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Topic: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

A common core thread has come up among the masses that suggests adding PVE Gamma islands.  These Gamma islands would add to a pvp free content filler in the PVE sector of this game which is severly lack.  Some ideas buzzing include:

- No Turrets
- Keep Terraforming
- Terminal Tax(on this island only)
- No PVP
- Roaming NPCs

Not being a new idea in itself it was also once brought up many moons ago when Gamma was still brand new and fresh.

The Good

Obviously a PVP free zone would add much need relief for the more casual and less hardcore player looking to experience MPC construction.

-Why is it needed?

The zone would be a buffer for corperations to develop.  It would provide pride and sense of ownership of territory without having to wage war full time to gain a foothold on Beta, allowing corporations the ability to get a foothold in the production side of the game by recapturing the NIC from production and being able to gain market side transaction for the corporation.

Provides more wiggle room for entitys who are too small to wage war against Veterans.

It's fun.  Building a gamma base is really fun.  Managing the energy network is also fun.  Look at the test server all the players who went out and created something.  This could be enjoyed by EVERYONE not just the PVP powerhouse. 

Most of the tools are already in game to keep development of this idea to a minimal time.

- Develop Island(and placement of server location)
- Figure out if you want 3 in each zone or one large zone in the middle of the map with teleporters leading to each one of the Alpha 2s.
- Reduce the terminal cap for this island to 1500M placement apart from Terminals
- 1 Terminal per corp Cap
- Remove Colixium from this island.
- for 1 island in the middle I would suggest the plants being segmented into their respective corners, blue type plants being near the blue telport, green near its green and etc...  Because let's be realistic it is really just 1 jump from one island to another to get the other plant life.
- Make the NPCs Lvl 3 mobs that roam the island
- Keep walls and gates in, just for feeling.
- Use the SAME energy system as Gamma.
- Allow all buildings to be built except for offensive stuff like Turrets.(yeah just turrets)

This would create a market for Colixium and for MPC gamma buildings.  (win win)! 

This will be a win win for producers and corporation leaderships.  This would drive DOWN the prices of production allowing for things to be cheaper on the market to help new players wanting to grind to get stuff off the market.

This would Create a NEED for gamma territory..  To get colixium...

The Bad

Development Time, QQ

The Ugly

Couple things we have to worry about.  Players with malicious intent would terraform impassable slopes for mechs and heavys.  Would require stewardship of players.

When deconstructing buildings a ninja could come up and loot your building container, so moving of the energy wells could be slightly problematic.

The institution of a corp tax should be introduced for this island.  Something along the lines of 500,000 Nic for standard terminal.  1 Mil for Advanced and 2 Mil for hi tech a WEEK.

Beta Terminals need production bonuses.  Since it takes less time to flip a Beta terminal than a gamma station I feel like Beta outposts should have some of the highest production bonuses.

I welcome more feedback on pros and cons!

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

Stop developing the game around people who don't want to risk anything.
Stop inventing considerations for feelings of people who don't want to risk anything.
Stop reasoning with people who don't want to risk anything.
Stop coddling people who don't want to risk anything.

MURDER THEM - with NO consideration - with NO special treatment - with NO mercy.
Until they realize what the game is about.
Or until they quit.

Play the game.

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

Syndic mainly you are right.

BUT, we are dont have that much people, that is the problem not everyone about to die in PVP.

SO for the game we would need more PVE people, who dont want to RISK!

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

4 Reply by Burial (edited by Burial 2014-10-27 19:32:09)

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

Syndic wrote:

Stop developing the game around people who don't want to risk anything.
Stop inventing considerations for feelings of people who don't want to risk anything.
Stop reasoning with people who don't want to risk anything.
Stop coddling people who don't want to risk anything.

MURDER THEM - with NO consideration - with NO special treatment - with NO mercy.
Until they realize what the game is about.
Or until they quit.

Play the game.

This post reeks of ignorance. Do you understand what this game needs? This game needs PVE content. MPC on PVE Gammas is PVE content.

