Rant on a Common Misconception about Incursion Difficulty

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Actually, no, I used to run a lot of Incursions back in the day, for years. I was very active in TVP back when it still existed and still have over a million LP left over that I havent bothered to use.

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So in other words, they added a single new ship to their lineup, and the old fits for vindi/nightmare/machariels are pretty much unchanged and accepted? And youre seriously gonna tell me that the meta is constantly being changed?

Im looking at the WTM fits. Its the same as my very very old cheap Nightmare fit that I used to use when i first got into incursions.

Spoiler: Its the same.

Sure, but thats up to WTM if they want to take 30 new players who have never ran incursions before. Although I very much doubt youre going to have that many players who have never, ever ran incursions, in a single fleet, Thats the thing with WTM, its an entry level incursion team. If you want high end incursion ISK, go do Vangaurd sites. But none of this changes the fact that its relatively simple, now, and the newbro speech took 40 seconds to make.

It took me 2-3 sites to get the hang of Incursions. Its not rocket science. The spawns havent changed, the rooms havent changed. And as far as Im aware, youre still using T2 logi, which means logi pilots arent gonna be new, which is the largest key to survival in incursions. A dead machariel isnt going to largely impact your survival rate, but a dead logi will. And if you dont broadcast when youre yellowboxed, thats your own damn fault.

Not really.

FIrst off, Incursion NPCs dont spread damage or scrams. Its only always 1 or 2, i think max ive seen in the years ive ran, is like 4 people asking for reps. Even if youre somehow in trouble because 4 of your logi happened to be 4 friends who are trying to f*ck you up, the majority of your fleet will be able to warp out safely.

Secondly, the only way to damage a fleet is by flying Logi, and not doing your job. T2 logi is already a skill-intensive omega-only role, which limits the pool. Ive never seen a logibro who wanted to harm the community or any other person who was inside the fleet with us, who wanted to harm us, the most ive seen are tornados that were trying to gank, or thrashers that were baiting/stealing. The people who want to do harm are few, and massively unimpactful.

No idea why you would include contests as something that makes incursions hard. Theres a possibility that you wont get paid, but it doesnt make the sites necessarily harder, infact, the opposite happens. When were contesting NRFs and the likes, the sites end much faster and there is less stress as logi because theres 100% more people who will take on the damage for you that you dont have to worry about.

Well, no. When I was in WTM, we actually chose TPPHs because we didnt have enough Logi or players who were experienced. TPPHs are longer, but they are also easier.

Not really. TPPH is the easiest to contest, just shoot the HQ. TCRC same route, if you know you can win with DPS though ive seen FCs purposefully let the HQ rep itself. NRF is probably the one that requires the most knowledge, but again, not really, ive had FCs just tell us to aim for the armor/structures on ships to get the most damage, and burn into position as fast as you can.

Again, not really. Staying at gate will always tell you the fleet comp cause its a bottleneck. And if youre flying with a bunch of alphas, chances are youre not going to contest anything. When we were in TVP we used to contest WTM and we knew we would win just by eyeing the fleetcomp, not really anything more to it.

Sure, but none of this make the fleets themselves and running the sites any less or more hard. TVP already had a strict infrastructure in place so I had to do very little when i became FC.

This, I agree with. They should add randomness and more variety to incursions, instead of making them cookie cutter sites that spawn and act the same way every time. Something other than the Outunis neuting, and once in a while a support fleet suddenly warps on top of you, stuff like that.

But as it is, Incursions are easy.

Im not saying this to dismiss the effort it takes to set up a community, or the effort it took to document and create fits that are pretty much unchanged till today, atleast for sheilds, Ive never ran armor incursions so i dunno how those are like. But lets face it. Incursions have been done so many times before, that nothing surprises us. The only surprise is from the players who go afk and dont broadcast.

Incursions are easy.

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42

Anyone whos joined an RVB or Brave Newbies fleet for the first time knows that this isnt that hard.

Both of these are completely separate from rewards.

And the decreased risk. Which is why the risk VS reward appears to be skewed.

And no, group play necessarily decreases risk. Talk to a fleet of 10 cruisers going against a fleet of 1000 cruisers, and ask anyone who is at higher risk of losing their ships.

