Surely, you can’t be serious (“Airplane!” pun intended).
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Much higher isk earning opportunities, more ore and salvage etc for industry, safer space due to intel channels, as much pvp as you could want due to roaming non blues looking for fun…do I need to go on?
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Let’s stay at the pve topic and leave that debate for another time.
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For sure - But a lot of people in this thread are pointing to those events as something they enjoy too. I’m personally guessing that’s due to the short time-commitment required, and good rewards, as you indicate. But if that’s what makes people like content, then it’s a good thing to take note of.
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You’re welcome to go listen to the recording if you wish - it’s not exactly hidden.
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Are RW even “instanced”? I mean the gate does not transport you to a different server or cuts you out of the system unreachable for anyone else. As Pedro noted, anyone can still enter the RW site once you or your group is in there.
That I saw all the agents around me, nearest first.
That I did not just see 12 out of which 6 are always in lows sec and far away from where I am.
That it showed me agents when I jump from 2 to 3 jumps away from a given agent.
That the agent finder was closed when I closed it and didn’t keep flashing in my UI.
That the menu was small and not spaced out over a large window.
That it did respond immediately and not after a second or two of pondering.
That I could use the Agent Finder and Journal side-by-side without one or the other limiting content displayed by one. That I could right click on an Agent and select “Dock” instead of having to click a card and then move the mouse all across a large window to dock at the agent location.
That I could hide unavailable agents or have them displayed but grayed out so that I knew which agents I could actually use and didn’t have to guess whether I have enough standing for a Gallente or Minmatar agent.
That the name of the agent was displayed first and not the type of agent. The type of agent is irrelevant for locator agents and I rather want to see the name and system prominently displayed than the agent type.
Those missions already exist. And they are pain in the back in particular in NPC null sec.
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Actually not, if the site is full, nobody else can enter. Also the entrance is guarded by a standings requirement, which can only be fulfilled by running these sites and by no other way.
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I stand corrected.
If people want more unpredictable and universe-involving PVE, how about this: Agents in Landmarks and Natural Phenomena
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I am also among the supporters of the Agency window as the one-stop menu for PVE. The problem is that it just is not that. IT is severely lacking in features. Old mechanics that were transferred into the Agency lost functionality in the process. It is difficult to use. And most importantly it curates and censors PVE content according to what CCP wants you to see and not according what you want to see. For to become the One Ring To Rule All PVE Activities, it would need a lot more development, as many people in the numerous feedback threads about the Agency window have repeatedly noted.
For instance, I think a less annoying and clunky UI would help. Instead of Suggested, Combat, Mining, Specify, there should be the options
- In Space (has everything related to anomalies, exploration, signatures, resource wars, FOB, escalations, and so on),
- Agents (has everything related to missions, cosmos, storylines, faction warfare, your loyalty points, research points, faction warfare points, available agent contacts (which are still in the P&P window), and so on)
- System/constellation related things (asteroid belts, planets, moons, natural phenomena/landmarks, and so on)
These options would be tabs either on the side or top of the agency window. Clean sorting of things. If no tab is selected, the entire window can show many cards of possible PVE activities from all over the space.
When you click on a tab, you go into the actual content area with a sub-menu tab bar that only shows the specific content types and menus you want to see and need to sort your content. Something like this basically:
And CCP needs to add some necessary UI manipulation options:
- Make the map option and possible to hide
- With this above UI, give an option to always open the window in a certain tab/sub-tab
- Especially for agents, we need the old sorting options (“security level” and “available to me” in particular)
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Actually, you can only enter if you have sufficient standing with the relevant Resource Wars corporation, and practically, are not an outlaw with -5 security status or lower. While not true instancing, that does create a space in Eve that not everyone can go which while not unprecedented, does sort of come close to breaking the idea that “nowhere is safe” and PvP can find you anywhere.
But they only last 10 minutes or less, and you are vulnerable as you enter the site, and theoretically just after the site despawns. You then usually have to move from system putting yourself at risk on the gate. In total, the whole issue of locking access to the site seems to be not to be a reason why it failed or a large missed opportunity for additional gameplay.
