Am i the only one that thinks the ESS timer is way too long?

Communications Center General Discussion
1

Almost 3 hours? If i want to safeguard the isk i make i have to be online and vigilant for 2 hours and 45 minutes or i risk losing almost half the isk i made ratting?

I just lost 40% of the isk from an hour and a half ratting because i went to make a damn sandwich. I am terrible at pvp, but i will gladly get in there and waste a ship to try and save the bank, so the system works to promote PvP. But nearly 3 hours is just insane to me.

I could have used that 100m isk to welp a couple of cruisers and get better at pvp, instead its just gone because apparently im a dumbass for needing nutrients.

Yes im salty but i cant be the only one annoyed by this right? Wouldn’t a timer of an hour or an hour and a half achieve the same goal?

I dont want to survive on fast food while defecating in a bucket just to be sure the magic screw-you-stay-online isk magnet device doesnt get robbed in 5 mins because my face isn’t glued to the screen

2

Maybe that’s what you should do?

3

You are missing the point as much i missed that ESS getting robbed.

Also what makes you think i don’t?

4

I read your post?

5

I never bothered to do so myself, but I’ve heard of this strategy of looking at when the next payout will happen before you do some sites.

ESS pays out at a schedule.

Using this knowledge it should be possible to get paid out within an hour of ratting, just like you want, by ratting at the right time.

6

I just want to play the game without the need to stay online for 3 hours or schedule my playing time according to a in-game timer so i dont lose 40% of the isk i make.

Either CCP should shorten the timer or lower the amount of isk it takes from your payout. 40% over a 2 hour 45 min period is an insane amount for someone who just wants to casually play for a few hours a week.

7

You could try defending it, run sites where allies are defending it, steal it yourself or try running sites in multiple systems so no single system attracts roamers with a large payout.

8

The purpose of the ESS is to promote engagement.

If you want that ISK, defend it, otherwise you don’t deserve it.

End of debate.

9

I already said im willing to defend it, just not to stay online for 3 hours at a time to do so.

10

The point is, if the payout timer is too short, not much ISK can accumulate, making it absolutely not worth bringing a gang over to contest it. Also the overwhelming majority of ESS banks would simply be empty.

I personally don’t like the ESS system, specifically because you need special fits to fight in there which are mainly useless outside, which leads to the stupid situation that a random roaming gang (which will 99.9% be fitted with MWDs, and all their small support stuff cannot enter…) cannot poke the locals by trying to contest the bank and getting a fight out of it. And those especially fitted for ESS fights will simply bail most of the time and once driven out of the ESS not take any fight outside (because their fits suck there) and just wait out a filament timer and jump away.

A much better way would be to remove a part of all NPCs bounty and replace that with loot tokens (like Blueloot from WH NPCs or Redloot from the Abyssal NPCs). Then whoever runs sites needs to make sure to loot the field and if opponents come, he has to fight over the loot or the opponents can take it instead. And any gang, be it roamers or people coming in from spawned WHs or people filamenting in can contest that uncollected loot if they find someone ratting, instead of needing specialized ESS arena fits that are pretty much useless anywhere else. Spontaneous, non-staged fights, no “call the blob from the alliance to help” nonsense.

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11

could your corpmates not defend it? Nul sec is not solo space

12

LOL

If the raiders are waiting the full time to loot your ESS, your alliance simply sucks, get a new one.

If you can’t stop ratting for five minutes and get into a defense ship when raiders visit, you don’t deserve the ISK the ESS was holding.

If people raiding your ESS is so common that it’s become a major issue for you, stop being the cause of the pattern. Rat in more than one system, an ESS needs to hit a certain threshold to make it worth raiding. If I look at Dotlan, I can easily find where the ratters in a region are, and the systems with high “NPC Kills Delta” are ripe for plucking the ESS. Sure, you and your buddies think it’s great to be in the same system, but you’re literally painting a target on yourselves when you do that.

That would require more effort than demanding CCP change the game mechanic to suit them.

13

Why are you still going on about me not wanting to defend the ESS? I already said i am willing to do that, my point is and was from the start that 3 hours is too long a time frame for someone to stay online to do that.

I mean sure you can get high and mighty about this all you want, but people in an alliance are not always online at the same time and when they are people are often away on fleet ops.

I made a post about something that bothers me in game, i didn’t write a formal protest to CCP to change the game. Sure you can disagree on my point of view but holy ■■■■ get over yourself.

’you dont deserve the isk’ who even talks like that?

14

You want sympathy that your nearly zero risk isk printer isn’t 100% efficient?

Yeah, no. I’ve got zero sympathy for you. Get better at printing isk.

15

if it was shorter, as several have mentioned, it wouldn’t be worth trying to raid… you could raid it yourself before you log off.

16

From what ive seen people will still go for 50 - 100 mill in the ESS

In fact they just did that 2 hours ago, after i did an hour and a half of ratting for the first time in a week and right when a gang came in the majority of standing was fighting 2 fleets that came into our staging one after the other and for that reason couldn’t respond.

I mean raiding our own ESS and stealing from corp mates isnt really a solution. Half the solutions here seem needlessly time consuming to me, from logging in to see at what time it is optimal to rat within the ESS timer to warping around different systems so you spread the ESS load. Ratting in my eyes is supposed to be the way to get the isk for fights, not the core content in terms of time spent with some pvp on the side.

Just to work around a arbitrary system that witholds the isk you make for 3 hours

I dont know, seeing the responses on here i guess im in the minority on this forum when it comes to disliking the ESS system. To me it seems like a cumbersome solution to promote a type of engagement most people i know seem to dislike anyway. Like Syzygium said, ESS fits are useless outside of the ESS, and fights on the ESS gate grid revolve around kiting and just warping off when their range is matched.

If people want a fight they will get a fight, in my experience camping a gate in a home system or shooting an ansi will get you a fight most of the time.

17

several people don’t like it that commented here.

18

I think most people don’t really like it. The design is not very good and it feels unnessessary punishing for those people ratting because you either have to schedule your PvE around an arbitrary payout timer or if you log out after an hour you either have to raid it yourself or risk losing it while you are offline.
As said: The much better solution would have been converting ~50% of the rat’s bounty to loot items (dogtags, data sheets, rare salvage mats), so if you get interrupted while ratting you either fight the attackers off or not. And whoever can hold the field will grab what is left in the wrecks. No special fits needed, no arena needed, no payoff schedules.
If you can catch a ratter, you maybe even get additional loot that he has in cargo from the last few sites, or you can kill and loot MTUs that he has left in space.

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