Well got data from 5 hours run, 75% was for me could be 70 or 60 but together with respawn timer it is a killer. Plus if you did it like in two steps with proper PR (announcing properly) probably there won’t be so much problem for most people doing it. It is all about the way it was done.
You probably could come up even with a fiction story that explains changes in details.
The problem is that EVE is structured in such a way that for the typical player, ‘fun’ and/or entertainment is less the goal, and either rewards/hr or some version of “I like to piss on other people’s cornflakes” is their goal.
If the content features rewards/hr as a ‘reason for running’ it, then by the very nature of that design feature, it will get abused. It will get exploited by farmers, by botters, by multi-boxers, by RMTers.
It isn’t just about bots, and it isn’t ‘ruining it for everybody’ if the payout is dialed back to a more rational amount. What EVE really needs is a reward structure/achievement tree that goes beyond tradeable loot and ISK. It also needs some re-design work that puts some of the fun back in the game and focuses less on the reward grind. After that, it needs some more re-design to make PvP a bit more interesting to those who aren’t in it for the guaranteed win.
Emerging Conduits is one of the more encouraging things I’ve seen CCP come up with in years. I hope they try to focus on making more and better content like this, and less on “but I need my loot stream pinata or I can’t play!” reward incentives.
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Thank you for your constructive post.
While I agree with its general sense, there’s also the other side of the coin, namely what kind of message is CCP sending?
Not addressing bot abuse permanently sends a message that this is an allowed approach because of no consequences, apart from negatively impacting the botted to hell and back activity.
What’s stopping me or you from grinding the crap out of the next conduit extravaganza? Speaking for myself, it’s being the good Eden citizen. But as the recent nerf proves, there’s a lot of people having that quality so deep the sun doesn’t shine there, so what’s stopping them from doing this again next time opportunity arises?
Until the underlying cause is permanently addressed, we’ll be here arguing again meanwhile people actually responsible for it laugh at us, tears of laughter being dried out with the fat ISK wallets, all the while we’re thinking what to do with ourselves next.
I would welcome your suggestions of providing another reason to do activities besides income, but I’m afraid that is not going to change any time soon. Not as long as the game is built on foundations of ■■■■■■■ one another over, be it ganking, scamming or shooting the crap out of each other for the sake of shooting.
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Erm… wut?
Did you not see the “resource adjustment” recently? DEY TUK MAH VELDSPODUSPAR!!! ***
So… they reduce the stupidly high income you can basically afk, which then led to it getting hammered by the botters, but HS gets “all the HUGE nerfs”? Really?
Edit: *** and reduced the volume of the 3 ‘larger’ ore anoms by a truly impactful percentage.
Perhaps the brain trust at CCP needs a dedicated bot team whose sole aim is to find ways to bot new systems before they go live. That’d require checking some design team egos at the door, though. I wonder if they can manage that…
In the time you now need to wait on the respawn you could run two additional sites before. so that’s already a 66% cut, plus less loot,. So yes CCP Sledgehammer , you’re probably right, it’s more like a 80-90% cut.
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The way I see it you achieved two main goals by this major change. You drove a lot of people crazy and made that botters will be jumping now between 2 adjacent systems instead of occupaying one.
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That is exactly the problem with EVE fundamental design mechanics. The ‘goals’ of EVE, for the most part, consist of:
- Asymmetric contests, where you’re trying to put yourself in the “I win!” position by virtue of out-positioning/out-preparing/out-thinking your opponent. Can occur in PvP, markets, mining, whatever (also, simply by contesting against those much weaker than yourself)
- Resource accumulation, which for some people is a goal in itself, and for others is simply a necessary step on the road to positioning yourself in the “I win” position of Asymmetric Contests
- Salt mining, which is the (to my mind, unhealthy) process whereby some people find their ‘entertainment’ in making other people upset/ruining their activity (griefing)
- Strategic Gameplay, which is the longer-term process of mastering your manufacturing, or mining, or market trading, or Sov holding, or PvP/PvE strategies simply for the satisfaction of knowing that you are performing better than X% of other players in that niche
(Note: not including “Social bonding” here because that’s not really part of EVE gameplay mechanics, to my mind. At least not in EVE’s current state. What social bonding does occur, while very important, is more a side-effect of EVE game mechanics than a direct one.)
Those goals would cover most of the reasons, most players play EVE, most of the time. And of the four, ‘resource accumulation’ is probably the primary activity. (Keeping in mind that a single activity can in fact possess elements of all 4 main goals.)
So yes, anything that comes along, especially if it is formulaic, routine, repetitive, and easily farmed, is going to create the same response of ‘Introduce content, content gets farmed/botted/multiboxed to hell, nerf or remove content’.
One way to get around that is to introduce non-tradeable rewards: rather than ISK and drops, you substitute personal skill points, reputation, unlock achievements, unlock access to features, and/or encourage more social behaviours and connection.
