Oceanus Burner Changes and Level 4 Tools

I really should pay more attention to the Dev Blog feed.  I missed this one a few days ago, but thanks to Sugar's weekly CSM wrap up, I got caught up.

CCP Seagull posted the summary of Oceanus changes coming at the end of the month.  This blog isn't intended to entirely about lvl4s/burners but it's quickly becoming that way.  Anyway, in case you missed it here's the blurb on burners:

New Burner Missions, now with logistics 

Take on a new set of Level 4 Burner missions with more high powered enemies in frigates which have brought their own logistics support. A dev blog is coming with both information on how Burner missions have fared so far and the details about the new missions.

Sounds like some of us are getting our wish for a more complicated encounter that all but mandates you bring a friend (or five).

Looking forward to the additional details....

 ----

Separate but related topic, there was some news about lvl4's in the last CSM Townhall.  You can get the full mp3 of the conversation here, but I'll attempt to transcribe the part at the end (about 48:20) about CCP's efforts to rebuild their in-house dev tools (I don't know who the speaker was; I am bad matching voice coms to character names):

Something we are now pleased that we can talk about... CCP are working on PVE tools that was [announced on] the [alliance tournament] stream.  Basically, the problem at the moment is that the tools that they have are less than intuitive, and so they are a bit of a pain to make changes with. Which is obviously going to slow stuff down.  They are working on the toolset at the moment, which is going to make it easier for them to add additional content and make changes for other things with it.   

So, on PVE content: once the toolset is back into play, and has been redone, it will be far easier for them to add new stuff.  Don't have a timescale for that, but they are working on it at the moment.

This jives with things that we have been told before.  Investing in a new toolset is a signal to me that CCP wants to continue to extend PVE and breathe some life into decade old content.  Which, if you're a reader here at all, should know that I think is a big friggin' deal.  See also my Manifesto.

18 and Counting

Still haven't hit Burner Mission #2 yet.  I must be extremely unlucky?  I just checked the journal, and I count 18 successful missions since the last Anomic Agent.

Jerks.

Skill Plan Changes

It's funny how a little patch can change your focus.  Hasn't happened to me in a long, long while in EVE, so it's a good thing.

I'm talking about Skill Plan changes.  I have 4 skilled characters across 2 accounts (the rest have essentially only starter skills, more or less).  Least skilled character 'L' is just above the basic starter set and is set up for some lowsec scouting and shenanigans in frigates.  A cheap clone for cheap ships.  I always meant to do more with him, but never have.

Of the 3 heavy hitters, Character 'Z' is basically set up to knock out Incursions.  Perfect large turret gunnery and battleships in 2 flavors, plus misc repping, fitting, damage mitigation, and other accessory skills.  She runs a shield-fit Navy Mega and could step into a Vindi if I dumped the cash into the hull (alas, current time commitments don't let me grind Incursions).

Next most Character 'M' is my original alt and has skills shotgunned everywhere, from mining to hauling to salvage.  Wherever I need a 2nd set of hands to pick up what falls on the floor, she is there.  Combat skills are somewhat limited, and were focused around null ratting in BCs back in the day.   Her one shining block of skills are her perfect Boosting skills, and she looks mean in her Gallente command ship cranking 5 links.  She's almost as old as my main, but I resisted buying a 2nd set of implants for her until recent times (originally ... as in waaaay back ... she was my permanent resident in 0.0; she went for years training w/o any implants), and when my interest in EVE wanes, she's the one that I let lapse first.

And then there's Abavus.  My main.  A decade worth of training, not always in the most efficient manner (talent remapping, +4 implants instead of +5, lapsed accounts, etc.) but still a respectable number of skills at rank 5 (153).  He can do anything I'd need (frigates to capships and much in between) and has perfect skills in many things I don't do any more (mining, refining, researching).

For the past many months, I've logged in, looked at the Mastery tab of whatever ship I was flying, and picked something of an appropriate length.  In particular, I've been nibbling on Mastery 5 for the Golem, and working through some of the Armor tanked hull Masteries as well.

Burner missions made me revisit these habits.  Suddenly I see gaps in my skill abilities that I didn't know I had.  For example: altho he's been a missile shooter since before all the cool kids did it, Aba didn't have Rocket Specialization maxed out.  Fixed that: I'll have rank 5 in 2d 2h.  Character 'M' and 'Z' on the other hand, had both trained Assault Frigates but not maxed it, and likewise have some gaps in frigate-sized weaponry skills.

This made me make a choice (choices are good): if I were going to dual box AFs for Burner missions, which alt would I take?  After weighing skill pools, the headnod goes to Character 'M.'  Combat and fitting skills are close, perhaps even a little less than 'Z,' but the passive gang bonuses from all her Leadership training will help.