By the way, is your post supposed to be some sort of a battlecry for grinding even more newbies out of the game for uh.. reasons, definitely other than your hatred for the game and it's developers? lol

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

Syndic wrote:

Stop developing the game around people who don't want to risk anything.
Stop inventing considerations for feelings of people who don't want to risk anything.
Stop reasoning with people who don't want to risk anything.
Stop coddling people who don't want to risk anything.

MURDER THEM - with NO consideration - with NO special treatment - with NO mercy.
Until they realize what the game is about.
Or until they quit.

Play the game.

Did you ever realize there are no wolves when the sheep are gone.

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

Celebro wrote:

Did you ever realize there are no wolves when the sheep are gone.

When the sheep are gone, they feast on the Shepards.

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

Nooodlzs wrote:
Celebro wrote:

Did you ever realize there are no wolves when the sheep are gone.

When the sheep are gone, they feast on the Shepards.

Your analogy would mean that there is an intent to go after the game and the Devs and destroy it all.

8 Reply by Nooodlzs (edited by Nooodlzs 2014-10-27 20:19:42)

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

Altera wrote:

Your analogy would mean that there is an intent to go after the game and the Devs and destroy it all.

I love this game but it is full of people that feel that they are entitled to something, I remember trying to kill Lemon in a heavy mech when we were in assaults and dying in a fire, night after night, we came back for more.

I'm talking about the bitter vets that have hangers full of crap they will never ever use and feel all that is the sign of being a ~good player~.

Always pulling the strings of the newer players.

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

Celebro wrote:

Did you ever realize there are no wolves when the sheep are gone.

Did you ever realize WE DO NOT GIVE A FLYING F*CK.

We're players. Playing the game. Try it, it's a game.

If you and the rest of you unwashed peasants spent 10% of the time you spend defecating on the forums on actually playing the game there wouldn't be a population problem.

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10 Reply by Stranger Danger (edited by Stranger Danger 2014-10-27 22:44:04)

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

Nooodlzs wrote:
Altera wrote:

Your analogy would mean that there is an intent to go after the game and the Devs and destroy it all.

I love this game but it is full of people that feel that they are entitled to something, I remember trying to kill Lemon in a heavy mech when we were in assaults and dying in a fire, night after night, we came back for more.

I'm talking about the bitter vets that have hangers full of crap they will never ever use and feel all that is the sign of being a ~good player~.

Always pulling the strings of the newer players.


True words.


Ive always felt its their ego that wont allow them to play and get better, they would rather not play and get on the kill boards than to die in a fire until they learn from their mistakes....and they have more than enough resources to do that.

Oh and ville, we would get more fights out of gamma, and more gamma activity if this game had any amount of pvpers within its ranks.

All the new corps ally up and only take stations with no resistance, and ignore defending their stations.  They don't want pvp. 

The vets who have the ability to pvp on a large scale would rather watch the game die slow than to log in and risk getting on a CIR/77 kill.

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

I went through all 6 gamma islands tonight, not a soul to be found.

PvP needs to be promoted as a rewarding venture, in both entertainment value and outpost ownership.

If people fight for outposts, they may eventually own said outpost, making production and industry in general more profitable, thereby making goods cheaper and more readily available, and PvP less intensive to get into asset wise. Rinse, wash, repeat.

The only issue is getting people to want to put forward the needed effort to get the ball rolling, not sit in alpha playing "how much of my infinite storage space can I fill up..."

12 Reply by Silkdawn (edited by Silkdawn 2014-10-28 05:27:56)

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

In general Im with OP (Ville) that the game needs more content and especially more PvE content, but for the rest Im with the second poster (Syndic.) Gamma aint supposed to be some safe haven, its supposed to be earned.

I like the idea of PvEish islands where you can put up a station tho, just not Gammas. How about making 3 islands going out from the starting islands which in all effects works as alpha islands except they allow for building of outposts? Of course there needs to be limits, I can see a moneydrain being one, making it less interesting for heavy PvP corps and more interesting for those corps who have no intention of fighting on Gamma islands?

EDIT: Sorta like putting up research and production POSes in hisec in EVE? They just take money unless you use them properly for production and research.

