Not the Direction I was Thinking Of

So Rubicon 1.1 promises to give us a slew of new mobile deployables to play with this winter. We are getting:

- Encounter Surveillance System to add some farms in low sec
- Micro Jump Unit which acts like an off board micro jump drive that battleships can currently employ
- Mobile Scan Inhibitor which cloaks ships within its sphere from directional scans (but it still shows up itself and is easy to probe down)
- a variant of the Mobile Siphon Unit.

I've let that sit in the churn bucket for a weekend and now I'm ready for my reaction post. Here it is:

Not the direction I was thinking of...

I'm surprised to see more examples of disposable temporary mobile structures for combat battlefield modification purposes (like the cyno jammer) rather than semi-permanent ones for non-combat utility roles (like the mobile supply depot and tractor tower).

To me, the latter approach is what EVE needs more of, more control of activities outside of the confines of POSes and stations. Module recycling, ore compaction, ammo/charge construction, ship repair / refueling, ship storage, ship-to-ship cargo transfers, etc. I.e. mobile bases in which to operate from.

Instead, CCP seems to be leaning more towards the battlefield modification route where these temporary structures are launched to modify the combat environment in a certain manner and then forgot about. A new form of ammunition for a fleet as opposed to a ship we could say. While I'm not opposed to seeing some progress down this route, I'm surprised CCP chose this route because balancing combat utility deployables should be harder and more risky than balancing non-combat deployables that are designed for making life easier or more varied.

Regardless, the fact remains that we have two new terrain modifying deployables and two "utility" deployables to look at.

Micro Jump Unit - An interesting concept  but the execution leaves a little wary. The 12 second spool up time essentially means that you are faster than an interceptor (8.333 km/sec average speed over the 12 seconds) but it also gives your opponents that long to lock you up and scram you. And that's ignoring the setup time the unit has to begin with. This limits its flexibility a lot but does leave room for some very specific use cases for getting around a battlefield quickly when needed. Best idea I heard was on the High Drag podcast where they suggested a fleet jumping through a gate into a bubble could hold cloak while one member anchored the micro jump unit and then they could all use it to speed out of the bubbles faster than simply burning for clear space. Still, a very specific scenario.

Mobile Scan Inhibitor - Colour me intrigued. While it won't completely hide a fleet since it is visible itself on deep scan and easily probe-able, it does add the factor of the unknown to the mix. What's hiding there? Who in local is docked up and who is in that inhibitor? Should I warp there? In null sec, the fear of bubble traps increases the tension and in wormholes with no local its like knowing you heard a noise from the closet in a house you are supposed to be alone in. Nerve wracking. to say the least. Additionally, in faction warfare in busy systems I could see perhaps wanting to use one inside a plex to throw an enemy fleet a curve ball; sure, one scout can find out what's there but I like having the tool available.

Encounter Surveillance System - In an attempt to add a type of "field" to null sec, they created a deployable that will have the least impact overall but cause the greatest amount of wailing from the null bears. I appreciate what CCP is trying to do in this scenario (adding risk for greater reward) but I don't know if it will greatly change the landscape at all. Time will tell.

'Rote' and 'Hybrid' siphon units - Expanding the siphon mechanic from base moon mining materials to threaten reaction and wormhole POSes. I approve. Not much to add.

* * * * *

What next? We will wait and see...

So We've Crossed the Rubicon... Now What?

Part of the big promise of the Rubicon expansion is the beginning of the three year plan it represents.

Looking Ahead

There has been a lot of talk and hints in the various dev blogs and interviews that suggests that something major is coming. The image of the badgers assisting in a stargate construction, hints about new space being accessed, talk about the control of the empires and CONCORD slipping. They are flashes of parts of a grand vision we have not been made privy to yet. Intriguing yet frustrating.

So I'm going to half speculate and half dream and lay out the vision of what I think the end goal is going to be or should be.

