Skip to main content

CSM9 - Day 218

CCP has decided to sneak features into the last days before Rhea. The release is on Tuesday.

The insurance change was not slipped in unannounced so much as it auto updated and was noticed. When Crius was released mineral usage changed. Extra minerals were rolled into base mineral costs for hulls. In other areas mineral costs were smoothed out. This caused insurance costs to skyrocket. Some saw this as a great thing. It gave more ISK back to people who lost ships and incentivized them to buy more expensive hulls. Other’s felt that it devalued PvP and injected ISK into the game unsnessessarly. Some just hate insurance. It was suggested that it would be changed and the changes have now kicked in. The costs are not as low as they were but they are not nearly as high. My Jaguar before gave me a million ISK or so. After the buff it gave me nineteen million. Now a Jaguar loss is down to five if I insure it at the Platinum level.

CCP Seagull announced map changes. We have all been waiting to see what they are. CCP released a dev blog on Thursday along with the update on Sisi. The new starmap is an opt in feature under the escape menu. It appears as an icon on the neocom and you can create a floating, dockable window to hold your map. It is a work in progress but it is good progress that will create a functional map to match its beauty. However, I do not think an in game map will ever give the detail and depth that dotlan does. Nor does dotlan’s creator.

The new map turns into a floating window. I’ve been tossing around the idea of giving channel MOTD’s the ability to float freely. We store a lot of information in them at times. Mostly this thought started because of Rookie chat. The MOTD there is a fantastic source of information but it vanishes under the scroll of the channel. Of course that might be spam. Or something configurable. Or maybe just for rookie chat?

Sisi has also been remirrored. I lost my free titans. Much sadness was to be had for me but joy to be had for everyone that has been waiting for a remirror.

More colors have been added to the new UI but the colors are still not able to be personalized. Some of the icons have been improved for clarity. The graph icon for the market was changed for instance. I still expect significant unhappiness when this launches on Tuesday. I have been wanting a gamma correction and had someone ask me about that a few days ago but I do not think that is on this horizon.

Teams are being removed. I am torn on this one. I am glad that CCP is accepting that some things do not work and are admitting that they cannot work on it and removing features instead of leaving them broken and partially finished. However, teams do help some producers and I worry greatly that they were helping to subsidize some groups. I don’t know and this is now a topic I want to look a bit more into over the upcoming weeks. Then the question has to be asked where they stand if they are creating a balance point. Being willing to remove features is not bad. It should be encouraged just as not releasing unfinished features should be encouraged. Now to watch how this falls out with people who were using teams. It is something for me to dig into. As a side note, I wrote my Pod and Planet contest entry based off of the lore around teams. Bad choice on my part.

For those who are participating in Eve Probe, a new version has been released. Eve Probe gives CCP statistics from our machines about Eve’s performance. It also has beautiful graphic scenes to look at and an Eve themed screensaver.

Let’s discuss an interesting change in the patch notes. Joining corporations is changing a bit on the mechanical side. This will stop things like people joining corps while in space to avoid being flagged a war target. That particular action is an exploit. However, it is buried in the past news documents. Some of the CSM has an on going effort to create a clearer way for players to access policy topics such as this. The policy is good but accessing the policy is bad.

It was pointed out to me on Twitter that it makes it hard for super pilots to join corporations. However, they already had to leave to apply for a corporation. This moves where the pilot had to get out of the super and go to the station. Now it can be looked at with the opinion that super pilots should have holding alts. Like cyno alts they are somewhat the cost of doing business. But, would it be harmful, beneficial, or just a niche case for super pilots to be able to join corp while in space? It would decrease the amount of dumb things that some people will do when faced with decisions. Opinions?

Ships will now fall from the ship maintenance bay. I felt when the Bowhead was to be introduced, this was important and it was my first question about the ship’s introduction. These drops where fixed for the POS module and now they are here for hulls as well.

There is also a notification of a fix to some 4/10 complexes that let T3s in. That came to my attention a few weeks ago and the PvE team has corrected it. There are a lot of fixes to rookie mission little things. We found a lot of bugs with the hundreds of people doing Tutorials these last few weeks and many of them are being addressed. One that was very interesting to me had to do with blue print location and the interface not changing blueprint location when the blueprint was moved. Not understanding the interface, this has been causing a lot of “I have all the stuff and cannot build from it,” problems.

CCP Falcon has announced a competition. CCP wants its players to make their own version of “This is Eve”. The top videos will be shown during the Keynote at Fanfest in March. There are also other prizes to win.

