nomatech
Terbo Holdings
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Posted - 2012.05.04 19:28:00 -
[1] - Quote
Hi Soundwave.
Thank you for your willingness to continue to review incursions. I'm speaking from an almost exclusively HQ fleet FC point of view and only occasionaly an AS FC point of view...my knowledge of the VG folks is mostly anecdotal.
One of the things coloring the feedback from the changes made last week is the fact that either due to fewer VG fleets running or changes to the Sansha Influence mechanic (or both), the Sansha Influence has been an order of magnitude harder to move since the patch. While we have the ability to compensate for running at high levels of influence in the HQ fleets and to a lesser extent in the AS fleets for longer periods of time, the VG's have been hit harder by this than anticipated I think. With fewer fleets running (Incursion local on the Shields side has been running at 50-75% of the pre-patch levels if that) it takes longer to run the sites, and with the bar being perceived to be not moving as fast as before, I think there may be some pilot frustration causing attrition. It's one thing to nerf the income, and make the sites perhaps more difficult...but stacking the higher influence for hours and hours longer than before is like a 3x affect rather than a 1-2x that you may have been aiming for.
As to the AS sites specifically, the Assaults appear to be only slightly more attractive to pilots and FC's since the patch. The changes to date do not at this early stage appear to have been sufficient to attract and sustain a new core or community of dedicated AS pilots and FC's in the long term. So I do applaud your interest in reviewing them in terms of making them more attractive to pilots either through further site refinements or even perhaps still meddling in the rewards. Again, at higher levels of Sansha influence, the longer run times of the AS sites make them even less attractive. We (The Valhalla Project HQ and AS Shield community) have been able to run AS fleets to date mainly as overflow from a full HQ fleet, and again only as a stepping stone into building a second HQ fleet. One of our long-term AS FC's returned from break and ran for a couple of days but didn't seem overly excited, and appears now to have returned to break. So HQ's remain far more attractive to all but a very small sub-set of pilots and FC's, again, not large enough to sustain a dedicated community.
I do not think this was an intended consequence of your changes.
You didn't ask specifically about the HQ changes. But I'm going to give feedback anyway. Only one site (NRF) was changed at all. It takes a bit longer to run and is no longer blitzable...no biggie. The sites take 50% or so longer to run at high influence, ok, we can work with that. And we have to now pay a little more attention to feet composition both due to the NRF changes and Influence levels (horrors...paying attention is so wrong). So, we've actually seen a small amount of growth in the Shields HQ community due probably to our stability and proven ability to cope with the patch changes. This growth however comes probably largely at the cost of both the VG fleets and potentially at cost of the Armor AS/HQ community who may not be able to afford those losses long-term.
So, TLDR. I think the Influence could afford to be looked at. At least in the context of it being a greater nerf than perhaps intended in the greater Incursion context. I also think AS's need to be again looked at to see if there are ways to increase the attractiveness to both pilots and FC's...however I don't know if that will take reward changes or site changes.
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