Probably because those 6 hours pay for his 1 hour of PVP. Now that player will have to invest about a week to play one day. Is that terrible? Probably not as the player can divert afk ratting into afk research, afk manufacturing, afk PI, afk jita spam, afk trade spam,…
Let’s hope the changes will make more people interact but with the above replies I don’t think the nay-sayers will probably keep on being the hermit (crabs?) they are…
So, after some days of experimenting, here are the things that I found:
taking a ship that uses only drones as the only damage source as an example: the Ishtar,
ECM and Sensor Dampeners are extremely detrimental to Ratting efficiency.
ECM is somewhat easier to handle, because a well-fitted ishtar can melt a guristas deadspace battleship in a short time, but as for sensor dampeners, the Ishtar would have to get closer, taking more damage.
A good counter is to fit your Ishtar with XLSB and face tank the site, as the only rats that do sensor dampening and ECM are Guristas and Serpentis rats, which do Kin/Therm damage, that corresponds to the innate resist buffs the Ishtar already has. This Also applies to deadspace sites.
However, this change might impact gila deadspace ratters more, since a gila cannot tank that much damage and would be forced to clean up battleships before the major damage dealers to the gila- battlecruisers and cruisers. This might also impact its ability in cleaning up stasis towers.
Normal Anomalies contain very few frigate rats, and the med drones of the ship can tank the damage, but in deadspace complexes the small ships often appear in large swarms, and they can track the drones properly. Losing a target means that the drones would finish chewing the first target, and crawl back to the ship, taking heavy fire before the owner sends out instruction to let the drones return.
Prioritizing targets is very important in deadspace Ratting(which is something.that the player actively maintains), but apparently CCP had that nerfed too.
In short, drone boats without the ability to repair lots of damage suffer from this the most, and mostly new players use these types of ships(a good example would be the gila). This would Also affect deadspace runners more than the normal anomaly ratters. However, ratters in other regions(e.g. drone regions, Sansha, Blood) suffer from this less.
Seriously…?
I get that some PvPer’s only play the game to PvP, but do they care so little about the game they can’t afford to do some active gaming for an hour or two to gain enough isk to freely PvP the next day…?
Also, I seriously can’t comprehend how some people don’t even stop to think it’s fine to go out with a cheap ass fit just to have some fun, without having to farm hundreds of millions before being able to afford a shiny ship they would also end up blowing up in an hour or two anyways.
Guess that’s “elite PvP” for you, where you can’t fly anything other than the most expensive stuff, otherwise you aren’t a cool kid anymore.
1 Like
Or, alternatively, its lies and they prefer to sit on an ever expanding hoard and claim “next week Ill buy ships for my plan”
1 Like
Damn, how will I cope?
I was only explaining how I do it and what my afk options are, because -like the little crybaby that I am- I simply adapt. Not sure why you get all emotional about it, EVE Online is a nice game in general but most of the game mechanics are dull and elaborate. I have been playing for over 15 years now, so for me -as you could see in my previous post- it’s just another challenge to adapt some of my afk-actions. And no, I won’t go do PVP -I’m sorry PSW (player ship wrecking) just before anyone is triggered about the definition of PVP-, Don’t worry, you are happy because you can pay me dank ISK for your ships and fittings and I’m happy because you pay me dank ISK so you can be ‘one of the cool kids’. 
Also, this thread is lacking good memes, so here is what the crab community will feel like when the nerf hits the server like the chair hits the hand ;
OK selecting one at random, Guild Wars 2 introduced a new winter zone (a few years back), the value of the unique zone currency on release, the predictability of the spawn clusters, the number of mobs and rate of respawn lead to the map quickly being covered at spawn points with AFK necromancers. Their pets in guard mode would kill the mobs then regen their health, and the character would be set to chain cast a skill that didn’t require a target (a legitmate basic ui action is to change 1 skill only in GW2 in to a chain cast, it doesn’t have to be the basic autoattack that is chained) - most commonly the greatsword 4 nightfall pulsing ground placed aoe damage under the characters feet. The legitimate changing of 1 skill of your choice to chain cast, thus prevented the character from logging out as afk and added some character damage to mobs.