Yes, the semi-instancing should actually help the RW sites because people always seem to demand more security for their PVE.
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For sure, but as it’s a part of the feature the CSM was intensely concerned about, I want to find out if the measures we took when talking to CCP to make it “less instanced” worked, and what might be done in the future to keep such ‘dungeon’ sites feeling congruous with the rest of EVE. It never hurts to try and learn every lesson you can 
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The fact that the CSM was “intensely concerned” about the instancing, presumably because it limits piracy potential, but let the actual content be poor enough that the release as a whole was a flop at first seems quite disappointing actually.
Did you also talk about rewards with positive lp to isk values or combat potential to entertain all kinds of pilots? You should worry most about ensuring new content is enjoyable when it is released and catches on so it is actually worth the dev time to design it, rather than making sure it is gankable enough. Ganks can be tweaked after players partake in the activity but if nobody does it, there will never be anyone to gank…
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Well, the content itself is by all accounts really good, the problem is the reward structure. The lack of ‘combat’ as you put it later on in this quote isn’t something I think is a huge problem, as combat can be used - it’s just less optimal to go full combat, as intended.
Yes. The reward structure was not nailed down until very close to the release, but the intent was to have it ‘reward’ players with access to ships at a discounted price (as it was intended as a new player focused piece of content). Unfortunately it seems that concerns about its impacts on the market (especially after seeing what happened to the T1 market in response to the event with ‘just add water ships’), a conservative reward structure was chosen.
Our main point on the rewards here was that we wanted the ISK/h to be below that of L4s, as we felt otherwise it’d make the instancing a very dangerous anti-interaction tool that would feel very “un-EVE”. We didn’t want it to be worth literal negative ISK/h, I promise 
Hell, I even asked them when they planned on iterating on the feature last summit, as I felt it only needed a better rewards structure to be a hit, but the team had already been moved on from that project and was working on a new feature. This is sad, but not exactly something I’m not used to in my time on the CSM. I’ll be looking to find out a good reward/h ‘price point’ for CCP at some point in the future, and derive a better reward structure from that, in the hopes of getting it implemented, but I wouldn’t hold out hope there.
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There’s a good reason I never comment about Wormholes, Faction Warfare and LowSec…it’s because apart from ninja daytripping it’s not something I’ve done.
Maybe if you tried this content before leading a roundtable discussion about it you would have a better idea about the issues you might hear about.
Not after an argument, just pointing something obvious out to you.
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Fair enough! Just wanted to check since, “intense concern” on one side didn’t seem to leave much space for more concern about other things. That’s why I said “at first”. I can definitely see not wanting to give ships too cheap given the “alpha strike” (or something like that) event’s effect on the market. Those will set a “ceiling price” for ships for sure, but CCP definitely was very conservative about the reward structure.
Lower than L4s is fine, since conceivably not every newer pilot who takes part could blitz L4s, so potentially as a fleet it could still be more reward than what could be individually achieved. Good luck with designing a reward structure and getting CCP to use it! RW definitely don’t need much more work to be worth it.
If they ever are willing to expand on it, I’d love to see NPC miners there too, so you could participate as a combat pilot (keeping the NPCs alive) or as a miner (replacing the NPCs after they got killed). Or even just bounties on the NPCs such that combat pilot bring more isk/hr to the fleet over time in an equivalent way to an extra miner would be helping to complete the site faster for the final reward.
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The thing is the way the success or failure of the site worked (mine X amount of ore in Y minutes) they (the sites) had to have limited entry otherwise Eve Players being Eve Players would just have thrown enough ships at it to cheese it as fast as possible.
The content was not instanced to prevent PvP it was instanced to prevent abuse / exploitation.
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I have (went through every site up to L4 on my Alpha alt), I found it better than most other PvE I’ve tried in EVE, but I recognise I am not the target audience for it - after all I’m a veteran player with a lot of resources and experience - I struggle to put myself in the shoes of someone who does not, which is why I’m running this thing. I used the term ‘by all accounts’ improperly here though, what I meant to say was that ‘other people in the thread seem to indicate the content is above average’, but I tried to shorthand it.
I’m entirely aware of that - it was explained to us when we were introduced to the concept.