Encounter Surveillance System Update

[Ganthrithor]

[quote=“Black_Pedro, post:474, topic:277014”]
Standard carebear/safebear defeatism.

Sure, like always you are going to win some and lose some, but you really are invoking the worst case scenario here.[/quote]

I spend a lot of time in nullsec, most of it on the killing people side of the equation, and no-- I don’t think a scenario where a couple of Kikis and a Scalpel show up is out-of-the-ordinary. It doesn’t have to be those ships, it could be any of the troll-y BS that people fly these days: Hecates, interceptors, Navy Ospreys, assfrigs-- it doesn’t really matter. ANY of that stuff is going to require a somewhat-serious ship to engage, and the minute you need a real ship the cost:benefit flies out the window.

@Black_Pedro

Ok, sometime you’ll get soem 50-man fleet you are outmatched by wandering through, but oh well. Stay docked, and write off 50% of your last 3 hours’ ISK. Big deal. Most of the time no one will come by, and if they do, you can still decline the fight. There is just a small cost to that now instead of it being the best choice as it is now.

It’s not a small cost: it’s about half. Doubly-troubling since it’s half of what are already horrifically-low bounty payouts. People’s take-home is going to be almost nothing-- 20M isk/hr? What possible motivation could they have for pursuing this method of income generation? They will just go to highsec, where they can semi-AFK mine in peace with zero risk and make the same money or better.

I think PvPers who are keen to have targets “forced” into their guns fail to understand the importance of cost:benefit to most players. I have friends I’ve been playing with for over a decade who are perfectly proficient small gang PvPers and are ~as we speak~ in the process of decommissioning their nullsec PvE operations and re-basing them to highsec to do AFK mining. There’s just literally no reason to try and PvE in nullsec right now when you can make the same money with zero effort in highsec. These changes are not going to result in more targets: they’re going to result in more people following the path of least resistance.

@Black_Pedro

Your income is not going to be dramatically impacted but the ESS - there just aren’t enough content creators out there. Maybe that will change, but I kinda doubt it. Eve is mostly krabs now and they have better things to do than risk their ships for a fraction of the pittance you are ratting. I could be wrong, but let’s at least wait to see how things shake out before deciding that the game is unplayable for the conflict-averse farmer. I kinda think these changes are going to fail - but not in the way that keeps you up at night, but rather that no one will care and the unbridled krabbing will go on unabated.

We’ll see I guess.

Normal players’ income is going to be very much affected by the ESS changes, since the casual player has the least ability to defend an ESS for hours at a time. I agree that the changes don’t look likely to succeed, and I think they’ll do basically nothing to diminish the kind of turbo-krabbing that’s actually causing the ISK fountain concerns: the botters and turbo-krab autists have the alt armies and specialized ships on standby that will be needed to monitor ESSes all day long and drive people off.

[Scoots_Choco]

@Ganthrithor

I think they’ll do basically nothing to diminish the kind of turbo-krabbing that’s actually causing the ISK fountain concerns

CONCORD introduces the Dynamic Bounty System

It’s happening! ESS rework next week!! TL:DR Summary, bounties will be based on a system multiplier. This multiplier will get adjusted constantly based on what’s happening in the solar system: Excessive ratting? Multiplier goes down High level of player combat and death? Multiplier goes up Empty system? Multiplier stabilizes at an equilibrium value. Of course there’s a lot going on behind the scenes to set the rate of change, but the three points above are all you need to effectively pla…

???
CCP is literally doing this.

[Siegfried_Tahl]

Last year they said that summer 1kk SP login campaign, drifter invasions, and blackout which all ran roughly at the same time (jul-oct) saturated the data and made it impossible to make meaningful conclusions on how each of those changes influenced population and retention. But the dip in the graphs is obvious. And they had to roll it all back.

They are cramming mining changes, DBS and ESS all at the same time again, while trig invasion and pandemic consequences are not settled yet. They saturate the data again. And in case of people leaving in droves again, they won’t be able to tell what caused it again. And might need to roll it all back again. While DBS or ESS. separately, could just be enough.

Makes you wonder if one big expansion per year was better. At least it hit everybody at the same time.

[MB_ThePhotographer]

All the newer players forget that CCP killed off apx 3/5’s of it’s player base in the past. The numbers never recovered. They don’t care if you quit.

