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CSM9 - Day 77

Crius is due on the 22nd. This marks the second release for CSM9 and the first of the new, six week cycles. The only difference is that Crius contains the other half of Kronos. That would be the industry changes.

If you don’t have your reprocessing skills trained up for the new standards I suggest you spend some time reprocessing things you plan to reprocess before Tuesday.

This week has been about Crius. It is crunch time and all of the last minute details are popping up and getting hammered in. There is one, gigantic angry topic and that is the change to the Material Efficiency skill. CCP Greyscale has been active in this thread and soliciting player feedback for it. This skill change is going to come in after Crius in one of the patches the following week or so. It is not going back to what it was. No one is getting skill point reimbursements. Participate in the thread. Make your opinion on the topic and the future of this skill known.

Why the last minute changes? This is a big complaint. Why are they waiting until now to change some things such as the multiple modules in the POS and this particular skill? Because, going over and over and over it again, some of the usages were going to create problems. And it was pulled because pulling it is better than putting it in broken.

Last weekend, during my Eve Uni talk, Crius was a big topic. There is a lot of confusion and concern about what is going on. This is not a small change. This is also not a change any of us can neatly predict because everything is changing. And yes, a lot of people are mad about that. Industry is still going to change. Take some time to read the Crius release page and its condensed dev blogs.

CCP has been working on Crius. The CSM has been chasing around information we create and information brought to us. The threads, the mails, the messages, the usage cases, the fringe ideas. Yes, they all are being gone through. Kronos was like this as well so I am curious if the next release will be too or if this is because of the size of Kronos and Crius.

Faction Warfare NPCs are getting their damage reduced. I’ve been sitting on this one for weeks so it is nice to release that bit of information in the wild. It is tucked in the patch notes for Crius.

Some people have pushed thoughts of Crius aside and asked what is coming next. Stuff. Stuff is coming next. Some teams have been on vacation in June and July and they are heading back in. That means things are going to pick back up.

Outreach:

As part of my PvE things I’ve been talking to people about NPC null sec. While NPC nullsec PvE is a much larger thing, I’d like to get a few good discussions in with NPC null corporations before the summit.

Comments

  1. Have you heard about the Null sites not desponing bug yet. Horde sites are the only ones that i have heard about it effecting. There might be more.

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  2. Frankly, I stopped reading about Crius long ago, after teams added yet another layer of complexity to industry. I've never been a industrialist and the only thing that should concern me is how will it affect low end mineral price.

    The rest is just about how having the best skills and the best tools in hisec will mean you are at a disadvantage compared to nullsec. I don't play games where being the best is not enough, rather the developers arbitrarily choose the winners out of their design choices.

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    Replies
    1. "... the developers arbitrarily choose the winners out of their design choices."

      Yes, the game is riddled with poor "design choices." I'm very curious to see how they address this issue over time. Integrating the Eve Universe as one big mass of exception code will require a great many programmers.

      Delete
    2. What's interesting to me is that when I was testing the changes in highsec, I was receiving more minerals than I was before, without any changes in skills. This might have something to do with them taking the 37.5% from the original formula and adding 38.1% minerals to all the ores. In other words, the old 100% wall is now broken and everyone's going to get slightly more with access to all the minerals we could have gotten over 100% in the old system (The reason why people stopped at 5 Ref, 5 Ref Eff. and 4 Ore and a 1% implant...)

      Now let us add in the 52% highsec refinery... and the 2% material bonus from assembly arrays... What is lawless space getting over this? 54% intense arrays, 57% level 2 min/level 3 others) and 60% level 3 minmatar. (Never mind that they have to pay nearly 40b for the level 2 and 3 upgrades....)

      I think I'll be quite happy doing industry in highsec still, maybe more so since I won't be paying a station tax and can build fuel blocks directly in tower again without needing to haul heavy ore to some station to reprocess...

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  3. So, what kind of things do you want to learn about NPC Null?

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    1. I've been given lots of stuff about Syndicate loyalty point stores for instance. The state of the PvE perhaps? Exploration sites spawning? Viability of livability? Complaints. Stuff. Etc. :)

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    2. Yeah Syndicate is very different to say Stain - the PVE in non-pirate NPC is very poor in comparison, what with the lack of pirate missions, let alone the broken true sec of places like Fountain, which has the best of pirate *and* sovereign null sec in the same region.

      Yes, the Syndicate LP store is terrible, and I hope that, even before the major rebalance of faction items, that the minor factions get a sprinkling of items that are actually valuable.

      In addition, some of the bad parts about NPC null is that the facilities there are even fewer than null-sec. The incredible sparseness of stations with cloning facilities is a real deterrent to even casual stays - I remember when Fatal Ascension went on tour to Syndicate and we were paying 150M isk/month in station fees because of the number of offices they opened :(

      I think the addition of level 5 agents throughout NPC space would also be a good addition; it provides a high-risk/high reward income stream for the brave, while allowing all the standard null sec options, while being a unique experience for NPC null sec dwellers.