Outreach:

I am looking for questions and topics for the January Summit. I have my collection. I’d like some low sec focused topics. I’ve been collecting war dec opinions and thoughts. I plan to request information from CCP regarding the general health of low sec, see how the capital ship changes are affecting us, how capital production is going, and discuss faction warfare. Phoebe has caused significant changes in low sec that have yet to play out.

Monitoring the overall health is very important so that we don’t wind up dipping in an unwanted direction when we’ve finally gotten some momentum going. I’ve gotten some good feedback so far on Faction Warfare as well. But, there is more to Eve than low sec, FW and caps, so questions and thoughts and ideas are welcome and I will do with them as I can. I got about 70% of what I took last time answered. Hopefully I will do better this time.

I have a Podcast session tonight with Derping Thru War. They ran through my home system and we got to talking and I was invited to their podcast.

On December 13th I’m following Corbexx’s wormhole sounding board with CCP Affinity with a general PvE one. More details can be found here. I am looking for participants.

I have my Open Q&A for December on the 14th at 1500 and 2200 Eve time.

My official running for CSMX announcement is also up on the forums.

Comments

  1. Pilots should be able to apply, join, leave, be kicked from corporation while in space if they are under a POS shield. This solves lot of issues (WH, supers) without changing the main rule that you can't change in space to surprise enemies. POS shield is more "docked" than "in space".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wouldn't they be ejected from the POS if they don't have it's force field password though?

      I think the changing in space thing will necessitate standings and all other information being pushed to the char and everyone in local at the time of joining. Currently this step happens on a session change, a fleet join, or a relog, with relogging being the most reliable method.

      Delete
  2. Since they like to tool tip everything maybe put the MOTD in a tooltip when you hover over the channeltab?
    I liked teams, were they complicated? Yes, but that is also because the out of game tools aren't following/incorporating them as of yet(changes have been to rapid for the 3rd party dev to follow).
    I have been making some t2 ships with teams.
    Not even bidding on the teams just searching near jita for the best teams available and moving everything there.
    There will still be the industry index but that will become static over time.
    People don't love moving stuff around.
    The teams kept it a bit more dynamic.
    I am also making caps in low sec . There i did bid on teams.
    The capitals teams have fierce competition from null sec. You realy need to be sneaky and bid at the last moment.
    Teams for copying were almost useless, the time less was so low that you didn't notice much.
    And invention teams were not yet implemented.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well, I have a broad question about High Sec. Will it be a part of the upcoming lore or it's been left behind by the events like Thera and the player built stargates?

    Also on the Teams, I don't get why are they removed without a replacement. The game is full of stuff which barely is used, why remove the Teams before having a iteration in hand? Are they breaking something, aside of not working as intended?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=5270435#post5270435
      This link is to a dev post explaining why.

      Delete
  4. Re: Teams

    As a long time Hi-Sec industrialist I quickly discerned I would be shunning Teams. Rather, I searched around for a convenient low system cost index location and moved there. Once ensconced, I honed the production lines around items I could competitively manufacture team free. Purchasing teams, especially spiffy ones, would have been counterproductive at that point since:

    1) It would have brought other free riding manufacturers to my location to produce the very same items I had purchased the team’s assistance for thereby creating a local margin lowering glut.

    2) In addition to feeding margin lowering competition, a team induced influx of free riders would have also driven up the system cost index not only raising the expense of producing team manufactured items, but also *everything else* produced by me at that location.

    Conclusion – Teams, whole lotta down side. Comparatively minimal upside.

    Appears many other manufacturers followed similar lines of reasoning meaning a team centered push/pull, clumping/dispersal mechanic not only wasn’t functioning as such but couldn’t function as such:

    Purchasing teams only made sense if the purchaser had a way to limit the competitive clumping the team was supposed to produce which 1) couldn’t be achieved in NPC controlled space and 2) wouldn’t happen elsewhere. The purpose behind the mechanic was doomed from the get-go.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Why not just allows supers and titans to dock. The current mechanic is very limiting; I cant imagine how much less interesting EvE would be if I could only fly one ship. It is not clear what useful purpose is served by creating this rather strange mechanic.

    Often I hear youngish players, and even one or two year old players express that they would like to someday have a Nyx or build a Nyx or upgrade a system or construct an outpost. And then someone takes them aside and explains it is not for them; it is a coffin, it wont fit through a wormhole and can not be built inside of one, it cant be made without Sov, if they have it they cant put it away, so to have it they have to quit corp, leave their friends and do big bloc nullsec things with big bloc nullsec people. In such ways dreams are smashed and eve becomes less interesting to one more pilot.

