Improvement proposal for High-Sec Incursions, Scout sites and Assault sites

PvE Gameplay Center Missions
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Thank you to the CCP staff and everyone at ISD for your continued support.
My name is Beatlise and I am a FC in the Japanese high-sec Incursion community. I would like to post about the current problems and rebalancing of high sec Incursion.

◆1. Background and Objective

There are four types of incursion sites (HQ, Assault, Vanguard, and Scout) by difficulty level, but currently players are polarized into HQ and Vanguard, with very few Fleets playing Assault and none playing Scout.
The main reason for this problem is that the effort required for the strategy is not matched with the rewards at the scout and assault sites.
Below, I would like to propose the current problem, the direction we should aim for, and the measures to improve the situation.

◆2. Current problems and directions to be pursued

2-1. Cleared time and reward

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The above figure lists the hourly wage (maximum, middle, and minimum) for each site in the current high-sec incursion environment.
(The approximate attack times are reliable data from actual incursion runners, wiki editors, etc.)
As shown in the figure, Scout is too little rewarded for the time it takes to attack, and Assault has a lower average hourly wage than Vanguard.

2-2. Problems with scout sites

  1. This site was very time-consuming due to the large number of ECM ships and remote repair ships, as well as the presence of snipers.
    →The challenge was made by 5 ships (Nightmare, Paladin, Vindicator, Claymore, and Basilisk), which can cleard Vanguard, and it took 20 minutes per site.
    *Especially in Wave 3 of the Propaganda Cluster, 4 remote repair ships, Mara Paleo, appeared, and the number of ships that could be attacked and the enemy tank strength did not match remarkably.

  2. The reward is less than the L4 mission, despite the need to move the ship every week to attack.
    →In the case of 20 minutes per site, the hourly wage is 10.5m. (Significantly less than the average hourly wage of the L4 mission)

2-3. Problems with assault sites

  1. Some sites do not match the reward with the time and effort required to attack.
    →The Nation Consolidation Network (NCN) requires more preparation and effort to attack than other sites, because it is necessary to split the fleets in Battleship and Battlecruiser and attack at the same time.

  2. Overall, the rewards are low, and it is better to go to HQ or Vanguard.
    →If there are 20 pilots, it would be more profitable to split the fleet between 10 and 10 people and go to Vanguard.

2-4. Direction to aim for

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The direction of the rebalancing is that Scout should be between Vanguard and L4 mission. Assault will be adjusted to be between HQ and Vanguard. (Red: Changes)
This will provide the following benefits

  1. Increase the options for small group PVE for 3-5 players by increasing the efficiency and rewards of scout sites.

  2. Increase the efficiency and rewards of assault sites to make them an good option for fleets of 15-20 players (Vanguard and above, HQ and below).

  3. Scout sites will become a higher level content of L4 missions, giving solo players an opportunity to enjoy small group fleets.

◆3. Proposed Improvements (Scout sites)

3-1. Raise the reward amount and the maximum number of rewardees.

  • (Current) 3.5mISK + 400LP, maximum reward of 3 pilot.

  • (New) 7.0mISK + 400LP, maximum reward of 5 pilot.

3-2. Reduction and replacement of some enemy NPCs

  • Delete the following [ECM ship, remote repair ship, sniper ship]:
    Orkashu Myelen, Niarja Myelen, Arnon Epithalamus, Antem Neo, Mara Paleo, Uitra Telen, Vylade Dien.

  • Add a small number of the following [warp disruptor ships, close range ships with moderate DPS]:
    Schmaeel Medulla, Renyn Meten, Tama Cerebellum, Romi Thalamus.

With this adjustment, I would like to maintain a moderate sense of urgency and adjust the clear time per site to 10 minutes or less, as in Vanguard.

3-3. Fixing a bug

The Nation Industrial Proxy site could not be started because the enemy was spawn at a distance of 3,000 km and could not contact the site.
If any flags are required to start the site, please specify them in the description.

◆4. Proposed Improvements (Assault Sites)

4-1. Increase in the amount of remuneration

  • (Current) 18.2mISK + 3500LP

  • (New) 23.66mISK + 3500LP

4-2. Below are the modifications to the NCN site (either Plan A or B)

  • Plan A: Remove restrictions on ship types at the entrance.

  • Plan B: Make it possible to attack the site by the BS route alone. (If both BS/BC routes are taken, the reward will be doubled.)

When we cleared NCN with our community’s mixed BS/BC fleet, it took about 20 minutes, and the other sites took about 15-18 minutes. With this adjustment, the time to clear all sites is expected to be within 15 minutes when circling with the BS fleet.

◆5. Other improvement proposed

5-1. Adjustment of beacon repop time.

Currently, it takes 7:15 for a new beacon to pop after a site is cleared, but we would like to see this accelerated. I would like to see it pop in 2-3 minutes or less.
Depending on the number of local pilots, there may be not only waiting for the site to spawn, but also fighting over the site. However, Incursion players do not like PvP. This things simply adds to players' stress.

5-2. Fix to prevent incursions spawn into the high sec constellation in the enclaves.

