Yesterday CCP rolled a stick of dynamite into the crowd and we all got a chance to watch it explode. The long anticipated first round of changes arrived with a DevBlog from CCP Greyscale and BOOM CHAKKA BOOM!!
After essentially lying dormant for the past few years post-Incarna CCP finally exposed the beginnings of what is going to be significant changes to the "way-things-have-been" and have shaken the ant farm up a little bit. As you can imagine, this has not gone over well with the louder elements of New Eden. Especially those that have exploited the failings inherent within the established system for years. Those people are very mad bro.
If this heralds a return to a more pre-Incarna CCP then I for one welcome the return of our Overlords. While I've appreciated Tiericide and Small Changes and UI improvements and new ship skins and star flares and cloaking effects, it is also incredibly important for Eve to sometimes take giant leaps forward... or, at the very least, a big step in one direction or another. This is something that vital, growing, important and engaging games must do to stay relevant.
The great thing about Eve has always been an often overlooked fact of single shard, shared universes - rules apply to everyone. If your Dread fleet can't jump across the universe in five minutes, neither can the other guys. We all live under the same roof in this house and we all have to play by the same rules. It is a lesson the Wormhole players learned recently after getting so upset when it was their turn to eat the change bullet. As my WH guys said yesterday, we learned, we adapted, and we moved on. HTFU, it used to be Eve's un-official motto.
Having said all of that I'd also be the last person to tell anyone to just take and accept everything that CCP gives us. If you've followed this blog for any length of time you should know better. And there are things within the Dev Blog that concern me. And that we shall have to keep a close eye on as hopefully more and more details emerge. For one thing, I'm not sure the new fatigue system is the most elegant solution to a complex problem - not to mention yet another timer - but it does seem to achieve a certain objective.
After months and years of whining and complaining about Force Projection and Cap Proliferation ruining the Null experience - it shouldn't come as a surprise. CCP was, for all intents and purposes, obligated to make drastic changes to a region that has become rather bland, boring, predictable, and carebeary. If anything, those that have been willingly and knowingly exploiting that system for the past few years have no one to blame but themselves. Those of you that chose the easy way, that joined the herd for the sake of monetary convenience and safety - will get no sympathy from me. Those of us who have sat on the sidelines of Null have watched as one after another power-bloc gave up and gave in to the powers that be. CCP didn't do that, you did.
Personally I hope this is only the opening salvo in a long and determined string of changes aimed squarely at shaking up the status quo. And from all indications it is.
For those of us in Low Sec, WOOT! The proposed changes actually make me excited for a wide variety of reasons. Carriers using Gates? Doomsday in Low? Heck yeah, bring it on.
Suddenly Eve feels vital once again. This reminds me of the heady days leading up to Dominion and the hand-wringing that led up to the changes in Sov that have directly led us to this day. As Eve players we should know better than anyone how to adapt, learn and exploit any new system of rules that CCP throws at us. I for one look forward to figuring out what this all means, how to take advantage of it, and then how to explode all the other people trying to figure it all out.
This is good for Eve. This is good for us. Keep shaking CCP and watch as we scurry about rebuilding.
HTFU. Oh yeah.
PS: Let's all be honest with ourselves here, these changes alone are going to do nothing to break up Null, or fix the issues that Null may or may not have (depending on your perspective). They are an interesting first step and anyone who is rage-quitting over this is welcome to do so. How easy are you? Changes are coming!?!?? I friggin' quit man! Sheesh. What a pussy.
Comments
That's not to say that I agree with all the changes, though. And take all of this from the perspective of someone who has never sat in a capital ship before. I for one think that jump fatigue needs to be looked at closer. In combination with the drastically reduced jump range it's practically suffocating those players that have invested a lot of time and money (both in game and out of game) from using the tools they have worked hard to acquire. From numbers I've seen so far, the fatigue timer can get wildly out of hand extremely fast. CCP wants to liven up null sec with this? It's only going to make people use capitals for ratting and very short jumps for fear of being stranded in the middle of nowhere with an outrageous fatigue timer. I'm indifferent about reducing the jump range, though a flat 5 LY range seems asymmetrical with how the game is right now, but both reducing the jump range (making players jump more to get to the same destination) while penalizing them for jumping more seems ludicrous to me.
"But wait, you can use gates with your caps now! Just slowboat like the rest of us!"
Second, I feel as though Jump Freighters need to remain untouched. I've never flown one (only talked to those who have) and logistics sounds like enough of a nightmare the way it is now. Messing with Jump Freighters messes with the economy, and I strongly believe that prices for near everything will increase as a result.
So what would I do? Completely remove jump fatigue, or reduce its drawbacks substantially. I think it's a terrible mechanic that will do much more harm than good. I saw someone on Reddit who proposed cutting each ship's jump range in half, which I think is pretty fair. Cutting a Carrier's max jump range by ~66% is simply too much.
But hey, what do I know? I've never sat in anything bigger than a battleship before and I could be off my rocker. I just fear that CCP taking drastic action for the sake of doing so is going to set a bad precedent.
Logistics vrs risks of being hot dropped.
- the (in)famous power projection - good riddance and I'm all for it.
- null logistics - worst nightmare possible. It happens on all areas so I'll use one example I saw in the threadnought: Etherium Reach to The Forge - today a JF pilot with JDC 5 needs to jump 2/3 times to get to lowsec from null and vice-versa. With the changes it goes to 12. But that is not the bad part as this all large alliance will easily adapt. today this trip with the correct cynos in place can be done in less than 20 minutes round-trip. With the "Fatigue" it will be a 7 hours job. That means for casual players it won't happen. If you ever been in a huge fight with thousands of players you know that most can't stay that long. So, it becomes inefficient to use JFs or carriers for a logistic approach. If this was associated with better resources in null, that would not be an issue, but most nullsec can't survive without resources from empire. End result, only the very large alliances will be able to live in null while the small alliance that are supposed to benefit from this change are screwed.
And if anyone decides to take a titan through gate, blue or not, I want to be there to gank it alongside with the entirety of eve.
- For lowsec, there will be impact, most positive for PVP
- For newbies - do you really believe any of this impacts them? Except for a small change of being part of a gang ganking a titan using a gate?
- All my capitals and my supers are being moved to safe lowsec systems and will stay there. They will stay in dry-doc or will be sold or scrapped. not worth the time consumption to fly capitals.
Or maybe I'm nuts. I have been before.
And as said CCP needs to think better about how to go about it as this proposal will have repercussions all over.
Alone the proposed change solves nothing only adding annoyance and off course some more oppty for pvp. But, the large nullsec alliances/coalitions wont change their accords and blue settings because of it. Thus status quo in null won't change much.
But, I'm really looking forward for the oppty to gank a titan using a gate. :-P
Don't tell me the null sec overlords are going to have to be >gasp< nice to miners and indy corps...?!?!?