Initial Post Fanfest Thoughts

Disclaimer: I have not had time to dig into all of the information released about the new Abyssal pockets, Triglavian NPCs, and mutation mechanics for modules coming for the May expansion Into The Abyss. But here are some initial thoughts I have from the event and what I did pick up.

New Space: The Abyssal space sounds like just another type of wormhole space, but leaving nothing to chance this time to ensure players don't unexpectedly decide to move in and live there. On one hand that makes me disappointed about long term exploration possibilities since its basically feels like just instanced mission dungeons, but on the other hand I'm excited for the weird effects and environments these pockets can have and the new PvE content that they can host.

New Ships, New Weapon System: Ambivalent overall. I love the look of these new ships, but the new weapon system that increases damage over time (hello Inferno Dragon!) sounds great at first, like a weapon that smaller groups could employ against larger super fleets, but I suspect much like Strategic Cruisers, will find greatest use in mass numbers that large coalitions can bring together. Big losers might be the smaller elite groups that depend on up-shipping to maintain dominance.

Module Mutations: Random mechanics always sound neat at first, just like invention did when it first released. But here is a hard truth about random mechanics: you do enough of them, the randomness is eliminated via statistics. Ultimately the randomness will only punish the small guys trying out the mechanics, and the big producers will reap the benefits of the new powerful modules. Plus balancing these new mutated modules is going to be a pain, and ultimately will be the new benchmark for PvP ships if they come down in price. Remember, cost is not good a balancing factor.

Overall the feeling is hopeful pessimism. A lot of the devil is in the details of this expansion, so I eagerly await the dev blogs on some of this new material.

Fanfest is Coming... I Hope Its Good

Last year's EVE Fanfest in Iceland left me feeling un-enthused about EVE and it has lingered for the interceding year, culminating in my plea from January, "Come on CCP, give me something to blog for".

Since then we have heard whisperings about new ships from heretofore unknown faction called the Triglavian Collective,  new Drifter ships, and improvements to Upwell structure mechanics. My interest has been piqued.

I'm cautiously optimistic about Fanfest this year, I'm hoping for a big reveal or two that will energize me going into the next year. I have no illusions about Faction Warfare getting any love though; I'm optimistic, not insane.

Come on CCP, give me something more to blog for. :)

Fanfest Reflections

So I've been following the fanfest through blogs and twitter and my thoughts have been percolating over the weekend and I have a laundry list of thoughts.

New Jump Effect

Very gorgeous and I approve of the War on Loading Screens. Very much so. Anything to drive a more immersive experience is good in my opinion. My only concern is how well it performs under stress (i.e. trying to jump when a big fight is on the gate and if it slows down jump duration any.

New Directional Scanner "Discovery Scanner"

Finally! The outdated and archaic Directional Scanner UI is a particular bugbear of mine which I have argued needs only a little love to make it significantly better. However, I have some questions and concerns. Number one is if we will still be provided a list of hits for 260 degrees because my viewport is at least less than 180 degrees (and more like 90 degrees). If I have to rotate 360 to see all hits at a glance I will be annoyed beyond belief. Also, will it still have range and angel control for fine tuned scanning?

Probe Formations

If this is all they are doing to probing directly, I approve. Assuming the formations are any good. Super bonus if they let us create our own formations and save them, and even more points if they can be exported and imported.

Ice Mining

Not sure why they are moving all ice belts to anomalies... other than it gives them more ability to reduce the amount of ice available overall but controlling the amount of ice in the spawn and how often it respawns once depleted. This change it going to piss off a lot of casual ice miners, especially when coupled with the shortened cycle timers, an obvious attempt to make ice miners look more active for bot detection I wager.

Resource Rebalance

- Moon Goo: At first I questioned the point of the two new materials but I reread the blogs and I get it now. Before the Ferrofluid and NeoMercurite were used across all four empires, but now they are just for Caldari and Minmatar tech II items respectively while the two new materials are for the Amarr and Gallente. So far this change makes sense to me but I leave it to the moon goo number crunchers to really dig into it (paging Ripard Teg!).

- Asteroids: So a lot (I mean a lot!) more low end minerals in null sec and low sec ores. This is supposed to allow null sec manufacturing to thrive because they won't have to import low end ores but in reality this ends up as a nerf to high sec mining as null sec ores now get the high end ores get the same high end minerals and the low end minerals. Hmmmm. I do like that the reward for min-range ores have been brought back in line though.

The removal of grav sites from normal probing to just being picked up by the "discovery scanner" is interesting, but not sure if it will have any impact.

- Outposts: Wow! Outposts got huge upgrades. More manufacturing and research slots, offices, and bigger upgrades.

Overall: This constitutes a massive massive buff to null sec and significant nerf to high sec. Expect to see a lot more production done in null sec and the price of tritanium and pyerite to drop. The ice mining changes will also be a buff to null sec as high sec will be less able to meet the demands of hungry towers and capitals and I expect these prices to rise accordingly as well.

CSM Election Results

I'm very happy that four of my six endorsements made it on the CSM and extremely pleased that Mike Azariah was one of them. Except for the glaring hole of low sec/ faction war representatives it seems like a good spread of candidates, although I think this is the first time there is no null sec Russian rep if I'm not mistaken.

EDIT: It was pointed out to me that Korvin is a Russian candidate so hopefully he provides the Russian community with the communication channel to the CSM they deserve.

I'm sad that election turnout is down. I think its a combination of no pressing outrages and  a disappointing CCP effort to make the CSM election important (to be fair, after I posted that CCP did make a good dev blog post with developer testimonials and I saw Devs in local promoting the election in trade hubs) along with a frustrating voting experience that forced turnout down. Part of me wonders if fanfest preparation takes too much of CCP's attention from running a good election. We'll see next year I guess.

New Trailer "Origins"

Its very slick, but obviously marketing material and not reflective of actual gameplay footage for a large degree. I would love for some of those damage effects in game.