When you have nothing to train, the skillpoint game of EVE is tedious and boring.  But when you need to min/max a training queue in order to get something Important, it's always been a fun aspect of EVE.  I like looking in the nooks and crannies of a game to figure out little puzzles like this.  It's just another side benefit of new content.


What's Playing:  AC/DC: Back in Black

Burner Upgrades

Burners aren't perfect.  We can probably agree on that.  CCP has stated that they would like the expand the concept to other ship classes (which I think is a great idea at face value).  However, there's also more that could be done with Frigates.

These are in no particular order and are just my random musings:

• One of my gripes from yesterday: Burners are too short.  Per the original dev blog post, this is somewhat intentional.  And I'm not advocating adding an intentional timesink (although a separate class/tier of lvl4's called Expert Missions in parallel with Burners would be outstanding).  But keeping with the theme of emulating 1v1 pvp in a lvl4 mission, you could tack on just a little more and have a more satisfying experience ... maybe an appetizer to the main event.  For example, put a (much less challenging) frigate or two at the acceleration gate.  Or add an intermediate room with a Burner Lieutenant, before the final room with the "real" Burner.
• Burner-Lites.  Maybe level 3 Burners.  I'd like something that can be done with tech1 frigs and meta4/t2 loot (non-faction).  Lower risk, lower payout.  The current burners are pretty harsh (in my view, appropriately so), but a lvl3 version might be fun for lower skillpoint characters.
• Burners On Demand.  I don't think a dedicated Burner agent is a great idea; implications of farming are pretty horrendous.  But a scheme where "On Demand" means "for a cost" then maybe it's better balanced.  Would you pay your agent 5,000 LP to locate a Burner for you?  10,000?  Would you maybe schedule some friends for "Corp Operations" around a group chain of Burners?  As a former Corp Party Planner, I'd have loved that kind of content.
• Separate out the Burner Mission like a Storyline mission.  If I am running lvl4's and I am offered a Burner, right now I either decline the Burner and keep grinding, or I stop what I'm doing and get set to do the Burner.  Some players will decline just so they can keep grinding.  Other players will decline because they don't want to be dead in the water (at least with that agent) until their friends login or travel to help.  Some of those players will get the Burner, decide they want to run it but can't/won't run it right that moment and will logoff for the night.  With PCU numbers the way they are, don't give me a reason to logoffski, let me set aside the content until I'm ready. Personally, I'd rather get an evemail from a different agent saying "We've got a special problem that needs a pilot with your skills..." and let me deal with the Burner when I have time.  

That's it for now.  Thanks for looking into my brain with me.

Burner Balance

Reading forums, it's apparent that there's some disappointment with Burners.

Now, it's the EVE community. There's going to be some whining and banging of pots and pans.  But, some of it struck a chord with me and put words to the feelings that I had rumbling around behind my brain.

Folks are saying that there's too much risk for too little reward.  They're saying that that they're too hard.  Or require a big shiny faction fit in order to be completed.

Overall, I think CCP hit pretty close to the mark.  Although some adjustment is probably warranted, I wouldn't do it just yet (let's collect more data), and I wouldn't make sweeping changes.  But I do think that they need to get the balance a nudge or two before cranking things up with Cruiser sized burners.

Things I like:

• I like that burners are difficult.  
• I like that they're making people think about their fits and affecting their skill queues.  
• I like that there's a whole new strategy and tactics being developed for them (I saw the term "drop bait drones" being used as a means to break warp scram during an unsuccessful burner run and thought it was great, i.e. turning the AI's desire to murder drones against itself).  
• I realize these are pretty high level, conceptual bullet points, but all in all, I'm reasonably happy.  All in all, Burners are pretty cool.

Things that Suck:

• I wish that we'd drop from warp a little further from the target, to try to get our bearings before being instalocked and ganked.  Either add some distance or turn down the npc's lock time a bit.
• Balance is tricky, but the current setup yields a little bit of rock-paper-scissors(-lizard-spock).  Each burner is designed with obvious counters, meaning that a relatively narrow range of ships will be successful.  Youtube is yielding a surprising number of different setups for some of the flavors, but given the number of frigates in the game, we're using far too few of them on Burners.
• Balancing around overheated faction webs kinda sucks.  A near mandatory ~95M isk investment is poopy.  Wish Mr. Sansha's orbit range was 10km instead of 15km, for instance (even a 12km orbit would let me do it with meta4 and an off grid booster).
• Once you drop from warp, it's very much about getting all the right buttons mashed to facilitate a kill.  Once guns are firing and modules are blinking appropriately, there's not much to do but wait for the eventual success or fail.  If CCP /really/ wanted to make things interesting, the AI would get smarter and do things like random orbit ranges and other maneuvering switchups that would make you react during the fight.
• It's over too soon.  More on this in the next post.

