Upcoming Changes to Drone Aggression

EVE Technology and Research Center Upcoming Features & Changes
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1466

New carriers were fun to play, before they got very dull. I’ve been among the people who asked to not nerf them into the ground, but introduce a personal DBS so that we can play it at reduced bounty if we’re considered “overfarming” - because sure as hell I’d go out in that carrier rather than subcap, even if subcap would be giving better bounties. It’s not like you could multibox the new carriers like the old ones, right?
CFCCP, being CFCCP, told us “no fun allowed”, and did the opposite of common sense, as usual.

capital pvp gives me not even a mil an hour, yet here I am.

Eve is not the only pvp game I play, and let’s be honest, the are only two reasons I play with people. One is I socialize when playing with my friends, and two, is that AI simply does not provide necessary level of challenge. If it would provide that challenge, I’d take it, like I took legendary runs in vermintide with blue gear.

I’d probably still have to grind for ISK via the most viable method though, because sov bills and ship requirements, but I’m not the type to be confused WHY I play videogames: to have fun. For example, I did a lot of belt ratting lately. Hardly profitable (4-10mil ticks lmao), but a variety of special spawns and dealing with them was ultimately more fun than anomaly ratting for sure - getting a faction titan spawn and dropping it was at least interesting, even though the loot was disappointing, and I only got one in forever.

But yeah, the argument is, I did belt ratting at 20 mil per hour rather than doing “AFK” (not truly afk because dread spawns and intel watch) anoms at 45 mil per hour because it was more fun, so I could totally see myself playing for fun, rather than for profit, even further down the income.

Thus I think your pick at me that I won’t hold back my complaints at truly interesting content is invalid.

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1467

Ahem, anyway…

Right, so you have your content, and its content not adversely affected by the drones having to be manually controlled, so whats the problem?

So you havent complained about belt ratting? At all?

At the end of the day, none of this is on topic. Do you have a case to make other than removal of auto-drone ratting is making already dull PvE duller (which you say isnt the sort of PvE you do)?

If not, happy to drop this here.

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1468

The problem is bills. Like I said earlier, there is a cost of living in nullsec, and more efficient is the way you make ISK to pay that, more time you got to be playing.
Having alts on drone boats while main is actively ratting was one of the ways to cope with this cost. This change greatly devalues those alts, and ships they fly, that’s problem number two.
Problem number one is of course how heavily this buffs botters - they are the reason for inflation, and that is an universal problem regardless of a way you make your ISK.

I dare you to find at least one complaint about it.
Even though honestly it’s just as dull, and you couldn’t “afk” drone aggro there at all (belt rats would target drones right away if you try, so you had to pull them or lose them), it was more fun than anom ratting, and I opted to do it rather than anoms if I wasn’t hard-pressed for ISK.
Saying that “I got my content” because I got a content that’s a bit less dull is unfair imo, not to mention I’m threatened to lose even that, because…

I do drone pve on alts while main does the full attention thing for bills, so it’s not like I don’t do it. So this changes almost doubles the time I have to grind, which was already a significant portion of my limited playtime, and threatens to eliminate the part I’m grinding for - and I got nothing to replace it with.
And once again, let’s not forget about how tremendous buff it is for bots. If bots weren’t a problem, I’d be more willing to let it slide - after all, smartbombing and auto-targeting missiles are still a thing. But looking at how this change applies to me, but doesn’t apply to botters, is making me perceive it as a very unfair, balance-upsetting issue, in strong favor of botters against me.
Even though I haven’t got a single null rat kill in the last 2 weeks due to MESS, I would still argue against a change like this.

2 Likes
1469

Ok well, I dont understand how removing an autoplay feature is a benefit to bots if they could do it manually too anyway.

And I stand by that manual control makes clearance quicker not slower for a human pilot.

But I appreciate the tone of your responses and wont push ya further. Youve been a good sport in this exchange :slight_smile:

1470

then do WH.
I did yesterday one C5 Site with two Nestors. 270M blue loot, 40M salvage and 60m Hackingstuff for 1 Hour. I’m fine with that.

