51

(163 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Celebro wrote:

At the end of the day would you rather build and sell in bulk  t4 cargo scanners or  t4 LWF? OFC your decision will come on the one that sells more or in other words, the most popular one smile

It took a long time for T4 frames to 'leak' into the market place, M2S had a distinct advantage as one of the few corps with access to not only the T4 prototypes, but enough production capcity (for T1-3) and epitron to make them in bulk.

How out of balance would the game be with an 'injection' of 100's of new players capable of fitting T4 mechs from day one (with 500k boost)?

52

(163 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

I would probably have gone into the whole concept of why GAP isn't an issue, but there's plenty of threads about it already on the forums, and the "Gap" proponets in those threads where never convinced by them.  I suspect it's because as Aaron says, it's his opinion and he has a right to have and express it, but the problem with opinion is there's no level of evidence or facts one can provide that will ever elicit a change in opinon. Almost by definition it requires an emotional arguement to sway someone's emotionally biased opinion (biased isn't a negative conotation in this usage).

Any hoo.

Continue to discuss, don't mind me.

53

(163 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Celebro wrote:

I don't think its bad at all, but we could agree it's not popular enough.

That's a completely different approach; Is there a large enough player base to support Perp in it's current form?

It's an interesting question, but ultimately irrelevant.

While it would be 'simple' enough to change how the EP works, what isn't simple is the impact it would have on game play, and the cascade of changes that would need to go into effect to make the game re-balanced.

Bluntly, AC doesn't have the resources to predict or respond to the impact of such a major change. They could literally kill their own game, which I assure you they do not want to risk.

So while this whole EP adjustment thread is a nice diversion, I reiterate that it's ulimately irrelevant; case in point, AC is agonizing over the changing "approach" command, arguably a much less complicated impact on the game then trying to change the BASE structure of the game.

54

(163 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Aaron Sool wrote:

What? I don't wanna turn this into any other game. I want Perp to be Perp. But if a system is flawed, like time based progression is in a MMO according to me

Perp is a time based system, your opinion is time based systems are bad, so you really don't like Perp. You like some aspects of it but you are trying to change the base game to be something that you do like.

The MMO genre doesn't mean everyone has to be equal, that is a theme-park MMO critera.

In a Sandbox MMO, it's almost certain that everything will never be equal, even if there were no character progression stats.

Perp should add in some potatos (new content), but it will still be brocolli WITH potatos.

55

(163 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

The point isn't if it's "Good" of not.

I can't say this any other way, Perp is a time based skill game. Trying to argue that players are leaving because of that is the same thing as saying people don't eat broccli because they hate vegtables; it's accurate but irrelevant if all you are serving is broccli.

Also Edit:

Aaron Sool wrote:

But most peeps won't stay 9 months with the current EP system

There's simply no facts to back this up.

As players we don't have access to account drop rates and certainly even AC doesn't have exit data on WHY people didn't renew.

56

(12 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Celebro wrote:

I hope you mean new islands not existing ones (I don't want to loose my stuff stacked on alpha2s), but the idea is sound, as far as closing the GAP. Here is an example where it closes the GAP well because assets are far more important than EP, and it gives players a challenge.

it would have to be existing, too much dev work for new. I'm not going to suggest which ones, because I don't know who owns what and I don't want this to turn into a f*ck STC thing.

But no, I wouldn't want anyone to lose stuff either, technically it wouldn't be gone just locked away, but maybe something can be done to move everyone's stuff to the nearest Alpha I main outpost.

Edit: I too would LOVE to see these as new, but the devs need to be fixing and improving the game. Again, don't want people to say 'no' to this because they want devs working on ISSUE X instead.

57

(163 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Lemon wrote:

Most of the new-players I interacted with that came in-mass to PO were vet resistant and this only drove to their in-game problems to be exaggerated.

Absolutely. Some players come into Perp and want to become the Dread Pirate Roberts, the most fearsome solo PVP player to ever set metal plates on Nia! Or to single handedly take over the market... on the first day.

58

(12 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Basic idea: Nia natives have figured out a way to shut down part of the core Teleport system and hack some terminals/outposts.

Result: 4 Islands have become isolated from the rest of Nia, (1) Alpha II Island, (2) Beta II Islands, and (1) Gamma Island.

Game Play: The only way into the (4) Islands is via SpT, all existing inventories are inaccessable, and there are only a few basic T1 items in the AII market place.

Any player is allowed to set an SpT to the AII outpost, but all they will have when they arrive is a free arhke.

Players/corporations will have to hack open the teleports to the connected beta and then to the gamma island, to get the resources they need to activate the main TP system and reconnect this area to the rest of Nia.

While EP, Skills, and prototype knowledge will go with the SpT characters, they will have no existing materials, cores, modules, or bots.

How long will it take our agents to recover this lost section of Nia!

