I think there's actually very little wrong with the game at this juncture.

Sure, "balance" has a metric *** of issues thanks to Alf (demob immunity, ictus nerfbatted into the ground, EW nerfs, etc etc). That's a HUGE issue, but aside from that it's pretty much good.

It would be nice to see Beta 2's get a face-lift with terminals.

More frequent new content & features is what has the highest chance to bring people to this game. Rehashing the balance won't do it at this point, although it needs to be done "behind the scenes on the backburner" to reverse-engineer this nuclear fallout Alf left you with.

P.S.

Pretty much every time you see someone whining on the forums about Beta, take a peek in-game and check the following was true in the past month;
a) When they owned it, it was great
b) When they lost it, it was bad
c) When they couldn't get it back, its terrible change the game boohoo.

Then ignore that feedback. Seriously I'm not kidding. Too much damage has already been done by 2-3 emotional wrecks spilling their frustrations into the forums with batsh*tstupid ideas.

P.P.S.

This message is dedicated to The Poodle, long may he bark.

Beta 2 needs field terminals & missions, not alpha connections. If they had missions on them, logistically it would make sense to live there because longer travel time works both ways - longer to get to alpha, longer for alpha-pirates to get to where you live.

Without alpha connections, Beta 2's are vastly superior to Beta 1's - if missions are added there.

Zoom you need to address Mechs & 3 plates demob immunity. They're as fast as heavies were. Drop their speed by 10% or something so they're faster then Heavies but slower then Assaults (simplest solution).

53

(44 replies, posted in Q & A)

I blame Rovoc and Ville for continuously posting links about "epic Jita tears" in TS. Eventually I took a look. lol

54

(44 replies, posted in Q & A)

You ~outlasted~ for 2 years dear Jita, don't complain too hard when you get it done to you for 2 weeks. lol

You did my bidding better then Ville ever could. lol

55

(44 replies, posted in Q & A)

Jita wrote:

Apart from you didn't fight, ypu blue balled until 80% of the alliance got bored of saps and quit to do something fun. Then you crawled out from under your rock and took stations with barely any resistance.

When DOY did play they were sufficient to murder you solo. If you had engaged with the community in a sandbox like the rest of us their might still be a population.

Your victory is in boring 80% of the game away in which you are no different than STC before you.

All the stations except Moyar were hovering around 50 dipping over and below.

DoY gave us good fights, but were already cracking and couldn't cope with us by the time you bundled up the whole server to come fight us.

Watching you throw away your entire multi-faction pretence in order to try and deny us our island was both amusing and predictable - in fact I was counting on it. Then after a little bit of time, we went over to Norhoop and exacted retribution on all those little corps banded up in your coalition.

Best part is, we didn't have to pull anyone's elbow to come play this game. Our lads can continue to enjoy themselves in other games, rather then waiting for brave Jita to come out of Alpha after we own the map for 2 years. 

But at least this time around, you can lay claim that you killed the game all by yourself. All I had to do, was step back and let you do it. lol

56

(44 replies, posted in Q & A)

It's important to note that the Beta outpost mechanics are evidently functioning perfectly fine.

A small force of POE members based out of Tellesis and ICS Beta. We had an extremely significant amount of bots and mods locked away from us. Conquering Domhalarn was a process which attracted a Server Coalition (meaning EVERYONE dropped all pretenses of multi-faction metagame) to fight and try to prevent us from recapturing our home. We took it back in ~2 months of fighting.

The outpost mechanics actually provided us with a fun-factor since we had to strategically target Koykili without making it obvious, once it was below 50 and unlocked it allowed us to haul equipment out throughout the US TZ to fuel our war effort.

Now that equipment is sitting in station that can't ever be locked, so we won't have to think too hard next time around. Which is a shame, thinking games are too rare today.

Bottom line - fighting with less assets, less manpower, against locked stations, we achieved our objective (Reconquista) and all our enemies fell on their swords and went to play other games again.

57

(20 replies, posted in General discussion)

Celebro wrote:

Such a niche game is a hard sell. Anyone willing to invest expect a return, it can be turned around but it is obviously a huge risk, few, if any are willing to take. Investment can only come from those who have a passion and understand this niche game quite well and does not mind the risk.

Edit: One of the issues I have come across during development in general is not staying true to the niche and trying to please those that are not willing to take risks for a greater reward, or don't understand  between griefing and player made content.
For instance, the first sign for trouble came from this insurance fraud that fell hard on a particular entity which as far as they were concerned it was 'part of the gameplay', but Devs decided it was harmful to the game as a whole.

Wrong move as it was a level playing field and it rewarded the smart players, and the move did more harm than good. This examples has happened all along it's development catering to a sort of 'Protect the carebear' mentality instead of rewarding gameplay and community. I think Syndic understands this better than anyone.

Most of those problems stemmed from listening to Jita in the early days. A while ago Zoom made it quite clear the Devs were no longer considering Jita's feedback, but by then damage had already been done with the "balance" patch (thanks to Burial, Annihilator, and Jita).

