I think I’t would be removed from those system’s as I’m sure all the portal’s will cause unnecessary lag.
tldr: Having tier 1 - 3 sites not give you a suspect timer in Highsec devaluates loot and thereby replaces interactive and suspense-packed gameplay with grinding.
I’m also not sure the idea of making an exception from the suspect rule for tier 1 - 3 is a good one. You have two options how to generate value in those abyssal sites - by time investment and / or by investment of capital. The default MMO way is close to pure time investment where the value you recieve from running a site equals the opportunity cost of not doing other isk-generating activities. The thing is: The feature of abyssal space offers the option to go heavy on the capital side of value generation by making the product of required ship value and average chance to lose that ship way bigger than the value of the time spent - which also means more pewpew!
in my mind it looks something like this:
expected value of a run = value of grindtime(isk/h) * time(h) + spent consumables (ammo, boosters, charges) + value of used ship * chance to lose that ship
I assume you, CCP, want to make sure Abyssal mods are valuable so they don’t screw with balance too much, therefor the current super low droprate for mutators. But you could also rise the cost of aquiring the mutators on the supply side by making it riskier to do so. The unpredictable environments and advanced A.I. are doing a very good job at that at the moment, but they are still A.I. and this will change over time, simply because people will figure out which tier can be done afk in that environment and willingness to increase the chance of losing the ship has to be justified by increase of expected value generation - which is hard to imagine in this case since pockets up to tier 3 of 5 can be run without risks already and the ship value will be way greater than value of time spent. Having tier 1 - 3 not affected by pvp, it takes away the only non - removable risk factor which would make value generation capital-intensive, which in this case also means encouraging pilots shooting each other and generating fear of loss & therewith suspense-packed gameplay.
Of course, if nothing of value is dropped from a site, then you can exempt it from the suspect requirement. No effects = no problem. So having a tier 1 site without suspect timer which doesn’t drop anything of real value would not be an issue.
I see that turning abyssal space into a grind fest is easy to balance since it reduces the effect of ingame imbalance of security space - but attempting to equalise the risk of losing your ship amongst all security spaces would the be quality approach to create interactive content. NS and rolled WHs might need some love there too, even if the work these two put into reducing risks has to be rewarded as well.
Yea I would hope tier 3 would at least give you a timer, tier 1 and 2 can be for people to get their feet wet, but I don’t agree that muta should be even rarer than they are now that will just make them unusable.
3 Likes
yes, i meant that instead of making their dropchance as low as it currently is, we should make it risky to run the pockets
2 Likes
Anyone have a clue about vial t4 or t5 ship to run these sites? I’ve tried Gila and Vagabond, they work fine until triglavians encounter. Webs+Neuts+BS dmg nukes everything I’ve tried so far 
I’ not able to sustain the dmg or get close to BS before I’m out of EHP.
What is the idea behind giving the Leshak a base PG of 17k and having the base cost of T2 Large Desintegrator cost 17.4k? Unless we are speaking mandatory powergrid upgrades, the bit PG you’ll have left will come from AWU 5 and PG 5, right?
I’m guessing that’s where implant’s/drug’s and faction mod’s/muta mod’s come into play.
Hot take:
The basic big idea is fine to great. The actual tech is fine to great. The execution is currently just plain gross.
I suspect people are going to HATE this content on live. It is basically a Simon Says pixel hunt through the fitting system with binary solutions, and not actually content about internet spaceships.
The vast majority of players won’t log into the test server. The encounter design feels more like designers showing off how well the understand the fitting system than using the fitting system as a tool to allow interesting things to happen during a pitched internet spaceship battle.
What is worse is that the player knows that the game designer has successfully executed a ‘gotcha’ potentially 10-15 minutes before the content will actually kill them. Not only are they gotten by a ‘gotcha’, but their entire gamestate is a total loss where NOTHING can be salvaged and every single game play decision they make has zero meaning and they should just get up and walk away from the computer and make a sandwich. Its like dead air during a podcast or show. Something is DEEPLY wrong with a podcast with dead air. Something is DEEPLY wrong with a game where it is patently obvious that all your inputs are pointless for an extended period of time.
