C5 and C6 space.

I said a while ago that I'd write something up about the state of C5 and C6 space.

I've had some concerns over this area of W-space for a while, along with a few others who have spoken to me about various issues around it. A lot of people have complain that this area of space is dead or dying. The problem atleast in my eyes is that part of the problem isn't a mechanical issue. Getting more people in to C1 to C4 space was fairly easy a big increase in the value of blue loot lead to a lot more people in space, combined with C4 getting dual statics and a lot of PvP groups moved in to them.

Some of the problems can be shown in a mail I got, I get quite a few like this and skype messages about the same. (I've blanked out names)

bringing up the point of bringing more people to w-space, until cap escals are delt with vary few groups will move to repopulate high class space out side of farming and even then it is currently dominated by **/****/***/****. Almost every other c5/6 you find will have a alt corp owned by them, and they will defend them i remeber when i was still in rainbow that **** once asked if anyone wanted to help kill caps which turned out to be someone trying to evict their farm corp. 
lowering loss is a good first step but wormhole need to loose the massive profit of owning many holes or those mega wormhole corps will continue to dominate the rest of w-space without challange for a long time.

What can be done? Getting more people in to C5 or C6 isn't that easy, with capital escalations its very easy to make huge amounts of isk in a very short time in a pretty safe manner. Whats worse is that you are disincentived to bring more people since this lowers your isk/person. Your much better having 10 groups of 5 people running cap escalations in 10 different wormholes than 50 people in one place farming.

CCP Bettik mentioned at fanfest that they are looking to potentially change this lowering the isk from cap escalations in some manner but giving you a bonus for finishing the site to compensate.

This would hopefully encourage groups to farm stuff in their static and get more people in space, more people in space is always good.

The non mechanical issue. The whcfc, now while they aren't always together, they often we're/are and this leads to people always assuming they are regardless. In NoHo we're had multiple times when we're had 3 groups all come in together and it does get to the point when if you see one you just assume the others won't be far behind.

Whats worse is it doesn't stop there. People don't want to engage them and just blue ball, due to either not having enough people or expecting other groups to be with them. This then leads to evictions due to "they never fight must be carebears". Then you have even less people to kill. It's a simple case of over fishing.

Now even if these groups do stop teaming up the problem is people will often assume they are together and so still won't engage. I've spoke to a few people about this and I just don't think this can be sorted by any mechanical change.

If people have ideas and suggestions I'm more than happy to listen to them.

Structures.

A Dev blog came out a bit ago.

Alot of the stuff is pretty good, How ever there is always concerns.

From a wormhole POV I have three main concerns

1) No auto defenses. I have several issues here, You have to set the vulnerability time for your prime time (ok you don't have to, but you'd be pretty crazy not to). So when its your best time to be on and playing with your mates, some one has to stay back to man the guns. This to me is terribly counter intuitive.

After that you have the issue that without a hp threshold anyone in any ship can potentially reinforce a pos meaning that cloaked ship in system could easily reinforce a pos if your not about.

2) Loot not dropping. This isn't strictly true some minor stuff will drop, but it won't be how it is in w space where everything could potentially drop. Its one of the main reasons people invade for loot and without this its likely to not be worth the hassle.

3) Just how will we find these new structures and get intel on who is inside. This is probably the least impactful and easily solved of the three, a lot has already be discussed regarding this.


Station games and linking.

I've had a lot of people moan about wormholes getting docking games and this simply isn't the case. It basically comes down to a couple things, people not reading the feedback thread and CCP not explaining it really well.

Here is what it will mostly be like.

you will be docked, you will be able to see the grid outside. So can see if anyone is about. You undock and enter a linking phase, while in this linking phase you are invulnerable, can't lock people or be locked yourself. You will how ever be able to fly around the citadel to a certain distance. This will act as a pseudo force field.

As for feedback, I've gone and spoke to nine different wormhole groups so far for approximately 11 hours. I've had some really great ideas and feedback along with a lot of good questions that need to be asked, three A4 pages of wormhole questions and notes and another 1 page on general stuff. Which I have posted on to CCP's confluence. I've also been speaking to CCP Nullabor alot about issues regarding citadels in w space (500 plus lines of convo in the couple days before the dev blog coming out) So much so I feel pretty confident that he could now actually plan a semi decent wormhole invasion on his own.