Even if an incursion spawn into an enclave high-sec, few people be able to play. Currently, when incursions spawn to the high-sec of an enclave, the routine is for some of the top players to terminate it early and wait for the next repop. For this reason, while many others are unable to enjoy the contents when incursions spawn to the high-sec of an enclave.

5-3. Modification to two spawn in high-sec (please return to the old specs).

Currently, high-sec incursions appear in only one constellation, but in the old environment, they also occurred in multiple constellations.
Furthermore, in the current environment, the cost of participating in the contents (travel time, risk of Gank, or transportation costs) is higher than in the past because of the difficulty of traveling between Caldari and Amarr due to the fall of Niarja.
For this reason, I would like to see a modification so that it always occurs in two constellations, for example, one in the area of Caldari - Gallente and one in the area of Amarr - Minmatar.

The fall of Niarja is a very interesting event, and I do not particularly disagree with this point.
However, Thereby the if the game is made difficult to participate in the permanent contents, or if the game is made to incur high costs for participating in the contents, it is a failure of the game.

This kind of talk will bring out people who claim that “High-sec ganks is EVE’s culture”, but I disagree.
If you force PvP on a player who prefers PvE, will that player like PvP? Probably no. They will just go on to enjoy PvE in other games.

That is all.
Thank you for your consideration.

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I’ve read this post and two other posts of yours today. You’ve obviously spent a lot of thought and time on them.

The conclusion I’ve drawn from your writing is this: you fundamentally don’t like EVE Online as it is currently published.

EVE as a game has always included non-consent pvp. Does that discourage some gamers from choosing to spend time on it. Yes. Yes, it does.

But, that is okay.

Not all games are for all gamers.

It’s like flowers. I like flowers. I like scented flowers more than non-scented flowers.

But, some scented flowers “stink” to me, so I avoid them no matter how “lovely” they may look to me.

EVE’s the same. If you like pvp in your games, you may like EVE. You may really enjoy it. If, however, you don’t like pvp in your games, you may take a hard pass on EVE.

And, in the end, both positions of the buyer/gamer is fine.

But, I do want to point out again, the ultimate conclusion your words impressed on me was this: you fundamentally don’t like what EVE is currently.

This may be a language or cultural barrier; but, it is the message I got from reading your threads. Just food for thought, in case, you wish to make further proposals.

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As the first responder noted and I’ve also saw at least one of the other threads (the one about ganking rebalance) and have the same impression.

OP if you don’t like chess but like poker the solution is not to introduce card mechanics to chess but to not play chess and instead play poker.

And if EVE is the only game you like of this genre but you want to play it as a singleplayer combat game without PvP then you try to play it wrong as PvP is one of the core principles of EVE.

Not every game is for everyone and it seems EVE is clearly not for you.

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As an incursion runner I welcome changes. To really stay simple here. I hope sites get redone. New NPCs. New sites and so on. Incursions has remained untouched for years. Only recently focuses being downgraded from 3 HS to 1 HS. And changes to the ships such as murders that run them. What’s crazy is we (the incursion community) has every site “cracked” (optimized) and yet people die to human error and disconnects.

Long as ISK/hr doesn’t change “drastically” I would love to enjoy new incursions. CCP hasent touched it for a while now so I am not going to push for anything honestly.
Many people are here for the fellowship than running the 3 sites in HQ Incursions needs to be gutted and redone sites are stale only reason I stay beyond the requires 4-16 sites a day to plex an account is the people XD I know this is an MMO and MMO’s aren’t known for their fresh content anyways but that’s just my thoughts on this.

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Every PvE site is “cracked” (optimized) in every MMO game. Eve Online included. And beyond Incursions: missions, anomalies, signatures, rated and unrated complexes, FW missions and plexes, and hell even newer stuff like abyssals.

That alone doesn’t make it a good reason for devs to do a content pass on it. It’s the min maxing players that are the problem for that particular issue, and it’s injecting other players to unpredictably interfere with it that solves this problem of repetitive predictability. PvP adds huge degrees of creative uncertainty that programming can never provide.

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Your justification for point 5.1 is terrible argument that undermines the rest of your post. I highly, highly advise that you delete your justification, and come up with something better (like reducing waitlist times and allowing more people to enjoy playing the game, rather than sitting around with their thumbs up their asses).

I feel similarly for point 5.3. More spawns to support more players and shorter wait lists is fine in my book, but the idea that spawns should… spawn in certain locations in order to minimize the need to travel through ganker hotspots is hogwash. Incursions generate content for more than just the incursion runners. And, if you don’t want to be someone else’s content, then I suggest that you use best practices when traveling.

Ugh. And it’s just going downhill from there.

Okay, I’m not opposed to upping the rewards of scout and assault sites in order to bring them in line, but this is an challenging always on PvP game whose name literally means Everyone Versus Everyone. And if you don’t like it, you should go play something with consensual only PvP.

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Careful what you wish for. Somewhere there’s a monkey paw itching to curl a finger. Don’t get me wrong, I sometimes wish there was more site variety, but I’m reluctant to ask CCP to make changes, lest they make things worse.

