How is You being Dumb MY Fault?

So we had a little fun last night.  While gatecamping a domi that we knew loved hugging gates and stations warped to the highsec gate at 0. He sat there.  We didn’t aggress him, he certainly didn’t agress us.  So local smack started.

[ 2011.11.30 03:17:11 ] Gabriel Anjelos > so true story time for a sec
[ 2011.11.30 03:17:21 ] Gabriel Anjelos > i get better fights from eve-uni than from base
[ 2011.11.30 03:17:48 ] Demented Reality > awesome story… fiction?
[ 2011.11.30 03:17:52 ] Gabriel Anjelos > trufax
[ 2011.11.30 03:18:16 ] Recon 00 > cool story bro. let me carebear with you hugged up to the gate
[ 2011.11.30 03:18:31 ] Gabriel Anjelos > its funny because theres 5 of you
[ 2011.11.30 03:18:36 ] Gabriel Anjelos > and you wont engage me
[ 2011.11.30 03:18:38 ] Gabriel Anjelos > u scared bros?
[ 2011.11.30 03:19:16 ] Recon 00 > better story, gabriel anjelos sits in teshkat and talks a bunch of noise, rather than going off to play with eve uni. we all know they don’t come here.
[ 2011.11.30 03:19:27 ] Gabriel Anjelos > meh eve uni got scared of me
[ 2011.11.30 03:19:28 ] Recon 00 > so why don’t you go to them
[ 2011.11.30 03:19:37 ] Recon 00 > maybe of the smell of you
[ 2011.11.30 03:19:40 ] Recon 00 > cause you stink
[ 2011.11.30 03:19:44 ] Gabriel Anjelos > you faggots are on the verge of fearing me
[ 2011.11.30 03:19:59 ] undeaddread1 > lol
[ 2011.11.30 03:20:08 ] undeaddread1 > gabby we love you bro
[ 2011.11.30 03:20:08 ] Gabriel Anjelos > btw, ive bought 3 bs with the money from wallys tengu
[ 2011.11.30 03:20:17 ] Gabriel Anjelos > isk isnt even halfway gone
[ 2011.11.30 03:20:20 ] undeaddread1 > no fear but love
[ 2011.11.30 03:20:40 ] undeaddread1 > gabby?
[ 2011.11.30 03:20:53 ] Gabriel Anjelos > hello
[ 2011.11.30 03:21:04 ] undeaddread1 > helloww
[ 2011.11.30 03:21:16 ] Gabriel Anjelos > how u doing buddy
[ 2011.11.30 03:21:36 ] undeaddread1 > Gooood gooood and you gabby?
[ 2011.11.30 03:21:42 ] Gabriel Anjelos > little bored
[ 2011.11.30 03:21:53 ] Gabriel Anjelos > eve uni wouldnt engage me
[ 2011.11.30 03:21:59 ] Gabriel Anjelos > so i thought “hey ill go to teshkat”
[ 2011.11.30 03:22:05 ] Gabriel Anjelos > but youre all scared of me too

At this point he jumps through the gate.  Fiddles around on the high sec side and re-approaches.  I call in the rest of the gang.  All of them.  Gabriel jumps back in Srs bizness ensues with lots of webbing, points and bumps.  And, inevitably out comes the tears.