Welcome to Polaris

I think Jove space is finally going to be opened up but not with full stargate access like all other null sec regions. Instead it will be accessed through special constructed stargates that are not permanent, but rather destructible and require fuel.

These stargates will be constructed by capsuleers from several mobile deployables that combine together (like Voltron!) and will only allow access to the corporation that built it (or based on standings), but hostile forces can take control of it through hacking. Constructing it will not be overly difficult or expensive for small ships, but larger ship classes will require larger and more powerful gates constructed.

Inside Jove space we will find what we already knew; the Jove are gone, either completely died out or mysteriously vanished, and Sansha has moved his most powerful and obedient forces into the region. The Jovian stations are in disrepair or destroyed, either by the departing / last Jovians or by the marauding Sanshas. What this means for the players entering this space is a slew of extremely tough incursion level rats and complexes / exploration sites, where the rewards are parts and blueprints to new technology in the forms of new modules, deployables, ships, and implants. Hacking, Ghost Sites, and new site mechanics will all feature heavily in this space.

Another feature of this space is that most if not all normal stargates will be dysfunctional so in order to delve deeper into these Jovian region you will need to construct more temporary stargates in Jovian space. The deeper you go, the greater the rewards but the greater the risks (especially if someone else takes over your stargates!).

Local will be in delayed mode in this space like wormholes but there will be a deployable to anchor that will activate the beacons which keep track of pilots in space so that local returns to immediate mode.

Players will be allowed to anchor starbases (the new kind, not POSes which will have been obsoleted) but not claim sovereignty due to CONCORD not having authority in these regions. Due to the dynamic nature of stargate construction (which will require something from known space to build) and destruction, living in the Jovian space will be difficult and fraught with risk of getting trapped inside, but players will find a way to the lucrative rewards for the prepared.

End Day Dream

So that's what my wild guess is. I'm putting the crystal ball away for now.

In Pursuit of Mastery

You'd think, with just under 132 million skillpoints on a combat pilot, that I'd have at least one ship with a mastery level V beside a shuttle. Nevertheless, its almost completely mastery level four across the board and not a single V to be found.

Damn you ISIS! I can feel my OCD kicking in...

I looked up my beloved Incursus and saw I was missing the Armour Tanking V due to only have level IV in the Armour Compensation skills and the Small Hybrid Turret V due to the specialization skills for blasters and rails. So I know what I'm doing next!

I really like this system over the certificates, it ties the ships and the skills together much more intuitively. I was looking for a new skill goal after getting my leadership skills to V so this is perfect timing.

Rubicon: Dawn of a New Age

Back in 2007 and 2008, EVE was very, very different.

That was the height of the Nano Age, which had always existed in in EVE since the beginning but really came into its own as the cluster population expanded and aged, creating those with skills and resources to exploit it to its full.

Various attempts to combat the spread of "nano" ships had been tried and some stopgap measures worked, removing such things as Typhoon battleships moving faster than frigates, but the problem only spread throughout space until it was ubiquitous wherever you went.

In June 2008 I wrote about the problem:

Nano-ships are ships setup to achieve crazy-ass speed (that's a real technical term, half between "damn fast" and "ludicrous speed" on the Eve ship designer's scale) using Overdrive Injectors, Nanofibers, Inertial Stabilizers, Polycarbon Engine Housing rigs, Snake implants, and sometimes even gang mates with leadership bonuses. And of course, the Microwarp Drive. 

The nano setup works better on some ships than others but its a common setup and the source of extreme frustration for a lot of players. Due to game mechanics a nano ship is often nearly invulnerable to capture and most damage is negated by the extreme speed, and while their DPS is gimped in order to go so fast a gang of nano-ships can be quite deadly and nearly invincible. 

I used to be in the "nerf nanoships" camp but nowadays I'm on the fence on the issue since I'm more experienced and can see several strategies to deal with them at least some of the time but still feel they are very powerful even without some of the more expensive options. 

