Category: Dominion

And the Age of Dominion is upon us ! A surprisingly smooth patch I must say ! The #tweetfleet buzz was very active. People reporting how far their download was etc. And even an hour early, we were able to log on.

I checked my invention blueprints and it seems that we indeed need less highlevel moon goo related components and way more mid/low lvl (armor plates). I am going to hold off production for a while and see how it pans out.

I could see the alliance wormhole fleet in the fleetfinder, sent out a few emails to check the new client, browsed my blog to see if the ingame browser worked, and yes it all seem to work smoothly. The ui with all the squareness needs a bit of growing into, I guess, after all these years of roundiness.

Then undocking… WOW stars, nice planets. People just warping from planet to planet, very fun experience. I almost forgot, but people in corp chat started linking contracts to the new Navy ships. I couldn’t resist and got me a Navy Scorpion. People have been saving up LP and started dumping them, plus the FW nerf (of sorts) will not make these any cheaper in the future I hope, so I think it’s a good investment. Haven’t had quite enough time to fully deck it out, but I think it’s a lot easier to fit than the CNR. Plus a lot of tankage with 8 med slots and the resistance bonus !

All in all the first impressions are VERY good ! Smooth patchday, smooth graphics, every as advertised. And the positive tweets keep coming in. Gratz to CCP !

With Dominion less than a week away, I was planning on doing a dominion in a nutshell post, but Kirith Kodachi beat me to it. But I decided to go ahead anyway and sort of give it my own spin.

Changes / improvements that don’t affect gameplay:

1. New email client (mails also available through API)
2. New ingame browser
3. New planetary graphics

These will make the game more enjoyable, but won’t have much impact on gameplay. The new email client was long overdue, the ingame browser will be very helpful.

Changes that might affect my gameplay :

1. Project gun changes – more alpha, less rate of fire
2. New Navy ships factional warfare store
3. Assault frig afterburner boost
4. New fleet finder interface.

My factional warfare character flies minmatar so he’ll have to test no. 1. I am not sure about no. 3, I cannot find much of it anymore in the patch notes. Did it get scratched or is it still in ? No. 2 might bring more people (at least temporarily) to FW, though I am not too sure about it. The fleet finder is a fine addition !

Update: The AF changes were scratched :(. Was looking forward to that…

Other changes:

1. ‘Epic’ pirate missions
2. Boost to pirate ships etc.

I don’t fly these ships as they’re a bit too expensive to my taste, but who knows I might one day ;). The epic pirate missions don’t interest me at all. I tried the Caldari epic mission line, and someone at CCP thought it would be epic to have people courier documents 28jumps… But some people might like it, more content never hurts !

Last but not least:

1. 0.0 sovereignty changes
2. upgrades to 0.0 space
3. capital ship changes
4. Moon goo income changes / T2 bpo changes

And here it is, the meat of this expansion. The thing is that CCP boasted these changes on fanfest and during the alliance tournament, but what actually will be deployed on dec. 1st is quite meager. The upgrades are nothing to write home about. The sovereign system was still subject to change two weeks before the whole thing is going live, and I have already given my thoughts on the mothership changes.

Best thing to do would be to go live with the first set of things I mentioned. Nothing controversial there, every one will have a better game. Give the 0.0 overhaul some more thoughts and testing !

But we all know that this is what will be going live next week. And for those that claim that 0.0 doesn’t effect them, think again ! The whole game is affected by T2 prices, demand of trit due to capitals being blown up etc etc.

There also seems to be  misunderstanding that the only people that complain the mothership / 0.0 sovereignty thread are those from the big alliances like Goons and Atlas etc.. I see plenty of empire / lowsec people complain as well. Not only on CCP’s attitude, heavily censoring, but also about a dev blog that was simply factually incorrect. How such a blog can slip through is quite beyond me.

Let’s hope things will work out for the better, it will certainly be very interesting to see what will happen, the coming weeks. And how the market will respond. To be honest I have no idea, but will watch it with excitement.

Update: CCP just put their features page online.

This is a very nice upgrade. They actually look better in game to be honest ! I especially like the earth like planets and the lava ones.

The bomb has dropped on a friday afternoon in the form of a dev blog on the eve online community. You can read the responses here on the forum, lots of references to the SWG NGE.

What’s the problem with the changes posted in the dev blog ? It costs 2bil to fully upgrade a system (yes a single system) in 0.0 and claim sovereignty. How are you ever going to make that system cost effective ? How can a small alliance afford to do this ? Even bigger ones, will be in trouble. They’ll probably just develop a few key systems and lock off the rest of a constellation for the rest of the people. CVA with their NRDS policy is especially screwed. They don’t make anything from their visitors.

CCP claimed that the goal of Dominion was to attract more people to 0.0. As I see it now, this will do the exact opposite. And if you think ‘I don’t do 0.0, this won’t effect me’, please think again. A lot of materials for T2 etc come from 0.0.

If people don’t / can’t bother with those anymore, markets will plummet and it will effect everybody in the game.

UPDATE : CCP Soundwave is now trolling posting in the above mentioned thread and says (amongst some other nonsense) As I said, if the costs become an issue, they can always be looked at.

It’ll be too late. People will have giving up and moved on. Anyone with some common sense can see that these changes are ridiculous.

Update II: CCP Chronotis posted in the feedback thread and it seems CCP is starting to backpaddle already. Which makes you wonder where they pulled the original numbers from in the first place… Post nr. 1000 btw raises some excellent questions.