This will hopefully be a part one of two. This was the presentation and some questions in one of the main halls. There is supposed to be a round table tomorrow that I will do everything in my power to attend. As this was the most interesting thing for me I'm writing about it first and in the most detail.
There will be a Dev blog with all of the slides out next week, we were told. The stream was also recorded and I assume it will be put up somewhere to be watched.
Crimwatch began with a brief overview of the old system and the reason for the changes. It is old news but always nice to hear. The groundwork was laid in inferno which was mostly back end changes. One thing mentioned was that Interdiction Sphere launching gate lock. It is currently working as intended and is not broken in any way. He knows that there was a period of time where it was broken and changed and rebroken so he made sure that its current state of working was as intended.
One thing he also comments is on the logoff nerf that they did. It made people commit to the fight and they approved of that. If people wanted to drop a carrier into a fight they had to commit it. No more disconnect before it could die. For the size of the changes there was very little fallout over the complete change of the aggression mechanics and the overall response has been positive.
The overall ship value being destroyed has increased. Null sec always has the highest values except during that one little low sec battle back in January in Asakai.
I found that very interesting. My group has downsized ships a lot since the patch but that means more people have upsized out of I assume frigates into cruisers. Security status hits for aggression have also increased in frequency.
The safety chart was interesting. At first everyone had their safeties on but that was also a reflection of the fact that the persistent safety was not yet implemented Once it was the graph shows interesting things. High sec and low sec are mirrors of each other with safety use. He is surprised at the general lack of the middle safety button. Null and low are also very similar which may reflect the passage of people in and out of those two regions.
What's next? Next is tags for Sec. When that came up I was excited. It looks like they have their plan and they are building it. Hopefully, it makes it into Odyssey.
First they are changing how they store security status. It seems that like so many things in Eve to first fix or improve it they have to redo it. Right now, on the technical side security status seems to be stored with your regular standings. This means that your security status makes your -standing to concord. They are going to separate this. Security status will be its own area separate thing from standings. This will let them change how the rules to security status works easily without breaking lots of other things.
Once this is released everything will be copied over. However, after that works out they are going to reset everyones Concord standings to 0. It gives everyone the option to use concord agents. However all the current rules of outlaw standings will remain in effect. It will just be moved over to the security status instead of the standings. It took me a minute to understand it but I think I got it. Hopefully.
Ratting as we know it is going to change. They are going to change the current cycle ratting loop. It seems as if it was never intended and it is a little bit broken. It also doesn't make sense and it is a pain in the ass. People don't know how to 'rat' properly for sec. Someone teaches them.
And onto Tags for Sec. This will cause endless forums tears I am sure. I hope that they reach all of these goals and will be able to release it to us.
I did a pretty good job with the entire taking pictures of the slide thing.
Basically, a 'rare'ish beltrat will spawn only in low sec belts. It will drop tags 100% of the time when it spawns. There are four types of tags and four types of rats. The tags give a particular amount of sec. Money will also be added. This is only redeemable in Lowsec Concord stations. One of the questions fits well in here. The question was will this make it to easy for pirates and another asked if they now had an I win butto for sec.
The over all response was that the sec is still being earned. Someone has to earn the isk. Someone has to rat for the tags. As long as these things are done the sec gain has been earend. It has just been moved around. It is no longer kill rat rat rat kill. Now in a way someone else may pay for the sec with their ratting time or their isk making time and you are paying for it by obtaining it and spending ISK. The mechanics is not about the person ganking earning back their sec with a boring forever grind. It is about the sec costing a certain amount of time in the game.
The UI interface for this involves a drag bar it seems. It looked quite spiffy. I need to trot out to dinner so I will add the Q and A later.
Edit: Back from Dinner I will now add the Q&A that I caught for this. This time I hand wrote notes so I hope I can read my scrawl.
Q: Can tags take sec above 0?
A: No. They will not take sec above 0
Q: Suspects: Some way to combat lag? When you attack suspects but their timer is ending and you hit attack but miss the timer ending due to lag and die because of it.
A: Use the orange/yellow safety setting. It will not allow you to do any illegal attack. It is one reason he is so surprised so few people use it. It is exactly what that situation is for.
Q: Tags for Faction Standings?
A: Initially no. Maybe? (a shrug and left off there)
Q: Will ganking cause Concord standings to drop?
A: No. This is part of the decoupling security standings from faction standings.
Q: The make or break point is how many tags it will take to increase sec. What are they doing about this?
A: They can tweak it and they will if they need to. They will be watching it very closely.
Q: Rogue Drone sec gains are broken. You don't always get the highest drone killed's sec. Also the sec gain is less than it is with other NPCs.
A: The inconsistent gains comes from the fact that Rogue Drones do not have a faction. They are aware of it and CCP Bittek is working on it.