So I think CCP will probably do something to nerf nanoships. In my opinion, they need only to address one module to fix this problem: the Micro warp drive. 

The Microwarp drive gives at least a 500% boost to max velocity (550% for tech II, more for faction and deadspace versions) with a penalty to total capacitor and ship's signature when active. But despite these severe penalities, the benefit is such that many combat pilots insist that the MWD is a mandatory module on any PvP setup and not just for nanoships. 

The MWD essentially takes all the velocity improvements of other modules, rigs, implant, and gang bonuses and enhances them such that a ship with a base speed of 242 m/s (the Vagabond) can reach speeds of almost 6000 m/s with just Tech II modules and Tech I rigs. Even ships not built for speed like the Ishtar can get up to almost 4000 m/s without trying. Smaller ships like Interceptors easily get faster than that. 

The problem is not the speed though, its that all the weapon systems in the game seemed to have been designed with speeds less than a few km/sec in mind. And the only way to slow someone down, Statis Webifiers, have very short range and many ships simply can coast out of range of them due to the extreme speed they start at. (Minmatar Recons and Electronic Attack Ship having longer range webbers so are a rare exception.)

Did you read all that? Did you catch the part about Vagabonds going ~6000 m/s and Ishtars approaching 4000 m/s? These were also the days when micro warp drives were not turned off by warp scramblers so if you happned to get got by just one of the 90% speed reduction webbers you still moved faster than your base speed (i.e. 600 m/s for Vaga above) and you coasted out of range of it your speed immediately picked back up again. They were notoriously hard to catch. And the craziest thing was that larger ships could boost their speed more but having more slots to put overdrives, nanofibres, and polycarbon engine housing rigs so frigates generally were left by the wayside since they could not achieve the speeds the Vagas could.

While this was not the only ship/fleet type that one would see in the spacelanes of null and low sec, it dominated the meta to a large degree that was unhealthy for the game. Proponents of leaving things the way they were argued that there were counters to the nano ships, such as Minmatar recons with long range webbers and other nanoships, and they also argued that they had trained and paid a lot of ISK for deadspace gear and expensive implants to maximize their speed so why shouldn't they dominate and be hard to kill?

Those arguments were recognized as unhealthy for the long term of the game and CCP recognized the issue was creating an unbalanced environment that pushed all players who wanted to succeed to one style of gameplay, thus they decided to address it in the Great Nano Nerf of 2008, part of Quantum Rise:

- a vast rebalancing of base ship speeds and agilities
- all Micro Warp Drives limited to 500% speed boost
- webbers changed to 50-60% speed reduction from 90%
- warp scrambler deactivates micro warp drives
- modules affecting speed were changed to reduce non-stacking-penalty bonuses
- drugs, implants, and fleet bonuses were reduced that affect speed

The tears from this change were loud but limited to a small population of players who had the Ludicrous Speed ships, and the landscape of PvP changed dramatically overnight. Suddenly frigates were the fastest ships again. Suddenly pilots had to decide if they wanted a vulnerable-to-scram micro warp drive or more-durable afterburner because other pilots were choosing between short ranged but kills MWD scrambler versus long point.

So why the history lesson? Because of this dev blog: Warp Drive Active: Warp Acceleration Changes in EVE Online: Rubicon :

LUDICROUS SPEED!
Here's a comparison with the same two ships as they will warp post-Rubicon:

Observe that even though the interceptor's maximum warp speed has been reduced from 13.5 AU/s to 8 AU/s, it still manages to beat the cruiser to the finish line in less than half the time.
PUNCH IT!
The current design has the fulcrum set on T1 cruisers. If you're flying a T1 cruiser with no modifications to your warp speed then you will not notice any difference warping in Rubicon. Every ship that warps faster than a cruiser will see their acceleration increased (and therefore see significant reductions in overall time warping) and every ship larger than a cruiser will see their acceleration decreased (and therefore spend more time in warp). The small ships are being sped up by a larger degree than the big ships are being slowed down, so the average warp speed across the classes of ships is getting faster.