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This is a lie.

Any activity that produces resource can be optimized for this income, taking risk into factor.
It’s the same for nullsec mining.

Just because you reduce your risk does not mean the activity does not have risks. The risk is the same as it was at the beginning.

The only activity that does not have risk is the one where you know the outcome. For example, ganking when you do it for profit.

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No.

First off, I did not say Zero risk.

Secondly, you are contradicting yourself in the same sentence.

You first say “Just because you reduce your risk”, an admittance that you can reduce the risk. Then you say “The risk is the same”, seemingly to state that there is no reduced risk. Pick a lane.

And again, yes, type of risk will remain the same, but the level of risk is not the same as it was at the beginning. You can decrease or increase the risk of any activity based on your actions. If you talk to a doctor, an engineer, an economist, and ask them whether it is possible to decrease or increase the risk of something related to their profession, they will agree.

And thats all we care about. The level of risk.

No, Risk is inherently tied with the outcome you choose to value. If you dont care about getting lung cancer, then it doesnt matter that Smoking increases your risk of getting lung cancer. If you care about getting loot and being isk-positive, then there is risk in ganking.

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No, it’s an admittance that you can reduce YOUR risk, not THE risk of the activity.
Just like experience does.

The risk of the activity are still the same, but the experience of the players reduce their loss.

Your mistake occured because you rely on a stupid notion like “risk”, for which the meaning is never explained. If you don’t have a formal metric for risk, you can’t say if it increases or not.

Also your image for lung cancer is completely out of topic. We are not talking about life, which you have only one of.

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What do you mean by THE risk? How could we possibly talk about risk except within the context of the person who is running it?

No, the discussion is already centered around the formal metric for risk that we have all agreed we are discussing, which is, the current state of incursions and the groups that are running it.

Unless you are retarded, you are not going to start discussing a complete tangent of 40 brand new players being thrown into incursions.

You seem to have a difficult time following a discussion.

We are talking about risk. Its called an analogy. Do you know what that is?

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47

Ugh, I might need some sleep because this conversation is breaking my brain.

Okay, I think Greten is right. There is the inherent risk or danger of something, and then someone’s personal risk or danger. You can reduce your personal risk, but the inherent risk remains constant. For example, humans develop antivenom for a snake --> less people die from snakebites. Now, less people dying means that the snake is less dangerous to humans overall, but it didn’t make the snake less venomous or dangerous. It’s still just as capable of killing it’s prey, defending itself from other threats, and can still kill humans if they don’t get the antivenom in time. Anti-venom or no, you’d still be a fool not to respect the danger that the snake presents. Indeed, not doing so actually increases your risk of negative consequences.

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48

So in other words, they added a single new ship to their lineup, and the old fits for vindi/nightmare/machariels are pretty much unchanged and accepted? And youre seriously gonna tell me that the meta is constantly being changed?

Im looking at the WTM fits. Its the same as my very very old cheap Nightmare fit that I used to use when i first got into incursions.

Spoiler: Its the same.

Yes a single ship being added to the lineup completely changed the meta. It also completely changed the balance from armor being crap to being way overpowered compared to shields. So instead of the meta being Vindi, Nightmare, Mach, Basi, Scimi it swung to Leshak, Paladin, Vindi, Nightmare, Nester, Guardian, Onerious.

No one wants Machs they’ve even been banned by several communities as there pilots tend to be just sandbaggers. As for WTM using the same fits that’s because they stuck with shield as shield is much easier for newbros to train into as they don’t need the compensations skills. Also there’s only so many ways you can fit a shield tank ship while using the hull bonuses.

It took me 2-3 sites to get the hang of Incursions. Its not rocket science. The spawns havent changed, the rooms havent changed. And as far as Im aware, youre still using T2 logi, which means logi pilots arent gonna be new, which is the largest key to survival in incursions. A dead machariel isnt going to largely impact your survival rate, but a dead logi will. And if you dont broadcast when youre yellowboxed, thats your own damn fault.

A good 90+% of pilots are brand new to logi when they first start flying logi in incursions. They’re usually a battleship pilot that cross trains in to logi because they want to fly the better sites or keep the fleet running when there’s not enough logi.

