It’s plenty challenging. It’s plenty interesting. I like the content (as much as any other pve at least). There’s lots of eye candy.
I’m disappointed because there’s literally no reason to fly any other cruiser than what you’d normally fly for PVE. Yes you CAN fly other fits… but if you are, you’re doing it wrong. It’s PVE content, it exists to be done as efficiently as possible. Coming up with creative fits to accomplish this is no different than eating the glitter and glue and saying you’re using your bowels to craft ornaments. True, but…
The same cruisers that are king of PVE in all of Eve, are still king of PVE here. It’s boring.
I mean, your top two choices (which people can argue about endlessly) are the Ishtard and the Gila. I’d be shocked if an active tanked VNI couldn’t at least do F3s.
There’s literally no reward for coming up with exotic fits, save for the fuzzy feeling of producing said bowel ornaments. Yes, exotic fits can be made, yes they can work. But there’s no reason to fly them, they’re always sub-optimal.
One thing. Ships in EvE are not design for PvE, at least most of them. The balancing is always via PvP. PvE abilities are just offspring from PvP. Drones and missiles are best systems for it because selectable damage.
There are no obstacles to use other hulls if you wish to. Problems are not that Gila and Ishtar are the best, but rats in the AP. They neut hard and both of these hull have weapon system independent of the cap.
I was thinking of using phantasm myself but after tried T3 with Gila and after being sucked dry I changed my mind.
It is disappointing that a handful of ships are capable of running the highest level filaments. As expected, null-sec was given the golden ring (again).
Because excuse me, but outside the fact that you get a suspect timer when coming out of T5-6 filaments in Hisec, I don’t see where does they get better things. Of course if you want to run high tier filaments in hisec, find a deadend empty system, do a fleet with an alt in Griffin/Blackbird and do your filament. If someone come in and camp the signature : finish your site, and come out. If he aggress, try to ECM him and go away.
It’s a risk, but if you’re only playing in Hisec, a bit of danger is what make the game interesting.
If you want something without risk do some market PVP ^^
I never really timed individual runs. I did however use a hour long booster and was able to run 7 t3 electrical sites right before it expired with a vagabond fit specifically for electrical sites.
That is more sites than I could run in a nearly equally expensive Gila.
There are more ships available. It just happens that hardcore PVE players don’t often leave their comfort zone of drones and missiles.
The uninteresting nature of AS as single-solution puzzles has been discussed previously and is a trademark of all new PvE released into EVE for the last years. With primitive agent missions, running them sub-optimally is both a opportunity and a challenge. But there’s no reason to risk losing exotic fits in deadly PvE where you can not escape if your fit gets you in trouble.
All creative aproachs to solving the AS puzzle become futile once a few optimal solutions are established. So you have 3 hulls with 5-6 fits and 3-4 implant sets and that’s it, stepping out of that beaten path just lowers your chances to survive.
This is patently false. Players live with suspect timers in highsec all the time and avoid dying to other players. There are also 1212 highsec systems, many of which hardly see any players where a suspect timer is nothing more than a theoretical risk.
Meanwhile, T4-T5 sites were killing a significant portion of those that attempted them (20%-40%) over the first days, and while I am sure the completion rate has improved, there is still a very real chance the NPCs will get you in the site.
Maybe the players are a bigger risk than the NPCs if you run T4-T5 1000 km off the Jita undock or something silly, but there are so many ways to mitigate the risk of a suspect timer in highsec, and so many places to do it sneakily, it is completely disingenuous to say it is more risky than the danger inside the top tier sites.
Opposing fleets (note that I said “fleets” and not “players”) have 20 minutes to organize for what is essentially a free piñata party. You need to run some bling forl the higher level Abyssal pockets, so F4 and F5 filaments have effectively become free killboard padding.
I don’t know how you effectively counter 20+ waiting T3 cruisers on emergence from a filament.
Yep. I managed to escape a F4 filament with 20 seconds to spare and emerged damaged (with every module in the red) to an awaiting armada of no less than 20 ships (most Tengus and Lokis). It doesn’t matter where you attempt these in high-sec; the odds are not in your favor of surviving (either the filament or the waiting swarm).
After running these for 2 weeks I’m inclined to agree with the OP. They were fun for a while, but the risk just isn’t worth the reward anymore.
People are a few hunting site runners in highsec (even if I am also skeptical they are doing it in 20-man T3C fleets):
But way, way, way, way more ships are being lost in Abyssal sites:
If you look at the losses in the first two links, almost all of them occurred in 0.5 systems to gankers, in a trade hub, or within a few jumps of Jita.
If you don’t want to lose your expensive Abyssal-running cruiser to other players, don’t run them within a few jumps of a trade hub, and don’t use autopilot through, or loiter in, 0.5 systems. Cruisers move around pretty fast so it just takes a few minutes to get outside the population centers, and to be extra safe move around regularly so someone doesn’t take an interest in why you are suspect, and you will have to be very unlucky to be found randomly.
Or just stick to T3 and below and do them in Jita. Risk/effort vs. reward and all that.
You’re putting the cart before the horse. This PVE content was designed after the ships. We have 5 different types of filaments, each with its own difficulties - there’s a stark difference between F3 and F4, so those difficulties themselves can easily be used to diversify.
As an example, imagine that dark sites were impossible with drones - they’re close, they just need to be moreso than they are. Magically gila won’t work there. I’d add a bonus to the suppressors tbh. The bonuses are conducive to breaking drones, they just aren’t sufficient.
I want to see more than just missile ships and drone ships.
I played with a polarized phantasm on sisi last night, it was lul (a bowel ornament as described in the OP). Worked fantastic until I found out that drifer cruisers do missile damage. Wooooops. Sisi ftw.
This is patently false, and based on your faulty assumption that hisec is safe. It’s not. It’s not intended to be safe. It’s an area where you are a tiny bit safer. You’re seeing players die there because you’re concentrated in space that is safer for attackers to wait for you in (whereas nullsov, for example, any roaming gang should get pushed out by the residents if they don’t suck at eve).
Yes, this much is true. There will always be an optimal solution to a predescribed scenario. But in virtually all instances, those answers are “passive buffer gila” or whatever the current ishtar fit is. I would like for maybe 1/5th of the content to be optimal for those fits, 2/5ths to be sub-optimal and 2/5ths downright foolish to attempt. Should be that way for turret ships, missile ships, armor tanks, and shield tanks.
The “puzzle” will be solved, but that doesn’t mean we need a horrifyingly small number of good solutions.
Null-sec and wormhole space are the two safest locations to run Abyssal pockets. So in terms of risk vs. reward, low-sec is probably the worst place to run filaments followed by high-sec.
Ok, so this is a perfect example why CCP should just not waste time with PvE.
I mean it’s what, two or three weeks and we already have multiple threads from people complaining that the content is stale because they min-maxed everything until it becomes an uninteresting never changing chore again.
Congratulations, you are your own worst enemy if you destroy your own gameplay this way. No one is forcing you to play the ISK/h game instead of enjoying it with the ships you want to use.