----

I was thinking this morning about the GAP, Lemon's post about billions of units of ore and 1000's of bots. How fun would it be to have to 'start over' without actually having to start over. Would anyone want the challenge of having to mine with arhkes, be excited again about getting a mech core, and want the drama of having only (2) beta outposts to fight over?

59

(163 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

When my cable company offered me the premium channels for 1 year at special price of $50 I took it, and after the year I told them I was going to cancel if they didn't extend it, which they did because they didn't want to lose me.

When that EP starts dropping from 3 to 2 EP per minute, those players will feel like they are 'losing' something, it's human nature.

1 time incentives may be a way to entice people to a dying game, but the whole concept of GAP is based on Themepark games with level caps and instant PVP fixed sized battle games like DOTA.

60

(163 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Temporary EP boosts are gifts, not improved game mechanics.

61

(163 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Why not give every player 100B Nic too, that will make them stay.

You don't 'gift' players stuff, because you can't buy players. They either like the game or they don't.

If players don't like your game then you improve it by changing mechanics.

Your idea of changing the EP per minute mechanic is valid way to address what you see as an issue in the game, just know that it's the BASE concept of the game, and you're going to have to work very hard to come up with a replacement idea. Don't expect the Dev's to willingly just redesign the whole game on a suggestion that it needs it, but if you can actually produce a solution/concept that is better and works with the rest of the game mechanics they would probably look at it seriously. However I wouldn't expect them to redesign the game from the ground up before Steam launch.

62

(163 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Aaron Sool wrote:
Shadowmine wrote:

There are a million small things you could do to keep a few extra players around. But the fact of the matter is a little bonus ep for new players isn't the magic fix you seem to think it is. Sure it might help, but its not the real solution or reason for the current state of the game. Having the game ready for steam, and steam itself is still the biggest and best thing the devs can do for the game atm.

I'm NOT saying it's the only reason. The opposite. I'm saying serveral things have led to this, and the EP-gap is one of them. And if doing something bout that particilur reason, if doing something bout that WOULD lead to more players, then why not test it? As I said, the worst that could happen is you still only have 100-200 active players. Can you tell me what is wrong with trying this?

Edit. And I see the steam release, as another chance for the game. And why not minimize the reasons for peeps to leave, by doing something bout the EP-gap amongst other things? I don't want us to take the risk to loose some due to the GAP-issue. Don't let the Evil GAP win!!!

Here's the kink in a GAP arguement, time doesn't stop.

Assuming the devs expect the game to continue into the future, a gap reduction between 2 year players and Newbs would still create a gap between NOW players and players joining 1 or 2 years from now.

Addressing the issue of GAP means redoing the whole concept of Perp, which is players earn EP based on elapsed time into a fixed maximum level system; because that is the only way to create a rolling EP leveler.

The only response is simply that isn't the way Perp is designed.

Eve is continually getting new players and they stay despite the GAP, while some do not.

The difference in Perp is that because the population is so low, and so few new people are trying the game, even losing 2 or 3 people that don't like the EP Delta, results in a 5 or 10% retention rate; which makes it FEEL significant.

Taking a different perspective, the largest current Corporation probably has 10 to 15 players on their most active night.

If an outside guild of 200 active players joined Perp, they would have a significant impact within a few weeks and would dominate the server within 90 days if there were no other corps formed, after which they would quickly get bored and quit, but that's not an EP GAP issue.

If after greenlight, Perp gets 20-30 players per day, after 90 days the impact of the GAP would be very small GLOBALLY. Sure, individual players or solo players that encounter vets will be sent to the nearest outpost in flames, but from an overall viability of a corp to prosper, they will not be greatly hindered by EP.

Ideally, a large % of those new players joining will go into existing Corps. In this case we end up with 4 or 5 active Vets supported by large numbers of new players, which is fantastic.

tl-dr; If losing a few players to 'GAP' is a significant number of new players, then the game simply isn't viable, because the GAP is how the game is designed.

BeastmodeGuNs wrote:

Can't we just leave this alone for now and let the Devs work on the what will most likely be very broken, newb island and the final touches for steam?

If your gonna nerf this mechanic, at least wait until after steam release so there will be ACTUAL players and less multi-boxing people who are trying to fill every last fleet roll.

I'm Obviously fine with less follow and more dedicated, but we don't have that kind of pop right now, so my personal opinion is to leave the followbot mechanic the way it is for now, finish steam content, launch on steam, then work on nerfing your little mechanic

Probably, but once players get used to something, even the new ones, the more likely they are to have a negative opinion on the change. This is MOST true when they are taking a feature away (a few people will complain about buffs just because, but it's mostly nerfs that raise the WTF levels to the WTFFF level).

Just so I'm not hypocritical, I have to encourage doing a change before the new players arrive, if Devs are indeed going to change anything.

