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Leon De Grande
Diamond Command
5
   |
Posted - 2013.12.21 19:32:00 -
[1] - Quote
Hello CCP & EVE: Online!
I will try to explain what I think is a lack of fleet-specific/group oriented PvE content in EVE,
Also I will try to explain why I think this content is good for players and the game itself,
Finally I will point out why I think some content can be revised/implemented.
Lack of group-oriented PvE content!
I've always been impressed by the unique qualities of PvE (and PvP) content in EVE: Online. The combat mechanics in general when compared to other MMOs are fresh and engaging. With it's myriad of possible roles and fits, and the fact that in a durable combat fleet every ship that's going to be near the line of fire needs to be able to tank it somehow, EVE is thrilling for all combat players involved.
With this in mind I have always been surprised at the lack of group-oriented PvE content in this game, especially at the lower levels. We have Incursions, and C5/C6 wormhole sites, but nearly everything else can be run solo and is not necessarily challenging or dynamic for fleets due to not being designed just for fleets!
Finding engaging group content!
For a long time now I often FC fleets of inexperienced players; taking them into dangerous places in search of challenging content for the purpose of pushing them to realize their limits, and grow as players. When the tech1 ships were re-balanced with the tiericide this style of game play became far more feasible. Now we often run C3s in tech1 frigate fleets, or harder wormhole content/incursions in tech1 cruiser fleets. (Sometimes we run C5s in tech1 frigate fleets if the system bonuses are appropriate.)
This is good for players!
These fleets are good for the pilots; and the reaction among regular and non-regular attendees has always been immensely positive. Not because of the profits; they're good considering the ships being used & experience of the pilots, but mainly because of the experience, the challenge and the accessibility provided by running such content in the lower tier fleets. Our ships are not very powerful, so they're also inexpensive. This makes the content more challenging, and less frustrating when people make mistakes and ships are lost. In the end everyone has fun gaining valuable experience unique to fleets. It strikes a good balance between profit, challenge, and fun.
PvE content aimed specifically at lower tiered pilots should be implemented!
With the advent of tech1 support frigates/cruisers, and the tiericide combined with the long-standing mechanic of warp gate restrictions designing content specifically aimed for (and only accessibly by) fleets of tech1 frigates and/or tech1 cruisers doesn't seem far-fetched.
Look at existing but undervalued content, Incusions! (scout sites)
A good place to start looking I think are the entry-level incursion sites that virtually no one does. (Unless I am missing something they're practically worthless, <3 u CCP don't hate me) The gates here could be changed to only allow tech1 frigates. After that one could scale content accordingly. Pilots could put together some nice fleet doctrines and start running entry-level incursions.
For some crude math lets say a frigate can get about 2500-3500 EHP buffer in armor or shields. A support frigate could provide about 180-250 active tank. With 2.25 cycle time on remote armour repair modules we can be generous and give 6-8 seconds for repairs to land. The sites could be designed so that in practice the frigates would not have to deal with more than about 300-550 incoming DPS at once.
Due to varying degrees of capacitor stability and DPS output with such low-tier ships the category of tech1 frigate incursion sites could have a little scale of progression all their own. Starting with the easy sites that output only 300 incoming DPS in practice, to the hardest ones with 550 DPS, capacitor warfare, EWAR and NPC RR. The easy sights would be lenient and not require excellent piloting, the harder ones would require good piloting and fleet coordination.
(DPS numbers are theoretical of course, actual content would be scaled so that there is enough NPC DPS that support frigates need to pay attention and rep in time.)
Conclusion!
The situations and obstacles mentioned above will be encountered by players who want to do more difficult combat in EVE Online, PvE or PvP, and this kind of content could help them learn how to deal with it. Unfortunately many are turned off learning how due to the lack of content balanced towards lower tiers, and the resulting entry barriers. While it makes sense for the most epic content and reward to be accessible only with great ships and pilots, there's no reason for this style of game-play to be inaccessible to newer players!
With group-oriented PvE content, balanced and restricted to lower tier ships, these entry barriers would be removed and players of EVE: Online would have more reason to get out and play actively with each other. |
Alvatore DiMarco
Capricious Endeavours Ltd
1513
|
Posted - 2013.12.21 19:44:00 -
[2] - Quote
I have long believed that the incursions are balanced improperly. Scout sites should be useful and should be completable by a group of Frigates/Destroyers/AFs/Dictors with logi frig support. Vanguards should go to AFs, Cruisers, HACs, BC and CS. Assaults should be where the battleship content begins and HQs should be hardcore beyond all things hardcore. Naturally, acceleration gates into sites should be size-locked to keep battleships out of Vanguard sites and cruisers out of Scout sites.
LP rewards should be tweaked to scale appropriately: Scout site LP goes way up, Vanguard LP goes down, Assault LP stays the same or drops very slightly and HQ LP remains as-is.
Killing Sansha rats in the belts should also yield LP per rat kill, based on hull size killed. It is mind-bogglingly stupid that there are Sansha belt rats just everywhere in these incursion zones and yet there's not a hint of reward for harvesting them.
