Topic: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

It is simple risk and reward that keeps people off Beta.  It is not worth it most of the time to put your mining bot at risk for slightly faster mining.   Heck most of the time when you mine it is afk watching something else.  Mining on Beta is Risky because it is so hard to disappear and once you get spotted you are done and it does not matter if you are in a guild or alliance on that beta island or an independent you are done because until the threat goes away the minor bot is put away.   So when it takes hours to mine up mats for something it is not worth the risk. Other than for guild ops relating to the Epitron only available on beta mining not worth the risk!

I suggest:
Shrink the influence ring of the guilds on the island to closer to their station buy proving excellent benefits close to base.  Say great mining and combat bonuses next to the base and make it much easier (many more port in and spots) for people to get on and off the Beta island.  This would make it harder for guilds to control access to the beta island and at the same time give guilds the ability to protect guild mates without controlling the entire island.   But you also need change to the gates.
Most of the time when you drop onto beta you are either looking for trouble or not wanting to find trouble (mining/farming).  Either way you do not want to be jumped right as you drop in. So how to stop M2S from having a person sit in an Ark all day long on one of the only 3 port in spots for 8 to protect everyone on the island?  This only takes 3 people to sentry the entire island. You can
1)     Change the warp in point immunity and make it timed. This would make it much more difficult on the Ark sitting there announcing everyone who comes through in alliance or guild chat.
2)    Put in more gates but make them one way.  This way once you are in then you are committed but there are many more ways off the island.  I would suggest 12 more gates 6 in and 6 out for each island.  This would make it much more difficult to deny access to an island.  Rewards are great but you have to believe you have a good change to escape with your loot.
3)    Either make the islands bigger or shrink the radar.

What all this does is: Makes it much much harder for a guild to control access to an entire island and at the same time provides different bonuses and protection to guild mates mining farming close to base.  This should open up the island to more people.   More people on the island translates to more PvP.  People want to be able to dash in pick a fight/mine/farm and get away. When all 3 ways on and off the island are guarded that is extremely hard to do.

Laf

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

1 and 3 are excellent suggestions.

I freely admit to using the teleporter immunity to my advantage, but it is not a great feature. The immunity should be no longer than 60 seconds. Enough time for even the most *** computer to load. Beta Terminal protection is fine though.

There needs to be a much larger landmass if groups are to ever feel genuinely safe on beta, however false that sense of security is. Not knocking the dev team on this one, because what we have is a great starting point.

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

The devs say they'll expand the land mass when theres demand for it.  So, I ask them: WHAT THE F*CK ARE YOU WAITING FOR!  The 3 beta islands are basically controlled by the 3 major alliances.  We need more room to spread out and give other corps a chance to rise without having to be friendly with the other corps, more open islands for people to feel they can get "lost" in them and not be found easily, and to be able to experience beta without the near certainty of being seen and chased.


The Devs denying the game of land mass just says that they're trying to starve us and force us into pvp all the time.  Just give us the damn islands when you make them and I KNOW people will still find each other to pvp.  They're trying to control the population on beta islands and thats just wrong.  Give us ample room and we'll do with it as we wish.  Trying to feign a feeling of activity on beta is just wrong and people dont like it.  You wont see more people on beta, less people on alpha, and less people complaining about it being so damn packed on alpha until you expand the landmass.

I am Perpetuum's Most Dangerous Agent and an equal opportunity troll.
-> You just lost The Game <-
"Perpetuum sounds like a something I would stick up my *** for enjoyement." -Kaito Kurusaki

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

At the moment there seems to be little reason if any to go to beta unless you already have a presence there.

The PvP is mostly just for bragging rights atm. It tends to either be;
Blob warfare with large group, low skill, combat consisting of called target annihilation.
Login ambushes, where a gang will appear out of nowhere and gank  the target.
One on one goose chases where people dodge in and out of terminal repairing constantly.
The last is the only PvP that seems to even come close to needing any sort of tactics/strategy.

On the market side, everyone has easy access to Alpha isles, so there is no need to haul ammo or other supplies out to beta, the few haulers that try usually end up ambushed.

On the industry side...not sure, i do not do much with indies other than buy and sell to/for them, i have seen some say that all minerals are available everywhere, others say some are only found on the betas.

Who the $#@% is stEvE?

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

Small group pvp up to about 20 per side is the best kind of PvP, and I think most would agree with that.  The most fun I've had in fights is when we had around those numbers.  Its not enough to just obliterate any target called instantly, and not too few that it just turns into a goose chase through the island never doing enough damage to kill something.

