Going, Going, Gong.

That was a terrible pun, I'm sorry but it had to be done and yes, EVE does indeed have sound.

The patch notes for the latest release on Tuesday 8th March don't make mention of the change but introduced was a noise, categorized as a "dong", when a target lock is lost. Check the patch notes and you'll see nothing for the sound but there is mention of a graphical change:

The UI bracket is now animated when an enemy target is destroyed.

It's been mentioned a lot on Reddit and I'd agree it is a most annoying and distracting noise and there has been something of a current to get it changed, added as specific sound option or just plain removed.

Seems CCP is in a phase of listening to feedback and this appeared (overnight for me) on the Official Forums:

All Hail The Mob.... Community!

Rorqual News Sighted!

I was reading the CSMX Summit Two minutes and on Page 20, the Capital Ship changes, the following paragraph appeared:

What is this sorcery, is CCP acknowledging there is a capital ship called the Rorqual! I do believe they are. Huzzah!

Drone Miners eh, well that fits with what people have been guessing is coming. People have wanted large mining drones/fighters for the Rorqual since it came out. Be interesting to see this.

An invulnerability button too, that locks a fleet in place, prevents them taking damage until help arrives. Interesting, I wonder if it could apply to only mining vessels or if combat ships would be protected too. Would be a great way of trapping an attacking fleet with a small bait one and then dropping a larger one on them.

Ah, the possibilities.

I'm most happy the Rorqual was mentioned with positive information. Last years minutes were lacking information but at least this year we get a paragraph. Perhaps next year we'll get two!

I like my Rorqual, and the other six I own. No I don't use them all for mining, I bought the others at various excellent prices over the past year. I'm holding onto them in a couple of locations ready for sale on contract when they get good again.

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.

Good Guy CCP

EVE is experiencing some issues with stability at the moment, one of my characters keeps getting booted from the game saying "socket was closed". None of the others have issues but this one can't remain logged in for more than 10 minutes at a time.

It's a pain in the backside as I have things I want to do with this character. I was planning to use a quiet afternoon to get some mining done but I have to reschedule that I guess.

Grrr...

That said one thing that I have found out is that something is happening with towers and their use of fuel. I went to do my weekly fuel top up and found that I had more fuel in the towers than I was expecting. 

Even my out-of-game monitoring application was reporting the fuel to be far more than it should have been given normal usage. So I asked in the Help channel:

Grymwulf > they also most likely set it not to use fuel during the 'issues' to avoid people filing tickets due to offline poses that they couldn't refuel due to server issues

And there is the probable reason. It's nice to see CCP being proactive, I'm sure they've done this before but I hadn't even considered this myself and was assuming my towers would continue normally. 

Of course, database offline nothing can update, fuel can't be used.

Thanks CCP. It might be virtual fuel, but at least I don't have to worry about it for a few days extra now.

Hunkering Down and PROFIT!

Last night was hauling night.

 

Two freighters made short work of the moving of product to Jita for sale. The Amarr->Jita pipe was full of reds and I made sure I used my scout to watch them and keep an eye for bumping Mach's on gates before I entered warp.

 

The journey was not really eventful but I did manage to pick up a war dec from PIRAT for my troubles. Interestingly the Jump Freighter pilot got the war dec whereas the freighter pilot, in a totally unrelated corp but who jumped through gates at the same time, did not.

 

I was tempted to send a mail to the PIRAT pilots laughing at their stupid war dec but I decided against it. A one week, stay in null sec doing profitable things could turn into a couple of weeks quite easily if I offended them.

 

So I remained quiet, finished my jumps and got home in time for a cup of tea and to drop off some courier packages.

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.

The Power of Three

I've previously covered a titan kill in Mai and mentioned several times how this system in Domain is home to some extremely capable and dangerous pilots.

It's been a while since I've seen anything worthy of a post and today I was pointed this.

Great, Smashing, Super

Gatchythepirate was caught in Mai by a team of three. Two Heavy Interdictor Cruisers and a Bhaalgorn managed to get the killmail.

The story is, like most, quite simple:

All is quiet,
Cyno goes up 
Boy finds Girl but she runs away,
Boy finds Girls again and captures her (heart),
But Girl kills self due to crippling intimacy issues leaving Boy alone, again.

It's almost like Shakespeare wrote it, brings a tear to my eyes every time. 

Gather Round Children, It's Story Time

Gatchythepirate planned his entry into Mai very well and was executed flawlessly , the cyno went up and was down before anyone could enter warp. Normally this is where stories end but in this case the Wyvern remained on scan and a prober quickly entered system and was able to get a fix on the Wyvern's location and tackle was entered warp.

Tackle entered grid to see no Supercarrier, obviously the ship had cloaked but was he still on grid?

Well the answer was yes because as tackle was exiting warp they passed close enough to the target to decloak him.

The Wyvern pilot used his Projected ECM and used this to escape by entering warp. unfortunately he warped to zero at the Planet 1 POCO where he was pursued and captured again. The pilot then made a choice to self-destruct his ship as the possibility of salvation or surviving was close to nil.

Shortly after there was a rather large explosion and no more Wyvern.

That'll Hurt

Gatchythepirate, believed to be an alt of well know super scammer PatchyThePirate, was very chilled about the loss:

[17:29:38] Gatchythepirate > Yo
[17:29:43] Gatchythepirate > how long you guys were following me?
[17:30:07] Gatchythepirate > damn NSA playing Eve now

Gatchythepirate was extremely unlucky and was trying to move through a very dangerous system. He almost made it, certainly more competently than others who have tried, but almost isn't good enough.

There is some talk on a Reddit post that questions why, with only three attackers, that the Wyvern didn't want until the Projected ECM reloaded (one wag thought it funny to say he did not have this skill trained because it was in his cargo, he did and did use it) before trying again and jumping out. 

Loot was pretty light, this appears to have been either a pre or after sale move and as such it explains the T2 nature of the fit that is designed, not for combat but travel.

I wasn't able to contact Gatchythepirate to get his input in this but it makes sense that he didn't know reinforcements weren't on the way so he self-destructed in order to avoid being solo killed by a lone Bhaalgorn.