Incursionbears who wish to whine about this change or threaten to ragequit their 15 accounts should be allowed to whine while the change gets made anyway. There needs to be "endgame" fleet PvE content in K-Space for something other than just battleships. |
Icarus Able
Traverse Holdings
228
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Posted - 2013.12.21 19:47:00 -
[3] - Quote
There is group oriented content. L4s can be group if you bring cruisers/BCs. C2 wormholes can be group if you bring cruisers and so o and so forth. |
Alvatore DiMarco
Capricious Endeavours Ltd
1513
|
Posted - 2013.12.21 19:49:00 -
[4] - Quote
Icarus Able wrote:There is group oriented content. L4s can be group if you bring cruisers/BCs. C2 wormholes can be group if you bring cruisers and so o and so forth.
This community is shockingly adept at sidestepping issues. Maybe that's why issues so often go without being fixed.
What you say is correct, but missions and wormholes and Incursions are not the same at all. |
Leon De Grande
Diamond Command
6
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Posted - 2013.12.21 19:51:00 -
[5] - Quote
PS: Please keep the topic focused on the subject matter of the 1st post primarily, this 2nd post is additional subject matter not meant to augment, not sidetrack, from the primary.
Advanced Topic: Logistics = Reward
(Real logistics, eg. The coordination of an operation, people & assets)
I mentioned incursions first because I truly think the lowest level incursions are a good place for entry-level fleet content. Mainly because they're in HighSec, and very easy to find and gain access to. Other content, like exploration content (especially in low/null/wormhole ), requires more effort and skill to find and access efficiently. Additionally, depending on where it is, one could be attacked when running the content.
Therefore I think it would be a good idea to also implement fleet-oriented PvE content in exploration as well. The content could be on a similar same scale of difficulty as my theoretical incursions, with the average profit scaled up a bit corresponding to the required amount of additional effort in accessing the content.
The type of reward given could be varied as well, for the sake of variety and facilitating more decision making.
- The familiar faction, deadspace, BPCs...
- Something like overseers effects, but drop in stacks. This opens up the possibility of a fleet member thieving the reward and running off with it.
The idea of scaling reward with logistics effort could be expanded upon. |
Leon De Grande
Diamond Command
6
|
Posted - 2013.12.21 19:53:00 -
[6] - Quote
Icarus Able wrote:There is group oriented content. L4s can be group if you bring cruisers/BCs. C2 wormholes can be group if you bring cruisers and so o and so forth.
This is a misleading statement. You might as well say belt ratting can be done in groups. Class 1 anomalies can be done in groups. Level 1 missions can be done in groups. Just because it is literally possible to run content in a fleet does not mean the content is designed for fleets.
You also completely missed the point of my thread. I mentioned content designed specifically for fleets. Encounters that are challenging, dynamic, and fun for groups. Level 4 missions are not because they were not designed for it. |
Leon De Grande
Diamond Command
6
|
Posted - 2013.12.22 22:46:00 -
[7] - Quote
The majority of people I know who started then stopped playing this game was due to reasons related to those in this topic. When I ask them why they stopped they said it was because there was not enough challenging social content for them to tackle early on, and they felt like they had to wait months to skill up for better ships before they could do anything relevant. |
Malphas Inanis
Brave Newbies Inc.
Brave Collective
4
|
Posted - 2013.12.26 15:42:00 -
[8] - Quote
I like the idea and I am always willing to support more group oriented PVE stuff have a +1!
This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous GÇô indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.
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Seranova Farreach
523
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Posted - 2013.12.26 18:23:00 -
[9] - Quote
Alvatore DiMarco wrote:I have long believed that the incursions are balanced improperly. Scout sites should be useful and should be completable by a group of Frigates/Destroyers/AFs/Dictors with logi frig support. Vanguards should go to AFs, Cruisers, HACs, BC and CS. Assaults should be where the battleship content begins and HQs should be hardcore beyond all things hardcore. Naturally, acceleration gates into sites should be size-locked to keep battleships out of Vanguard sites and cruisers out of Scout sites.
LP rewards should be tweaked to scale appropriately: Scout site LP goes way up, Vanguard LP goes down, Assault LP stays the same or drops very slightly and HQ LP remains as-is.
Killing Sansha rats in the belts should also yield LP per rat kill, based on hull size killed. It is mind-bogglingly stupid that there are Sansha belt rats just everywhere in these incursion zones and yet there's not a hint of reward for harvesting them.
Incursionbears who wish to whine about this change or threaten to ragequit their 15 accounts should be allowed to whine while the change gets made anyway. There needs to be "endgame" fleet PvE content in K-Space for something other than just battleships.
scouts are aweful they have no reward worth of the time and are solo-able in a hurricane
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http://i.imgur.com/d9Ee2ik.jpg
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Batelle
Komm susser Tod
922
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Posted - 2013.12.26 19:20:00 -
[10] - Quote
The difficulty in designing rewarding group content for lower-level pilots is that it will be cheesed for great profit by those with higher SP and better ships, and CCP is generally opposed to putting artificial limits on who can do what with what ships. Gate restrictions and payouts per-pilot instead of evenly split rewards examples of times where CCP does place such restrictions.
