Final Thought(s) on the Watchlist change

I've been pondering the Watchlist changes at some length, I've spoke to various friends and one of the most interesting conversations I had with Bex gave me reason to consider the changes not from a gameplay point of view but a software design one.

With Great Power

People argue that the Watchlist is a powerful intelligence tool, it can be but it has to be used the right way. The introduction of tags or labels really increased the power but knowing someone is online is not the most useful of intelligence.

With the coming change the Mercenary, The Pirate and the Intelligence Assets of major alliances lose a way of tracking pilots of their targets. 

If you see them online in your watchlist then you instantly know they know they are watching you, because you're in their watchlist. Paranoia +50!

Brings back all kinds of "watching me, watching you, watching me" jokes. *shudder*

What Could They Have Done

As-is the watch list is a very useful tool in both gameplay positive and negative ways (probably more negative depending on whom you speak to) but it was poster StainGuy in a Reddit thread who (shockingly) provided, surprisingly excellent, constructive feedback on how it could be changed.

The new method can't be stopped and I doubt any major changes will take place before it appears in-game however I firmly believe that the watchlist should work based on a delay. The closer you are to a target, the sooner you see they are online and consequently the further you are from them the longer your notification takes to appear.

So you're in the same system, well that will be a waste of time as you could see them in local but with 5 jumps you'd find out within a minute or two. Get ten jumps or more then it starts increasing so if you're 50+ jumps away it could take up to 60 minutes before you see them online.

In a wormhole, well it should only work if you're in the same system but still delayed by a few minutes. After all no beacons to show local in a wormhole so no need to tell everyone someone is in the same system as you by having a pseudo-local instant notification system.

The Future?

The Watchlist is a feature people like and dislike, i think it will remain but its form will forever be altered. However I think the form is being altered not because it has to be from a gameplay perspective but from a software engineering one.

The time has come to change a feature and which would you rather spend time on, new features or old, buggy ones? With the exception of one developer I worked with every developer wants to do new things not fix old things they didn't design.

So comes the Watchlist, someone has been tasked to update it and they've taking the quick and easy route. I can't blame them but long term I feel it's shortchanging us, the players, we're getting a reduction in functionality in order for something to be updated but nowhere near the functionality we had before.

Why do this?

Two reasons come to mind, this is a short term solution (that in true EVE style will likely remain long term until someone notices it in ten years :)) or there is a lot of code for this functionality that is hard to maintain, no longer is efficent and needs to be updated. 

That's where I'd lay my bet, the code is old and needs to be changed in the modules (for whatever reason: CREST, BIAB etc..).

It's a shame, we're being shortchanged with this.

Watching Me, Watching You

Over the weekend a photograph of a slide at EVE_NT has left blog friend Bex with a very sour taste in his mouth. Normally I'd fan the flames and enjoy his tears but after pondering the image and thinking about the repercussions I can't help but agree with Bex.

 

 

This change is terrible. Not just for wormhole players but all players.

 

What List

 

The watchlist is an in-game feature whereby you can add a character to the watchlist and when they come online or go offline you will receive a notification. It does not tell you where they are only that they are online or offline. It is primarily used as a basic intelligence tool providing details for those in wormholes and pirating for finding out if targets are online who can then be found (if in known space) via Locator Agents.

 

It is a useful feature.

 

I currently use it for getting an indicator on whether or not bumpers and/or gankers are active when I'm moving cargo. If I see characters online then my scout, who has them watchlisted and added as contacts, will be able to see them quickly and I can either dock up or I can proceed with my journey. It works and I've avoided a few ganks I'm sure thanks to this.

 

I used to use it to monitor cyno droppers and reds in Providence when I lived there and I know a few people who use the watchlist solely to monitor known supercapital and titan pilots.

 

Friends Watching Friends

 

The watchlist will now only show whether someone is online if both you and they have watch listed each other. No longer can I watchlist a ganker and know when he's online and take defensive measures now I have to hope I've registered on his radar enough that he adds me.

 

But what if he adds me on an unknown alt not his main, well nothing. The watchlist won't work.

 

Rest In Peace

 

Congratulations CCP you've taken a working, albeit broken feature, and changed it enough that it will now will not work at all and will never be used by more than a small percentage of players.

 

RIP Watchlist.

20xx to 2016

 

Not sure when it was introduced but you get the idea.

