So, when CCP removed the old 1v1 arena, many people complained and wanted it back or either an equivalent replacement. Here I gonna suggest an equivalent replacement for the old arenas, the burner proving grounds.
To enter these, there is a new filament, the burner proving ground filament. You can obtain them by the same way as you get the normal proving filaments. However, the mechanic inside these sites is different from the regular proving grounds.
- Instead of a queue, you always enter the site once the filament is activated. In the site, you find a “mutating cladistic cache”, which has a 5 minute timer on it, that starts counting down once you enter the site. If no one comes within these 5 minutes, you take the loot and leave. Otherwhise you fight to the death.
- Time limit is 35 minutes, resistance drop hits at 20 minute mark.
- Loot value depends on the probability to get a fight. The higher that is, the better the loot.
- All cruiser sized ships can enter(including Ikitursa, Stormbringer and Vedmak)
- Ewar modules such as sensor dampeners and tracking distruptors are limited to 1 per ship(this does not include drones).
The fight probability index: This value updates every 30 minutes and tells you, how likely it is that another player activates a filament within the next 5 minutes once you entered. Default value is 50%. At 50% chance to get an opponent loot factor is 1. At 0 it is 0.25 and at 100% it is 2. There are also some milestones at which you can get special rewards:
- at 65% there is a 7% chance that the cache contains pirate faction modules(including veles rad sink)
- at 80% the cache has a 4% chance to contain deadspace modules and pirate ship bpc’s/implants
- at 92.5% the cache has a 2% chance to contain officer modules(including zoryas stuff)
- regardless on the FPI, there is always a 0.5% chance that the cache contains 500 PLEX or a skill extractor.
this says, that the higher the chance to get a fight, the better the loot. This fits perfectly into the risk vs reward system. And with the droprates still rather low it does not really make it worth to bring unfit T1 cruisers to farm.
The cache always contains standard triglavian loot and mutaplasmid(stuff you normally find in the abyss)
Matches: The matchmaking system is the same as in the old arenas, the first who comes, is the first to take the fight. A fight lasts between 30 and 35 minutes, depending when another player uses a filament. The structures flash as soon as someone enters the arena(exact same as with old arenas). The timer on the cache stops and it opens as soon as one ship dies. I know it might become a thing to bring unfit T1 cruisers just to grab the loot, but with these low drop rates, it is not worth on the long term to do it. Base loot value is around 40 mil at 50% chance for a fight.
Meta: As all Cruiser ships are allowed, it is likely that the same ships used for old arena become dominant. However, since there is no pve part, other ships can become viable too. Especially pure gank fit and the Curse(which became useless after the surgical strike patch). This brings some more options on the field other than ikitursas. I also know, people bling the hell out of ships, but in old arenas there were cheap ships that killed 5b ikis. In the 2v2 arena, that seems different however.
New players can still enter with cheap T1 cruisers.
This should not be a replacement for the events, just an addition and replacement for old 1v1 arena, adressing the problems this one had. For example worthless loot or timezone restrictions. This is more meant to be pvp content that you can do whenever you want, plus you can invest on the longterm into it other than the limited time events, where it is not that much worth making a 5b clone and rolling lots of modules just for a few days.
Edit: Maybe instead of a new filament, it would be better to introduce that system behind a pve abyss of tier 3 or higher. This due to all the stuff we have seen during the events. Especially collusion. You could theoretically spam alt acounts into this arena to push the probability index high and loot tons of factionstuff, while players that look for a fight get only an unfit t1 cruiser.
Let me know what you think