[ 2011.11.30 03:22:08 ] olo VonBorg > o/
[ 2011.11.30 03:22:47 ] undeaddread1 > squee
[ 2011.11.30 03:27:39 ] Gabriel Anjelos > lol base
[ 2011.11.30 03:27:44 ] Gabriel Anjelos > bringing the good fights as always
[ 2011.11.30 03:28:07 ] Recon 00 > lol dumbass, dieing like a dumbass
[ 2011.11.30 03:28:22 ] Gabriel Anjelos > gets kill with 10 man blob
[ 2011.11.30 03:28:25 ] Gabriel Anjelos > is proud
[ 2011.11.30 03:28:37 ] Al Monsieur Opadopolis > <3
[ 2011.11.30 03:28:39 ] Recon 00 > i know you get 10 man kills, it’s cool man
[ 2011.11.30 03:28:54 ] Al Monsieur Opadopolis > feed the corp
[ 2011.11.30 03:29:02 ] undeaddread1 > om nom nom nom
[ 2011.11.30 03:29:06 ] Al Monsieur Opadopolis > we all hungry and no ships wanna pew anymore
[ 2011.11.30 03:29:15 ] Gabriel Anjelos > m8s
[ 2011.11.30 03:29:23 ] Gabriel Anjelos > you wont engage unless you know you will win
[ 2011.11.30 03:29:25 ] Al Monsieur Opadopolis > ill jump at a kestrel
[ 2011.11.30 03:29:29 ] Gabriel Anjelos > but then complain about not getting fights?
[ 2011.11.30 03:29:33 ] Corelin > sounds smart to me
[ 2011.11.30 03:30:09 ] Gabriel Anjelos > meh
[ 2011.11.30 03:30:18 ] Gabriel Anjelos > can buy 5 or 6 more domis with the tengu loot
[ 2011.11.30 03:30:45 ] CosmosNova21 > just go back to your closet
[ 2011.11.30 03:30:46 ] Al Monsieur Opadopolis > bring em around

So let me get this straight.  We don’t give him a fight on his terms, he messes up and walks right into a trap and then whines in local about it.  Somehow it’s always on people that win fights to bring something fail and lose fights.  I’ve done that already this month, it didn’t work out well so thanks but I’m going to avoid anything resembling a fair fight for as long as I can.  Oh and Gabriel, I hope your local smack made you feel better about losing a really silly domi fit.  Oh and why do people keep talking in local?  Even I fell into the trap.

What about Major Kong?

Reading Tea Leaves

Tomorrow is Crucible.  Tomorrow the fruits of the labors CCP has been making for months are revealed.  Tomorrow EvE changes again.

The patch noted can be found here.  Many other bloggers are proclaiming gloom and doom, especially with regards to two things:  POS Fuels and Suicide Ganking.

I’m going to take on suicide ganking first.  Hulkageddon will be epic.  A tornado or two will kill any hulk I’ve seen and will be only a bit more expensive than a brutix.  I doubt there will be a hulk or even a retreiver undocked in highsec within 24 hours of the start of Hulkageddon.  Orcas and Freighters aren’t safe either.  Some bright minds have figured you can kill a freighter for about the cost of a freighter hull.  I suspect that freighter ganks will become more and more common and that autopiloting freighters will be a thing of the past if they have anything worthwhile in the cargo.  However there will always be ways to move things throughout Empire.

The advent of Player Owned Customs Offices is being decried as the death knell of PI in lowsec.  People as respected as Mord Fiddle and Rixx Javix are proclaiming that they sky is falling and that the price of PI goods and the resultant POS fuels will skyrocket as players greedily restrict access to their Customs Offices to make a few isk.  This would be a case of stepping over dollars to make pennies.  If I had a Lava or Plasma planet in lowsec I would open that fucker up.  I’d make sure anyone that wanted to use it knew exactly who to get a hold of to arrange access and I’d make damn sure to check my wallet a few times a week to watch the fucker fill up.  PI is boring and I don’t care to do it.  If someone else wants to make money for me by doing it I would be thrilled and delighted.  I want the population of Jita to come to my system do PI and pay me to do it.  Yes there will be ganks, but these already happen.  Yes there will be some inefficiency in the market due to the taxes, but I rather doubt that lowsec PI moguls make up the majority of pos fuels in EvE.  Nullsec would certainly outweigh them and even wormholes would have a very strong presence in the market over and above what highsec offers, even as limited as highsec PI is from a moneymaking standpoint.

Yes the offices are easily assaulted, reinforced or even destroyed, but there are entities in lowsec with the capability to defend them.  Heck there’s R64 moons and even the odd Tech moon in low.  Yeah they tend to belong to the big boys from Null but a few trickle down to pirates who have settled in for a bit.  You think a lava planet, or a plasma planet might not look like something worth holding to some calmer, more settled pirate as an asset?  It’s not difficult for a carebear to keep an alt in system near his planets to peek in and see if his favorite customs house is available.

