CCP Please Revamp C5/C6 Sites

[ISK_Lord]

Hello Wormholers!

Players who remember the old capital ship escalations in C5 and C6 space (I think) will probably 95% agree that the current Drifter Boss alternative is less challenging, has killed PvP content, and had seriously deleterious effects on the player-system occupation landscape.

As a starting point and if we put the ISK nerf to one side, the actual challenge of doing the sites Player versus Sleepers is no longer as fun as it once was.

The old escalations required dreads and old carriers to warp in (2 of each) in order to spawn the 4 extra waves. Those cap ships would be tackled by sleepers and would generally have to enter siege and triage in order to complete the sites. This meant lots of ISK fielded and fabulous opportunities for PvP groups to come in and fight cap ships committed to the sites.

What did this mean?
Lots of risk… lots of ISK… lots of PvP content… lots of groups in high end space. The balance was there between risks and rewards. It worked, and high end space was thriving.

The new system is incredibly low risk, and generally performed by battleships with MJDs. There is no requirement to bring cap ships into sites to spawn the Drifter, and indeed 4 battleships can comfortably complete the sites. OK, so players do bring Dreads to do the sites but this is relatively rare due to the unnecessary risks involved. The bottom line here is that there is almost zero risk and this kills PvP content.

We also see lots of ‘citadel farming’ of Drifters. The sites are generally run with battleships, they shoot the can and spawn the Difter, and then are free to just warp off. They then let the Citadel kill the Drifter. Zero risk, zero challenge…

All the largest C5/C6 wormhole groups have many holes for this kind of farming. They do it ‘because they can’. It’s low risk and easy. However I think most PvP groups will agree this has killed content, and the lack of free C5 and C6 systems means newer groups find it hard to break into high end space now. The big groups have gobbled them all up.

CCP are aware of Citadel farming and did not design or anticipate it. They have stated they regard it as undesirable but have no plans to fix (as far as I know).

I think the scale of the problem goes well beyond this however. CCP need to put back some kind of capital escalation game play that forces groups to commit capitals to site running. IMHO battleships should not be the go to ship for C5 and C6 sites unless you run 6+ with remote reps. It’s too easy. They should also certainly NOT be able to spawn escalations! It’s broken…

What I would encourage CCP to do is revamp and vastly improve the player experience around escalations. It would be good to see:

1). Escalations that can only be triggered by the 3 cap ship classes (Dreads, Carriers, FAXes), and for them to be forced to stay on grid for the majority of the site to bring back exciting PvP opportunities.

2). Escalations that make the use of each cap ship class worthwhile. For example, Dreads are good against big sig targets and hit hard, Carriers are good against smaller and faster targets (and remove/lower the fighter aggro to make their use practical), FAXes can be used where huge incoming DPS from the Sleepers is present and can combine with subcaps for webs and painting of fast and small targets. This is the hardest challenge for designers but it is critical to fun game play.

3). We’d be back to fielding 15-20b for site running again, so let’s bump up the escalation rewards again. It used to be 700m per C5 site (that was 3 years ago?), and PLEX prices have rocketed since then. So let’s bring the balance back. High risk should mean higher reward. Let’s make this exciting and rewarding again!

4). Prevent any sleepers (Drifter or whatever) from warping on grid with any structures. Sleepers should only be engaged by player ships. Obviously…

I see capital escalations as the biggest single problem in wormhole space right now. We need to bring this content mechanism back urgently. There is also a great opportunity to improve it and make it incredibly fun.

A few years ago you’d see farmers every night, and PvP groups rolling every weekend to try to catch them. It generated so many great fights, and players would take the risks because it was worth it. Even if you lost a few caps now and then the ISK was so good you could soon replace them fairly quickly. It was always worth it!

We also need to encourage the larger groups to take down all these deserted low-risk and zero content citadel drifter farm holes. Again this has killed content, and it’s so very hard for groups to break into high end space. Larger groups are effectively poisoning their own back yard with this play style. Content is king folks. You know that.

HK and LZK have claimed C6 space. We were warned against taking a C6 by HK for example. Tut tut… how to kill your own content guys.

