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Awesome upgrades. I like the new font, though I can't put my finger on exactly why. I just notice that it is different and that I like it.

It seems things are shaping up nicely. I hope to be back on in about 5 hours.

Kudos to CCP!

To all the nayayers, you do not waste time do you?


Slade

Very nicely done CCP. Gone a long way to restoring faith in the company's commitment to this game. With more time for you to plan and test I have great expectations for future expansions.

PB is a wasteland. That's nothing new, working as intended.

Great job!

The game has received some much needed polish and it does look truly fantastic.

The nebulae and star field are rendered beautifully, and the new paint jobs look good.

UI is definitely a lot easier on the eye :)

Lots to explore yet, but thanks to everyone at CCP for the hard work and wonderful results!!!

Best,
FC

So far the one thing that sticks out as really needing worked on is....ship lighting. The ships are really dark......so much so as to make them uninteresting to look at.

Please work on this. I know this is space and all and the only source of lighting is the star but come on. There is so much in this game that isn't try to life can we please see our ships at all angles? Please?

Dammit CCP, I wrong a huge reply to this thread, and then my page got ganked by your site maintenance.

For the most part this is one of my favorite expansions to date. Corp bookmarks are awesome. Missing shots are awesome. Engine trails are awesome. I love the new font, I can read things. I could go through all the awesome line by line, but you could pretty much take the patch notes and remove 1% of them, so the easier option is to go ahead and list that 1%

Primary thing here is the drone hordes. All other regions received a buff to their payouts based on the bounties received. Because drone regions don’t rely on bounties, they didn’t get a buff (or for that matter, any direct balance compared to other regions). However, it did effectively receive a huge nerf.

There are several disadvantages to drone hordes already. You have to salvage everything being the primary one. This either requires two accounts (cutting into real life money, or ISK if you play with PLEX), switching ships constantly (which cuts into isk because the hordes now take twice as long), or you have to pay a corp mate to salvage for you (again, cutting into isk). There is also the disadvantage to most pilots that after salvaging you have to turn the drops into liquid isk either by selling them directly, or building something with them. There is a lag created in payout here.

Most drone residents were fine with these disadvantages because there were also advantages, to one site in particular. You could spawn the entire site at once. This means that you didn’t have to worry about aggro changing from spawn to spawn, so you could run the site in the same amount of time by using a second account or a corp mate. You also didn’t have to recall drones because the aggro changed. You also had the option of only killing the battleships, taking the loot from those. This decreased the value of the site a bit, but increased the speed at which you could run them, it was generally considered more profitable. The TLDR of all this is that the disadvantages of these sites were offset by the speed at which they could be run, increasing the isk per minute value of them.

In the expansion, by changing them to a wave mechanic, you forgo all of these advantages but still have all of the disadvantages. You can no longer safely have a noctis in the site with you while running the site because of aggro, for the same reason it’s necessary to periodically recall drones, increasing the time it takes. You also cannot work your way through the spawns killing only battleships and warp a noctis in after, I found out the hard way that it seems you have to kill EVERY ship in the site before the despawn will occur.

This happens at a time that all other regions have received a buff to a greater or lesser degree, effectively increasing the isk/min amount that can be earned from all other sites. I encouraged CCP to look at sites and ensure they were balanced from an isk/min standpoint before the patch, whether this be the suggested change of bounty payouts on drone so they can be directly and fairly balanced or simply changing the mechanics. I have no problem with drone regions being different so long as difficulties are balanced by easiness.

Mostly, I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if CCP had looked at them and stated that they were examined and found to be balanced, but the fact that they publicly stated that these were not part of the balance really sucks for those living in that region.

To those saying this is a “bot nerf”, that’s ignorance at best. It’s been shown time and again that bots can be written to do almost anything. At best this will break them for a few days until the code is updated, and then they’ll continue to run sites, probably with more efficiency than a human ever could.

Oh, one more feature I love, the ship spinning counter, whatever smartass at CCP put this in, I <3 you. Same with the destroyed monument outside Jita. Overall this is still one of, if not, the best patch to date (IMO). I love the focus on the little things, they are force multipliers that make this game so much more fun to play. Thanks CCP, and keep up the new focus (by balancing drone regions first preferably :P).

-BBK
PS. I can't wait for time dilation, I understand the desire to troubleshoot this on it's own though.
Also, your forums keep eating my BB code, so here's the post I'm trying to reference.
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=375781#post375781

I like the new graphics. Especially the fancy new nebulae and the beautiful redesigned Caldari-ships (albeit some were just re-textured). I don't think I've been so fond of my Buzzard since I first bought it. And the Manticore, Hawk and Crow... Oh, they look bad-ass now. Good job, CCP. Seems like this is the most successful deployment so far.

However, I had gotten the impression that we'd be able to choose whether we wanted to use the old font or the new. I personally prefer the old one, but that's just because I've gotten used to it. Maybe I'll wind up liking the new font as well.

For now, I'll just look forward to my Hawk getting its fourth bonus.

I guess you would say the same thing about tech moons? The fact is that balance is what drives the game. Hybrids were crappy, everyone could just train different weapons, why not leave them? Differences are good, they allow one thing to counter another or players to enjoy the game in ways they want to without being at a clear disadvantage. Blatantly allowing anything to be "crappy" and ignoring that problem is not good game mechanics. I've yet to run into anyone in this game that sees something as being imbalanced compared to other parts of the game and saying so what, leave it. Now I realize this isn't my game, which is why I said if CCP had looked at it, then I would (grudgingly I'm sure) accept it. The fact that they didn't shows they ignored the potential problems completely (or perhaps ran out of time, in which case I'd like to know if this is on their plate now).

Anyway, I'm not here to argue about it, it's feedback for CCP, I'll leave arguments to the GD threads that are sure to be created :)

Fine, you pay everyone's subscription in the meantime clone.

Nearly every bug FIXED over the last year is back - what hard work? Making new comicbook backdrops?

The truth is that most of the problems Tranquility has now have been seen on SISI for awhile - guess it was hard work to ignore the testers reports, see arrogant devs comments elsewhere about how he never read feedback.

Great patch if you love to make in-game movies, they look great on devs resumes afterall.
As usual, playability improvements were minor - 'hot button' forum issues ignored - and plenty of more CCP con about 'how they will fix it in the future' really really this time.