To me the most interesting outcome in industry will be in the areas of mining.  With ganking becoming even easier now, it will be quite possible to find it exceedingly difficult for miners in belts to function anymore.  While highsec mining may not be the biggest, or even a top-three contributor to the source of minerals in EvE, if an entity like goons or gankers in general took it upon themselves to sweep the belts clean for a few weeks I am rather certain that Trit/Veld prices could easily spike quite a bit in the short term.

Finally, get ready to see lots of grey-green ships in lowsec.  More easily fit, more agile blaster ships supported by the simpler to use Oneiros will begin to surface more and more to fight for king of the hill status with the ubiquitous Hurricane gangs.  I’ve already been looking at some fun fits for the brutix, and some really scary ones for the Proteus.

EvE will change.  Carebears will whine.  PvPers will pay more and more, and make more and more off the high-end income sources that are becoming more and more prevalent.  In the long-term the effects of all these isk faucets will run into the ease with which the bounty of New Eden can be destroyed and inflation will start to rise.  It has already struck the Plex market.  Hard.  I doubt that the prices for Plex will go too much lower than the new ~475 million isk they are sitting at now.  Between incursions, wormholes, and L4 missions there’s simply too many ways to make money to allow prices to sink any.  In addition players are getting older faster than new players come in.  These older players consume more and more high-end resources, especially Plex and this will cause prices for Plex, T2/T3, Faction and Capital ship assets to continue to rise while it is quite possible that some “Noob” items sink in price, ships like Caracals, and Stabbers, Fittings modules, like PDS and the like.

It will be an interesting year in New Eden.  The fires of Crucible are here.  Winter has come and now we will see what their meeting brings.

What about Major Kong?

Fallout

“No I don’t care how much it costs.  I’ve been doing this for 4 years now, I’m not going to worry about the damn kredits this time!” Corelin “shouted” from the depths of his pod to the agent deep in Caldari space.  ”Find out what’s on those lists, get it and have it delivered to Motsu station… the one you are in… by tonight!”  Ending the call Corelin relaxed his mind and body as much as he could in his capsule.  He could have decanted into his quarters in station, but it seemed alien and unnatural after all these years.  While he did step out once in a while, for the sake of variety as much as anything, he barely felt human.

A stable of ships hovered nearby, a sinister looking Devoter dominated the view, being the currently selected ship.  A brief mental command moved a different ship.  A humble Badger Mk II to the front of the queue, the Devoter drifting back against a dock further away.  One of the capsuleer’s text channels pulsed urgently as Corelin boarded the Badger and requested permission to undock.

“Corelin what’s this about you wasting a ton of isk?  I didn’t think think you went in for that sort of thing?”

“I don’t Vorg, but this is different.  I’ve had a good year even if the wallet doesn’t show it now, and anyway it’s the right thing to do.  We may not ALWAYS do it but it needs to be done,”

“Well, ok buddy,  but you know you’ve got a lot better things to spend the kredits on!”

“I hear ya, but trust me, it’s the right thing to do,”

The Badger jumped out of lowsec, and started the long flight to Motsu.  Scans in Niarja and Madirmilire by the lurking suicide gankers revealed an empty badger… fit for can baiting.  As the ship passed Kaaputenen the contracts display blinked up.  A long, long list, clothing, holo tablets loaded with books and instructional videos, food, medicine, tools, toys, repair materials, one entry was incongruous enough to raise Corelin’s eyebrow even in the normally static pod fluid.

In Motsu an agent’s comm panel buzzed urgently.

“10 cases of ‘Minmatart FTW’ posters?  This is supposed to be a charity event to kids on Waira IV, what the heck do they need fourteen hundred posters for?” ‘yelled’ Corelin.

“Hey boss you called me, told me to order everything on the list.  I ordered it, I’m not gonna miss out on something just because it’s weird.”  Said the agent.  ”If you don’t want ‘em, sell ‘em.”

