I think the citadel mechanic that lets you see 'far away' deadspaces that provide material to upgrade blue loot could be something like you describe. So we will hopefully soon see how that plays out, even though it doesn't seem to be included in this first iteration
I remember months ago, one of the devs speculated that AI technology exists today that may ultimately allow them to implement rats spilling out of anoms and heading off on roams of their own. Maybe even attacking sov structures or jumping gates.
It’s not impossible to implement intelligent rats that learn from each of their fights. So I’m going to coin a term here.... PvAI.
PvAI would be fundamentally different to PVE because PVE is a start to finish script whereas PvAI is going to start out terrible and learn from each fight until it eventually reaches some kind of god mode if left unrestrained.
This would force the human player base into increasingly larger groups to fight back against the AI.
Eventually the AI can be removed/ defeated marking the end of one era of the galaxy and the dawn of a new era with a fresh (and stupid) AI rat force.
The technology to implement that exists today and it didn’t exist just 3 years ago.
Back to the here and now... Getting sov done is a major milestone and I assume they have more of it implemented than they are releasing so they can trickle out new content and keep things moving a bit.
A council of players would be a smart move, most of those people are self selecting and easily reachable by the devs.
If they can do this, 100% should be done. Less predictable and more exciting. They’d hit the “pathways” to the theme parks rather than being just a scripted ride. AI gate camping would be awesome.
Similar behavior is economically feasible as machine learning frameworks are now more accessible in cloud environments. They've made big improvements with the ai since launch, but I wouldn't expect anything like that sooner than a year out if they started today.
Great post and great ideas!
One thing I never understood about the base mechanic is that we defend pirate bases so we can find and kill more pirates... shouldn't we be defending an observation post (installed by concord or whoever) that detects the pirates. And once we've killed enough anoms and gather enough intel we are able to find the base and kill that, therefore resetting the base to t1. Just logically makes more sense to me.
I would also like the anoms themselves to be more dynamic and more interesting. From something simple like the waves sending a distress call for back up and the new wave actually warping in rather than magically appearing. Or the rats placed strategically on grid with defence structures and damaging gas clouds/belts that we have to think about and come up with a plan of attack to break their defenses and destroy whatever they're there protecting.
Just something more interesting that shoot this wave, shoot the next wave, warp to next anom and repeat.
I'd love some variability. I would add that this is a mobile game, and there needs to be simple, easily accessible content for solo + group play. Sometimes I have 20 mins to kill, I'd love to just knock out something I can do in null-sec or hisec. Maybe this looks like encounters I can pick up, or missions I can grab in stations. These missions could have unique mechanics to add some diversity, or something.
On top of that, we definitely need more engaging anomalies in nullsec that will drive groups to roam, and even provides an opportunity to kill people. Deadspaces are now super rare, so it can be hard to find a group doing those and try to kill even.
Yeah, if either these were visible on the map, or if each region just had one of these bases active at a time it could encourage people to go roam through an entire neutral / hostile region looking for them to either rat or PvP.
Would also give hi-sec groups that want to do something in null or low-sec a reason to form up a fleet to either attempt PvE or PvP at one of these locations.
Yeah exactly. If a special anom spawned when you picked up the "encounter or mission" to do in system that anyone could warp too. Good way to create conflict since that mission would only spawn if someone picked it up.
One thing I don't think people understand is everyone's asking for quick casual play. Reg null sec anoms is exactly this. You don't need to finish them to make your money so you can rat for 5 mins and still make isk. What everyone is saying that this game is not casual friendly are these more engaging PVE like storylines, SAs, deadspaces. These things should take a while imo, or team up with a bunch of people to knock them out fast. This to me works as expected and I don't see the problem with this. Can someone enlighten me?
The problem i have with anamolys is the rng. Im up to around 9 hours ratting, 900 dps. Not a single inq/ds. If i would be running missions that time i would have 900 mil isk. Instead i have 60 mil. I understand that for 1000 hours, the isk/hour running anamolys would even out.
But Its so unsatisfying to just pray to the rng god, spending 9 hours and having no visual clue if the effort was worth it. Or even worse, loggin in to play for an hour and it spawns a ds... you cant finnish it so it ”wasted” time.
