Having played eve for many years, there’s been one real constant that i’ve noticed, Vexor, VNI, Gila, Rattlesnake, Ishtar, Dominix, Praxis, Nestor, Eos, Myrmadon etc.
When it comes to PVE in Eve-Online, it’s generally one of the above that you turn to, whether it be running forsaken hubs or havens in null sec, Abyssal traces, or even finding a cheap way to do wormhole sites, most people turn to the ability to put a drone boat on grid and either multibox them, or go AFK completely.
This lack of requirement to be at the keyboard to control your ship and make decisions i feel is a major contributor to the botting problem that is seen in many regions of Null Sec, and has killed the diversity of eve PVE in general.
Additionally drone boats have a vast advantage over other weapon systems for PVE in the lack of overheads, all other weapon systems require ammunition, the cost of which detracts from the overall profits of the PVE, this puts a natural and unfair nerf on all other weapons that drone boats should be balanced to meet.
I would love to one day head out into the universe and come across a zealot running a Sansha Forlorn Hub in Paragon soul, or a Cerberus in Deklein, just some variety would be nice.
Sadly when i am flying through space 95% of the ships that i see in sites in Null Sec are Ishtars, and it’s almost guaranteed that as soon as i enter system their script has them pulling drones and warping back to their citadel until the intel bot character they have next door shows that i have moved on.
When i’m discussing running Abyssals with my corp mates, the discussion always swings back around to, it doesn’t matter what type you’re running, just use a Gila.
I’d like to see something done to balance drone boats and make other ships more viable options for PVE, spice up the landscape a bit and add some variety.
A couple of options i have thought of are detailed below, and yes i know the hardcore botters and krabs will ree about changes to their beloved and easy ISK/H, but i couldn’t really care less, you’re part of the problem and don’t want to admit that there is one.
Balance option 1:
Allow the NPC AI to take into account the tank and repair amount of the entity that they are shooting, and if they decide they are unlikely to be able to break the tank of their current target, give them the ability to swap targets.
In the case of a drone boat, this would hopefully force more drone agro, requiring the player to be active at their keyboard in order to avoid losing drones and incurring the overhead of replacing them.
Balance Option 2:
Perhaps a change to the way drones are controlled could be implemented to make them more like fighters, force the player to control a primary weapon set, a secondary weapon set, and an MWD/AB, as well as manually directing them to attack specific targets, instead of them automatically attacking targets.
I’m imagining that the above suggestions will incur quite a bit of trolling and reeing from the community, but just know that i enjoy your tears, i enjoying seeing how many selfish individuals there are in eve that only want what is best for themselves, instead of considering the health of the game at large.
So if you must cry, at least make it a decent cry, and don’t just embarrass yourself by falling back on sad and tired stereotypes of personal insults, at least try and make your reeing decent for all of us to enjoy.
