Jame Jarl Retief
Murientor Tribe
Defiant Legacy
342
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Posted - 2012.11.09 15:37:00 -
[1] - Quote
Dear OP,
In general, I agree with you, though perhaps not for the reasons you presented.
One thing that worries me is, this game still has a fairly/very vibrant mission runner community. When I was starting out, I would spend my evenings running L4s in high sec, chatting in Missions channel, there were regular folks there, the discussions were anywhere from serious to total nonsense, and it was just a fun and relaxing thing to do in the evening where I didn't have the energy to play something that actually required me to actively move and dodge. EVE PvE is really great like this. A few clicks, watch things melt for a minute, a few more clicks, and again relax for another minute. Not very demanding.
This gameplay could go to hell with the coming AI change. There are some missions that I personally believe will no longer be soloable, not without very good/excellent character skills and a very well built (expensive) boat. That means, all those casual players looking for relaxing PvE in high sec in collegiate atmosphere are about to have that gameplay destroyed. And for what? If they wanted to fight sleeper AI, they could have gone to wormholes or ran incursions. They CHOSE the low-pressure, low-payout L4s because that's gameplay they prefer.
What's more, this change will also put into stark contrast the imbalance in EWAR systems. Previously, as Gallente, you could deal with jamming Caldari NPCs fairly easy. Just pull aggro, dump out aggressive drones. Presto. After the change, if you are jammed, you are dead in the water. Why? Because you can't order your drones what to do, and if they take damage and you pull them in, releasing them won't make them re-engage the target, and you can't even remote-repair them. In other words, you're totally screwed. And there's quite a few missions where you face 3-5 jamming elite cruisers in a single pull. Which WILL jam you. That's just one example how this upcoming change will further wreck missions.
In my mind, I see this AI change the same way I see the UI change in Inferno. It wasn't ready, nobody really wanted it except for a tiny minority. But CCP still shoved it down our throats, despite MASSIVE amounts of negative feedback regarding the operation and features of the new UI. They're doing the exact same thing now, with the AI change. I see virtually no positive arguments as to how this improves the quality of the gameplay, but I see tons of examples how it negatively affects it. In many facets - from high-sec carebear mission running to null ratting and everything in between. The argument that "it works in wormholes and incursions" does not work, because both of those are designed as group content, not solo content.
Bottom line, I don't see anything good coming out of this change. Especially if it is not ready. This is really something that needs to be TOTALLY polished before release, not iterated over the coming year to get it up to snuff.
Having said all that, I strongly urge everyone to stop complaining. Why? Because the bigger the explosion of negativity after the expansion release, the better the results will be. Remember Incarna. Remember the rage explosion after the Incarna. Remember how CCP scrambled for Crucible? Same thing can happen with this expansion. The bigger the rage, the higher the odds they will finally pull their collective head out of wherever they are keeping it and start paying attention to user feedback. Not just nodding along and then saying "yeah, well, we're releasing it anyway, brace yourselves because it's mighty cold." |