[TIme-For-ECO_mamals]

Ratters be like : so i guess i’ll die

[Scoots_Choco]

1. god, I hope so
2. the smart ones will realize this doesn’t actually hurt them as much as the garbage on the forums think and will keep ratting anyway

[Black_Pedro]

@Ganthrithor

ANY of that stuff is going to require a somewhat-serious ship to engage, and the minute you need a real ship the cost:benefit flies out the window.

That’s kinda the point of all these changes - to skew the risk vs. reward balance to be more fitting of somewhere called “nullsec”. Maybe the benefit side will need to be increased, but it really the amount of wasy ISK spewing into the game has been unhealthy for a very long time.

CCP is exactly looking for this, so to point out that you might actually need to risk a ship to defend you ISK as a problem is silly. That is the whole point.

@Ganthrithor

It’s not a small cost: it’s about half. Doubly-troubling since it’s half of what are already horrifically-low bounty payouts.

It’s not. Even if a gang rolls in 10% of the time you are ratting at the exact moment to steal 50% of all your ISK, that averages out to only a 5% decrease in your earnings. I find it very hard to believe most nullsec systems will encounter random roamers even that frequently.

I guess, a more systematic farming of the space might be attempted by some that increases that number, but at that point we aren’t talking random roamers here, but an actual invasion of “your” space. You should be defending against that, and if you can’t well then you probably shouldn’t be in nullsec.

But I can’t see the future so who knows? Maybe the ISK for bounties will need to be increased - there is already a feedback in the new system to do that if your system sees a lot of fighting, or CCP can now adjust things in general upward as they get the ISK faucet under control.

@Ganthrithor

There’s just literally no reason to try and PvE in nullsec right now when you can make the same money with zero effort in highsec.

This will need to be looked at by CCP of course, but you and your friends are going to be disappointed with the “no effort” ISK available in highsec. There is some that is pretty low APM, but it really does pay a pittance. The decent levels of ISK in highsec all require effort which seems to be what you are most interested in avoiding.

I would not make any major decisions right now in the middle of a resources distribution rebalance. It’s very likely, ~as we speak ~, CCP is working on the devblog which will announce changes to the other resource faucets. They’ve done mining, and now nullsec bounties, but there are still some notable SK/resource outliers that I expect them to make changes to.

@Ganthrithor

Normal players’ income is going to be very much affected by the ESS changes, since the casual player has the least ability to defend an ESS for hours at a time.

I’m sorry, but nullsec is not suppose to a safe farming zone where you don’t have to defend your stuff. If your “playstyle” for lack of a better word is such you can only live in nullsec by avoiding every fight, then perhaps you shouldn’t be there afterall. Highsec and lowsec offer more casual friendly activities that as we established, pay reasonably well if you put in some effort.

The get-every-player-into-nullsec direction the developers embarked on did a lot of damage. Not just to the economy of the game, but by setting some expectations that you can farm (and bot) in perfect safety. Not every activity needs to be for the “casual” and nullsec should be about more challenging, large group play. It should also be accessible to new entrants, and that is a challenge CCP has yet to really solve, but just by making things so safe that you can decline every fight short of full-scale invasion, and piles of ISK are lying on the ground, hasn’t created a great ecosystem.

In any case, the TL;DR is that pointing out that you now have to defend yourself and your ISK-making activity as a problem is silly - that is the entire goal of the ESS. I do think it is fair to remind CCP that you are making your ISK making choices based on ease and how lucrative they are, and you might go elsewhere if these changes make somewhere else more attractive, but I also think CCP is well aware of this and more adjustments are in the pipeline.

And I think this is exactly in the direction CCP wants to take income generation - reward active/risky activities more and AFK/safe activities less.

[Daro_Mozu]

@Black_Pedro

And I think this is exactly in the direction CCP wants to take income generation - reward active/risky activities more and AFK/safe activities less.

There is a rather large list of activities that can be done with less risk and even more reward than krabbing in null. I wonder if CCP dares to look at those?

[Ramona_McCandless]

@Siegfried_Tahl

they won’t be able to tell what caused it again

But they ask why when you cancel a sub and wont people leaving in anger be all too happy to tell them? I know I told em why when I cancelled my subs.