Celebro wrote:

It was discussed a while back on a multi-account thread: The ONLY mechanic that deliberately supports multi boxing is the follow command, no other mechanic actually promotes this all the others are derivatives of social play.

I think the follow command is not a deliberate mechanic for multiboxing.

I used follow all the time when I was first roaming, so Newb me wouldn't get lost.

I used it extensively with Syndic when we were RSA buddies on ewar, so we didnt get seperated before combat started. It was useless after combat started, because we were both ducking around LOS items.

How many times did you/I let the other player go on follow coming back from a mining run. no reason for us both to drive.

These are all situations where follow was useful on a single account and really helpful. So it's not just a multibot mechanic, but it certainly is utilized for multi-accounts.

Because follow is actually useful for other than multi-account, I would hate to see it thrown out with the bath-water so to speak. Mostly because, it doesn't actually stop Macro'd Multi-bot action which is absolutely p2W and very disruptive to game play; see thread on Multibox software for reasons why this is so (Or ask Cookie).

Rex Amelius wrote:

I don't think Follow nerf proponents have accurately articulated their case. Period. Why is a PvP muti-account user more 'abusive' than an industry muti-account user?

I'm not sure I want to take a side here. Mostly because the follow command is not the real issue. Multi-box software is.

What I mean, is you don't need the follow command to run multiple accounts with marco software. You can press "W" and have it keyed to all the open windows, which does the same thing as follow (just better). And it gives the player full 'situational' control over multiple bots.

Don't get bogged down in PVP vs PVE follow issues.

Why is Follow on the table then? Because follow does a REALLY good job at hiding if a player is using macros. If there wasn't follow, and you saw (5) bots all turn and move at the same time... BAM, caught and banned.

To be clear, the issue isn't with movement though, its being able to FULLY control mulitple bots via macros. Follow just makes it almost impossible to tell if someone is macro'd.

Rex Amelius wrote:
Burial wrote:

Using follow bots in PVP is bad because it gives unfair advantage to anyone not willing to subscribe more accounts. cool

Okay. Now we are getting somewhere...

Shadowmine says its not about HAVING multiple accounts it's about HOW you use those accounts. Apparently it is okay to have multiple miners strip-mining alpha but its not okay to have PvPers using follow bots.

Burial says it about HAVING multiple accounts. So Burial do you think it's okay to have multiple miners strip-mining alpha?

Rex - Follow only helps for getting the miners to the location, it doesn't help doing the actual mining, as each bot has to target tiles seperatly as well as empty cargo seperately. BUT using multiple accounts to mine is MUCH MUCH more effective than multiple PVP accounts, since each account is fully dedicated; but thats not a follow issue.

Burial wrote:

Using follow bots in PVP is bad because it gives unfair advantage to anyone not willing to subscribe more accounts. cool

Thats not wrong, but it's not very concise.

Multiple bots versus a single bot is always going to have the advantage. The above would be the same regardless of if it was a follow bot or if it was an actual player.

The game is most certainly not balanced for 1 v 1, or for that matter X vs X.

A valid arguement for unfair advantage, is if having multiple bots run by the same person provided some kind of additional benefit beyond what having it run by seperate players could provide.

For example, there is no communication lag when 1 person is running both (or more) accounts, which is an advantage in targeting for example.

Celebro wrote:
Arga wrote:

And if your thumb is sore, its about your thumb.

Arga: you are a genius; but left disappointed, I was expecting a wall of well thought out text from you. tongue


LOL

I actually did write a wall of text, but deleted it.

No one really cares about the issues, they just care about being right.

And if your thumb is sore, its about your thumb.

70

(9 replies, posted in Recruitment forum)

This game could really use the injection of a motivated eve guild to shake it up, I hope you can accomplish this!

As Rex points out, I know all about the ramifications of SpT, but this thread is about mobile TP. I was making a comparison of the different reasoning behind changes to mobile TP versus SpT; not any arguements for or against SpT.

I'm an indy guy and I loved the support role.

It would be nice to see even more synergy between mining/harvesting EP and support role EP. That would allow players to stay mostly focused on improving their Indy skills but still be desirable and effective out on the battle field.

The idea of being able to buy and fit any of the 4 factions before choosing is the 'spirit' of the trial area. I'm hoping a side effect will be that new players can get blown up a few times too, so they don't feel like losing 1 fight is the end of the world.

74

(8 replies, posted in General discussion)

Just to clarify, for the archive diggers wink

This is Massively's misinterpretation of the Perpteuum blog, as Zoom clarifed on the forums that it was likely to be T1 equipment, before the Massively blog went out.

What a stupid post.

Hunter wrote:

Hmm... I've planned to discuss a little bit later.. I don't read anyway. Anyone who troll me - you waste the time.

Just checking if your're reading this. smile