Topic: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

They should be. Only, they aren't. Like the assignment system they are too one dimensional with no depth and as a result they are, no other word for it, boring.

Replace the word "missions" with "spawns" in the following quote from the latest Dev blog and I don't think anyone would have noticed the mistake.

Dev Blog 18-Sep-2013 wrote:

The player is presented with a long and stale list of a gazillion missions which just gets longer and longer the higher he gets on the relation ladder. With time he finds out which missions provide the most rewards for the least effort, and then he does those over and over, degrading the whole assignment system into a glorified grindfest

The "grindfest" of assignments is being addressed. Spawns must be next. There is so much potential to make them more interesting and challenging for all levels of EP.

As a starting point I would start with the game lore. The Niani are supposed to be battling the Earth controlled agents to regain control of the territory they lost before halting the progress of the Berger virus. So why do they just mill around in circles at fixed points and continually throw bots into the slaughter? Not very smart.

  • Spawns should use beacon mechanics. A spawn could appear anywhere and hang about for a period of time, say an hour, and if they are not shot out they'd despawn. If they are shot at the spawn continues for a number of waves. When its dead you have to go look for another one.

  • To make finding spawns a bit easier it could be more likely for NPCs to appear at key strategic points, buildings, highways, route to teleports, mountain passes etc. We are supposed to be at war with them after all.

  • Some spawns escalate, some don't and those that do escalate in different ways. You might just get more numerous NPCs of the same type with each wave, you might get higher tier or both. In rare cases even escalate as far as Mercenary, Praetorian and Vanguard with their sexy loot potential. Make it risky. Give us unknowns. Make us sometimes have to run or shout for help.

  • ICS, Asintec and TM roaming spawns showing up blue, yellow and green in landmarks. Attack if you want but suffer the consequences of loss of relation for doing so. Get relation back by doing assignments or face getting ambushed by said spawns if your relation falls too low and you enter the "wrong" island

  • Get rid of beacons from the Syndicate store and SAP loot - make them drops from Niani NPCs only, make them special

  • Get rid of permanent assignment spawns. They only need appear if someone doing an assignment enters the right area

There is no sense of achievement going out to kill NPCs. No feeling that you had a really good few hours by finding something of which other players can be envious. Sure, loot tables would need to be buffed for balance but at least it'd be interesting.

TLDR Spawns are boring. Spice 'em up a bit. Just a few ideas.

Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

I would play WOT a while and look at their mission system. We need something similar here. I think a departure from the whole dock up get mission undock do mission mentality is what is needed. Its grindy walky, boring and a big turn off. Its also a *** copy of eve instead of a nice diferentiator.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

3 (edited by Blocker 2013-09-25 05:34:25)

Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

When myself and a friend started playing (2 or 3 years ago?) we were hooked straight away with the sheer number of spawns. They were everywhere and none of this orange rubbish, they would agro if they could. There was also roaming observers, these were excellent. I'm referring to the alpha islands here.

Look at the situation now and it's like a wasteland. You can roam all over some beta/gamma islands and nearly never see any NPC's. Some beta's are better, not sure why, but the bottom line is a LOT of content was removed. This is the only game I have played in the last 10 years that has REMOVED content.. Why ?? How the hell do you expect to attract new users, and more importantly keep them, when you remove content..

Some suggestions:
1. Have the orange NPC's only on alpha 1 islands. Alpha 1 islands should be for new players, where they learn the ropes.
2. Remove all orange NPC's from alpha 2 islands and make them all red. Bring back roaming observers on alpha 2's even if they are just assaults. Gives newer players a progression from alpha 1 islands.
3. Increase the numbers of NPC's on ALL islands, what mechanics they use to move etc is of secondary importance and can be refined/tuned later if needed.

Just my 2 cents...

