Aside from the 30 Day Market Challenge I have not been as active in Eve this month because I am trying to find a job, and my spring semester is ending, hence finals… Oh the life of a grad student. But here are some off the hip thoughts on the Escalation.
Flashing Lights
I got to see the new status effects in the flesh today while running missions. It is a very nice addition, and it makes easier to tell if that stupid frigate is webbing me (not that important) or scramming me (more concerning). Also, as I tend to mission in Caldari boats seeing any sort of target painting or an inept npc tracking disruption is entertaining. C’mon pirates, a Drake already has a sig the size of Ohio, and a Tengu gives no shits about your turret effects.
Looting the Corpses
Also in missions, I find the loot drop changes to be very nice when I salvage. Instead of ignoring the drops until I get around to refining/selling/whatever, I get excited when I see a pile of named mods gloriously uncluttered by other junk. I almost wonder if it would be worth CCP just taking out the metal scraps and ammo drops completely and just upping the bounties another tick.
You could even get rid of dropped meta items, replace them with BPCs from salvage, and combine Salvage BPC + Salvage Material + Tech 1 = Meta. Or maybe that would be stupid. I’m not sure. It would give industrialists something to build while waiting for those damn BPOs to research, or to do while you get together access to a POS.
Econo-what now?
From a market perspective, I am in the process of becoming an all-PLEX player. I was hoping the Jita camp and the Escalation changes would drive the mineral prices even higher than pre-patch, but it seems the speculation was mostly that. I am sure there will be long term effects, and mining modules are making me some nice margins on station trading, but my hoard of minerals had to be sacrificed to feed CCP and keep the indy alt active, so less profit was realized than I hoped. For the time being my Hulks and Orca will sit out Hulkageddon, as I hope to come back to mining later in the summer or in the fall and find myself making a bit more per hour once the study grind ramps back up.
A Game of Drones
Perhaps most notable in this Escalation are the things that are not here yet. I am really looking forward to new missile effects, new Bomber skins, the new inventory improvements, and in a strange way I am really excited about that drone damage module that peeked out from behind the dev curtain. I started as a Gallente pilot and my old Vexors and Myrms are itching to come out and play again. Apparently some people already think the Extrinsic Damage Amplifier is crap. Personally I would like to see it as a high slot module, and I think calls to buff it into the same range as normal weapon mods is appropriate, but we’ll see what comes of it.