Jita wrote:Lemon wrote:Jita or whom ever is for unlocking.
Can you describe the gains or benefits of unlocking these beta stations? I understand your saying this is step one but what do you foresee as the immediate gains or impact of this change.
Further more, where do you see this growing or being expanded on to support the above points.
I believe a true focus should be on picking apart the pit-falls of beta and other areas that don't support player growth properly. Once Identified a work around or fix can be designed and implemented.
I understand Joke may choose to not leverage cookie-cutter builds to shut players down but it inevitable that a player or group of players take a action that paints them as a target as every group has eventually done in the history of PO.
When the above happens these mechanics will be used against them and they will be victim to it.
My point is what is 'your' dev road map that starts with unlocking betas go to next and what are the steps to create a active and proper beta environment?
Fair question. I'll try to give some detail in answering.
First change would be opening Beta 1’s.
The hope would be that now that there is no risk of having assets locked out and enough stations so that effective camping can only really be done to one or two entities at a time beta would become more populated.
Others would live in SI. NSE and Joke would be on Hokk. Cons and CIR on Dom. ERA on Hoop. There wouldn’t be a lot of industry happening as reward still isn’t there but at least there would be missions with 4 different locations of people any 3 of which would potentially have targets.
Second change would be a rebalance of alpha – beta 2 islands reward so that it pays to progress.
This would see a considerable nerf to alpha alongside a considerable boost to Beta. Corps would find the risk reduced due to station unlocking alongside the reward increased. More PVE happens on Beta. Corps begin to move their industry out there. As alliances have begun to break up PvP becomes more frequent, less all or nothing and indy gets ganked like crazy. By this point corps in the free outposts have begun sap fights vs the station owners as station income becomes important as well as station bonus’
Third change would be risk rebalance
A war on the terrible scouting mechanics. Under station / teleport detection is nerfed. Station chat channels can be turned off for anyone who doesn’t own the station. Beta has the undocking protection severely nerfed alongside a station ownership bonus that returns it to previous levels. This makes undocking if you don’t own a station a lot more dangerous than if you do. Armoured probes.
At the end your left with the ability to move to beta one for some beta reward and some risk. You can move to beta 2 for a much increased reward and the risk of getting locked out of your station. You can then move to gamma for a similar reward but more roam protection. The downside would be the requirement to win set piece fights at will.
As this progresses the corps that cut their teeth in Beta 1 would potentially progress to Beta 2. As it becomes clear that turning up with massive forces just leaves you staring at the outside of a station people come in more reasonable roaming bots. Ganks happen. Counter ganks happen. Corps get used to killing station scouts and repelling borders to protect their indy.
NONE of this will bring in new players. Lets be honest and upfront about that. What it will do is create an environment where some of the people who have left the game but are watching would consider coming back.
Over the space of six months to a year (alongside I would hope some other easy and good dev content) the game creeps up to the 100 – 150 person mark based on older players having fun in a game where pvp is roam dominated and not sap dominated.
Once this reasonable base of vets exists new people entering the game don’t think they are playing dayz and don’t get steam refunds. Slowly but surely it begins to grow.
That’s the dream. Will it work? I don’t know. I do think for the comparatively small amount of dev time it would take that it would create a real difference and for a lot of people recapture the parts of the game that are fun. Roaming PvP. Risky yet lucrative PVE. Defense and Offense ops. Production and industry in a hostile environment. Territory control because you live there, not because you don’t want someone else too.
Jita, I can see where you are coming from with this story, I was looking for more of a technical description disregarding any current political landscape and focusing on the average player and below.
Details of how x mechanic or feature is intended to support the player, which there are hints of sprinkled in the above post.
I think we can all agree that the majority of players that are still here, PO forums, do no fall into the category or realm of who we are targeting to support and empower with these changes.
Station Locking vs No Lock
It takes days to drop a station and then lock others out currently. The issue is not corporations being locked out but their inability to cope with the methods and tactics of harassment PvP that can be brought on by a beef, which always occur.
Now I want to compare two experiences of mine to demon-strait the players I believe we need to target and support properly for game growth. I feel they are the ones we have failed to help time and time again.
Using FOOM as a reference example, I engaged them solo in a vendetta for something their CEO stated to me. I could not beat them all but I could beat 80% if not more of them on my own, consistently. Only a few remain
When they did take a step to engage me at 110% to take a defeat me I rang the dinner bell calling my boys. I may have gone down but none of them survived those engagements for I was ultimately baiting them to go all in.
Note I never took the station form them nor did I have docking rights. I merely took control of their beta and shut down their ability to use it productivly.
Lets use STC as a example second example, when I returned from in-activity and they controlled Dom with RG. When this occurred I was locked out of Danachrov and had no access to resources. They were well over 30+ active players living and playing on that island.
They refused me access and declared a preference to fight me over it. We all know the results of this, however players like DeathMonkey and his brother as well as a few others were capable of learning, adapting and growing from this.
We lost however 80-90% of their players in my mini siege against them.
When the server attempted to assist them, again, I then engaged them with my own support and continued to come out on top despite sporadic losses. Once these conflicts reached a certain point I did bring in the full weight of what is now PoE to crush any and everything.
My point with this is that unlocking beta stations wont change much in the above dynamic. It would be far more beneficial for us to write guides, video tutorials, and feature descriptions to empower these players to successfully venture out.
The rough numbers for mission rewards are a great step but I think our main focus should be identifying abusive mechanics or harsh mechanics that could use some tuning to prevent what appears to new players as a complete shutdown to access to aspects of the game.
The 3 days it takes to turn a outpost around and lock someone is not somthing that happens over night and it can be identified and planned for when it begins to occur.
You cannot know when a player like myself, Mongolia, Supremeghandi, DeathMonkey or others stage against you and there is nothing to help them combat us besides that station lock as it limits a few of our greater techniques.
We have lost far more to niche play things that new players don't understand and fail to overcome with the currently available knowledge and tool-set.
P.S. All the fits I used to achieve these things were provided to the dev's prior to use and were detailed to be pushing the edge of what is considered balanced. I personally thing balance is in a worse state now than it was previously for these new players as well.
Undefeated 2013
"Even alone you probably are one of the best" - Khader Khan
"Lemon the 1 man army .... also know as: THE TERMINATOR!" - Obi Wan
"There are people who are just better then you at doing many things at one time, some are far better then myself, far better." -Merkle