Some of this goes away if CCP would say the words "Burners aren't meant to be solo'd."  But I don't think they should balance around a gang fight.  The solo frigate fight is the classic duel, and emulating that experience in a lvl4 just kinda feels right.  If they can get the balance right, it goes a long ways towards having a future in PVE, /and/ as a stepping stone to train future PVPers.

Anyway, with 1 week in game, that's my opinion on Burner Balance.  Sometime soon (maybe even tomorrow), I'll chat a bit about how the concept could be extended in future patches.

Burners 0, Pukin' Dogs 1

*** FIT VERIFIED SCYLLA 13 APRIL 2015 ***

Was a close fight, but on this day, the Sansha Burner floated home in a pod.

It was a close fight.  I misclicked and didn't get the Highslots into full overheat, meaning most of the fight I wasn't dealing maxdps.  I realized this just as my first web expired from overheat.  Mr. Burns (someone's been watching too much of the Simpsons marathon on FXX) died just as the 2nd web went down.

I was making faces and squirming a little. Very close.

So, lesson learned - overheat matters.  Not sucking matters too.

This is the fit I emulated (also watch the vid):

[Retribution] perfect skills, no implants, no boosters
Small Armor Repairer II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Centii A-Type Thermic Plating (very cheap)
Centii A-Type EM Plating (very cheap)
Imperial Navy Heat Sink 

Caldari Navy Stasis Webifier (any web with 15km+ range)
Caldari Navy Stasis Webifier (any web with 15km+ range) 

Small Focused Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Small Focused Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Small Focused Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Small Focused Pulse Laser II, Scorch S 

Small Anti-Thermic Pump II
Small Capacitor Control Circuit II

My fit isn't quite this shiny.  I found that I had some headroom in cpu and opted for a cheaper tech2 heatsink.  I also reminded myself that I need skills for a tech2 CCC rig, oops (used t1).  The CN Stasis Webs seem about mandatory, due to the orbit range of Mr. Sansha.  This is more shiny than I'd like to fly on a ship this thin; will adjust with time.

And yes, I cheated. I had a booster off grid providing me some boosty mcboosterson.  I know!  I figure I'll run the training wheels until I get used to small ships again.

Anomic Agent #1

Well, it took longer than I expected.  I actually lost count of how many lvl4's I did this weekend before I got this to pop.  But let me say that when you want to burn through missions quickly, the game has a knack for finding every LONG mission and throwing it at you.  AE4 and Dread Pirate Scarlet (normally one of my favorites) came and went, along with many others and a few repeats.

Anomic Agent
I have a special optional mission for you, we won’t penalize you if you decline it. 

A single individual, a rogue element of Sansha’s Nation, has struck out on their own. We don't know why, but we want you to hunt them down.  

They have all scans open, so we can't go there in force. We've acquired their coordinates and need someone to sneak in and take them out. It's you against them.  

Only frigate sized ships can gain entry to the hideout, so don’t try to bring anything bigger.
This pirate will be flying an extremely fast, shield boosted Succubus frigate. He uses lasers loaded with Scorch frequency crystals. Survivors of his previous attacks claim that he likes to orbit his opponents at around 15km at extremely high speeds. He always flies with a Stasis Webifier and a Warp Scrambler fit.  

A word of warning: this rogue pirate is extremely dangerous and has proven very capable of destroying capsuleer ships. If you choose to decline this mission or if you fail to complete it, you will not lose any standings.

I've got some reading to do and some equipment to get out of cold storage.  I was hoping that the Serp would pop first so that I could dust off my trusty old Hawk.  But I also have a Retribution knocking around since some long forgotten reason.

Wish me luck!

Edit:  Helps if you title your post. Gah.

Edit again:  Many of you are reading this from a Google search.  The results and fittings of this mission run are captured in this post.

The Machines are Winning

No, I haven't tried a burner mission yet.  I've knocked over just a few lvl4's and haven't had one pop yet.  Has been one of those weeks at work.... little time for EVE.

The stats posted by CCP Fozzie (see this Mike Azariah post) are interesting.  "On day one, 207 Burner NPCs died, but they killed 1563 capsuleer ships. The machines are winning."  Learning curves are a good thing.

I did go get my Hawk out of deep storage and am wondering what other ships I should go invest in.  Watched a few youtube vids of guys getting their asses kicked by burners; kinda scares me (a good thing).  But, the thought of spending battleship money on a faction frig so that I can lose it the first time I misclick is giving me pause.  Maybe I should go play around on SiSi a bit.

