Player Features and Ideas Discussion

It is always good to shift responsibility for usability of one's software to 3rd party developers
I need to recommend that strategy to my boss, it would make my live so much easier.

Facts:

1) NPC API doesn't belong to wormhole space by game design and will be removed
2) most people agree with this

Have fun, you'll be fine when you get over the butthurt.

Are you posting from your exploration / day trip Null sec blue ring scanner alt.

This API information is not giving us brilliant intel that is guaranteeing fights and/or ganks. We have the make the effort in each case to get those fights with cloaky / scouts and spais. But due to the nature of W-Space we cant have 2000 man alliances because alliances don't work all to well in wormholes. Cudo's to the big groups who are making them work currently!

And most groups will live in ONE wormhole that can randomly connect at any time to others, if you overcrowd said wormhole, you practically roll your static while everyone goes out to scout / chase that one thing seen down the chain a bit, or when a few BS's try and go out to find some PVE sites to run.

That said we could spread out and populate each system we come across but our ability to take larger engagements diminishes significantly.

We can't light a cyno and have a carrier jump in and save us.
We can't have a titan bridge us a fleet to save us.
We can't have a 50 man fleet of cross the blue galaxy via jump bridge networks to save us.
We can't have a top down afk economy harvesting moon minerals so we can instantly replace our stuffs, our moons are baron.
We can't do all of these things and have all the relevant API data available to us on top of the cake.

But hey you're argument over your last 100 posts is that this API information doesn't make sense,
So lets not have our worm hollers appear in local when we come into a system without having used a star gate or docked at a station, and everyone can deal with our "risk vs reward"

Or if you are speaking from a wealth of relevant W-Space knowledge you could post from your main.

Please consider holding off on this change while you design and implement an in-game alternative like this

I've never really put any thought into this topic before, but this change makes total sense.

Repeating this here to ensure FoxFour reads it:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4567366#post4567366

"You know guys if you want easy intel on w-space victims all you have to do is agree to co-operate.

At the moment we all use a system like siggy or tripwire and all of our data is partitioned.

However, if we agreed to share some of our data, such as times and location of sitings of ratting etc, then actually you can achieve the same quality or better of data than is supplied by an API.

Why better? Because you can include ship types and numbers, likely willingness to retaliate etc.

This crowdsourcing of intel works very well in the markets, why not in victim identification?"

... and that's why all you lazy w-space "pvp-ers" who want helpless sacrificial lambs laid out on an altar for you need not worry.

A bit of hackery and you'll have your free intel back.

I think forcing the community to co-operate in order to slay innocents is preferable.

If the innocents choose to subscribe to the same data, they can then do their own form of pvp with it - i.e. seeding it with wrong intel, setting traps for unwary gankers and so on.

Defenders would also be able to get a picture of just how often they are observed, and might start beefing up defences and changing operating practices to compensate, for example doing PVE in larger groups equipped for pvp. This is to everyone's benefit because what we really want is good fights, right? .... RIGHT?

fact of the matter is pretty cut and dried

the data you're abusing is not available in the client

therefore it cannot appear in the api

trying to make a bunch of convoluted predator-prey arguments thinly veiling your desire to corner the usufruct of wormhole space does not help you

The majority of wh dwellers are not against it.

I already posted here I agree with this change, and I still do, but after reading almost all the posts here and at other topics I think we need to calm down (we're quickly losing the point between all the angry discussions) and consider many things at once, since this involves the whole WH-space thing. I'll try to sum them up here. I hope this helps players discussing this topic and CCP to have a wider look at the whole thing.

The purpose of this change is to remove something that shouldn't be here, which is the fact 3rd party sources can use the API info about NPC kills to give information about activity in WH-space systems. This, as CCP FoxFour stated, is against both the design of API and what WH-space should be: a place where the intel can only be adquired ingame, through scanners and flying around, not even through local or anything else. That is the reason for this change: remove a contradiction. And only because of that, it is neccesary to be removed.

Of course, doing so will have consequences, as any other change. Those come from the fact this "API intel" has been around for so much time almost every WH player has become accustomed to use it, to a higher or lesser extent. Although it's very useful, it is not perfect intel: things like ship types, whether those player ships belong to residents or passer-by's, etc. That makes traditional scouts still indispensable.
As stated above, it makes sense to remove this "API intel", but will indeed shake things up for all players, as we have been living in WH-space with "API intel" almost since Apocrypha. The community will have to, again, adapt to the changes, as it has done for all the changes this game has experienced in its history. We have always adapted, we can do it again.

It's pretty much obvious the player groups that will be the most negatively affected are the PVP-oriented large groups that hunt PVE-oriented ones. There are many other groups that play WH-space differently to either those 2. In my case, it's about groups that do PVE and PVP as they please, just for having fun.
With this I want to enphasize the fact WH-space is not all about PVP hunters and PVE farmers, therefore any change should not just be centered around these 2 groups, but take in account all of them.
That makes predicting the whole consequences of removing API NPC kills way more complicated. Here in this topic there are many posts trying to predict what would happen, but after all, we can't predict everything that will happen with 100% sureness.

And with all that stuff I mean: after this "API intel" is removed , it would be wise to wait and see what happens. Once there is information to work with, then it would be the time for suggestions.
Perhaps the large PVP groups get accustomed to not having "API intel", and will continue to do what they like: ganking those farmers, and forget there was a time they had intel coming from out-game. Perhaps the PVE groups experience an increase in their relative safety, and PVP groups start having it very difficult to gank. Perhaps nothing changes significantly.
Perhaps CCP finds out that by removing the "API intel" PVP players could use some ingame tool that gives them similar information, such as deployables and probes some people have suggested, putting the balance in between. Or maybe they add their other recent suggestion, delay signature appearance, to make it work together with the "API intel" removal.
Time will say what happens and if there are more adjustments to do.

But all of this is related with something we all should have in mind: WH-space hasn't been changed, it hasn't received new content, almost since its introduction. And that can't be good.
We need to think about things we would like to see. There are topics around with lots of good (and bad) suggestions. Some things I'd personally like are:

- Graphical update for WH-space nebulae, keeping their shape and theme but getting new, high quality backgrounds in line with those of K-space.
- Redesign of Black Hole effects, since it seems they offer less advantage/disadvantage ratio than the other effects.
- Chance of escalations in sites similar to those of K-space.
- More variety of sites, or even random content.

And many more. Each suggestion must be properly analyzed, to see whether it fits with the WH theme or not (WH stabilizers are an example of things that don't fit, as they mess with the very base of the wormholes themselves, and therefore how WH-space works). As it has been posted somewhere recently, "WH-space needs some lovin' ", and it's true. We should have in mind the intention of bringing new content to a part of EVE that hasn't changed in years, and improve it along with the rest of the game. Perhaps it is time for a themed expansion? :)

Whoa, what a long post.