Wormholes

Very nearly there, it is more like the surgeon tipping the table vertical, spinning it and throwing axes at the patient,

Whilst loudly proclaiming, " roll up roll up, who feels lucky today!"

Well, if past experience is a guide, we will probably get the response that we are now reducing the size of the axes, and spinning the table a little faster. And adding a cosmetic change such as the table squeaks a little louder and sparks fly out. Everyone likes sparks, right?

After response from players, CCP heard to mutter "ungrateful lot"

Just combine the two posts above yours.

Mine. It appears I was drunk at the time as I have no recollection of posting that...

Nicely put, as you say we have adapted to the randomness inherent in these three cases, this is randomness though to modify the presentation of the mechanic. This being the case means that players can learn and adapt to the random factor as it does not change the core mechanism.

This change however is different, the only way of dealing with the mechanic is one of deciding to jump or not jump. Once you have decided to place your fate in the hands of the luck Gods, you are just along for the ride.

It is literally the same as implementing a change where whenever you jump through the wormhole you have a percentage chance of self destructing when encountering hostiles.

Where you come out in a great sphere surrounding the wormhole is out of your hands, and your fate is dependent on whether you are lucky enough in your and your fleets landing position. You may well be delivered into their waiting laps cut off from support.

If we jumped and landed out of return jump range, all together, we may disagree with the need of it, but we would learn to adapt.

There is no way of adapting to this as currently proposed. None. Just "do you feel lucky" ? sometimes you will be able to burn back with the right fit, sometimes warp away and back, and other times you are just "unlucky" and there is no way whatsoever to change that.

That is the worst imaginable piece of games design if you want to retain and encourage customers.
You have just developed game aversion therapy.
Good work CCP

Yes, other incentives to encourage one not to need to close holes to seek combat, would be promising.

But please understand, this is absolutely not just about risk factor, while increasing risk will affect the decision as to whether people roll holes or not, this proposal goes way way beyond that.

The risk is not that you may encounter more opposition, or harder battles, it is whether you randomly get dropped into a position where NOTHING can save you. That cannot be mitigated against by fitting skill or tactics. THAT is what is so greatly concerning.

If CCP ONLY wanted to increase risk, and encourage combat, then they could have simply said that capitals would jump 5km outside of the range they could jump back and as the hole was destabilised by such a large mass then all the ships that followed would land on the heavy ship.
That would have encouraged the development of a whole new range of tactics for offensive and defensive closing.

But no they wanted all the ships to spawn scattered randomly across a wide sphere where some would end up easy victims.

See the difference?

I think that this snip perfectly sums up the most probable consequences of the spawn distance changes, even when you take into account the other changes on SiSi (specifically the K162 delay).

People respond to incentives. For all groups of people living in wormholes, this change is a very strong negative incentive to rolling a wormhole:

•Farming groups whose primary purpose for living in wormholes is making ISK are getting an all-together negative incentive package for living in wormholes from this expansion. Rolling their static hole becomes much more dangerous (What CCP wants), but they can be caught while farming much more easily due to the K162 spawn changes (What CCP wants?). However, the frequency of farming will decrease significantly, as the likelihood of being connected to a hostile entity is higher due to the much-more-frequent spawns of wormholes and the increased average cost of rolling a hole (Ships lost per hole rolled over a given period).

If the farming group is connected to a hostile entity, no farming and no rolling will occur. This will lower the amount of ISK generated via wormhole content (Almost assuredly what CCP wants), but will dramatically decrease content for all other wormhole dwellers, the next group most:

•Large entities that farm and pvp are largely unaffected by the spawn distance changes... Directly. They will still be able to efficiently roll holes with much less risk than a smaller entity, and can absorb losses more easily when accidents do happen. There will, however, be less overall content for them because one of their 'targets', the farming groups, will be fewer in number and farming less often. On the upside, the K162 delay changes make logoff traps incredibly effective, as if the farming group fails to place someone on their newly-rolled static or that person fails to notice a wormhole activation, it becomes trivial for a scan alt to scan a way in for a site-running gank fleet without the target's knowledge.

All that having been said, the large pvp'ing/farming entities are still getting a net negative incentive to living in wormholes from these changes--There will be less farmers who do less farming (many may leave if Incursions become relatively more profitable), and less of the next group residing and operating in wormhole space:

•Smaller entities that farm and pvp. I further specify that these entities will take most fights that (initially/based on intel) are fair. Because these groups generally live in lower class wormholes and/or do not have as many members as larger groups, their incentive package is also quite negative from the spawn distance change. They risk more of their overall net worth in order to secure their hole for farming, and since rolling takes significantly more time with these changes they lose a non-negligible amount of efficiency. Furthermore, they are more likely to not have the ability to place a scout on their new, unopened static to ensure that no scan alt has zipped out to find a way in for a predator, which significantly increases their risk factor in addition to the other increases discussed.

Because these small groups will be living a much riskier life, they will be pressured toward clumping into larger and larger groups in order to stay viable. This isn't an entirely negative change, as the game should encourage and reward playing in a commensurately larger group, but it's fair to say that most small to medium-sized wormhole organizations stay that way because they choose to, not because they are unable to.

The net effect on these groups will be a strong disincentive to living in wormholes. Their way of life may not even be viable--I even think it likely that they won't be able to make enough ISK to support their pve and pvp habits. They will largely leave wormhole space or gravitate to the already-larger groups. The end result, I think, will be an extinction of these groups over time.

~~~

So, above I've outlined my case for why virtually all wormhole dwellers are getting a net-negative incentive package for living in wormholes. Below I'd like to propose my (poor) suggestion to achieving what CCP wants from this expansion, ie, less ISK, more risk, and more content for wormholes and the people that live there. I say poor because I don't think there exists an easy change--People respond much better to positive incentives than negative incentives, but it's difficult to further incentivize an already quite-welly incentivized activity. What I mean is, as it stands, it is pretty easy to live in wormhole space and stay ISK-positive.

Hard to really know for sure - I suspect though it would have resulted in less small to medium sized groups in C5/6 space and more of a gravitation towards a small number of larger power blocs instead.

I snipped out the part that I think is most important to talk about: Smaller-ish groups. These changes have a strong negative incentive for them to live in wormholes, and will encourage the same POS up/log off activity that farming groups do.

Farming groups are net-negative because they can be rage-rolled into and have no idea they're about to get jumped, with no way to defend against it. This will likely change the ISK:Effort ratio enough to favor moving out of wormholes, which creates less content for everyone else.

I never loved wormhole space for its safety. We ran sites with holes wide open and posted scouts on them so that if someone was coming, we had time to see if we needed to reship or if we could take them with the fleet we had. I'm just saying that so that it's clear that safety and predictability are not features to me, not in J-space.

The problem with this proposed feature is that it trades one kind of predictability for another kind, which reliably favors large fleets of smaller ships and which very nearly requires them for closing large holes, and; it introduces a new kind of safety and predictability in that you'll be able to jump through a WH and be 100% sure that the hole can't decloak you on the other side.

If it were just increased randomness, I'd be fine with it. I said as much in the Dev Blog thread. At least that would be more hassle for everyone, instead of directly incentivizing larger fleets.

So for the last 6 months there was everyone complaining about those farmers and how they added nothing to wormholes. Esp since the NPC API data was taken away. Now all of a sudden everyone wants to keep them because they are content?
Being ok with the proposed changes or not, but arguments should not be shifted around to fit your point every time.