It's a holiday weekend in the U.S., so I'm hoping the lvl4 agent smiles favorably on me.

Apologizing for PVE

Sugar posted her CSM update earlier today, and as I read it on my phone this morning I had to cock my head a bit.  Let me quote and add some emphasis:

At the start of our Term CCP Fozzie told us that he was looking to add a new type of mission. It is one of those things where everyone said "yes please!" On Monday, CCP Seagull released the news and CCP Fozzie followed up with a dev blog about the missions. 

Now, the reaction was not what I expected. I expected that i would sit here and respond to complaints that CCP was working on PvE content. All of the things about it, such as it being skippable, in the regular level fours but not decreasing access to the normal mission pool, and using frigates were supposed to be the defense for them. The idea of giving mission runners something new to try and a reason to try out frigates and fighting styles that are not optimal battleship blitzing seemed amazing.

I find it odd that a game company would find themselves compelled to rationalize/apologize in advance for adding new content, or trying to find ways of reusing existing assets (ships) in new and exciting ways.

I'm sure it's frustrating at times for CCP; they can't seem to make a sandwich for lunch without someone starting a threadnaught to tell them they're doing it wrong.  (OMG! I said NO MAYO! Wtf CCP?  /unsub 57 accounts).

It's just weird, is all, that in a game with fairly poor PVE that the devs would feel so guilty about trying to address some of PVE's issues that they'd let the apology/defense affect the development strategy.

I'm not making a particular accusation for/against CCP or the CSM on this particular addition ... my only point is:  these are strange times we live in.

Back on the Front Burner

Okay, today was the day this blog was built for - the (hopefully) beginning of a long series of PVE additions.   Let's break down today's dev blog on BURNER MISSIONS:

Burner Missions are 100% optional. There will be no standings penalty for turning down or failing these missions. Your friendly neighborhood security agent knows that not every capsuleer will have the equipment or skills to take on these missions and won’t be offended if you decline.

Optional is good.  Some days you'll just not want to fuss with trying to refit a frig, or maybe the chair in your Golem is particularly comfy.

Burner Missions can only be completed in frigate-sized ships. The pirate Burners operate from bases protected by acceleration gates that only allow access for frigates. All types of frigates (Tech One, Tech Two and Faction) can enter the bases.

This is not a surprise given the preview we had a few days ago; still gets a thumbs up from me.  Starting a wave of new content with frigs and working up is fine by me.  Including t2 is a no brainer and mildly mandatory.

Burner Missions pit you against a single enemy NPC. This NPC is an extremely powerful frigate with stats based on those of a player flying a pirate frigate with officer/deadspace gear, pirate implants, and command links. All of these NPCs use warp disruption, and most of them use scramblers that turn off microwarpdrives the same way player scramblers do.

This sounds ... mean.  In a good way.  Very much want to tangle it up with these new little bastards.

I gotta say, though, in my perfect world, we'd have this implementation (i.e. single boss) as well as a more traditional multi-npc armada facing you in any new small-ship PVE encounters (think: mini-mini-incursions).  This sounds like it's being setup primarily to emulate 1v1 fights; I'd /also/ want some group encounters to batphone for backup on.

So, I like the ideas of having a harder AI to contend with and dismantle, and I like the idea of a mock-PVP situation.  I just want more. :)

The fact that these missions can only be received as part of the random level 4 security mission pool should prevent them from being too farmable.

I'd rather queue up for new missions and only new missions rather than have to slog through the old "full sized" missions (legacy missions? what's the terminology to use here?) hoping one will pop.  But I understand the economics/farming concerns.  It all depends how "rare" rare is.  If I can pull 1 or 2 of these a gaming session, I would no doubt be happy.  If I go days without seeing one... meh.  Once CCP learns a bit from the first pass, maybe they'll loosen up this restriction.  

Bottom line:  A solid first step.  There's hints in the blog and on the comments page of a "first of many" approach, and maybe the new content deployment schedule will help us get incrementally more MORE.

Looking forward to flying a frigate again soon....

Hyperion!

I know everyone is combing through the WH changes (and for good reason) but ... just read this in today's dev blog:

A new kind of Level 4 missionsTake on a single, powerful enemy using fitting skills and combat tactics in new optional level 4 missions for frigate size ships that will be available from all security agents in Empire space. An upcoming dev blog will present the new missions.

Love for lvl4's - check.
Small ship PVE - check.

These are words I never thought I'd see in a dev blog.  Sadly, there is already some angst about it.  For me, it's a good thing.  It's not much info yet, but I'll take it!