This change, more than any other since 2008, will change the landscape of PvP in low sec, null sec, and wormholes, mark my words. Combine it with the interceptor changes, deployable structure, and ongoing tiericide, it stands to reason that whatever PvP tactics, doctrines, and strategies you currently have will become obsolete on Nov 19th.

Brace yourself, a new age is dawning.

Say What?!

Um, come again?

EDIT UPDATE: Hearing it is just a troll now. If its not a troll, I'll have more to say later. If it is, consider me well trolled.

Crystal Ball Rubicon Edition

Time for another edition of "Kirith Makes Wild Guesses About The Future!", this time based on the curretn information we have about Rubicon and what's on the test server.

1) Rise of the Assault Frigate - The warp speed changes are going to be a big boon to all small ships, that's for sure, and a huge detriment to larger vessels (we'll talk about that more in a sec), but the biggest benefactors are going to be Assault Frigates.They will still move incredibly fast compared to everything else. Look at this chart from the Eve Forums:

Click for full size

Assault frigates will be only 9 seconds behind interceptors over 100 AU and a full 33 seconds landing before cruisers. They are relatively cheap, have impressive firepower and resilience, can support large enough buffers and resistances to work with frigate sized logistics, and now sport incredible maneuverability. Its easy to see how a fleet with a core of Assault Frigs, a few interceptors for tackle, and a wing of tech I logistics could cover a lot of ground and take on a lot of targets. Expect to see them more often.

2) Decline of the Battlecruiser - The flip side to this change is how much slower the battecruisers and battleships are going to be. For the latter, its not a huge deal as battleships have a very specific role already (i.e. damage application and absorption) and being a bit slower on the warp is not going to hamper that role much, but for the former this is a big deal. No more will lone sniping Tornadoes or the occasional Talos roamer get away with camping gates and patrolling null sec so easily. A kitchen sink defense fleet with a few frigs in it can cut off escape routes and check planets faster than the Talos can get to top speed in warp, or an inty will be on a Tornado pilot before he spam deep scan twice. Think about that for a second: Interceptors will warp from 20 AU away and land in 12 seconds! You you're distracted for just ten seconds between when you can hit deep scan and when you do, you had better be aligned and going speed to enter warp.

3) Sisters of EVE ships will be Popular - But not as popular as you think, at least not the Astero. While its a nice frigate, and a good prober, it will probably be in the 50-60 million ISK range like most pirate frigates and thus more expensive than a Covert Ops frigate which probes better at skill level IV. Sure, the Astero has more combat capability to go along with that Covert Ops cloak and good exploration ability, but serious probing will still be the domain of the Covert Ops ship.

The Stratios, on the other hand, is interesting in that it is a cruiser that gets a probing bonus that no other non-frigate ship has (EDIT: Forgot about the Gnosis which also has a probing bonus). Combine that with decent combat DPS, flexibility from large drone bay and slot layout, and hacking bonus and you have a new class of ship for a new role of Science / Exploration vessel. Still, its going to be expensive, probably in the 120 million ISK range, so it won't see a lot of action in regular combat. And it still has less virus strength and probing strength than Covert Ops so it will not dethrone that class as the perfect hacking ship. I figure it will be seen but not common outside of high sec and wormhole space (because, say it with me, wormholers are weird).

