Leither Yiltron
Ahrendee Mercenaries
854
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Posted - 2014.04.07 03:17:00 -
[1] - Quote
So I'd like to preface the response with saying that my objective here is to find the most tolerable place we can get PC1.0 with minimal resources. That seems to be Kane's approach as well. It's pretty obvious by this point that many of the core PC mechanics conspire to create a hostile environment...and the only way that's getting fixed is by redoing PC. Since that's NOT what we're discussing here, these are the things I'm keeping in mind while responding:
1. There's really no hope of a hotfix making ownership of land a relevant, fun, or engaging metagame. That means there's no reason to talk in circles about how to make an environment where big wars and cool dynamics flourish with a hotfix. Simply put, it's more reasonable to give up on this entirely and start from there.
2. Given that lack of background changes, it's unreasonable to expect that any hotfix-able changes can make it common for newer or less elite teams than the current ones to hold land. That they can't at the moment is caused by the mechanics of PC1.0, not just the numbers.
3. The primary objective with PC1.0 then is to put it in a state where a lot more players have the opportunity to engage in frequent, coordinated, competitive fights without facing a gigantic barrier to entry. On the flip side it's a careful balance not to make the barrier too low. If that happens then we'll be left with an equally dead Molden Heath because the current owners will spam out newcomers and current participants alike with bogus attacks.
Okay, on to the response:
Kain Spero wrote:
Turn off clone auto sale or reduced passive clone sales to 60k and increase biomass from battle to 160k
Make it where you only get ISK for clones killed in battle, which will tie up some loose ends potential locking for profit.
I'd like to recommend this go a step farther and recommend flat out making ANY clone sales off districts 0 ISK and leave the biomass value at 100k. It has taken me a long time to come to this conclusion, but I'm resolved that it would be for the best in making PC1.0 modestly tolerable. A note on 100k: really nice proto suits cost around 200k on the high end. As the winner of a match you will receive 200k/death minimum as long as your team has an average 1.0(clone)KDR. Usually it's a good bit more, 100k's a good sweet spot.
Without passive ISK generation the three primary reasons to own districts are (A) bragging rights and (B) free clones (C) choosing battle times. Current landowners would still have an incentive to own districts because:
The clones cost 0ISK/clone rather than 110k/clone
The defenders choose the time of the battle
They make money whenever they win a defense
This would also close the pathetically massive low-risk ISK faucet that PC1.0 has become. Yes, there's plenty of opportunity for attacking your own districts to extract ISK, but this would require MORE labor than locking or the current method of doing nothing. Additionally even if you did lock your own districts with clone moves (clone packs are completely unsustainable) you'd make a whole lot less than you do now. It simply wouldn't be worth it.
The second bullet point quoted is a good suggestion in general. It opens up a few more harassment opportunities involving no-show battles, but it would cement attacking your own districts as an economic impossibility.
In general these changes would make PC1.0 a hilarious ISK-sink if you really wanted to treat it as a war ground. The meta would inevitably involve spending huge pools of ISK on spamming attacks, but that's fine. After all, what are going to do with the districts after you get them?
Kain Spero wrote:
Implement a district transfer function so that a corporation doesn't have to use a clone pack to get into PC and also open up possibilities in terms of how conflicts are resolved outside of battle.
Add an option at the end of battle to liquidate loot for ISK, so that even when a battle is lost you still have a way to make ISK out of it or come close to breaking even.
To the first, yes. To the second, a bit of discussion. In general mitigating some of the risk factors for the losers in PC is a rather critical piece of encouraging fights. Liquidating loot sounds like it would take a goodly amount of dev time to implement though. I'm more open to something along the lines of a fixed multiplier of the winner's pool paying out to the losers. In effect that makes it cheaper to play, but you still have to lose clones to get the refund. Say around 1/4th of the winner's pool (I'm throwing a number out). As the loser you're going to make 50k/death at a 1.0KDR in this system. To be clear, the winner would still get the full pool.
Kain Spero wrote:
Increase Clone Pack Size to 200 Clones at 80 million ISK a piece.
For the clone pack sizes and prices, I'd recommend a number in the window from 150-200. Instead of 400k/clone (80m/200 clones) the cost needs to be much lower. I'd say around 135k/clone at least. Otherwise it's just completely unsustainable. Most players by themselves could make 400k (high balling, not profit but pure ISK) in the span of 2 pub matches. If a 16 man team needed to buy 10 clones for each player at the 400k rate, it would take each guy all the ISK from 20 matches to buy them. Just for the pleasure of one PC game with whatever likelihood of losing!
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Leither Yiltron
Ahrendee Mercenaries
854
|
Posted - 2014.04.07 03:33:00 -
[2] - Quote
These I don't like:
Kain Spero wrote:
Make clone moves a minimum of 200 clones so that a district is weakened when an attack is launched and help minimize the snowball effect of owning many many districts.
I get that this is an attempt to prevent the recurrence of "spam the clones!" tactics in "big" wars, but I've given up on PC1.0 supporting meaningful wars anyways. With that in mind, upping the minimum clone move hurts players with fewer districts to their name because they have more to lose (as a percentage of holdings) if their district becomes vulnerable. The only thing that's going to stop the current landowners from taking land that they want is a lack of incentive.
Kain Spero wrote:
Explore the idea of opening another Region of space in Dust 514 Planetary Conquest to spur activity, but only if the issues with passive ISK are addressed.
I think that more land is a detriment in two ways.
1. The PC playing community has dwindled so far that Molden Heath barely has a handful of active corps. Even if that number improved, the background mechanics of PC still emphasize and allow for small core teams to hold vast swathes of territory with low risk. Until MH seems active there's no reason to open up more districts that will just stagnate.
2. Since we're anticipating an eventual rework of PC anyways, opening up more territory means more clean up when a proper system gets introduced. Even worse it might make CCP feel obligated to experiment with PC2.0 more widely (geographically) than necessary.
Kain Spero wrote:
Add the ability for any Eve pilot to connect to a district and fire for either team. This would allow freedom of association when it comes to alliance membership and allow Dust matches to be content for all of New Eden.
The Eve-Dust integration is crap, and it's going to remain crap until PC2.0. Molden Heath isn't suddenly going to become a more desirable place to be in Eve with a change like this, so you'd expect the same old guys who are already out here to be the only ones engaged with something like this. Honestly it'd be most likely to bolster the influence of the current land-owning party and little else. That isn't accusatory, mind. I get that we'd all like to see SOME improvement to the Dust-Eve link in PC, but this isn't it.
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