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Author Topic: [Everything is RP] Incursion Culture  (Read 10833 times)

Katrina Oniseki

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Re: [Everything is RP] Incursion Culture
« Reply #30 on: 09 Aug 2013, 19:36 »

I'd also like to posit - how is Sansha's repeated presence despite being farmed any closer to 'winning' than Sleepers respawning, or pirate Anomalies, or DED plexes, or any other respawning PvE content? Does that mean every NPC faction is winning since they keep coming back? If several Guristas 10/10 in Deklien sit there and don't get done, is Goonswarm 'losing the war' against Guristas? If a backwater system in Black Rise isn't getting ratted, does that mean the State is 'losing the war' with the Guristas?

Why is that argument good for incursions but not for other PvE?

Similarly, the numbers have already been pulled in the past, showing that while incursions pay out ridiculous sums of cash per individual, the total Incursions payout is far lesser than total mission and anomaly bounty payout for a given period. That means that CONCORD has for the last ten years been paying us more ISK than they've ever paid on Incursions. Again, the argument that CONCORD is being bled dry by incursions is baseless.

I appreciate and completely empathize that Nation loyalists have had their RP stomped on with Incursion, and they're doing an admirable job of trying to make the best of a spoiled meal... but I think it seriously stretches suspension of disbelief to suggest Nation is winning.

And of course, anybody claiming CONCORD is winning with a straight face is somehow completely missing the fact that the Empires are on the defensive. We don't know where Nation is living (it certainly isn't Stain anymore). We don't know how they use those wormholes, and they've demonstrated the tactical capability to strike wherever and whenever they want (or so it seems). CONCORD is not winning anything.

The concept that Nation is simply waiting for some reason, or toying with the Capsuleers just to screw with us, is entirely more plausible and reasonable. In such a case: I encourage Empire loyalists to respond to this claim with saying, "The longer Kuvakei toys with us, the more time we have to find out where he lives."

DeadRow

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Re: [Everything is RP] Incursion Culture
« Reply #31 on: 09 Aug 2013, 20:26 »

I'd just like to say that I never said Nation was winning anything, merely stated that a good portion of the Incursions that pop up aren't completed and the ones that are are farmed until it starts withdrawing and only then the Mom gets dropped.

I'd also like to posit - how is Sansha's repeated presence despite being farmed any closer to 'winning' than Sleepers respawning, or pirate Anomalies, or DED plexes, or any other respawning PvE content? Does that mean every NPC faction is winning since they keep coming back? If several Guristas 10/10 in Deklien sit there and don't get done, is Goonswarm 'losing the war' against Guristas? If a backwater system in Black Rise isn't getting ratted, does that mean the State is 'losing the war' with the Guristas?

Are Goons losing the war? No. But it does show that Guristas life does go on and aren't being overly hindered by Goons stay in Venal. Hell, they probably don't mind too much if a small fraction of the pilots out there do a couple missions for their agents and help kill a few CONCORD patrols they send up!

Quote
Similarly, the numbers have already been pulled in the past, showing that while incursions pay out ridiculous sums of cash per individual, the total Incursions payout is far lesser than total mission and anomaly bounty payout for a given period. That means that CONCORD has for the last ten years been paying us more ISK than they've ever paid on Incursions. Again, the argument that CONCORD is being bled dry by incursions is baseless.

They aren't paying us more for bounties, they are paying out more because more people kill belt/mission rats. It's two different things really, also that shows that incursions are about ~27% of the bounty pay outs. And that is from players doing 1/4 of the incursions that are typically up. I think CONCORD are thankful that players only do it one incursion at a time :D

That doesn't include LP either. Which, if you do HQ sites, is where most a lot of your isk is. On the other hand, it doesn't include LP from Level5 missions either, which is hilariously high isk income but only it's literally all LP. And not as many people do them.

So yeah, I agree that as it stands now, CONCORD aren't really being strained with regards to payouts.

As to the purpose of the incursions, I don't have a clue since they stopped taking people from planets. For all I know, it could be Kuvakei's way of organising a Mining Op (No one goes to belts during an incursion because of nasty rats!). Distract the capsuleers by kidnapping a few deadspace colonies and dropping a few rebirth stations and let the True Creations guys drain the belts :D

I'm not overly butthurt over incursions because I haven't had to deal with it IC for the past so many years. When they were introduced with the Live Events I was vaguely Nation loyal at that point, but was in Veto and ordered not to participate in said Events. Then I was Anti-Nation/Nation-Neutral for a good 2 years when I went Cartel with Vincent. I've only recently rejoined via TSF.

