Blog Banter 76 – Bull’s Eye

At fanfest CCP Fozzie proposed a potential new ship class. Let’s call it the fleet commander’s flagship for now. This is to try and prevent “FC Headshotting” where the opposing fleet knows who the FC is and alpha’s them off the field leaving the rest of the fleet in confusion and disarray. Fozzie mentioned a ship with a great tank but no offensive abilities. Is this a good idea? Is FC head-shotting a legitimate tactic? If CCP do go down the route of a “flagship” how might this work? Also is a new ship the answer or is there another way of giving an FC the ability not to be assassinated 12 seconds into the fight without letting players exploit
 

My experience in fleet warfare is mainly limited to the days when Factional Warfare started. The FCs indeed did get shot at first. Factional Warfare those days was a somewhat tight club and it was well known who the FCs were in most big skirmishes. If I remember well, most flew around in something agile and nimble or order to try to not get caught or a very heavily tanked battleship. I might have seen a damnation, but those were expensive ;).

So do we really need an FC ship ? There are already options, but in big fleet battles once you’re the primary target probably no amount of tank would help. Maybe some sort of ship that has a siege mode, which will mean huge resistances, but no mobility and no offence ?
The flagship suggested in this BB is kind of like drawing a big Bull’s Eye on one ship in your fleet and waving a flag while screaming ‘Shoot me Shoot me’.

Arrow Bull's Eye

Now if we think outside the box a little, it would be cool if the FC could co pilot or even be a passenger on one of the other ships and concentrate on his FCing from there. Sort of like the Star Trek Bridge ;). I am afraid in order to do that, the game would need some rewriting in order to make this feasible.
Another option, though not as cool as the above one, would be to simply remove the names and give them more generic names in order to still be able to call targets. Not my idea, but I think I read that in one of the other responses to this BB. Of course there are in game targeting tools as well, but they might be laggy in case of a large scale battle.

Anyway, there are some option to tackle this problem, I don’t think the ‘flagship’ one is the best one though.
Other participants:
Grimmash on Gaming – Blog Banter 76: Whither Flagships?
The Wormhole - BB76 – Tanky McTankFace
SCASS – BB76 – The FC’s Flagship
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah – Blog Banter 76 – Flagships
YADOT – A CAPSULEERS ADVENTURE – BB76 – The FC’s new chariot

Blog Banter 75–Dust revisited

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 75th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are please visit the Blog Banter page.

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What Does Project Nova Need to Be Successful?
At Fanfest CCP showcased their current iteration of the FPS set in the Eve Universe. Following on from DUST514 and Project Legion, Project Nova is shaping up to be a solid FPS with CCP taking the decision to get the game mechanics right first. However with so many FPS out there what will Nova need in order to stand out from a very large crowd and be successful? What are the opportunities and perhaps more importantly, the dangers for CCP? How can Nova compete against CoD, Battlefront and Titanfall to name a few?
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First of all I have to say I am a little surprised CCP is even trying to take on this project. After DUST I was expecting them to do something different, but I guess they didn’t want to waste all the experience from DUST and they want to give FPS another go. I tried to like DUST but I never really got into it. The incredibly hard to read text and awkward menus (maybe that changed later) didn’t make a good impression from what I remember. The gameplay was so so.

So first of all to make any sort of good impression, the game needs to have solid mechanics. First impressions are what count, people don’t have a lot of patience these days, so that has to be good right from the bat. Second it needs vehicles Smile. I love vehicles in these games. Well to be honest the FPS I last played somewhat regularly was Battlefield 3. I am not getting any younger, so you need to rely on street smarts and well tanks and helicopters to get your kills, not so much on reflexes.

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From what I remember I loved Battlefield 1943 on the Xbox 360. You could fly planes and also drive around in tanks and jeeps it was awesome. Not sure which game came up with that first, but I remember that game for doing it right.

