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Bring back element life count/element destruction to PvE


Yoarii

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As the saying goes "To every problem, there's solution that is clear, simpl and is completely wrong"

 

First of all, by NQ own admission a sizeable share of crashes, be it newbies or old timers, is still caused by syncing, element lag  issues between client and server.

Bringing environmental damage element life count back would have been conterproductive unless flight model implementation were solid enough

to  declare that sync/element lag crashes are as rare as diamond finds in a septic tank. While NQ has made some progress in this regard, it's still long ways from being optimal. 

 

Disregarding the backend issues, flying in DU, be it atmo or space, already has steep learning curve.  To a new player, muddling through the first few weeks of learing

the ins and out of building and flying a functional ship is punishing enough as it is.  The existing new player conversion rate is good testament to that.  Turning on element

damage will only make the bad situation worse.

 

Veterans don't crash as often as new players, at least i don't (and i carry heavy loads all the time and i'm no Chuck Yeager).  Turning on element life decay outiside PVP will hardly result in inrush of sales. I can only judge by myself, but i imagine unless pilot is a total muppet, the annual PVE crash volume would have been well within single hand finger count.

 

Core limits also put a damper of ship collector audience, which ultimately reduces demand for new parts.

 

On its own, turning PVE element life counters back on would have been a net loss to NQ, from the perspective of subscription service operator.

Naturally it removing elements from the system is absolutely necessary.  But element destruction needs to have a rewarding game loop attached to it in order to be digestable, regardless of the age of playerbase that is subject to it.

 

And that brings us a full circle back to a very old argument, that is NPC rats that can provide challenge and reward even outside PVP environment.  A very few people would argue that EVE online isn't the most dog-eat-dog game out there and without NPC rats it would have never lasted this long.  There were many attempts at no NPC, no quest hubs MMOs over the years

and there's a good reason why none of them are around anymore. 

 

Limping back with from belt mining with 2 out of 3 engines busted with a good story to tell and interesting drop in the hold is sure as hell more interesting than "i burned off random bits while re-entering planet after 5 hours of slowboat" nothingness. Radom encounters along those slowboats would have been a lot more interesting way to remove elements from game.   

 

 

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Its almost time. If the server (and client side) connections could be more reliable and less jittery while coming into high population areas, absolutely.

 

The major sinks in the game right now are taxes, market fees, and schematics (taxes on industry). As much as NQ attempts to make pvp more mainline, it just isn't a big resource sink, otherwise we'd all be buying new pvp ships every few weeks.

 

An alternative would be element decay, or adding the long forgotten power system, both of which would require a large dev.

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The game has infinite production.  It doesn't matter what you do to increase the rate of destruction of elements, there will always be too many elements on the market because infinite production is, well, infinite and means that production will always expand to provide a bit more than is needed.

To make the market work both production and consumption need to be fixed and balanced against one another.  The only way to balance against infinite production is infinite destruction which would probably look like 'elements have a decay and your ship needs to be completely replaced once a month'.

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13 minutes ago, Zeddrick said:

The game has infinite production.  It doesn't matter what you do to increase the rate of destruction of elements, there will always be too many elements on the market because infinite production is, well, infinite and means that production will always expand to provide a bit more than is needed.

To make the market work both production and consumption need to be fixed and balanced against one another.  The only way to balance against infinite production is infinite destruction which would probably look like 'elements have a decay and your ship needs to be completely replaced once a month'.

Probably the best way to do that would be to require constructs stored in a hangar so they wouldn’t have decay. Only when they’re outside in space or on a planet would decay happen. Then certain planets could have more wear and tear than others and cause decay faster. Or have space clouds that move  cause continuous damage.
 

It would be an interesting mechanic to avoid dangerous regions of space or require properly stored ships to avoid decay. Could even have different voxel material prevent decay when on dangerous planets.  🤷🏻‍♂️

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4 minutes ago, Izon2887 said:

Probably the best way to do that would be to require constructs stored in a hangar so they wouldn’t have decay. Only when they’re outside in space or on a planet would decay happen. Then certain planets could have more wear and tear than others and cause decay faster. Or have space clouds that move  cause continuous damage.
 

It would be an interesting mechanic to avoid dangerous regions of space or require properly stored ships to avoid decay. Could even have different voxel material prevent decay when on dangerous planets.  🤷🏻‍♂️

These are all interesting, but the only way to balance *infinite* production (meaning that the game can always produce things at a faster rate) is with actual *infinite* destruction, meaning that you can't avoid it no matter what.  If you make an engine and sit it in a box for 3 months it decays even if never used.  Then the rate of consumption will always increase with the rate of production.

Anything less and items are guaranteed to stockpile eventually and undermine the player driven market.

Of course, limiting the rate of production by character seems like a much more sensible solution but for some reason it doesn't seem to be a popular idea.