13 Reply by Obi Wan Kenobi (edited by Obi Wan Kenobi 2014-10-28 11:43:12)

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

why do i keep looking at these forums .... Oh wait... coz its like watching a car crash. smile

PS. nothing in this game will feel right or play as it should when there are hardly any players in the game.

True Pros make a Podcast to influence the Devs minds, 
The rest of you guys are Hacks tongue

PS. I got my Highways & stopped playing b4 they came in & have never used them! ...... Irony much ? tongue
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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

I see this adding vast content to the pve side of the game without taking 6 months to develop.

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

Let me start with we would love to have something like this at some point.

The glaring problems I see with your suggestion:

1. Gammas must retain their incentives to go there. I know currently there are not many but still, simply not having colixum on these PvE islands is not enough. Personally I would only allow T1 buildings to maintain the industrial superiority of gammas.

2. Free building anywhere will go terribly wrong, the same thing will happen like now with gammas. Everyone who can quickly build a colony will occupy all the available space on day one, and the whole feature will be a toy of a handful of players, till the end of days. You surely know that a weekly tax of 1 million NIC is laughable for the veteran corps.

In order to let everyone participate in a totally free system, we would need to have infinite island space to make it future-proof, so this is a no go.

Islands divided into fixed land slots where a corporation can only own one would help, but then alt corps happen.

We could also have an auction system where corps are bidding blindly for two weeks of land ownership. The blind part is important because it leaves a lot of chance for those who don't have much NIC to burn on this. Unless of course big corps throw a LOT of money into it to bruteforce ownership, but in this case it's a very good NIC sink, and it probably can't be sustained for too long.

Auctions then happen in regular intervals and if the current owner can't pay the actual highest bid, they will lose the land slot, and the highest bidder can move in. (With a few days of grace period to deconstruct their buildings.)

This would basically create a market for land, where prices fluctuate based on demand and location. For example locations close to teleports would probably be more sought after, which would drive its price up.

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

I wouldn't mind an auction house for property, both beta and gamma.

The problem right now, and sort of the problem of the past, is that there are a group of people who want these stations as sources of pvp.  The rest of the players want to take the stations with no risk, and wont defend the station if taken (however will cause a sht storm in chat and on the forums about killing the game not letting them have it)

Since the SAP system encourages people to take stations with no risk, and gamma is all about risk...you have and are going to have people who wont risk a thing wanting beta and gamma...which is why the only people attacking gamma are inda in a T1 throw away arbalest (for shame inda) alone...and occasional arganos with a gun and cargo fill of ammo (t1 ofc)

The Ninja SAP lifestyle has infested this game.  They will want gamma to have similar mechanics so they can have a chance to risk nothing for glory of land ownership.

While I agree that the game needs more stuff for people who wont ever leave alpha, I disagree that these people should have pvp mechanics catered to them.  An old corp with one active member shouldn't be able to hit a SAP, there should be no babysit mechanics, there should be war and fighting mechanics only for pvp.

At least with an AH, people who cant pvp (new players who have allied up every single other new player corp leaving themselves with no one to fight other than us, which ends poorly for them) can pay us for land.

So at least the often overlooked diplomacy could be used since vets have egos too large to fight and noobs are too scared and allied up with anyone who could offer them a realistic fight.


If possible zoom, please program in a better community.  Nef vets ego and fear of losing their endless supplies of horded bots and mods from the ancient gamma super happy safezone funtime era, and please program new players who want to fight other new players rather than ally them all up so they can complain they have no one proper to fight.

Figure out how to do that and the games population grows massively (sore loser vets come back and want to fight and new players have pvp content they can handle appropriately)


Maybe give some sort of "everyones a winner" trophy when your bot explodes to a player to help with this.

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17 Reply by Celebro (edited by Celebro 2014-10-28 16:04:24)

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

DEV Zoom wrote:

Let me start with we would love to have something like this at some point.

The glaring problems I see with your suggestion:

1. Gammas must retain their incentives to go there. I know currently there are not many but still, simply not having colixum on these PvE islands is not enough. Personally I would only allow T1 buildings to maintain the industrial superiority of gammas.