All the big entities have also taken scores of C5 systems for no content farming. Small groups looking to break into high end space find it pretty much impossible, and there is a good chance they will be evicted just so people can citadel farm. I strongly believe we need to take away this eviction pressure from citadel farmers, to help newer groups settle and start out. Otherwise we end up with deserted space with just a handful of blue donut frenemies all scared to take each others farm holes. Pretty much what we have now.

I am a huge advocate of wormhole life even with the problems. However I think it’s important to bring this issue into the open. I love EVE and I want you to be successful CCP. Hopefully, some well-intentioned player pressure will encourage some urgently needed new development, that will improve both wormhole game play and CCPs bottom line.

If you are a wormholer and agree with me (and most of the community will I expect), it would be great if you could show some solidarity here. CCP must be aware of this problem, but I don’t think it is high on their agenda. Wormholers are a significant portion of the EvE player base but still a minority. We need to make our voices heard.

Any ideas for the capital escalation design would great to hear. Let’s inspire CCP and help their designers. The wormhole community are ‘the best’ source to help CCP. Better that we describe what we need, rather than them coming up with something that seems cool to them but they unwittingly damage our game play with it.

Cheers,

ISK Lord

[Cha_ka_Khan]

I remember rage rolling with Jaded looking for cap kills. I remember the excitement when I found my very first escalation site and we managed to warp in and kill the carrier that was on grid. It was a lot of fun and a lot of risk. I wholeheartedly agree with the content of this post. I’ve lived in J space for 4 of the 5 years I’ve played. Went from fights every night to blue donut with the big guys. It’s frankly ridiculous that HK and LZX have done what they’ve done with C6 space. I have no hard feelings, but the whole point of j space is unpredictability. And that’s simply not the case in those holes. You roll into a C6 and never see anything there anymore. Yeah I know people whined and complained about WH guys making too much ISK but the truth is that we have to seriously work for our ISK. It’s not just handed to us like bounty ticks in null. We have to clear sites, salvage sites, haul the loot without dying and then sell it. It’s not JUST easy money and roses…

[ChrisLCTR]

More Like Salt Lord. Huehuehue

Hero Dreading was garbage back in the day as well, and If you fielded 20B in caps permanently on grid to run C5 and C6 sites then you were doing it in an inefficient way. What I see is romanticization of the past.

It’s pretty unrealistic to think that CCP would change C5 and C6 sites. We are only like 1.5 Years in… There really is nothing stopping you from throwing shitloads of isk into a site by the way. I wouldn’t dog on people for not wanting to do it themselves. People have learned better ways to do things. Catching Rattles in site is harder, but still doable.

“HK and LZHX have claimed C6 space. We were warned against taking a C6 by HK for example. Tut tut… how to kill your own content guys.”

Have you noticed how the groups that you mentioned don’t make long winded posts about being starved for content? We don’t sit around and complain about not having things to do. We hunt and find fights every day.

Posts like these also seem to seclude HK and LZHX from the conversation, like we aren’t Wormholers just like “the rest of you”. I’ll remind you that that could not be farther from the truth, we’ve been a part of this space longer than most of the people complaining constantly about us. We have taken the old “adapt or die” mantra as far as we have been able, and set the bar for the rest of the entire community. Like it or hate it, but we are playing the exact same game as you. So instead of complaining about the big bad HK and LZHX, go and build something for yourself.

“Went from fights every night to blue donut with the big guys. It’s frankly ridiculous that HK and LZHX have done what they’ve done with C6 space.”

I have a feeling you have been drinking too much kool-aid. But whatever. There was exceptionally little resistance to get where we are. Think about that. Before blaming us, maybe take a look at the rest of the community, and its blatant inability to do anything comparable, or to contest it. If I had to guess it would be more because of the lack of initiative, coordination, and general defeatist attitude that weighs the rest of you down. Ridiculous to me to think that people wouldn’t expand the creep if they were capable themselves…

“but the whole point of j space is unpredictability.”

^ What is the point of this statement? It hasn’t been unpredictable whatsoever for YEARS. For this you can thank the THOUSANDS of WH players that have existed in the space for 8 years, and have trampled all over any semblance of mystery. CCP removed Jumps and NPC kill API, gives us Nullsec Wormholes with full mass and time that will close randomly upon trying to jump! That’s unpredictable!!! Such immersion!!!

For maximum mystery, don’t use WH mappers, Eve-Survival, etc etc. You pay your sub.