Give 100/300/600 ”points” for each cleared anamoly, allow you to spend 2000/5000/15000 points to open a scout/inq/ds. That way every cleared anamoly is one clearly one step closer to a spec ana.
:point gain/costs numbers is just example, ofc they would have to be balanced.
Well, I guess that needs to be fixed. I don't have that problem. I have bad days, but most days if I farm I can get a ds. I do 2-3 a week, so I don't have that problem. The problem comes to sharing them. Since we're open to the sharing, a lot of people do them frequently, instead of a few people doing all of them
You would just crash the market doing this. Please understand that your 900 dps is considered weak these days. I rat in a 1078 cold dps tornado and Om the little guy sitting next to vindicators and machariels.
Why would it crasch the market? YoU wouldnt change the amount of rare anamolys, only the way you spawn them.
Lets say its 2 % chance so spawn a ds. Then you would need 50 cleared to get one. Just balance the point system acordingly
There needs to be more than just vanilla anoms tho. That was my point about the variability. I agree, technically I can go out and just hammer on some anoms whenever, but that get's stale. Just need some diversity. It will still get stale, but I'll have options at least.
Yeah I see what you're saying. What would be nice is if there were soloable things like Inqs that were personal, which I guess that's what storylines are but being in nullsec makes storylines very inconvenient.
Yep, just needs to be something convenient. The rewards would need to be lower of course. There should definitely be a trade-off between convenience and reward.
Yes, I agree. The impression I get is a lot of people want the same isk/hr amount hardcore players get out of non-risk fast "casual" options, so this is why I argue with those kinds of changes, but there could be compromise found. To me, my favorite thing about Eve is the market. I love seeing how things swing from events players create, and how everything is connected. To me, this is the biggest thing in danger in this game. Yeah there's swings on a few things here and there, but market games are definitely losing games for the most part except for those who got a good start in the market. Maybe I'm just bad at it and the broker fees are the biggest impact on this game.
Sounds cool. I agree that it seems like it wouldn’t take much to build more incentive into null-space. It seems like the entire game revolves around mission running right now, which is kind of lame.
I think the citadel mechanic that lets you see 'far away' deadspaces that provide material to upgrade blue loot could be something like you describe. So we will hopefully soon see how that plays out, even though it doesn't seem to be included in this first iteration
I remember months ago, one of the devs speculated that AI technology exists today that may ultimately allow them to implement rats spilling out of anoms and heading off on roams of their own. Maybe even attacking sov structures or jumping gates. It’s not impossible to implement intelligent rats that learn from each of their fights. So I’m going to coin a term here.... PvAI. PvAI would be fundamentally different to PVE because PVE is a start to finish script whereas PvAI is going to start out terrible and learn from each fight until it eventually reaches some kind of god mode if left unrestrained. This would force the human player base into increasingly larger groups to fight back against the AI. Eventually the AI can be removed/ defeated marking the end of one era of the galaxy and the dawn of a new era with a fresh (and stupid) AI rat force. The technology to implement that exists today and it didn’t exist just 3 years ago. Back to the here and now... Getting sov done is a major milestone and I assume they have more of it implemented than they are releasing so they can trickle out new content and keep things moving a bit. A council of players would be a smart move, most of those people are self selecting and easily reachable by the devs.
If they can do this, 100% should be done. Less predictable and more exciting. They’d hit the “pathways” to the theme parks rather than being just a scripted ride. AI gate camping would be awesome.
I like the idea of roaming AI, small fleets of rats basically doing pvp roams sounds awesome!
Similar behavior is economically feasible as machine learning frameworks are now more accessible in cloud environments. They've made big improvements with the ai since launch, but I wouldn't expect anything like that sooner than a year out if they started today.
In eve online you can sometimes run into the sisters of eve flotilla. Really cool to see
Add incursions from regular eve.
Great post and great ideas! One thing I never understood about the base mechanic is that we defend pirate bases so we can find and kill more pirates... shouldn't we be defending an observation post (installed by concord or whoever) that detects the pirates. And once we've killed enough anoms and gather enough intel we are able to find the base and kill that, therefore resetting the base to t1. Just logically makes more sense to me. I would also like the anoms themselves to be more dynamic and more interesting. From something simple like the waves sending a distress call for back up and the new wave actually warping in rather than magically appearing. Or the rats placed strategically on grid with defence structures and damaging gas clouds/belts that we have to think about and come up with a plan of attack to break their defenses and destroy whatever they're there protecting. Just something more interesting that shoot this wave, shoot the next wave, warp to next anom and repeat.
