Well youve not actually raised a circumstance other than farming that this interferes with…
And so what? Is it not “cool” to be a Farmer? Is Farmer offensive for some reason now?
FML 2020 never stops bein pants on head wierd, does it.
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As mentioned above already, it’s not about efficiency or ticks, it’s about beauty of the game. I just like drones how they were before. In PvP and in (attentive) PvE. I think it’s a loss for the game if drones lose their unique character, beeing autonomous.
I get it, you don’t feel like losing something in the game. But please accept the others have different opinions about this. I play EVE for a long time now. And I will certainly miss this special flavour of Gallente weaponry.
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Pretty much all the people complaining about how running missions in battleships will be terible from now on.
It seems to me they simply don’t have any experience running missions while actually paying attention to what they are doing, and just use shiny fits to tank everything without having to worry about triggers and etc.
Very similar to the guy who mines in an Orca and was complaining about rats, as he never even bothered to try ignoring them in the first place, and simply focus on mining with drones.
Is a venture affected? Yes, but newbies will just have to learn it’s not a good idea to leave the keyboard while undocked in a ship with 0 tank.
Procurers/Skiffs and Orcas? Nope. Just use mining drones as you’ll get some extra income, and ignore rats altogether.
The only time I ever take my combat drones out in High Sec is when an elite NPC spawns, and I hope for some shiny loot, but other than that, nope.
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Shh there there Sacrilege, he didnt mean it, you have good honest Amarr drones in your belly.
Tch, and so close to Christmas. For shame.
I mean, at this point, we might as well stop all discussion in this line because we’re entering the territory of subjective feelings.
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I think you realize that this change is entirely a PvE context and are making this observation merely to bang on a talking point without adding anything of relevance.
Thanks to those engaging with my posts constructively. I have been surprised by defenders of this change. It seems there are a few who feel that drone use is wrong or lazy or bad for the economy, and others who feel this is ok as a bandaid. I won’t dispute that large (semi)afk earnings can unbalance a healthy economy, although there are many afk streams in EVE and marketplace trading can be very significant for one example. I wanted to respond to a couple of your points.
I don’t bot, I don’t afk-farm, I never have in 23years of playing MMOs. In every MMO game I have played (a great many of them, many in some depth to be fair) there have been pets. The pets could be set to guard their owners and defend themselves. This is nearly always the default behaviour. There would always be some pet issues that would arise with afk-farming of spawns. Every MMO dev team whether large or small, AAA or indy would do the work of solving the specific issues that arose in a targeted fashion. Usually pretty successfully.
I have never ever seen a MMO dev team just blanket give up and say designing for pets is work we either don’t have the skillsets or manhours for, we’re giving up and removing their ability to defend themselves or guard owners. Designing and maintaining a MMO involves work, everyone’s jobs involve work, addressing the actual problem cases involves work, that’s normal, doing your job involves working at it. This CCP change is just astonishing to me, and pretty worrying - what else are they going to turn off because turning stuff off is less work than fixing it?
There’s both practical and emotional issues arising from giving up on doing the work on pets(drones). They no longer feel like pets, more detached vulnerable turrets with their own very fragile shields and armor that float around in space, engaging very slowly and taking a long time to switch targets because of targeting then travel times. The sit dumb in space issues will decrease their dps, by a lot in some use cases. That needs to be acknowledged, it will never have an effect of zero, it will decrease dps by a fair bit in some cases and make small change in others.
This change will also affect how some content plays, not just from reduced dps. I know from experience that some combinations of blinding, tangling, starving etc etc ewar was only survivable for me, because my drones would continue to do stuff, even if I was tied up in webs, with horrible lock range/time.
I have never seen a dev team just give up on balancing pets and any issues that arise from pet(drone) use before - it is pretty astonishing. Simplistic, quick ‘solutions’ to complex systems often lead to a fair amount of new consequences.
I believe CCP devs should be targeting actual specific problem areas, (e.g. afk ratting, bounties, loot/MTUs etc) and doing the work of fixing problems there in a measured way. I made a few quick suggestions about upgrading content (actually doing the work), anoms/missions across low & null to shift play to active non-afk-able streams etc I know many have made these points in a great deal more considered detail too. This should be an opportunity to make content more fun and rewarding (and active) not an excuse to turn stuff off because that’s quick.
In essence yes changing content is more work than turning off what makes pets be pets, but I have never seen another MMO team shirk their work in this way before.
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The Drones still go agro on PVE. Seems CCP has some doubts on this. Will they change their mind?
@CCP Paradox. Can we just shoot all of CCP Dev ingame once in awhile with a plex loot drops just to release some frustrations? 