[Lee_Blackwood]

INB4 Fozzie reads this and whispers ‘No’ before closing his browser.

[ISK_Lord]

Nobody is having a dig at HK LZHK or anyone specifically. I have just outlined a very well-known problem. ChrisLCTR I am sure that you do not speak for either of these entities or all their members. I applaud their success, and I’m not bitter about that - I want groups to be successful otherwise our sand box will dry up. There is a bigger picture here my friend. I hope you can see it.

The simple fact is CCP have an opportunity to vastly increase wormhole PvP content, the C5/C6 capital escalation player experience, and discourage all these empty zero content farm holes.

I understand wormholers may be loath to give up their citadel farms, but this is going to happen one way or another. CCP are aware of it and in time will no doubt at least fix this - that is a simple one. What we need to do is make sure the alternative is a good one. We want fun doing the sites, we want capitals back in them, and we want the ISK put back for the higher risks.

Old site running was a lot more fun, and it was mandatory to field multiple cap ships and commit them to each site for 10-15mins plus if you wanted the rewards of the escalation waves. There was no other way to spawn escalations without cap ships! Yes you could do the sites without the escalations but the ISK per hour was poor without them. I’m not being a romantic but a realist. These are the facts… ask older members if anyone needs to check this out.

CCP we have a problem…

[Eikin_Skjald]

I agree that the PvE View is correct. I don’t like the new sites too. But PvP? The only PvP you got was roling your static an warp into the site. Ok, It’s fun…but after a few month?

The folks who could not run the sites now, because they don’t “own” a high-class WH now run sites in C3 or C4. or in best case go hunting now. We have never found more “targets” than this year in WH Low-Class Space. The only Corps who could be sad about are HK and LHXZ but they found other ways for entertainment.

Short: I agree to the PvE impact but PvP in general WH Space has improved if you are not just rolling.

[ISK_Lord]

Actually there are many groups living in C5s that are affected by this. There are also hardly any free holes for new groups to move into. Some are genuine home holes, but the vast majority are citadel drifter farm holes. As has been explained the farming is risk free and generates no PVP content. The overall results mean fewer groups living in C5s and less PVP. It doesn’t matter how you look at this. It’s broken.

[Legion40k]

@ISK_Lord

Old site running was a lot more fun, and it was mandatory to field multiple cap ships and commit them to each site for 10-15mins plus if you wanted the rewards of the escalation waves.

Considering you’ve demonstrated you don’t know how the sites used to be run before the change, this thread is dead before it was posted.

[Kalaratiri]

@ISK_Lord

There are also hardly any free holes for new groups to move into

This isn’t actually true by the way. Earlier in the year I went looking for a c5/5 wormhole to set up a group of friends in. In a few days scanning I found more than a dozen completely empty c5/5s. That’s not including the non-c5 statics I found.

If people want to move to high class space, there’s plenty of room.

[Lugia3]

Posting in a meme thread.

[Listrentite]

Players who remember the old capital ship escalations in C5 and C6 space (I think) will probably 95% agree that the current Drifter Boss alternative is less challenging

Stopped reading here.

[Fetouros_Kousou]

no! https://www.twitch.tv/furykano/manager/past_broadcasts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK-ad7ShWrE check this!

[Fetouros_Kousou]

RIGHT NOW I MAKE 3.5B HOUR IN C6 WITH 2 DREADS. + I AM ABLE TO ROLL STATICS AND MAKE 2.2 B/HOUR WITH 1 DREAD!

[Jonn_Duune]

ISK Lord, you are right about some things, and very wrong about others.

I’ll sum up my thoughts:
With fleets/players who don’t typically own a c5/6 WH, PVE is almost exclusively done in battleships, most equipped with MJDs. That’s because 1, it’s the best isk/hr, requires the fewest pilots and is the safest.

The Large High Class WH groups: TDSIN, IRS, HK, Lazerhawks, and a couple others control 90% of c6s, and nearly half of c5s as jewholes. I define a jewhole is a WH occupied by a small number of people (typically 2-4) in which they use dreads to farm sleeper sites, and thats it. There are very few actual C5 static 5 groups left that don’t control multiple jewholes, and there’s exactly 0 PVP groups left in c6 space (AoE was the last to leave, merging into IRS).

