Ripard Teg analyzes the PVE AI revamp announcement.
Jester’s Trek: Breaking stuff to look tough
The latest dev-blog is out, and it’s one of those that’s designed to hurt my brain. Go give it a read. I’ll wait.
http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=73413
Short version: CCP is changing all non-wormhole, non-Incursion rats so that they will target-switch the same way wormhole and Incursion rats do. As a side effect, the rats will “try” to target player ships of about the same signature radius as the rat ship. So frigs will try to attack frigs, cruisers will try to attack cruisers, et cetera. In addition, rats will now switch targets to drones if drone threat goes high enough.
First off, we’re told by CCP FoxFour that this is — stop me if you’ve heard this one before — the first step of many. The old AI code is going to be thrown out in favor of the “Level One” AI code. Once in place, the devs will then be able to make modifications to the AI that they’re not able to or uncomfortable doing to the old code.
All well and good, but I can’t help thinking that breaking this without some initial positive steps is going to end up hurting more players than it helps. In the section of the dev-blog titled “Why we are doing this”, there are five reasons listed. Three of them are for the benefit of CCP, not the players. The other two aren’t being implemented this winter. That’s worrisome.
Let’s look at the positive first, though, because it’s a big one. This change will make it functionally impossible to AFK sites using drone boats. Try it and eventually the AI is going to go after and kill all the drones leaving the AFK boat doing no DPS. CCP lists this among the five reasons: “to try and close some exploits.” That is undeniably a big huge positive step, the mission equivalent of going after mining bots. You’ll get no argument from me that this is a good thing.
Still, there’s some worrisome negatives and they come in a lot of flavors.
First, it’s going to make it a lot more difficult to bring new players into high-level missions while more experienced players tank them. Somewhere out there, Marlona Sky is saying “good!” and yeah, I understand where this perspective comes from. But in a game where prices are increasing rapidly, new players are in danger of getting priced right out of the markets. Effectively taking away a major income source for new players is not exactly a step in the right direction here. CCP FoxFour’s response to this is that newer players should bring frigates into the L4s instead of battleships, but this strikes me as no solution at all. If the Level One AI is going to set its frigates attacking player frigs, isn’t that going to mean the new player is going to find himself webbed, scrammed, and attacked by the mission’s six or eight or ten rat frigates?
Second and related: it’s pretty common these days for an initial tank ship to enter a site or mission and be followed by a lot of glass cannon DPS ships. It’s obviously CCP’s intent for that to change so that any ship entering the mission or site can potentially tank it. But that’s also going to mean that the total DPS of a mission/site group will be reduced… maybe substantially reduced. That’s going to reduce mission/site income for everyone. That effectively makes this change a PvE nerf for everyone.
Third worrisome factor: in mission groups today, it’s also quite common for a tank ship to be followed by salvaging looting ships. This change is going to delay Noctis pilots and other salvage ships, further slowing down their work. Salvage prices are already a little bit nuts and making salvaging even MORE annoying isn’t a good thing. Still, initially this is probably going to be a somewhat more minor issue since salvage prices aren’t anywhere near historic highs yet.
Fourth, this is going to require a lot of testing at the high-end. The site that kinda sprang to mind for me is the Guristas 10/10, called “The Maze”. Despite living in the north for about a year, I’ve only done this site once. But I still have vivid memories of that Citadel Torpedo firing station that ends that site. When I would hear NC pilots talk about doing this site on comms, there was always a very specific custom-tanked ship that was brought in just to manage the enormous ship-breaking DPS coming off that torpedo. There are a number of other null-sec sites and missions that fire similar weapons. Something’s going to have to be done about them because asking everyone in the site/mission to be able to tank that isn’t practical.
Fifth: people who make a living out of ninja salvaging or can flipping in missions are going to have to be a lot more careful. But who cares about them, right? If they’re put out of business, that’s no big deal.
Finally, as I mentioned at the top of the piece, this change doesn’t really do anything to make the missions more fun, interesting, or engaging. For that FoxFour tells us we have to wait for the next iteration and of course we’ve seen how CCP can sometimes forget that part…
So overall, I’m cautiously optimistic about this one for putting AFK drone boats out of business. But it’s also going to hurt a lot of legitimate players who are just using PvE to make ISK for other needs. And the newer you are at the game, the more this change is likely to hurt you. So let’s hope the second iteration of this change happens very soon after the first. I’m all for making PvE more engaging, but this change alone doesn’t do that.
Send us Intel/Corrections via dropbox or shoot us an e-mail
If you would like to read more we invite you to visit his blog here.
