So it happened again. Some vile, belligerent PVEer warped into a combat anomaly and, completely unprovoked, started shooting rogue drones. Bastard.
Thank goodness, I was nearby. I warped in and executed the ratter. However, in the midst of the battle, half of the rogue drones switched targets and began shooting at me, even while I was saving their asses. Thankfully, no harm was done, but it was a close thing.
I’ve killed hundreds of ratters in the drone lands. One would think I’d be a dang folk hero to the rogue drones. They should love me. And yet, they not only shoot at me when they see me, but they will even stop shooting at someone who is actively killing them so they can shoot at their savior instead.
I’m a firm believer that PVE content should not be intrusive. In a perfect EVE, no NPC would ever shoot at someone who isn’t shooting at them first. They should be part of the scenery unless actively engaged with.
I realize that CCP does not share this view, and will never carry out such a reform. But at the very least, the rats should be smart enough to recognize that someone deliberately attacking them is a greater threat than someone who is attacking the person attacking them. Heck, they should be giving me remote repairs instead of shooting at me.
If you ever read any of the drone site descriptions, they specifically describe rogue drones as malicious, evil, and hating all things that are not them. You are no different to them than the ratter because you are both human.
Ok, sure. I can accept mindless, idiotic, pointlessly hostile factions like rogue drones, Sancha slaves, or Amarrians behaving in this manner. If I must. Although I’m not convinced that rogue drones aren’t simply misunderstood. But the sentient NPC factions do it too. If I was in, say, Guristas space, they would have the exact same behaviors.
This is literally game breaking. I haven’t lost any ships due to it, but I demand reimbursement nonetheless.
Brisc needs to get down there to Reykjavik and start cracking skulls until they fix this.
Trust me, we’ve been bringing this up for a while. It has never made an ounce of sense to me why the rats attack the guys killing the ratters. That is straight up dumb as hell.
you could look to why ccp changed rat aggro some time ago . players like our op use the rat damage to assist overcoming the ratter’s tank , giving an unfair advantage .
rats also respond to ewar use , so scramming a player may get them to switch as well .
there’s been many tears and rationalization (the enemy of my enemy…) over this change , by players who either wanted to keep this unfair advantage (op) or have another agenda served by speaking against it (brisc) .
bottom line , it’s a game , and some mechanics which may not seem logical , are needed for balance .
How is it an unfair advantage that the PVEer takes damage from the rats? They picked that fight. The rats were just minding their own business in that anomaly, not bothering anyone. Of course the PVEer should take damage from the rats.
I remember the old days, when the first person into the PVE site took all the aggro. That was nice. Let’s go back to that.
wow . the rationalization is strong in this one …
but , i think you’ve got it all wrong .
warp into an anomaly , the rats will start shooting you , without provocation !
the innocent pve’er is merely defending himself !
and you come in , trying to 3rd party their fight !
rats don’t like that .
you’re trying to steal their kill , and take all the loot , doing only small % of damage !
rats don’t like that .
you’re being unsporting , using rat damage to unfair advantage !
rats are very sportsman-like , and don’t like that. .
you act like the rats are stupid , and don’t know your true motives .
they especially don’t like that .
the rats should switch all their aggro to you , and blast your third-partying , loot stealing , unsporting butt right out of your ship . then de-spawn , and leave your loot , for the peaceful pve’er , and see how you like it !!!
The enemy of mine enemy is an emeny even rats shoots everyone no regards for law & order in New Eden there the law done apply to parates & players rats more dumb than traffic light attacks spaceships and fleet 3 times its size & power players always beat rats.
Btw don’t know if this was mentioned before and not sure if this is the case in this specific scenario but AFAIK rats switch to targets of higher priority and using EWAR including scram / point also counts towards that, thus if the (botting) rat farmer does not use those or only lower priority ones but the hunter (obviously to prevent its escape) uses one or more (and/or higher priority one) on the farmer ship then the rats will change aggro.
This doesn’t mean it isn’t silly the rats attack the hunter when it didn’t even lock them just saying this might be the reason for this so this might also provide some further subject for the discussion of this issue.
As for the subject itself also not sure if was mentioned before but maybe the rats should consider standings towards them so if the hunter never killed their faction or corp members before then maybe they should decrease target priority until it actually aggresses them and the same can be said about other factors such as EWAR and such mentioned above as long as those are not aimed at the rats the rats should consider it a much lower priority if any at all to switch target.
This has been asked for since forever by people who have good standings with the pirate factions of Eve. By roleplayers, people interested in intuitive game mechanics, on balance arguments, as rewards for being friendly to pirate factions, and so on.
Instead you have to “just know” which few rats are blue to you due to your positive pirate standings. Admittedly this sort of arcane knowledge leads to hilarious situations. I think there’s a video out there of Suitonia (now known as @CCP_Kestrel ) with what I believe was his positive guristas standings baiting some nullsec folks into triggering a mining response fleet. He was blue to the Guristas miners and they were not. I think it resulted in quite a few capital ship drops.
I think the rats should take standings into account, that being said, one of the pirate epic arc agents does inform you that just because you have worked for the pirates doesn’t mean other members of the pirates (‘rats’ in this case) will see you as one.
Lore wise, CCP has made efforts to explain why all rats, except the much newer diamond rats, will attack all players on sight regardless of affiliation.
I can live with them attacking on sight, even though it makes no actual sense in many situations.
But one would expect them to at least have some basic ability to assess and prioritize threats. The ratter, who spends all day, in bot-aspirant fashion, warping to one of their complexes after another, systematically massacring them, and who is actively attacking them at the moment of concern, is clearly a more urgent threat than the good samaritan who is attacking the ratter. They should be smart enough to make this distinction.
After the ratter dies, if they are suspicious of my intentions, it makes some sense that they might go after me then. But I do favor a system where they learn over time who their allies are.
so , go ahead and rationalize as much as you like . give the npc a level of AI , just enough to justify what you’d like them to do .
lol ok now you’re just trolling it’s ok . i recall when the npc change was put in , to balance people like you using npc damage to help them kill players .
one solo war-dec’er , warped into his WT’s lvl 4 mission , expecting as usual the already-aggro’d npc would help him . his tear-filled post , as he floated in his pod , concluded : “i’m literally AT WAR with the player shooting these npc’s don’t they know i’m their friend booo hooo”
ps. you can check your standings to npc in the char. sheet . if you’re negative to them , you’re not their friend . come back when you’re + …
regardless , if players would like the mechanic changed , it’s important to remember the reasons CCP changed npc aggro-switching in the first place .
balancing npc effect in pvp was just one factor . afk play , bots , and drone boats were some other reasons .
and is rolling back the change , or the effort to tailor npc aggro , worth the dev time ?
most players adapted and waited for the npc to be killed by the pve player , then engaged him 1 v 1 without npc assistance . those that didn’t adapt , come here and cry about it .
