Pochven: Current Issues and Gaps

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
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Hi CSM members, such as @Mike_Azariah and @Brisc_Rubal.

It’s been a week since the Triglavian’s stole 27 systems and created their new pseudo-region of Pochven. While I think there were a few unintended quirks the first few days, it’s been long enough to review the current content and provide some constructive feedback to CCP from the player perspective. Of course, this perspective is one of an outsider so it’s possible these concerns are temporary and will be addressed in short order with planned or delayed new content, but regardless, I will provide some feedback.

So first, I would like to say the the idea of a harder, more dynamic space for smaller groups - one of the apparent goals of Pochven - is one right up my alley. It’s a player cohort poorly served by the current sectors of New Eden and to experience it, our small corp stashed a scanning alt before the patch, and immediately moved into one of the border systems to experience how a new entrant might experience living and progressing in the new area. We did have very slightly positive Trig standings from some dabbling in the Invasions, but basically are starting from scratch.

So far, here are the major issues as I see them from our experience:

  1. The standing grind is far too onerous: I think this feedback has been provided (and yelled) at CCP in many other places so I won’t dwell on this too much. But by my calculation it will take me about 100 hours of playtime to reach a standing of 1 and be even able to access a second system, and then if I efficiently use both systems it will take another 100 hours to reach a standing of 3.0 and be able to move around the region. That is too long to “live” in a space without access to refining, manufacturing or even the ability to visit the other systems.

  2. It’s too hard to move around: This probably flows more as a consequence from point 1, but being locked out from gates, and living in a system with no static wormhole means if there is no wormhole, there is essentially nothing to do but maybe mine. Certainly nothing to do that earns standing. For almost 72 hours this was the case this weekend, and there was nothing to do in our border system. We couldn’t even leave and go roam somewhere else.

    This kinda defeats the purpose of living in a “new region” when you can’t even visit any of the other systems. It’s like an emptier version of a classic wormhole, where random roamers can easily access your home but you can’t even leave. The feeling of a connection to the space is also pretty diminished when I have visited exactly one Pochven system, and won’t be able to visit another for another 100 hours.

    Maybe this will be fixed some with more useful wormholes or more accessible filaments, but for now it feels bad to be trapped in a single system.

  3. There isn’t enough content: Without an active wormhole, there are not nearly enough NPCs to fight or other things to do in your new home. Again, if you could move about Pochven maybe this would be less an issue, but in a single border system with no wormholes, there is literally nothing you can do to raise your Trig standing most of the time. If there is a wormhole, the system is constantly filled with Trig-enemy NPCs, but without it is a ghost town.

So the TL;DR is that in a current state, it is essentially impossible to progress at a reasonable rate in a border system as a new Trig group (which I am guessing is the intended progression path of the new space?). These problems are probably less for those that already have sufficient standings, but for a new group, boostrapping into a Trig loyalist corp in Pochven is basically not possible.

On the plus side, I do like many aspects of the space and the new NPCs, and it is great to have a place that isn’t as blob and alt friendly. I also really like the harshness and see the benefits of some grind. However, it is not just that Pochven feels unfinished, it really is unfinished, and there are no viable gameplay loops for new entrants yet.

We’ll keep going for now, but eventually the newness will fade, and the limitations of the lack of standings combined with the unreasonable standings grind will probably kill the motivation to undock, in Pochven anyway. I hope this feedback is redundant, and CCP will roll-out shortly changes and more additions to address these concerns, but if not, could the CSM please pass along these observations.

Thanks!

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That’s probably the big dilemma with easing the standings gain and access difficulty. I have a rough idea what CCP was thinking when constructing the triangle … a hierarchical society, where people over time move from border to inner and eventually after years to home.

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Yeah, I get it. I’m not going to play backseat game designer, but if you asked me, I wouldn’t change the gate locks or trivialize the standings grind too much. I think they are just missing always-available options for low-standing Trig players to participate in when they log-in, and maybe a better connection of the border systems to the rest of New Eden.

However, as it stands there does need to be away for new groups to get started on the path if it is intended to be possible inside of Pochven. Maybe CCP plans that the initial bootstrapping is to be done outside of Pochven, but as it stands, there just isn’t enough content in a single system for new groups to progress. I’m not even sure how a new group would even reach a border system right now without help if they didn’t pre-stash a scout.

I like that CCP is thinking different and setting up a longer term, more challenging paradigm for the new space. If you make me speculate, I think a whole new NPE is well underway that will plug-in in part to Pochven, and might solve some of these issues, but I won’t take that for granted and wanted to make my observations known.