    Wouldn't it be better to harness the excitement. For EvE to have yet one more pilot active in space, scrounging and doing and moving about to piece by piece harvest the isk or tritanium on a sisyphean task. EvE gains that most valuable of all things, a pilot in space with a goal. The producers gain a customer, and everyone else gains one more human to interact with. Yes, actually having the Nyx would like be pointless, it would likely not leave station and if it did it would likely die gloriously or perhaps stupidly but that does not matter. It the pursuit of the goal which is interesting and exciting and it would be much better if such a thing were facilitated.

    The current state of supers and titans seems like a great lost opportunity. Groups and individuals need goals, really big goals and the shame is the game has some like building a super or titan, building an outpost or having a super or titan which are just put a bit too far out of reach with impractical limitations. Imagine for a second that a pilot or corp built a titan, super, or outpost in NPC null, or lowsec or even a wormhole. If you list the actual behavior that would change afterward, I believe it would not be much, and in the period of leading up to that point so much useful and engaging activity would happen that it would be a great win. I want excited and engaged pilots with goals and purpose, please help CCP to see this.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Why not just kill several birds with one stone and put a timer on joining corporations?

    You can leave and join a new corporation once a week (or whatever CCP decides is an appropriate cooldown).

    And of course the same if you get kicked from a corp to prevent using kicks to get around the timer.

    ReplyDelete
  7. How about fixing the chat windows so that I can set the order of the tabs and instead of them being in a different order each time I login the stay the same.

    BTW "Reload MOTD" is right there in the chat window

    ReplyDelete
  8. I know reload motd is right there. Some places have info dense motds that people never see to know a motd is there because the room movrs to fast.

    The chat windows will stay in order. It is just their otfet and not your order. There are many fixes for chats that I'd like to see.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maybe one day!

 [15:32:10] Trig Vaulter > Sugar Kyle Nice bio - so carebear sweet - oh you have a 50m ISK bounty - so someday more grizzly  [15:32:38 ] Sugar Kyle > /emote raises an eyebrow to Trig  [15:32:40 ] Sugar Kyle > okay :)  [15:32:52 ] Sugar Kyle > maybe one day I will try PvP out When I logged in one of the first things I did was answer a question in Eve Uni Public Help. It was a random question that I knew the answer of. I have 'Sugar' as a keyword so it highlights green and catches my attention. This made me chuckle. Maybe I'll have to go and see what it is like to shoot a ship one day? I could not help but smile. Basi suggested that I put my Titan killmail in my bio and assert my badassery. I figure, naw. It was a roll of the dice that landed me that kill mail. It doesn't define me as a person. Bios are interesting. The idea of a biography is a way to personalize your account. You can learn a lot about a person by what they choose to put in their bio

Taboo Questions

Let us talk contentious things. What about high sec? When will CCP pay attention to high sec and those that cannot spend their time in dangerous space?  This is somewhat how the day started, sparked by a question from an anonymous poster. Speaking about high sec, in general, is one of the hardest things to do. The amount of emotion wrapped around the topic is staggering. There are people who want to stay in high sec and nothing will make them leave. There are people who want no one to stay in high sec and wish to cripple everything about it. There are people in between, but the two extremes are large and emotional in discussion. My belief is simple. If a player wishes to live in high sec, I do not believe that anything will make them leave that is not their own curiosity. I do not believe that we can beat people out of high sec or destroy it until they go to other areas of space. Sometimes, I think we forget that every player has the option to not log back in. We want them to log

And back again

My very slow wormhole adventure continues almost as slowly as I am terminating my island in Animal Crossing.  My class 3 wormhole was not where I wanted to be. I was looking for a class 1 or 2 wormhole. I dropped my probes and with much less confusion scanned another wormhole. I remembered to dscan and collect my probes as I warped to the wormhole. I even remembered to drop a bookmark, wormholes being such good bookmark locations later. My wormhole told me it was a route into low sec. I tilted my head. How circular do our adventures go. Today might be the day to die and that too is okay. That mantra dances in the back of my head these days. Even if someone mocks me, what does that matter? Fattening someone's killboard is their issue not mine. So I jumped through and found myself in Efa in Khanid, tucked on the edge of high sec and null sec. What an interesting little system.  Several connections to high sec. A connection to null sec. This must be quite the traffic system.    I am f