I think changing incursion scout sites into something to reasonably be done with a small gang of frigs and cruisers would be pretty awesome, but the rewards should be low.
Also, what about level 5s?
A lot of exploration plexes weren't designed to be solo content either, but they became such due to ships getting stronger and SP going up.
Any new fleet stuff should happen in lowsec as well. Lowsec PVE takes on a much different flavor when you're in a group.
"CCP is changing policy, and has asked that we discontinue the bonus credit program after November 7th. So until then, enjoy a super-bonus of 1B Blink Credit for each 60-day GTC you buy!"
Never forget. |
Leon De Grande
Diamond Command
6
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Posted - 2013.12.27 00:44:00 -
[11] - Quote
Batelle wrote:I think changing incursion scout sites into something to reasonably be done with a small gang of frigs and cruisers would be pretty awesome, but the rewards should be low.
- Of course, definately. It would be more for the experience than earning oodles of ISK in any case. The reward should be high enough that it is useful however... Maybe so the average pilot in a frigate fleet could be earning 8-10mil ISK/hour.
Batelle wrote:Also, what about level 5s?
Level 5s are great and we do them from time to time, but due to the nature of K-space rats long-range DPS is best and short-range ships like frigates spend more time flying into range than anything else which is not very engaging gameplay.
Batelle wrote:Any new fleet stuff should happen in lowsec as well. Lowsec PVE takes on a much different flavor when you're in a group.
I agree with this. Getting people into fleets to earn decent amounts of ISK and also put them in space where they'll have to deal with others is accomplishing two good goals at once IMO.
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Leon De Grande
Diamond Command
6
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Posted - 2013.12.27 00:46:00 -
[12] - Quote
Seranova Farreach wrote: scouts are aweful they have no reward worth of the time and are solo-able in a hurricane
I agree. I may be missing something important, but I don't even know why scout sites exist right now. They seem pointless. This is part of the reason I think it would be good to start here with re-vamping some content.
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Malphas Inanis
Brave Newbies Inc.
Brave Collective
4
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Posted - 2013.12.27 15:17:00 -
[13] - Quote
this could easily be done by only allowing certain ships into the events thus making it harder to solo them.
This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous GÇô indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.
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Zan Shiro
Alternative Enterprises
271
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Posted - 2013.12.27 17:07:00 -
[14] - Quote
Malphas Inanis wrote:this could easily be done by only allowing certain ships into the events thus making it harder to solo them.
thing is ccp is only a handful of people who don't have the time to theory craft all combos of fits and tactics. With several thousands of players at some point someone is going to find a new combo that works.
I am pretty sure the author(s) of say maze when done thought this here 10/10 will be challenging and need a few people. At some point solo maze tengu said guess again.
I am also sure level 5 devs did not see see rattlesnake spamming come down the pike to crap on their grand scheme of making it a pita with neut towers galore. Put on tinfoil hat time maybe but I think rattler played some part into why level 5 was moved to low sec entirely. Which is a shame...it was one area where it outshined many other ships. Well that and even denser players learned oh....I take an inty/sb to see the agent in low sec to make getting the mission which could be the hardest part of a level 5 much easier.
And grand scheme ccp would have to remove off grid links off the table entirely. Little bit of snake or crystal, links to enhance that (as the t3/cs does not need to be in the area, just has to not be pos'd up atm), some bling fits and magic can happen. The semantics of solo with running a linky alt while it can be debated...is what it is in the current state of the game. |
Leon De Grande
Diamond Command
6
|
Posted - 2013.12.27 18:59:00 -
[15] - Quote
Zan Shiro wrote:Malphas Inanis wrote:this could easily be done by only allowing certain ships into the events thus making it harder to solo them. thing is ccp is only a handful of people who don't have the time to theory craft all combos of fits and tactics. With several thousands of players at some point someone is going to find a new combo that works. I am pretty sure the author(s) of say maze when done thought this here 10/10 will be challenging and need a few people. At some point solo maze tengu said guess again. I am also sure level 5 devs did not see see rattlesnake spamming come down the pike to crap on their grand scheme of making it a pita with neut towers galore. Put on tinfoil hat time maybe but I think rattler played some part into why level 5 was moved to low sec entirely. Which is a shame...it was one area where it outshined many other ships. Well that and even denser players learned oh....I take an inty/sb to see the agent in low sec to make getting the mission which could be the hardest part of a level 5 much easier. And grand scheme ccp would have to remove off grid links off the table entirely. Little bit of snake or crystal, links to enhance that (as the t3/cs does not need to be in the area, just has to not be pos'd up atm), some bling fits and magic can happen. The semantics of solo with running a linky alt while it can be debated...is what it is in the current state of the game.
You forgot to factor in limits on ISK/time. It doesn't seem too far-fetched to restrict sites to tech1 frigates with acceleration gates, and simply scale the payout per site to be low enough that it's nice content to run as/with newer players, but doesn't pay enough that veteran players would want to do it for the ISK value. |
Malphas Inanis
Brave Newbies Inc.
Brave Collective
6
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Posted - 2013.12.28 15:32:00 -
[16] - Quote
ya I think with some common sense limits on ships it could be doable
This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous GÇô indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.
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