Look at C4/C5 payments here…

1471

It’s a benefit to bots exactly because you’re mistaken in your second sentence. It would significantly slow a human pilot on a second window. You are corrent that drone auto aggro is less efficient than manual aggro. But being human with a limited APM, which is being consumed by main account doing full attention ratting on a proper ship, ratting on second and third account would be severely gimped, to the point where it probably wont be possible at all, as after a certain inactivity time, even anom rats would switch to drones.
But bots can enjoy max efficiency manual clearing on any number of accounts, which is becoming an incredible double-triple ISK/hr advantage over a multiboxer, from a point of comparable value to half a magnitude difference, it’s an explosive growth of botting efficiency.

Like I was saying here and in MESS thread over and over again, if my objective was to be the richest krabber of new eden, I’d be in a bloc spinning a super, which I’m perfectly capable of - got SP to fly it, ISK to buy it, and a killboard nullbear can present with no shame, which will get me accepted to any bloc.
I’m not there because I do not have such an objective. Like I said, I’m in nullsec because I like organized engagements on timers with proper force escalation. Can wormholes provide that? I think not, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

1472

Ah ok fair enough, I generally only run a single PvE account at any one time, and only one atm due to going Alpha due to my own complaint about a CCP change. Haha how ironic, ok I can buy that angle.

Thanks for explaining.

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1473

Truer words have never been spoken. :+1:

1474

Please, PLEASE STOP breaking game mechanics. This doesn’t FIX ANYTHING. If you cared so much about maintaining the “criticality of Player versus Player engagements”, then you would make drones PRIORITIZE players if they are busy attacking NPCs. This is the kind of change some narrow-minded ape who doesn’t like PVE players would make. “There isn’t much thought to it. It’s not fixing anything, but it takes away from PVE players so we thought it was a good idea.” Why do you need to destroy part of a logical game mechanic? If this actually goes through I’m just gonna unsubscribe permanently. I don’t care that you can’t AFK rat in an Ishtar, and this change literally has no effect on me (A strictly PVP-focused player). This change isn’t even major or apocalyptic, but developers that make repeatedly unintelligent, narrow-minded, and destructive changes to their game is just a red flag.

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1475

On the bright side it will be easier to find bots when Eve has no active player base :slight_smile:

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1476

I don’t want to spend 5+ hours a day pressing F and targeting ships just because. That’s not fun, nor a game. I also rat on several accounts while I can to maintain adms. Much like people that were previously nullsec mining. What is the point of having multiple alt accounts if you can’t manage them all. Atleast mining is less profitable in nullsec currently and still doable. Multi boxing 3 accounts on a single monitor, locking and manually targeting npcs is just stupid. tldr. I unsub my alts can continue playing. Then run out of isk. And stop playing all together. I already pay a subscription for a second job effectively and I stay around for the community and social aspect of the game during the pandemic. Taking the worst parts (boring) and making them retarded levels of un-necessary difficulty is just pointless. I would much rather them upping the isk reward by 10x and making the sites engaging and difficult. Something like they did with Abyssal deadspace. Now we get to hammer on F keys all day long instead. Probably losing half your income to ESS thieves in nullsec. why? I mean I understand risk vs reward. But I see no possible benefit aside from weaponized inconvenience for already possibly the most dull and boring (yet essential) task in eve online. If they were truly worried about botting they would remove plex and injectors from the game. So when you banned a super botter. They were actually gone. Not replex-reinject and keep botting. It’s just crippling the community with isk shortages so they have to pay a sub AND buy plex. I’ll leave long before I have to buy plex to fly in reasonable ships just to play this game. it’s turning into second life star citizen edition.

1477

I was joking about this change to my alliance on Friday and here we go. Honestly, as someone who is using two PvP Domis to farm C3 sleeper sites, I am not surprised. Ofc there’s some effort to scout and bookmark site structures first for a close warp-in and I have to move my ships around, setting up RR, taking care of NPCs shooting my drones randomly, and drop the loot at a safe. But 90% of the ratting runs afk. So it was just a matter of time CCP will stop this because they want alpha nerds without families and jobs IRL. :slight_smile:

But what’s the real change here for me? I need to lock NPCs now by finger, send drones by shortcuts and will finish my hour or two hours farming without chatting in the background or moving my scout around to probe for other content.

The idea was to sit at a sleeper site, make ISK, and wait for random PvP. And CCP might again think about to remove MTUs to make it harder again to collect the loot? :stuck_out_tongue:

Finally, I don’t care because I’ve adapted so many times to changes. But when we talk about useful changes maybe CCP should look into serious stuff that really ruins the fun in this game? When I sit in two juicy Domis waiting to get killed what about to get a chance to fight without being perma-jammed all the time. Did I really say this? Sorry for the triggering.