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Hmm… it’s almost as if there was a CSM candidate that actually runs a high sec incursion community that ran. I can’t quite place who it was though… :rofl: Just remember this for CSM18.

Anyways, my only real 2 complaints about incursions are:

  • scouts are freaking bloody useless. Instead of wasting the time to refactor and make them worth something, ditch them completely and give that system to another one of the incursion site types.

  • decrease the spawn timers or add more sites to bigger systems. At least in the VGs there’s a lot of competition and there’s been times that 3-4 fleets are waiting around for a new site to spawn. Doesn’t happen often, but it’s usually on the focus spawns with the smallest amount of VG systems.

Doing this would allow more fleets to share a system and minimize the waiting around. For me, this isn’t about isk per hour. This is about fun per hour. Waiting around or having to fly 100AU to the next site isn’t really fun.

As far as the moving goes, yea it sucks. However, we solved it. We move and pilots can use a loaner ship unless they want to upgrade into another ship on the doctrine. We regularly talk to our pilots how to move safely and I even send them out to roll with Safety on Safety Saturdays (doesn’t make me the most popular kid on the playground but nobody that actually went has been ganked). We teach them how to set up multiple caches in different areas.

And the island spawns aren’t that big of a deal either. Either fly with the HQ groups and help burn it down (they use cheap ships) or use the break to do something else.

Honestly out of all the high sec activities, incursions are probably in the best shape.

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Best thing CCP can do is remove them and rebalance level 4 missions to take their place. Incursions are dead content; Sansha’s is no more.

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My first though when I see your post was ‘Are you mad?’

Incursions have the follow benefits:

  • gets people in space in fleets in high sec. Which is a stepping stone to joining PvP fleets elsewhere in the game.
  • gets people actually talking to each other.
  • actually puts high value battleship at risk of loss , which happens way more often than you would expect.
  • provides a market for high value mods and weapons. Who else in this game actually uses faction guns?
  • provides a stream of high value gank targets criss-crossing high sec in predictable ways.
  • gets people in space earning their isk - undocked.

Do you really think this should be killed off?

The biggest issue I see with incursions is the marauder buff, which has made incursions safer and more exclusive while increasing the reward, but that could be changed without removing the benefits.

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Level 4 Missions, by the way they’re set up, are not really a fleet activity. You can get 10 pilots max that can still get a reward and even then it’s kind of a pittance.

Meanwhile if I take myself off grid in the booster, I can get 14 pilots into a fleet to do VGs and even at 7m per site the rookies just finding their way to this activity can still make a decent amount in the 2 hours our fleets run. On top of this, we’re about to break into assaults which really isn’t any better isk for the effort BUT I can get MORE pilots into the fleet.

Eve Rookies Incursions has been established in the HS incursion community for well over a year now and now we’re being overrun with pilots thirsty for SOCIAL INTERACTION in a no strings attached way. We just started doing FOBs on Saturday and those are now being overrun. So it’s clear what we need is MORE 15-30 pilot fleet activities, not less.

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I like how they responded to me, but didn’t bother to read my post. Probably so triggered by “remove incursions” that their minds blanked out.

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Rebalancing level 4 missions to allow fleets of 40 people seems like a lot of work when you already have 40 person PvE in the game. I’d rather the developer time went on other things.

Incursions get people in space in expensive ships in clearly marked locations. I think they should remain.

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Nah not really. The mission system is 15+ years old and needs an overhaul anyway. And Incursions are dead from a lore perspective; Sansha’s is no more, just like the Jove are no more. Make the othe rpirate factions great again.

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If you want group missions then maybe having a group mission agent could be a thing, but it shouldn’t be mixed into the normal agents as that is for solo.

Having to decline 3 group missions every 10 will hurt standings a lot especially when the social boosters stop working in a few days.

What if you could install a mission agent module into a citadel one of those options being a solo agent other being the group agent then all that new content for missions can be enjoyed by everyone. With those installed agent’s having a separate lp tree so it doesn’t influence normal lp stores.

I like the op’s proposed point of increasing the pay of those 2 sites the scout pay seems like a joke tbh.

But making it safer from gank’s is just silly that is up to the pilot to do themselves not ccp. Maybe don’t fly direct take a slight detour where gankers would not be ?

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It would be a shame for CCP to simply plug sansha incursions. Like they did to invasions. HOWEVER, we are seeing new things come from Edencom so maybe some action coming soon.

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You are correct regarding the buffing of the Marauders.

*In 2014, when I joined WTM’s HQ fleet, it was about 100m per hour.

I think that the Marauders enhancements have caused a major balance distortion not only in PVP but also in PVE.

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LOL, look at this pathetic scrub. If you do not want to play EVE just leave. HTFU.

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If you want PVE only… Star Trek Online is that way. Elite Dangerous also. I personally like the threat of being ganked/forced PVP. Really spices things up. Star Trek Online is litterally Farmville in space. LOVE STAR TREK dislike the game XD

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Maruaders will get a nerf within a few months they are still oppressive in pvp but will probibly still be useful in pve.