1 (edited by Kaldenines 2011-10-06 23:11:10)

Topic: reason for a small group/solo player to be out on beta

Ideally I would like to know what kind of vision the DEVs have for beta islands in the near future.  At the moment there are 3 main types of activates on beta:

1) Ninja mining (maybe harvesting) alone or in a small group (with or without detector).  Makes sense if you are trying to get epi.
2) Big organised mining/farming ops with scout on all/most gates.
3) Roams, groups of people running around looking to kill stuff.  These require a lot of time, usually about 2hours from starting to form up to coming back home.  Nothing wrong with it in principle but its hard to get a roughly even fight.  This is due to the low population and lack of incentive to engage without having the superior force. 

RESULT: people sit around ninja mining or being semi afk until some kind of pvp occurs.  Often one side by chance or due to the time of day will have considerably more people.  Please leave the politics out of it because its a question on incentives (ranting at your enemy telling them to undock in the type of bots you would like to shoot at is not gonna solve the problem).

WHAT IF:  You instead of ninja mining/farming you could get into your combat bot and wonder around beta running a detector and collecting small patches of some kind of resource (maybe a rare plant that doesn't require a harvester or some kind of artefact that doesn't require scanning).  I am being intentionally vague here.  The idea is to give people who want to be out and about on beta in a pvp capable bot some reason to do so.  The reward does not need to be nearly as large that gained by a dedicated mining/farming operation.  However, at least the person/small group would not feel like they are committing suicide by SWAT (ie the next roaming gang that comes along) for no reason at all.  Also the resource value would be sufficiently small and widely distributed so that it would not be worthwhile to form a large group to go around collecting it.

TLDR: A lot of people would like to be out on beta and would like to have the chance to engage in occasional one on one or small group pvp.  At the moment the incentive is to form big groups and going around alone feels like a completely unjustifiable risk.

+1
-Confucius

Re: reason for a small group/solo player to be out on beta

Hopefully, the NEAR future will have 2 things.

First is a different outpost intrusion system that will encourage corporations to live and work on beta. This vision does not include small neutral parties roaming around beta doing random things.

Second is the energy credit system. Where you put a crystal down on a site and wait for it to charge up. This is exactly the activity that you want, random pvp bots dropping down stuff and doing things.

Put thos two together, and you have Islands that corps want to islolate and control while other players want access to.

Other than that, this is the same request that was made a few weeks ago for random pirate chest type things to be spread around so roaming groups could get some kind of reward for doing what they were going to do anyway.

Your suggestion requires some additional modules, and that's pefectly fine. Although for the most part I can see organized PVP roams not wanting to fit any non-combat modules, so unlikely that anyone other than small corp or solo players would benefit from it.

Re: reason for a small group/solo player to be out on beta

add a PvE activity that requires exactly the same equip as PvP, does not include need for heavy hauling or staying in place for several hours, and can be done solo or in group. (especially does not need to bring 10 alt accounts)

giving npcs accumulator is a first step towards that (now neut/drain makes sense in PvE)

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4 (edited by Hugh Ruka 2011-10-07 14:50:08)

Re: reason for a small group/solo player to be out on beta

Annihilator wrote:

add a PvE activity that requires exactly the same equip as PvP, does not include need for heavy hauling or staying in place for several hours, and can be done solo or in group. (especially does not need to bring 10 alt accounts)

giving npcs accumulator is a first step towards that (now neut/drain makes sense in PvE)

make tanking setups worth something in PvP and the PvE folks will come.

edit:

To the OP: it is already in game ... it's called NPCs .. you get plasma from them that takes almost no space and you can collect it with your PvP fit bot ... you just need to rep somehow afterwards.

Re: reason for a small group/solo player to be out on beta

In the new intrusion system maybe npc's could actively attack saps that make the outpost slowly loose stability? That way corps have to go outside in combat-fitted bots and defend saps. This would probably incite roaming parties as they know that players can be outside defending their saps.

Attacks should be random and not deplete stability too fast of course...but still as much that there's incentive to get out there and fight the attackers.

Re: reason for a small group/solo player to be out on beta

In the last word we heard about the new SAPs, corps have to actively take the SAP back. If they don't undock they'll lose the SAP even if no one is attacking it. But they've probably made a lot of changes to the I 2.0 since that blog, so it may be that adding NPC's to attack the SAPs would actually be needed.... and fun for that matter (if it wasn't every 24 hours).

Re: reason for a small group/solo player to be out on beta

Arga wrote:

In the last word we heard about the new SAPs, corps have to actively take the SAP back. If they don't undock they'll lose the SAP even if no one is attacking it. But they've probably made a lot of changes to the I 2.0 since that blog, so it may be that adding NPC's to attack the SAPs would actually be needed.... and fun for that matter (if it wasn't every 24 hours).

