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@CCP Lebowski and Obil Que: I've read that blog front to back at least 3 times if not several times prior to you two linking it, as well as watched the fanfest stream. Here's some more with the passage to which I was referring bolded and underlined:



I never said CCP wasn't happy with the emergent aspect of w-space or that they were trying to bring it more in-line with the original intent. Only that players are using it in a way that is not in-line with the original intent, which is both true and clearly stated in the blog. All the rest of what you came up with is entirely an assumption on your part about what might be on my mind.

In that regard, it's my fault for not giving enough context, and only posting a single snarky remark. My apologies for that. But for future reference, I say what I mean, and I mean what I say.

To expound upon my original post, my point is that anyone using the game environment in a way that is not in-line with the intent has little recourse for complaint when the environment gets changed in a way that necessitates moving away from their accustomed play-style. In some cases, that behavior is intentionally generated en masse in order to garner enough player outcry so that obviously bad mechanics would get changed.

There is even an entity within New Eden that specializes in examining game mechanics and taking advantage of unintended play-styles. You may have heard of them. GoonSwarm? Remember the technetium bottleneck? Remember when mining barges and exhumers had no tank? Has everyone forgotten exactly where CCP Fozzie came from? Yes, Fozzie is a goon. And you know what? The vast majority of his work (and CCP in general as of late) has been outstanding.

It is up to CCP to decide whether or not a particular play-style is healthy for the game environment. In the case of w-space, CCP has publicly communicated that the emergent behavior has in general been healthy despite the unintended consequences, and will remain for the most part unchanged. So be it.

CCP is doing their best to update and freshen structure content using player input. So when the chicken-littles start crying a river over how the sky is falling and Eve will be ruined forever and CCP will go out of business without their accounts, I just cringe. I am fairly confident that having to actively participate in the defense of one's assets will not kill Eve.

A valid concern that I have yet to see addressed is with geographical anchoring restrictions being removed, what is to stop someone from anchoring a Citadel in a shattered system? How about Thera? That is clearly directly contradictory to the intended behavior and play-style of those systems (no moons for a reason).

In addition, clearly constellation capture events will not be functional in w-space. System-wide would work. But do you really want that kind of content just for a POS?

What is going to happen to POS modules? Some of those have important functions like compression arrays.

Problem is that, as with any game, players are stupid, and would you really want random people defending your billion isk investments? Maybe if it was made so that they had to be part of the alliance itself, that way they could have recruitment standards. Sadly, as fun as it would be, I fear that it will have negative attributes

I think that somewhere one of the Devs said that they were hoping to have the vulnerability window length vary based on use of the structure (But maybe it was just XLs). But if vulnerability window lengths are tied to some type of statistical use of the solar system...

If there are modules that increase anomaly spawns, it would likely be a drastic change to how WH space is used. WHs would become home mission systems instead of what they are now, hybrid staging-escalations systems.

If there aren't modules that increase anomaly spawns, this will be a bad mechanism for WH (and many in K-Space too) since it is generally best to run Anomalies in connected systems before running your own (saving for a rainy day). From Wormholers to industrialists, what could be used? Industrialists could have their Vulnerability Window lengths tied to stuff like running jobs, but not wormholes. Since WH corp members are often in other systems, and return to logoff, the best stat I can think of would be the average number of characters active or logged off in that system (which would encourage alt-sitting). However, many C6s WH corps have members that don't play during their peak times and often do down-chain anoms in small groups. These people could be seen as a detriment to the Vulnerability Window's statistics.

But in either case, if you have a REALLY active WH corp that spends a week doing out of system stuff like PvP (main thing CCP wants), then their structures would be much more vulnerable than if they did the more boring thing and ran anoms in system...

So if vulnerability times are variable, unless WH structures get special rules (or I've missed something), wormhole corps would have to deal with sub-optimal vulnerability mechanics.

Ugh, stupid forums ate my post again...(figures the one time i don't cntl-c my post before hitting the button)


Wrong, there was only the indication that the coding was still flexible...i believe the dev said "they don't have to be every day", that does NOT mean it will definately not be daily, only that it is still an option at this stage.

There are still many unanswered concerns that have been raised...CCP's silence means they are either re-working it, or more likely going ahead and pushing it.

Edit...third times a charm?

I didn't see this mentioned, but in terms of fuel:

Since there are no racial Citadels like the current POSes, will these Citadels require a new fuel block type or are you planning to allow any kind of current fuel block to be used as fuel?

No official answer as to whether CCP will convert existing POS stuff, make it so their only use is for reprocessing, or make them disappear after the transitory period.

Indications are reprocess/refund once POS's get deleted. Which will be months if not years after this new system gets added. Remember that POS's can't be removed till every new structure is up and running, not just the Market/Admin hub structure.

And pls on a per-use basis - inactive facilities/components not consuming fuel.

PLS

The entosis link solves this problem. Undefended structures are extremely vulnerable, so much so that a single person can take one down if it is undefended with only a minor grind. In fact, it seems like there will be no automated defenses at all, just a vulnerability window.

The days of plopping down a tower and relying on its massive EHP to protect it are over.

However, like the vulnerability window in nullsec, perhaps the citadel could have a scaling window based on occupancy. For example, in a occupied structure the window could be 2 (or 4, or whatever) hours a day, but this could gradually increase the less the structure is used. Or maybe, if no one has docked in the structure for 30 (or 90, or whatever) days, it could lose the protection of the vulnerability window and be open to attack by anyone, at anytime.

CCP, I have a humble request. (Not saying this isn't in your plans, but I just want to make sure) Please ensure that we can check or be alerted to vulnerability times and changes via a healthy number of ways, like notifications / calendar / structure GUI / Corp Management GUI / CREST / EveMail. As you've said, you want structures to be more user friendly. Overlooking this (relatively simple) component would be a big deal to me.

Even better would be to give app developers the tools/knowledge to pull CREST data and use it to notify us if our current week's activity levels will put us below the activity thresholds used to determine vulnerability window length/frequency.