Homogeny

Been a while peeps. What can I say. That good old RL stuff as per usual.

Covering a night shift again, so the brain has time to idle away on slow and think about… well, stuff. Time online has had a further kick in the nether regions mostly because I’m looking after kids so we don’t have to put them into after school care. It’s the holidays right now, so as you can imagine it’s even worse atm. Afternoons used to be time I’d catch up with peeps. Not so much now. Sorry K 😦

Yes, real men do in fact look after kids, hang out washing, cook dinner and clean up afterwards. They also get their game time knobbled in various creative and unexpected ways… no broken bones anywhere yet though, touch wood.

Which is all beside the point. What I really wanted to talk about was the upcoming changes for the winter expansion and something that occurred to me while looking over the proposed changes. While CCP is doing admirable things with new frigate and cruiser changes, I’m a wee bit worried we’re going to end up with cookie cutter builds all the way through.

Easier for new players? Yes.Interesting and challenging for the older players… not so much. And this is why: the dropping of the utility high slot. Used to be that you could cram any number of interesting things into that high slot – a cloak, probe launcher, neut, nos etc etc and use that same ship in a number of different ways.

Now I know you could argue that a combat cruiser or frigate means exactly that, but if CCP are in fact streamlining the ship classes and putting specialty ships into play for a particular purpose we will have less variety out there. Or at least not without compromising on weapon systems. The consequence is likely to be cookie fits across a range of classes.

And talking about scanning for a mo, when did T3s suddenly become unable to access (at least some) sites in high sec? #$%^ acceleration gates. I won’t miss the Tengus (Tengee?) but it seems they almost disappeared from the Forge overnight.

Really hoping this is not part of an attempt to push players into low/null. What I would expect to see is a decline in single we can do it all ship types and an increase in dual boxing. One for the scanning and a second combat alt to run the site (now why do most people have that the other way round…?).
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While ice mining is OK for multi-boxing, I have a bit of a mental block as far as scanning and exploration goes. It should (imho), be something of a solitary profession and not need to be reliant on the support of others.

CCP have alluded to a science vessel as an upgrade path for the scanning frigates, but I suspect we’re a wee way away from delivery… and the scanning frigates are in no way, shape or form able to tackle a 4/10. Even an assault frigate has difficulty with them. Mistakes end with explody type stuff. And not in a good way. Sooner the better on that please CCP 🙂

Anyways, I am really saying this – to a point, we as players can compensate for a lack of bonus on a hull though practice, equipment, and high levels of skill, and use ships in interesting and sometimes unexpected ways. But please, CCP, that compromise is a step too far if we’re losing utility highs on more and more ship classes.

Imho –  and outside the obvious null sec fleet doctrines, the uniqueness of EvE online is not something well served if the end result of the new classes is the same fit used exactly the same way as soon as someone can use it and the associated fittings.

Perhaps it’s too many hours of EFT-warrioring and the pleasure of flying something unusual you’ve thought of that is coloring my view. I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s late. Perhaps I’m a splitter (Piss off! We’re the Peoples Front of Judea!). I’m not asking for a 25 sig, 4000m/s, 800 dps wtfomgpwonmobile. Just to retain a little bit of choice.

And yes. It should be acknowledged that balancing the upcoming changes is damn hard in the first place.  Without sticky beak bloggers weighing in either! 🙂

FS

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