The GW2 dev team, did the normal work of a MMO dev team and fixed the content problem they had released. In time the AFK characters ‘farming overnight’ by misappropriating legit mechanics were gone before they had too significant an economy effect. There are hundreds more examples like this from every MMO out there that has a pet system (most of them), and have never resorted to turning off the pet system (all of them to my knowledge).
Contrasting the EVE dev team to the GW2 team what GW2 didn’t do was create spots for the necromancers in most zones of the world, and leave them in place, often as people’s primary income source, for many many years until they had significant effect on the economy. Until necromancers become so hated by some that any level of nerfs to pet users would feel justified to them. And then finally react by becoming the first MMO dev team in history to remove pet AI from a live MMO.
As a much newer EVE player (under a year) I understand from reading this thread how people developed such an opposed stance to drone play - but it’s not drones that are the problem it’s the way content has been left. I’ve always liked pets from the first low level mob I tamed in Ultima online (yeah it was a rabbit I think) to having a pack of dragons at my command whiel riding a nightmare. My EQ1 bard who through a lot of long corpse runs solo-ed his epic sword (charm & other mechanics through months of trial and error resulting in solo killing of mobs designed for 72man raid teams). Pets as a feature of MMOs have always thrown up problems, I remember for example showing a dev how recent changes to secondary LoS checks allowed a team of channelers to cast aoe on allied huntress pets then effectively teleport those pets hundreds of meters away through walls to hit out of sight and out of range targets. Normally content problems are resolved by that content being properly fixed in due course.
The EVE devs have it a lot easier than most dev teams, they don’t really have to deal with pathfinding - many times the thorniest of issues to solve, they don’t even have to deal with a true aggressive mode where pets hunt targets in range (a common mmo feature), just the much simpler defensive (called aggressive here) mode where drones react to hostile action on them or owner.
It seems completely normal to me to switch between aggressive, defensive and passive pet modes multiple times during an encounter in order to optimise gameplay damage output, agro ranges and pulling, respond to CC (ewar) and so on.
I find it quite sad that the EVE devs are to my knowledge the first dev team to remove pet functionality from a live MMO in history. A drone with no limited atuonomy, no basic ai, is not a drone, is not a pet - it’s just a turret floating in space with fairly crappy shields and armour.
I hope the EVE devs actually work on their content and fix the true issues (and the economy problems they created) so they can restore drone/pet functionality to their MMO.
2 Likes
er thanks for making my point for me? I’m not sure how listing wikipedia entries for US military drones in RL is more than a trolling exercise - but they have increasingly sophisticated loiter, track and other routines giving them some limited autonomy.
As do ours.
And you know fine rightly why; autonomy of control is not a defining characteristic of a drone. Specifically your claim about AI, which I quoted.
Some what disingenuous of you to call me a troll, but then I supose Ive earned it by assuming you are a krab who is hiding behind lore excuses now rather than just be honest;
This change means less isk/hr for low effort players and you are opposed to this change on those grounds.
Anything else is garnish.
No I genuinely think it is sad that EVE is I believe the only MMO in history to remove pet functionality from a live MMO.
I get that afk ratting (something I’ve never done) has caused economy issues over along period, and I get that some people are so keen for economy issues to see change that they don’t care if the wrong change is made to drones, instead of the right changes being made to afk-able content.
If you cant name it, feed it, get attached to it, train it or pet it, then I dont think it classes as a pet.
In regards to changing the activity, Im pretty sure everyone on both sides agree that would be good, but for now, Im happy to see how this pans out.
Like I said, its quicker less work to do and undo and has an immeadiate effect, and doesnt harm peoole whove been using avctive drones successfully for years.
Better to do something than nothing for months while working on a new thing.
The defining characteristics of companions or pets or drones across the MMO genre is, they can guard their owner, they can engage multiple threats.
