Oradric Cube
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
2
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Posted - 2016.08.30 15:27:26 -
[1] - Quote
I would like to comment on the changes to mining boosts only. I do not have any opinion at this time about the combat boosts changing.
Please take into consideration the negative effect this will have on the new player experience. I am part of an in-game community where veteran players volunteer their orca boosters free of charge to help new players. These established players are very often afk and gain nothing for this. If they were at the keyboard they would probably do something profitable with their time instead. Could you please design these changes so that these selfless individuals can continue to help newer players that want to mine?
Here is my idea to make it possible:
Make it so that the new bursting boost modules stay active between warps for mining boosts. That way an afk booster can be dragged belt to belt via the existing "Warp Squad" mechanism without breaking the boosts. I don't think that this violates the risk vs reward design principle. If they're in the belt then they're at risk. They have very little personal reward. If they choose to afk then why not let them?
Please also take into consideration what this will mean for players that only have 1 account. If I'm a miner with only 1 account then I can only get boosts from someone else. Why would someone invite me? Burst boosts will mean that I will always be in the same belt as them, mining the same asteroids as them, slowing them down. I think the net result of the burst boost change will be that single account players will be invited far less frequently.
Here is my suggestion to address this issue:
Make "boost with dedicated hauler" mining operations easier to run. That will make it so more people run them and in that way single account players can also hopefully benefit from burst boosts.
How?
Change the fleet history tab to be more granular for ores & ice. Right now fleet history cannot be used to reliably determine who mined how much because mining 1 unit, kicking it to a jetcan, then looting it will sum up to 2 units "looted" in the fleet history. If you simply separated "mined" and "looted" into 2 separate aggregation buckets it would solve this problem. That would make boost & haul mining operations much easier to track.
(I'd actually prefer a fleet history mode that would record each event as its own transaction. A mode with no aggregation whatsoever. That wouldn't solve the problem directly, though, because we would still need a way to differentiate between "mined" and "looted".)
This is sort of a corollary to the previous point. It relates to the boosters themselves. If I'm a single account player and I want to be a Burst Booster for other players then what's in it for me? Why would I want to be active all the time if I'm making no isk? You can already pay folks for access to their boosts, but in practice few do because it's so easy to be scammed (IE: pay for 3 hours and the booster leaves early or kicks you out but keeps your isk). Even when it's not a scam it's a hassle to keep track of.
One possible solution:
Make tipping your booster more convenient. Facilitate the transacting of boosts as a service. Build an in-game mechanism that would allow a player to voluntarily pass X amount of isk (of their choosing) to a particular booster every time they get hit by a boost burst tick from that person. Then give the booster a readout of some sort. I'd love a line graph showing isk per burst on the Y axis on a 30 minute or 60 minute period over the X axis. Each person could be a different color line so that the booster could easily, at a glance, see if someone stops paying (and who). I'd like to be also able to tell visually the difference between someone not paying because the burst didn't hit them vs someone turning off their payment and still getting hit by boost (leeching). Perhaps a broken line vs a line that stays continuous but is drawn at 0. Either that or drawing the line to 0 vs -1. |