It's WHO not WHAT you know that matters it seems

Yesterday I posted about the coming T2 Capital modules that were hinted at by ISD Rontea in their image on Twitter. I was by far not the first to have posted about this as people I showed the image to on social media had either already seen it that day or had beaten me to the punch and posted about it themselves.

However I logged in this evening and got a message from a friend where he said that that image was old news and it was good that ISD Rontea had released it as it now made it "semi-official". I queried him on his wording and he said that image had been doing the rounds of Goon specific forums/image sharing for more than a week.

Seems that it's not WHAT you know but WHO you know that gets you the heads up. 

What good are standings now?

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

That used to be the muttering when a mistake in a program was used to make life better for the users and instead of being removed it was fought for and remained, often with additional work to make it "production quality".

Well it seems CCP have had this happen, I'm sure it's happened before and will again but they've admitted it was an error and feedback from users has influenced their decision to let it remain "as-is" rather than what they planned, which to change it back to the way it worked.

Ths is a great change, I'm very happy they have decided to leave it alone. Having had new alts have to grind or travel to null in order to use a Rorqual to create a fresh clone is a pain in the arse but no longer do I have to do this.

Estel Arador Corp Services (and other jump clone services) have long provided this service for free and have been the saviour of many a pilot. I agree wholeheartedly with Mike Azariah in the Reddit post that a statue or some kind of "official recognition" for the services that were provided is needed by CCP.

It does beg the question now though, aside from lowering Tax and increasing Refining/Reprocessing amounts what purpose do Standings have?

Oceanus Announced

Over the weekend CCP announced, via devblog, the feature list for the next expansion due on the 30th September 2014.

I've read it a few times now and I've absorbed the comments on Reddit and the comprehensive preview by TMDC (really 646 words is comprehensive is it?) and I'm still left considerably underwhelmed by what is to come.

Opening Comment

To me there is very little for the average player, sure Interceptors and Interdictors are getting another rebalance (which I do think is needed) but aside from the start of the named module rebalancing (although this only starts with a renaming) there are no significant features or changes of benefit for the average player.

Name

I'm not a fan of the name, every time I see it I think of Oceanic I think of water and things NOT associated with EVE Online. I did the customary google search on the name and found this. 

In short, Oceanus was believed, by ancient Greeks and Romans, to be the an enormous river encircling the world, which was divine personification of the World Ocean, 

What this has to do with EVE Online I can't begin to imagine, what does a river have to do with spaceships in space? Given the feature set its fitting, a bunch of hooey for a release of hooey.

Features

The translation of EVE Online into French is long overdue, I always thought it was strange that there was a Japanese, German and Russian translations but one of the largest groups (French language) did not have a localised translation.

Mac users get an update but as I don't use a Mac and I don't know anyone who does to play EVE I can't really comment further.

Burner missions get an update, the "logistics friend" seems like a good variant but I've yet to try one of these missions and I have been put off attempting one after reading about how difficult people have found them. I know people are finding fits that work but I'm just not interested in frigate sized missions at the moment.

Named module naming changes. Not much can be said, the names will be changed and statistics will be updated later, in a later expansion. There is a devblog due on this that will explain how this will be done and I'm actually very interested in this as it will be a good indicator on how meta modules are going to be rebalanced.

There are a few graphical updates, the most visible one being a rework of the cloaking animation, more ship skins with changes opening up the possibility of customizable ship skins in a later expansion without impacting existing ship skins.

The largest graphical update will be to the visual appearance of wormholes with (hopefully) pilots now being able to identify the type of wormhole and whether or not their ship will be able to use it just by looking at it. CCP released an image of the changes but no labelling on the image we don't know what each wormhole means.

I'm most happy with the announcement that it will be a lot easier to import fittings from external tools such as EFT/pyfa and BattleClinic from the clipboard instead of having to mess around with xml files and the in-game EVE fitting tool. 

Notifications get an overhaul with the introduction of the new in-game opt-in all-in-one-location notification system and options to configure how and what notifications you'll see in various levels of detail. More details are to come in a yet to be released devblog.

There are a lot of small changes too, more tool tips for market groups/categories, new music (wait... EVE Online has sound/music!?), previews for the New Eden store and lots of "under the hood" changes to the game.

