Upcoming Changes to Drone Aggression

Mass reduction on HIC bubbles replaced with a mid slot module?

The entire approach is a sophism, and false.

Because CCP does not want to fix a problem, does not fix a problem, and probably does not even perceive a problem.

Also the article is factually wrong in many aspects, I basically dropped it at “increased safety” (safety decreased greatly), but before that it was “systematically increased iskflow from most major sources” (wrong, check MER), “There are plenty of wormhole corps who have success without any supers at all” (if success is defined as safe farming, then probably yes - wormhole is THE safest space of new eden based on deaths per population), etc, not gonna waste time picking apart an obvious wrong sophism article any further./

We realize it. We just celebrate the death of AFK farmer trash and low-effort players who can’t cope without multiboxing their AFK alts. Now hopefully CCP will kill off more of the bots to match.

And yet here you are demonstrating its attitudes nicely: defining success based on ISK/hour and not by the things you do, and completely unable to cope with the idea of doing PvP without infinite ISK faucets and “who cares, already replaced it” capital fleets.

why ccp… why?

why not?

this change makes it more difficult for Joe “Wallet Warrior” Schmoe to load up 15 alts and have them afk in nullsec anomalies for 15 minutes each while he jerks himself off since they don’t need any human input. i think that’s pretty great for the game overall.

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afk playing in eve is a big issue

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Yes, and CCP is making this change to address one area of afk gameplay.

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now pve will be more active ig.

Well, whether it will be or not is something we will have to see, but yes, that is the idea that these changes are trying to move the direction of PvE towards. Something that’s more active and less low-attention.

As a combat explorer i agree with you

“Bots” will suffer the least, because to force the next target to attack is to add one line to the code. You take part of the game and earnings and give nothing in return.

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So now ratting is only gonna be botters? Who tf is gonna do something that active for the minimal reward it gives. I can think of like 5 more enjoyable things that will be a better return on my time. Whats next? Are lasers not going to auto cycle and you have to tell drones to mine again everytime they return?

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why you guys need to oppose the idea , ccp want to close their company , so let them do it

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I am fine with the change because you can cry or accept it. But let’s talk about the realities. This will not harm botting but just adding a few lines more code to the app. This will harm players with a ridiculous number of accounts and they start maybe botting now. And it makes it harder for the ones really enjoying more aspects of the game for 15 years than just farming all day long.

In my case, I simply enjoyed ratting C3 anomalies in two PvP fitted Domis, which works like a charm. It’s not like it’s AFK ratting but 8-10 minutes mainly drone work (well, in a Sci-Fi environment I would expect computers doing it anyway :slight_smile: ), listening to Leo Metal Covers, and being able for a bit multitasking.

The game is and will be time-consuming and people like me are struggling with RL a lot. So I need to find proper gameplay over and over again. Farming C3 sleeper sites while waiting for random PvP was the best option in my case because I make slowly more ISK I lose and can waste the billions for PvP without struggling again and leaving the game at the end.

What does it mean in my case? I have to do some pre-work like probing, scouting, making bookmarks, and move my Domis in. I make around 42 mils in 12 minutes incl. warping around, setting up the RR tanks, dropping MTU and MD, etc. Let’s say I make 200 mil/hour. Two hours 400 mil. Maybe 10 days a month. 4 billion for spending 20 hours in Cyberspace. This is a fair deal.

So maybe CCP should be aware that their customers are not alpha-nerds without a life or no other interests in general. :wink:

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So, what is the big issue here?

If you are already actively playing the game in those 20 hours, then you have earned your reward for that.

The change is meant to address people who sit at their keyboard doing whatever else but playing, and only glancing at the client every 10 mins or so, to get the rewards which their drones earned for them.

And it doesn’t stop there, as due to barely requiring any attention, they can just leave their PC on and the clients running, while doing other stuff for hours on end.

While you may only have the chance to actively rat for 20h per month, these people can rat in an AFK manner for 200h per month, if not more, per account.