I am ready to adapt. Whatever it is.

o7

1 Like
1478

This thing again.

I’ll answer again, that maybe a single person shouldn’t be responsible for mantaining a system adms, and a corp/alliance should have more people doing work out in space and protecting their system.

I do agree however that the DBS and ESS are very conflicting with one another on the matter of mantaining a good adm and income at the same time, and that null sec players should be able to make a decent income where they live instead of requiring alts to farm missions in High Sec, or wherever else.

If CCP wanted to address the blue donut issue running rampant in null, then I don’t believe that’s the correct manner to go about it.

This however, doesn’t have anything to do with this drone aggro change.

The change is in order to address “low to no attention gameplay”, and it will work out, because like you said:

You and Orca have raised the same points over and over again.

That the cost of living in Null Sec requires people to run multiple accounts to even be competitive, leaving anyone who doesn’t have the luxury to do so, or is simply new to the game, in the dust.

Please answer this.

If you only ever required a single account to be competitive with everyone else, because everyone else now also only needs a single account to afford the cost of living in null, would you still be mad?

That’s the supposed goal that CCP is aiming for according to the roadmap, so while they can implement stuff that I don’t completely agree with, like the DBS/ESS, I’ll still go ahead and give feedback, while checking other people’s PoVs on the matter.

Currently, the only real points of discussion here are regarding ECM in PvE, mainly in high end content like abyss T5 rooms, and if wether or not this change should also apply to PvP or not.

People complaining that multiboxing will actually require some hard work now, amongst other arguments of why this change is bad, are completely unfounded imo.

1479

CCP doesn’t owe you AFK-able farming content just because you’d really like to farm with multiple accounts simultaneously.

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1480

@Mike_Azariah
One thought that I do not think would undermine this change, that CCP might wish to consider as a teeny bit of compensating balance - increase the targeting range of the Venture. Currently it is just 15 km. A new player or an Alpha can push it up to around 17km. My reasoning for a minor increase is as follows:

  1. Current drone auto response often clicks in with belt rats at about 18-20km. If three or four rats are going for a Venture, this means that at least one is usually engaged at a reasonable standoff range, making it more possible to tank the others at closer ranges until the drones can deal with them. Giving a few extra km to the Venture would balance for the loss of the initial auto response and maintain Venture survivability where it is now.

  2. It has always been damnably daft that the mining lasers on a Venture (esp the scoped ones) actually outrange the targeting system…

  3. Where is the downside of going up from 15 km to, say, 20km? It is hardly going to unbalance the game. The Venture’s pilot will still have to target and command the drones.

  4. CCP could actually point to a balancing buff they had delivered… :slight_smile:

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1482

This again seems to be an attempt to reduce the amount of ISK players can make, first of all the crazy mining changes. Now this. I guess it is time to stop subbing 6 accounts.

1483

This is exactly the type of stuff this change is intended to influence.

Players with 1-2 active accounts won’t really be hurt by this change. But it’ll become a lot harder for people to just sub 6 alts and afk-krab by spinning in anomalies with their Myrms and Gilas, etc. Adding roadblocks on how easy it is for someone to farm isk with low risk and low attention.

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1484

I like to mine. My main has an Orca. Can you say lock time? One more case of all stick and no carrot for anyone who does not do the PVP thing very often. That is a reason I am dropping my paid for main account for a while and going Alpha. I do not want to pay for that sort of thing.

1485

Nope. I do not make much of anything sitting in high sec and mining. Not a thing, I do however find it relaxing as strange as that may be to you. So I also dropped my accounts after the mining changes, It was not worth the sub and it did not mesh with my play style. Notice I said my play style. Not your pay style, however my sub was the very same as your sub. Instead of griping and doing nothing I went proactive.

I now run a gimpy alpha alt, and if CCP ever gets tired of running paid subs off, then maybe I will go back and start paying again.

Before you do the usual and say good, Good be gone with you, allow me to remind you that the servers are not free. Neither are the salaries. Your play style will be irrelevant when the game loses all that invested they made. Its true. I expect you to salt away now, or say your the one salting. I expect nothing less. However I simply voiced and opinion. I really do love Eve. Its the only game I play and has been the only one for a couple of years now.

All stick and no carrot is not something I care to pay for.

2 Likes
1486

Nothing that you have typed here is impacted by this change…