The agent ended the conversation and Corelin stewed in his pod fluid until the Badger docked.  In Motsu he decanted, and headed straight for the medbay.  The shots a capsuleer has to take to interact with people are painful, and the sensory blockers prevent him from flying, sometimes for weeks, but some things can’t be done by Neocom.  All the shots but a few were complete and Corelin’s pale arm was marked with dozens of needle marks by the time he walked out.  The last few shots were loaded into hypo canisters for when he landed on Waira.

Groggy and sore he went down to the hangar, loading all the crates himself onto pallets he sent the lifters to the Badger.  That task done he walked back into the gantries to re-board his pod and start the final leg of his journey.

On Waira a comm panel in a school house buzzed raucously.  A young woman keyed it “Yes?”

“Hey baby sis.  You can take down the list for your kids.  I’ve covered it, AND I’ve got the materials your school and Hab dome needs for repairs after the flooding.  Oh and find out why your kids need so many Minmatart posters would you?”

Happy Holidays.

Quantifying Success, Giving Thanks

It is the time of year for us Americans to give thanks for the past year, for our family, for our friends, for our achievements, and for some that our suffering has been as limited as it has been.  In EvE I am thankful that CCP seems committed for the moment on making it a better game.  I am thankful for the tools that I use, EvE-HQ, Teamspeak, Mumble, and the people that provide them free of charge to me.  I am thankful for wordpress and for the viewers of my blog, who make this such a rewarding task, and I am thankful for the banners from Rixx and Sassy B.  Most of all I am thankful for my friends in-game who make it worthwhile to log in almost every day and enjoy this universe we have helped shape and create.

So I’ve been thinking about my success in EvE.  How I measure it, and how that measurement drives me.  As a PvPer I measure my success by my corps efficiency (this is not a good month for that) as a leader I measure it by how many of my members log in, do things with the group, and especially learn to be better players.  As an older player I like my shiny toys, being able to acquire and fly expensive ships is both fun and rewarding, and keeps me logging in and even doing things I don’t like to do (like crazy amounts of PvE.)  So how do others measure success, is it killing the white whale?  Finding someplace unique and amazing?  Getting into that awesome ship you have been drooling over?  Drop a comment and let me know how you measure success, and how it drives your play.

What about Major Kong?

A not so Good Fight

So I stepped in it the other night.  For all of you who don’t regularly check my killboard (I believe that is… all of you) you missed this steaming pile:  http://tfhc.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=11573172

When I whelp a fleet I don’t fuck around.  There’s a petition going on with CCP about some minor factors, and believe me you will hear about that, but I want to take a moment to take my Fancy Hat off to our opponents.  They beat us but good.  Active tank mach and tengu handled us roughly, our responses were uncoordinated and confused and we were simply outclassed in this fight.  I made the mistake of calling for people to shoot a neutral RR pilot, which may not have been wise, (spoiler alert:  It wasn’t) and the confused actions of my fleet, combined with some voice comms fails led to our fleet being virtually annihilated.

I planned for one kind of fight, (lowsec roam) people didn’t show up, got another kind of fight (highsec station games) and managed to come in totally unprepared and got whelped.  The other side had a plan, and executed it (and us) very, very thoroughly.  Well played and GF (for you… not me)

What about Major Kong?

GF!

Rooks and Kings released “Clarion Call 3″ today.  The latest in their Triage series.  I will admit to being a blatantly pro-R&K partisan, and this video is both their most beautiful and, upon reflection, the most disappointing.  The video is gorgeous, the fights dramatic and tense.  The storyline unfortunately is rather sordid with metagaming, politics, and media manipulation.

What it reminded me of was how I feel about fighting in general, and how I define a “good fight.”  To me a really good fight is one I win without losing any assets of my own.  I’m not a fair person.  Fair fights are for losers and people crying about blobbing, cheating, or unfair actions in forums, local, or voice, are almost always on the losing side.  Or spies.  There’s always spies.

Historically there’s even precedent for this style of fighting.  Back in the late 1600s and early 1700s campaigns would be fought like chess matches with troops marching all over Europe trying to find an advantageous position, and armies (small, professional and well trained) were so damned expensive that getting the men killed was unthinkable because it was so hard to replace them.  The end result is that by convention an army in a disadvantageous position could nearly always surrender and have the men paroled to eventually fight again in the next war, rather than go through the effort of retraining them.  While I don’t think that EvE needs to be quite so extreme, a FC that husbands his forces carefully and doesn’t throw them away in stupid fights will find he has more friends than FCs that regularly leroy whole fleets into a shower of blue stars.