[PS] We already have 1 to 5 classes of NPC's. Do the same with observers and allocate them across beta and gamma islands. Observer class 1-3 on beta and 3-5 on gamma. Make them so you need a group effort for the 3-5 spawns. Anything to encourage more group play, same could be done with missions.

4 (edited by Martha Stuart 2013-09-25 14:36:02)

Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

My suggestions:

1) Remove Cortex's from active SAP loot.
2) Make all roaming spawns/Observers Mk II class bots
3) Make all Mk II class bots (Player controlled MK II's included) have a slight chance of dropping cortex's.   (This would make roaming spawns worth hunting down.  Right now they are just a nuisance, and not even worth ratting)
4) Martha is Great!

MK II's, just like T4, have become the defacto standard in PVP.  If you aren't flying a Mk II its a trash fit.  This should not be the case.   MK II's should be somewhat rare.  The standard should be the MK I bot.  Most fights should take place in MK I class bots, so that when one side/person brings out a MK II everyone on the field knows that sh*t just got real.

Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

To make Mk2 non-standart, they shouldn't be the same as Mk1 just better, they should be really different. Like, other robot bonuses, different robot stats etc.

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Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

Not sure if a reform is really needed with the spawns. I wish there were spawns where older players would prefer a group.

Gamma spawns were supposed to be really hard ones to kill but a solo player in a MK2 mech is able to kill them without issues. Then again, if you would need 2-3 players to kill Gamma roaming spawns, no-one would do them with current rewards.

The problem I see is that once you hit a heavy mech, the NPC content stops for you. It becomes grinding with nothing to test your skills with or invite buddies to. That's something that got even furthered with the 3 beacon limit.

Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

I agree with What Blocker posted above 100% it is beyond stupid that on Alpha 2 we have orange spawns. Back when we had the EVE influx noob had a ton of fun hunting down Observer's on shinjala. The effort & planning they needed to do to engage NPCs (more for of the higher classes) was fun & not a pure mindless grind.

I can understand what the DEVs were trying to do but in doing it they killed one of the better aspects of this game.
Keep Alpha 1s orange, bring back alpha 2s to their former glory & more.

Also Martha Has some really good ideas that would be nice to see done!

well maybe not point 4 tongue

8 (edited by Blocker 2013-09-26 02:32:55)

Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

To be clear here, I am concerned primarily with getting new players and then keeping them. By all means throw the bitter old vets (me included) a bone but in all honestly the PVE needs to be the primary focus now. For too long the focus has been all on the PVP side of things, gamma islands, MPC's etc. All great work by the devs, but where has it got us ? Minimal population and next to zero PVP.

Why??

Time to step back and take stock, for a start perp has to compete with a lot of good F2P games, so we have one hand tied behind our back straight off.  I'm going to use the royal pronoun "we" to mean the entire remaining player base( including the DEVS), because it's going to take all of us.
We have one chance at this (steam release) and we better get it right. First up let me say for PVE CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT!!
I know the devs have been working on this and that's great to hear. Consider these points.

    Industry: As far as PVE is concerned it's all arse about face! Make factories just as efficient (or maybe nearly) on Alpha as they are on gamma. PVE people will WANT to build stuff. Don't restrict them or try and force them into situations they are not comfortable with, give them the oppotunity. When the gamma concept was released it came with a nerf to everything on alpha. WTF ? I mean PVE people pay for subscriptions too right? Now, before you all scream at me, consider that the gamma and beta islands should be the source of rare RESOURCES needed in these factories.

      Resources: Complete rethink needed here.. Remember we are talking about PVE so the amount and location of resources needs redoing. Also I don't think the random spawning of fields has really worked. This may be another factor that contributed to people leaving. You know I have not seen one blood red ore field on gamma yet! To be honest I can't remember the last time I saw a blood red resource field. In any case we need to revisit the resourse side of things with the focus on the new player and PVE

        Missions: Well as Jita said there are other games out there with some good mission systems, we could learn from them..

