jodgi

I've wanted to do this for the longest time. Doing instance tests in a "scientific" manner is a cakewalk. The OW speed readout is not dampened and the numbers change too quickly over small timespans, that makes recording numbers almost pointless for use in comparison graphs. If there is some magic you can do to the readout to make it more human readable (in lack of a better term) I could serial produce graphs to snuff out these imbalances. Alternatively: The process of finding suitable ships, with similar woods, similar or no upgrades/perks/mods/guns and so on is an extremely tedious thing. Then you have to grab a buddy, sail alongside and observe speed diff. We're still in anecdotal country and errors in observation, wood, mods, perks, guns... can sneak up on us easily. Maybe some bright minds can think of an adequate and effective way of getting this done? It's been at the back of my mind all this time but I've found no way of doing it properly.

Shouldn't the little ones have something going for them? I'm sure it's historical for big ships to be deathstars to smaller ones, but does the game get better if big ships can kill the crew of little ships that work hard at staying out of the gun arcs? Derp guns could provide quite a bit of entertainment and frustration and we could fill our meme thread with our own versions of these:

I did not know. It's both amusing and worrying. I remember I farmed an afk santi when I was starting out in a Cutter. I simply thought I was lucky to turbo-charge an already quick grind. Does this statistic include both PVE and PVP battles? I can understand why PVE grinders clicked out. Farming without big waves was more time effective and less demanding on actual gunnery skill. Same story with PVP, actually. Oh, dear... Exactly what you would expect from auto-skipper santi drivers.

You know nothing... <hides>

I was referring strictly to all those things that are never used in crafting. I have no opinion on smuggler flag. Ye, lemme go so the grown-ups can talk. Hah! I actually used the pray button a lot. VNC from work to home puter - fire up scumbag alt - ventre all the fine Bcedar home - tell tinytask to click pray to avoid disco - travel home, make dinner, eat dinner, clean up, read the news, notice time - guide ventre to freeport - trade main - click optimal ships for friends. Spent some cash (You're more than welcome GL oxoxo) and 15 min to get the rarest thing in the game. Ya, so don't knock the pray button, infidel!

Ooohh, that sounds ominous. Sounds like some form of trader speed-nerf? A ventre can deny good tag and run from any ship in the game if the driver is awake. What else could it be?!

Oh, boy! I'm so relieved! Why would connie bp default to marks instead of resources?

It is indeed very hard to start off crafting. I will certainly not set out to poop ships right off the bat as that demands fantastic dedication to gameplay I honestly view as a waste of my time. Getting money is extremely boring no matter how you go about it. But Even I can visualize what they're trying to set in motion with a fully player driven economy. You only need to produce a dozen resources to make a connie, and it is possible among a handful of friends to get the supply chain going, even with no outside help. When enough people do this there will be surplus resources that you can sell to fund your production. Then there's the hauling. If these fifth percentile hauler type players are busy role-playing trader with people's crafting resources instead of fox fur that would offload some of the transporting downtime for most players who wince at the thought. I mean, here we have this tiny group of players wanting a place in this game, we give them an actual job but they're too busy getting rich moving artifacts around!?

The idea of having to grind PVE marks to click out a connie fills me with oppressing sadness.

I believe the idea is to have less emphasis on missions and nudge haulers into transporting stuff that crafters need. If traders are busy making easy money trading useless things crafters will suffer. Missions in their current form are a problem for the player driven economy. Maybe we will have trade missions generated from player's sell and buy contracts?

If this ever becomes a thing after those scandals and rumours, then sure, I along with everyone else will try it out. How many years have they been taking people's money? This has to end in glory or utter failure with an angry mob who's lost 150 mill combined. Everything looks and sounds really cool but there's this voice in my head that says it'll end up like a PVE shitfest.

Consider that most players that bought the game haven't been near a PB.

What is useful for you for us to test? Edit: Ventre not a normal ship? Very interesting...

Yet it's not enough to force people out by taking away teleports, tho that can help. A positive snowball effect will happen when people can go out for PVP not worrying about losing.

