Upcoming Changes to Drone Aggression

[Black_Pedro]

@Jenn_aSide

How are players supposed to deal with ecm and damp heavy guristas and serpentis npcs now? What happens in the abyss when you can’t target stuff?

I’m not going to cry over a minor change to the ship meta, especially given how over-represented drone ships are in PvE activities you mention.

Oh well, drone ships might have a bigger downside/weakness. Use another ship and weapon type. Ship balance changes all the time so this is not a real issue, and if it really is in a particular niche, changes can be made there.

@Jenn_aSide

Just like the ess, there are probably a million fun ways they could have fixed the problem ( like when they added npc dread spawns that slaughtered afk ratters and bots but gave the rest of us more interesting ratting gameplay.) but instead they choose a nerf that invites unintended consequences.

All changes are going to have unintended consequences. That isn’t a reason not to change things.

Again, I agree, more work will be necessary here and I hope this start gives them space to reward the ■■■■ out of whatever stuff they have in the pipeline to juice uptake. But I guess we shall see.

[kosmicheski]

@Orca_Platypus

New players in Myrmidons want to have a word with you.

New players with mirmidons can do the same thing, they just need to press attack ?
How is this a problem?
Maybe those “new” players will figure it out that they can make better ticks with something not a mirmidon.

The rest is just false… I have 3 accounts none of them does afk mining or ratting.
Maybe you were so lazy you missed on getting rich in null

[Orca_Platypus]

@Black_Pedro

I’m not going to cry over a minor change to the ship meta, especially given how over-represented drone ships are in PvE activities you mention.

Minor?
Pedro, you just confirmed you are the John Snow here.

That change murders: abyss runners, ewar L4 runners, and ofc multibox ratters.

It affects pretty much everyone who was shooting NPCs in a ship with a drone bay.

Drone boats were meta not because they are good - hell, their dps is pathetic, and their application isn’t good either, they are at the low end of ticks as it is. What kept them is ability to have alts in space doing something while your main is doing full attention ratting on an actual ship. So all that change achieves is nuking multiboxers for nothing.

[Na_av]

I mean you can also just drop the entitlement to a stupidly big solo multibox farm operation. That should not be viable anyway.

Sounds like the wails of a poor.

[Orca_Platypus]

@kosmicheski

New players with mirmidons can do the same thing, they just need to press attack ?
How is this a problem?
Maybe those “new” players will figure it out that they can make better ticks with something not a mirmidon.

It was a response to Pedro the idiot claiming afk ratting is a vet-only activity.

@kosmicheski

The rest is just false… I have 3 accounts none of them does afk mining or ratting.
Maybe you were so lazy you missed on getting rich in null

My point exactly. I never afk ratted or mined either. I did spin some alts on drone boats while doing full attention ratting on main, but that’s it, while Pedro claims we’re afk.

[Orca_Platypus]

@Black_Pedro

All changes are going to have unintended consequences. That isn’t a reason not to change things.

“Shutting down servers defats botting, so it should be done. Take that, you botters! What? Players? Well, all changes are going to have unintended consequences, that isn’t a reason not to change things”.

[Na_av]

Honestly, if most of these idiots took a second to view their argument reductio ad absurdum, they’d realize how dumb they sound.

[Black_Pedro]

@Orca_Platypus

It was you who claimed that it was vet-only thing. Now you just try to avoid the subject.

Vets are the ones massively multiboxing ratting fleets and benefit most from low APM gameplay. New players have one ship and if they are paying attention pressing a key once in a while isn’t a real issue just like all the other new players who use non-drone weapon systems.

@Orca_Platypus

Those are murdered by this change as well, so your claim here is self-cotradictory.
Should it be fine, or should it be nerfed? This change nerfs it so apparently it’s not fine. Pick one.

They aren’t really. Or at least not as much. If you are actively playing your two or three accounts, who cares if you have to engage your drones? It mostly is a benefit for those who want to launch the drones and go do something else - either watch Netflix, or play on another game client. This isn’t contradictory at all.

Let me try again - active engagement = good. Massively parallel self-playing accounts = bad. This change mostly nerfs the bad with only a minimal impact on the good, and an impact that is already true for every other weapon system.

@Orca_Platypus

Drone boats were meta not because they are good

Well now they are worse. Who cares? There are other ships and the usage stats have shown drone boats to be the FOTM for far too many months. Let something else shine for a bit, will you?

@Orca_Platypus

“Shutting down servers defats botting, so it should be done. Take that, you botters! What? Players? Well, all changes are going to have unintended consequences, that isn’t a reason not to change things”.

You are blowing a gasket there Pupkin. Maybe time to take a break?

There are other ships out there that can run nullsec anomalies. Perhaps some time and distance will help you gain some perspective on that.

[Scryptic_Menzies]

CCP, you are such a disappointment. This is another manifestation of your short-sighted arrogance and selfish narcissism.
Countless times, when using a gunboat like a Talos or Dominix, I have jumped into missions and been damped and scrammed by NPCs. Unable to warp out or target NPCs, I used my drones, set to aggressive, to save the ship. They were the only option available. Now you want to take that away?!

This is not about balancing, this is about another nerf to ratting and ratting income.

@CCP_Hellmar , we remember when you played Eve at “near addiction levels” for 6 months, and were profoundly encouraged and given hope that you would actually be empathic for the players and understand the game better. We felt like we could trust CCP with our play time and sub fees.

