Burner proving grounds as a replacement/relaunch for the old 1v1 arena at the end of abyssal sites

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
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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 ā€œmutating cladistic cacheā€, 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 bpcā€™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

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Good Idea, that should have been implemented in the old arena a long time ago, then it wouldnt have gotten so unused.

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Interesting concept. Iā€™ll add it to my list.

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On Torvald Stream a DEV said that the PVE Abyss and the Filaments use the same set of Solar Systems. @TheCorrupted said elsewhere that if weā€™d seperate the pve and filament part into two different sets of solar systems, then we could have the old arena back theoretically. This means, that the PVE sites uses a set of solar systems toghether with the old arenas, and the new Filaments use a different set of systems.

A side effect would be that it can fix lag and tidi issues in pve sites that the arenas cause when a lot of people are doing it.

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Ohh found the part lol, I also noticed that the game lagged a bit during the destroyer FFA when doing pve.

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Actually, removing content players liked without even trying to give an equivalent replacement sucks!

I mean, why? Was there any good reason to take this great 1v1 content away?

@Brisc_Rubal when is the summit? Bring that concept up! Even the new content is not much more popular, there are times you end up sitting in queue for hours. I was enjoying watching the streams from Gustav and Corrupted.

Removing the pvp room from the Abyss where you were able to bring 5b ships for these event filament where you only can bring cheap ships is not a replacement!

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No summit this year. We havenā€™t decided what weā€™re going to do in lieu of it.

I think the abyssal filaments were the equivalent replacement. I know some players liked it, but from my experience it was not many, and just the same top guys doing it over and over. Thatā€™s one of the reasons why I expect it was removed.

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cant you do that per video conference? No summit would be sad. I always enjoy reading the meeting minutes to get a glimpse on what is beeing discussed and to speculate what is coming up.

For Abyssals, it would take me wonder why CCP threats it different from other content. It was not popular, but level 5 missions, ressource wars and forward operation bases arent that popular too. And there CCP keeps it.

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We do video conferences all the time, but the summit is more than just meetings, which is the hard part.

Mainly because itā€™s newer content that the folks who created them are still there and know how to fix. Level 5 missions, resource wars - all that stuff is so old itā€™s almost impossible to do anything with, so it just gets left alone.

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I think that depends on how you define ā€œeuivalentā€. An equivalent replace would be that you get a filament that brings any Cruiser in an abyssal pocket with a cache, and if another one enter within a specific time, fight starts.
These new filaments are not the same, you always get a fight, you can only bring tech 1 ships and maximum tech 2 modules, and you can not even bring pirate implants. And there are huge gaps where the content is not available, it is always Friday till Tuesday, and no Abyssal PVP from Tuesday to Friday.

Same guys and same ships, yeah, I know that, but in FW it is not much different, there are also a few ships that dominate, for example the comet or Garmur. And in PVE the same fits are used for years now. But that would be a ship balance issue, not a concept issue.

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another interesting point is that the agency still has information available for the old arenas, yes, even the support article still has information on that: https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000852629-Abyssal-Deadspace

Well, that older content is harder to fix and gets abandoned makes sense. But Ressource wars were introduced in Winter 2017. Abyssal PVP one year later. As I can say, the removal of the proving gate was the first time for ages that CCP did take away great content without replacing it equivalent or replacing it with something less funny or more restricted. I dont remember any other case where that happened. Maybe hyperdunk nerf or war dec changes, but that were more balance topics to improve game health.

@Abyssal_Hawk That was the thing I was pointing out the whole time in the dev blog feedback thread. A lot of the game has solved meta. Solved meta is a balance issue, not a concept issue.

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I fully support this, either bring back the proving gate or add these new filaments.

Would also be nice if CCP tried the old content by themselves. And it feels like the new content is losing popularity slightly, with 30 players beeing pretty active, while the rest are more casual players.

I want to do 1v1 whenever I want and I want to be able to bring bling fit if I want.

@Brisc_Rubal

does that mean you brought it up to CCP already?

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Not yet.

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They rarely do, these new arenas was the first time CCP did new content they introduced. But would be nice if they actually do the content themselves before removing it.

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To add something up, yesterday there was a discussion going on on my stream about the removeal of abyssal pvp: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/773087862 starting at 3:10:00 to the end in the chat.

It is higly possible that it is due to the way how the database is structured. CCP reused the code for the old arena to add the new ones, causing them to dissappear. If they had copypasted the code and added new locations it could have worked to have both(and that even needs to be considered in order to implement your format).
Or you could simply ask yourself: Is it possible to have multiple events running simulanously? Lets say a frig free for all and a destroyer free for all at the same time? Or how can we have 7 different tiers of abyssals and 5 different effects?

