So I launched the new website, then a lot happened! I became a director, then a ceo, drama happened between and after those things, moves occurred, restructuring, all that stuff. Out of game I had my first child and lost my only uncle. So all of my grand posting drafts kept falling to the wayside.
Life in and out of Eve seems to be normalizing for a given quantity of normal. Time to write!
Inside Eve, I like the new release cycle. Crius was great and all the changes to industry have so far been fairly useful. Well, the new isk sink of arcane fees is a bit annoying, especially since CCP refuses to recognize it as such. The new interface and simplified ME/TE are welcome changes. Living in a wormhole, our fees are pretty low, so there is also that.
Hyperion was a bit of a mixed bag. I live in wormhole space, and I find a lot of the changes feel mostly like change for the sake of change. Some things I find surprisingly useful, such as the scatter dynamic. Since our group lives in WHs that rarely if ever get capital sized connections, this mostly has resulted in never getting uncloaked after jumping anymore. That is actually a boon to staying hidden. We’ll see what happens if we start rolling holes.
On the other hand, I am not as huge a fan of all the new wandering connections and the frigate only connections. The first simply makes it a rare occurrence to close up our hole for a day now and then. We can still do it once in a while, but it feels like that option is largely gone. We do get more options for chain scouting and logistics, but at the price of more time and effort spent staying vigilant. The frigate connections have not led to us seeing many interceptor death gangs as feared, but they are mostly an annoying curiosity that we have little interest in. Perceived risk is up, but rewards remain the same, so maybe think about that, CCP? Simply making things more complex a better game does not make.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the new release cycle is how angry some people are that Hyperion and Oceanus have not had big “jesus features”. The whole point of small releases is that CCP can rapidly iterate and deploy stuff. And the rumblings from the CSM and CCP indicate that sov, corp mechanics and POS changes are all in the offing, so let the poor devs dev. I for one am happy a lot of things are getting fixed after years of neglect. Once many of the sucky things suck less, CCP can get on with making new things.
Count me as one of the ten Eve players hoping corp mechanics are the next thing on the list. The way POS mechanics and corp mechanics interact are terrifyingly obtuse and rife with loopholes and completely unexplained limitation, rules, and interactions. For example, an SMA can only have access set by four levels, two of which are ludicrous (Fuel and Anchoring? What?). Almost every other array uses divisional access rights. But industry arrays also require roles that let one player mess about with things completely unrelated to their own work. And if you go into the POS backend, there is no way to give access to industry arrays based on industry roles. Oh, did you want to create a title that gives director access without the ability to access the master wallet and create another director? Nope. The mind boggles.
Fixing those systems will make it easier for people running things, and hopefully make it easier for player groups to organize and create content for each other. By which I mean making it easier to hunt, build, assign roles and access, and manage members in ways that give people the security they need to focus on having fun in space. Anything to help the HR departments of Eve corps from imploding under the strain of not doing any of the myriad things that can screw over your internet spaceship friends would be great in my book.
Here’s looking forward to the next few releases!