Verek Locusti
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Posted - 2013.11.07 00:45:00 -
[1] - Quote
From what I've read/experienced, these are the pros & cons of the past sp events. Disclaimer: lot of assumption.
True Triple SP
Pros: Immediate and tangible returns on time invested, no added time investment required to receive event rewards, rewards active players slightly more than afkers, no cap increase locks afk farmers out of farming faster.
Cons: Afk farmers receive only slightly less sp rewards than active contributors.
Overall Community Response: Unanimously Positive (from what I've read, I missed this event and so do not actually know how bad afk farming was at the time)
I'd say the biggest pros are the immediate rewards, and no extra time investment, as players could stop before capping, get to the cap or play after cap and know all the sp they got was tripled, as opposed to the following event that gave zero reward until reaching a significant time investment, and then requiring yet more time invested to receive the full (or even a tangible) sp gain.
Double SP Cap
Pros: Higher potential SP gains for the week.
Cons: Absolutely zero reward for players investing an average (I know that's subjective) amount of time, higher cap encouraged & allowed players to afk farm for a > average amount of time.
Overall Community Response: Majority Negative
While this event was designed to combat afk farming, it inadvertently punished most active players, requiring you get >190k SP before you start seeing any rewards, and even more time before those rewards become noticeable/worthwhile. For anyone who didn't go over the normal 190k (me) it was just a week of normal SP gains while looking at an insurmountable cap (missed potential SP) and dealing with the frustrations of MCC loungers.
Many players who condemn afk farming did it themselves, as 190k a week on a single character is as much as some people can do, double that and it became unattractive/infeasible/impossible for a lot of players to gain a substantial amount of the possible bonus SP without turning to afk farming, made more possible/attractive because you were able to do it for a longer period of time without hitting the cap.
Triple Active SP and Weekly Cap
Pros: Rewards active players with a (slight) increase to SP gains, higher potential SP weekly SP gain.
Cons: Afk farmers can still greatly benefit, providing a bonus only to WP:SP gain may punish newbs/noobs/players in certain roles, greatly increased cap extends the window players can/must afk farm to gain substantial benefits.
Overall Community Response (so far): Mixed (leaning toward negative from what I can see)
While I'm certainly going to enjoy increased sp gains, again, I don't believe I'll be using a whole lot more than 190k of my bonus SP. Only increasing gains based on WPs also seems to reward certain classes/play styles over others. Vets will most likely see much higher gains from the event than new players, logis will almost certainly be the top earning group, we'll also probably see a lot more uplink/nanohive nade spam this week as well. This could result in new players, or players in non logi support roles, earning little more than they would if they were afk farming, and at that point why wouldn't they afk farm?
Increasing the cap gives players more potential SP, but as stated earlier reaching the cap then becomes largely infeasible for a good portion of the community, at which point only hardcore grinders and afk farmers will benefit. Imo, most of the non-hardcore grinding community will benefit more from this event mixing active participation with a ton of MCC lounging. With a largely increased cap people will also be able to afk farm for a larger duration of the event, which will likely result in a much more prevalent afk population for the entirety of the event.
It seems that the majority of players are active, with only a few afk farming, but the opposite is true when the cap is increased, as then afk farming becomes the only attractive/possible way to get significant/any rewards from events of this nature. From all I've read it seems like afk farming was less of an issue when all gains were tripled, and most people that played enjoyed the event overall, while the double cap event that followed was a debacle, and this event is being looked upon poorly (although that could be in part because of CCP's apparent lack of attention to issues the community had with our last SP event, or the this one wasn't adequately described).
All in all, it sounds to me like it'd be better to offer rewards to the community as a whole (including a few non-contributing assholes) without increasing the time to cap, as all attempts to punish afkers so far have also negatively affected a large amount of active players (without deterring afkers, and actually increasing the amount of afking we see during event periods). |