Ok let’s put this another way, removing limited autonomy from drones - makes drones really ■■■■ slow missiles that can get agro and then die from it. They’re losing what made them drones.
It doesnt change their speed, they always could get aggro, and they can die regardless of control method, especially if not playing attentively and pulling them when they draw too much aggro.
ok I’ll try this another way. FML honestly.
Different weapons systems have different pros and cons.
If you add a new con to a weapon system, you should also add a new pro.
Its making all cars Manual instead of letting there be Automatics.
People who drove stick shift their whole lives simply couldnt give a damn.
Because to them there is no con.
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These arguments are ridiculous.
You people talk as if there are mission sites with tens of frigates spawning with each enemy wave.
There aren’t.
It’s 4-5 frigates tops per wave, and sites that have more than that are missions with different aggro conditions, so if you don’t touch certain groups or objectives, they won’t aggro.
I’ve been using a barghest for lvl4 missions, and had no issue clearing frigates with drones(set on passive to avoid unecessary aggro or early trigger kills), and killing cruisers and up with my main guns.
By the time I was dealing with battleships, all other smaller ships were dealt with, and I could put medium drones to deal some extra damage on the remaining targets just fine.
Letting drones run loose on missions is one of the worst arguments I have seen on why this change affects active gameplay.
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You are missing my point. It’s not about efficiency, it’s about removing a fun, unique game mechanic in PvE. I actually enjoyed the autonomy of drones in PvE, seeing them whizzing around, doing their thing on their own while I’m busy with other targets.
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This assumes that the weapon system didn’t have too many Pro’s to begin with. I would argue drones did.
Good news! Their firing and flight patterns are still automatic! You can watch them whizz about all day with no change!
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This pretty much confirms what I suspected, you like the changes because it hits all drone use.
Objectively speaking this is a poor change because it doesn’t hit it’s target - (semi)-afk drone boat usage (in a high respawn location), it sprays bullets in to the crowd hoping a few might reach it’s intended target.
If a small subset of pilots using certain types of laser boats in certain locations were producing afk play issues - a good solution would not be to add say a 20second reload time to all laser crystals.
If a small subset of pilots using certain types of projectile boats in certain locations were producing afk play issues - a good solution would not be to add a large amount of capacitor use to all projectile turrets.
If a small subset of pilots using certain types of missile boats in certain locations were producing afk play issues - a good solution would not be to add tracking requirements to all missile launchers.
The drone change is objectively an indiscriminate, hence badly designed, change - irrespective of whether you think drones deserve it - it’s not properly targeted on the aims CCP stated.
Your comparisons would only be accurate if there already were a large number of people using;
Amarr fits which dont rely on changing range
Minmatar fits that already have cap buffers
Caldari fits with Tracking Bonus to Missiles (which arguably BCS should in fact have anyway, if Missile Turret Tracking existed)
There are already plenty of people who dont use auto-drones without any problem at all.
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Ok, you’re agreeing with me here. Changes to weapons systems should hit the targets, the guilty parties, and not indiscriminately hit all bystanders who happen to be using the same weapons systems.
Im agreeing with that principle and saying that its not at work here.
Right, so you agree in principle that changes should hit their intended targets (guilty parties) and not randomly hit innocent bystanders (which could include yourself), but in this particular case you think you won’t be one of the innocent bystanders being hit, so you’re not bothered.
Fantastic.
If you want to paraphrase it like that, then this is how it works for me:
I am one of the bystanders, but I was born with bullet proof skin. As were a lot of other people.
To put it into the actual terms of the topic:
I dont auto-drone. I never have and I never will. I was taught from my first days in EvE in 2009 that leaving drones to auto engage was a mistake, and it didnt take long to see why.
I am constantly surprised by the amount of people who claim both;
- They dont manual at all
- Manual is too much effort
I refer you back to my cars analogy which is more accurate than your police murder one.
They pass a law tomorrow banning automatic transmission cars.
Are people who have only ever driven stick affected by this law?
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Right ok, you feel like it’s justified to not care about others playstyle because you think your playstyle is superior.
Saying you only ever ‘drive stick’ isn’t a badge of superiority, it just means you haven’t thought about cases where the limited autonomy of drones can be useful. You’re miner boosting new corpmates in an orca, they are new players and fairly fragile and you protect them against rats where your orca has long lock times, the limited autonomy of drones is useful. You’re doing certain content, events, emerging conduits, whatever comes next etc etc there’s a lot of ewar from small fast long to lock ships, limited autonomy of drones can be useful. And so on.
In your own words, you don’t care about bullets being fired randomly in to a crowd because you think your skin is proof against bullets. If it was acid being sprayed randomly over a crowd you’d care or not based on whether your skin is acid proof.
Mostly I’m a manual stick driver (in your terms), manually assigning targets to passive drones because drones do tend to agro stupid targets, however I recognise that principles should be applied universally and not just where it benefits or doesn’t affect me. Good design is making changes to deal with a special case that is targeted to that special case. Bad design is targeting an entire weapons platform far beyond the special case circumstances.
This.
100% this.
So much this.
It reminds me of when people claim their eyes are bleeding because someone used ALL CAPS in a sentence.
I mean, c’mon. It’s not actually hard at all.
It just requires you to use one finger to press one button.
I’m loathe to compare EVE to other games, but I’ve played WoW (okay, look, don’t shoot me) on and off for years and in combat I have 4 action bars of moves / abilities to choose from and in a fight with one target I will have to press at least 12-15 buttons depending on the class.
But in EVE we cannot press F because ‘too hard’?
Really?
Really really?
[insert really ??? GIF here]
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No, its got nothing to do with feelings. Its the simple fact that your “affects everyone equally” statement is false.
Right, so do this and the problem is gone.
But you are ignoring literally any and all benefits thats removing auto drones provides; reduction in passive wealth generation (the stated intention) and the side affect of less dornes lost in combat. The fact it affects people lazier than you is not something that’s a bad thing. I dont know why you want to defend them when its clearly a negative, or CCP wouldnt be removing it.
Which we both agree it is. You said it yourself;
The special case is everyone who isnt.
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You’re agreeing with me, but just not seeing it somehow.
If the problem is for example afk droneboats farming bounties in high respawn locations, then the fix should be targeted on afk droneboats farming bounties in high respawn locations. The fix should not be targeted on… drones as a weapons system.
F sake.
CCP told you the reason in the Dev blog. GO AND READ IT.
Stop inventing your own reasons then complaining CCPs change doesn’t match your invented reason.
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And if its this, plus farming Low and Null too? If its possible to do in all sec levels in any ship capable of carrying drones? By anyone with just the basic skill level needed for ship and drones? What would you suggest thats as easy to implement, control and if needed reverse without unforeseen consequences?
The statement there is clear in its target; “NPC killing activities move closer towards attentive player interactions and rely much less on low or no attention gameplay”
AFK Droning I will put £5 on the table and say is the single largest NPC killing activity that relies on low or no attention gameplay, so it makes sense to do it to drones, and we should not assume that other forms of AFK NPC killing would be ignored. Its much more sensible to change a small thing and see how it works out than half a dozen tiny things.
If you can think of a way that you can alter AFK Droning that is as efficent, simple, easy to revert and most importantly easy for attentive players to not even notice, Im sure they would love to hear about it.
I know I would.