Holding a Outpost like that would feel like a chore and not a accomplishment. It will also limit smaller corporations from holding a outpost due to the inability to field sufficient players at random times through out a 24 hour period.

Would you enjoy having to wake up, go to work/class and then come home to see that outside your corps prime time you lost 50-80% of your control. To then wait and hope it randomly ticks during your prime time so you can push it back up. This to me leaves me with the thought of needing to recruit more and become larger. This size boost then causes me to be able to field more, much more.

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Re: reason for a small group/solo player to be out on beta

Technically you'd only lose a few % per day unless it was snowballing, but that conversation we already had. smile

Conceptually the idea is to find some way to require corps to live and work on beta IF they want to have access to an outpost. Really you don't need an outpost to use beta.

To accomplish that you have to require a corp to do some volume of grind daily to 'prove' they are living there. The smaller the corporation, the more that burden is going to fall on each player. It doesn't have to be a PVP related grind, someone else mentioned a point system, and while that seems much to convoluted, putting some kind of target that needs to be done daily isn't. The target shouldn't be something that requires any particular skill to accomplish, like holding saps, since that is then always going to fall to the PVP/Combat players. Having the abilty to choose any number of activites, any of which count as the daily grind, allows it to be spread out as much as possible.

It also seems balanced that small corps should have to work much harder to have an outpost while larger corps would find it easier. If they do go with the % ownership too, then balancing it so small corps have to play almost perfectly to achieve 100% while med and large corps are only 'difficult' is about right.

Re: reason for a small group/solo player to be out on beta

Hugh Ruka wrote:
Annihilator wrote:

add a PvE activity that requires exactly the same equip as PvP, does not include need for heavy hauling or staying in place for several hours, and can be done solo or in group. (especially does not need to bring 10 alt accounts)

giving npcs accumulator is a first step towards that (now neut/drain makes sense in PvE)

make tanking setups worth something in PvP and the PvE folks will come.

edit:

To the OP: it is already in game ... it's called NPCs .. you get plasma from them that takes almost no space and you can collect it with your PvP fit bot ... you just need to rep somehow afterwards.

1) Are you trolling when you say that the tanking setup not being useful in PvP?

2) So do you often go out on beta kill a spawn, loot their plasma and move on to kill a spawn in another location?


Back to the topic: as discussed in the first few posts the idea is not just to get groups of people out on beta.
It is about the way people spend their time on beta.  Some of us like to be out on beta taking risks and getting into fights.  It does not have to be economically favourable but at the moment it feels like sheer stupidity.  Nobody will be forced into doing this for money but some of us will have a lot more fun.  People like the element of risk in their gameplay, just look at all the poker websites.  In conclusion I believe that legalising prostitution would protect the most vulnerable in our society... eh sorry wrong topic...

This really does not have to be a big or complicated feature, hence why I put it in the balance section.  Personally I am not in favour of any artificial requirements such as a farming points system.  Its too much like something a theme park mmo would do.

+1
-Confucius

Re: reason for a small group/solo player to be out on beta

Kaldenines wrote:
Hugh Ruka wrote:
Annihilator wrote:

add a PvE activity that requires exactly the same equip as PvP, does not include need for heavy hauling or staying in place for several hours, and can be done solo or in group. (especially does not need to bring 10 alt accounts)

giving npcs accumulator is a first step towards that (now neut/drain makes sense in PvE)

make tanking setups worth something in PvP and the PvE folks will come.

edit:

To the OP: it is already in game ... it's called NPCs .. you get plasma from them that takes almost no space and you can collect it with your PvP fit bot ... you just need to rep somehow afterwards.

1) Are you trolling when you say that the tanking setup not being useful in PvP?

2) So do you often go out on beta kill a spawn, loot their plasma and move on to kill a spawn in another location?


Back to the topic: as discussed in the first few posts the idea is not just to get groups of people out on beta.
It is about the way people spend their time on beta.  Some of us like to be out on beta taking risks and getting into fights.  It does not have to be economically favourable but at the moment it feels like sheer stupidity.  Nobody will be forced into doing this for money but some of us will have a lot more fun.  People like the element of risk in their gameplay, just look at all the poker websites.  In conclusion I believe that legalising prostitution would protect the most vulnerable in our society... eh sorry wrong topic...

This really does not have to be a big or complicated feature, hence why I put it in the balance section.  Personally I am not in favour of any artificial requirements such as a farming points system.  Its too much like something a theme park mmo would do.

how do you tank 4vs1 ???

Re: reason for a small group/solo player to be out on beta

Which 4 vs which 1? Thats important.

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Re: reason for a small group/solo player to be out on beta

Line wrote:

Which 4 vs which 1? Thats important.

no it's not ... usualy the attackers have an advantage otherwise they'd not attack ...