But Im fascinated to know what these things in HS that are safer and more economically enriching than krabbing in Null are.

[Induce_Deadline]

@MrStock

Loved to get up on a free day, grab a coffee, log in my rorquals, mine a little, reading news, get another coffee, survive 250 man bombers bar hotdrop with help from 250 alliance dudes and get back to mining while i did some super ratting cause i was addicted to faction titan spawns and the loot i got from those like in diablo.
That is all gone now thx to ccp, and besides the war i really dont know what its left to do with my playstyle in eve.

Totally agree. Survived multiple BB drops with my 3 rorqs out, it was some of the scariest moments I’ve encountered in any game. Then you think about those doing the dropping, fragging rorqs and supers. It was awesome for both sides. Add in the BB streamers who were advertising the game and building hype for their fleets… All of that engaging, compelling playstyle… Gone.

With ratting now being nerfed, the real victims here are the NPSI groups who will see even less targets in space to shoot at.

Such an odd design. Why nerf some of the most enjoyable parts of the game?

[Induce_Deadline]

@Scoots_Choco

And how regularly are these Needlejack filaments killing you vs the days/weeks you go by uninterrupted?

A ratting super costs around 25b. If you’re good, you can make 400m/hour with it so you’re looking at 60-65 hours to break even. Supers die regularly in Eso, Delve, Dek, Kalevala etc.

If this creates an environment where people are regularly roaming null, people won’t rat as there’s little chance of breaking even on that kind of investment. That’s not about being risk averse, it’s just common sense, how often do you go roaming in a 25b ship?

[Jenn_aSide]

@Induce_Deadline

With ratting now being nerfed, the real victims here are the NPSI groups who will see even less targets in space to shoot at.

The worst thing about this discussion is that you have people that just can’t grasp this idea.

I should dig up that big pre-blackout thread and link it here. It was the exact same thing. They honestly thought people were just going to sit there and take it, but very many people just quit all together.

it’s the same here, you got posters think that folks are gonna keep ratting even though their isk keeps getting stolen and/or their “ess defense” ships keep getting blown up (not even mentioning the dynamic bounty stuff).

People largely abandoned anom ratting in 2011 over a much less invasive change, and yet the defenders of this change in here are certain that this is not going to happen. And irony of irony, many of them aren’t ratters and don’t even live in null.

It just goes to show you that reality doesn’t matter, lessons of the past don’t matter. People will keep thinking what they think over and over again regardless of what actually happens.

[Ramona_McCandless]

But if you raised 25b easily enough in the first place…

[Eukaryotian]

It’s a good thing that people who want to convert EVE to HelloKittyOnline are leaving. Hope they never come back,.

[Daro_Mozu]

While this upcomming change will hit nullsec to an unknown scale, according to you the entire nullsec wanted EVE to become hellokitty online… because the entire null died out during blackout.

[Eukaryotian]

I dont think so. Blackout was different, lot of people didnt want it. ESS update is not a big deal, just on this forums. Reddit not really care about it for example. And this forum went to a whiner-cryer forum some years ago, so i hope devs not take it seriously. EVE needs to be healed, to be true to its name, or it wont be succesful in long term. It has to be cruel and challanging, mature game.

[Daro_Mozu]

Well, ESS will go hand to hand with DBS, and total change may be hard enough.

@Eukaryotian

It has to be cruel and challanging, mature game

You know yourself how many areas of the gameplay are not challenging or cruel or even mature whatsoever.

[Zhalyd_Lyehin]

@Eukaryotian

so i hope devs not take it seriously.

The developers don’t take anything serious, least of all themselves. Or how else to you think we ended up with Rorqual Menace, Structure Spam, an economy in tatters, rampant ISK influx and all that despite countless people telling these funny people at CCP that their ways are wrong?

They again don’t take themselves seriously with this feature either as it is not complete (see lacking API features, lacking access to a core function of the feature and lacking consideration for special cases).

[Eukaryotian]

CCP do anything a certain number of people always say they are wrong.

[Zhalyd_Lyehin]

That’s irrelevant if their own data shows that these people are right. The MER of the last 4 years have shown every single month that these people were right, but CCP gleefully ignored them.