What I admire most about the Rooks and Kings approach is their ability to look weaker than their opponents in order to bring on a fight, and then assert their dominance in a way that rarely leaves a question as to the outcome, and sometimes it’s a question of whether or not R&K will even take any significant loss.

Their is an old military adage:  Win, then Fight.  The theory is that if you get into a fight and then figure out what it will take to win, you have already lost most of the time.  Fortunately for most of us, EvE is filled with enough amateurs that many fights are filled with people on both sides who take this approach.  Winning then fighting requires a lot more work, but tends to bring about a lot more winning.

Let me lay an example on you.  This fight (not my finest hour) was a thorough but-kicking by the former FWA members of Mayhem. against their former friends, FWA.  Both sides had a pretty good idea what the other side was going to bring.  Our side had a rather complicated plan, that fell apart when a key asset turned out to not be available when we thought it would be.  The other side (Mayhem.) came in with a plan for everything we could reasonably expect to pull and frankly ripped us apart in a most professional way.  They won, and then fought, and the battle ended up being less than a formality, more of an expression of their dominance, and an opportunity to kills as much as they could.  Only some superb flying by a few pilots (and some quick thinking) saved us from losing a couple carriers in the mix.

Another video by Rooks & Kings shows this approach rather better than the more dramatic Clarion Call series.  The video Battle in Notoras shows a fight with very small, fast, hard hitting ships well supported with Logistics ships.  This fight shows a high level of dominance… and also an amusing bit where LM burns out his ECCM by not paying attention.

BTW can I change my blog banter answer to “FIX THE OVERHEATING UI!?”

What about Major Kong?

Cautiously Pessimistic

Maybe it’s the Eastern European Jew in me, but I’m feeling a bit paranoid today.

Maybe it’s my lofty sense of self, but I think CCP is taking things too far.  Again.

A new monument has been seen on SiSi.  I may not be the most religious man on Earth, but seeing it reminds me of a passage in the bible.  First:  The picture.

The new Jita 4-4 Monument

In Genesis 8:15-16 God tells Noah that he is making a covenant to never again flood the world and the symbol of that covenant is to be a rainbow.  Now leaving aside that God has many, many other ways to destroy mankind, from fire and brimstone to plague, to nuclear armageddon, to global warming to informercials, the combination of a hugely visible symbol and a promise is stirring.

This monument represents CCP’s promise to listen to their players.  This promise was borne of CCP’s actions in ignoring the outrage they created and the fiscal fallout that contributed to CCP firing 20% of it’s staff last month.  In response we have many great steps taken by CCP to redress what players see as inequalities in EvE.  This has resulted in the features list for Crucible that covers nearly every aspect of EvE.  In addition there are the changes of the last few weeks that I feel wildly neutral about.  The trend towards reducing, and, I feel, possibly eliminating PvP in hisec is very alarming.  In addition the rumored change where Drones will be getting bounties and will no longer drop “Drone Poo” changes many, many things in EvE.  Suddenly the best way to gather T1 materials is… mining.

Let me go back a bit.  Currently the best way to get minerals is to rat in regions where the Rogue Drones are the faction of choice.  The 2nd best is to run level 4s and obsessively loot and salvage drones.  Coming in 3rd is mining.  Take drones out of the equation and suddenly Hulks become much more popular.  On a completely unrelated note:  Hulkageddon is coming.

Back to the topic.   When Aralis resigned from heading CVA (and left the game) he whined that CCP didn’t listen to him and ruined the game for him and all of CVA.  New Eden laughed at Aralis and hoped the door hit him as he walked out.  EvE Uni, in the new New Eden whined that hisec was being ruined for carebears, and CCP listened.  Hopefully the same New Eden that taunted Aralis will call on CCP to reconsider.

