That would be so awesome, @Namaan !
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The solution isnât âspawn more and make them more aggressiveâ for a few reasons. First, they already spawn up to 600-something subcaps with the capital spawns on a separate counter, and theyâre aggressive enough that if youâve got an interceptor sitting 400km away (watched it happen) while your fleet is tanking the NPCs, the frigates will decide âok, letâs dogpile himâ and warp right onto him.
More importantly: it doesnât matter how many of them there are or how aggressive they are. All that does is force more of your attackers to be in logistics ships, just like in fleet PvP. Theyâre laser boats, so their strength is DPS, not volleyed alpha-strikes. As long as you can bring enough remote reps to match the incoming damage, and enough of a buffer tank to survive until the reps land (and again: lasers. Damage-locked to EM/Therm, use passive hardeners for the neuts), you can ignore them, completely.
And you have to ignore them, because thereâs two timers in play. The first (only present on the kill, not the initial attack) is the repair timer. Sure, you can keep the repair timer paused with some of your DPS, but now youâre splitting your damage, and⌠the second is the âhow long am I taking?â timer. This matters for two reasons:
Reason 1)How many people are in your fleet? How long are they willing to sit there and shoot this thing for 2 BPCs? 200 people means at least 198 of them donât get a BPC, even if the BPCs are immediately handed out to the fleet. If the compensation takes any other form, itâs going to be delayed. So payoutâs not exactly⌠âpush button, get baconâ. If itâs one guy multiboxing supers (and for the record, that was not one guy), then sure, maybe itâs worth it, but if itâs even 50-60, every 20m youâre fighting this thing is 20m youâre not out there making money some other way on that character. The longer it takes, the more itâs costing your fleet members just to show up. So they wonât.
Reason 2)The longer youâre out there doing it, the longer someone else has to come along and screw with you. And they will, if they think they can pull it off.
Between those, you want to run this thing as fast as you can. So, since you want to go fast, and thereâs no reason to actually engage the rats who give no bounties and no drops themselves⌠why would you? Engaging them takes longer, which, as Iâve pointed out, is actively detrimental to your goals.
This is all stuff theme-park MMOs knew 10 years ago. Blackwing Lair, in WoW, was released on 12 July 2005, and by then the âspawn lots of adds and ENRAGE TIMERâ mechanic was already well-established in EQ raids. So while the AI on the EC is great, the structure of the EC fight⌠still some catching up to do.
The rats on the current implementation (the Sotiyo) pay no bounty, and drop no loot. Thereâs nothing to farm, by design. They donât want people just going there and spawning limitless loot/isk and farming it for 3 weeks then killing it so it doesnât despawn.
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Letâs be balanced and blame both.
Indeed, personaly speaking, I play to switch my brain off after a hard day and immerse myself in a space themed game, not to make friends, enemies or isk.
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Ah thatâs right, but with enough spawns salvage becomes the thing.
Salvage never becomes worth the time, especially not when compared to hunting rats that give bounties and loot.
Indeed, personaly speaking, I play to switch my brain off after a hard day and immerse myself in a space themed game, not to make friends, enemies or isk.
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That also sounds like exactly my style of play.
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Ok thx for the info, I hope CCP will allow more to do with moon harvesting in wormhole space in the near future.
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Jenn aSide
Thatâs what I meant to link, that was a year ago, and as usual not many people were there (somehow people can complain loudly about PVE all the time but canât seem to participate anywhere but these forums)
Personally Iâd like to be involved in these sort of things, I just canât afford to fly to the other side of the world to do it.
So my only option is to use these forums, which as you say, is more often than not, not productive as it is generally just seen as complaining. Those who can afford to spend the time and money attending fanfest and the like really arenât representative of PVEârs, they represent their own agendas (exactly the same as the CSM and most focus groups). Which is not to say they are wrong, they are just not able to represent âeveryoneâ.
The average player has no voice when it comes to game design - By design.
As an example; The BR Sotiyo (coming soon to highsec in a nicely dumbed down version [and probably an even more limited reward for âthe personâ who loots the can first])
Fact is, CCP donât care that many players would rather it be actual content that involves a fleet [group] engaging NPCâs that will give some reward when they die. Rather than having thousands of NPCâs that need to be totally ignored while you concentrate all firepower onto the structure, it would be better to have less NPCâs that need to be destroyed âbeforeâ or at least while the structure is being reinforced or destroyed.