That means their low to no attention efforts netted them 10x times the income you earned from actively playing the game, while doing the same activity, devaluing the value of the isk you earned in those 20h.

That’s not a good incentive for players to be active, and it’s the main point CCP is trying to address here.

Removed a large number of off topic posts and took moderation where needed. Keep it civil and on topic. No more warnings.

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I am pretty sure these players would run no accounts in the other case. So what’s the point for CCP? The game is extremely hard for most people. PvP in good ships needs a proper cash flow … and experience. I see no issue if people farm billions to invest this on the market for creating assets for other people’s content.

Too much effort will make players leave the game. I have seen this now for over 14 years that people with the will to play EVE left at the end because they went broke ingame due to RL responsibilities or the effort to farm a PvP ship was too high for the one minute fun in a fight. And they saw no sense to buy GTC all the time besides the monthly subscription for 2-3 accounts.

The question is how good is this balanced at the end. People using bots or farming AFK all day long will not pay a cent to CCP for sure. I am aware that RMT is an issue in this case but trillions will flow again into the market from this supporting players creating content or killing others.

CCP has to make hard decisions because they still take a high risk that the game will become to complicated and time-consuming for the people. Otherwise, we would have complete different numbers ingame.

Could the op also be updated to indicate whether drones already told to engage NPCs will automatically pursue a subsequent target, or would still need to be told to attack their next target?

Because really, if you look at a ship like some of the Marauders (Paladin and Golem as examples); their drone bays are almost exclusively there for helping to deal with frigate-sized targets.

Yes, they can mount grapplers, but those are only effective up to a range at which one typically does not find the more-hardy of frigate/destroyer-sized rats.

Yes, they could begin burning in the direction of the frigates to bring down transversal (for the turreted boats), but if we’re being realistic here this will bring the isk/hour of mission-running down very aggressively, particularly for anyone who does not run in at least a duo.

But for some other ships where their primary damage source is drones, such as the Vexor, Ishtar, Myrmidon, Dominix… You’re reducing their general effectiveness relative to other ships of similar classes for the same purpose substantially - because drones still have travel times and lock times are still a thing. If you happen to have limited targeting range or have been jammed up, you can’t initiate an attack against a new target until you, well, manage to get something locked again.

During which time your drones could have come down from what could’ve been 30km away where the NPCs were at back to your ship, which if they were Ogres you’d launched as example means you’ve got to wait for them to get all the way back to an NPC again at the speed of slow.

Meanwhile a turreted or missile ship is at least able to put down effective fire against the offending ship(s) (particularly in the case of ECM) without having to care as much about their drones’ contribution to the story.

Consider this carefully CCP.

Drones in mission running, besides on Domis/Nomis and Rattlesnakes, are generally a supplementary tool, not the primary one. And for most ships, for the purpose of mission running, they’re there to deal with what that ship specifically is not that great at dealing with using its own weaponry; namely the smaller, faster, longer-to-lock and harder-to-hit things.

I think it’d be much more sensible to introduce a new minigame or at least some form of mandatory-interaction where drones’ activity is concerned to enable them to function at their intended efficacy.

If drones begin engaging a new target, have a drone control window on the side where a short captcha-like minigame has to be completed (you can create various Project Discovery ‘games’, you can create this) in order for them to deal full damage, else they only deal 1/4 damage until it has been completed due to ‘incomplete sequencing of the drone control systems’ or something along those lines.

If done right image-recognition bots wouldn’t be able to properly complete it (reliably) and it would introduce precisely the sort of ‘interactive play’ you’re aiming to have, but WITHOUT the unnecessary and more-difficult-to-accommodate implications for sensor damping and ECM.

In this way players relying on droneboating will still have to be attentive of their game the same way turret/missile-users have to be, while botters will have a harder time of getting their thing done.

And best of all, you’d have an easier time identifying botters since enough flawed results could highlight potential botter accounts - that, or simpletons who might be worth watching for the lulz anyway.