I don’t know his/her methods, but apparently he/she is able to filter out relevant ship changes from the “Chaos Client cache,” using what I can only assume to be some sort of magical scrying stone.

I have a few preliminary thoughts on these changes…

(1) The MWD bonus seems highly ineffectual:

I think that the devs may be attempting to encourage the use of a “heavy interceptor” setup that can remain highly survivable while MWDing out to tackle targets for roaming gangs, or even in larger fleet battles.

However, this “heavy interceptor” role bonus really isn’t something that will be particularly useful to most gangs, or even most assault ship pilots.

Changes in fleet composition trends, game mechanics, and FC preferences over the last few years have caused frigate tacklers to fall out of favor, in both fleet warfare and roaming pvp.

The rise of idiot-proof probing has removed the phenomenon of 150km+ snipers (who cannot track frigs for shit) from 0.0, the popularity of close-ranged turret BS has made orbiting frigs into mere fodder, e-war immune super-caps determine the victor in most serious battles, and missile-spamming 100MN AB-Tengu fleets give absolutely zero fucks if you scram them.

The bottom line is, there is no longer a need for a “hero inty” to burn out to the enemy like we saw depicted in the Incarna trailer.

Even in smaller fleets, it only takes a few roaming fit-BCs to pop an MWDing assault ship in a single volley, before it can reach them at range on a gate or station.

The focus has instead shifted towards well-placed interdiction spheres, heavily-tanked HIDs, long-range tackling recons, and tech-3 “strategic” cruiser tacklers with faction mods.

These ships can provide better tackling, usually from further away, and can actually be supported by logistics on a reliable basis.

In solo PvP, with a few notable exceptions – such as Imperial Navy Slicers – solo frigs rarely run MWD-only fits today.

Almost all 1v1 frigate setups plan on fighting within scram range these days. Worse yet, mwd/scram/web frigs can often be escaped by AB/scram  frigs, with only web-bonused ships like the Daredevil being a consistent exception.

For this reason, most pilots fit to optimize their performance within scram range, rather than attempting to kite.

(2) Most people expected something else:

The two most popular theories discussed have always been an AB speed-boost (as a flat role bonus of perhaps 25-50%) or e-war resistance (such as web immunity). I would greatly prefer either of these bonuses to an MWD-related bonus.

Since interceptors already have the MWD signature bloom reduction, would it not make much more sense to give assault ships an AB-related bonus?

This would benefit assault ships in close-range tackling, further augmenting their defensive capabilities, without encroaching on the (already greatly diminished) territory of ‘ceptors.

I believe an AB-buff is what most of the player-base would have voted for, if given the chance. However, I would personally favor an even more dramatic change.

My suggestion is that CCP allow assault ships to fit medium weapons!

The game really doesn’t need yet another boring frigate-sized tackler, it needs original ship concepts that spur innovation and force battle-soured capsuleers to reconsider their dogmatic approach to warfare.

Where will the Amarrian God be when your fancy new Oracle gets tackled by an AB-fit Enyo with a rack of Heavy Neutron Blaster II’s?

I think that this would be in-line with the tradition of over-sized weapons established first by stealth bombers and, more recently, tier-3 battlecruisers.

I digress though. Back to the tentative changes.

(3) EHP values are going up:

The next general buff to all assault ships seems to be the addition of either 200 armor or shield, depending on the natural tanking predisposition of the ship.

Some have said that this will tip the balance even further in favor of assault ships against close-range faction frigs, which are already starting to go down in price (particularly Dramiels). I certainly agree with that sentiment.

However, I think this was done, more than anything else, to put comparatively-expensive assault ships (and I use the word “expensive” with a degree of sarcasm here)  in a better position against the recently (and rather unexpectedly) buffed T1 destroyers, which are very affordable.

The passive armor/shield buff also favors passive fits that can attach a multiplier effect to the added HP (such as a core defense extender or trimarks) rather than active setups.

However, I personally believe we may well see a golden age of active-tanked assault ships used by solo combat pilots due to the improved slot-layouts.

(4) Added slots and fittings space will create new possibilities:

Each assault ship will be receiving an added slot!

The biggest change here has to be the addition of a second mid-slot to the god-damned Retribution. A frigate with one mid-slot is just a fundamentally flawed design, and it’s a bit disappointing that we had to wait for a full overhaul of the ship class to get this thing modified.

