Hey, Ventures Are Banned By The Way

I waited three hours

Typically I prefer waiting a bit before offering up an opinion on some new change, nerf, or buff that rolls down from Mt. Olympus in Reykjavik (or London these days). For one thing some changes are horribly complicated and can have multiple threads attached. Speak too quickly and you run the risk of stepping on stupid. Secondly, it's just fun to let others say all the stupid stuff first. The forum thread on the recently announced Cyno changes coming in September is a great example of that process. And highly entertaining.

I've listened to both the Hilmar and Rise interviews on TiS and I think we should all have a good idea of what this Chaos Era thing is all about. Changes. Disruption. And Isk Faucets. The Cyno changes hit all three of those and disrupt practices that have been abused for a long time, practices that became to predictable (which is bad for bot control), too easy (which is bad for Combat), and too rewarding (which is bad for Isk Faucets). There are plenty of resources that can get you more information, charts, and whatnots about those if you are interested. I don't trade in that kind of spurious detail in these pages.

The Cyno change is a good start. Yes it is a pain in the butt to certain trades, like Jump Freighter chains (and I hope that gets addressed), and Cyno Vigils (I like the idea of a module that interacts with the new Player Memorial that is coming to TQ), and a few other niche uses - but overall it is a tremendously good start. And I use the word "start" on purpose, because I don't think they should stop here. More needs to be done to make this truly work the way they intend.

But I thought Rise nailed it, Cynos need to be pinned to a ship class in order to be brought into line with every other module in the game. The idea that any old ship could light one was always a silly idea that made it difficult to control. So that is fixed. What happens next should be interesting.

Not that anyone else cares - but Ventures will be banned from entering FW Plex in September as well. This is a huge victory for us Low Sec players and follows up on promises that Fozzie and Rise made back when they banned WCS from FW plex. Heck, Fozzie and I discussed this as recently as Toronto. For those of you that don't fly in Low Sec you may be wondering why this is such a big deal? And no it doesn't have anything to do with combat, or kills, or anything like that. It has to do with bots and defensive plex running. Both of which are completely out of control. This does not solve those problems, but it removes an unbalanced option from the hands of those trying to exploit the system as it is currently constructed.

Again, I hope that won't be the last change. If we truly are entering into an era driven by chaos these two changes are not enough. More needs to happen.

And soon.