I have seen 40+ shield broadcast in the space in the space of a couple of minutes in sites. Yes aggro is usually on one or two people but there’s a thing called split aggro. FC do there utmost to avoid it happening but sometimes it can’t be helped.

It’s bad enough there only 3 sites (4), no one wants to run just one of them all the time.

Wow that right there just shows your complete lack of knowledge on your part. Also TCRC are by far the easiest contest yet the most dangerous if you fly shields.

Again you show a complete lack of knowledge when it comes to contesting with that post. The reason TVP could get away with that is because contesting WTM is basically clubbing baby seals. Any half decent FC sure as ■■■■ would not do that against NGA.

Wow have you tried forming a 40 man HQ fleet without a WL. It’s a dam site harder trying to setup a fleet i’ll tell you that. As for you being a TVP FC i’m shocked, TVP were a great contesting community when i FC for them. Maybe you’ve forgotten a lot of what you used to know. Which actually wouldn’t surprise me as a lot of tricks TVP used to use seemed to have disappeared over the years. Like pulling the spawns or holding fire on the Mara until it gets to 300m/s (sig bloom but no speed).

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I mean exactly what I wrote : claiming the risk is too low is BS.

BS.
Not a single formal definition was used.

No, I don’t know what is risk in that case, and do you either ? Nope. Risk in that case is not defined. Your definition varies with your need. At a moment you define it as being the total loss, at another one you define it as being the difficulty of the waves. And then you define it as changing with the players yet the activities do not .

Hello ? you are claiming BS.
So your analogy on something that is not defined, it’s pure stupidity - even more because it compares risk in real life to risk in a video game.

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I was referring to that managing a group of people is harder than one person managing themselves.

Competition is 100% related to rewards, and one reason why public sites drop some of the best loot for high sec.

This is not what we are talking about. The more appropriate analogy for incursions is 1000 cruisers going up against another fleet with perhaps similar power of 1000 cruisers, it’s just one fleet is possibly fitted better than the other. Otherwise you’re talking more about 100 battleships going into a Lv4 mission, and that’s not the equivalent level of risk as what an incursion is.

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CCP Please nerf it all to the ■■■■■■■ ground…

Max Payout 100M / Day. For all activities in game, for traiding too.

Maximum limit should apply to all!!^1

The whole risk vs revard thing is just annoying.

Everyone says that you should consider your own ship as lost when you undock. so the risk is the same everywhere.

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No, its not.

Even inherent risk is always tied towards consequences. If we were able to create nanomachines that were dispersed into the air, and therefore affecting every single person on the planet, and made them immune to snake venom, there would be no risk from snake venom anymore.

If you want a more recent and actual example, Drones VS fighter planes. Fighter Pilots have risk, and even though technology has advanced, making it less likely for them to be shot down, etc, there was always risk to fighter pilots and their lives in combat, when they were providing things like close air support to ground troops. But Drones changed this, and there is now zero risk for drone pilots who provide the same close air support.

The fact that you can create a scenario where there used to be inherent risk, but it no longer exists, demonstrates that inherent risk still needs to be tied to consequences in order to even exist.

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What are you talking about? Armor was never crap. The Ditanian Fleet was proof of that. There were always benefits of running Armor vs Shield.

And also, which community are you talking about? As far as I know, WTM still uses sheild and Ditanian uses armor.

The two that im most aware of that are active are the Ditanian Fleet and WTM. Both of them accept Machs, so which community are you talking about?

Okay. are you talking about every instance you run a site? Or Just the Logi that were there, started out as new to logi? Theres a difference, between those two.

And how often does this happen? Ive never seen it in my life of running, what, 3 years of incursions?

If youve got brand new players or not enough logi, running them all the time is better than running nothing.

Okay, explain.

I mean, not really. You could let it rep, I guess that would put it in favor for your side if you know you have more dps. But otherwise, by easy, i mean you dont have to really do anything.

Although Im pretty sure NGA is defunct, we went up against russians all the time. And won. Lost some too of course.

And no, we wouldnt be contesting WTM in NRFs because WTM wouldnt be running NRFs. So no, my experience comes from fleets other than WTM.

