ASCN vs BOB

[ajax34i]

Yup, not saying I want EVE changed, just that the recent influx of newbies seem to be of the carebear variety, and that that clashes with CCP's goals for 0.0.

[Morat20]

1) Look, objecting to solving a problem via a new skill in EVE is like objecting to leveling via "killing shit" in WoW. (Even quests boil down to killing shit). The whole entire goddamn advancement system in EVE boils down to training skills. Even to use the loot, you've got to have the fucking skjills.
2) I suspect that a skill-based solution to the problem would be two-tiered -- a quick to train basic tier, and an advanced tier that takes longer. Just like basic and advanced learning skills.
3) If it's module based, I bet you'd need a skill to use it....
4) No, it would not be a 'required skill'. It would be a fucking useful one, however, for anyone playing in low-sec. However, that's true of most skills. People in high-sec would train it just to cut down jump times between stations and high-sec systems, and would do so casually. By the time they moved to low-sec, they'd already have the bulk of the skill trained and be ready for the advanced version. (The same way I'm currently ramping up fuel conservation -- it's suddenly more useful to me than it was two months ago, so I'm training it).
5) Newbs being carebears: Of course they are. They're fucking new to the game. Unless they join a corp willing to outfit them, they can't afford to fly in low-sec. They can't survive there until they gain the required skills, ISK, and modules to make it possible to do more than die. That will change as they grow into the game.
6) I can understand why it's upsetting to, say, have your giant collection of painstakingly gathered instas invalidated and replaced with a skill or set of skills that might take three or more months to train to get you back to where you were. It sucks, and I'm not going to argue that. On the other hand, you'll get a hell of an improvement in lag and you won't have to keep gathering instas everytime you settle into a new system -- like the new areas opening up soon.
7) I don't think "Click to warp to Zero" is going to be a solution, simply because that invalidates the autopilot and the autopilot is damn necessary. Or if they do have a "click to warp to zero distance" they'll ALSO have the skill to allow warps with higher accuracy to keep the autopilot useful.. In that case, it wouldn't be a necessary skill to have, but a damn nice one for anyone doing a lot of travelling. (Like traders).

[Fordel]

7) I don't think "Click to warp to Zero" is going to be a solution, simply because that invalidates the autopilot and the autopilot is damn necessary. Or if they do have a "click to warp to zero distance" they'll ALSO have the skill to allow warps with higher accuracy to keep the autopilot useful.. In that case, it wouldn't be a necessary skill to have, but a damn nice one for anyone doing a lot of travelling. (Like traders).

How is the Autopilot not invalidated by the insta system currently? All I use it for currently is to see which bookmark to mash next if it is a unfamiliar route.



I still don't understand how the idea of making everyone train for an extra month is superior to just making it a base mechanic of the game. By your own admission, it would suck. WHY would we want 'suck'? I'm saying, if the solution is to just let people warp in on top of the gates, just let them do it by default then. As far as I can understand, you want the same thing, but with a extra month of training tacked on because... "that's just how shit IS in EVE!" or something.

Of course the REAL issue is the gate system itself, it's like every system in EVE has its own AMG in Emain. Pair that up with the more or less improbability of actually seeing another soul outside of a belt/planet/moon... small wonder people camp gates ;)

[Morat20]

How is the Autopilot not invalidated by the insta system currently? All I use it for currently is to see which bookmark to mash next if it is a unfamiliar route.

I still don't understand how the idea of making everyone train for an extra month is superior to just making it a base mechanic of the game. By your own admission, it would suck. WHY would we want 'suck'? I'm saying, if the solution is to just let people warp in on top of the gates, just let them do it by default then. As far as I can understand, you want the same thing, but with a extra month of training tacked on because... "that's just how shit IS in EVE!" or something.

Of course the REAL issue is the gate system itself, it's like every system in EVE has its own AMG in Emain. Pair that up with the more or less improbability of actually seeing another soul outside of a belt/planet/moon... small wonder people camp gates ;)

True -- instas invalidate autopilot. You don't use autopilot if you have instas in system. A good portion of people getting snagged by gatecampers are people travelling on auto through low-sec. Without auto, moving any real distance is a pain in the ass. With it, you run a too-serious risk of gatecamping.

If you had a "click to zero distance" option then you wouldn't need instas. If you added a trained skill to reduce warps that weren't clicked (IE: Autopilot) then you'd ALSO allow people doing long journeys to be harder to gate camp. (You could still set up a bubble, of course -- but instas don't help you there either). That would result in PvP moving to asteroid belts (ganking miners) and the new encounter areas you're supposed to find via scanning, rather than harassing travelers.

Probably a kick in the nuts to pirates, but it'll move people around more by making travel easier. And then the pirates will have to buy scanners and find folks that way (and I understand the scanners might make it easier for them to do that).

