EVE Technology Lab

How, exactly, is he being silly? I am more than a little offended that you are being so flippant about a major major MAJOR change to the quality of life of every wormhole resident in the game.

My corp and I spend many collective man hours mapping chains going from empty wormhole to empty wormhole. We have not once set a log on trap. The only ways to know if someone is newly online in the mapped chain is to do a sweep through or to check the API history for NPC blips. The only way to know if someone might log on is to check histories for time zone activity blips. With this change, you are removing two methods which EVERYONE who lives here uses and has access to (eveeye or dotlan for small fries. Corp tools for bigger fish), leaving only having a scout go through as the only way to check for activity.

While this isn't going to be the end of the world, it is a kick in the teeth to people who hunt here. Leaving a scout for a few days to check for time zone activity isn't worth doing for every care bear corp in Anoikis, especially since it could be months or even years before you roll in again, and there is no guarantee they'll still be around.

I repeat. I am offended that you all are writing this off out of hand as "too powerful" without anyone apparently having a bloody clue how it's used in the first place and then insulting people who do know how its used who complain, either eloquently or not, that it is a major nerf to quality of life.

TLDR: please do not make this change. Finding fights in w-space is hard enough as it is without taking away knowledge about ever-changing neighbor time zone activities.

I completely get why you're doing this from a game design stand point. But perhaps you need to think this through on an overall game design stand point. You want risks and rewards to be related. You are reducing risks in WH space if you make this change. That risk reduction by removing the API for WH kills is non-trivial.

Just throwing some idea out there, perhaps consider some compensating method, like a long lived deployable you can hide in a WH system to report back to the owning entity NPC kill activity - or something similar.

Consider if you made the same change to null sec space. Remove NPC kills from the in game map (deleting code is a lot easier than writing it) and the API. What would the outcome of that be? In line with the circle of destruction for Eve? Would that produce a positive game design outcome?

As I recall there was an Eve video called the Butterfly effect...

I believe you misunderstood me, sir. The post I quoted was silly in my opinion. It is silly to propose that mistakes in the API should kick of a design change in EVE proper rather than be fixed in the API (that does not mean that said end result is silly, just the logic). It's silly to offer a solution only to state offhand that you will not be listened to. It's just a silly way to initiate a dialouge as you're basicly saying you do not want one. It's silly to be rude-ish (open to opinion and interpretation) to people you want listneing to you by claiming they're just trying to make your life difficult or do not know what they're talking about. When people behave silly around me in real life I tell them I find their behaviour silly. They can then chose to ask me what I mean or simply ignore the statement. At least they'll know why I'm no longer engaging them even though they do not agree with my assertion.

I fully understand that this changes things for some people so I'm absolutely not saying that any claims that this changes things are silly. Just that this specific post struck me as silly. No need for you to get offended on Valterra's behalf (unless you want to, then it's your right and I have no intention of infringing on that right).

First of all, buried deep in an API thread is not the right place to announce changes like this. I think you now realize this though.

Secondly, the NPC kill information is useful really only for finding people who are just farming in w-space. It is already quite hard to catch and kill these folks. They rarely store anything of value in a POS, so invading and shooting their POS doesn't matter, one of the few ways to kill them is if they have become predictable, and the only real way to find that is with NPC kill data.

The fact that this information is not visible in the client isn't really a good reason either. There is plenty of information that is only visible via the API right now, for example, the contents of POS hangars when you are not at a POS, or even POS fuel levels when you are not present. Are you also proposing to remove the Assets and POS endpoints?

There are many publicly available sites where everyone can see this information, from Dotlan to static mapper, so people that choose to seek out the information can have it. EVE is a game that is all about punishing the lazy and uninformed player, why are you proposing to change this here?

It's just as your numbers swell, the common member isn't doing any scouting, as people tend to rely on others. Therefore it's not uncommon that 100-200 man corporations actually don't even know who owns the towers in a certain hole most of the time. That's where wormhol.es and similiar come to play.

Removing this mechanic will force people to actually scout systems to check for activity, and with each new check they'll have to commit a scanner to getting vision in there, what's not to like.

I've been using wormhol.es/siggy instensively back when I was pretty bad at wormholes, the usage decreased as one got better at scouting - and tbh I don't see much lost over that change. The bads will have a harder time finding targets, while capgankers will just keep on busting into a system with combat probes.

Can't see what all the fuzz is about.

Ed: To put my activity into relation to jack's scanning, I'm behind him with an average of 200+ wormholes a month over the last year.

So you would support this change if it required you to be in the system.....

Dear Blood Union, I'm sorry for your loss.

Yours sincerely,
Dexter o7

Maybe it's because log off trapping is way too easy and effective? :)

I completely agree that wormholes need attention, but not in the form of nerfs. Removing API information will mess with the many apps us Wormholers use.

They realized it before, which is why they did it.

Generally when game developers want to **** on content that they themselves do not play or understand, they bury it in threads like this so as to arouse the minimum complaint possible.

It's okay, though. This change is all according to 'design.'

No one should know how many kills take place in WH space, because ::reasons.::

Just like capsuleers were not the first folks to map the entirety of Anoikis. That honor belongs to Interbus, who somehow managed to get to every single system and drop customs offices on every planet. Because ::logic:: and ::design.::