EVE Information Portal

Well, so much hate flung around in this post...

I'm not going to pretend to somehow know the dev's intentions as you did, but it still seems to me that you don't quite understand why the involvement of haulers in more varied pvp situations is something that would be both desirable and beneficial, both for the entire eve community and for the haulers themselves, who are still part of said community. EVE has always been a PVP-driven game in which the economy and logistics play a vital role. As such, your hauling affects other players wether you want it or not, and their activities affect yours. Hauling is already a PVP activity, albeit not a direct one and allegedly not a "violent" one (unless you count economic violence as a true form of violence). EVE, like a military-industrial complex, runs on a cycle of destruction. The haulers have manufactured things to haul because manufactured things are destroyed, and the destroyers have manufactured things to destroy because manufactured things are hauled around. As such, crippling any part of that cycle that would negatively affect your adversaries is a valid strategy. That includes haulers, who, in turn, now have a reason to care about protecting themselves, either by organizing as a group or by having people to protect them in exchange for the benefit of their own services. This means that haulers would actually have to play in an increasingly social and dynamic game world, which in turn will provide more opportunities for hauling stuff.

Even if what you are talking about really was a nerf to hauling, it would not be any more driven by hate on the developper's part as any other change in the game. Indeed, it actually shows that they care enough about it to not want the logistics specialists to unsubscribe out of boredom or lack of personnal involvement in the game.

The way I see it, it would only be logical for developpers of a conflict-driven game to maximize the potential sources of conflict in the game.

Now, if only hauling could be recognized as a pvp activity in which rewards do involve risk, which the pilots ought to accept and prepare for, then hauling would not be seen as much of a "carebear" activity. Giving more potential for tank or speed to freighters and more defensive options to miners seems to me like an excelent decision that actually hurts the "hurr, i'm a hard-core pvper"-type of player more than the others, in order to distribute the fun end of the pvp stick a bit more evenly around the playerbase. If haulers could also get more offensive options, then ganking them would really get interesting.

tl;dr version: Hauler pilots are already PVPers, deal with it. Making hauling less "safe and boring" and involving more options and actions will generally put more fun and more emotional involvement into hauling as an interactive activity between players. And that's what keeps a game like EVE rolling.

A forum thread is on its way.

Since you included this, am I correct to assume that this is confirmed for release in Kronos regardless of the unanimously negative feedback on this reduction in QOL for all enablers in Eve?

just going to take a guess, the other two are Osprey and Harbinger... in that order?

Any estimates on a total patch filesize?