These layouts, combined with some extra PG or Cpu here and there, should enable some dangerous new setups.

For example, the Enyo gains a slot that could be filled with a web, but I believe many will attempt to emulate the success of Garmon’s legendary taranis fit by opting for dual-prop layout.

The Vengeance in particular seems singled by these changes, and arguably has improved the least, but it was already so good at what it did that it hardly needed improvement. This hard-tanking frigate is the PzKpfw 38H735 (f) or “Hotchkiss” of Eve – a reference I suspect many tank-driving Eve players will agree with.

More relevant to my own tastes, CCP may-well have ushered in a the golden era of dual-rep armor tanking assault ships. I am very excited to experiment with cap-injected, dual-repping Ishkur.

(5) The Missing 4th Bonuses Finally Applied:

T2 ships, regardless of whether they have a role bonus or not, always gain two additional bonuses on top of their two T1 hull bonuses. That is, except for Assault Ships.

This shortfall has always vexed many pilots, and at last we have those missing bonuses.

An extra 5% or 7.5% per level can make a huge difference in a dog fight, and this will further cement the Assault Ship as the new kings of close-range frigate brawling.

Fortunately, that was NOT the case this time. This is what I would call a perfect game, in that I literally would not change anything about the experience.

I was not planning to purchase Skyrim so soon. Rather than paying full price for the game + lots of DLC, I typically wait for the expansions to be released to each Elder Scrolls game before buying the package deal.

However, I received Skyrim as a belated birthday gift from a friend, so I was off to explore the frozen Nordic wastes earlier than I had anticipated.

The world is really beautifully constructed, and I feel strongly immersed when adventuring.

I am also impressed by the quality of the voice acting, and the dungeon layouts I have experienced, two things that were painfully awful in Oblivion.

I just wanted to say that, if you aren’t seeing me online, this is why:

Like many, I didn’t enjoy Oblivion very much compared to Morrowind, and let me just say that Skyrim has completely refueled my love for this franchise. They did so many things right this time that I don’t even know where to begin.

Finally, I wonder if any other Eve players found this particular ability amusing:

I kind of chuckled when the Greybeards started talking about ‘Clear Skies’ up on High Hrothgar.

CCP’s internal numbers (including the last 4 years of kills) now back-up my recent study of public kill-boards reflecting that AAA is the most destructive alliance in New Eden. It is a source of pride for -MVN- that we have contributed to the ongoing success of AAA for nearly a year now.

We faced the “old AAA” from their earliest days in 2007, back when The Mavericks were providence residents, enjoying daily fights with skilled AAA pilots. AAA has always had one of the best roaming cultures in the South, and the stats reflect this.

Our respect for -A- grew again as they continued their way of life, roaming the South and having fun, while simultaneously turning the tide against IT Alliance & The Initiative in 2010, eventually rebuilding their empire.

Many alliances have claimed they can survive losing space, but only AAA has been able to actually grow while facing a larger coalition, month after month.

Here are CCP Diagoras’s Findings:

Source: http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3235

This table includes the top 5 ranked alliances on Battle Clinic (based on their all-time rank). Though Battle Clinic rankings are based on kill-points, I find that the most interesting data is the overall amount of kills, losses, and isk damage caused by each alliance.

A note about “BC” rankings. Battle Clinic ranking is based off “kill points,” not the raw isk value of kills.

For example, killing a T2 frigate in another T2 frigate is worth 20 points, while killing that same T2 frigate in a battle-ship is worth much less points, even though the isk value of the kill is the same in both cases. This system is supposed to judge the difficulty of a kill, and in most cases it works well.

Sharing a kill with multiple players spreads the value out, so solo kills are the most valuable. This tends to benefit alliances that have many small-gang and soloist pilots.

Of the top-5 alliances, it’s easy to see why each of them are there:

(1) AAA has held down the top spot for years. While AAA’s current enemies in the DRF tend to portray AAA as cockroaches that refuse to die after losing space, the truth is that sovereignty is a secondary priority for most AAA pilots.

AAA has maintained an almost compulsive small-gang roaming culture with multiple gangs across multiple timezones since their formation.

That tradition is very much alive today, and the alliance is now more active than ever in the U.S. timezone, in large part due to the addition of  The Maverick Navy’s fleet commanders.

