Wormholes

I'm actually wondering if CCP is staging w-space for a massive increase in players.

For example:
Doing something about insta-rolling mostly hits the rage rolling mega blobbers.
More avenues for smaller ships = easier accessibility into or out of w-space.
Changing the effects sensibly = primetime won't stand for teribad effects.
Making C4's viable for larger groups,
K162 change seems to be anti griefing & more actual pvp.

So, to sum up my concerns/feelings (and those of my alliance, mostly):

- K162 change = far less potential for finding holes when scouting a chain. Timer helps that somewhat. PvE activities (mining, sleepers, etc) become far riskier - this hurts smaller corps in C1-C4 holes especially. Not really sure that it does anything to lead to more real fights. Maybe a few more hauler/miner/site runner ganks, but the truth is that a real fight only really happens with both sides are willing to make it happen, and that depends on numbers online, not on when the hole becomes visible.

- C4 second static really adds a lot of risk for small corps living in C4s now without giving them anything in return. Will probably result in a lot of C4s becoming vacant (like there aren't enough of those already). That's actually great for us as we have a static C4 that we farm sometimes, but overall we think it's bad for the game. This change might be ok if something was done to make C4s more desirable for small/medium sized corps to live in right now. Anyone big enough just goes straight to C5, really.

- Mass based spawn distance doesn't hurt us really all that much, although it may change our tactics slightly. But I can definitely see the problems for C5/C6 corps that are using capitals to close their big holes today. In the end, not really sure that this change adds anything that makes it worth the added frustration for corps living in large wormholes.

- Frigate wormholes are quite simply a pain in the butt for anyone on the receiving end of them. Most pilots have too much ISK n implants in their heads right now to make frigate roams viable risk-wise, and no way to swap clones. Sure, some more aggressive corps will find a way to exploit the mechanics to put strong kill fleets in the other wormhole, but to what end? The defenders are still going to turtle up if they don't have the numbers to match. From a defender point of view, having a hole that we can't close and have to watch for 16 hours straight just means we'll all stop doing anything else in our system, log off, and go play a different game until the hole goes away. That's because even with a strong camp on the hole (which can be stupidly boring) there's still always the chance that some hostile scout has gotten in and will open a static. Then we'll come back, roll our statics, and keep an eye out for leftover scouts. End result is no real gain and more frustration for a lot of players.

Essentially a lot of these changes feel like they're coming from people who don't understand how PvP really works in wormholes. Right now, people turtle up in their POS or log off because they don't have the numbers to contest whoever they ran into. They close their holes so that they can make some ISK without having to keep half of their folks on sentry duty all the time. This is especially true for smaller corps - closing their holes is the only way they have to insure enough safety to really do the PvE stuff. These changes aren't going to really increase fights because they don't address the real reasons why players do these things.

If we want to increase the amount of PvP in wormholes, giving people more lucrative content to fight over would be a good first step, rather than making a bunch of mechanics changes that aren't really going to help the problem.

hm, looks like all this will really happen...just tweaking it a bit further.
Basicly you are going to connect the big ones to everywhere because they are bored.

well done guys.

Can't stress this enough, but:

REMOVE SENTRIES FROM c1-ANOMS

all in all, people are supposed to run those sites in frigates if there ever was a wave of high-w-highways for frigates exclusively, and it will end terribly boring if they just see *oh, i was 300m off that sirius and he still wrecked my **** in tight orbit*

Really, please turn c1-space into something a scrub/rookie can handle, currently it's easier (by far) to run c2 anoms compared to c1s, and that's not only because *the line* is a deathtrap for any new player. If they die, they should die because they did something stupid in-site, they shouldn't be punished for not flying a drake.


Edit: The smallest ship that can currently run c1 anoms is either a RLM-caracal (with background knowledge on how to fit it), or if frigates - requiring RR. That's not newb-friendly at all.

Further edit: Could also go in deeper and label it *Certain elements don't increase gameplay at all, they just dictate your approach to the task* - and sentries as an infinite gun, perfect tracking, perfect range, are about as beneficial to the overall pve-gameplay as superneuts in L5 missions or 90%-stasis towers in others, cause they cut down the ways to run such a site to an ASB-Varg/Golem and MJD-Raven, without any chance for emergent gameplay to ever happen.
Overall, there should be a diverse spectrum of ways to accomplish your goals, not ONE AND ONLY ONE.