There are some medium to large High Class WH groups left that do run their c5 static 5s like the old school wormhole PVP groups did, but they’re getting less and less common, either merging with other larger groups to start forming supercorps, or simply petering out and dying.

You are absolutely wrong about ISK making with dreads. It is infact more profitable now than it was pre-sleeper “nerf” and has only served to make the EVE WH 1% even richer in relationship than before. However the wormhole PVE cap meta has shifted, I’ve actually seen a slow, but steady increase of farming sites with rorquals and snakes, to avoid the capital ship escalation in jew holes.

Citadel farming is an issue, but again, it’s something that CCP has been mousely silent on. You shouldn’t be able to drop a citadel and farm the drifter spawns with impunity. CCP has said that sleeper AI is the most advanced of all their NPC AIs. Its time for it to evolve to the next level. Then you get the issue with people spawning sites in the Shattered holes, and spawning the drifters, which leaves massive piles of drifters flying around.

Pre nerf, the c5 and even the c6 sites were still doable by small ships. I’ve had first hand experience watching c5 sites run with one person multiboxing a vulture, 4-6 gilas, and 2-3 basilisks. So there’s no point in saying that C5/6 sites should not be runnable by battleships, as that skews those even more in favour of dreadbombing sites.

Now to the points you’ve made:

1. Going back to the old style escalations is not good. If you want to propose a proper solution. Make it 1 escalation wave per capital ship (regardless of class, so FAX, dread, carrier, and rorq) upto a maximum of 3 or 4 waves (i’d have to play with those numbers to find out for certain what i think would work the best).

2. We don’t need to rebalance the site for multiple cap types, we need to find a way to make the gameplay more strenuous for those who have the abilities to fully punish the WH PVE mechanics.

3. No, rewards don’t need to go up. Its still easily possible to do enough PVP in a week without pushing it (avg ~1 hour a night) to replace a 15 billion isk loss. The risk/reward is already pretty skewed towards the high end anyways.
   Triple dread: can be around 2.5 billion isk an hour without much difficulty
   2 Rorq, 2 snake: peaks at about 2 billion isk an hour if you’re really focused, normally around 1.6 or so
   2 snake/3nestor: makes between 500-70mm mil isk Hr without much difficulty, though the high end data/relic sites in c5/6 space are not easily doable.
   1 Marauder makes about 250 million isk/hr fairly consistently.

That to me seems like a good risk/reward progression

4. Drifter battleships currently warp to certain signatures, and celestials (WH sigs, other combat sites when a drifter has engaged in combat, POCOs, etc). I don’t think this needs to be changed, moreso the drifters should have some kind of tech against citadels. I’d try to make them be able to beat astrahuses, but a fortizar seems like a reasonable risk/reward to me.

As much as capital escalations aren’t great to jump these days, it’s not a problem of the mechanics behind them, it’s a problem with WH population (and moreso EVE population in general). 5 years ago, it wasn’t unusual to have 40k-ish players on every night at late EUTz. Nowadays we’re lucky if it’s above 27k.

I do agree things should be done, but i feel like your train of thought doesn’t really suggest anything to help it. The largest groups in WH space probably have between 200 and 250 wormholes currently under their ownership, nobody can challenge that.

And while I’d love to see CCP do something about it, the population of WHs is actually quite low overall in eve. The active number of WH characters if they ALL banded together would probably barely be in a top 10 alliance of EVE (my best guesses put the total number of active WH characters a bit below 5000).

And unfortunately, CCP has showed how it feels about the EVE community in general, and the only reason why i’m posting this is because I feel like you do need some support. But I highly doubt anything will come of the newest in the line of EA monitization schemes.

If you want some ideas of how to improve isk generation to WH space here you go:

1. Remove melted nanoribbons from all c5/6 sites. Increase spawn rates to something higher.
2. I’m curious to see how moon mining in WH space will go. So i’ll hold judgement on it there
3. Make the drifters more aggressive, capable of reinforcing structures, and popping them even, in order to force people to be less spread out, allowing for better isk generation for most players.

Jonn.

P.S. This current forum design is balls. It’s like they took a fashion designer, injected them with like 4 meths and 2 marijuanas in it, and told them to psuedo code things with lipstick, while sitting on a rollercoaster. I know it’s new “Web Whatever.Whatever”, but CCP the ONLY redeeming feature i can see is the simultaneous preview on the chat window, the whole layout of the site is…garbage. I guess even CCP realizes that r/eve is the real eve subreddit.