At least attempt to make it something akin to pvp, rather than - shoot structure - tank NPCâs - collect reward.
Any group focused PVE needs to reward everyone who takes part, not just one individual.
Like a group setting out to destroy a player owned structure, everyone who attends is rewarded, with killmails.
If Devs canât find a way to balance ârisk vs rewardâ group content is not going to be âa thingââŚ
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Arrendis, My idea for this is in brief; Introducing The Winter Expansion - EVE Online: Lifeblood
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Well, the principles youâre outlining there are sound: making something interesting, something that actually requires fleet v NPCs action, and offers immediate payout for the participants⌠I think all of that is probably exactly what CCP should be shooting for on the group PvE content, especially in HS.
I also think they need to work on more engaging and interesting solo PvE content. Wanna know a big secret? Out in null, people really arenât exactly driven to run the BR EC, either. Group PvE content? Thereâs incursions, but what most of the people out in null want in PvE content is solo content.
Null miners multibox, or mine in small groups with 4-5 friends (usually both). The largest rorqual fleet in Delve? Itâs one guy, and Gaara makes no secret about it. Multiboxing without input multiplexing is still possible, even in large numbers. When weâre ratting? Other than the groups that run incursions, we rat soloâto the point where people get violent toward blues who warp into the anom theyâre working on and wonât leave.
If CCP wants people to want to run the FOBs, the FOBs need to scale to solo as well as groups, and they need to pay out. Sâall there is to it.
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Well, you get the HS concern then. Next time Falcon notices you, please put a word in for us, the poor ignored Hisec individuals who are looking for some upgraded content that could be done solo (or not). Thanks!
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Any group PVE particularly in HS will be a waste of time.
Players will get fed up with never getting the drops because you know damn well that thereâll be more than a few cloaky interceptors waiting to pounce. So players will just not bother turning up.
As more than a few have said we need true solo content but CCP are still trying to force the move to just group content and ignoring anything else. Everything over the last couple or three years has been designed to drive out solo and small corp play and I donât sense thatâs going to change anytime in the near future.
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small corps⌠small groups of people who do stuff together? 
i donât see how group PvE content drives out small corps made of several people, also known as groups. are you sure that your dislike doesnât cloud your judgement?
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Feel free to point out new PVE content aimed at solo or small corp play, without making me laughâŚ
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Unlike you i know that itâs not out yet, so i reserve judgement for the day when itâs out and playable. unlike you, i donât rant about my personal idea of what something might be and treat it is a definite fact of what it will be, without actually knowing what it might be.
you can look through your own posts and you will find that you continuously rant about something you have nothing but speculation about. not logging onto the forums and game for two weeks will do your judgement, and anger issues, wondersâŚ
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How about you just â â â â off and stop trolling my posts?
BTW, nothing has been a rant, just my view on the state of the game.
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What Iâm hoping CCP are doing is writing a mission framework that drives these new missions, and can be changed by amending the parameters that govern the number and nature of defenders, level of AI competence, final rewards etc.
This way the work is never wasted and can be reused across all areas of space for new PvE content. Iâm sure there will only be a % of players use the new missions but to me that just means they benefit from it, and itâs a players choice whether they partake or not (and they have no-one else to blame in the latter). Make the newer missions reward better than standard according to difficulty and people will naturally migrate away from the old missions.
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I agree 100%, obviously CCP has no clue how most High Sec PvE players operate, which is doing things solo.
What new âmissionsâ are you talking about?
The current plan is to bring the BR Sotiyo, which only rewards the ONE person lucky enough to loot the can when the structure dies (dumbed down) to highsec.
It is not a âmissionâ it is a spawn event that requires X amount of players to shoot a structure whilst tanking X + X amount of NPCâs so that at the end when the structure is destroyed on its final timer - ONE person will get a reward.
Personally I donât see too many Highsec mission runners lining up so some random guy can get a reward⌠Especially when you consider, the person who scoops the one and only reward only need be the fastest to the can, they donât even have to participate in the killing of the structureâŚ
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Group content for casual players will only ever work if
⌠everybody participating gets a reward independent from other players performance
⌠no upfront organization, like fleets, FCs, etc. is required ⌠hence ârecruit in localâ principle
⌠PvP interruption is not worth or ⌠and this is the holy grail ⌠fun for everybody
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