Like I said, every other MMO in history (to my knowledge) has fixed content problems, instead of turning off companions/pets/drones.
Maybe the economic damage of afk-able content has been so severe and left for so long that turning off drones has been chosen, but my suspicion is, once off, drones will never be turned on again and it’s in fact a way of avoiding doing the content fixing work a MMO dev team would normally do.
Personally, Id be happy with both solutions.
Infact, I say drones will now be more akin to working animals than pets, only savaging on command.
Drone assist vs NPC’s works in high sec, low sec, null sec, and wormholes (at least until they broke it today). I know this for a fact because I multibox 15 ships for PvE purposes and have done so in all areas of space. As for using it against players, it only works in null space, such as null sec or wormholes, OR if they are a legal target (war dec, factional warfare opponent). I know this for a fact, because I have done it.
High sec incursion fleets use drone assist vs NPC’s every single day. I use it vs NPC’s in low sec incursions. My mining fleets in null sec and wormholes use it vs NPC’s to protect themselves. Players will not be aggressed by assisted drones in high sec or low sec unless they are war targets (or factional war targets), but in null sec and wormholes then assisted drones will happily aggress players too.
The patch today broke drone assist entirely but it appears to be an unintended bug.
Something that has been semi fun has become rubbish. Bring it back.
I’m a new player (returning casual player from years ago) who has had my finger hovering over the Omega button for a couple weeks. Drones level 5 would have finished on this toon today.
I primarily play PvE. It’s a time thing. I can’t dedicate 100% attention for long swaths of time to be a part of a fleet, sticking to one region bores me, so I do exploration and combat sites when I can.
My preferred PvE playstyle is big guns from range, while my drones take care of the small ships that get in closer than I can track. I now have to micromanage that way more. Additionally, it’s not uncommon to find myself sensor jammed by mutliple rats, dropping my targeting range from 40km (extreme range of my guns and range of my drone control), to 10km. So now I have to fly right in to the teeth of the enemy, get shot at the whole way, target something that is already on the edge of getting in too close to shoot, and manually activate my drones. Then I either tank more damage until I can assign the next target, or I run away, repair, and start over. That’s doable, but it’s a massive pain, and not fun.
Do I care about needing to press a button to tell my drones to attack? No, I frequently do it anyway to focus fire on the ship that I actually want them to attack. But having the ability for them to have SOME form of autonomy to cover literal blindspots in my targeting was what made them worth having around.
So the playstyle I’ve been building towards isn’t AFK mining, and it isn’t bot-swarming, but it is less viable now, and I’m less inclined to subscribe as a direct result. Make of that what you will.
3 Likes
ok i got your point of view, but really about bots ect. but cmon fleet farming is now kind of dead cuz of this change. im not into auto agress, but when i give asist comand and i using a target painter on another ship drones SHOULD work insted of not atacking… its not afk farm or botting this change affect a lot of normal players.
Drones will, therefore, no longer automatically engage NPCs when their operation is set to aggressive and rather will rely on player-issued instructions to initiate action against a chosen target. We are making this change to guarantee that NPC killing activities move closer towards observant player interactions and rely much less on low or no awareness gameplay.”
Ok, so why the needless add to tedium CCP ?
Im semi-afk, working from home, and alt-tabbing ingame whenever rats appear, in time to pull a drone out before they agro.
Now it’s needless added tedium to have to target each rat individually and press F.
In what way does this help contribute to more “observant player interaction” ?
I am already ingame and so cannot be considered afk or in “no awareness gameplay” state.
Neeldess stupid changes, just to be annoying and useless, per CCP usual.
2020: the year that doing something is regarded as more boring than doing nothing
1 Like
How am I doing “nothing” ingame exactly ?
In your world I would have to be manually forced to watch a screen in shipspin mode meanwhile ratting/mining for hours on end ?
You’re out of your ■■■■■■■ mind, most adults have other ■■■■ to do too, while at home, in 2020 especially …