I am Perpetuum's Most Dangerous Agent and an equal opportunity troll.
-> You just lost The Game <-
"Perpetuum sounds like a something I would stick up my *** for enjoyement." -Kaito Kurusaki

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

I like these suggestions

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

Neoxx wrote:

The devs say they'll expand the land mass when theres demand for it.  So, I ask them: WHAT THE F*CK ARE YOU WAITING FOR!  The 3 beta islands are basically controlled by the 3 major alliances.  We need more room to spread out and give other corps a chance to rise without having to be friendly with the other corps, more open islands for people to feel they can get "lost" in them and not be found easily, and to be able to experience beta without the near certainty of being seen and chased.


The Devs denying the game of land mass just says that they're trying to starve us and force us into pvp all the time.  Just give us the damn islands when you make them and I KNOW people will still find each other to pvp.  They're trying to control the population on beta islands and thats just wrong.  Give us ample room and we'll do with it as we wish.  Trying to feign a feeling of activity on beta is just wrong and people dont like it.  You wont see more people on beta, less people on alpha, and less people complaining about it being so damn packed on alpha until you expand the landmass.

Well said.

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

First, thank you for singling out Infestation as the only alliance who places scouts on TP's. Nothing like a thinly veiled ulterior motive when appealing to the community at large in order to change game mechanics to support suboptimal gameplay. (ZOMG, nerf M2S!)

lafolet wrote:

1)     Change the warp in point immunity and make it timed. This would make it much more difficult on the Ark sitting there announcing everyone who comes through in alliance or guild chat.

This would be completely negated for 2 reasons. One, it would be just as easy to park the scout on the alpha side of a teleport, making them just as completely invulnerable to attack, and Two, as soon as the attackers jumped in and killed said scout, they are spotted and reported anyway.

2)    Put in more gates but make them one way.  This way once you are in then you are committed but there are many more ways off the island.  I would suggest 12 more gates 6 in and 6 out for each island.  This would make it much more difficult to deny access to an island.  Rewards are great but you have to believe you have a good change to escape with your loot.

This would not make it much more difficult to deny access to an island, it would only make it three times as difficult. You would need to have six scouts on the inbound TP's, in addition to the three on the current TP network. Given the size of the islands, the inbound gates could even be covered by a couple of scouts who would merely patrol between them.

3)    Either make the islands bigger or shrink the radar.

For this to be viable, the islands would have to be made extremely large in comparison to current land area. Otherwise, in addition to scouts, controlling alliances would put together fast-moving EWar squads to patrol the islands while maintaining the ability to field other squads to travel to other islands looking for targets. Increasing the islands sizes and adding more outposts doesn't really work because established alliances would have very little trouble denying newer alliances from getting a foothold.

What Neoxx said is the best option. Increasing the number of islands, separated by additional TP's would greatly increase the opportunity for players to find a place to call home. Rough estimate for a first land expansion should be at least six new islands. You would see much smaller roaming gangs with the increased area to search for targets, and would see more alpha players venturing out to beta because of the increased chance to remain undetected while mining or running missions.

Reactor......ONLINE
Sensors......ONLINE
Weapons......ONLINE
All systems nominal.

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

What Neoxx said is the best option. Increasing the number of islands, separated by additional TP's would greatly increase the opportunity for players to find a place to call home. Rough estimate for a first land expansion should be at least six new islands. You would see much smaller roaming gangs with the increased area to search for targets, and would see more alpha players venturing out to beta because of the increased chance to remain undetected while mining or running missions.

Spot on +10

Without space for other factions to at least establish a foothold we won't see much more dynamic PvP evolving, stEVE went through a period early on where PvP happened in the same solitary spots whilst footholds were established. Right now, no one else can get a look in so why bother, more land mass plz k thx bbq.

"like Kalsius, a shameless carebear and jitalover" - Syndic
http://www.perpetuum-intelligence.com
http://www.perpetuum-intelligence.com/killboard/

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

I think we need beta islands connected with each other and alpha teleporters removed cool

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

Adom wrote:

I think we need beta islands connected with each other and alpha teleporters removed cool

So people can't come to beta and kill your Seths?

Anyway, more islands would be great. Another island per faction connection to beta island only.

Hokk <> New Island 1 <> Dohm
Dohm <> New Island 2 <> Norhoop
Norhoop <> New Island 3 <> Hokk

The Game

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

It's time for more islands. Seems like alpha is getting dead pretty quick. Alpha mining is going to run low real quick and everyone is getting their rep high enough to hit beta missions.

13 (edited by tRens 2011-01-03 17:19:57)

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/post/4668/#p4668

I agree there needs to be more land.

You know why people hang out at the gates all the time?

THE ENEMY IS SITTING THERE INVULNERABLE SO WE HAVE TO SIT THERE WITH THEM BABYSITTING... WHEN WE COULD BE ENJOYING THE GAME...