When they killed off the mining bots minerals went skyhigh which makes everything ingame very expensive.
Coming with this SUPERNERF is a REALLY REALLY BAD move.
Me myself, I have more than 100 bil isk and dont worry about how to afford stuff.
But as you mention in you text, its really bad because:
1) New players will have a much harder time getting ships, skillbooks and stuff. It will become an endless grind with less fun in it. Alot of my learning period in EVE I had mission evenings in my corp where the experienced players took the new guys out while sharing stories over comms. That was my best time in EVE.
2) Perhaps having roles in a plex setup is a bit wow:ish. But it is part of the fun to gather a group of diffrent ships. If every dps need to change their gyros for hardeners it will be…. "an endless grind with less fun".
3) Frigs in L4…. come on brainiac… For SOME you can blitz but do AE in a frig and then we´ll talk CCP.
4) Ninjalooters, cba to answer this…
Generally, I dont like change. (no Im not a 60 y/o republican sitting on my porch with a handgun in each hand)
In this case, I just dont see the goals justify the means (?).
If this is to stop ishtars…. then its the wrong way to go.
The day EVE becomes an endless grind for new players it will slowly lose the noobs.
The day EVE becomes more about CCP than the players, it will slowly lose the vets.
Perhaps we are already there?
The drone regions were also nerfed, that drove up mineral prices, not the bot bannings.
The bot bannings did, however, let loose a torrent of botter tears >:D
this ^^^^^
Drone regions were the backbone of the eve economy, and is the direct reason prices were so cheap. It was a hedge against inflation, of both types. Now thats gone and the entire eve eco is all over the place and is far weaker then it once was.
super tank the noob ships, i let new guys fly with me in my 4s, but their dps is nonfactor really, so just haveem in tank ships if it's about learning.
4th point is invalid. Turrets never change their targets. Not even in wormholes. They work under different logic.
this already in effect on tranquility, was cleaning a belt my pve ship had all agro.. min later i warped noctis in, one by one they changed target to noctis..
This kinda reminds me of the recent update on the MechWarriors Online Beta where they updated the amount of payout you get for each fight. I know it is beta(will probably change I hope) but I refuse to play a game where it takes like 13 hours to grind to the most basic of ships/mechs while piloting a ship/mech that is no fun to pilot.
It's only AFK if you're actually away from the keyboard.
I use to use my navy domi with fed navy ogre's to do missions, since I'm a miner and have no gun skills. Now apparently I can't aggro everything and let them just kill the rats. This means no more missioning for me, which is a shame, because I do like to take a break from mining and work up my standings from time to time
use a target painter in your mids, it'll draw the fire onto the domi first. Then launch the drones.
I take it you realise you can train outside of industry?
Train to T1 crystals, then cross train for a Tengu or something then take your mining crystals to lvl 2.
even a drake can tank most l4's and its alot quicker to get into
Yeah but arent they nerfing Heavy Missile damage & Range as well? You *can* do Lv4s in a Drake but it's a lot slower than using a BS. With a (20%??) damage nerf to Heavies it will be a hell of a lot slower on some missions and I can think of a few BS mission rats that may not be doable at all due to resists+repping. Especially if your skills arent 4s or 5s.
CCP is trying to convert this game into a sort of free for play game. Nerfing PVE and forcing poeple to grind more will have effects for the sell of plexes to avoid grinding.
AFK players lose out? That can only be a good thing. Missions get harder? Tough, adapt or die. I've been playing Eve since 2004 with no time-outs and all I've seen is Eve getting easier for new players, AFK players and botters. Anything CCP bring in to screw them over is fine with me because I PLAY the game for what it is.
Jester, I like your column and long may it continue, but why must every change be met with the response ''the sky is falling!''
The only thing CCP really messed up was Incarna and WIS. Everything else is just a question of can you handle it?
I'm 51 years old, so is my wife (also an eve player) and our third corp member is 70 years of age. If we can handle this stuff, where is all the grief coming from?
@ Reason #2: This only effect people dual boxing/running in groups. Oh, no, so people can't tank with a Tengu and fly in a tankless Talos and nuke everything. This only hurts people dual boxing. (Or runinng in a group, but who would want to fly the Tengu, they would get little to no bounties.)
@ Reason #3: Because salvaging a mission after you finish is it SUCH an inconvenience… so now you have to warp your alt in afterward and salvage while you clear the next site. That doesn't slow anything down, it just delays when the Noctis finishing compared to when DPS finishes.
@ Reason 5: Nobody likes ninja salvagers, now they will have to use something other than a T1 frigate. This helps many more players than it hurts.