Edit to add: Not sure I'm being clear. I think adding a 'click to zero' feature (or click to 1k or something) as a change, or as a module or something, is a good idea. Further, I think adding a skill that reduces auto jump distances as you train the skill is good too. Both seems even better, as it totally rids you of the need for instas and makes life easier on multi-gate trips. I don't think CCP had in mind Gate-camping or station camping in any case. With the new scanners, PC rats should be able to locate anyone doing anything in system (mining, exploring, whatever) and of course actual "go looking for battle" fleets will be webbing and scrambling and generally making warping impossible anyways.

[Kamen]

From the dev chat for those of you who haven't read it:

Oveur: Instajumps is something we've been talking a whole lot the last weeks
Oveur: and getting feedback from all around about what to do
Oveur: personally, I'm standing between in two camps, the "warp to 0 with autopilot on 15" and the "remove them and use the tools you got to begin with, mwd's and ab's to move"
Oveur: pretty much lost faith in any thing between that, but i'm not the only one with an opinion on this and in this case, much more than chairs have been broken

[Fordel]

Edit to add: Not sure I'm being clear. I think adding a 'click to zero' feature (or click to 1k or something) as a change, or as a module or something, is a good idea. Further, I think adding a skill that reduces auto jump distances as you train the skill is good too. Both seems even better, as it totally rids you of the need for instas and makes life easier on multi-gate trips. I don't think CCP had in mind Gate-camping or station camping in any case. With the new scanners, PC rats should be able to locate anyone doing anything in system (mining, exploring, whatever) and of course actual "go looking for battle" fleets will be webbing and scrambling and generally making warping impossible anyways.

What I'm saying is make warp to 1k (or whatever the ideal range is) default behaviour. Making people click the 0km option out of the list of 15k, 30k etc... is pointless busy work and having a skill to train to auto 0-1k you from the gate is just another mandatory skill that isn't really needed. This of course, assumes CCP actually wants us to keep instas, they were never intended in the first place :)

To elaborate, say they put in the Click to gate, 15k on auto... what will end up happening is exactly what happens with bookmarks now. You setup your auto-pilot route but don't actually turn it on. Then you just use it as a checklist as you click your next warp target. Only difference would be the removal of the 40billion gate bookmarks everyone has, which would be a good thing but wouldn't actually change any practical mechanics in the end. Now add in your skill idea, which does the same thing as clicking but less busy work with the GUI at the cost of a week/month of training time. I say remove all that crap, and just have everyone autopilot or manualpilot, warp to the 'insta' range to gates and stations. As far as actual gameplay, all of the above methods result in the exact same thing, be it Bookmark Insta's or Click to 0km or TrainedSkill to 0km... I say if CCP decides they do infact want insta's to stay, just make it default warp behaviour with no strings attached. No need to keep existing loopholes or create new ones.

The thing that worries me a little bit, I'm not so sure CCP actually wants insta's to stay in anyform at all. So umm, hurrah to quadrupling traveling times if they remove them all out  :-(

[Reg]

I could live with the removal of instas if they put in the manual "click to zero" jumping. If they did that I wouldn't mind if they added a new skill that would reduce your default warp in distance. That skill wouldn't be necessary except for afk travel in high sec so I don't see any harm in making those guys invest a few days/weeks of training time to do it.

But if all they do is take out instas and put in the skill it will be mandatory for anyone who does any travelling at all. The same way having your advanced learning skills to 4 is mandatory for anyone who's played more than 6 months.

[Yegolev]

I personally don't care too much how we get to the place we all want to get to.  Another skill or two is OK with me.  Skill+module is fine.  I would not even argue too hard against making so anyone, including the farming trial accounts, could simply just warp to 0km without any effort... although I don't care for that too much.  We want to be in a galaxy without instas.

Autopilot is already only useful for AFK highsec travel.  I would like the skill-based solution since it would help me everywhere, thereby encouraging travel which is what CCP wants, and me too.  A module would require a skill, but I'm not opposed to that either.  I don't like the idea of letting everyone do it without any expended effort.  Since I am mining ice already, why can't I just have it appear in my hangar instead of requiring the kludge of hauling it manually?  The mining barge skill is a must-have, so I should just have it right from the start.  I am, of course, being ridiculous but there is a line somewhere between default behavior and tedious skill grind.  In the case of a Warp Accuracy skill, it is unlike the Learning skills since the hypothetical WA skill actually does something.  All I can think of while training a Learning skill is how I'm not training something that makes me a better pilot.  The Warp Acc skill fits naturally into the Navigation group, along with such necessities as... well, most everything in Navigation.  Skills for AB and MWD are pretty much a requirement, and I feel that one or possibly two more isn't going to hurt.  Three is too much, though.

