Ok, then what recommendation for overhauling PC do you have that will allow small corps to compete but eliminate the ATM-like behavior of the PC system we have now? Keep in mind that as of right now all of Molden heath is locked down.

I've been telling them for 8 months that passive ISK generation has no place in this game. They also need to fix the exploits regarding the clone packs, so you can't lock and profit.

Other than that I don't see they need to do much else, The truth is that they're working on PC 2.0 (last we heard anyway, might have changed), so there's really no reason to try and overhaul PC completely at this point. Let them work on PC 2.0 and improvements for FW as these things are what's really important, whereas doing a complete overhaul of PC only to replace it with PC 2.0 in not too long wouldn't be.

Just because MH is almost completely locked down (except there's still plenty of daily matches) doesn't mean there would be more activity if it wasn't. I believe there were around 30-40 daily attacks before, which means that people were also farming ISK without locking their districts.

A timer-less system will destroy the ability to anyone to defend their territory. Whoever's in a different time zone will always take it, and the no-show matches will make the game boring for the attackers. People need to realize that timers are a good thing, and they're here to stay.

The ISK generation is most definitely the largest issue. It should COST money to hold a district, but you should MAKE money fighting on it. So the only way to profit on a district will be heavy combat on it. Therefore, it's only worthwhile to hold as many districts as you need to get all your players involved in combat regularly.

The ISK generation as it is, has to go. I'm actually shocked and amazed to this day that CCP didn't do an emergency fix for district locking. It should never have been allowed to get this far out of control. As it is, by the time the player market releases, income will be radically unbalanced.

(Note, that when the infinite orbitals exploit was discovered, CCP did a fix over a weekend. I feel in some ways, district locking's ramifications might be far worse.)

The ISK generation as it is, has to go. I'm actually shocked and amazed to this day that CCP didn't do an emergency fix for district locking. It should never have been allowed to get this far out of control. As it is, by the time the player market releases, income will be radically unbalanced.

(Note, that when the infinite orbitals exploit was discovered, CCP did a fix over a weekend. I feel in some ways, district locking's ramifications might be far worse.)

The reassignment of True Grit wouldn't have slowed or altered development of PC 2.0. The work is merely being continued by another as yet identified team in Shanghai.

Identification of who is doing what will no doubt come when the Dev blogs start to arrive, hopefully within the next week.

Also, there has been a lot of new talent brought in by Rouge since taking over. You only need look at the jobs page for that. For instance CCP Z is the new monetisation manager, I'm assuming in charge of how to boost Aurum sales. That role was I believe wrapped into the marketing department, who frankly don't have a clue as to to the technicalities of the game.

I remember seeing an AI programmer job, so that's likely work being begun on a form of PvE. Right now on the jobs page they're looking for:

Gameplay Engineer- Network
Physics Programmer
Programmer- Build Engineer
Senior 3D Artist
UI Designer (whoever gets this job is going to get a lot of feedback from me

And other jobs have been filled as well. It's clear that CCP are giving Rouge all the resources he needs to make the game better. The news blackout has been in place while he's being doing all the changes to the design processes being done in Shanghai.

Its clear to me that he's learned from the mistakes of the past 2 years and he isn't going to promise or say anything till a) he knows it can be done and b) has the team in place to actually do it.

A timer-less system will destroy the ability to anyone to defend their territory. Whoever's in a different time zone will always take it, and the no-show matches will make the game boring for the attackers. People need to realize that timers are a good thing, and they're here to stay.

The ISK generation is most definitely the largest issue. It should COST money to hold a district, but you should MAKE money fighting on it. So the only way to profit on a district will be heavy combat on it. Therefore, it's only worthwhile to hold as many districts as you need to get all your players involved in combat regularly.

The big thing moving outside Molden Heath will do, is it will give EVE players a reason to engage with DUST players. My alliance would participate if it wasn't a two hour trip for no strategic or financial benefit.

In regard to the OP getting rid of timers would be a very bad idea. You want to make PC into a job? Make sure you have to be on 24/7 to ensure a team doesn't try to stealth capture your district. I could see moving to a window system (district is vulnerable for 2 to 3 hours) where the district can be attacked at will, but even this has the potential to lead to empty fights.

The fact is that empty fights get boring very quickly, but players will generally gravitate towards gameplay that provides the most benefit for the least effort (see district locking). An FPS game where people don't actually fight isn't going to be something that is very compelling.

Then what alternative do you have? Or do you think Mobius' alternative is a better idea? See link below for his alternative idea.

https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1892076#post1892076

Again, I think a lot of the issues stem from passive ISK, which is compounded by the clone pack refund. Players will gravitate towards what is most profitable and no corp is going to want to spend hundreds of millions a day for long keeping their district locked up.

Good dustcussion, peeps.

This is one of several reasons i think a robust & flexible player/corp contract system is important to the evolution of the game. I put it above the player market and PVE in terms of what DUST needs to succeed.

District-holders could make auto-defense contracts for district defense when they could not be on to defend. These contracts could specify preferred corps, preferred mercs, pre-specify squad leader spots by corp membership and/or merc name.

The system should allow the use of an extensive list of variables(K/D, W/L, WP, ?, ?,...) with a robust set of logical tools, mathematical operators and conditions for both contract qualification and payout conditions. As an example of a robust system, consider Grismar's search tools. This is not a simple task for CCP but not a terribly tough one either, but the payouts from a contract tool like this will be tremendous in terms of immersive, social, player-driven, story-generating content.

And ofc the same tool would be used later to facilitate PVE drone-maintenance contracts - experienced district-holding PVP corps would issue contracts to younger PVE corps tyring to build a reputation and get their foot in the door for district ownership. Again, the social capital that comes out of this is significant.

Imo there is no other tool that CCP could add to the sandbox that would generate more story or more depth for New Eden.

P.S.: In thinking about this, we really need the game to maintain a permanent record of the end-of-match rankings(with additional pertinent stats) for every battle. This is also a feature that has tremendous positive social implications for the game.

Vrain, your system sounds unnecessarily complicated. It's likely to be excessive in terms of UI, and not particularly user friendly. A better mechanic is to do contracts the way EVE does them. They have a collateral. Anyone can accept the contract, but the contractor has set both a collateral and a reward. They pay the collateral when they accept the contract, if they succeed, they get both their collateral back, as well as the reward. If they fail, you get the collateral. So if the team you contracted loses the match, you get that collateral to soften the blow or use to acquire another district or whatever.

Setting a high collateral will ensure that only corps who are confident they can succeed will take your contract. However, if the reward is too low, they won't bother.

Regarding expansion outside of Molden Heath, I say wait until we are sure that PC 2.0 is working as intended. Considering the current problems, wouldn't it have been even worse if there were more districts?

Lets get it right, or at least make sure it is workable, before expanding outside of Molden Heath.

Pretty much this.

Unless PC locking is fixed first, opening more regions will just introduce more ATMs and this more excessive ISK flooding the market.