[Capri_Sun_KraftFoods]

@ISK_Lord

We were warned against taking a C6 by HK for example. Tut tut… how to kill your own content guys.

“We didn’t move into a C6 because HK wouldn’t make a NIP with us”

That said you’re completely right except for the fact that what you’re asking for is already the case in C6 space. It’s C5 space thats ■■■■■■ up, not 5/6.

[unimatrix0030]

Citadel farming needs to die in a fire!
And could someone explain to me how you can say herodreading is bad and say the new drifter system is good in the same sentence?
Every pve capital is a herodread these days… .

[taque]

@Jonn_Duune

Remove melted nanoribbons from all c5/6 sites. Increase spawn rates to something higher.
I’m curious to see how moon mining in WH space will go. So i’ll hold judgement on it there
Make the drifters more aggressive, capable of reinforcing structures, and popping them even, in order to force people to be less spread out, allowing for better isk generation for most players.

not sure what is about the melted nanoribbons. last time i checked they were below a million a piece.
to be honest, when i do sites i don’t salvage.

i can agree with a few here about citadels vs drifters. if you engage with either a ship or citadel then that should not matter, a drifter should be able to atleast reinforce a citadel just as it can kill any ship piloted by a player.

i don’t see much issues in how the mechanics work other than above points that have been mentioned earlier. but the many wh’s where i see only a citadel but barely see any players on may be. empty space.

there are still a good number of C5s not being claimed. but most of the better c5’s already have been taken.

here is also a challenge to other players/corporations and alliances to make wormholes more attractive and a will to find ways to pvp since pve is not an issue. that may ask some creativity from us aswell…

[ISK_Lord]

I’ve just got back from EvEsterdam and can report some encouraging comments made by CCP Lebowski. This is not word for word obviously but in summary:

1). He stated that the rewards across sleeper sites C1 through C6 were not evenly spread, and something would be done to rebalance this.

2). He stated that CCP have been aware of the citadel farming problem, and indicated that there are plans to make Drifters ‘smarter’ to counter this in some way. He indicated this would likely appear within the next few iterations but probably no warning will be given. Citadel farmers… your days may be numbered!

3). He was aware that wormholers do not find the drifter sleeper spawn challenging, and indicated that some new tweaks to AI may come to spice things up.

It is very good to see that CCP are listening and just as keen as the players to improve game play!

Let’s hope these changes come soon to kill citadel farming and dead farm holes providing zero content. Some easy development changes such as tweaks to drifter behavior triggers could have hugely positive benefit on high end space in the short term.

Medium term I would sincerely like to see escalations remade as proper ‘capital escalations’. Keep the mysterious drifter theme perhaps, but find some way to make it mandatory to bring each capital class in to spawn a wave and give each class a useful role geared to its strengths and weaknesses.

As an aside - I’m not one for getting involved with trolls, but Legion40k I’ve been a wormholer much longer than you and lived in C6 and C5 space for many years before you dared to jump your first hole. Before you embarrass yourself again, check the facts. The old sites were spawned in 4 waves - 2x carriers and 2x dreads. Ask some your corp mates who are vets in HK.

One other great trend that seems to be coming to PvE across all space is more dynamic sites i.e. there will be more randomness to keep it challenging. CCP RedDawn stated that CCP were aware that repetitive running of identical format sites was ‘boring’. They are therefore working on ways to have more ‘chance based’ variations for a given site. The new hisec ‘resource wars’ that promote collaborative gameplay for newer players, are part of a drive to make PvE more interesting and perhaps bridge the gap to player interaction / corp play styles.

Perhaps one day we wont have such rigid formats to sleeper sites (and indeed all sites), and there may be a necessity or benefit to bring say, a carrier into a site again, or a FAX to hold the field. This would be chance based, and rather than running sites with cookie cutter dreads or battleships, players would need to be ready to field a diverse variety of ship types and fleet comps to run the sites effectively. Sound fun? Yeah!

[Fetouros_Kousou]

hmm,maybe ccp will add doomsday ability to drifter

[Rena_Skjem]

that sounds boring. ppl will bring cheap ships then, bait DD and then switch to w/e shp that can kill it.

that how was done in drifter incursions atleast.