Eliminating the bookmark system, I assume, means we cannot set bookmarks at all and we will then have to rely on warping to objects.  Some method of warping into jump/dock distance will be required, the notion of wiping instas and not having a replacement system is lazy and bad.  We would still be provided bookmarks by mission agents, of course, we just would not be able to set our own.

Would a warp-to-zero option make gameplay (for non-pirates) too easy?  This is probably where most of the arguments lie.  I submit that travelers will still need to be at the controls due to warp bubbles, so allowing an autopilot-to-0km system isn't going to break things, really.  People in slow ships can still be caught by faster ships, as happens currently even with instas since you still have to align to warp out.  Not having to manually click will free the pursued pilot to do other things, if only ask for help from his corp and bite his nails.  So I guess I'm in the "skill up to autopilot down to 0km" camp.

[Furiously]

Call me strange, but I think they should leave it at 15 and encourage gate camps.

Imagine KNOWING that nothing is going to get through. It would be great. (To be a gate camper).

[Yegolev]

I was wondering if they had considered that, what with the push towards increasing defenses and all.  Maybe giving the tissue-paper ships more of a chance to run the 15km gauntlet?  You don't want to make lowsec and 0.0 trivial to enter, I guess.

[ajax34i]

Don't understand why the hauler ships are defenseless...  that was a bad design decision in my opinion.

But, eh.  Their main concern is with removing the lag, and not really with altering the gate-camp / instajump dynamic.  The way EVE is designed, most combat will still happen at gates, regardless of how easy it is to scan or hide, etc.

[MahrinSkel]

Not all of the hauler ships are defenseless.  Minmatar ships especially tend to be tough nuts, since they are intended to shield tank (so you can tank while leaving the lows clear for expanders/WCS/nanos).  A battle-Mammoth can be a nasty surprise for an Interceptor when he turns around and scrambles/webs the ceptor, then starts chewing him up.  Battle-rigged Prowlers can take out just about any frigate, and a Mastodon that has a good active tank can pretty much just ignore them unless there's 3+ (I once tanked a Taranis and a Stilletto for over 5 minutes, until friends finally gated in and killed one).

You can also fit ECM on just about any of them to break a raider's lock and warp away.  You're not going to run a gate camp without special preparation and the right ship (I do it all the time in my Prowler), but that's true of anyone flying solo in 0.0.

--Dave

[Simond]

Latest (political) rumour: Strange things are afoot at the Circle K on the borders of Fountain...freighter movement, covert ops ships, etc. Depending on who you ask, the ships belong to either D2 or RISE.

[MahrinSkel]

D2 is currently fighting in that mess up in Venal, and I really don't see them as likely to want to add a piece of territory as hard to hold as Fountain to the mix (they're more likely to want to add more of the Kali region links).  RISE is a much stronger candidate, the only way I see D2 involved is if they've struck a deal with D2 for later support in Venal.  Just what that mess needs, another couple of alliances in the mix.

I can see D2 doing it on the principle that anything that weakens BOB improves their own position, and supporting a RISE expansion gives them a stronger buffer against BOB.  But not trying to take it for themselves, they'd turn towards IRON or Freelancer first.  Frankly, D2 is probably at their limit of expansion, getting much more widespread will probably cause them to fracture.

--Dave

[Morat20]

D2 is currently fighting in that mess up in Venal, and I really don't see them as likely to want to add a piece of territory as hard to hold as Fountain to the mix (they're more likely to want to add more of the Kali region links).  RISE is a much stronger candidate, the only way I see D2 involved is if they've struck a deal with D2 for later support in Venal.  Just what that mess needs, another couple of alliances in the mix.

I can see D2 doing it on the principle that anything that weakens BOB improves their own position, and supporting a RISE expansion gives them a stronger buffer against BOB.  But not trying to take it for themselves, they'd turn towards IRON or Freelancer first.  Frankly, D2 is probably at their limit of expansion, getting much more widespread will probably cause them to fracture.

--Dave

Did I mention I fucking love this game? I wanted so bad to go to the fan fest. I HATE fan fests. I wouldn't attend a fan fest if it occured two miles down the street for any other game. But EVE? Hell yeah.

Just to sit around, drink vodka, and wait for some of the forum warriors to realize their arch-forum-nemesis is that chubby dude over there.

Plus, I think CCP deserves some public support. I honestly think smaller game companies (IE: Everyone but Blizzard) should pay more attention to what CCP did than Blizzard.

[Fordel]

BOB has a titan now : http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=423174


Let the E-peen wagging commence!

[Yegolev]

Fantastic, I hope we get some titan-on-titan action soon.  Seems unlikely, but one can hope.