4) Deployable Structures Will Be Everywhere - As I said last week, a lot depends on the implementation for these things. But assuming a good outcome on the details then I make the following prediction: these things will be everywhere simply because they are new and people WANT to put things in space. The supply depots will see the most use followed by the tractor tower for missions in high sec and PvE plexes everywhere. But the cyno jammer will see some use all over space where cynos are allowed and the siphon will infest moons all over too. I look forward to the inventive ways players put these last two to use. Hell, all four of them. Note: on the first day of Rubicon, change your overview settings to show them as they will most likely be unchecked :P

5) Marauder Use Will Increase, But Not Noticeably - Despite being a fan of the idea of mini-dreadnoughts, the expense will still put them out of reach for common usage, and most large organizations will simply jump from Attack Battlecruisers to dreadnoughts for structure bashes, jumping right over Marauders. They will see some increase in use, for example in missions where increased range and damage could be useful in some situations. But in PvP where battles are too fluid and Micro Jump Drives are too slow to be useful (although I am intrigued by the 70% reduction in Micro Jump Drive reactivation delay... being able to jump after 2.5 seconds instead of 9 sounds like a good deal  EDIT: I apparently am confusing activation delay with reactivation delay.). In the end, though, the expense is what puts this ship on the shelf more often than not.

That's all for this round.

I Need a New Ride

So, CCP Fozzie posted last week that they are thinking of changing half the command ship models to use the other tech 1 combat battlecruiser model. To be precise:

The plan is to change the visuals of the ships as follows (the names of the ships are not changing at all):
Absolution becomes a Carthum Harbinger
Eos becomes a CreoDron Myrmidon
Nighthawk becomes a Kaalakiota Drake
Sleipnir becomes a Boundless Creations Hurricane

I wholly support this change. Especially since it means this:

*Drool*

I love the Myrmidon hull and the thought of having a Tech II version of it appeals to me so much that I plan to trade in my Astarte for an Eos.

Click to Embiggen

This ship would be for small engagements where and the armour warfare links would boost not only local reppers but any friendly logistic reppers, as well as adding a nasty dose of Drones and Blasters itself. The flexibility of the drone bay gives this ship some more engagement opportunities than the Blaster oriented Astarte.

Can't wait to try it out.

Player Owned Mobile Structures - Thoughts and Musings

So last week I said I was delving into things like Incarna and expansions  and expectations and promised on Thursday to talk about the new Player Owned Platforms / Deployables coming in Rubicon. Then I got busy and I didn't have time to dedicate to the topic until today.

CCP's moniker for the new items are Mobile Structures:

Deploy Mobile Structures - Reduce your reliance on Empire facilities. Transport and deploy temporary, player-owned, mobile structures to support your industrial operations and wartime efforts.

Back in last winter I called them Player Owned Platforms but its CCP's property so whatever. ;-) There are four of them coming in Rubicon: a resupplying forward base, a POS moon material siphon, a grid wide tractor tower, and a mini cyno jammer. Some common details we have so far are that they won't require corporate permissions to anchor and own as they will belong to the players, they don't need to be anchored at a moon, they will have small setup times and will have reinforcement timers. I don't have more firm details but let's talk about each one in turn as a "thoughts and musings" post and when the details do get released I can refer back to this for context of what I wanted and hoped for.

The Space Yurt - The idea is that this player owned mobile structure (POMS for short from herein) would allow players to have a local base to refit ships and store extra ammo/modules/supplies at. This is not only useful in null sec where you are in hostile space and can't dock and the overhead of a POS is not needed, but also in any space where easy access to stations is not available like in faction warfare, wormholes, regions with few stations, areas where stations are camped heavily, etc.

This is a great idea in concept but requires the right implementation. For one thing, the packages structure can't be too big to transport. If it requires more than a Blockade Runner then it will be too difficult to get to the hostile systems to deploy the thing. On the other side of the coin, the deployed yurt can't be too small: if it only contains a handful of modules and a stack or two of ammo, there is no point besides refitting to set the darn thing up, in my opinion.

So if the size is right, if its not too expensive, and if its easy to deploy... these might be awesome.

The Mosquito - AKA The Siphon. The idea here is that you amble up to an enemy's moon mining POS and you set one of these down, anchor it, and it hacks the POS and begins to pull moon materials from the silos. Reportedly anyone can take from the siphon unit as it fills up with goo. Again the devil is in the details though: how fast does it work, does the enemy get a notification about it, what's its storage capacity, how big is it to move around, etc. Could be game changing, could be a boondoggle.