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  4. Ugg, crius is a mess, dev blogs have become obsolete, info is to be found in 20 different forum threads.
    A overview of all the changes is realy needed, ... .
    All the industrial sites,apps will need to be updated... .
    It is a mess!

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    Replies
    1. There have been several consolidation attempts. The CREST and API stuff is out and third party tools have been working on their updates.

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  5. State of pve content in syndicate really depend on the pvp activity of the said region. If the said region is quiet, pi, ded, exploration sites, missioning can be done easily but once our neighbours starts knocking on front door, pve content suffers.

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    1. Aye. The loyalty point store was what was brought to me as a major thing. I don't know how big or little that is on CCPs side but that doesn't stop me from asking.

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  6. I am at a total loss as to why this industry thing is even an issue. Yes, I know what Seagull about player gates and how this is suppose to 'fix' problems and I honestly believe it to be a load of crap. Fix the station code, fix sovereignty, remove non-destructible stations in all but NPC null, make null really RISK vs REWARD ... not what it is now - safer than highsec. THEN, when all the conflict drivers are in place, fix industry ... there will be TONS of stuff that needs to be made.

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    1. What a great way to kill the game... destroyable stations... even emptier nullsec...

      Then again, if you bore all the pvpers into leaving, maybe the rest of us can rebuild the game into a nice little utopia. Then they get bored and leave too I guess...

      Six in one, half a dozen in the other. I don't think you can really change Eve to be all destruction or creation all the time without killing it.

      Why not go back to thinking about how things could be balanced instead?

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    2. Yes, destroyable stations. If the nullblocs would actually do what all these changes are intended to bring about, it wouldn't change anything. What am I talking about? Mining, industry/manufacture, patrolling/protecting their space .. you know ... the whole RISK VS REWARD mantra that keeps getting thrown around. I believe null space would open up as blocs would cut down their sov to a more manageable amount, allowing more people to actually USE nullsec.

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    3. And the idea IS to bring back balance. Some of the complaints ... Force Projection, lack of industry/manufacturing, lack of PvP/War Targets, the boredom called station bashing, risk free logistics chains, timers, to name a few, all go or can go away as new groups move into those areas the nullblocks abandon. Create real conflict drivers and these things actually come about.

      Moon Goo ... bust.
      Sec status tags ... bust.
      ISK banks (can't think of the name ... our corp dropped the idea of deploying them three weeks in) ... bust.

      And since the large nullblocks are NOT going to change, they need balancing and encouragement to do so. Do I like the idea of nerfing myself and and my corpmates ... no. But for the good of the game, sure .. .we will adjust as we always do ... but the game needs a serious shake-up and industry changes is not it.

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  7. Wildlands could use more scan down combat, relic and data content to offset the poor sec status/low availability of agents (only 3 stations) / general emptiness / low number of plexes. While not npc null, the drone regions lack data and relic content.

    Stain seems mostly fine although it seems weird that sansha drop enams and not invulnerability fields. Perhaps the relative scarcity / cost of factioning a shield tank vs armor tank could be addressed by adding sansha enams into the drop table in place of enams.

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    Replies
    1. I scrambled my thoughts on that one....should have been invuln in lieu of enams.

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    2. I was wondering about the emptiness of that area myself.

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  8. Oh hey, another thing. Can you raise the issue with CCP about some of the niche production skills which are currently ridiculously narrow in scope?

    e.g.
    Battleship Construction
    Capital Ship Construction
    Cruiser Construction
    Frigate Construction
    Industrial Construction
    Outpost Construction

    Currently they do nothing at all except gate the production of T2 stuff. It would be nice if they got a little bonus (e.g. 1% faster build time for all production jobs of that class) so they at least affect T1 manufacturing a little bit.

    Frankly, the skills surrounding T2 invention and production are just a little bit screwy, where there's this incredibly small difference in skill level needed between inventing something vs making the components needed to make the BPC itself, that seems a bit too tightly-coupled. I hope CCP looks at that more closely after Crius.

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    Replies
    1. What is the CSM proposed pi change mentioned in Xanders weekly summary on crossing zebras?

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    2. Aye, Serpentine. When the invention stuff comes these will be good points to look at the skill system.

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  9. I live in NPC nullsec (Venal). Here are my thoughts.

    I think Eve needs more NPC nullsec regions. There are wast swathes of unsed sov space, but the few NPC nullsec regions are relatively crowded.

    Considering that under current sov mechanics it;'s literally impossible for a new alliance to establish themselves in sov nullsec without either joining one of the two big blocs or becoming renters. The only option is NPC nullsec, so I think it needs to be expanded, or get some attention from CCP (fat chance of that ever happening).

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