EVE General Discussion

its another dumbing down of the game. No side effects so what happens to the skills everyones learnt? When you had those skills the side effects where basically nil. I dont mind ccp looking for ways to keep players in the game but how are they gooing to keep them in after a year or two once there is nothing new or nothing to challenge them.

You tell'em you ugly @Ss skank.... Let those John's know who run your street corner.

More people who have never used boosters. The fact of the matter is, standard boosters aren't that expensive. Improved and strong are. But even they are certainly not on the level of faction mods, you make a terrible point. And when demand spikes and prices go up, what'll happen? People will start running LADAR sites and boosters will thus become more readily available and prices will come down. So yes, they will become mandatory.

Also, there was nothing wrong with the old boosters. The drawbacks were perfectly reasonable, but people saw them and never used them, so they won't know. Tell me, how many of you actively and regularly used boosters? Because I've yet to see anyone other than myself that seems to have any experience with them.

Hey folks, it seems this thread needs some attention.


Let us explain why we are not happy with current state of boosters on Tranquility:

• Unpredictability: that is due to the side-effects being randomly applied when you consume a booster, and that often hampers the very points you are trying to boost. As examples, chance of reducing shield capacity when consuming Blue Pills, missile velocity with Crash, or armor hitpoint / capacitor penalty with Exile. The list goes on, but the important point to remember here is that unpredictable mechanics on a player produced, controlled item do little to promote the usefulness of it in the long run.


• Production complexity: boosters, as short-term consumables, are too time consuming and complex to produce. They require a combination of reactions and manufacturing, while relying on limited supply of skills, gas distributions and commodities to produce.


• Distribution inconsistency: since most of them are illegal, smuggling boosters back into high-sec is highly unreliable due to the bugged and incoherent nature of Customs NPCs.

Basically, boosters are they stand right now should be used more than in just a few niche situations. There are a lot of points to improve, but instead of trying to revamp everything quite blindly in one release, we chose to adopt a more conservative step-by-step approach and see actual consequences before moving on to the next step. That also fits well with our "thousand little things" project, which consists of many, small iterations on existing features.

The changes about to be deployed for Crucible look into their unpredictability, by making them more appealing to a broader portion of our player base. Since they are supposed to be more reliable, we tuned down their effects a bit, while revamping old skills to partly compensate for the change. We also do know this is going to cause prices issue as the production isn't changed for the time being.


To help you understand why this was done and how this fits in our general scheme, here is a glimpse of our long term vision for boosters, smuggling and contraband:

• Production changes: as stated above, iterate on booster production to make them more available, at least on their synth and standard variations. That includes, but is not limited to, gas distribution changes, modifications in the reaction and manufacturing process, remove or adjust some skills.


• Distribution iteration: have a look on how booster components (gases, pure booster reactions and commodities) are moved around, iterate on their illegality status.


• Consumption iteration: look at how boosters are consumed, possibly look into and replace unpredictable side-effects by addiction mechanics (remember, first one is free).


• Smuggling improvements: possibly remove Custom NPCs, and move the act of scanning and seizing contraband into player hands. Coupled with the points above, make smuggling of large illegal goods or more potent boosters challenging but rewarding in low/high-security space, turn booster distribution into an emergent, player controlled system that is easy to get into, but difficult to control and profit from. And finally, look into ways to promote low-security and fringes of high-security space as main sources of smuggling, contraband production and distribution.

Remember all of this remains soon™ material and are no way fixed in stone right now. We just wanted to be a bit more transparent on why this change is happening and which goals we are attempting to reach.


Note: Alchemist and Edge implant sets are an oversight that are being looked into. Fix will most likely not make it for Crucible release, but shortly after, so we advise you to hold on to them.


Hope that helps.

Oh cry more you pathetic little winger

It isnt dumbing them down its making them more useful in more situations ...