I live in a wormhole so I do know what I"m talking about on this one.
If the AI is like wormholes then it will favor non-drone boats so enormously it's stupid. Basically you need to rep each other (because the AI hate repping even more than drone) to make it work now in a drone boat The path of least resistance is to bring the typical missile boats instead or at least a gun boat if you don't have a missile one. Plus unlike ammo your drones aren't replaceable onsite like ammo is when you start losing them, lose enough and you've lost your dps ability and have to go back
Makes the play less fun because you have less boats to chose from and you won't bring a drone boat at all.
And wormhole PVE gets duACll too, it's not like this AI saves it from being dull.
God forbid that CCP actually give us some new content instead. Oh yeah, that would take actual work.
1 possible fix is to warp a tanky orca in to replace lost drones in your domi using the fitting service on the orca
can't transfer the drones in space. tried it just the other day.
Thinking training drones sounded like a good idea was the second biggest mistake I made in Eve. (Training hulks and mining being #3, and "ever undocking in the first place" being #1… No seriously, every career choice I've ever run with in Eve got nerfed into oblivion. Fuck'em.)
Drones… ugh!
TL;DR: Retard Ted proves again what he is made of. His future vision of PvE is to shooting non-moving targets that don't shoot back (so he can win EVE, too).
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/foxtrot-slideshow/
Time to sell your drone boats?
And I don't mean I afk mission in a drone boat. Far from it. I just like using them. It's already a pain in the ass to manage drones between spawns, and their travel time is looong, so it takes a long time to clear sites. Rats switching to drones is just plain terrible. Why kick this dog when he's already down?
does this means that the darwin torpedo 10/10 stations will shoot anyone now? :O
Rats switching to drones is just plain terrible. Why kick this dog when he's already down?
well i both like and dislike the changes…. from my perspective its a good change but i fear it comes to fast.
the main reason is there is alot of missions where targetswitching can be bad and then there is a lot of missions where it can be a good thing aka drone aggro etc.
they should delay the change to summer expansion and test it further since I fear they need to rebalance quite a few missions also. because if its messing with Agrro mannage ment "World collides" comes up as a big Warning sign for me isn't the end room got a potential of doing over 1500dps and thats NOT tankable"
and now im only touching Highsec missions nullsec and Level5 missions will be hit even harder
I am expecting to see ALOT of tears on the forum from players who lost there "Pride and Joy" mission boat. This might backlash on CCP very fast when players unsub after losing there ships ….
< Fits small remote shield reps on Navy domi,
< increases CCC on Navy domy,
< perma reps my sentries.
< Continues the AFK farming in my domi.
Yep, this will really fix the AFK farming with drones. And it would take me 2 min to write a macro that will scope my sentries every 5min to reset drone agro.
700 dps, 5 perma remote reps, 1 large local amror perma rep and 3 drone tracking upgrades. stable at 60% cap.
yep got my new build
I'm not complaining in the least, this makes marauders more relevant again. I have never needed a tank ship and a dps ship, or a salvage ship to follow. My paladin can tank any lvl 4 i go in, has 1100dps and 3 utility highs plus a tractor range bonus. I'm smiling from ear to ear. The drone thing is a bit annoying since I am useless if frigs or fast cruisers get right on me and i count on the drones for that, but eh.
Idk I feel like doing this to the rats is going to hurt noobies. I love better AI, god knows missions are fucking boring, but I always used to let the corp noobies tag along and shit around plexs/missions and shoot at w/e they liked knowing they were not going to get popped. Now We can say eve Is harsh and the new newbies will have to deal… BUT I feel like there is a solution.
In other games where you have a "party" (we call it a fleet) There is a
healer/priest/monk class (we call them logistics ships)
A debuff caster such as a necromancer or a witch or some shit (we call them EWAR ships)
a DPS character that just does a shit load of damage, and we call those ships Glass Cannons like dessies and t3 BC's.
Then there is the tank. The tank has the ability to sustain a lot of damage, But what other games tanks have that EVE tanks do not… is an ability to make the NPC's hate them more so they will be more likely to attack them. some games call this a threat level.
What if CCP made a highslot module(that fucks with rats ships) or beacon rig that makes their sensors want focus on you, or an implant or a skill that makes you good at "taunting" the rats, any of these so as not to cut into either type of tank (Mids/lows) That makes you a tastier target to NPC's so they will be more likely to attack you?
Ugh. …Yes, by all means let's *make Eve harder*, right? Because having a game that rewards calculating fucking radians per second isn't niche enough…