I am not a programmer or database manager at all, but I think this process would only take a few hours to do. And I assume this had to be done in order to add tier 0 and 6 abyssal sites. Otherwhise funny things like getting a tier 1 room with a tier 6 filament or beeing put into a random place inside the abyss would happen.

Also, it would make sense if pve and pvp used a different set of solar systems each. Then we could better distinguish between npc and pvp kills. This is the reason why pve kills appear in the abyssal pvp section of zkill.

If it only took a few hours, then Iā€™d say its worth the time and effort.

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So, are you(or EVE_TC in your stream) saying, that CCP took away the old arena just because they were too lazy to press strg + c and then strg + v?

If that is really the case, that will hurt for many players. I have always been sceptical that the actual reason for removeal was the fact that too few players did them. By that logic they must also have removed FOBā€™s and ressource wars a long time ago(and they are just one year older than the old provings).
I am not a programmer too, but I am 100% sure that similar steps to keep the old arena had to be taken in order to add the destroyer co-op abyssal. I donā€™t know how the mechanic inside the abyss works. I only know that there are 200 systems with 10 constellation, and those put into 5 regions (ADR1-5).

I think the least CCP could do is to actually give us a reason for removing content. I dont think that in the entire evehistory it ever happened that CCP removed gameplay. I remember that CCP gave us good reasons when they removed captains quarters in 2017, or the static DED sites in 2012, because of botting issues and AFK farming. For the captain quarters we got statistics on usage too. CCP should have released that for old provings too(and then they see that usage was increasing since the surgical strike patch in April).

We can just speculate at the moment, but the following reasons can be excluded for sure:

  • Usage: FOB and ressource wars arenā€™t used much more than the old provings
  • Gambling laws in some countrys: How would that fit with the hypernet?
  • Solved meta: The meta is solved in the entire game, in that case CCP should rather look at the ships
  • Too much work: That work had to be done in order to add the new abyssal tiers and destroyer abyss
  • Old Abyss was dominated by few players: This is not much different in the new one, looking at the leaderboards, I see that there are some guys with 1500+ wins.

It would be great if CCP at least gave a reason for the removeal, or listen to player feedback. In the CCP thread about that at least 300 of the 1000 posts say that the old arena should stay with the new one(and the way some players posted, it is more like a shitstorm). And the worst part on all that was that it wasnt mentioned in the patch notes on patchday. this let many players think that CCP decided to keep the old arena, and they got dunked hard when they did abyssals.
The results of the removeal is that some players quit eve entirely, others are whining here on the forum or reddit. Among this thread there are like 2-3 more active saying that old proving should come back. And if CCP kept the old arena among the new one, I would not have posted that thread, and the players that quit would still play.

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This is just stupid DEV at CCP

  • Taking a shortcut with our old proving ground
  • Adding graphics on tops of it
  • Same solarsystem , same spot, same arena
  • They stop the code sending the people in the pit to build a new code that work with those bad formats filaments.

From CCP, on DEV stream, they state that both cannot live at the same time

  • From my view, define arena for pit#1 and pit#2 is EASY, not much DEV.
  • 1 to 100 for one content, 101 to 200 for another content.

For the old proving ground 15 arena would be more then needed, They have 200 at the moment.

Not even haft a day of work, at CCP maybe more then a year or 2!

The guilty is the one that need to be headshot on top of suitonia! Kill on sight!

He had this idea of new filament arena, in his little corner , on his computer all by himself

  • then start showing other what kind of cheap work he can do !!

So , stop forums, they had no plan for the new abyss arena, why should we have one for the recovery of the old one?

we should buy out another DEV to work in the little corner too!!

Bring the old proving gate like it was!

  • people in the new arena farm their own alts on some timezone (no PVE part)
    ** Only 4 team needed to do so. @Abyssal_Hawk , no one won 1000 fights :stuck_out_tongue:
  • no comments on their ā€œFARMboardā€ this ainā€™t a leaderboard like abysra.com

abysra was a leaderboard base on ELO ranking with a dynamics Kfactor to penalize harder top rank killed by less experimented players in the pit. #1 could drop outside of the top 10 for a single lost. Doing more fight just make the thing even harder to rank up.

  • Thatā€™s why you see Sniper Bros in #11 even if he has 1200 kills, he was giving ELOs to less ranked and it was harder for him to reach back #1.
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Another thing I want to add, is the Vegas keynote from 2018:

you need to start watching at 45:50

there CCP says that PVP inside Abyssal deadspace was one of the most common request.

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Whatā€™s the cost to send a DEV work in that pretty little corner?

  • If he did that all alone by himself, that mean DEV have nothing to do. Go time to Work !
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CCP finally just banned metagaming from abyssal PVP. Should these burner proving grounds become reality, these rules must apply there too, otherwhie people would farm tons of faction mods and keep that index high