This is one of the reasons I think these AIR objectives missed the point: they reward and therefore encourage behaviour that is most easily solved with cooperation rather than PvP.
If I understand correctly, you can get 100k SP for each of the 4 paths and another 125k SP for completing all four. 525k SP total I guess (correct me if I’m wrong).
For a veteran 80M+ SP player, deep into injector diminishing returns, this amount of SP is equivalent to 525/150 = 3.5 skill injectors. With injectors at 800M ISK each on the market, these ‘new player challenges’ are the equivalent of 2.8 Billion ISK of SP for a veteran player.
And you can just do them on an alt on your account, finish the challenges, redeem on your main, delete alt, create another, do challenges again and make another 2.8B ISK worth of SP for your main.
I haven’t timed how long it takes to finish those challenges, but even if it takes multiple hours (sped up if you collaborate with a friend/alt on the ‘PvP challenges’) that’s a very good ISK/h for players interested in SP.
Does that sound like ‘aimed at new players’?
Sure, it was intended for new players. But those rewards are worth significantly more for veteran players due to SP diminishing returns.
I didn’t say only new players but the new players are the ones that will benefit from actually going out and shooting someone to get the achieve and experience it, normal players have already done that kind of thing and using their alt seems fine tbh.
If people are encouraged to cooperate with a friend to get rewards which are originally intended to encourage hostile gameplay, the reward mechanisms are failing to accomplish their intention and should be reworked or removed.
how hard is it? just go and shoot someone in low sec it takes a few minutes really… why are you even complaining. Even if you die it auto completes the mission you don’t have to win.
Here’s the solution: every miner in high sec should get a criminal timer and get hunted by the local faction police NPCs. Players cannot be expected to gank everything, everywhere. Space is just too big for a few players.
It’s time the lore of this game got some positive attention and in-game mechanics should reflect that. Throw the roleplayers a bone for a change.
This can already happen in the form of ransom making the pilot trust the ganker/s to the point they pay a fee in isk to be set free. Results then can go either way.
First, pick a system to mine in that doesn’t have much ganking. You can find this out via zkillboard by typing in the name of a system. Bear in mind that the higher the security rating of the system…the faster the Concord response time and thus the more gankers will be required to gank you.
Add gankers groups to ‘bad standing’. This means their members will show in red in Local. Watch out for ganker scouts…who will often scout a system on their own before the main fleet arrive.
It really helps to be in a corporation, where you can not only join mining fleets, but also get intel on where gankers are. I often provide such information for my corp…which is why people often see my alt zooming up and down Lonetrek in a shuttle.
Pick an asteroid belt that is closer to the station you intend to deliver to than the distance to any stargate gankers may arrive through. For example I regularly mine at a belt just 0.1 AU from the station, and 30 AU or so from the nearest gate. This gives a huge time advantage…giving you time to align and warp before gankers can get to you.
Mine as far from the asteroid belt landing point as possible, and preferably ‘above’ or ‘below’ the belt and with a clear line of sight to the station you can flee to. Whilst its not impossible that gankers can warp straight to you…in a lot of opportunistic cases gankers will warp to the landing point, which you thus want to keep as far away as possible. Make a bookmark of where you are mining and return to that spot.
Do not ( as most people do ) send out your combat drones all the time. They simply clutter things…and you only really need them if npc pirates show up, and then retrieve them again. The drones will be useless against gankers if you are on your own. Also…actively listen for the sound of ships warping in ( that thumping sound ).
Keep an eye on the number of people in Local…watch for any sudden rise of half a dozen or more. Flee to station if there is a sudden sharp rise, even if they are not ‘red’ in Local…as it may be some new ganker group you are not aware of.
Use d-scan. In addition to telling you all ships within 14.3 AU, you can also narrow down the field of scan and see if people are waiting at your safe station. In particular watch out for Catalyst, Thrasher, and Coercer ( I think it is, the Amarr version of the Catalyst ). You can use directional d-scan to check that there are not people waiting for you at the station.
Create insta-doc bookmark at station. You do this by undocking and immediately creating a bookmark. Using ‘L’ you can show all bookmarks in system, and when you warp back to station just ‘warp to within 0 metres’ of that bookmark and click ‘dock’ on station. This is much faster than the regular docking method.