        I really like Ludlow's storyline content idea, that's exactly the sort of thing to attract and keep people playing. We have everything we need for PVP except population.. Time to focus on PVE and see if we can boost that population and thus have a resource pool of players that we can try and encourage to come PVP.

        Remember: If you keep them playing, you keep them paying!

        Sorry for the great wall of text..

        Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

        I think things have to move around to make the world dynamic, to bring in the joy of discovery. And this applies to spawns as well as raw materials. But they can't last forever that ruins the dynamism. If you don't take advantage you should have to find them all over again.

        Maybe not all spawns should be dynamic - we probably do need some statics - but the dynamic ones should be worth looking for. I like the idea of escalation.

        Maybe even make the best escalating spawns scannable. They are not wandering about on terrain but are triggered when you pop a sort of "artifact". In keeping with open world because, of course, this "artifact" is common to all and anyone can muscle in once triggered.

        The point I'm making is that there are lots of mechanics already in the game that with a little creative thought could make the PvE world much much more interesting.

        Use whats already here but use it better.

        Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

        *bump*

        Energy to Earth!

        18.01.2014. [12:57:58] <BeastmodeGuNs> after that i remembered all those warning about 1v1 you lol, and i found out why xD

        Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

        So true, need more Pve and better loot drops!

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        Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

        Aye

        Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

        More static spawns equals less spots to mine solo.

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        Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

        Ville wrote:

        More static spawns equals less spots to mine solo.

        I dunno, I mined solo just fine when I first started playing 2 years ago and that was with roaming observers as well. People just want everything handed to them while they watch a movie or something..

        As I said earlier, my friend and I actually found the risk of even just getting around on Alpha in those days appealing. Maybe I come from a different generation that's used to actually working for rewards. Meh, I've stated in this thread how I feel about pve content in this game, no point repeating it.

        Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

        Did you have dynamic moving ore spawns 2 years ago?  The answer is no.

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        Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

        Ville wrote:

        Did you have dynamic moving ore spawns 2 years ago?  The answer is no.

        Do you think answering your own questions makes you look smart ?

        I'm fully aware that the ore spawns were static 2 years ago, and I'm sure something could be worked out to negate the issue. Maybe the introduction of moving ore fields had consequences that didn't turn out so good for new players? I'm also sure it would be pretty easy to still have moving ore fields AND static spawns. After all the spawn is static, so it's location is fixed, should be pretty simple to tell the ore location generator to avoid those static locations when generating a new ore field location.

        Least it would seem that way to me...

        Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

        When I started this thread my suggestion was that there shouldn't be any static spawns at all and now we seem to be having a discussion around the pros and cons of having more static spawns. I'm a bit confused about how thats happened.

        If you'll forgive the rather egotistical self quote, The key point for me is:

        Ludlow wrote:

        ...there are lots of mechanics already in the game that, with a little creative thought and some balancing*, could make the PvE world much much more interesting.


        * Italic bit added to original quote.

        Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

        I think the current amount of spawns is correct its just the aggressiveness that's the problem. Observers are like kittens now and no red spawns on alpha 1 just encourages macro play

        19 (edited by Ville 2013-12-20 18:08:56)

        Re: NPC Spawns - The Bread And Butter of PvE

        Blocker wrote:
        Ville wrote:

        Did you have dynamic moving ore spawns 2 years ago?  The answer is no.

        Do you think answering your own questions makes you look smart ?

        I'm fully aware that the ore spawns were static 2 years ago, and I'm sure something could be worked out to negate the issue. Maybe the introduction of moving ore fields had consequences that didn't turn out so good for new players? I'm also sure it would be pretty easy to still have moving ore fields AND static spawns. After all the spawn is static, so it's location is fixed, should be pretty simple to tell the ore location generator to avoid those static locations when generating a new ore field location.

        Least it would seem that way to me...

        I tldr past the first sentence.  We had 8 threads on why static npcs and dynamic ore was dumb.

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