Mission crashing (to the extent of actually killing the mission runner) has become harder due to the Orca nerf.  Incursions are safer because you get a warning before you rep someone with an aggro timer.  Now suicide ganking is soon to become harder to do thanks to the elimination of insurance payouts for suicide ganks, helping haulers and miners, now mining will become CRITICAL in the absence of drone poo.  Wardecs have been nerfed HARD due to the campaigning of EvE-Uni.

All of these changes are things that players demanded.  CCP caved on every single one.  I stumped for one of these, and cautiously support another, but the cumulative effect of all these changes is severely detrimental to the game.  Highsec is in danger of becoming a consequence-free zone of carebear bliss.  Without consequences EvE becomes a very different game, and the road from carebear to PvPer becomes long, wild, and the motivation to drive that road disappears.  The best thing that happened to me in EvE was getting griefed by canflippers and the buried by CHFOR.  Without those experiences I never would have tried PvP, and without the teaching and mentoring at the hands of TRAPS I never would have kept with it long enough to get good.

Now players are being robbed of the chance to fail.  To see their own ship get blown up because of the spineless changes CCP is making.  Yes CCP made a promise to listen to players.  That doesn’t mean they give players the keys to the car.  Populists don’t do well because they don’t use their own head judgement.  Admittedly CCP has shown miserable judgement lately, and I do applaud much of what I see in this expansion.  What concerns me is where do they go.  Do they continue to make hisec safer?  Do they focus PvP improvements on Null while low withers?  Will Wormholes ever see any iteration?  Will I ever be satisfied (Probably not)

What about Major Kong?

 

Blog Banter 30: Finally, Our Long Interstellar Nightmare is Over!

In my post “Assumption of Risk” I talked about how risk is part of EvE, and that portion is diminishing.  Poetic Stanziel the brought some light to EvE-University’s contribution to the issue.  I am operating under the assumption that EvE Online is a PvP-centric game.  If I wanted to play Hello Kitty Online I’d find out the URL and start playing that.  You assume a certain level of risk when you PvP flag yourself in any game.  Not many people know what the PvP flag looks like in EvE so allow me to show you what it looks like.

Click on This and PvP is in Your Future!

EvE is getting away from this.  Frankly I think we might see the last highsec killmail sometime in the next 18 months at the rate CCP is going.  The changes to wardec mechanics make it so that they really aren’t worth the trouble.  Changes to ganking that are already on SiSi indicate that harsher penalties for highsec ganks might be in the cards.  I don’t want this, other PvPers don’t want this, and PvE players don’t want it either.  With less PvP there is less demand for ships and modules, with lower demand, there is lower prices and profits, and with lower prices and profits people, especially those buying plexes, cannot afford to play the game.

So I’m going to improve things in part by rolling back changes.  Decshields – Gone, Refunding ships for people who undocked with a timer – Gone, Warnings before repping people who have aggro – Gone (although you will get a replacement warning when someone with an aggro timer joins your fleet.)

The wardec mechanics will change completely.  Voting timers are gone.  As soon as there is a majority, BAM sanctionable action.  When you go to start a dec you have to decide what kind of war you are creating.  I envision a system where there are different objectives and conditions that, when met, make the war cheaper to renew (or end it if the defenders are successful.)  In addition the dec sticks to the corp, if they join an alliance then the alliance gets involved, if they drop, the dec against the alliance drops and the dec against the corp sticks.

Finally – neutral reppers.  It’s over.  You can’t stop neutral scouts, covops, whatever.  But neutral repping is done.  Doesn’t work anymore, if someone is at war CONCORD blocks you from repping.

Station games are another thing on my shit list.  We need a station window, and to change how docking timers work.  I’ve made suggestions before on this and while it’s not a perfect list, it is better than what exists now as far as problems.  I’d also change the “skin” of stations so that your distance from the station is measured by… your distance from the station not the weird bubbles we have now.  EVERY station becomes a kickout MUAHAHAHAHA.

So yes better highsec PvP (for me.)  That’s what I’d do.

What about Major Kong?

Not gonna be around this weekend

SW:TOR Beta test calls.  Enjoy EvE.  I’ll be back monday.

