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Aran Abbas
Goonfeet
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Posted - 2013.07.05 08:10:00 -
[1] - Quote
A long time ago in an Internet Spaceship game you're all familiar with, pilots were unable to directly warp onto gates. Instead they could only warp 15km distance from them. The reasoning behind this decision was that CCP wanted to make travel hazardous, provide opportunity for those that wished to fight and kill, make the galaxy seem larger, and gates were that natural chokepoint that would allow this.
People, however, have an inherent tendency for risk aversion and to seek any and all advantages to survival and time, and so some enterprising pilot soon came up with the idea of bookmarks that would allow him to warp directly onto gates. The mechanics of how bookmarks worked are not as important as the effect on the game. Bookmarks sucked up server/database resources, and as more and more pilots learnt of the advantages of bookmarks the number of them in game grew exponentially until the load on the server became catastrophic.
The devs of course tried various workarounds to prevent the use of these bookmarks, but without success. Just as soon as a stopgap solution had been implemented the players found a way around it, until eventually CCP learnt an important lesson about player behaviour and allowed warping directly onto gates and removed the bookmarks. Overnight the lag reduced and EVE is a much better, faster game for it.
Dust has a similar problem in AFKing.
AFKing exists because mercs are able to draw an advantage from it, increase their rewards while minimizing their risks, making use of their limited time for competing tasks. Currently, the problem with AFKing is mostly limited to the irritation it causes the other players on the AFKers team. However, any merc in game is using server resources, and as the total number of Dust mercs (hopefully) grows, the amount of load that these inactives put on the server will also grow.
CCP will of course attempt to fix the problem in various ways, as they tried with bookmarks in EVE. First they will remove skillpoint gain for mercs in the MCC. So players will simply AFK on the ground beneath the MCC. Then to counter that CCP will remove skillpoint gain for those in the redline. So players will simply AFK one step outside the redline, behind a rock. After that, there's nowhere else to go really, other than to remove skillpoint gain for time spent in game. This, of course, would increase the perception of Dust's grind. So you might increase warpoints to counter that, but this would increase the skillpoint gap between active good and organised players and casuals.
My point is, as with bookmarks in EVE there is no way to keep time linked skillpoint gain in Dust without players finding a simple workaround, whilst removing it altogether and increasing the rewards for activity just increases the gap between the better and older mercs versus newbies. Newbies, of course, are the lifeblood of any game and if they stop coming the game dies a slow but certain death. So, rather than jump through the million hoops that CCP did with bookmarks in EVE before capitulating to the logical thing, CCP ought to do it with Dust early on in its history. And just what is that logical thing?
Remove in-game time based skillpoint gain and add that 'lost' weekly 190k to passive skillpoint gain. No more AFKers. Reduced load on server. Reduced teammate irritation. No greater increase in the gap between better and older mercs versus newbies than exists currently. |
Aran Abbas
Goonfeet
Top Men.
151
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Posted - 2013.07.05 08:47:00 -
[2] - Quote
steadyhand amarr wrote:Iv been calling for passive only gain since day 1 they will never do it though
Never say never. Some thought they would never implement Warp to Zero in EVE, but it happened. Very late in the day and when bookmarks had effectively ruined the game, but it did happen.
Let us hope CCP don't wait until Dust becomes a slideshow before they see the sense in this. |
Aran Abbas
Goonfeet
Top Men.
154
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Posted - 2013.07.05 10:48:00 -
[3] - Quote
BL4CKST4R wrote:But won't it make getting active SP a grind with no bonus SP? The split between veterans and noobs is already there and never going away. I think its just time to uncap SP and increase the rewards for actually playing i.e more SP for more WP. At least with this noobs only have to grind for a month instead of six to be competitive.
If the current 190k active sp was added to the passive sp - even though you'd still be getting the same sp overall - the perception of the grind would decrease, simply because you wouldn't feel you needed to play in order to stay competitive. We're all trying to keep up with the Jones'. It's human nature. Even when we might not want to play we do, just so we don't fall behind on the sp escalator. |
Aran Abbas
Goonfeet
Top Men.