You can call the event: CCP Dev Hunt.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. This applies to games just as much as any other ‘art’.
Yes, I said this because ppl defending this change often argued with efficiency, laziness and ticks. But after all a game should be a joy experience I think.
Autonomous drone behavior is an example for a unique style of weaponry, which feels special and distinct. Removing it from the game makes it less enjoyable.
There are proposals made in this thread how to tackle the actual issue in a much better way, which would actually add something to the game.
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Yeah its super when they split up and attack things you dont want them to attack, or aggro a frigate miles away that bee-lines over to kill em specifically.
Your missile analogy also completely neglects that drones are far faster than missiles if you are sending them at a ball of frigates. They pop one, and you direct em to the next which you already have queued up. Often , its in their range, so no delay.
And did you know Drones can be faster than missiles speed wise, cant be Anti-missiled, and dont need to reload.
Sounds pretty distinct from missiles to me.
cruise missile 6110 m/sec
ogre 1440 m/sec
Never heard of a dev team in the history of MMOs deciding to discontinue pet use by removing what makes them pets, their limited ability to take autonomous action when set in that mode. Which live MMO has removed guard/defend capability from pets? I’m just not aware of one, ever.
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So maybe fixing this would be a good thing then? Instead of removing it altogether?
Also, the fact that I liked drones and how they acted before this change - despite some glitches here and there - should prove that’s about fun and games and not afk-laziness, for me at least.
Let’s say you mostly use turrets. Do you think in the position EVE is now as a live MMO of many many years that each turret on your ship should now have it’s own individual agro state added, be given really subpar armour and shields, be very complex/impossible to repair and have a really long engage time added before first shot? Do you think npcs should be given the opportunity to quickly target and blow up all turrets on your ship with your ship tank not applying to turrets?
If you don’t think some of the disadvantages of drones should be added to turrets, then why should the advantage of drones be taken away - instead of actually fixing specific use case problems that target specific problems (like afk-able content bounties/loot/mtu/spawns etc).
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You seem to be under the impression this activity is not intentional. I put it to you that it is an earlier attempt to get people to control their drones, which apparently has failed.
Something doing something for you automatically is fun and games?
Also, this change isnt about fun and games, its about altering the balance of the economy. Thats a mechanical issue, not a “fun” issue.
The view that auto-drones are really the more unfun setting, is subjective but I oppose your supposition that having things done for you is more fun than doing them yourself.
So would you like each missile to require you manually driving it via nose-cam in to an enemy while bearing in mind limited fuel supply?
How about turret firing, you would support having to manually aim each of your turrets while eyeballing velocity, trajectory and lead times to try and have your shot actually hit an enemy?
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Ok lets do this.
You say this like using aggro to crowd control with several drones at once is a bad thing. So yeah, that would be great, actually.
You need to skill your drone skills a bit better if your Gecko isnt out performing most T1 frigs.
What? How are drones hard to repair? How are they impossible to repair? You can repair them in space, which you cant do to turrets.
You need faster drones, better drone skills or the midslot speed mod installed.
Yes
If a turret ship can have its turrets targetted, then turret specific hulls should get a bonus to the turret HP… Just like many drone boats do for their drones.
Drones dont have a limited fuel supply. Neither do manual drones have the ability to be piltoted. I lock and issue the fire command, just as I do with all other weapons. That said, Id love Stealth
Bombs to be m,anually controlled with nose-cam, yes.
This is also something you dont need to do to drones.
Let me ask you a question in returm. Do you think it would be right to allow turrets and missiles to auto target and commence firing without anything more than a single button press? To autoreload and change targets once the first is dead? What about laser turrets? they dont even have to reload.
Now that’s a wild guess, isn’t it? Breaking (or not fixing) a feature by intention to move ppl away from it? Anyway, as said, I take drones as they were before! I don’t want to be afk while drones doing all the work. I want drones acting like proper drones. And fixing some of their glitches mid-fight here and there can be part of the game.
Ships have turrets and launchers too! It’s not about laziness, it’s about rich gameplay. Drones do one thing while I do the other. Autonomy of drones add something to the game.
There are much better ways to reach this goal. Without ruining the fun part.
Indeed, fun is subjective. And as said above, there is enough other stuff to do and to monitor on the ship besides that.
Yes it is, but it started happening at one point when before it wasnt, and is now pretty much to be expected. But yes, its a guess.
A minor thing thats extremely easy to abuse. And now its going away.
Given you are monitoring your weapons and targets anyway, I disagree. Do you ever pull drones due to aggro or damage? If yes you monitor them already.