Q: Can the Safe logoff timer be smarter? That you can activate it and it count down your suspect timer or engagement timer and then safely log you off without having to wait out the timer and then activate the logoff timer.
A: Something to look into.
Q: Will you be able to escape Concord systems? Right now if you jump into one the gate locks and you die.
A: Yes because all Concord standings will be set to 0.
Q: Will we continue to receive sec gains from fleet ratting?
A: Yes. No intention to remove that.
Q: We can leave the systems and the new sec changes will follow us?
A: Yes
Q: This makes it an IWIN button for pirates. The carebears will cry. What about when they rage against this new trick for pirates?
A: You are out ratting right? Taking the risk? Getting people into low sec belts to be shoot is a good thing.
A: (Grayscale) They are moving the work around that you currently do to gain sec. The work is still there it is just done in a new way.
Q: Rarity of the tags? By system sec the spawn rate will be determined?
A: There will be a gradual degree of rarity
Q: Will we see sec gains for shooting people who have lower sec then we do?
A: Not now, no. They have not yet seen a way for it not to be abused.
Q: People buying PLEX and with that buying tags and gaining their sec with no personal work is that a problem?
A: No. The work has been done to earn the security status. If someone wants to use a PLEX that is fine. The work for the sec has been done.
Q: Any plans for spawn rates? Will they have Sleeper AI? Bounties? Normal Sec gain?
A: "That is like seven questions" but Yes, normal sec. Yes they will give bounties. They will sometimes drop normal loot. They will be salvageable. They will have the standard beltrat AI.
Q: Will this mean that sitting in my anoms in my carrier will cause me to gain security status three times faster?
A: No. They are balancing it and feel they will avoid that problem.
Q: Will it be easy for stealth bombers to farm the sec tags?
A: Yes and No (they won't say more for now)
Q: Removing the DED complexes: Are they putting something in to give low sec more places to PvP now? Some type of landscape for people to go fight at?
A: No immedate plans but yes they are aware of the damage they did to some PvP in low sec when they removed the static complexes. These were being used for farming and not generating the fights they should have.
Q: Will they be changing the old tags?
A: No. They don't want to create a shock to the market due to stockpiles. That is why they are starting with a brand new item and they will let the market set the price.
There will be a Dev blog with all of the slides out next week, we were told. The stream was also recorded and I assume it will be put up somewhere to be watched.
Crimwatch began with a brief overview of the old system and the reason for the changes. It is old news but always nice to hear. The groundwork was laid in inferno which was mostly back end changes. One thing mentioned was that Interdiction Sphere launching gate lock. It is currently working as intended and is not broken in any way. He knows that there was a period of time where it was broken and changed and rebroken so he made sure that its current state of working was as intended.
One thing he also comments is on the logoff nerf that they did. It made people commit to the fight and they approved of that. If people wanted to drop a carrier into a fight they had to commit it. No more disconnect before it could die. For the size of the changes there was very little fallout over the complete change of the aggression mechanics and the overall response has been positive.
The overall ship value being destroyed has increased. Null sec always has the highest values except during that one little low sec battle back in January in Asakai.
I found that very interesting. My group has downsized ships a lot since the patch but that means more people have upsized out of I assume frigates into cruisers. Security status hits for aggression have also increased in frequency.
The safety chart was interesting. At first everyone had their safeties on but that was also a reflection of the fact that the persistent safety was not yet implemented Once it was the graph shows interesting things. High sec and low sec are mirrors of each other with safety use. He is surprised at the general lack of the middle safety button. Null and low are also very similar which may reflect the passage of people in and out of those two regions.
What's next? Next is tags for Sec. When that came up I was excited. It looks like they have their plan and they are building it. Hopefully, it makes it into Odyssey.
First they are changing how they store security status. It seems that like so many things in Eve to first fix or improve it they have to redo it. Right now, on the technical side security status seems to be stored with your regular standings. This means that your security status makes your -standing to concord. They are going to separate this. Security status will be its own area separate thing from standings. This will let them change how the rules to security status works easily without breaking lots of other things.
Once this is released everything will be copied over. However, after that works out they are going to reset everyones Concord standings to 0. It gives everyone the option to use concord agents. However all the current rules of outlaw standings will remain in effect. It will just be moved over to the security status instead of the standings. It took me a minute to understand it but I think I got it. Hopefully.
Ratting as we know it is going to change. They are going to change the current cycle ratting loop. It seems as if it was never intended and it is a little bit broken. It also doesn't make sense and it is a pain in the ass. People don't know how to 'rat' properly for sec. Someone teaches them.
Now it is changed a bit.