You know what happened the other day?

We saw a group forming on Sehvosky, so we mustered our forces...

Nothing happened, because they're INVULNERABLE, we left because hey.. I DON'T want to waste my time waiting on someone that is INVULNERABLE.

I find the game more of a waste of time now than I ever have.

All we do is babysit people that are INVULNERABLE.

The current gate mechanic obviously doesn't work, so change it, if it doesn't work that way, change it.

The way the gates are setup now, the attacking force always has the advantage, they're INVULNERABLE until they DECIDE they want to fight.

Maybe I am a bit crazy as I am ignoring all other issues.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY8V8_JsAOc

Look at that.. 1 hour of our lives wasted and it happens every day all day.

14 (edited by BigCountry 2011-01-03 19:04:13)

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

tRens wrote:

We saw a group forming on Sehvosky, so we mustered our forces...

Nothing happened, because they're INVULNERABLE, we left because hey.. I DON'T want to waste my time waiting on someone that is INVULNERABLE.

I find the game more of a waste of time now than I ever have.

All we do is babysit people that are INVULNERABLE.

It's the same on the attacking end also though. If they did leave the gate and came to you, if you did not wish to engage or did not have the numbers to fight them, you do the same thing = you sit outside your station and double click Enter if they attack.

Sucks both ways. PvP in this game atm is totally conceptual. We both waste hours of time playing cat and mouse. Sucks. Needs fixing/addressed on both ends no doubt. It's not just the gates, but the gates would be a good start. I cannot imagine trying to play EvE with a gate system like we have in PE, it would be horrible.

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

/signed for new islands

Have a productive day, Runner

16 (edited by tRens 2011-01-04 17:56:30)

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

BigCountry wrote:
tRens wrote:

We saw a group forming on Sehvosky, so we mustered our forces...

Nothing happened, because they're INVULNERABLE, we left because hey.. I DON'T want to waste my time waiting on someone that is INVULNERABLE.

I find the game more of a waste of time now than I ever have.

All we do is babysit people that are INVULNERABLE.

It's the same on the attacking end also though. If they did leave the gate and came to you, if you did not wish to engage or did not have the numbers to fight them, you do the same thing = you sit outside your station and double click Enter if they attack.

Sucks both ways. PvP in this game atm is totally conceptual. We both waste hours of time playing cat and mouse. Sucks. Needs fixing/addressed on both ends no doubt. It's not just the gates, but the gates would be a good start. I cannot imagine trying to play EvE with a gate system like we have in PE, it would be horrible.

Yes I would run it is the smart thing to do.

Though your understanding of HHO, where you would find me, is not correct.  If you force us into the station WE CANNOT GATHER INTEL.

So it isn't the same and hardly has much to do with gates. Also if I remember correctly. When I exit the station my INVUL lasts 10 seconds and that means I am going to die if you're there in numbers. There is no safe imaginary circle I can enter to wait out my session timer (gate timer whatever).

Gates != Outposts.

I am at work so I cannot make this a full entertaining reply.

I don't believe we should hijack this thread as well.

MOAR LAND!

17 (edited by BigCountry 2011-01-04 19:05:40)

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

tRens wrote:

Though your understanding of HHO, where you would find me, is not correct.  If you force us into the station WE CANNOT GATHER INTEL.

Sure you do. You rage spawn Arkies and gather all the intel you need with no risk or loss what so ever. And this is exactly what happens. We do it also.

That's another fix they need to patch in. No Ark respawns on Beta. You bring them their manually from Alpha. If you die in an Ark in Beta and do not have any robots in station (other than an Ark) = you spawn back in Alpha in Ark, etc.

18 (edited by tRens 2011-01-04 20:57:59)

Re: Why Go to Beta? Is it worth the Risk

BigCountry wrote:
tRens wrote:

Though your understanding of HHO, where you would find me, is not correct.  If you force us into the station WE CANNOT GATHER INTEL.

Sure you do. You rage spawn Arkies and gather all the intel you need with no risk or loss what so ever. And this is exactly what happens. We do it also.

That's another fix they need to patch in. No Ark respawns on Beta. You bring them their manually from Alpha. If you die in an Ark in Beta and do not have any robots in station (other than an Ark) = you spawn back in Alpha in Ark, etc.

I concede to your point.

I 110% agree with your opinion on Arkhies.. I've been on the irc channel complaining about them since my first beta experience.

They're ridiculously useful.

I would go one further and say that Arkhies are only handed out at the beginning of the game. You also shouldn't be able to enter beta lands in one.

When you have a risk vs reward type situation like the beta islands why hand someone something that reduces the risk to 0?