Looking closely at the numbers, the sheer volume of kills by AAA pilots tells the whole story. The kill total is un-matched by any of the other alliances listed, and this tells me that AAA has been constantly involved in fighting.

AAA has more kills than the all-time #2 and #3 ranked alliance combined, and is – in that sense – the most destructive.

(2) The Privateers. Ah yes, the greatest terrors of high-sec. These campers regularly scored mission-fit battleship kills with small groups, which is an excellent kill-point generation strategy.

You can see the relatively low number of losses for Privateers, which is evidence of the well known fact that their prey is mostly unsuspecting high-sec fodder. However, the lack of large-scale battles means less overall kills as well.

Privateers also suffer in the isk damage category, largely because you cannot score high-value capital and super-capital kills in empire. I guess ganking in Jita has to have some drawbacks to it.

(3) Triumvarite, the phoenix that keeps burning itself out, only to rise again.

This alliance, which can be considered the precursor to Northern Coalition(dot) of today, was a nasty menace that kept a much larger norther force on their heels for months at a time, periodically disbanding when the e-peen of involved parties got in the way of operating a single alliance.

Triumvarite was well known for both small gang roaming and ganking capitals, both of which generate copious kill-points.

Unlike privateers, who took very few risks, you can see from the numbers that Tri definitely took heavier losses as a result of fighting an organized opponent while out-numbered.

(4) Pandemic Legion, the game’s one true king-maker for hire, and the force whose fittings and tactics have been most heavily imitated in the last two years.

I expected that, being the game’s most successful super-cap killers, their isk destruction total would be very high, and it is. PL is only 5 trillion isk behind AAA, despite killing roughly half as many ships.

PL certainly has a healthy kill-point generation source in large battles, where they are generally un-matched, but perhaps they are not quite as active between major battles.

Since PL is well-known for playing other games actively (like myself), I think this is probably explains what we see reflected in the data.

(5) Stain Empire is a tough group of Southerners with a long-held regional alliance with Coven and AAA. These Southern alliances tend to place a strong emphasis on roaming and casual pvp, which is reflected in their strong overall ranks.

Much like AAA, Stain Empire appears to care more about fun battles than holding space. SE is even more extreme in this regard than its neighbors, and they have proven they are perfectly content to live in the NPC-owned Stain region.

During the invasion by the DRF, which caused a massive wave of counter-balancing, Stain Empire stuck to its principles and temporarily reset many of its allies to keep the kill-mails flowing.

The stand-out statistic here is the fact that SE has apparently caused 68.3 trillion in damage, which is more than twice the next closest  total. Unless there are fake mails involved, that means AAA trails SE with 31.4 trillion destroyed, despite killing more than twice as many ships.

This amount is larger than the sum total of PL, Tri, and Privateer’s totals. Without going out-side the top-5 ranked alliances, this feat is un-matched and makes SE a strong outlier.

Stain Empire – at first glance – seems to be the single most destructive alliance in Eve history.

These ships have become the single most important factor in determining who controls null sec territory, and they seem to have cornered the market on frustration & butt-hurt at a time when customer satisfaction with CCP is at critically low levels.

Because of the high damage of fighter bombers, which require no ammo or energy from the host ship, super carriers have been firmly cemented as the new bulldozers for sovereignty infrastructure.

Compared to dreadnaughts, super carriers have far better offensive and defensive capabilities, with none of the built-in disadvantages that dreads bring.

Super carriers, like titans, have full e-war immunity at all times. Unlike dreads, they don’t need to siege to obtain this immunity, and therefore it is much harder catch them with their pants down in the same manner that often happened to dread fleets.

While in siege mode, dreads can be killed even by a comparatively small number of sub-capital ships. This is because dreads in siege mode cannot receive remote repair, dock, or jump.

This was a great way to balance the behemoth tower-killers of yore. No such balancing mechanic exists for super carriers. Super carriers are far from helpless against sub-caps thanks to their drone bay, fighters, remote ECM burst, and considerable buffer tank.

And then there are the titans.

There is no other ship class that has caused so many problems in the history of eve. Titans have been broken since release, and every change has simply replaced one game-breaking super-weapon with another game-breaking super-weapon.

Titans have never been fun to fight against. Originally, they could remotely AOE ships from another system through a cyno. In those days, they didn’t even have to jump through to set off the weapon.