Even when successful in the content, it isn’t because of player agency. It is a giant fittings puzzle. They are just going to copy a fitting that solves the puzzle from Reddit and win.
Running missions might tend towards being massively boring… but it involves an actual decision: will my tank hold or do I warp out? The player is engaged on a incredibly basic level, but they are actually engaged and need to make a judgement call and a judgement call about the timing of that first judgement call. With this content even that super basic decision making process was stripped from them.
The developers really ought to sit down and play a game like Subnautica or one of those fuel based mining games. Forcing players into a trap is NOT a popular sort of game design. You LURE the player into getting in over their head. The door wasn’t locked behind them, they CHOSE to delve too deep and too greedily and made a miscalculation and it cost them.
Abyssal space would likely be orders of magnitude better if it was an ‘incident pit’ (Google it) and not a fittings puzzle. Abyssal space is the perfect platform for having that tension, and it always feels basically fair because the nature of an incident pit is that every time you get sucked in you could have recognized the pit and backed out earlier to salvage the situation.
Seems like good tech being mis-used by people who have their heads buried in doctrine/counter-doctrine modes of thinking that the vast vast majority of the playerbase isn’t going to be interested in.
6 Likes
When I first read about Abyssal deadspace, it sounded like you would have a CHOICE about going into the “next room”. I think this would be a far more interesting mechanic.
In response to the numerous posts above, I agree that the “all or nothing” feel of Abyssal deadspace simply isn’t that fun. I don’t like heading in and realizing a roll of the die screwed me out of my gear and pod.
Solution: The loot can only be obtained when the rats are dead in THAT pocket. You can escape with what you got so far. It’s like pulling out the magic mirror in Terraria, or an Escape Rope in Pokemon. But if you’re too late on the trigger and realize you did indeed get in over your head, then everything is lost because YOU didn’t react in time, or didn’t plan things out correctly in the heat of the moment, as opposed to getting annihilated because you brought the wrong fit for all three pockets.
1 Like
It’s difficult to judge only from text, try it 
Exactly!
the loot appears to be uninteresting, this is basically ‘mining’ with a sucker punch. Seems about as popular as Hulkageddon was to Hulk pilots.
After being in the May 11 masstest, having my reloading times tripled, apparently due to tidi, while the rest of the site ran merrily at full speed, I began to lose interest. TQ has better capabilities, so that shouldn’t last, but it will be kiss of death if it appears on TQ.
Other than epeen, I cannot think of a reason to run these on TQ. No one is raving about the new ships, so the BPCs become so-so. The rare lucky rolls on mutate make them about the same as Officer fits, you gotta be flithy rich to run them and enjoy being a pinata. It’s likely that I can easily earn the ISK in far less time doing something else to purchase anything that becomes useful and common. Unless there is a big reward, farming becomes like a grunge job.
FIXES: you have tier levels for these sites, make the failure costs tiered too. Currently for T3 cruisers, you lose a level of a subsystem skill for ship loss…OK, for Tier 1 Abby sites, you lose a level in the Mastery list…or something like that. Tier 2 tack on ship loss…giving you a chance to correct a badly guessed fit.
Bring in the pod death at Tier 4, by then a pilot should have learned the sites and risks.
Something along this sketch idea to make it interesting to get a toe wet in Abby Sites without being totally facesmacked.
1 Like
Has anyone else encountered the room with like 8 Trig battleships? I can’t see any way to beat it, I was volleyed off the field in two cycles in a Vedmak - seeing as I haven’t seen any other trig NPCs, I’d imagine they might be planning to replace some with frigates or cruisers @CCP_Paradox
My honest opinion on these overall, is that it is very basic and repetitive. 1) Gate, 2) kill NPCs while scooping loot, REPEAT. The spawns are definitely challenging, but it gets old fast! There’s only one group of enemies in each pocket…
It needs something to give it more variability. It would be great if there were sometimes two enemy groups. One group guards the area loot box, and the other plays the hunter seeker role. Like the hunters were assaulting the defenders when you come along. Rather than being sandwiched between the capsuleer and defenders, the seekers opt to remove the capsuleer while the defenders guard the loot. If the capsuleer manages to drag the seekers through or close to the defenders, the defenders attack them too.
