After being involved in FW for the past few months and dealing with plex timers, I think the timer mechanic can add a new level of play to Eve Online.
Mission sites that have a site timer would present challenges to the mission runner. For example, a mission runner has a count down timer until the site is captured. While in the timer ring, the site is being captured, while outside the timer ring the site is not being captured.
A site timer would allow the runner to close the gate into the site down to keep gankers from from coming into the gated site. The drawback would be that the runner woild have to leave the timer ring in order to complete certain parts of the mission.
The site timer would also have the potential for the site to be escalated to a highe4 tier site if the site timer is ran within a certain amount of time.
Timers for gates with a lot of PvP in the system would also add an extra amount of fun
When PvP is taking place, more than five ships destroyed in 10 minutes, dreadnought NPC’s would spawn on the gate and lock the gate down until destroyed. A timer would run in between each dreadspawn until PvP returned to less than one ship lost every half hour. While the timer was runner, players could use the gate to jump.
Why cant NPC’s mount large fleets on gates to camp the gates that players have to clear to use the gate?
plex timers are nearly universally disliked, no need to spread them to other places in the game.
IMO, I’d prefer to go the other way with it. Make plexes more like missions, in that there are multiple objectives the player needs to complete within the complex before it is completed. The could be dynamically generated from a set of potential objectives as well, like I mention in one of my previous posts about a dynamic mission / site generator.
No, the site would never get done due to pirates being able to access the site. Players would then not want to run FW, instead FW would become a Low Sec grind for pirates who enlist in the FW and then AWOX all non-pirate members.
I like them… the provide a sense of urgency that gets you fights.
But yeah NPC camps are a horrible idea. Trying to limit pvp in areas specifically designed for pvp is not going to go over well. Dreads would be somewhat cool, but not if you are getting shot at for no reason.
You mean like battlefields? Such a horrible idea. Those dungeons (don’t blame me for calling them that, it’s what CCP calls them) have been some of the most popular / interesting content CCP has released with this expansion.
You could have a dynamic changing environment that forces the player to think in order to complete objectives. Or we could just keep the boring timers. Imagine doing what the OP wanted to do… and force a 5 minute (or longer) timer in a pve mission… cancer.
I don’t really understand this comment, which is why I didn’t respond to it before. CCP has already taken a step in the direction I proposed with including FW specific hacking sites… and they’re getting done.
How is forcing the player to actually interact with the site mechanics (in a way that’s not mind numbing) going to drive players away from using the feature? Pirates currently hunt militia farmers… that wouldn’t change.
Perhaps you think it would be too hard to use your dscan and complete objectives. That’s a simple solution… just make dscan update automatically the way the overview does. (Which is something that should be done anyway. Hitting a button repeatedly like some sort of robot is not interesting gameplay.)
No, I don’t. No traveller trying to get from point A to a hunting ground is going to fly through a battlefield. The battlefield is literally by design a PVP catalyst (the mechanic, not the ship).
I assume you’re talking about this? He was talking about site timers right before that, so I assumed it was in reference to acceleration gates. But, I suppose I could be wrong.
That said, I will point out, trigs already camp stargates. So it wouldn’t be a huge stretch if the empire navies and pirates started doing it at the same level.
It would be nice if actual republic fleet enemies would have small (5%?) drop rates but use entirely their faction’s equipment. This would be weird for the Amarrs but the Minmatar could have faction guns, faction prop, faction shield stuff, faction gyros/BCUs, and faction ammo. That would make them very scary.
Those dungeons (don’t blame me for calling them that, it’s what CCP calls them) have been some of the most popular / interesting content CCP has released with this expansion.