However, ever since you became Pearl Abyss’s little poodle, you have fallen far out of touch. The incredible arrogance that we saw with the blackout was just the beginning. But you didn’t learn from that, until player count literally dropped off a cliff.
Your hubris has continued, with a string of destructive nerfs, first to mining. Then came the madness of the dynamic bounty system, supposedly to encourage players to spread out, even though, per the laws of null, we are supposed to strengthen the ADM of, and live in, systems we hold. The ESS was another blow to the “sandbox where players determine the outcome” as nobody wanted it, and it made ratting more of a chore than a fun activity to run a couple of times every day.

Your meddling in the behavior of drones is yet another confirmation of how disconnected you are with your player base. We all know why you really did this; you’re tired of seeing Ishtars ratting successfully and pulling in good ratting bounties. This isn’t about PVP, this is about your overlords telling you to cut down on player revenue so that we will have to buy plex to fund our play.

As the price of ships has skyrocketed after the nerfs to mining, your Pearl Abyss owners have assured you that the players will start buying more plex to buy ships, rather than face what has become a mindless and numbing grind to make isk. This nerf to drone ratting just confirms this.

But you didn’t think it through. The reality is that we NEED to be able to use drone aggression against NPCs to counter EWar. You merely bent over, wagged your tail and licked the hand of PA once again.

@CCP_Hellmar , STOP being Pearl Abyss’s little bitch. Reach down and find your balls and stop ruining PVE in this game.

There will be many butthurt PVE-haters who love the idea of making drones more difficult for PVE, but their opinions don’t matter. The PVE playstyle has been nerfed into oblivion. FFS, CCP, turn this around before your PVE players all leave.

[Na_av]

@Black_Pedro

There are other ships out there that can run nullsec anomalies. Perhaps some time and distance will help you gain some perspective on that.

Literally just had someone who flies a machariel complain about this change, because they actually understand what it does.

[SleepLacker]

@Orca_Platypus

Nullsec scales with accounts, that’s why people had so many, and capital costs are just not affordable with one account, so you kinda HAD to have many, endorsed by CCP (power of 2 among other things).

You talk as if it’s a normal thing to buy a capital ship every other day to hotdrop it on some random target, and replace it in case it blows up when the enemy brings two caps.

Capital spam shouldn’t be a thing, and should never have been a thing, and it’s one of the main things CCP is trying to fix.

Again, just comes to show how entitled veteran players have become over time, when nothing else besides capital warfare in null is a viable playstyle.

[kosmicheski]

Please send me all your stuff, if you are quiting.

[Na_av]

@SleepLacker

Again, just comes to show how entitled veteran players have become over time, when nothing else besides capital warfare in null is a viable playstyle.

Must by why everyone’s flying HACs right now.

Out of curiousity, do you play EVE Online?

[4312721Michh]

F, literally

[Kenrailae]

So I’m just gonna take this as a concession that you know your PVE content is rubbish and lack the ability to fix it. Because this is nothing but another band-aid to patch up another problem without fixing the actual problem.

[you_are_evil]

@Orca_Platypus

Those are murdered by this change as well

sorry Orca, but you are wrong.

I have actively ratted with 3 accounts. There are very few sites that could be made fully afk, and if at all, then for significantly less profit, so I have always actively attacked all targets with the drones, whether all 3 accounts in one site with assist and Target Painter, or individually. So I would say the normal active players with 1-4 accounts are hardly affected by this change.

[kosmicheski]

@Kenrailae

Because this is nothing but another band-aid to patch up another problem without fixing the actual problem.

What problem you are talking about?

[Orca_Platypus]

@Black_Pedro

They aren’t really. Or at least not as much. If you are actively playing your two or three accounts, who cares if you have to engage your drones? It mostly is a benefit for those who want to launch the drones and go do something else - either watch Netflix, or play on another game client. This isn’t contradictory at all.

Once again, no player dared to watch netflix while ratting or mining.
And your poor narrative and entitlement to have your super active play style to be the right one and everything else to be wrong, oh dear…

@Black_Pedro

This change mostly nerfs the bad with only a minimal impact on the good, and an impact that is already true for every other weapon system.

This change MURDERS the “good” single acc abyss runner, “good” single account ewar L4 runner, and gimps every other drone boat that relied on drone aggro mechanics for various things like clearing frigs that took 26 seconds to lock. You cannot sincerely claim the impact is “minimal”.

And when you take botters into account, the impact is between “tremedous” and “game-breaking”, which is why such a change should NEVER had been implemented BEFORE bots are out of the picture. Otherwise it’s game-destroying!

@Black_Pedro

Let something else shine for a bit, will you?

Auto-targeting missiles will be FOTM until CCP removes that too in favor of bots once again.

[Kenrailae]

@SleepLacker

Capital spam shouldn’t be a thing, and should never have been a thing, and it’s one of the main things CCP is trying to fix.

Yes, it shouldn’t have been a thing, but Orca isn’t wrong either. CCP has heavily promoted alts, and the past formulation of the game has always been a ‘create the biggest pile of gold’ metric.

But the things CCP are doing to fix it aren’t going to fix it. Okay, so they make resources rare for a while and stockpiles are slimmed. But if they don’t do anything else, the same problem will occur right after they start letting resources come back, too.

To actually fix some of this stuff so it doesn’t become a problem ever again, CCP doesn’t have the guts to do that. That would require things like maintenance, upkeep, storage costs, all sort of possibilities that penalize players for having more and more stuff, and just having it sit around for ages on end.

[Mike_Azariah]

Reading the thread and talking to CCP when a good question or suggestion comes up.

Some good points so far, thank you.

m