I’ve played off and on for a few years at a time since 05, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Recently I thought I’d poke my head in and see if things had improved. After spending a week flying around lossing some ships in lowsec and checking out some of the new PvE content I was having fun.
Down to my last 800mil, I thought it was time to do some mining and get some funds rolling, so I put a Skiff together, I was suprised it cost close to 400mil for a decent T2 fit, but whatever, markets change and I’d soon make it back; or so I thought.
After a couple of hours I had pulled in 50ish mil, not great, but thats High Sec mining for you. I continued, but the last belt I warped too was ridiculous. I got tackled as soon as I landed by a pack of Blood Raiders, about 12 of them. I got scrammed and nuetd; fine I thought, my tank is decent (90k EHP) and I have T2 combats, I’ll just take out the scrams … Yeah right, I didn’t stand a damn chance. I couldn’t break them and couldn’t escape, so the Skiff went up in flames, 400mil gone in less than a minute. If this had been players ganking me, that would have been fine, it happens. But losing a ship like this, to rats you don’t stand a damn chance against? No thanks, it just feels like a poor design mechanic to inflate ship losses in high sec.
It was fun again for a couple of weeks, but honestly, I’m pleased I only had a month of Omega, some areas have improved, and other feels like the designers are just ripping off other games cash grab mechanics. It’s like logging into a mobile phone game these days. I’ll check back in a few more years I guess.
Game development was done for a players enjoyment 20-25 years ago when gaming fanatics have been building games in their garage for themselves and also for others to enjoy… Today games are done by people in suits who think only how to make money of it. This is how gaming development changed over the years. Most mmorpg’s in a market implements all features first and foremost to increase company’s income and if players are ok with that that’s fine if they are not then it’s also fine cause no one cares about players opinion anymore, there will be always another player who will play when you will quit.
Yeah, CCP has introduced some changes that seem to give returning players problems. It makes me think that CCP should have a welcome back page that lists the most important changes that returning players should be made aware of. That way they can get up to speed on new challenges without having to read through umpteen years of patch notes.
Anyway,
You can find current pirate FOB locations in the agency. They spawn “diamond” rats, which are tougher than normal rats. I don’t know where all they go, but they can go to belts and upwell structures (which can be a problem if you aren’t tethered)
The Surgical Strike patch nerfed resists (and buffed short range ammo damage). Any old fits that you have saved may no longer have enough tank.
Any upwell structure that hasn’t been fueled for 7 days will enter the abandoned state and lose asset safety. If you plan on going on break, it is best that you move your stuff to an NPC station, or manually trigger asset safety.
Triglavians are a new faction that kill a lot of players in different places.
First, small trig fleets can show up in belts. A properly tanked procurer can handle them, but things like retrievers can not.
Second, Minor Triglavian Victory systems can spawn triglavian fleets, which can sometimes gate camp. You can set autopilot to avoid these systems. If you need to jump into one, you should either scout the gate, use a fast aligning ship, or use a ship that can fight them off.
Third, apparently systems that have trig wormholes in them can spawn trig fleets. How do you know what systems have trig wormholes so that you can go around or go in prepared? ■■■■ if I know. This is a new mechanic which I’m still reading up on. So, for now, I’m operating under the assumption that any gate could have trigs on the other side.
Alright, I think that’s it. Obviously, CCP has introduced a lot more changes than that, but I think I got all the big stumbling blocs for returning players.
players are still doing… but
CCP is making automated versions of player behaviors using NPCs
now we have CODE like NPCs
mining NPCs
gate camping NPCs
NOT GOOD
I think the concept is PVP-level rats (AI + stats with multipliers/handicaps) is healthy for the game, but there is a right way and a wrong way to implement them. Having them drop on you in a FOB system without any visual indication that a FOB is in system is unacceptable.
The trouble with giving people a heads up is that people can avoid it.
If OP knew that those rats could appear in system he wouldn’t have mined there and that’s 400mil that’d be in the economy that we don’t need.
I’m pretty confident this is why CCP gave little warning about trigs and werposts. Not because they didn’t have a plan like people suspected, but because if they told people the plan they would adapt before it was implemented.
That’s completely and totally different. Players are warned when they enter Invasion/Incursion systems before hand. There is even a popup that prevents you from entering unless you disabled it from appearing. They are not warned about the werposts specifically, but they are warned more generally that the systems are dangerous. The precedent exists.
Even if there isn’t a popup that appears prior to entering a FOB system (I’m not actually advocating for a popup), there should be an indication that a FOB is present once you’re actually in the system. This is half of what Invasions/Incursions offer, but is better than nothing.
The precedent caused the current economic problem.
I’m mostly playing devil’s advocate. And just pointing out that if people know a system is dangerous, they aren’t going to fly in it and lose their ship. Which is counter to current goals.
The current goal is to get people to lose their stuff. And the faster the better.
The guy says he wouldn’t have minded if it was players ganking him. And players would have given just as little warning. So does it really matter?
Invasions were a limited time event, so let’s exclude that for a bit and the major economic impacts it had. Incursions existed long before, and in sharp contrast to Invasions, the presence of Incursions were highly volatile, extremely temporary - just like FOBs. The random distribution of Incursions and their short lifespan had zero impact on the economy in terms of forcing players to shift activities for extended periods of time to the extent that it would actually affect supply and demand. in the long term. FOBs should have warnings like the precedent Incursions, which did not impact the economy, established.
Yes, there is a distinction between being ganked by NPCs and being ganked by players. You know this because you are an intelligent individual and I know I do not need to explain it to you. This one point is not one that needs to be debated.
