If it was merely used as some sort of "you can only run this once a day/week" training thing, fine.

I was under the impression this would replace mission rats with decent ones. You'd end up with an Increase to the risk rather than a decrease to the reward. The rest of your ideas about it just show you don't really 'get' what the guy is talking about. If someone is trying to make EVE PVE more like the PVP side of things, then a one person per site restriction breaks the intent immediatley. If people want to dual box RR ships, they can, just like they do in PVP. If they want to blob, then they can, just like in pvp. Of course, the rats might be dropping countermeasures on you. (ECM and/or neuts on the RR BS for example, just like in PVP.)

Ninja salvaging and mission runner ganking are part of the gage and should not be removed if the NPC AI is improved like this.

tl;dr, don't slap arbitrary restrictions on an attempt to make PvE more like PvP

One easy way to solve the solo vs fleet mechanics in sites, is to have a number of potential spawns that may show up as players arrive in the pocket.

For example:

Mission holder enters pocket, and sees base guy out at 32km in a Megathron-we really like them Megathrons here-Battleship, and 2 Tackle Frigates orbiting him out another 15km and swinging around to aproach him. He can see they're burning MWDs by the spped they come in on approach.

Flipping on his First Armor Rep and DC II, he watches as the first of his buddies arrive in a couple Interceptors, and start burning AB towards the two frigates.

A mere 10s later, as his buddies are engaged with the tackle and he's kiting them from a distance while tanking some significant DPS from the Mega, a Cruiser appears some distance back from the Mega, having warped in at 10km. Another Warps in a few seconds later, behind that one. Looks like they're both T2 by their paint schemes. An Arazu and a Deimos.

The Arazu moves away and his friend notifies he has been targeted, while the Deimos moves in to close range on the two of them. Looking at his Cap he cycles in the Booster on his own Mega, and fires up the 2nd Armor Rep, while switching targets to the Arazu and loading up some Federation Iron Charges.

The two Frigates are down now, and his last Fleet member is arriving; his shiny new Tempest automatically locks up the Deimos as the other two Tackle it, trying to keep range and transversal as the Deimos pounds into them. He directs his Ogre IIs towards the Deimos, off the Mega while kiting the Arazu, which looks to be in Structure now, and watches as the first of his friends goes down in one of the Interceptors.

The last of the enemies warps in on the Deimos, following his last friends arrival by no more than 10s, as he watches his tank start dipping towards structure he knows he's not going to make it through this one. That Mega has been pounding him the whole time, with its own Ogres circling him and spitting fire.

Fortunately, the Interceptor pilot is popping back in with Logi support some 30km back, and the Tempest is taking the Aggro from the latest arrival, a Dominix; which is just now engaging with some Hammerhead IIs, a Neut, and what looks like Minmatar Autocannons.

Great... the Hammerheads are on the Inty, and he looks to be going into structure fast; but at least it looks like the rest of this battle is going to be won, once he gets back here with his Rapier and targets up those drones.

"The Deimos is almost down, let's primary the Domi, and get back to this *******."

I understand what he proposed perfectly well, thank you very much, and it's come up before many times. The issues I pointed out aren't arbitrary, and they are quite limiting in the extent to which this idea could ever really be implemented. Unless of course you can think of solutions, which would be nice.

For example you suggest that the rats react to each situation, presumably so that people can't multi-box and just reap in massive rewards by running these missions in 20 seconds flat? Ok, so I warp into your site in a battleship, in high sec. I remote rep you quickly, the enemy react by warping support in or introducing jammers. I warp out of your site, leaving you in a very bad mood with a large spawn you can't kill.

Alternatively, presumably you are fighting a single bad ass NPC. I warp in and start remote repping the NPC, since this is a bad ass PvP NPC that has you pointed, you are well and truly screwed. I wait until you run out of buffer/boosters and lol my way home with your loot.


Reduction in number of rats is not equal to a reduction in workload by AI. This is either a simple HP/DPS buff of NPC rats, or it is introducing complex behavior that will significantly increase server load.

The latter is not necessarily bad, but I doubt the developers would be happy with making the behavior too complex if it was going to be used in something as common as missions. (In other words, I doubt they'd have the rats responding to player actions. More likely they'd just create a table of possible NPC ship types/fits, and associated NPC behavior for each type.)