Read this:  http://madhaberdashers.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/assumption-of-risk/

Assumption of Risk

For years EvE online prided itself with being a rough and tumble, hard, unforgiving game.  The road to enjoyment for many was paved with the bones and bodies of people who couldn’t HTFU.  For plenty of the veterans this has been a drawing point, something that makes the game what it is.  The main criticism of this approach is that it chases a lot of new, and younger, less hardened players out of the game.

Recently CCP has begun reversing this stance.  The first crack that I noticed in the edifice that was CCPs monument to HTFU was way back in August of 2010.  Paul Clavet of My Loot Your Tears called attention to CCP reimbursing ships for people who had undocked, ignored a “You are in Combat” Warning, and been killed by himself or others due to the aggro-extension mechanic.  Then pilots lost the ability to quick swap to a ship in an Orca when they were aggressed.  This slowed down mission gankers even more.  For a while things got quiet, but recently events have picked up speed.  And fast.

First major changes were made to wardec avoidance.  Where before joining an alliance and then dropping it to slough off unwanted wardecs was an exploit (dating back to 2008) now it is perfectly fine.  As GM Karidor said

In the past, there have been some policies in place within Customer Support that imposed additional rules onto the war mechanics available in game, such as the so called “Alliance Hopping” or the more recent “Dec Shield”.

The decision has been made to lift those restrictions that affect war declarations, thereby opening up ways for corporations to avoid unwanted wars via methods that were previously considered exploits of game mechanics.

In other words:
If you can leave or declare a war, raise the costs for other entities to declare one to you or do any other war related things within current normal game mechanics, you may do so without having to keep other rules in mind.

So that means that anyone who wants to avoid a wardec can and should.

Now people have noticed on SiSi that when CONCORD kills you, you no longer get an insurance payout.  Frankly this change is appreciated and long overdue as it just makes sense, but in this context it looks far more sinister.  It wont stop me from ganking on occasion, but it re-balances the suicide ganking mechanic to favor less PvP.  Next we find out that a recent mechanic has been changed, The Skunkworks has gone on a tear killing shiny incursion ships by creating aggression using a ship with an aggression timer, and getting it repped or energy transferred by someone else, to give the aggression holders permission to shoot the helper.  As you can see from their killboard it was pretty effective.  NO MORE said mighty Hilmar.

Now people (goons) are being told not to scam the recruitment channel.  Again making the game easier for new players, while tearing down the monument to HTFU that used to be EvE.

Finally I come across this tidbit on Jester’s Trek:

A couple of months ago, a GM scolded a player for killing a newbie in low-sec.

What… The… Fuck…  It’s Lowsec.  He had to click through warnings to get there, and even if it really WAS a newbie, how was the killer to know that?  It could be a noob alt scout, it could be damn near anything.  No GM should ever criticize a player for a legitimate and entirely correct action.

I am not saying the “Old Ways” were entirely better.  There does need to be a “break-in” period to protect new players from their own mistakes.  However what we see happening right now is coddling new players (To use Ripard’s term) to make them happy, while doing nothing to prepare them for the day the blinders come off and they realize that OMFG they are playing in one of the harshest game environments imaginable.

In fact, a lot of these changes seem like something a former CSM rep would push for.  In fact if you read the article on EvE-Tribune (from when it was relevant)

Ankh - Apparently the True CSM Chair

 

This leads me to one obvious conclusion.  Mittens is really Eva “Ankhesentapemkah” Jobse, pulling the biggest scam of her/his career by convincing all of EvE that Mittens is a male, american lawyer, and not a female, european game designer.  Well played Eva, well played.

More seriously, CCP is not operating like a well-balanced machine, but like a runaway train careening blindly, going from one extreme to the other very, very fast, and it might throw them entirely off the track.  I hope they can find a center path, a way to operate that lets them draw in new players and keep them, without ruining the monument they have created.

For me, this has created changes.  Fancy Hats no longer does wardecs.  There is simply no point, we are getting more active in Incursions, as they are a great way of making money and getting safer by the day, and we are being VERY careful of anything anyone might consider an exploit.  PvPers built this game, and I’m worried the game might turn on the ones who are pushing the edge.

What about Major Kong?