Last time I swapped words with Zoom he was on track with great stuff for the game, unfortunately he either took a hiatus or for some reason it's taking 6 months to do changes he said would take 2 weeks. Beta 2's for example, never got the field terminal & highway rework, and that was crucial to adding value to the otherwise worthless islands.

Perpetuum's story is unfortunately, mostly about lesser players metagaming the Devs to get a leg-up in-game. I got banned for account sharing because of mass petitioning in the middle of a war, when even today the majority of the population is still account sharing, gifting and swapping. My main account is still banned on these forums, indefinitely, because feelings were hurt.

Ultimately it's been a fun 6 years. But I'm starting to feel like we're coming to the end of the road. Maybe it'll be the beginning of something new, who knows.

58

(102 replies, posted in General discussion)

My newbies learn more about how to play the game (and enjoy it) in 2 months then you did in 2 years of waiting for EP.

EP doesn't give you experience. You can have all the EP in the world, you're still gonna do dumb sh*t (like I've seen you doing) because you're a noob without a clue. Nothing wrong with that, don't get me wrong.

You aren't uncompetitive because you're not on an even playing field EP-wise, you're uncompetitive because you spent X years afk-waiting to sit in the biggest baddest robot while everyone else who played advanced in leaps and bounds in their actual "skill".

The question is, is that due to bad vet advice or due to your simpleminded attitude.

59

(44 replies, posted in Q & A)

"... Ville orchestrated... "

You only have yourself to blame, if you were man enough to stick to your multi-faction plan there might have still been something. Instead, the moment DoY started getting pounded, you dropped the charade to pursue your Server Coalition #10.

So we burned everything and everyone again.

See you next time! o/

60

(26 replies, posted in Balancing)

Key thing in preventing P2W from happening in reality is to do what the Devs have been doing recently. Don't listen to Jita. Don't listen to Burial. Don't listen to Annihilator. Their bad track record is proven beyond a doubt.

Do listen to everyone else and actively investigate what's going on in game.

Keep black bots, gold ammo, gold whatever out of the cash shop. Make it about premium, trading premium, and that's the game's best chance of getting somewhere.

It's not a very good chance because it's a 5+ year old MMO with dated graphics and some bad aspects to it, but it's the best chance the game has.

This is *** priceless, way to go! big_smile

62

(44 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

You're writing out of your *** because you are pretending that buildings don't have a reinforcement timer and anomalies are permanent.

63

(44 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

You cannot destroy a Gamma base in a few minutes.

You can reinforce it through an anomaly, but there is no guarantee that anomaly will respawn in a convenient location 3 days later. Hell, there's no guarantee the station will come out of reinforce in 3 days like it's supposed to.

You cannot destroy a single ANYTHING that is being repaired by triple repair nodes as long as there is 1(!) defender there to swap connections around.

64

(44 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

My point remains.

20 dudes spending 2 hours in-game is worth more then 1-2 dudes spending 2 hours in-game.

65

(44 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

So did the 1-2 guys building the base. Nobody put a gun to their head and forced them to build it.

66

(44 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

20 dudes spending 2 hours in-game is worth more then 1-2 dudes spending 2 hours in-game.

67

(44 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

I don't see a problem with anomalies.

There is no way to successfully attack a reasonably constructed base as long as there is 1(!) defender online to swap repair node connections around.

The game badly needs a solution to the turret-grind, it's not fun or engaging in any way and it limits participation to only those vets who have the EP invested to use a Seth Mk2 with the required amount of range extenders.

68

(20 replies, posted in General discussion)

Thanks a lot Zoom.

Our squad broke 110 for the first time in months and I had to tell them to come back on Monday.

#godkillsakitten

69

(20 replies, posted in General discussion)

All affected bases should be returned to their original timer manually by the Devs.

Naismith wrote:

Bumping this post to create the illusion that ANYONE besides Jita, Burial and their corp wants even more unlocked stations besides 3 NPC terminals, is pathetic and transparent.

Naismith wrote:

Bumping this post to create the illusion that ANYONE besides Jita, Burial and their corp wants even more unlocked stations besides 3 NPC terminals, is pathetic and transparent.

72

(20 replies, posted in General discussion)

Okay, will this be subject to reimbursement if the base gets destroyed?

73

(20 replies, posted in General discussion)

Is the time we get from intrusion-scanning a module correct or?

If there's no way for us to find out what the actual time is then post the time. We are coordinating across every social media platform our members are conglomerated on to try and draw people to the game for the weekend, it would be sloppy if we changed the time at the last second.

74

(10 replies, posted in Balancing)

Sounds like you like watching more then you like playing

Accurately sums up what you've done in the last 5 years in the game

Hes pretty terrible yeah.

Base-sieging weapons are necessary though. It's unreasonable that it takes 10+ hours without any defender activity to breach a turret array with conventional weapons, but the out-of-reinforce timer lasts 2 hours and happens every 3 days.