The Vacuum - AKA The Giant Tractor Tower. When this was first announced everyone thought "oh mission runners only" and carried on for the most part. But this modules, again depending on size and ease of setup, could be useful in a lot of places. Picture a big null sec or low sec fight involving a hundred ships or so; the value in those wrecks could be considerable but the effort to clean up can be intensive. Now you can drop one of these and pull the wrecks into one central processing area where you can loot and salvage under the watchful eyes of your security detail. Or if the tractor tower works with cans as well, a mining operation spread over a wide belt with jet cans being pulled into beside an Orca or industrial hauler.

The Cyno Hammer - AKA Fuck Supers. The idea is that, once deployed, this structure will emit a sphere that will be X km radius (I've heard 70 and 100 bantered about) in which no normal cyno can be lit. Covert Cynos will continue to work as normal. So in essence, this will prevent OMG RIGHT ON TOP OF US capital and super capital hot drops, but will not prevent Black Ops drops. Now since this is not grid wide or system wide, it won't prevent a hostile capital force from jumping in just beyond the sphere's limit and warping in on top of you (unless you have a number of warp bubbles too) and it won't interfere with a sub cap fleet coming and killing your jammer so I'm not sure the point of this structure yet. It will inconvenience capital drops but it won't surprise anyone if it needs an anchoring time and short warps will allow enemy fleets to circumvent it. This functionality would have been better done by a Heavy Interdictor type ship that projected the effect from a module like the Warp Interdiction Sphere Generator so that surprise attacks and blockades could be arranged.

Of the four, this one I think is the least useful and might need some looking at going forward.

* * * * *

Going Forward

What most excites me about this new feature is the promise for the future. The framework for supporting these type of actual player owned (as opposed to corporation owned) structures that can deploy anywhere for a fraction of the price and hassle of POSes with various functions is a right step forward. When I proposed Player Owned Platforms back in January I ended the post with this:

These platforms would allow players to setup bases away from stations in potentially hostile territory without the massive overhead that even a small POS incurs. They would be far more accessible to newer players (and we know that perks your ears right up, eh CCP?) while giving new content to old players to try out.

I think these mobile structures of CCP's fit the bill perfectly... from what we know. Waiting on details, CCP...

Incarna - Second Chance

Before I get to the point of this post, let's review to how we got to where we are.

Fanfest 2008 CCP released a video of walking in stations and people were excited. (NOTE: You have to go to the site to see the embedded video, feed readers like Feedly might not show it.)

People were more than excited, they were chomping at the bit. Imaginations ran wild with people talking about setting up bars, gambling dens, poker games, customizing avatars, etc. There was definitely enthusiasm for moving Eve beyond "just spaceships" into actual Sci Fi simulator. CCP leadership got caught up in the enthusiasm and over the next 3 years poured more and more developers into developing this tech demo into actual content.

Somewhere along the line, though, CCP got tunnel vision and decided they had to create the ultimate avatar experience. They threw out all the code and started over; they forsook space ship development for avatar and environment building, including the underlying architecture. Grumblings about this diversion of effort increased as major and minor features that had been delivered in questionable states were left in disrepair: Factional Warfare, wormholes, sovereignty mechanics... When asked about when they could get iteration on these features they were told there was no resources for the next 18 months, and that became a powerful bitter-vet meme in of itself. :18 months: CCP was running out of time to prove its vision.

When the Incursions expansion hit, it included the new character creator and players got their first taste of Incarna. It was amazing. People loved the sheer customization and fidelity of the avatars they could create. Everyone was playing with it for hours, space politicians, pirates, null-bears... everyone agreed it was pretty amazing and overall some hope for Incarna was restored. But not CSM5. They kept asking "What's the plan? Where's the gameplay?" and got no good response.