Later, they were forced to jump through in order to deliver the doomsday, so people started bring “waves” of titans to ensure it wasn’t possible for anything to survive and tackle the titan.

Now, with titans being something like a super-capital sized battleship, people are not bringing a handful titans in waves before quickly hiding them, they are dropping dozens of them at a time on everything that moves.

And why not? It’s not as if there is any risk involved with dropping 50 titans, unless of course there are 51 titans nearby who are ready to counter you. Some refer to this as the “n + 1″ counter.

Titans not only reduce capital fleets to ash, they also have an equally strong impact on key sub-capitals ships. Titans can turn a “sub-cap advantage” into a long list of loss mails rather quickly unless you have obscene odds in your favor.

The common retort when discussing the primacy of supers in 0.0 is a two word reply, “cyno jammers,” as if these were an easy counter to sustain 23/7.

All it takes is an unannounced form-up by the enemy in your weak timezone, and rather quickly the jammer will be gone, usually too fast for a coalition to communicate and respond with sufficient force.

The enemy can jump in their supers and dominate the system from then on. If they need to log, they can log in system, and erecting a new jammer will do nothing to eject the supers who have already made it in.

Once you have hostile supers logged in a system, they will be able to log them in unpredictably to take down any new jammers. They can also cause all kinds of other misery for you.

Even if you could protect your jammers 23/7 and lock-in your own supers to crush invaders, you will have to cycle the jammer eventually to move your own caps into the system. Otherwise, the enemy could simply hit every other system first while you hide under a single jammer.

The bottom line is that a determined attacker will get their supers on-field if they want it badly enough.

To make matters worse, an incapacitated jammer prevents the anchoring of a replacement, so the defenders will have to repair or destroy their own busted jammer before they can re-jam the system.

So when speaking of “jammers,” remember that they are not an invincible on/off switch that the defender can flip at will, it is simply another pos module that can be taken out in a variety of ways.

Currently, supers are getting a ton of attention, and with good reason.

One of the things that makes Eve interesting is the room for creativity and innovation in fleet warfare. At the sub-capital level, this kind of evolution in tactics and fittings has always been alive and well.

Even when carriers and dreads started being used in large numbers, there was a huge space for diversity in tactics and fittings (e.g. – sniper dreads, brawler dreads, pantheon carriers, triage carrier rotations).

In those days, any good capital strategy involved using sub-caps as well, and losing all of your support often meant your destruction.

What made the capital ship class interesting was that – while powerful – they were also very vulnerable. Triage mode and siege mode present a HUGE risk. This is a TRADEOFF you make for more power.

Super capitals are not forced to choose between power and safety. A large group of supers are very safe on any battlefield.

Even against a larger group of supers, inadequate log-off mechanics ensure that you are likely to save the majority of your fleet in the case of a well-executed trap.

Supers represent a dead-end. There is no reason to specialize in anything else, and there are no counters to be found in other ship classes.

I realize people have killed supers with 200-300 suicidal gank-fit sub caps before. This is fun and I cheer along with everyone else when “welp fleet” takes down a super carrier, but this is not a counter that will allow a side with less supers to win a major battle, it’s more like harassment, and it only works under specific conditions.

Instead of a “rock, paper, scissors” situation (example: armor hacs v. alpha BS v. Tengus), or a Achilles heel situation (example: siege mode for dreads), we have a class of ships that have no weaknesses.

When the only direct counter for a ship/class/character/team is more of that ship/class/character/team, this is the essence of a broken game mechanic.

Right now, a majority of the super-cap heavy alliances are part of the same coalition.

This coalition, lead by the Drone Region Russians, was formed for a singular purpose: the destruction of the Northern Coalition.

To this end, Raiden (ex-BoB) and NCdot (ex-Tri) joined hands with the heavily Russian DRF. By this time, the DRF already included Red Alliance, Legion of xXDeathXx, Solar Fleet, White Noise, Intrepid Crossing, Red Legion, The Jagged Alliance, Controlled Chaos, and others.

Pandemic Legion, the largest super-cap force in the game, once again played “king-maker” here, joining the Russians and their comrades in exchange for a hefty sum.

At first, I was cheering for the NC to finally meet their end, as were nearly all of us in MVN, but soon I began to wonder if it really was such a good thing for the game to see a large care-bear oriented bloc that was notorious for welcoming new players removed entirely.

