CCP's first salvo of silver bullets results in friendly fire

I’ve been very quiet over the past few weeks.  Apologies for that – RL stuff and things in Eve have drained my time.

Anyway, a couple of things to mention.

Firstly, the changes to invention proposed in this dev blog.  Some good things such as:

• balancing datacore use – the new purpose based system makes much more sense to me


• multiple outcomes for invention – I have the hang of it and then I need to work harder, this always needed some love

However, as usual there’s some bad things:

• Merging Invention and  Reverse Engineering – these are completely different activities, the only reason to merge is to dumb things down


• Only needing skills to level 1 for Tech II construction – really? Integrating capital class jump technology into a T1 battleship is easy you say?

Serious point here.  Can somebody at CCP please start using a dictionary when making changes.  For years we had refining skills which covered refining ore, but also reprocessing modules.  Now, they’ve effectively nerfed refining modules so only ore is refined, but instead have renamed it reprocessing.  Do you refine a piece of iron ore or do you reprocess it?

Now, they’ve decided to do the same with invention and reverse engineering.  We take a tech I blueprint and, after looking over it and using our extensive and expensive science skills, we apply ourselves and invent something new, a tech II blueprint copy.  Alternatively, we take a piece of advanced and virtually incomprehensible alien technology and take it apart, scan it, poke and prod it until we manage to construct a design for something that behaves in a similar way… we’ve managed to reverse engineer it.

Why oh why can CCP not just stick to having things named correctly, or just come up with a new name altogether.  I can understand that CCP are merging the activities code into one section for simplicity and to make it easier to update and manage – well done and congratulations – but why can’t they then have things split into two trees, one named invention and the other named reverse engineering?  Perhaps I’m being too picky, but I think it’s just lazy.

Ok, that’s as much time as I’m going to spend on invention stuff for now, as there’s more to come on that I’m sure.  The biggest point is the travel dev blog.

I read it through, and then I read it again just to make sure, and then a corp mate helpfully posted this link which shows CCP dev responses.

The funniest thing in the whole dev blog is the example of Little Bobby Tables moving his Archon in appendix A.  I got to the point where Bobby decides to fly his Archon 40 gates through null-sec.  Unfortunately CCP Greyscale missed out the end of the story where, 3 jumps in, he gets tackled by a roaming gang and, shortly thereafter wakes up in a clone vat with an insurance payment.  Yes, the limiting of force projection is a good idea, but by quoting sheer stupidity in one of his examples, it doesn’t help soften the blow within the dev blog.

Once again, CCP’s activities have destroyed an entire game play style.  If you rely on people such as Black Frog Freight, Galactic Hauling Solutions or PushX (not advertising or endorsing any solution), better start thinking of an alternative as CCP’s first salvo of silver bullets aimed at null sec will headshot these operations.  It’s a real shame, as these groups (and others like them) have worked hard to build up a business to service the usually smaller operations in lo-sec and null-sec and provide them with a way to exist.

For me, it will mean that I’d need to double the number of cyno toons to be able to continue to operate as an industrialist in null sec.

By the way, that’s partly why I’ve been so quiet.  Having got bored and stale as renters, we moved corp to join a sov holding PvP alliance in order to help ramp up their industrial wing.  I’ve been busy setting up T1, T2 and T3 manufacturing lines and things are now progressing nicely, producing fleet T2 and T3 fits for sale on the market and by Alliance contract.

However, post patch, with fatigue affecting both jump bridges and jump drives, initial calculations on fatigue and the idea of funding another one, probably two accounts just for cyno toons, I’m starting to look at this and wonder whether CCP really have any idea what the implications of these changes will be.  Yes, perhaps if we had player constructed stargates available to build and deploy at the same time as these changes…. but that’s probably around a year away I’m guessing.

Other people have suggested so many different changes, such as the need for the cyno on a ship to spool up before it can jump.  Why can’t the fatigue be applied to that instead, so that maybe radiation builds up to the state where it takes longer to spool up each time, so the more jumps you do in a short period, the longer each jump takes to actually do.  This would have meant the need to defend the final few cynos for the jumps to be possible.

Essentially, with the changes happening now and in the future, CCP are taking the stack of cards that is null sec and the Eve economy, knocking it down and giving us a new pack of cards and hoping that we will be able or bothered to rebuild it into a working game again.

I’m very concerned about this, and not entirely sure I want to go through the effort and expense of being able to be part of the rebuilding process.

On a final note, I’ve been playing Warframe  a bit recently, as I was getting a bit fed up of Dust as the low player numbers there coupled with the matchmaking system seems to result in most matches comprising at least one full squad of full Proto gear players funded by Planetary Conquest ISK, or lots of people running around in cloaks with shotguns.  The actual gameplay in Dust can be very engaging at times, but the ability to make ISK to run good suits is not great unless you’re chosen by the good and great to receive some of their Planet gained wealth.

Yesterday I unlocked the Clan Key, and travelled to the Clan Dojo, which my Clanmate is building.  CCP – you really need to look at this and learn.  As a clan, you’re able to construct a very nice looking complex where people can have 1v1 fights to test equipment and learn and practice moves.  You can also make things for clan members to use too.  If, when we had Incarna, CCP had given Corporations and/or Alliances the ability to construct something similar in NPC stations or Outposts, then I believe that it would have been successful, and would not have resulted in the terrible consequences that followed.  Even if not applied to Eve, if something similar had been put into Dust when it was launched, then perhaps the concurrent player count would not be the poor few thousand it is now, but would have been in the 10,000′s as such a title should be.

Anyway, these are my thoughts.  I will welcome comments such as “QQ poor indy noob carebear thanx for the tears yummy” and so on.  Constructive comments also very much appreciated.

CCP's first salvo of silver bullets results in friendly fire