MrWacko
Squirrel Horde
Habitat Against Humanity
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Posted - 2012.05.08 22:45:00 -
[1] - Quote
Warning: Incoming wall of text taking up two posts.
The shield HQ/AS incursion community (The Valhalla Project) is still managing to move along, but it increasingly feels like we're taking war refugees. Frankly we'd be suffering too, if it weren't for having something resembling stable leadership, and running the least nerfed sites. The double/triple nerf to almost all incursion sites is way beyond what was needed or expected. As other incursion community leaders have stated already, the communities are suffering. Here's my take on why, from the (yet another) perspective of a shield HQ FC and community leader.
Incursions overall, of all flavors, were hit hard by the influence bar. Upwards of 100 people need to be actively running sites to keep the incursion bar down, and it takes forever to actually lower it to 0. If incursions were created today, they would never be touched for this reason alone. Low-sec and null-sec incursions are not being run now due to this very reason as well. Too much risk, for basically no reward relative to null ratting, plexes, etc. High-sec groups are being pushed together, but the shear effort and manpower needed to get anywhere with the influence bar is rather daunting.
VANGUARDS:
I run these the least, as I find the larger sites to be more fun, so this is less experience speaking, and more opinion gathering. They were nerfed the most, being hit with a triple hit in the form of the influence bar, reduced payout, and a huge spawn increase. One, maybe two of these would have been fine, if done with some thought. I like challenging sites, it makes folks think, and actually allows skilled pilots/FC's to get somewhere, but what you guys did was just up the tediousness of them.
Nation Commander Outpost (NCO): So there's more stuff to blow up, and legion fleets can't blitz them quite as insanely. At the end of the day though, it's just a turkey shoot. You need one site like that for all of them, at least as a simple introduction to the site size. Still tedious. Maybe a tad more randomization/threatening ships, but less overall ships. Honestly not sure.
Nation Mining Colony (NMC): A bit more diversity, as you have to do something other than blow up ships to get paid. Still a point and shoot kinda shindig though. Gets tedious quickly like NCO's though.
Override Transfer Array (OTA): These just went from being near the best, to being the crippled old man of Vanguards. While I have no issues with increased complexity/hardness/whatever, you guys made this a tad too hard for folks to get anywhere. 100km to travel for the hacking array makes specialization for this site a *****. You have to have a ship dedicated to this and nothing else, which at a fleet size of 10 is just silly. Has potential to be actually fun, but went a bit too far into the hard realm. Move the hack point closer to the spawn, and perhaps remove a few DPS ships.
ASSAULTS:
These are where I have a bit more experience. I still run HQ's the most, but I've been running Assaults more since the patch. Overall, these are just the bastard child of incursions. No one really runs them, as they were effectively double nerfed over the patch. Some shiny folks run them, but as soon as you hit NCN walls, you run into problems. Your patch notes from Escalation stated assaults would be buffed, which frankly didn't happen. I'm getting more info in the near future, as I hope to run them more.
Overwhelmed Civilian Facility (OCF): You added ships to the spawns. This makes them harder, not easier. You also have to blow up every ship on the field, which is just annoying. The civilian picking up is nice and has potential, but needs improvement. I'd suggest having captured civilians spawn from any ship, not just the romi's/last ship on grid from a wave. In addition, have larger ships give more captured civilians. Lastly, make it so that you have to defend the freighter as it leaves, and give the freighter the align/warp time of an actual obelisk (AKA forever). As all of that only really adds time, make more civilians spawn from the waves, and allow the civies to be dropped sooner. You could also change payout to index with the number of civies rescued.
Nation Commander Stronghold (NCS): While normally a semi-boring "shoot **** till it dies" site, randomized spawns and more threats, plus the larger fleet size makes this a bit more fun. Still not the manifestation of entertainment though. Maybe bring in logistics arrays, like OTA or Mom sites, in combination with a bit more incoming DPS, and change the commander spawn condition to be something other than his standing fleet being massacred.
Nation Consolidation Network (NCN): There are reasons these flood assault systems. Namely, we hate them. No, we don't hate them, we want to murder them, burn the corpse, and then curse NCN's entire bloodline. Split site was an inventive idea, except it is taxing on FC's (you need two of them), you drastically limit fleet comp (1 side doesn't take battleships), and it takes for ever to run the sides. Tier 3 Battlecruisers help quite a bit with the fleet comp problem, but they still take quite a while to run. If you guys wanna help, remove a room from each side, and allow T2 BC's into the cruiser side. I'm of the opinion that this site is hopeless, though. Split site goes against the grain of the whole group thing, splitting the fleet into two separate fleets.
And now, for HQ's! Only I'm running out of space in this post, so post number 2 here I come! |