Combined with a null-sec income nerf, and the introduction of high-paying incursions, there was little reason for the bears residing in the North to fight and reclaim their space.

The result was more people playing in empire, which means less targets for everyone other than Privateers & The Orphanage.

It would have been fine if the replacement for the NC were simply a number of smaller coalitions, but what we got was another mega-bloc.

With the NC defeated, PL went back to playing better games than Eve, and they reset standings until they are needed again.

However, the rest of the coalition has remained intact, despite the lack of any existential threat to the DRF or any real re-consolidation of the NC to be found anywhere.

Next, the majority of the coalition that was necessary to pry the NC from the North was leveraged against AAA, and the other “Southern” alliances. Ostensibly, this conflict also involved the residents of the entire Southwest, among whom are several ex-NC entities.

I can say with confidence that very few supers are being built in the South right now. Some corps are crazier than others in this regard, but everyone feels the impending doom of the DRF and their new allies.

It isn’t really a mystery why Raiden and NCdot kept the DRF blue, they want to beat up on a weaker coalition more than they want to worry about defending their own space right now.

Their choices were to attack West into Deklein, attack east into IRC space, or bandwagon with White Noise & RA against AAA in the South. Considering the stomping the Russians took in 46DP, I can only imagine that the Russians were pleading for help at that point.

So, predictably, the groups that once resented the NC for having “too many blues” decided to keep their new mega-bloc standings intact and go South.

Down here, they have been helping White Noise take revenge for the CSAA’s AAA destroyed, and to “reclaim” space that White Noise took from AAA to begin with.

Initially, the war was going well for AAA and friends. Red Alliance + White Noise + xxDeathxx + Controlled Chaos + Ultima Ratio were a good match for AAA + ROL + Nulli + Cascade/Atlas + Nulli.

Relatively even wars are conducive to large battles where super-caps are frequently deployed on both sides. Epic battles ensue, and fun is had by all. The brawl that took place in 46DP is a great example of this.

Victories under relatively-even conditions feel earned, and tend to make for great stories to write about. These are also the kinds of stories that draw new players to the game.

On the other hand, one-sided wars raise the stakes of using supers too high for the weaker bloc. While easier for the conqueror, these wars harm morale on both sides because there is no suspense, and even fewer enjoyable fights.

With the alliances currently tied to the DRF remaining blue, and the power of supers unchecked, we effectively have a uni-polar world on Tranquility right now.  This means new coalitions are unlikely to be able to break into 0.0, and the current blocs not-allied with the DRF exist only at their mercy.

This situation does not provide much fun for current players, and worse yet, it doesn’t draw in new players into 0.0 – or even to playing the game in the first place.

The Dominion experiment has failed, perhaps even more spectacularly than the Incarna expansion.

I don’t consider it a stretch to say that a super-capital imbalances between major power blocs are bad for the game itself. Dominance by one power bloc, which is made possible by an ever-growing growing super-capital majority, inevitably contributes to apathy.

This is the super-cap gap that many people, myself included, consider game-breaking.

When people feel that logging in doesn’t matter, they are more likely to move on to other games. This is bad for everyone involved, regardless of who won and lost in their most recent campaigns.

Right now, when all the supers in the game are counted up, the DRF and their allies simply have too many toys, especially if you count PL on their side.

Everything mentioned so far is common knowledge. I think CCP, the players, and even the non-Eve-playing gaming media are aware that there are balance problems with this game right now.

What hasn’t been discussed adequately is how to fix things.

First off, a political solution could be reached that breaks the DRF into at least two smaller parts. This would be a temporary fix to the problems caused by the super-cap gap, but it doesn’t access the root of the problem.

Most importantly, this kind of political solution is something only players could control, since I don’t believe CCP is creative or ballsy enough to come up with a way to penalize players for having large blue lists.

Additionally, any temporary reset between group like NCdot and their Russian comrades is likely to be temporary. Any serious threat to either side would lead to a renewed bandwagon.

Second, supers could be nerfed. This is something CCP has already come to terms with, and I suspect a poll of every player in 0.0 would heavily favor this outcome. The only question is, how.

Right now on singularity, titans cannot doomsday sub-capital ships. This is the first step towards balancing titans, and by far the most needed change.

