DUST Search - Announcement:Changes to Planetary Conquest

Rogatien Merc wrote:

Given the current fundamental mechanics of clone generation, clone packs, 24+hr attack timers, and selling clones for ISK I fail to see the possibility for an unexploitable mechanic that will achieve the goal of make legit attacks more profitable / likely than farming.

Kevall Longstride wrote:

I understand that they might be upset but in the long run its going to be an irrelevance once the player market comes in and that ISK is redistributed by market forces. Also the money that will come into the game via Eve eventually will DWARF that already earned in Dust. So for that reason I'm not unduly concerned.

I can see definite pluses for this from the standpoint of the mercs that fight in PC, in so much as they will receive a greater proportion of ISK payout from the biomass directly from the payout mechanism of the game and not as payment from a corp wallet. Also less work to do for an accountant role user having to pay them from that wallet.

If a corp is worried about the financial hit they will get from the lower sale value of Clones to Genolution, they can simply raise the tax level. This however also brings in a certain level of risk as their best players may go another corp willing to tax them less. I'm in favour of a CEO, speaking as one, to have to take this into account in his/her decision as it brings with it consequence, which is what gaming in a single shard universe should be all about.


Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 10 post(s)
Leither Yiltron KILL-EM-QUICK RISE of LEGION 738	Posted - 2013.10.16 23:21:00 - [1] - Quote These changes will have little impact on day-to-day PC operations. ISK hasn't been a limiting factor in PC for a very, very long time. Even clone packs are more about the debilitating clone disadvantage than they are about ISK cost. You're not going to see the 3 alliances left in MH surge into action just because they could get like 20mil more per day or something. The underlying mechanics suck too much to promote much more activity than is already happening.
Leither Yiltron KILL-EM-QUICK RISE of LEGION 738	Posted - 2013.10.17 00:39:00 - [2] - Quote Rogatien Merc wrote: Given the current fundamental mechanics of clone generation, clone packs, 24+hr attack timers, and selling clones for ISK I fail to see the possibility for an unexploitable mechanic that will achieve the goal of make legit attacks more profitable / likely than farming. Rog gets it, though it goes even deeper than this. Let me open up with this: It shouldn't just be FoxFour's responsibility to inform the player base of changes to PC. Why, when these sorts of changes are getting pushed to the live build, isn't there some person whose job it is to check whether each of the updates getting pushed might demand an announcement? Even so, the entire scenario is a fiasco. There are wars going on right now; if ISK was really any part of the calculus of those, such calculus would be borked on a moment's notice. We need a procedure for these situations, not just one guy against the world. Changing the ISK values on clone sales and biomass sale values isn't going to change the fundamental interactions in PC in a meaningful way. This is because these two ISK values are essentially irrelevant to whether or not anyone chooses to initiate a battle in Molden Heath at the moment. What does matter is the human element of planetary conquest. Whenever I make a decision concerning PC- and mind you I'm ROFL's PC coordinator- the first question on my mind isn't of the form, "If we pick up more districts we would make enough ISK to...", nor does it look like, "I wonder if we'll have enough ISK to...". No, the first and biggest question that comes up is, "Are we going to have FUN doing it?" And really that's the only question that matters. Morale and lack of fun will always become a problem before ISK does in PC's current climate. Losing morale and losing ISK are caused by the same thing- losing matches to mechanical flaws and keystone problems with the game. These are things like SP/gear disparity and map/game mode design which are strategically brain dead. When you're afflicted by these types of issues, frustrations with the game itself mount far quicker than you could ever get to the bottom of your pocket book. So now you should have an insight into why these types of changes are irrelevant to fighting in Molden Heath. We're not going to fight more often. Maintaining correct activity rates is more important to FUN than pushing activity rates really high in order to gain ISK. After all, what are you going to do with the ISK? At best, what it might encourage is destabilization of Hrober V and Oddellulf III, arguably the only saving graces of PC which foster any sense of community at the moment. The only numbers that can be tweaked which will have any positive effect on PC1.0 are the ones that concern clone packs. 120 clones is not enough, and 36 million is too much. Tweaking the other values to align with changes to clone pack numbers would be acceptable, but that's about it. Here's how PC looks to a new corp: (1) Scrounge up 36mil ISK (2) Attack someone (3) Lose because 120 clones isn't enough for anyone, don't care who you are, against a competent opponent; doesn't matter if you're actually better strategically/winning by MCC in spades (4) Scrounge up 100mil (5) Buy a district from an existing corp (6) Lose because existing corps can't justify leaving the district alone when fighting on it represents easy activity, existing corps probably have a team that's much more grizzled than yours (7) Lose especially quickly because attacking mechanics are stupid and allow that experienced corp to take your district in less than 2 hours Do you see how this goes? We can all agree that PC1.0 is fundamentally broken for a variety of reasons. One of the only ways to allow a pool of players bigger than 500 the mechanical ABILITY to have a fun, clean fight somewhere out in Molden Heath is to cut many of the strings that are attached to the logistics of holding districts and loosen restrictions on clone packs even farther. Kevall Longstride wrote: I understand that they might be upset but in the long run its going to be an irrelevance once the player market comes in and that ISK is redistributed by market forces. Also the money that will come into the game via Eve eventually will DWARF that already earned in Dust. So for that reason I'm not unduly concerned. I can see definite pluses for this from the standpoint of the mercs that fight in PC, in so much as they will receive a greater proportion of ISK payout from the biomass directly from the payout mechanism of the game and not as payment from a corp wallet. Also less work to do for an accountant role user having to pay them from that wallet. If a corp is worried about the financial hit they will get from the lower sale value of Clones to Genolution, they can simply raise the tax level. This however also brings in a certain level of risk as their best players may go another corp willing to tax them less. I'm in favour of a CEO, speaking as one, to have to take this into account in his/her decision as it brings with it consequence, which is what gaming in a single shard universe should be all about. The rest of your post had merit as a personal insight, Kevall, but these three paragraphs are silly. Paragraph one is dismissive of the conversation at hand. You provide no good basis for your statement in paragraph two other than speculation. As stated above, it's frankly irrelevant. Paragraph three just doesn't do the math. Maybe D-UNI makes a lot of ISK from taxes already or something, but as a director in the largest corp fighting in PC I can tell you that tax increases generate nothing compared to clone pack costs. Additionally the bigger problem with clone packs, again as above, is the low number of clones. They're not fun to use, which is a bigger issue. My point is ask you not to speculate when you don't engage with particular mechanics.