2. Free building anywhere will go terribly wrong, the same thing will happen like now with gammas. Everyone who can quickly build a colony will occupy all the available space on day one, and the whole feature will be a toy of a handful of players, till the end of days. You surely know that a weekly tax of 1 million NIC is laughable for the veteran corps.

In order to let everyone participate in a totally free system, we would need to have infinite island space to make it future-proof, so this is a no go.

Islands divided into fixed land slots where a corporation can only own one would help, but then alt corps happen.

We could also have an auction system where corps are bidding blindly for two weeks of land ownership. The blind part is important because it leaves a lot of chance for those who don't have much NIC to burn on this. Unless of course big corps throw a LOT of money into it to bruteforce ownership, but in this case it's a very good NIC sink, and it probably can't be sustained for too long.

Auctions then happen in regular intervals and if the current owner can't pay the actual highest bid, they will lose the land slot, and the highest bidder can move in. (With a few days of grace period to deconstruct their buildings.)

This would basically create a market for land, where prices fluctuate based on demand and location. For example locations close to teleports would probably be more sought after, which would drive its price up.

This shouldn't be about NIC but real cash or perpetuum credits as I explained in my own thread. You don't have many players atm so it's not a problem but with lack of space more gammas can be created. The auction system sounds good but I would do it with Perpetuum Credits. Leave NIC to maintain the territory only; 100million NIC a month.

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

Celebro: I'm speaking against us here, but that would be stamped for being P2W to hell and back.

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

I don't like the idea of adding game mechanics to try and make up for community behavior. 

Everything talked about could be achieved right now in the current system if the community would mutually act in a way that supports it. Currently it does not.  So if we add this new mechanic it'll be filled with a bunch of people who disagree with the idea gaming and trolling the system.  It'll be a waste of dev time.  Certain individuals have already dumped an absurd amount of real money into this game. There's no reason they wouldn't buy every piece of available space on day 1.  If we use perpetuum credits there's no reason an entity with trillions of NIC wouldn't buy everything they could simply to deny access.  With terra forming there's no stopping some jerk from camping and terraforming obnoxiously every day at 3am.  The troll will continue and the 'tears' will be harvested.

I'm with Syndic. Shut up and nut up. 

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

DEV Zoom wrote:

Celebro: I'm speaking against us here, but that would be stamped for being P2W to hell and back.

What exactly to you win with gammas without bonuses?. Is not like that's the only thing you have to do, you have to pay rent, build it and be active playing too. Anyhow, no one mentioned pay2win on my thread when I suggested it. The game is basically free for all players once bought. You can't keep yourself holding back because you just can't make a quality game out of thin air with no cash, I would understand. If you still needed to sub then definitely no.

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21 Reply by Stranger Danger (edited by Stranger Danger 2014-10-28 16:18:12)

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

I don't think it was ever intended in this thread for beta to be a pay to play island. 

I don't think people are suggesting the only way to be on beta is to pay for it (real money or NIC)

I think the intention would be the option to sell stations without the risk of scamming, for corporations who might be indy based, or intending to make the terminal a public trade hub....

The stations purchased would have to be attackable....and the people who buy it and cant defend it would need to have allies willing to lose bots to defend it.

I don't think spending Perp Credits, essentially making the stations potential ways of transferring Perp Credits like the old ICE system, would make sense....

There is literally nothing in the cash shop worth buying for a vet.  Even if they had ICE tokens again, able to transfer 2400 perk credits into an account who used it...who the hell would buy one?  ICE made sense because wealthy vets had money and the game was subscription, and were willing to spend nic to not pay $10 a month.  The current booster system benefits new players who wouldn't have the money to buy the credits for boosters.

I do like this land AH as a bit of sand in the box, so to speak....

None of this solves the issue of 99% of new player corps allied up with no one to pvp (realistically) and the fact that in the absence of CIR/77 playing on beta, the only thing that happened is people ninja'ed the sap without a fight.  Hell....STC got on the map briefly, a one man corp (despite being allied to all the noobs and rest of the server)

Id rather sell a station to an upstart (how would they pay?) than see a station go to that one guy who only plays to ninja saps and avoids fights.