Titans currently get “rooted” for 30 seconds after firing their doomsday weapon, which is only a minor limitation, but they also cannot cloak or jump out of the system for 10 minutes. These restrictions are still present on singularity, but they have not been increased, which has come as a disappointment to some players.

The real problem with the current “penalties” associated with the doomsday weapon is that they make dropping a single titan on a hostile target (like a ratting carrier or jump freighter using a cyno beacon) hazardous for that one pilot, but they do not make large titan fleets any less safe when deployed together.

In order for 50 titans on grid to worry about their 10-minute timers, they would need to be in danger to begin with. Making them stick around is only a penalty if there is a chance that someone stands a chance of killing them.

So what’s still missing?

Titans need to be more vulnerable to sub-cap fleets. The DD target nerf is a huge step, but turret-based titans need to be unable to chew through hostile battleship fleets like they do. Nerf them all to the level of the Leviathan, which can only harm other capitals with its launchers.

I think that dreads also need a major boost in damage, effectively making them a viable counter to supers if you can resign yourself to losing them in large numbers.

My biggest question is, what about the super carriers?

Super carriers are cheap compared to titans, and they out-class both carriers AND dreads in every way.

I think a dread buff would go a long way to indirectly nerfing super carriers, since they share the role of anti-capital and anti-structure powerhouse. However, that doesn’t seem sufficient to me.

Some have proposed limiting super carriers to fighters and bombers, removing the ability to launch other drones. I don’t think this really gets to the heart of the problem. Having only fighters for killing sub-caps and only bombers for killing capitals would not be particularly limiting.

I personally favor a hit point nerf, reducing them to about 5x the EHP of a carrier instead of their current form (which is around 12-15x times the EHP of a carrier).

As an example, a Thanatos has 125k armor while a Nyx has over a million armor, with more slots to add tank. Supers are usually dead-space tanked as well, while carriers get t2 or faction at best.

There is another more radical change that I support. I am a proponent of removing e-war immunity for super carriers and titans.

What better way to reign in the power of super capitals than to allow well-coordinated teams of e-war specialists to dampen, disrupt, jam, scramble, and web these behemoths.

It only seems fair that titans should be vulnerable to tracking disruption since they can benefit from remote tracking links. It only seems fair that super should be vulnerable to dampening since remote sensor boosting works on them.

I would absolutely love to see a smart group of players beat an over-confident super-cap fleet using ewar and superior tactics. Perhaps a group of sniper dreads supported by dampening from a large sub-cap fleet (all of which fitting a phased muon dampener) would be able to pull off an incredible victory.

Isn’t that kind of scenario the stuff that makes for great player videos and great stories? I think it is, and I also think it’s time to move away from a model where the side with the most supers always wins.

This change would also make it possible to keep supers tackled with sub-capitals, even if they clear away all hostile dictors. Bubblers would still be important though, since it’s hard to individually point a large number of ships.

Finally, I think it’s time for one more major change to the game, longer log-off timers for capital and super-capital ships.

Right now, a side that commits large numbers of supers to a battle can simply log them all off when things start to go south. Sure, they will lose a few of them, as the DRF did in 46DP, but the majority of the fleet will survive.

What we need to do is move from a universal 15-minute log-off timer (before the ship disappears from space after logging) to a tiered system.

I would suggest that all sub-capital ships disappear, as they do now, in 15 minutes. I think that capitals (carriers, dreads, rorquals, etc.) should disappear in 30 minutes. Most importantly, I favor a 60 minute timer for super-capitals to disappear.

If you commit supers, I want logging them off to be suicidal. Your choices should be to clear away tacklers and escape, fight to the end, or defeat the enemy. No more of this “logoffski” crap, it’s a giant source of blueballs and a crutch for bad fleet commanders.

These posts typically get caught by Akismet, and I delete them in bulk without a second thought. After all, who wants to visit some shady drug peddling website.

However, today I spotted a particularly humorous one, and I felt compelled to share:

In any case, I plan to be a bit more active in October, so there should be a bit more content coming from me soon.

I have been busy IRL, and all my gaming time is currently going towards grinding for the tier 10 heavy tanks in WoT.

As soon as I have the T30 unlocked I will be done grinding.

Update: Best search engine term that brought someone to my blog –

In the meantime, being an online gaming addict, I needed something to play casually while working.

So, I decided to give World of Tanks a shot.

WoT is perfect because I can play one match until I explode, then tab out and do some work while the game finishes.