Hehe, "Only" makes it sound so innocent.

Factor in people like me, then. On live I've hoarded enough to support my small group of friends through quite a few months. It just sits there for when we need it. I don't bring it to market because I play to have fun with ships and not make (useless to me) money. I don't look for ways to play the market because it is vastly more boring to me than fighting ships. All your eco theories work on people because we need to eat and need a place to sleep as a prerequisite to enjoy life. In EVE the eco stuff works because that game has shitty fighting mechanics, everyone there came for "spreadsheets in space" and possibly some RvR "fighting". I believe the balancing of the NA economy is going to be a tremendous pain to get right, if at all possible. I'll be blown away if we reach the critical mass of eco motivated players to make it work.

Ok, that's scary. Didn't realize it was that bad. I guess I must come clean. I was one of the guys who asked for nerfing of upgrades because I used them, and I had too much advantage over new guys.

Don't worry, you don't have to be good in everything. As things stand now it looks like a medium intensity grind, which you can can do against bots, and then you're done. To fully unlock one ship's potential they're asking for a time commitment to a few ships. You can auto-skipper and play as lazily as you like and still get it done. I'd argue we can do the grind quicker by emplying low-brow "tactics" like downwind carro broadside smashing and bringing fleet bots.

I wonder what you all think is the single most important factor that will draw people to this game but more importantly keeps them hooked on playing? To do this exercise we need to put our own tastes aside and try to identify the factor that affect as large a selection of players as possible in the most statistically significant way. The most common denominator in the largest group possible. Kill your babies and identify that one most important thing...

"Thank you"!?!?!? You should be gasping in shock and disbelief!

The only thing I can help you with is forever open rat on rat battles. No join timers.

I tried to plunk it into a perm slot without effect. You prolly mean those unlockable skill slots? I need to grind bots to unlock that, sigh... maybe I should, for the science.

Came across this in a capped trinco: No idea what it is or what it does. I clicked "use" but there is no visible clue as to what it did. @admin or @Ink: I made a F11 report of missing dock slots after I paid for expansion. It didn't work at first but when I came back to the game later there was more room in my docks. I like the fact that people will have to seriously gimp their fighting capabilities if they want to drag bots around. Everyone will spend that one point to be able to cap and keep a ship, so that one's mandatory. 3 pts for one fighting bot and the ability to cap and keep a ship is ok I guess. If you go 4 pts for FC2 and 8 pts for FC3 you would REALLY have to prioritise dragging bots around. That's one little thing you can do for OW PvP without taking all choice away from those disruptive bot lovers. Does anyone know how crafting works now, or should/will work? I could make a frigate now from the get go, is it the old chance to drop system to gain bp or access bigger ships? It would be terrific to know before I start all that because all things resources and mats seems like a much bigger pain now. Traders can now get rich with that mindless displacement of virtual sea water. I wonder how people who prefer to only have fun in this game fighting ships, and preferably player controlled ships, are supposed to get by? Most things about the new NA seems to be one or several steps in the right direction, but I can't spot the enabling of fighter only players. Then there's the announced lulzy rat ROE that excludes competitive players from going rat. Also, timers longer than two minutes is a massive caveat for competitive players. No, I will not stop saying it as it is one of the most important things for solo and small group hunters. Be careful listening to the "I wanna help my friend" (translation: I wanna gank intruders) and "I want big boom many ships fight" guys. They say they love PvP but it is some form of Forrest Gump PvP where everything happens by chance with a snowball effect on top. Powderhorn talked about his vision of a deliberate, skill and planning based NA today, he can never have that with lolROE.

Stannis McMannis! I was actually constructing a post much like this and I'm happy to see others can see clearly as well as saving me a few minutes of typing. Where have you been hiding mr. smexy? How can I have missed a person like yourself?! If you want to get people out in the OW and be available for PvP the right question to ask is: "How do we make people want to go out and fight even if they stand to lose roughly half their battles?"