Celebro:  the intention of gamma is for fights, you get a small indy bonus, and yes the rewards need to be improved....but if you want to avoid pvp...then yes...there isn't a point to gamma.....less you make some public trade hub and get your members to not trash talk the pvpers about it....even then...can you even set terminal tax rates to make it worth doing other than just to do it?

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22 Reply by Celebro (edited by Celebro 2014-10-28 16:26:55)

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

Stranger: this is not really a gamma island , just a PVE island you can place terminals/terraform etc, it should not replace or a way to distract for the pvp gammas.

I think some players just like to pvp for the sake of it, give me something that is worth fighting for.

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23 Reply by Annihilator (edited by Annihilator 2014-10-28 16:29:04)

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

Celebro wrote:

Stranger: this is not really a gamma island , just a PVE island you can place terminals/terraform etc, it should not replace or a way to distract for the pvp gammas.

I think some players just like to pvp for the sake of it, give me something that is worth fighting for.

there are three outposts on each alpha 1 island.
i wonder what the usage rate of them is for player that are past the max mission level there.

there was even a discussion long time ago, to make the facilities in those upgradable by player corps.

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

DEV Zoom wrote:

Let me start with we would love to have something like this at some point.

The glaring problems I see with your suggestion:

1. Gammas must retain their incentives to go there. I know currently there are not many but still, simply not having colixum on these PvE islands is not enough. Personally I would only allow T1 buildings to maintain the industrial superiority of gammas.

By adding this island or islands, you would give the community a chance to experience MPC stuff further driving a need for Colixum, noralgis and Epriton.  I would suggest allow T3 facilitys to be built, because then those facilitys with great % will be a magnet for others to come produce there.  Think of it.  All these T1 stations and a couple T3 high tech facilitys where veteran corps can place down and potentially draw rent by creating a market hub inside the station.  While being able to produce there.  (since its PVP free the stations would be open to everyone, and I do mean everyone.

2. Free building anywhere will go terribly wrong, the same thing will happen like now with gammas. Everyone who can quickly build a colony will occupy all the available space on day one, and the whole feature will be a toy of a handful of players, till the end of days. You surely know that a weekly tax of 1 million NIC is laughable for the veteran corps.
A million Nic adds up very quickly and lets be honest if you want territory in a game you need to be there to claim it and if you were actually concerned with this you should have removed all the MPC buildings and converted them into commodities same with CTs prior to Gamma 2.0 launch.
In order to let everyone participate in a totally free system, we would need to have infinite island space to make it future-proof, so this is a no go.
You could theoretically place a flat island map with building restrictions only around teleports.  And then allow for a 1500M terminal to terminal limit.  I've seen some of the old islands with little to no water.  They had a large enough space where it would take 20 to 40 terminals to fill the island.
Islands divided into fixed land slots where a corporation can only own one would help, but then alt corps happen.
Yes, then money would have to be distributed to the alt corps and it becomes a huge hassle
We could also have an auction system where corps are bidding blindly for two weeks of land ownership. The blind part is important because it leaves a lot of chance for those who don't have much NIC to burn on this. Unless of course big corps throw a LOT of money into it to bruteforce ownership, but in this case it's a very good NIC sink, and it probably can't be sustained for too long.
Yes but your talking months to develop this type of system.  Also blind bids in this game is slightly counter productive.
Auctions then happen in regular intervals and if the current owner can't pay the actual highest bid, they will lose the land slot, and the highest bidder can move in. (With a few days of grace period to deconstruct their buildings.)

This would basically create a market for land, where prices fluctuate based on demand and location. For example locations close to teleports would probably be more sought after, which would drive its price up.

Yes it would but we are talking months to develop.  We want something in like this by like 2 years ago.

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25 Reply by Kayin Prime (edited by Kayin Prime 2014-10-28 16:49:59)

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Re: PVE Gamma Islands the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

CIR could just organize this themselves without the need for dev time.   Setup an island with terminals. Rent them out. Police them.   Anyone gets lippy, blow them up while trying to haul... deny access to the terminal... etc.

It would actually be better organized and secure if player ran this than something that requires dev time.