Im sure it is harder to form a fleet without a WL. But what does that have to do with the sites themselvers being hard? Are you saying that your FCs risked the fleet and went into sites they know they had a high chance of failing/losing ships to? I know of no FC that would risk that.

Yeah I miss TVP too, the drama was fun though. And yes, no FC i knew of would pull spawns or hold fire on Maras.

And I think thats kinda the point. If it was important to our survival, we wouldve kept it. But we didnt, because it wasnt important anymore.

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I dont think i said “Too low”.

What do you mean by “Formal definition”.

Yes, I do. In each analogy, I am defining what we are talking about in regards to risk.

What an oxymoron. You first say “Risk is not defined”, then you go on to mention that I did define it for every analogy i presented.

Hello? Are you an idiot.

My analogy is something that I defined for each analogy, and only pure stupidity would be unable to follow the discussion at hand.

clap clap clap

I believe thats what an analogy is.

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If the definition you use varies, that means there is not ONE definition, so the term you are using is not well defined. That’s how something you think you defined actually is not defined.

You don’t define what RISK is. You have no formal definition of what risk is, therefore your whole posts are just empty BS.

In that case you are talking about an ordering. I tell you the risk has not changed in the activity, just the players have adapted to reduce THEIR risk. And that is done by experience, not by mechanisms of the game.

Therefore you are complaining that players adapt to the game. You are a complete idiot.

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I still think it is funny people think ratting in your carrier/super under a supercapital umbrella should be the endgame of isk generation.

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57

TDF banned Machs (except for Yosh), NGA banned Machs and are still running, WTM is so sick to death of sandbagging Mach pilots they’ve made t2 guns a requirement.

As for pulling the spawn it was never about survival it was about pulling the sansha battleships into the path of the vindi blob. So they could apply void much sooner and save on cap from burning. The mara you held fire on so your snipers could alpha it off grid. Both things were about efficiency and running the sites faster and safer.

As for you disagreeing that with me about TCRC being the easiest but most dangerous contest. Again that shows a clear lack of understanding on your part. In TCRC you burn directly to the tower and melt it with as much dps as you possibly can throw at it. The reason it’s more dangerous for shield is because the outuni are left on grid and switch from target to target. If the Basi aren’t on the ball it’s easy to lose a ship.

Again you show an absolute clear lack of knowledge when it comes to running incursions.

And if we’re going to willie wave I’m former TDF, TVP & WTM FC currently retired, I’ve also flown with Urborus in lowsec and ran my own lowsec VG group.

Even though the ISK is crap compared to other activities in game i do still like to run Incursions for the large group pve activity. There’s nothing like it in game, were 40 people all come together and work as a cohesive unit and try to do there best.

Edit: The closest I’ve come to the fun i get out of an incursion fleet are going on blackop fleets with T2BS/T3. It’s the only other time we’re everyone is pulling togethor and each ship is customized to do a certain role and you all come together into one machine of death. Eve needs more of that kind of ■■■■.

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No it isnt, and thats why things like Ore in nullsec was nerfed.

Even if you have a hundred people competing over something that only 10 people can obtain, if that reward is something that, for example, respawns every couple days, or in the case of incursions, sites that respawn instantly, the collective rewards that are received can become massively skewed.

Moreso, if you have more people over different timezones competing. It means that the sites are constantly being farmed by everyone, without pause. The collective injection of ISK from that activity will rise.

Were talking about risk, in terms of losing ships, and not risk, in terms of not getting paid. If you dont get paid, you dont actually lose anything, except maybe tiime. If you lose a ship? then you lose something that actually has substance and needs to be replaced.

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No, and this is so far off of stupid i dont know why youre bringing this up.

If you want ONE definition, you can go look it up at Dictionary.com and find out what Risk means.

noun

exposure to the chance of injury or loss; a hazard or dangerous chance:

And yes, this word can be used to encompass everything from lung cancer to video games, because thats how the english language works.

I dont even know why you would be asking this. I thought it would be obvious.

Again, this is so stupid. CCP nerfs and buffs ships around people adapting to metas and when ships become too popular, all the time.

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And still you fail to show that the risk of the activity has been reduced, by proposing a formal definition.

THIS is what is stupid.

The risk is the same.