Again I'd like to stress that I don't think either side is winning. I'm just playing off others responses with some things I had floating around in my head. I try and avoid the subject IC (along with all other PvE interactions) for previously mentioned immersion breaking. Though I find the topic somewhat interesting OOC.
« Last Edit: 09 Aug 2013, 20:31 by DeadRow »
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Saede Riordan

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Re: [Everything is RP] Incursion Culture
« Reply #32 on: 09 Aug 2013, 22:24 »

Quote
The concept that Nation is simply waiting for some reason, or toying with the Capsuleers just to screw with us, is entirely more plausible and reasonable. In such a case: I encourage Empire loyalists to respond to this claim with saying, "The longer Kuvakei toys with us, the more time we have to find out where he lives."

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Morwen Lagann

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Re: [Everything is RP] Incursion Culture
« Reply #33 on: 09 Aug 2013, 23:20 »

Deadie, I don't think anyone was saying that you were suggesting Nation is 'winning'.

It is, however, obnoxiously common (and completely impossible to prove as accurate) rhetoric that is spewed out of the Nation loyalists IC on a regular basis.
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Felix Rasker

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Re: [Everything is RP] Incursion Culture
« Reply #34 on: 09 Aug 2013, 23:41 »

I think its important to remember that most of the player population is comprised of non-RPers who really don't give a damn one way or the other about the storylines that CCP introduces to the game. So it's impossible for CCP to make an expansion feature that severely changes gameplay and threatens the daily activities of the player base majority.

Sure, those of us who really appreciate storytelling and engaging fiction, we'd love to see an Incursion really threaten a system and force cooperation. But to 90% of the population, it's just another group of rats and a way to farm ISK. If the system was denied station access due to Sansha attackers, or PI was denied until the attackers were repelled, the PvE-oriented players would lose their shit. Same reason FW is so full of farmers: they don't actually care if an imaginary nation wins an imaginary war, they just want their LPs.
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DeadRow

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Re: [Everything is RP] Incursion Culture
« Reply #35 on: 10 Aug 2013, 05:09 »

It is, however, obnoxiously common (and completely impossible to prove as accurate) rhetoric that is spewed out of the Nation loyalists IC on a regular basis.

Eh, if so that is hardly limited to Nation Loyalists. There are plenty of things that Characters spout IC that are impossible to prove and stretch my suspension of disbelief.

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Graelyn

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Re: [Everything is RP] Incursion Culture
« Reply #36 on: 12 Aug 2013, 10:12 »

...So it's impossible for CCP to make an expansion feature that severely changes gameplay and threatens the daily activities of the player base majority.

It's totally possible, and easy. A brave CCP would do it.

It's all about what they think a sandbox is. Does it have a life of it's own, that you must fucking cope with or ignore at your peril, or is every grain of sand only meant to be apart of player's-only special sandcastles?
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Lyn Farel

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Re: [Everything is RP] Incursion Culture
« Reply #37 on: 12 Aug 2013, 10:35 »

Eve has half been founded on such principles to me, at best. The tedious farming side of it has always been designed to be more or less safe in high sec, and stable.
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Silas Vitalia

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Re: [Everything is RP] Incursion Culture
« Reply #38 on: 12 Aug 2013, 11:52 »

Eve has half been founded on such principles to me, at best. The tedious farming side of it has always been designed to be more or less safe in high sec, and stable.


Yes, but it is poor game design when the risk/reward ratio is so horrible that you can make such huge sums of money for no risk.   

If you are making lots of money, it should be dangerous and competitive and something you have to fight for.
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Katrina Oniseki

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Re: [Everything is RP] Incursion Culture
« Reply #39 on: 12 Aug 2013, 12:05 »

Eve has half been founded on such principles to me, at best. The tedious farming side of it has always been designed to be more or less safe in high sec, and stable.
Yes, but it is poor game design when the risk/reward ratio is so horrible that you can make such huge sums of money for no risk.   

If you are making lots of money, it should be dangerous and competitive and something you have to fight for.

I'll assume you don't know people lose ships to NPCs in Incursion fleets fairly often. I'll also assume you simply don't know we have to compete for the payout. I'll also assume that you think Level 4s, PI, Manufacturing, and exploration in highsec is also poor game design because you don't have to fight for that either.

People still think that Incursions are SO MUCH MORE profitable than missions, and the reality is that unless you're flying a 5 billion ISK pirate BS in an equally fit vanguard fleet, they are not that much better.