What About Null Sec

At the end of the devblog CCP mentioned the following:

The design team of EVE Online are working actively on changes to the game mechanics impacting null security space. The Council of Stellar Management are coming to Reykjavik for the CSM Summit next week, and directly after the summit we will bring the full discussion about the plans to the EVE community. Read more in this forum thread.

I don't know if we'll see anything in Oceanus, I doubt it, but gathering community feedback and assembling members of the CSM together in Iceland with CCP is the start. CCP obviously have ideas but tempering these with feedback from the CSM/player base will take time and I don't think we'll see any changes for at least another expansion or two.

Conclusion

Oceanus isn't a great or inspiring name for an expansion based on the features we've been told are coming, Perhaps they should just drop the Ocea from the name and go with Anus as the expansion name, it would then succinctly describes the release for most players I'd wager.

I don't see any changes coming from the Null/Sov Warfare summit considering there are only 15 days (from when this is written) until release and the list of features really is small and will not have a huge impact on the game.

That said, we can't have great expansions every time maybe Oceanus is the "take out the trash" release for 2014 but some changes here are groundwork that later, better features, will be built upon.

New Space

It's been rumoured for while and has finally been confirmed that CCP will be opening new space within New Eden for settlement.

 

This is excellent news as it gives people a new location to move to or visit along with all the surprises and goodies that will no doubt be available. As if that wasn't enough there is a lot of talk of player created star-gates allowing players to control routes allowing them to lead the expansion and not rely on CCP (read: CONCORD) opening up the space lanes.

 

 

Most people I've spoken to or have read blog/forums posts by seem to be very positive to this news. It's hard not to be, it could be quite the expansion should CCP introduce it with new features and ships however there are those people who have quite valid concerns about any new space being "open" for a few minutes until one of the larger alliances suddenly moves a large fleet in and takes over.

 

I'd urge, strongly, CCP to look at this ability as the perfect opportunity to shake things up and open the game up to new and different playing styles. Remove some of the familiar and replace it with something that requires all players to relearn how things work and to have to adapt rather than fall back to the familiar and 'safe'.

 

Any new space needs to be open for all, not just large entities that have the people and assets to defend/attack but the small corporations or one-person-bands. We need EVE to embrace these people and give them something rather than allowing the large alliances to vacuum up whatever they want with little to no resistance.

 

Rubicon

Rubicon is deployed and I've ensured my characters had at least 2 days of skills queued "in case of problems". I didn't anticipate any, and the CCP deployment team(s) made sure that EVE was back up and running on schedule.

 

I'm optimistic about Rubicon, I've not written a post before on it because I've mainly been reading what others have said and playing on SiSi with what has been released. There are bits I like and bits I don't, overall I think the patch is going to be good and brings new things to the table.

 

Name

 

I still think the name is bad, I can't put my finger on it but I really don't like the name and it doesn't fit in with past expansion names.

 

I'm looking forward to

 

Marauders rebalance / Bastion module : I'm really looking forward to these changes, they should mean an increase in ISK/hr through being able to complete missions faster. I will miss the loss of the webifiers but the bastion module means I should be able to kill those pesky ships at close range before they get close.

 

Warp speed changes : this is going to be good, the variable rate of acceleration will bring new tactical options to roaming fleets as well as people who previously wouldn't be able to catch ships that were just a second or two faster to align/warp.

 

Deployable equipment : the new deployable are going to be interesting. The siphon is good and bad from my perspective, I'll certainly be checking towers several times a day for interlopers and I'm now increasing my defences on all towers.

 

Implants : the new Ascendancy implants, the first players can make themselves will be expensive and, initially, result in some bling pod kill mails. The extra speed increase will not be for all, my tests in a freighter show Nomads are still the better option.

 

Sisters of EVE ships : two new ships, a frigate and a cruiser. Bonuses for drones and exploration, I don't do much of the latter and have poor former. Looks like an alt will be training new skills :)

 

I'm not looking forward to

 

Warp speed changes : running through space in a blockade runner now is a little more risky, looks like I'll need to invest in Prowler's as the extra high slot could be a good for a probe launcher for systems where I'm boxed in.

 

Deployable equipment (specifically the siphon) : steal my income, I don't like this but I understand POS structures need something to remove the "free isk" they seemingly generate. Going to be interesting to see how this works in day-to-day gameplay but POS owners need to watch out more for sure.

 

High Sec POCOs : just not interested. Two tax rates, poor resources (mostly). Sure we'll see battles at them but not that interesting for me.