154
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Posted - 2013.07.05 11:05:00 -
[4] - Quote
hooc roht wrote:A better solution would be to eliminate the SP/leveling system all together.
Not only would it solve the AFK problem but would solve a 100 other problems this game has.
I think this particular vision for Dust is well outside the scope of the discussion in this thread. What I will say is that such a thing would change the soul of Dust completely, and would perhaps seem alien to New Eden. |
Aran Abbas
Goonfeet
Top Men.
155
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Posted - 2013.07.05 13:43:00 -
[5] - Quote
Orion Vahid wrote:Is OP saying remove passive SP gain?
The passive SP gain you get from time spent in a match, yes, not the passive SP gain you get just from having an account. The latter I would have increased. |
Aran Abbas
Goonfeet
Top Men.
156
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Posted - 2013.07.05 13:57:00 -
[6] - Quote
semperfi1999 wrote:interesting reason to make basically all SP gain passive.....but this will never be done. CCP set up the game so that time in game is how you earn most of your SP because they want ppl to have to spend hours playing their game to max out. If you got a reasonable rate of return for your WP/SP conversion then I would probably only need about 10-15 games to max out in a week.
The thing is, the reason a lot of us log in and why a lot of people AFK is artificial. It exists because of in-game time-based SP gain. Take away that artificial reason and yes, fewer people would log in every day on a religious basis. However, they may come to enjoy the game more and see it as less of a job, which will extend the life of the game by reducing player burnout/frustration. |
Aran Abbas
Goonfeet
Top Men.
156
|
Posted - 2013.07.05 13:58:00 -
[7] - Quote
Cyrille Fodeux wrote:I like the idea but to be fair the passive SP should decrease if one doesn-Št play regularily. Also should there be a active part.
The active part I think can be left in from warpoints gained. They're not monumental as is. It would be that nice little cherry on the cake. |
Aran Abbas
Goonfeet
Top Men.
164
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Posted - 2013.07.06 17:15:00 -
[8] - Quote
Thor Odinson42 wrote:If active SP goes away there will be ZERO quality FPS players in Dust.
Passive SP only gives ZERO incentive to play. The only incentive to play Eve is that you are either paying for it or must earn enough ISK to buy Plex.
If the Eve nerds in Dust can't see that then they aren't half the geniuses they think they are.
Strange, I would have thought the primary incentive to play a game should be that it's really fun. Clearly, we disagree on this point. |
Aran Abbas
Goonfeet
Top Men.
165
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Posted - 2013.07.06 17:18:00 -
[9] - Quote
Zyrlux Kytori wrote:This is a absurd idea. CCP makes money from the cash shop. They want people to play to make money. No money means no servers. Furthermore, you don't even need to keep gaining so to stay competitive. First and foremost damage from a proto gun will do proto damage. Always. An older player may have more sp but the gun can only get so strong and his defense so high. Squads can run trains over proto stompers. What's the catch? Well we don't expect you to crush a protostomper straight out of the academy, but just like eve, dust is intense on COOPERATION and without it, just like in eve, you are going to have a hardtime.
Active boosters are not the only means to make money. I expect the sale of BPO's through the merc packs and directly in the cash shop makes them far more money. Also, there will still be passive boosters that will get you an equal amount of sp as one active and one passive currently, so when everything is balanced up sales ought to be the same.
I agree that a group or organised newbies can stomp a lone proto. But then it's more likely that it's the protos that will be organised than the newbies, is it not? That's the reality of the situation. |
Aran Abbas
Goonfeet
Top Men.
217
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Posted - 2013.08.07 16:52:00 -
[10] - Quote
Quite the relevant thread today, aren't we cupcake? |
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Aran Abbas
Goonfeet
Top Men.
218
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Posted - 2013.08.07 19:27:00 -
[11] - Quote
Oso Peresoso wrote:yeah basically. I wish I got skillpoints for the hours I spent in Dust outside of battle in meetings/discussions, fitting suits, doing recruitment, and other corporation admin stuff.
making active SP based entirely or even half on WP would result in a massive shift in the metagame, and not for the better.
Pfft, look at this scrub. He wants to be compensated somehow for herding kittens all day long and giving them a reason to play when CCP hasn't  |
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