This thread is dedicated to discussion about progressing the ratting aspects of eve. Please keep the replies on topic. This topic is about ways to improve ratting to make the experience feel better, provide better rewards, and all around over all improve it.
Some starter points to talk about:
Looking at working ewar mechanics to being more generic, Apply 1 point in an effort to create a single type of module that counters ewar. this and how it can be used as mechanics to helpdiversify pve builds from pvp builds which will give clear advantages
Lets talk about adding new mechanics into the game that are aoe based that specifically trigger from pve. For example smaller bubbles say 5-10km across that implode dealing large amounts of aoe damage you have to avoid. Mobs can shoot them out and then after a time detonate. This could probably be best fitted into a mine style of weapon.
Lets talk about the mix of rats in belts, and potentially looking at adding to them more things like logi, stealth bombers or ships that counter drones hard, that force mix ups of current meta (vni, super etc). these types of ships should rep each other and perform in better ways in tearms of npc team play. In this aspect values (health, damage, etc) on the ships would be increased significantly to offer slower kill rate at higher pay outs. These numbers can be changed in a way that it makes the over all encounter superior and feel better, but provide the same amounts of income.
Lets talk about group based ratting and we should look at changing the ratting system so that people do not share rewards, but get bonus’s from doing it. 5% isk bonus up to 5 people in squad (25% cap). That means bounties would no longer be split 1m / 5, but instead would grant 1m to each person + 25% of that.
From a development perspective rats have insane stats because that is the most effective way of making them competitive (“hard”) for players. AI coding takes time and a lot of tweaking and generally is not developer (cost) resource - efficient.
New weapons that randomly create “zones of death” (larges amounts of damage to armor/hull ignoring shields) or mini-versions of the doomsdays for rats (that just do lots of damage if you “stand in them” are good starts at improving the ratting system.
Or release another faction line of ships call them Driftavian and add one or two of each kind of drifter to each belt below 0.5 systems that spawn with the current normal rats.
Honestly Wow and Eve are both in what i like to “content death mode” Where developers spam content hoping it will some how stop the death of the game. it never, ever has or will fix a game.
That is the nature of “player generated content” and one of the strengths of sandboxes like eve.
However, that point aside, the game does not need more content (station designs etc) atm for the most part ( i say this because i am a fan of adding specific aspects of content that invalidate alt game play. Like sensors to detect enemy fleets via the map that invalidate spies in a corp/alliance).
I generally feel that the best way to go about improving a game system is not to do what most developers do, which is to say, “Let’s generate some cool ideas and then put those into the game! That will make the game cool, right?”.
If you want to change ratting, rat abilities, and rat spawn generation, you should probably start with talking a bit about:
What role/niche does ratting fill in the game?
What is wrong with the current ratting system?
What is good about the current ratting system?
What objectives do we want a ratting revamp to achieve?
That last point would be things like, Ratting should:
Be more interesting and active
Have greater variety of spawns and tactics
Be less bottable
Be more/less rewarding, or; more rewarding for active play, less rewarding for bot/afk play
Provide different challenges in different security levels/regions
Should ratting provide easy, medium or ‘hard’ fights? Should this vary by region or spawn type?
When we address the issues of ratting (like afking) and general afk - gaming in eve, the solution is to require the players attention to correct these issues. For example, Fast swapping of targets by the rats which could be accomplished by very quick lock times on them and a little change to the duration they stay locked on a person. This is done in abyssal with the drones, not paying attention and you will quickly lose them.
These sorts of mechanics prevent afking, and require the player to start interacting with the game, which is one of the key reasons we should change ratting (and other game play styles like mining etc).
Its a pve version of pvp, which could be used to both train, and engage the players who are not into pvp or are just learning the game.