Scenario 2) the NPCs have already scooped the loot and are headed for the next gate, and the npc ship name makes it obvious which one has the loot. The capsuleer needs to pop it before it reaches the gate or else no loot in that pocket.
Scenario 3) One sire already has the loot and the other side is defending the gate. Maybe have the loot transport led by something like the drifter ship that scoops bodies, and others in the group could scoop after you pop the previous holder.
3 Likes
i’ve had 2 encounters with the trig bss both in very versatile well fit ships with faction implants drugs and knowing beforehand the stats of those ships from the files both times my ships got pulverised without a chance in hell to do anything and there’s zero chance any amount of perfectly rolled abysal mods on those fits or deadspace gear would’ve changed the outcome,it’s just bad design i’m taking a break from this it’s not worth my time and effort until now encounters had an aproach a slim chance of winning somehow but geting zaped with 1200+dps(they have 5 times better tracking than drifter bs btw) 1200dps before fulll spoolup also 50km neuts and 500hp/6sec per bs reps as well as mixed ewar what can 1 single hac fitted to struggle through so much already do?
The only way i see they may have wanted to aproach the engagement is a divide and conquer style like a kiting player would do against a large fleet but in those situations the targets can’t reach up to 60 km to deal dps or 50km to neut
2 Likes
@CCP_Paradox Is it possible to remove mutaplasmid’s from the PvE site’s and add them into PvP area style instance’s of these where the container only become’s destructible once the other player is dead with 1-few mutaplasmid’s in the can 
Then instead of them being Rare it will become forged in blood :] and also if they are in PvE site’s as well then people wouldn’t run the PvP site’s :].
2man, 3man, 4man, 5man version’s with more muta’s would be great as well some type of alliance tourney feel’s
Also so that it’s easier to find other people at the same time maybe have 1 pvp frament, but the existing bonus’s(dark,elec,gamma so on) are cloud based like the current +300% sig and are randomly distributed in the area.
Might be cool if when you activate the pvp filament that it create’s an arua around your ship and it stay’s active until another random player is found, if no player is found and we click to move our ship again it close’s and we can try again later but if a player is found the filament get’s removed from inventory or something like that might work.
it’s 10 bs in a group as far as i found 10 in tier 5 8 in tier 4
1 Like
Now for the improvements toward the vedmak engagement below:
Fit a plate.That’s right a 1600mm plate plus 1 med armor rep will ensure all that armor extra you have is basicly frontloaded hp to buy you time to grind down 1-2 vedmaks and stabilise,also ignore the demaviks go straight for vedmaks prefferably any that are neuting,don’t mwd run away from them mid engagement most times if you try to mwd away they will still keep up if you 'play dead’sort of after first vedmak dies rest usualy brawl within 10km goofing up their own trackign and allowing you easier dmg on them.Enjoy!
As far as shields there is no improvement unless noone noticed almost all the clouds inside the pockets are designed to nerf shield fit A LOT of clouds have penalty to shield booster cap or asb booster amount of charges so go armor or suffer endlessly
1 Like
Exactly. All of this looks like a complete gambling. I can slice through these sites easily until I encounter triglavians and then it is 99% failure. Seems like a bit off balance to me.
Their damage + ehp is just insane atm to deal with, they need some type of weakness :/. As Dark said aswell you cant tracking disrupt 10 ship.'s 
ran through a few t3s to see a scaled down trig bs spawn and observe them a bit they do not like spliting up as far as i noticed so kiting them isn’t going to work the only solution i can see is a dual prop fit using mwd + adcu to go in and switch to ab when inside the group grinding down the threatning ones first like neut and webs however losing a full capacitor every 24 sec is another matter that i’m not very fond of
Dual prop also takes out alot of ships from potential candidates perhaps idk will try a vagabond a bit since it’s faster on ab and capless guns
also incase noone noticed the tiny drone shoot your own drones now before they didn’t and they also go inert and just sit there after you kill a random one(if they have an anchor thats pretty funny)