Player Features and Ideas Discussion

what would you define as real changes?

I mean 90% and double the jump range of almost everyone else. what more do you want?

m

Great post about timers.

Close, but keep trying. There's actually a way in under the 10LY range.

I guess I could TELL you, but what would be the fun in that?

Hi Sir,
The easiest way is to simply disallow the use of triage modules and maybe even drone control modules in .5 space or above, we can look at limiting the use of fighters/fighter-bombers too, which would mean that carriers would have to carry a compliment of "high sec" drones, or even approach the removal of the ability to "delegate" drone control in the same .5 or higher space.

these simple changes would limit carriers enough that they would still be viable, but not OP in high sec since they would still not be able to go through warp gates for most missions.

We can leave this to carriers, but not supers because they can't be docked up anyway.

of course, their jump drives wouldn't be an issue as you can't light a cyno in high sec, so no high sec hot drops would happen, but they could still jump out of high sec if needed (and not scrammed)...

o/
Just a thought.
Celly Smunt

Can you be more specific?

The only advantage to having a Carrier is the Drones and Capital modules...(unless I'm wrong.)

Prevent anything involving the word "Capital" in its module name from being activated in Highsec. Just like bombs and interdiction probes.

Prevent Fighters and more then 5 regular drones being deployed in Highsec.

Trial account upgrade improvements

Messaging around limitations on trial accounts and the path to subscription are being improved in Phoebe. A number of limitations for trial accounts are also being removed, such as the ability to fly battleships and participate in incursions and factional warfare. More information in an upcoming dev blog.

Timers are an interesting mechanic. They always seem to suck to no end when a group is on the offensive and they hit the timer brick wall and have to wrap up the fleet and reform at a later date. For defenders they are a blessing. Offering them time to form a defensive fleet, call in help, anything to try and repel the attackers. Well, unless of course you forgot to stront the tower?

Love them or hate them timers are needed. Just imagine your group just assembled this fancy new tower in a system to call home. You group doesn't have crazy good numbers in all time zones and you all slowly call it a night. As you all log back into the game the next day, you notice your POS is now in reinforce mode. Because of the timer now you have a chance to form some form a defense for when they come back. Basically a chance to fight for the moon.

Now imagine if there was no timer.

Your buddies and you would log back in and find the POS completely destroyed and most likely staring down the angry barrels of an enemy POS weapon system. All without even having a chance to defend your precious POS. Imagine if it was a station? You go to work with a decent amount of assets in a player built station, flip some burgers all day, come home and now the station belongs to someone else and all your internet spaceship stuff is trapped inside.

Why bother living and investing in a system, moon, POS, whatever if it can be snatched away from you in silly time zone wars without even having a chance to have some input into the game to keep it?

Players need to feel it is worth the risk of losing these things. This is done via rewards for investing in living out in null or holding a moon or what have you. No reward is worth the risk of losing everything because you decided to sleep, work, go to school, step out to the bar, go to Fanfest or basically have a normal life. Everyone would just dwell in NPC stations and never venture into the deep dark depths of the unknown*.

So while what we know as a timer might be changed, the principal will most likely be intact. A way to offer the defender a chance to actually defend without get an IV of Redbull and slip into some zombie, insomnia mode losing more weight than Christian Bale in the 'Machinist'.

Or, perhaps there is another reason for the timers, but this was always the one that made the most sense to me. I hope this drawn out version helps. If not, I'm sure there is legions of people typing furiously away to loudly tell me I am wrong in every possible way.

Perhaps both?

As far as the exploit that is going to happen in reguards to abusing the 90-95% reduction in Jump Fatigue - everyone is making plans to do it. Ship fits are being finalized, routes, the works. So it really is not a matter of if players will abuse it, but more of a matter of how long after Phoebe hits will CCP decide to fix the loophole. So hopefully Phoebe 1.1 will include this and CCP will not wait too long to do the update.

I don't like the loophole, but if CCP insists on shipping Phoebe with it, there is not much else one can do but wait till they patch it out later. Other than that, it looks like a hopeful expansion to maybe cause some breakup of the super coalitions. It really feels like a coin toss to be honest.

The other features coming with the expansion are real nice. Lots of good stuff that everyone will enjoy, no matter what flag they are flying. There is still tons and tons of room for improvement all over the game, but as long as CCP keeps at it the game can be turned around and become highly enjoyable for current and (hopefully) future players.

Now, about that local chat window...

This witch hunt of nerfing power projection makes be believe that CCP has lost sight of this being a sandbox MMO. All these silly regulations and stipulations and tribulations closing loops holes. Its a sandbox, what you're currently doing is overkill. The only real power projection problems have been rooted into the carrier and titan bridge chains IMO. Rather than taking a sledge hammer to the universe how about starting with a regular nail driver.

Its hilarious how many people are cheering for these changes thinking it will make some miracle cure all allowing them to be victorious. In reality it affects everyone equally, it will not give any smaller entities any benefit and longterm will hurt smaller / independent groups more, possibly add to nullsec stagnation and further promotes larger entities.

But hey it seems I'm alone on sanity island, the rest of you clowns that keep cheering for these needless changes be careful what you wish for.

The number of foundational mechanics that are being broken by these changes is off the greyscale, we're entering the plaidscale zone.
Things that will be gone that really shouldn't be
1) Suitcase carrier - the ability to move your subcaps from one place to another. This can be seen as force projection but its also just quality of life. The carrier is the entry level ship for anyone getting into being an independent nullsec player or entity. While carrier blobs are certainly in need of balance completely cutting this foundational mechanic out of the game is silly.
2) Jump Bridges, Seriously they got nerfed plenty in that patch that was right before Incarna, remember when we could have 2 JBs per system, those were the days...full fatigue on JBs is just insane and unwarranted.
3) Jump Fatigue breaks evac operations. Being on the loosing end of a fight just became a lot more expensive if you're gonna loose your space.

This entire proposal is a kneejerk reaction. Earlier this summer Jump Drives got nerfed with increased fuel consumption and the isotopes volumes were changed. Now you're basically proposing that aside from JFs we stop using jump drives all together. If you were planning to do this back then that change likely wouldn't have happened. This entire set of changes is very quickly thought up, poorly planned, and un-needed.