Turn off the damn server off. Done. No more PVE. No More PVP. No more disparity because it no longer exists. Yeah, it would work far quicker then then 9 years EVE has been going that CCP hasn't figured out how to make PVE and PVP merge into one aspect.

And an improve AI is not giving all forms of EWAR, buffing the sh*t out of the damage, adding AoE debuffs that cripple ships across the constellation, and reacting on scripted responses without changing ship slots (really, do you think there is enough mids on Marauders for a point or that they are fast enough to catch long range ships...overhaul of all ships in EVE as well as mission scripts)...is not an actual improvement. Its just a harder NPC, increasing the damage mod of the NPC while reducing the effectiveness of the player at the same time is a changed line of code (which is not a near sentient response like an actual player, its still predictable what you can face its just a larger number of random variables) Before I would even consider it, CCP would have to increase rewards dramaticly or decrease the cost of marauders so I don't cringe after losing an 850m ship as if it could be a rifter that I can lose several in a day (when you toss away ships without feeling a loss, its like throwing out a used condom...do you really care if you lose it? No, you don't which is why everyone flys cheap and gank hulks for the "lol-challenging" of the high value blowjob they get to their killboard).

Change is a progress, by which people make suggestions or voice criticism, and someone else responds to it with an adjusted example which accommodates for that.

Quick examples:

- Mission responds to Fleet members and Neutrals differently.

In this example, we'll take my above scenario, and have a Ninja Salvager Warp in. Within 5 seconds of the Non-Fleet member Warping in, the mission will spawn an appropriate counter by warping it to either a player or NPC wreck nearest that individuals location. That counter-we'll say an AC stabber with Warp Disruptor and AB-will then engage the Ninja Salvager.

This does not severely effect the Mission Fleets operation, and requires the Neutral to be prepared to fight back. Once the Ninja Salvager has defeated the Rat, been defeated, or warped out; the NPC Rat will roam around the edges of the conflict, potentially awaiting the Ninja Salvagers return.

Potentially, it may also engage the Mission Rats, Warp out, or engage one of the Mission Fleet members. That should be determined by it's relative power and the curent Mission Fleet and NPC Rats. Ideally, it shouldn't unduly imbalance the mission in any way.

- Current Missions remain the same for most purposes; with perhaps only minor changes to AI that would make them more effective, and somewhat more of a hazard to Neutrals jumping in. A slight reduction in numbers may balance the increased difficulty of more intelligent behaviour. All other aspects of the Rats abilities, DPS, and EHP should remain much the same.

This is about offering alternatives to the current Missions through different agents in my mind; not neccessarily completely revamping current content with what may be unwanted changes by a good portion of the player base.

- Rewards for these new Missions should scale with difficulty, ship loss by the Mission Fleet, and pay out to each active fleet member. Example: increase insurance to 100% for ship loss, add decent bounties, reasonably good mission payout; Bounty and Payout automatically split between all members equally, or based on value of participation.

T2 NPCs will drop T2 wrecks, fittings and ammo dropped would be more appropriate to ship type and fit as if it were a player ship.

- AI changes combined with much smaller engagements should account for any increase in server load as a result of these types of missions.

Really, all we're looking at here, is a basic analysis of playership, followed by a delay in which the server searchs appropriate counter including a basic fit and ship type based on the level of the mission. Tactics would be decided by typical player strategies and available weapons/EWAR options.

Example above: Deimos and Arazu responded to the new fleet members warping in with T2 Intys by spawning an Arazu and Deimos. Both ships proceeded to engage those players-rather than using Blob tactics-as their ship type and fit would generally be used. Warp in for them was based on the NPC Megas position, as it would be for assistance arriving in a player gang.

Following that, the Domi arrived in counter to the Tempest by warping in on the Deimos position, yet engaged the remaining Inty with Drones; while firing ACs on the Tempest and Neuting him. Also a potential player response determined by threat and position

Effectively, it is similar to the sleeper AI, yet slightly less Blob oriented. Sleepers tend to pick targets almost at random, based on varying factors. Not sure how Incursion AIs work yet; so I can't say anything regarding that. Actually not sure how Sleeper AI works either; just that it is much more hazardous than Mission Rats.

- Option to introduce new Named System Rats which act in the same fashion, or convert named Rats to this model. Either/or, though I can see a problem where Low and 0.0 are already hazardous enough, without adding this. Perhaps just modified AI.

- Example I gave above would possibly be a Level 3 or Level 4 Mission.

Did I miss anything?