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I don’t think the NPE will ever do anything with Povchen, were every misclick or wrong ship/fit means certain death. As there was not seen a single empire connection since the patch for the “statics” (at least until yesterday, not checked today), I assume something is not working correctly. WH and NS connections spawn all the time. Let’s see, I can only hope this content is not delivered and abandoned because of priority shift like so many other things before.

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You want to guess what? What you describe here is going to be exactly the same for null sec when CCP goes through with their dynamic resource distribution and dynamic NPC farming. It is going to be an amazing experience for everyone involved. Better get used this in Vagven while you can.

That aside:

How is Pochven in any way more dynamic than low sec, null sec or W-space? Essentially, you have the same activities available there that you can do everywhere else (ratting, mining, exploration) with the same dangers (players randomly coming in, diamond-level NPC) and structures or no structure limitations. Care to elaborate what makes it more dynamic?

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Not really. Starting groups can make their way to nullsec through various stepping stones. There is lowsec, there is NPC nullsec. They could start in wormholes I guess too. These places don’t require any particular standing, so until they get to the point they want to make supercaps and need sov, they are many options here. I’ll grant this last step is something CCP should work on as the incumbents have too much of an advantage after all these years of turbo-farming, but I’d say their are plenty paths to progress and CCP hasn’t put any “hard-locks” in place.

Pochven requires standing to live there, and getting that is not especially accessible right now. For new groups starting out anyway - you can go join an established group or the community in Raravoss and access standings more easily. But it does seem like a gap to me that content released a week ago has no reasonable path for new groups to progress though it, and these “border” systems which seem to be intended to be the most accessible and a starting place for those wanting to live there, are so empty of content.

I was referring to the PvE mainly and how that depends on the wormhole connections. The idea that wormholes are central to the PvE (and PvP) available is kinda interesting. You get invaded, or invade, different enemies and different connections changing all the time, rather than predictable missions and anomalies that are farmed perpetually. Plus the strength of your enemies and your NPC allies are constantly changing.

I’m sure this will be mostly figured out in short order like all PvE, but I like this attempt at more organic and dynamic PvE in Trig space. However, this wormhole-centric PvE is part of the problem as it leaves very little to do when there is no connection.

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Remember that CCP only wanted the about 300 people in who got the standings from previous stage, the other 1000+ who used the drone bug were not planned. So CCP knew it was a niche niche content from the start, and considering the speed of declaring exploit and fixing the bug, this was a specific design goal.

So I can only hope there will be reasonable ways to get standing, but it can well be that CCP wanted it to be for a tiny closed community as reward for stage 2.

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I would love to see possibility to hack triglavian gates that they ignore standing requirements for some period of time.

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I’ve never seen a reliable source that CCP ever claimed that.

However, I also don’t see an issue with those who participated over the last months getting a leg up in Pochven, but the subject of this post is the lack of options for a new group to align with the Trigs.

Perhaps this post was a few hours too early. A “new” version of the Minor Conduits and the EDENCOM equivalent just appear on Hoboleaks. Perhaps this will be an reasonable source of Trig standing, either accessible in the victory systems or even the border systems of Pochven themselves.

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I will make sure the team sees these concerns. Thanks for taking the time to write these out.

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Perhaps the best way to preface it is: “Some guy got stuck in Pochven and wants to stay there.” It should be good for a good laugh all around.

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I’d back the idea of
“selling exit(ORE filament, but this might be abused) and entry filaments(tri-filaments of the system type where you’re buying) at every station”
So players no longer gets stuck in provchen
I mean at least give them a way to get out

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The exit filaments are already available at every station in Pochven. At least I thought they were, before I left.

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Are they ORE filaments or something? Do they sell at affordable price?
Haven’t got inside Pochven myself yet, not sure if it’s worth the grind (and the PVP threat)

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You can get out of Pochven with a filament costing 10,000 isk. Very affordable. However, not all systems have stations. You can also use the daily giveaway null-sec filaments to get out.

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In that case i understand why players complain about be stuck
Thanks for the heads up
And link to Pochven discussion threads? This thing’s being up for some days but it seems not many have entered them

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Here is the most active thread:

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It’s a little hard right now to get started in Pochven (see the OP :slight_smile: ).

But if you are serious about visiting, or want more info, try here:

or in-game join the channel:

‘Raravoss Proving Grounds’

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I am -4.5 to trigs. This content is firewalled off for me.
Good luck and enjoy your content.

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Spending loads of time and effort to make content that is very limited to max a couple of hundred pilots? That seems like a total waste of time if that is actually the case.

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