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4 minutes ago, Izon2887 said:

Probably the best way to do that would be to require constructs stored in a hangar so they wouldn’t have decay. Only when they’re outside in space or on a planet would decay happen. Then certain planets could have more wear and tear than others and cause decay faster. Or have space clouds that move  cause continuous damage.
 

It would be an interesting mechanic to avoid dangerous regions of space or require properly stored ships to avoid decay. Could even have different voxel material prevent decay when on dangerous planets.  🤷🏻‍♂️

These are all interesting, but the only way to balance *infinite* production (meaning that the game can always produce things at a faster rate) is with actual *infinite* destruction, meaning that you can't avoid it no matter what.  If you make an engine and sit it in a box for 3 months it decays even if never used.  Then the rate of consumption will always increase with the rate of production.

Anything less and items are guaranteed to stockpile eventually and undermine the player driven market.

Of course, limiting the rate of production by character seems like a much more sensible solution but for some reason it doesn't seem to be a popular idea.

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Even if they repeat it every time, there is no infinite production of elements.

The production is limited several times.

Number of players who produce something
Number of schematics that can be bought
Number of ores that are available, these are LIMITED because of time and number of players (MiningUnits and Asteroids)
Number of machines that run sensibly in chord

When an energy system comes, it is further limited
When destruction comes and industrial units need to be replaced, it will be equally hampered.

So at any time in the game there is a limited amount of elements. This is currently only lowered by PvP. But this is probably not due to the players, but to the lack of interest of the players in PvP content.

 

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18 minutes ago, Zarcata said:

Even if they repeat it every time, there is no infinite production of elements.

The production is limited several times.

Number of players who produce something
Number of schematics that can be bought
Number of ores that are available, these are LIMITED because of time and number of players (MiningUnits and Asteroids)
Number of machines that run sensibly in chord

When an energy system comes, it is further limited
When destruction comes and industrial units need to be replaced, it will be equally hampered.

So at any time in the game there is a limited amount of elements. This is currently only lowered by PvP. But this is probably not due to the players, but to the lack of interest of the players in PvP content.

 

Well, there is a limited ore pool I agree, but it has been shown to be so much higher than any sensible level of demand that it probably won't end up being a limiting factor.  And even if it is now, there is a lot of spare capacity there and asteroid mining will add more capability.

Schematics do not limit anything.  There are millions of each type for sale and they are a one-off cost.  For most items the cost is trivial, for the higher tier items (which are a lot less likely to be lost to random PvE destruction) the schematic cost is trivially met by the huge amounts of cash made mission running. 

Number of machines is essentially unlimited, you can have thousands on one core and it works fine.  People have multiple cores with thousands of machines on each.  One can always add another core and get another few thousand machines.  This is not really a practical limit even for one character.

When the energy system comes I imagine it will be just as effective as my umbrella is at stopping all the chocolate from raining on my head.  There is not even a hint of an energy system on the roadmap.  FFS, there isn't even much of a roadmap really.  No amount of imaginary features are relevant to this sort of discussion no matter how long you've been hoping for them.

Same for destruction of industrial units.  In any case, all that does is adds an extra material cost to building something.  It doesn't change the fact that if I'm building 20 things at the same time I can always add another 20 things and have them going as well.  There is nothing practical stopping me from having as many machines as I want really.
 

I get what you're saying about destruction, but the amount of elements which can currently comfortably be generated in the game is so huge next to the amount that PvP would ever sensibly consume that it's a bit like shooting a firehose into a bucket and saying 'we need a bigger bucket to hold all this water' IMO.

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PVP - Ship is cored then it is CORED i.e Elements Blow up, Lives lost voxels explode.  Currently Nano Meta CCS pops and an intact ship can be added a new core and back in operation in 5 minutes........ Most stupid game issue currently!.

 

As for Decay it is NEEDED for the economy.  No ifs, no buts it is is needed or we will continue to be billionaires!

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14 hours ago, Honvik said:

PVP - Ship is cored then it is CORED i.e Elements Blow up, Lives lost voxels explode.  Currently Nano Meta CCS pops and an intact ship can be added a new core and back in operation in 5 minutes........ Most stupid game issue currently!.

 

As for Decay it is NEEDED for the economy.  No ifs, no buts it is is needed or we will continue to be billionaires!

 

The 3 lives work ok "while in combat" but a cored ship should lose all lives. The destroyed elements should then be an in-game item, that can be used with a recycler Industry that gives you small bits back of the production.  This creates a sink, and means looting can matter a little, but not so much that if someone dies in pvp it's literally handing over your ship to them. That won't be sustainable long term, and will also lead to risk aversion. 

 

What's the point of going to fight when I core 4 enemy ships, and I lose 4 ships but they held the grid. Not only do they get their 4 ships back, they get mine too.  That's gonna lead people to not even want to fight.

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All for damage over time of use. Ie an engine might have 100 operating hours before it looses 10% power. 

 

Pvp is just fine. Only takes 5 minutes to repair because you have no armor on it and the core pops right away.  I would be OK with it taking 1 life away. But if you want elements destroyed put some armor on that ship.

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