Another way is to start designing content that is variable enough that it becomes harder to farm in an automated fashion. Or design content that has some sort of built-in ‘bot detection’, although that would still be farmable and multi-boxable. Or CCP could increase the viability of PvP for both winners and losers, which would allow less harsh restrictions against PvP in HS and allow more people to explore content in low sec. This would in turn make it so that botters/farmers are more likely to be interrupted by PvPers.
There aren’t any ‘simple’ solutions, even ‘eliminating most botting’, while probably possible, wouldn’t be simple. Good solutions would require a lot of work and some significant changes. CCP may not be in a position to deliver that kind of effort these days, so we may need to focus on partial improvements.
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It really comes down to balancing and fairness to all players. This one upset the balance and needed rework.
However long term the risk vs reward balance needs some tweaks that all players can agree on.
- remove L3 and L4 missions from highsec completely so the new players have incentive to move on.
- remove ore anoms, ice anoms, and anything beyond veldspar and scordite in HS
- Incursions removed from HS
- trig invasions and emerging conduits further reduce payouts in HS - have escalations to low and nullsec for the primo rewards
This will allow the new players to get introduced to the game but incentivized to spread their wings into low and null and form lasting corp bonds and less solo play.
Rebalancing is good and we want more players to stay and join game not quit.
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This times many more is what happens, they don’t go to nullsec, they leave the game
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Your tweaks don’t incentivize, they force. High sec game play is as valid as any other part of the sand box.
Trying to force people out as the poster above says just makes them leave the game.
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While CCP removing the “veldspoduspar” is inconvenient, it not much of a nerf. Null Sec systems have 6-120 moons per system and the moons have not been nerfed at all. Null sec has switched from anom belts to moon belts but high sec has nothing to switch to. There are very few profitable things in High Sec to do.
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The design intent behind these sites when they were originally introduced was to provide a taste of Invasion content to those that aren’t necessarily able to take part in Invasions proper, namely aimed at newer players, the hope being that they would team up and tackle the content together.
A great feature I must say, I as CEO of a corp with over 1,700+ players, most of them new, the easiness of fleeting up and getting them making their first iskies to get into a battlecruiser or battleship, worked very well for new players.
This meant creating a piece of content that was widely available and easy to access, hence the 1 min respawn and HS-wide distribution.
Also great, allows all corps in highsec the ability to do some fun content with their members.
These goals were satisfied but I will be the first to admit that I did not anticipate the subsequent snowballing of botting and min-maxing that started to happen over December and January.
Solved by other ways instead of messing with a feature that benefited thousands of players, most of them new ones who thanks to EC are more likely to stay in the game. Punish the botters and restrict the min-maxers, like the one who claims to make 500m an hour with smartbombs.
The numbers that we started to see in that period became cause for great concern and a decision was made to space out their respawn timer more and tweak the survey database drop rate.
The concern as well is losing those new players. Already my corp is forced to try and give them content with lv4 missions, a vast reduction in isk making compared to the EC, and not as accessible, since only omegas can spawn the mission, and the agents are not located everywhere/take time to get access to. Incursions are another avenue, but many new players need skills and experience before they can do them.
Sadly the above results in many new players getting frustrated and quitting.
I understand that people have issue with this but given how the consumption of this content evolved past the initial goal satisfaction, they were a huge problem.
All content in this game evolves past their original goal satisfaction CCP Sledgehammer 
It is an inevitability of the sandbox, the key is making sure abuse is restricted, and that content that works, is either modified, or kept in the game. This content was enjoyed by thousands of players, removing it harmed them all.
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Yes. Bc all the moons have both Veld and Spod. Good point…
Seriously, this comes down to people who are lazy moaning and bitching about how their lives have been ruined cos they can’t auto/afk for top isk in no-risk regions.
If that is what you want go play that sort of game. Probably on a mobile. With sustainable vegan wifi or some such. Either play the game or don’t - just stop bleating about how unfair you find it.
Seriously.
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@ISD_Yumi, @ISD_BH_Schogol, @ISD_Dorrim_Barstorlode
Can we please limit the number of emerging conduit threads?
Nope.
Trying to restrict speech when it does not go his way, typical bittervet
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I personally think anything that is added to the game that can be AFK is garbage. If there is any part of a game so disengaging that a player would rather AFK it, then actively play it. Then those activities need to be looked at.
I did not say that all the moon moons have those ores but just stated their are 6-120 moons per system. We know the moons did not get balanced like the belts did.
So… you’re arguing that garbage being made less bottable is an “HS nerf”? Wow.
With regards to “the moon moons” maybe you would like to explain how they can all be set up for mining and have that maintained - or even just viable - while you’re talking about things you clearly do not understand. It would be educational I am sure.