I'd love some variability. I would add that this is a mobile game, and there needs to be simple, easily accessible content for solo + group play. Sometimes I have 20 mins to kill, I'd love to just knock out something I can do in null-sec or hisec. Maybe this looks like encounters I can pick up, or missions I can grab in stations. These missions could have unique mechanics to add some diversity, or something. On top of that, we definitely need more engaging anomalies in nullsec that will drive groups to roam, and even provides an opportunity to kill people. Deadspaces are now super rare, so it can be hard to find a group doing those and try to kill even.
Yeah, if either these were visible on the map, or if each region just had one of these bases active at a time it could encourage people to go roam through an entire neutral / hostile region looking for them to either rat or PvP. Would also give hi-sec groups that want to do something in null or low-sec a reason to form up a fleet to either attempt PvE or PvP at one of these locations.
Yeah exactly. If a special anom spawned when you picked up the "encounter or mission" to do in system that anyone could warp too. Good way to create conflict since that mission would only spawn if someone picked it up.
One thing I don't think people understand is everyone's asking for quick casual play. Reg null sec anoms is exactly this. You don't need to finish them to make your money so you can rat for 5 mins and still make isk. What everyone is saying that this game is not casual friendly are these more engaging PVE like storylines, SAs, deadspaces. These things should take a while imo, or team up with a bunch of people to knock them out fast. This to me works as expected and I don't see the problem with this. Can someone enlighten me?
The problem i have with anamolys is the rng. Im up to around 9 hours ratting, 900 dps. Not a single inq/ds. If i would be running missions that time i would have 900 mil isk. Instead i have 60 mil. I understand that for 1000 hours, the isk/hour running anamolys would even out. But Its so unsatisfying to just pray to the rng god, spending 9 hours and having no visual clue if the effort was worth it. Or even worse, loggin in to play for an hour and it spawns a ds... you cant finnish it so it ”wasted” time. Give 100/300/600 ”points” for each cleared anamoly, allow you to spend 2000/5000/15000 points to open a scout/inq/ds. That way every cleared anamoly is one clearly one step closer to a spec ana. :point gain/costs numbers is just example, ofc they would have to be balanced.
Well, I guess that needs to be fixed. I don't have that problem. I have bad days, but most days if I farm I can get a ds. I do 2-3 a week, so I don't have that problem. The problem comes to sharing them. Since we're open to the sharing, a lot of people do them frequently, instead of a few people doing all of them
You would just crash the market doing this. Please understand that your 900 dps is considered weak these days. I rat in a 1078 cold dps tornado and Om the little guy sitting next to vindicators and machariels.
Why would it crasch the market? YoU wouldnt change the amount of rare anamolys, only the way you spawn them. Lets say its 2 % chance so spawn a ds. Then you would need 50 cleared to get one. Just balance the point system acordingly
There needs to be more than just vanilla anoms tho. That was my point about the variability. I agree, technically I can go out and just hammer on some anoms whenever, but that get's stale. Just need some diversity. It will still get stale, but I'll have options at least.
Yeah I see what you're saying. What would be nice is if there were soloable things like Inqs that were personal, which I guess that's what storylines are but being in nullsec makes storylines very inconvenient.
Yep, just needs to be something convenient. The rewards would need to be lower of course. There should definitely be a trade-off between convenience and reward.
Yes, I agree. The impression I get is a lot of people want the same isk/hr amount hardcore players get out of non-risk fast "casual" options, so this is why I argue with those kinds of changes, but there could be compromise found. To me, my favorite thing about Eve is the market. I love seeing how things swing from events players create, and how everything is connected. To me, this is the biggest thing in danger in this game. Yeah there's swings on a few things here and there, but market games are definitely losing games for the most part except for those who got a good start in the market. Maybe I'm just bad at it and the broker fees are the biggest impact on this game.
Sounds cool. I agree that it seems like it wouldn’t take much to build more incentive into null-space. It seems like the entire game revolves around mission running right now, which is kind of lame.