You can also leave one battle and immediately start another with a different tank. There is never any boring down-time, and the amount of effort you need to spend working in the hangar area is relatively minor.

This “leave or stay” option provides an opportunity for hardcore players to get back to grinding while casuals can stick around and watch their team finish the game, possibly learning something in the process.

The basic method of entering battles in WoT is very simple. You click one button, and the server matches your tank and 14 others against a relatively-equal team of 15 opponents.

It takes about one minute from the time you click the “battle” button until you are driving around on the battlefield.

In contrast, Eve suffers immensely from the “time til fun” factor. You might need hours of searching to get one brief moment of joy.

Eve doesn’t feel like a game, it’s like an alternate world where you have to make a serious commitment in time to actually achieve something.

Maybe Eve is TOO real sometimes. We want people to be risk averse, otherwise there is no tension in the game, but not to the extent that people are afraid to undock without a large blob and guaranteed reimbursement.

Despite how much fun I am having paying WoT, I should be more active in Eve after the first of October.

However, with the number of great games on the market, I am definitely concerned that CCP might start losing cutomers if they can’t solve some issues with their Winter expansion.

Unlike me, most people don’t play 5-6 MMOs at once. Most people who fall in love with a new game drop their old game.

Sure, some people come back and change their minds, but I think there is a real risk here for CCP.

Rather than a single explosive issue, like the T-20 scandal or “the door to nowhere,” CCP’s problem is that they have established a negative pattern of behavior.

This pattern includes over-hyping future features, then delivering drastically scaled-down versions of those features with poor quality control.

CCP needs to understand that the best way to market Eve isn’t to dream up new features to add to the game description, it’s to deliver meaningful and enjoyable gameplay that transforms the customer into their best advocate.

Why did I decide to play World of Tanks? It was because lots of other gamers have been impressed by it. Their stories made me want to drive a tank, not the game’s marketing team, although their video mocking Eve was a rather humorous.

Don’t forget that existing customers are the most important group to cater to. Taking us for granted is not only arrogant and foolish, it will backfire when bitter veterans chase off those new players CCP has spent so much time and money trying to impress.

As gamers, we have lots of options. It is CCP that needs us, we are the people who fall into the niche market Eve caters to. There are not that many people who Eve will appeal to, at least not compared to a fantasy-based MMO, but that doesn’t mean CCP should try to make Eve more like those fantasy games.

When you try to be everything to everyone, you end up pleasing no one. When you have a unique identity, even if it appeals only to one niche of the gaming market, then you have something invaluable.

CCP talks about Carbon UI as their “competitive advantage.” Truthfully, the players could give a rat’s ass about this technology. It has brought us nothing useful.

So what do we want? I can’t speak for everyone in the game, but I can tell you what I would like to see.

I want CCP to put incentives in the game for smaller groups to fight over. The ideal solution would be to seed resources in such quantities that these objectives are nearly worthless when divided among 100 people, but valuable enough for 5-10 people to fight for.

I want CCP to restore some sanity in terms of super-capital EHP and doomsday weapons. I also think that supers should have longer timers before they disappear from local when they disconnect with aggression. Expect another post on this topic soon.

I want CCP to shake up the way we get intel through local so that bots can’t escape danger, and to add a sense of mystery & adventure back into the game. Everyone is too aware of their surroundings for our own good. Countless opportunities for fights are lost due to “local spikes.”

That would be a good start for the Winter expansion, which I believe should be focused nearly exclusively on flying in space.

When one of our Avatar pilots logged off the day before yesterday, NCdot was able to get his safe spot somehow.

They either had a spy in fleet who had warped to him and bookmarked the spot before he logged the previous day, or they were somehow able to probe him as he logged in yesterday. We do not know which.

Some people are posting that he cyno’d into HED. That is not the case. We did not jump anything into HED, least of all a single titan.

When he logged in at that safe-spot, expecting to be able to cloak safely before being found, there was a dictor waiting for him at the bookmark before he even landed.

The result was AAA’s first ever titan loss in their entire history, and a moment of great embarrassment for MVN. We’ll rebuild it eventually, but the loss upset us deeply. It was a far larger blow to our pride than anything else.

I had long resigned myself to the fact that MVN would probably lose a super in this war, simply because we actually use all of our toys on a regular basis while many in our coalition do not, but I was hoping any supers lost would at least go down swinging in a real fight.