Then, in June 2011, three years after that initial tease, Incarna was released. The great promise delivered... melting video cards... single uncustomizable quarters... single player only... no gameplay.... station doors that won't open.... reports from video card makers that the technology to support more than one avatar at a time was years away...

And on top of that there was the NeX store with clothing items to customize their avatars. Hordes of people looking to get cool clothes, tattoos, implants for microtransactions instead found a limited supply and prices an order of magnitude higher than expected. What do you mean $70 for a monocle?! When the outrage poured into CCP they posted a dev blog in which they tried to defend their pricing models with the most tone deaf and defensive tone possible:

Assume for a short while that you are wearing a pair of $1,000 jeans from some exclusive Japanese boutique shop. Why would you want to wear a pair of $1,000 jeans when you can get perfectly similar jeans for under $50? What do other people think about you when they see you wearing them? For some you will look like the sad culmination of vainness while others will admire you and think you are the coolest thing since sliced bread. Whichever it is, it is clear that by wearing clothes you are expressing yourself and that the price is one of the many dimensions that clothes possess to do that in addition to style and fit. You don’t need to buy expensive clothes. In fact you don’t need to buy any clothes. Whatever you choose to do reflects what you are and what you want others to think you are.

From a certain point of view, I can see what they were trying to do. After all, your average veteran player has thousands of dollars worth of assets so pricing them in the range they picked didn't see unreasonable, but for players expecting to pay at most $10-$20 for luxury items it seemed like a cynical money grab.

Then came the leaked internal CCP memo called Greed Is Good in which two devs debate microtransactions and their philosphy for them. Regardless of the intent or limited audience the memo was meant for, the playerbase read it and were aghast at the philosophy contained therein.

The Summer of Rage followed this trifecta of idiocy and players rioted on forums, in blogs, and even in game. Three years of planning and development and players were not logging in and quitting accounts in droves. Then, on August 5, less than two months after Incarna release, CEO of CCP, Hilmar Pétursson posted a dev blog that basically apologized to the entire playerbase:

Somewhere along the way, I began taking success for granted. As hubris set in, I became less inclined to listen to pleas for caution. Red flags raised by very smart people both at CCP and in the community went unheeded because of my stubborn refusal to allow adversity to gain purchase on our plans. Mistakes, even when they were acknowledged, often went unanalyzed, leaving the door open for them to be repeated.
You have spoken, loudly and clearly, with your words and with your actions. And there were definitely moments in recent history when I wish I would have listened more and taken a different path.
I was wrong and I admit it.

The end result was Crucible expansion. Although we got the other three captain's quarters for our avatars, from that point on Incarna was for all intents and purposes abandoned.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

The Point!

Its time to consider giving Incarna a second chance.

Incarna, that is to say walking and interacting in stations, is in of itself not a bad idea; indeed players were clamouring for it after Fanfest 2008. It was just CCP's poor planning and implementation that were bad.

It feels like CCP got their fingers so burnt by the players' ire that they have overreacted and virtually abandoned any Incarna development. I've thought about how to rescue Incarna and the NeX Store before, listing out a fake product backlog of features that could bring gameplay content and interaction into the current structure and got a lot of positive feedback. Players do want walking in stations, they do want customizable avatars, they will accept reasonable microtransactions for cosmetic enhancements, they just do not want it at the cost of all in-space development and feature iteration.

I fear its too late now that with Rubicon CCP is heading on a new 3 year plan that by all indications does not include any Incarna related development (updated character creator notwithstanding). There is an opportunity here for a competing sci-fi MMO to step up and fill the need of combining space ships with avatars (and no, Star Trek Online is not it).

TL;DR - It's time to give Incarna a second chance.

Eat Your Cake

I spent Friday and the weekend trying to formulate my thoughts on the announced features in the Rubicon expansion fully. I've read a lot, I mean A LOT, of impressions and opinions on other blogs that range from mildly optimistic to downright frustrated, trending more towards the latter than the former.

