Kristoff Atruin
Subdreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
2114
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Posted - 2014.04.23 14:43:00 -
[1] - Quote
There's been all kinds of discussion of integrated PVE ideas, mostly centered around Eve exploration sites, PI, sleeper sites in wormholes, incursions (I kinda like this one, incursions go on for days and have concept art of ground raids by sansha forces already) etc.
I got thinking about these and I think some of the issues with them are high barrier to entry on the Eve side, very short start to finish time on the Eve side or Dust influence not being that interesting (PI). Rather than trying to shoehorn Dust into existing Eve PVE activities, why not create a completely new activity in Eve that is built around Dust? So here's an idea: bombardment missions
These would be very easy to access in highsec. A corporation offers an Eve player a mission to fly to a district and destroy a ground installation, which is protected by a shield, belonging to a competitor or pirate / terrorist group. Where Dust comes in is a seize and defend map, similar to a domination map, where after you break into and take the shield control room you start a countdown and have to survive waves of NPCs. By taking down the shield, you allow the Eve player to destroy the facility on their next strike. On the Eve side, when the player arrives he has to kill a wave of defending ships in order to bombard safely. The trick is that without the Dust involvement he'll be there long enough for more waves of defenders to appear. By working with Dust mercs he increases his profit per hour (isk or LP, depending on the risk of inflation in Eve) and no mingling of Eve / Dust isk is required. When medium / large bombardment weapons get introduced higher level missions could be created. The missions could also be completed with a small gang of ships (brute force), if no Dust players were available.
The same type of mission could be available in non-FW lowsec with much higher payouts to the Eve and Dust players, with one difference - the battle finder includes an option to attack people attempting these missions. So instead of defending against NPCs, you're defending against players.
Some things I like about this idea:
- It doesn't interfere with existing Eve game play, so it shouldn't create riots over the console plebs invading "their" game
- It could provide a really meaningful benefit to Eve players without having to achieve full economic integration first, or creating new industry mechanics to consume new resources
- Due to the above it could probably be built sooner rather than later
- Risk and reward scaling
- Introduces new players to orbital bombardments without requiring them to join FW
- Gives Eve players an incentive to go into FW for non-pvp purposes in fairly inexpensive ships, which means pvp content. It's been a long standing complaint that lowsec in Eve is dead, because the rewards are so low and the risk so high for PVE.
I think something like this would be a very positive step in enhancing our involvement in Eve and creating a positive impression of Eve / Dust integration. Just have to figure out how to match up a specific team with a pilot. Do the mercs auto deploy when he accepts the mission? Is there a special module he fits to drop you into the district, and if so how does he fit that without gimping his ship? Also either team deploy is needed for this, or it has to be a game mode that is based around a single squad. |