Wormholes

I'm just going to put two and two together here. I believe that WH loot has fallen in price significantly, and the purpose of this change is most likely intended to control that depreciation. It's 'very CCP' to focus on the market above all else.

Look at what they have actually said about it:

We made the assumption that their goal was to increase conflict. But they never actually said that. Their only stated intention was to disrupt W-space operations.

Think about it. We have 50-60 pages of posts saying that this won't actually increase conflict, but actually reduce conflict. And yet they soldier on with the idea, even going so far as to implement it without asking anyone's opinion.

But when placed in the context of trying to disrupt loot farming, it falls neatly into place. If pursuing this goal, they don't care if people are hugging a POS for a whole day. In fact, that's ideal. The amount of conflict wouldn't actually concern them. Just so long as they aren't farming and flooding the market with the product. The frigate holes also make a lot of sense, in this context.

I feel like they are cloaking their intentions.
Maybe we should be trying to provide suggestions on how to control loot farming, without ruining wormhole mechanics?

One of the most frustrating aspects of wormhole living is fighting on a hisec hole. You don't have to worry about losing anything as you emerge right on the hole and you can jump back if things go poorly.

The idea where lower mass ships are kicked out further is a good one. Any situation where caps are used they can be followed back and killed. In any other fight when ships come through they can be webbed and taken down by a superior force.

I know you are trying to limit ragerolling, but in my mind ragerolling is a good thing. It creates new content, and pvp entities are more than willing to follow someone through with a small fleet and a probing ship if it means a good kill (orca anyone?)

That said - Multi-bubble hictors will still be kicked off quite a ways making them open to being killed.

While I support most of these changes, I cannot support the mass-based spawn distance as it currently stands. It falls victim to the same fallacy that the recent jump fuel use changes had: this change assumes that making something more difficult, slower, or more expensive disproportionately affects the largest and most powerful groups, while leaving smaller groups less negatively affected and by extension giving those smaller groups a leg up on using space. In reality, the larger and more powerful groups will be able to most rapidly and readily adapt to the new circumstances, while smaller groups will be left flailing to keep up.

Traiori correctly lists several of the major effects in his post on the first page of this thread. Ultimately this change will lead to less risk being taken, and fewer confrontations.

While I would prefer having any spawn distance changes delayed until after the effects of the other changes can be seen, I do have some suggestions (some my own, some pawned from this thread).

1. Maximum potential spawn distance should be *inversely* proportional to ship mass, but the minimum potential spawn differences should be similar regardless of mass. This would allow a greater use of kiting setups on wormholes, while also maintaining some risk to cloaky/nullified fast ships, as they could still spawn in a place where immediate cloaking would be impossible. However, this would also allow the practical and sometimes impromptu use of capitals on incoming and outgoing wormholes to continue in similar fashion as current practices. I do not see this as necessarily a bad thing.

2. Jumping one way through a wormhole should initiate a polarity timer which is proportional to the mass of the ship, or a function of the mass of the ship relative to the size of the wormhole. A covops may have a polarity timer as short as the session change. A HAC-sized ship may have a polarity timer as long as the jump cloak. A dreadnought may have a 2-4 minute polarity timer. Combined with the current (not proposed) spawn ranges, this would force rage-rolling and defensive-rolling entities to attempt some measure of hole control, while still allowing rage rolling and defensive rolling to be practical tactics in content generation. This would also allow a ballsy offensive force to jump into a prepared defensive force without being nearly guaranteed that they would be unable to get their capitals into refit ranges.

3. Sort of related to #1, ships should exit a wormhole with velocity away from the mouth of the wormhole. This would, in cases of mass-use jumping and other rolling, discourage ships from holding cloak as long as possible after a wormhole jump. When combined with #2, this would maximize the amount of time which a rolling force is exposed for, without making rolling impractical. It would force pilots to balance the relative safety of the cloak, with the time needed to return to the wormhole, and the polarization timer.

Sorry to hear that bud.

But i might be unsubbing my 6 scrub-ridden accounts too.

Most of my violence was done to Russians, KILL, SSC, AHARM, NoHo, and others while in the original Narwhals, or Transmission Lost, or Disavowed and Whale Girth. I never ran into Adhoc very often and when we did they usually weren't in a position to fight at that moment, plus any big fights would have been against my cap alt.

Glad to see you guys here and shouting about this mass/distance change too. I would prefer seeing active WH PvP populations growing again, rather than people burning out/abandoning w-space because they can't be asked to roll another hole.

In this patch you are touching the core mechanics the WH community has evolved around – the way WHs work. Any changes to this was completely unasked for by the w-community.

What made you think making rolling WH any more dangerous would be a good thing?

In the video you linked Hillmar was impressed about emergent gameplay. A sandbox will only work if players can manipulate the sand without getting hurt every time. They want to have some level of control over the situation.

This change is just not good enough – Wormholes deserve better

I feel it would be much healthier for w-space if you balanced the income side. It seems ridicules to me that some lower class WH people join Incursion fleets to make ISK. This is just wrong. If these people have a pecuniary incentive to be in w-space and an interesting environment to PvP we will see lot more people in here.

I am mildly panicking at this point and I really hope corbexx can convince you to reverse this change.

Great change.

I like this idea. Do the inverse, throw small, mobile ships further out. Heavy ships are already easy to catch on a hole because they get timered and can't warp anywhere. Small ships just play jump/cloak games until they can instant warp somewhere.

Svo.

So we should just sit down, be quiet and take it?

What if I suggested the same mass based spawn range for ships jumping to cynos? Would null/low pilots just sit there and say quiet?

Why should jumping caps to a station be completely safe. Oh wait it isn't you say, well neither is the current method of rolling wormholes.

And to everyone that says the current method is risk-free I ask one simple question.

Have you ever destroyed a ship trying to roll a wormhole?

+ 1 for this being an awesome change!

All it means is people will need to work better together to rage roll WHs... Carriers can still insta warp with webs the same as Ocras... If you then think about it for more than 2 seconds there is an EASY workaround for those that want to rage roll...

This also means MOAR fights with LESS rage rolling required! As people will NO LONGER be able to jump an Orca or BS into a WH from K Space without being at risk of getting blapped... And if worried get a friend to web you off the WH... Or even better get a fleet to protect you! We will happily fight you!

Awesome change CCP Fozzie! Keep up the great work.