Basically, a 'rare'ish beltrat will spawn only in low sec belts. It will drop tags 100% of the time when it spawns. There are four types of tags and four types of rats. The tags give a particular amount of sec. Money will also be added. This is only redeemable in Lowsec Concord stations. One of the questions fits well in here. The question was will this make it to easy for pirates and another asked if they now had an I win butto for sec.
The over all response was that the sec is still being earned. Someone has to earn the isk. Someone has to rat for the tags. As long as these things are done the sec gain has been earend. It has just been moved around. It is no longer kill rat rat rat kill. Now in a way someone else may pay for the sec with their ratting time or their isk making time and you are paying for it by obtaining it and spending ISK. The mechanics is not about the person ganking earning back their sec with a boring forever grind. It is about the sec costing a certain amount of time in the game.
The UI interface for this involves a drag bar it seems. It looked quite spiffy. I need to trot out to dinner so I will add the Q and A later.
Edit: Back from Dinner I will now add the Q&A that I caught for this. This time I hand wrote notes so I hope I can read my scrawl.
Q: Can tags take sec above 0?
A: No. They will not take sec above 0
Q: Suspects: Some way to combat lag? When you attack suspects but their timer is ending and you hit attack but miss the timer ending due to lag and die because of it.
A: Use the orange/yellow safety setting. It will not allow you to do any illegal attack. It is one reason he is so surprised so few people use it. It is exactly what that situation is for.
Q: Tags for Faction Standings?
A: Initially no. Maybe? (a shrug and left off there)
Q: Will ganking cause Concord standings to drop?
A: No. This is part of the decoupling security standings from faction standings.
Q: The make or break point is how many tags it will take to increase sec. What are they doing about this?
A: They can tweak it and they will if they need to. They will be watching it very closely.
Q: Rogue Drone sec gains are broken. You don't always get the highest drone killed's sec. Also the sec gain is less than it is with other NPCs.
A: The inconsistent gains comes from the fact that Rogue Drones do not have a faction. They are aware of it and CCP Bittek is working on it.
Q: Can the Safe logoff timer be smarter? That you can activate it and it count down your suspect timer or engagement timer and then safely log you off without having to wait out the timer and then activate the logoff timer.
A: Something to look into.
Q: Will you be able to escape Concord systems? Right now if you jump into one the gate locks and you die.
A: Yes because all Concord standings will be set to 0.
Q: Will we continue to receive sec gains from fleet ratting?
A: Yes. No intention to remove that.
Q: We can leave the systems and the new sec changes will follow us?
A: Yes
Q: This makes it an IWIN button for pirates. The carebears will cry. What about when they rage against this new trick for pirates?
A: You are out ratting right? Taking the risk? Getting people into low sec belts to be shoot is a good thing.
A: (Grayscale) They are moving the work around that you currently do to gain sec. The work is still there it is just done in a new way.
Q: Rarity of the tags? By system sec the spawn rate will be determined?
A: There will be a gradual degree of rarity
Q: Will we see sec gains for shooting people who have lower sec then we do?
A: Not now, no. They have not yet seen a way for it not to be abused.
Q: People buying PLEX and with that buying tags and gaining their sec with no personal work is that a problem?
A: No. The work has been done to earn the security status. If someone wants to use a PLEX that is fine. The work for the sec has been done.
Q: Any plans for spawn rates? Will they have Sleeper AI? Bounties? Normal Sec gain?
A: "That is like seven questions" but Yes, normal sec. Yes they will give bounties. They will sometimes drop normal loot. They will be salvageable. They will have the standard beltrat AI.
Q: Will this mean that sitting in my anoms in my carrier will cause me to gain security status three times faster?
A: No. They are balancing it and feel they will avoid that problem.
Q: Will it be easy for stealth bombers to farm the sec tags?
A: Yes and No (they won't say more for now)
Q: Removing the DED complexes: Are they putting something in to give low sec more places to PvP now? Some type of landscape for people to go fight at?
A: No immedate plans but yes they are aware of the damage they did to some PvP in low sec when they removed the static complexes. These were being used for farming and not generating the fights they should have.
Q: Will they be changing the old tags?
A: No. They don't want to create a shock to the market due to stockpiles. That is why they are starting with a brand new item and they will let the market set the price.
Nice. Thanks for the pics!
ReplyDeleteGood work! Have a great time there.
ReplyDeleteNice summary. Thanks :)
ReplyDeleteLooks to be a pretty good system too (depending on the rarity of the spawns)
Going to be interesting to see where the tags get sold.
Thanks, excellent writeup. Especially pleased about the tags!
ReplyDeleteGreat post, us pirates need as much info on the lowsec changes @Fanfest as some could not make it.
ReplyDeleteAs everyone else has said, excellent stuff! As I can't be in Iceland right now, I'm currently living vicariously through you and other bloggers. Thank you very much.
ReplyDelete