July 9th 2013

I failed to see in all their useless charts about the cost of PC battles did they once address the game's problem with how many players were disconnected, or had some game ruining glitch happen...be it frame rate drop or the problems with using a comm channel with too many active mics? How many players started and finished without a re-login to the battle?

"Remember push to talk is your Friend" line from the Dev's.... funny how that is just being swept under the rug....plans for a Comm channel system that works when officers want to talk? (but then again I like telling my buddy that 3 enemies are coming for him because seeing XXX (core flaylocked) Wakko03 just doesn't cut it to properly warn them and I didn't have time in the middle of the gun battle to hit the P2T button.

Not even going to discuss when I might be able to hit back against the ship in orbit, sure they can bomb me on the ground...where is my answer to that?

How about we discuss something like, I don't know ... say how many matches took place across multiple servers? How about the LAG... maybe players were spending so much money on the win/loss because they thought if they had the good stuff they could overcome a LAG problem. So in the instances where it was say America vs Europe or Europe vs Asia who did the lag favor more? With teams made of mixed groups Americans with Europeans and Asians vs say a team of all Europeans (vs Asians, Americans etc.)?

If they have a cargo hub, they can withstand 3 attacks before losing the district. Does this mean that we can have 3 battles in one day as long as we have 100 clones left after the second battle? Or is it limited to only two fights a day?

Thanks for sharing the incoming changes with us, and for trying to fix some of the problems Planetary Conquest have. That said, I can't say that I liked many of those incoming changes. I think they will make PC more static and risk averse than it is now. But I will wait and see before talking about them.


However, there is one thing that has troubled me enough to write about it now. I think you have made harder for new corps to enter PC by themselves. This is because two of the changes you have made:

1) Genolution pack gives you only 100 clones.

2) A follow up attack is only allowed if you win.


1) Means that a corp that has no districts and wants to enter PC, will have to attack at least with a 3 to 1 clone disadvantage, unless they are lucky enough to find a district that is not full.

2) Means that you need to win 2 or 3 battles in a row to take a district. If the defender wins even only one of those battles, he will have 2 reinforcement cycles (160-200 clones) before the next attack, so their clone reserves would be at full capacity again. Which means the attacker is back to the start point in most cases, and makes conquering a district against a better opponent by attrition almost impossible.


The combination of 1) and 2) makes very difficult for corps that are not already in PC to enter Molden Heath by themselves. In most cases, they have to attack with 100 clones against 300, and at least win 2 battles in a row to conquer a district. It is cheaper, yes, but their chances of being successful are lower. They may pull it off if they are a very good corps, but lets be honest here, the very good corps are already in PC.

Will Uprising 1.3 also improve technical issues we had in Planetary Conquest battles?

Promising changes yet I see a potential problem having another battle take place 5 minutes after the first one finishes (assuming the attacker has their 100+ clones remaining from the last match). That gives very little time to basically take a breath and go over what went right/wrong in the previous match.

I say have the next match start ATLEAST 15-20 minutes After so that way both sides can breathe, restock any fittings, devise any alterations to strategies, etc.

Just to clarify this say attacking corp looses, their ally corp initiates follow up attack does corp number 2 also have to wait the 48 hours or would they be able to attack within 24 hours? Essentially being able to tag team a defending district?

What about the followup attack can do you get a second round of clones to steal?

Ok. This are just my thoughts.

I'm a reasonably smart guy. I work in a bookies and I work with numbers daily basis. So the numbers being flung about so far is something I understand. And as I'm reading them in the new blog I had something of an epiphany.

This is incredibly dull.

The level of understanding required to get the most of your districts, risk/reward determinations, profit and loss, attrition rates blah blah bla.........snooze.

I know that their are players and corp that eat this all up with a ladle. But maybe I'm going out on a limb here to say this, I'm guessing these are in the minority.

The vast majority of players just want to shoot things. Nothing more complicated than that. And what they have right now are three options that are in fact just one.

An increasingly stale parade of Pub matches. Too infrequent Faction Warfare that offers nothing as a reward for participation. And Planetary Conquest, so convoluted in its complexity and of such value to an ISK starved economy that corporations are unwilling to allow anyone but their very best players in it, denying a majority access to develop their skill to level where they could participate in PC.

I know a lot of work has gone into PC. But I'm concerned that in is desire to provide consequence in the world of the Dust Mercenary, they've given us a consequence that a majority care little about, because the personal rewards are not tangible enough and the rewards for a corp are too ethereal.

I believe that in terms of engaging and keeping in the game new players and fresh blood, PC is ill conceived as a game mechanic and is more likely to turn them off.

Hopefully the new monthly point build cycle will bring us rapid progress on developing game modes other than the four we have in Pub matches, better rewards for Faction Warfare (gear as salvage that can only be gained in Faction Warfare and unavailable I the market place would be the first way to start) and as for PC....

Every fix so far has been broken by the players and the latest one before it even launched. It's off putting to new players and the latest iteration is going to do nothing to help prevent burnout of players. It's a game, not a second job.

The NPE, corp mechanics, balancing issues, murder taxis, Dropships becoming viable again... these are matters that should've been fixed already before PC was looked at.

I still love playing the game and I'll be here till the servers pack up but I'm just concerned that a priorities need to be realigned before further iteration on PC.

All I can hear is "wahh wahh wahh, our job is so hard". Good for you.
Other people also have complicated jobs and you don't see them explaining themself.

Get things in order, better and faster.
No one wants to listen to excuses.

If we want to make eve players care about Dust, we need to start being able to go after their stuff and make a lot more more ISK doing it.

If you loose the 5 minute reup attack are the attackers supposed to be able to keep the 1 hour attack dibs?

If so when does this 1 hour attack dibs begin? when we enter the MCC on the reupped attack?

Currently we are having issues on issuing the 3rd attack after loosing the bonus round.