Will it have to tie in with Eve somehow ? DUST tried, but it was never really implemented well. Not sure they should even try this time around though. Eve players don’t really want their game influenced by a bunch of Free to Play players (assuming it’s going that route ?) or whatever that hardly know what Eve is.

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Anyway, I don’t think just solid mechanics and ‘fun’ will do it though. They’ll have to come up with something  special to get people’s attention. It’s a hard market to break into, but it’ll be interesting to see what they will come up with. If the project will actually will see the light of day …

You can find the other participants of this blog banter at http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.nl/2016/05/blog-banter-75-what-does-project-nova.html

Citadel

As we speak Eve is updating to Citadel, the new expansion that will bring the new POS like structures, or maybe as POS were originally intended Winking smile. You can get your Medium, Large or XL structure blueprint at the moment and a select number of modules. I can imagine the sub components needed will sky rocket the prices in the market, but things will settle down eventually as they always do.

 

Meanwhile Blog Banter #74 is going at the moment. It’s about Fanfest and what people thought was the biggest reveal. Well I didn’t notice any. So I decided to not dedicate a post to it. But I felt obliged to post this here though, since I usually love the blog banters.

The official announcement blog post is over here.

Great guide can be found here : Citadels the ultimate guide

Blog Banter 72–Road to nowhere

Blog Banter 72 – This is the Road (map) to…..

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This month’s suggestion comes from Jakob Anedalle.

“What do you think about using Sugar’s recent blog post as a kickoff for a Blog Banter. I think it’s a great open-ended topic:

http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2016/02/your-ideal-roadmap.html

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I am writing just as the  new dev blog is causing a bit of a shit storm over at reddit and the official forum. Anyway, I feel a bit like an outsider looking in, as I haven’t been actually playing, but I look at this subject as someone who’s still following the game and reading about it. What would draw me in again ?

Judging by that latest dev blog, CCP is a little desperate to get people back in. Granting amnesty for people who bought ISK in the past. I am afraid, they don’t have any money / staff at the moment to pull off something big, that would bring in new players and pull back in, those that haven’t played in quite a while.

First of all we got the skill injection thing so returning / new players can ‘catch up’. I think what would bring back in those players CCP so desperately wants is a new big expansion. Something like the Wormhole expansion, Apocrypha. All these sprints and little improvements / new ships are all nice, but they aren’t creating any new headlines. A new hyped up expansion that would add a new PVE element that’s actually fun to do (solo and in a group) would be nice.

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So I’d put that on my roadmap. What exactly would that be you might ask ? I have no clue to be honest, I am sure some smart people can come up with something. Bit of a bad roadmap this, come to think of it Winking smile.

Also 0.0 space would need some love and they way it’s conquered.All you ever read about the sovereignty rules are complaints, so that needs (yet another) rewrite.

I do realize my roadmap is a little vague, but the point is that CCP needs to come up with something big otherwise Eve will just bleed out and slowly disappear. Is this going to happen ? I am afraid not, I don’t think they have the resources at the moment.

Other participants can be found at the main blog banter page over at Sand Cider and Spaceships !

Blog Banter #71 – Too Many Ships

Oops I missed this blog banter ! To be honest since I haven’t played for a while I never did experience the too many ships syndrome much. Usually the same ships were used for the same tasks, no matter whether there was a new one available. Not sure how much this has changed tbh.

Anyway, the people that participated are right here.

BB71: A Cornucopia of Spaceships
BB 71 – Decision Fatigue
BB71- Spaceships Make the World Go Round
BB #71: So Many Spaceships
BB71 – THE HARBOUR CRUSH
Eve Online Blog Banter #71: Too Many Ships Spoil the Sandpit?
BB71: Dear Santa. Thank you for all the presents!
Blog Banter 71: When too many is too many?
BB71 – Spaceships, Spaceships Everywhere!
Blog Banter 71: Too Many Ships Spoil The Sandpit? (OOC)
BB71: A rich game world full of spaceships