Why is that?

When Incarna arrived and the playerbase erupted into righteous rage due to the gameplay being non-existent and existing content left to rot (and I'll have more to say about Incarna tomorrow), CCP over-corrected with Crucible, an expansion that was nothing but little fixes and improvements. Since then, we have seen the following expansions and major features:

Inferno - Revamped war declaration system, factional war overhaul, and new missile effects
Retribution - New Crimewatch and Bounty Hunting
Odyssey - New Probing system and Hacking minigame

Doesn't seem like a lot, does it? Now, there have been a lot more to those expansions as you can see here which have included fixes, iterations (including Tiericide), new ships and modules, etc (seriously, have a look at the list of stuff in each expansion, it is eye opening to be reminded how much is in there). The expansions have not been lacking in the amount of work CCP has dedicated to them, but each one has been consecutively less well received by the playerbase.

Again, the original question I asked: Why?

The quick and simple answer is that players want their cake and to eat it too.

They want existing features to be iterated on and improved and brought up to date. They want ships rebalanced and for each one to have a role. They want weapon systems made unique yet balanced. They want POSes to be less evil to use. They want annoying and broken little things to be addressed.

But they also want the 'Jesus' features. They want slews of new ships, new weapons, new space, new mechanics, new sov system, new POS system, new wars, new ring mining, walking in stations... and they want it NOW!

While the playerbase was so burnt out on new content while old content rotted that they celebrated Crucible and Inferno, and to a lesser extent Retribution, we can see in Odyssey that the fickle players are feeling the blahs of seeing old content recycled and presented as new expansion material, even though that is exactly what CCP were screamed at for not doing in the years prior. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Which brings us back to Rubicon.

Obligatory Expansion Image

This no-win situation was summed up perfectly in a blog post at Sand, Cider, and Spaceships by Drackarn called Eve Rubicon - An Open Letter to Eelis Kiy:

So there you go Eelis, the quick guide to the features (so far announced) of the Rubicon 'expansion'. Yes, I know there doesn't seem to be a lot. Yes, it is an 'expansion' in the loosest possible terms when compared to something like Apocrypha. Yes, there is nothing to re-invigorate bored players or bring back ex-players... but those SoE ships do look nice! And you have to remember that the development resources are needed to rescue DUST. But didn't you see in the above, Interceptors will be immune to warp bubbles!!! Apparently for some, this five second coding change suggested by a player on the forums makes everything all right and elevates this from a point release to a full blown 'expansion' of awesomeness?

Have I convinced you to hand in your ex-player-bitter-vet card and rejoin Eve Online? No? To be honest I didn't convince myself here either.

This post, more than any other, echoed my feelings and put them into words I can read. And seeing my misgivings in letters and actual sentences forced me to face the truth. I am being unreasonable. Eve players are being unreasonable if they think they can have massive new development from the ground up that is fully functional and feature complete AND iteration on existing features that is meaningful and useful. Not in six month release cycles (and we'll talk more about that Wednesday!).

Being forced to face my greedy self interest I came to the conclusion that CCP gets this round and one more expansion to show me the direction of this 3 year plan before I start passing out torches and pitchforks. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and go to bat for them one more time.

Bring on the Player Owned Platforms! (We'll talk more about them Thursday.)

Send Cheque To... Part II

From today's next expansion announcement (named Rubicon):

What I wrote back in January:

Forget POSes, Make POPs
[...]
My proposal is to leave POSes alone as they are for now and instead develop something new for the sandbox: Player Owned Platforms
[...]
These platforms would allow players to setup bases away from stations in potentially hostile territory without the massive overhead that even a small POS incurs. They would be far more accessible to newer players (and we know that perks your ears right up, eh CCP?) while giving new content to old players to try out.

No need to thank me. ;)