The titan loss happened before we were even fully formed up, so there was no way to rescue him. We eventually gathered 500 people with proper ship types and had another 100 or so in a third fleet with a mixed composition of late-comers.

Our total fleet strength was around 600 sub-caps and a classified number of super-capitals. We had more sub-caps than the DRF, who had around 400 in their sub-cap fleet with, but the problem was their titans.

Even without heavy lag, a large enough group of titans simply makes sub-capital fleets irrelevant. Titans can pop a battleship in 2-3 volleys from their turrets (and sometimes less) and they can DD a command ship or logistic every time the cycle is finished.

In heavy lag, Titans get even more effective. Long cycling times for modules is no problem for a Titan. In comparison, close range battleships (like the Armageddon fleets we have been using heavily) will suffer immensely. Fast cycling weapons suffer the most in heavy lag, while doomsdays and XL-guns are rarely affected.

From the very beginning of this war, we knew that the presence of even half of DRF super-cap fleet would make beating them impossible. That is why protecting the HED cyno jammer was of such great importance.

Ultimately, the lack of active Russians in AAA made it impossible to protect our jammer when the DRF has good numbers. This was compounded by the Stain Empire reset, since SE have long been a key Russian timezone ally for AAA.

Because we couldn’t keep 23/7 system control, the DRF was able to continually break our cyno jammers down, and that is what allowed them to press the “i-win” button time after time.

The failure to protect our jammer made our strength in the U.S. timezone irrelevant.

We haven’t given up on fighting for our remaining systems, but the imminent loss of HED is a massive blow – both logistically and in terms of morale.

I think everyone on our side is proud that we held off the DRF in HED for 3 weeks. A month ago, we all expected that were going to be so badly out-manned and out-gunned by the DRF that we would have to immediately fall back to Stain. That didn’t happen.

AAA became a symbol of resistance to the DRF, and many alliances came to fight at our side. That is the reason we were able to hold out so long in HED. We saw regular participation from Nulli, ROL, Imperial Order and even Razor.

Unfortunately, the DRF seems poised to succeed at the monopolization of 0.0 like no other entity has done before. It is almost a cliche at this point to say that one side is “ruining the game” so I will just hope that the game’s new mega-coalition meets the same disasters that crushed the NC and GBC in the past.

Aside from mass-producing super-capitals, the other key to the success of Russian alliances like White Noise and XXdeath has been support from non-Russian alliances like NCdot and Raiden. If PL are needed, they also make an appearance – for a fee.

My hope is that the current DRF coalition fractures a bit. I can guarantee that they would see far more action from our side if they left their allies from the North at home.

-A- and Nulli formed up glorious golden dongs for battle, with S2N favoring Geddons and -A- favoring Abaddons. We had 180 in our own fleet, and I believe Nulli had a similar number, perhaps slightly less.

The sheer amount of guardians allowed us to cap-up our titans quickly, which made bridging across the South effortless. We were able to get into 46DP before the hostiles, and we setup on the 77S gate to wait for them.

Bombers made one run on us, but were all bubbled. They did some damage, but with heavily plated tanks,  it often takes more than one run to score a large number of kills.

After the bombers died, the hostiles moved to their titan so they could bridge into system. Once the first wave of enemies showed up, the lag monster reared its ugly head. Despite that fact, I was able to manually cycle guns with moderate success.

As more and more hostiles showed up, and even some 3rd parties looking to whore on mails, local hit 1400. The game became unplayable for most of us at this point. Blue reinforcements included Red Overlord, Imperial Order and Atlas.

I couldn’t lock most things because they were actually much farther than they appeared, my guns wouldn’t cycle, and I couldn’t give my ship new movement orders.

At this point the DRF forces had a big advantage, because their supers were able to cycle DDs and remote ECM burst on us. Even more importantly, their arty setups have better alpha than pulses, and work better when you only get to shoot once per 10 minutes.

Even still, we had a strong showing of forces, so we dropped our own supers. I was unable to get on the mails, but we took down a titan and 2 super carriers, along with a decent number of carriers.

We held the field, won the isk war, lost zero supers, and took down the hostile SBUs. In short, it was a very convincing victory in Tenerifis, which many hostiles had already taken for granted as belonging to them.

I am just mad I couldn’t get onto any of the super mails!