The average HQ fleet does one or two sites per hour, at 31,000,000 ISK paid our per pilot per site before taxes. These are slow fleets that take a long wait just to refill between sites, and take equally long just to shoot the tower. They are rarely optimized for profitability.

HQ Incursions: 62,000,000 /hr

Assault incursions are rarely done, but they pay about 18,000,000 per site per pilot. Finding a fleet that does these is like pulling teeth, last I checked. I have never found a consistent Assault fleet, so I can't comment on the payrate.

Assault Incursions: ???

Vanguard fleets pay 10,000,000 per pilot per site. However, with a high DPS, high tracking pirate BS fleet they can finish a site every 5-7 minutes. That's where the imbalance comes in. Now you're finishing 12-8 sites per hour. If you have an issue with Incursions, look here - not at the entire concept. Changing the NPCs that spawn here to ruin the shiny blap fleets is what would fix this. This has already done once, and the avg payout has gone down because of it.

Factoid: Vanguards had their NPC spawns and their payout nerfed at one point, ruining the site completely. Devs then reversed one of the changes, bringing back some of the profitability afterwards.

Vanguard Incursion: 120,000,000 /hr BEFORE RECENT VG NERF.

Level 4 missions, by the way, yield an average 25,000,000 per site in salvage, loot, and bounties. If you have a good L4 ship and a Noctis, you can finish 2-3 sites an hour. Many more if you have a salvage & loot alt, which many do.

Level 4: 50,000,000 - 75,000,000 /hr

It's also well known that LP is where the money is really at, and if you are willing to screw your faction standings, the tags pay out even more. I'm not an LP guru, so I won't get into the profitability increases between the two. CONCORD LP used to be extremely worthwhile. It's not so much anymore.

Onto the Risk vs. Reward: I will point out that you can and many do make far more in nullsec than they would in highsec. There are I-RED pilots that run 9/10 and 10/10 anoms, and for their risk they earn far more than they would in Incursions. It's more luck based than grind, but they still do make a whole lot. Highsec does not make more money, but highsec does require less effort.

Incursion fleets do lose ships. They lose them a lot. Unless you fly Incursion fleets regularly, you might not realize this. Flying one or two fleets and not seeing anyone die doesn't mean it does not happen. It does, and often.

People are late to call for reps, Logis are busy tying their shoes IRL, somebody popped the trigger, drone-guy didn't kill the jamming frigate... plenty of reasons. Unless you fly a shitfit Tech 1 battleship, losing your ship in any Incursion fleet negates that much income from your grinding. It's a huge loss, and it DOES count towards Risk vs Reward.

Players are not the only ones that can introduce risk. Just because you are not the one who comes in and pops that Vindicator does not mean it doesn't ever die.

Again, Vanguards are really an exception. These smaller fleets are often making enough money to pay for their ships many times over by the time they lose them - which is rare. They pay attention, they know what they are doing, and they have invested enough time and money into their ships to make sure they are operating at maximum efficiency. Isn't this knowledgability and attention and effort worthy of some respect? They aren't AFK while doing these sites. Isn't that what you demand of low/nullsec moneymaking? Or is the problem that YOU are not the one who gets to blow up their ship?

I know that it's popular to say "INCURSIONS ARE OP, NO RISK, ALL REWARD", but I disagree. There is risk and the reward is (except Vanguards) negligible compared to existing gameplay.

Pimpfitting a carebear ship is not something new. Making crazy cash in highsec is not something new. It's not something Incursions popularized either. They are a scapegoat, in my opinion, for the ganking crowd who can't effectively gank them. Incursions ships require a buffer tank, which is the bane of gankers everywhere. People don't complain about L4 pimpfit carebears because they run active tanks which are easily ganked and looted. Instead, they complain with salivating jowls about Incursion fleets, clusters of faction/deadspace/officer fit battleships that aren't so easily popped.

The problem isn't that Incursions as a whole are imbalanced. The problem is that gankers can't gank.
« Last Edit: 12 Aug 2013, 12:42 by Katrina Oniseki »
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Victoria Stecker

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Re: [Everything is RP] Incursion Culture
« Reply #40 on: 12 Aug 2013, 13:30 »

The problem isn't that Incursions as a whole are imbalanced. The problem is that gankers can't gank.

Then they need to get better at scanning down link ships and popping those, then watching fleets die as their tanking ability drops by 25-50%

I've actually pondered how much fun it would be to run a corp that focused on wardecs against incursion-based corps.
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Felix Rasker

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Re: [Everything is RP] Incursion Culture
« Reply #41 on: 12 Aug 2013, 13:39 »

...So it's impossible for CCP to make an expansion feature that severely changes gameplay and threatens the daily activities of the player base majority.

It's totally possible, and easy. A brave CCP would do it.

It's all about what they think a sandbox is. Does it have a life of it's own, that you must fucking cope with or ignore at your peril, or is every grain of sand only meant to be apart of player's-only special sandcastles?

Well dude, I mean... I hate to say it, but, it's the latter one, when profits are concerned.

CCP is a business, and they need to keep their player population as high as possible. I understand that EVE is inherently supposed to be high-risk and perilous, but even there, there are limits to what the average player would take.

Even if we want Incursions and other game features to provide story-driven, serious threats that we can rally around, if CCP delivered, they'd lose some of their players. Considering the cluster never has more than like 40k people, bringing that number down would hurt. Most players, like I mentioned before (LP farmers, Incursion farmers, etc) don't want a struggle. They want to be comfortable and assured of victory from the beginning, because they consider anything else to be a waste of time. Why fight a difficult, imposing foe, when you can make a couple hundred mil farming the same plex?

EDIT: I'm not saying it's right, or good for the game environment, or even fun. I'm just saying, it's the state of the average MMO player.
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Morwen Lagann

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Re: [Everything is RP] Incursion Culture
« Reply #42 on: 12 Aug 2013, 13:43 »

The problem isn't that Incursions as a whole are imbalanced. The problem is that gankers can't gank.

Then they need to get better at scanning down link ships and popping those, then watching fleets die as their tanking ability drops by 25-50%

I've actually pondered how much fun it would be to run a corp that focused on wardecs against incursion-based corps.

Gankers are perfectly capable of ganking incursion ships. They just don't want to put together the extra ships to get the necessary alpha because it cuts into their bottom line. Of course, once in a site, ganking incursion runners becomes a two-fold job. Not only must you gank the ships with between 3-15 logi cruisers repping them, you also have to clear the site afterward to even get at the loot, because Incursion sites only despawn when they are completed or the mothership is destroyed.

Also, deccing incursion corps is a complete waste of money and time if you're looking for kills. Because of flagging mechanics, you're not allowed in an incursion fleet if you have a wardec. Period. They'll just dock up and wait for you to get bored.
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Lyn Farel

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Re: [Everything is RP] Incursion Culture
« Reply #43 on: 12 Aug 2013, 14:28 »

Eve has half been founded on such principles to me, at best. The tedious farming side of it has always been designed to be more or less safe in high sec, and stable.


Yes, but it is poor game design when the risk/reward ratio is so horrible that you can make such huge sums of money for no risk.   

If you are making lots of money, it should be dangerous and competitive and something you have to fight for.

I didn't intend it as poor or good game design, just that CCP has never gone fully in a direction and assuming it to the very last bit. A lot of half assed measures for a game that is, granted, still an UFO.

Anyway that kind of mechanics is borked in the first place.

Either you grind to hell in safety to make money but it takes you aaaaages to make a decent amount that will get blown up in 5 sec of pvp. Boring and unsatisfying, better to leave the game.

Or either you go grind in dangerous space for good amounts of money, with the possibility to get blown up at the first gank, so eventually all your gains go into the trashbin regularly.



EDIT : though like you I would sometimes like to see a game where you don't have to go for pimp every time in pve. Where pve could be done in lowsec with actual pvp ships that can reply in force if they are attacked by hostiles. It would mean loss from time to time, but measured loss on a more profitable gain overall (except when you are in a bad day...). I would enjoy the game ten times more if it was not so much centered around money and farm. I'm sick of spending hours of farm to see it vanish in 5 sec every time. It's like paying infamous sums of money to get into a themepark lasting 5 min.
« Last Edit: 12 Aug 2013, 14:31 by Lyn Farel »
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Silas Vitalia

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Re: [Everything is RP] Incursion Culture
« Reply #44 on: 12 Aug 2013, 15:41 »

I wasn't talking about Incursions specifically, just the general concept that the less risky something is, the less ISK should be farmed from it.

It's a fundamental thing about the entire direction of the game:  CCP tells us for years how 'badly' they want to push people out of highsec into the more conflict oriented elements of low and null, and then refuse to adjust any game design to make this happen. 

The carrots aren't big enough to cajole people out of highsec, and the sticks are too painful for many highsec residents to bother leaving their chosen gameplay for places they can be shot.





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