One of the main things I got from people was overall its a positive thing although its still really early, and we need to wait for more information. Which I totally agree with, We had a meeting with CCP this week to get a better feel for there overall ideas and will be getting more info to read through soon, which will be nice, I raised a few issues (number 1 to 3) and also mentioned how some stuff just wasn't explained all that well, which they are hoping to sort in the future,

I'm pretty optimistic at the moment although its very early in the development at the moment.

PS. I'm looking to try and find some tiny wormhole groups 20 max players to chat to about this.

Concerns sent in.

I recently got mailed in some pretty good questions by Selto Black of The Desolate Order, so figured I'd answer them here as there probably concerns alot have.


What affects do you believe the new structures will have on j-space?

I'm hoping it will make life in W-space easier, although there are issues. Trying to balance everything for all different spaces, Isn't going to be easy

Do you think that the window of vulnerability will work in j-space? 

This is where it gets tricky, firstly its worth remembering that just because the vulnerability window works one way in sov doesn't mean it has to work that way for everything. CCP are building in as many knobs and buttons so that things can be altered and changed as much as possible as easily as possible. My guess is yes it can work although. I'll be pointing out issues and concerns as we go along I've posted alot of feedback already on the confluence page and as well raised them in our slack group and to CCP Nullabor, we're hoping to have a meeting soon where we can get some more information about general things to help give us a better overall idea of what will be happening.

What is your view on the new shattered holes?

If you mean in general I still have some things I don't like, I'm still not a fan of forcing people to go armour in them with the Wolf Rayet effect, although I can see why they did it. If you mean will they allow POS's in there, my guess at the moment would be no. They probably want to keep it how it is.

How do you feel about Wormholers jumping into null just to entosis station services to provoke fights?

How do you feel about Wormholers Reinforcing Null-Sec structures just for the shits and giggles.

I'll answer both these together I'm not sure these will get fights I can see small groups going out and saying "hey fight me or we start knocking your services offline" But the majority of people who don't want to fight will just stay docked and try to put them back on afterwards when noone is around. I think its potentially going to be a griefers paradise. Which has me concerned on some levels. Its one of these things that's not to much a issue for big groups but will be a huge issue for smaller less organised groups. Sadly that's nearly always the way regardless of changes but this will definitely make it harder for smaller groups that live in null. Alot of this will depend on just how much people use there space, and how big the vulnerability window is.

What is your view on the blue bagel renting out C6 space?

I don't really like it, sadly its hard to stop, its a player driven issue. Not a mechanical one. I must say I find it funny when Hidden Freman (CEO of lazerhawks) moans there isn't enough pvp in w space when he's part of the blue bagel going around kicking people out. I'm hoping the changes to capital escalations will help in some way although I doubt it will be enough. The other issue is should CCP even do stuff to alter players behavior as its a sandbox after all. I think the only way you can say yes here is if its in the interests of making the game better as a whole. Then it gets subjective on whats best for the game.

How would you go about making Poses in Wormholes "Fair" (with respect to not being moon locked, How to make them findable without having to reveal that you're there)under Fozzie structures?

With the first part if that happens in W-space, as stuff can change. You have to look at what issues it will cause, the main one being full moon coverage being a defense of system mechanic. When I did all the POS survey last year nearly half of the people who filled them in said they covered all moons. It also wasn't just people in high class wormholes that did this. loads in lower class wormholes did as well.
If your going to take that away you need to add something to compensate. If we can't have full coverage we need something else one way would be making it so POS are a real force multiplier. They will need teeth and a much better way to affect the battles around them than they do now.

On making them findable and I think you definitely need to be able to find them without revealing that you are there. Having them appear on the overview tab like stations, is probably the simplest way to do it. another option would be to maybe have some probes you can launch while cloaked that are cloaked as well but can only scan structures. Although that to me personally seems needless complex compared to the first way.

Slacking

I've been pretty slack on blogging, whats worse is I have a fair few things to write about.

I'll keep this one more to bullet points and go back over them in more details in separate posts.

C5 and C6, Had a couple bring this up and it was something I wanted to work on much more anyway as I think it needs some help. I'm lucky in that CCP Fozzie is good enough to sit down and give me 15 to 20 mins on skype for me to go over issues and check on stuff. I'm planning on seeing if I can sort another call with him in the near future.

The CSM is finally really kicking in. We all have nice shiny emails, We've moved over to slack, which has some good and bad stuff. Good its alot more organised, and easy to keep track off. Bad it's not used as much outside of work hours, like skype was. We've had six meetings now. I've managed to make them all.

I've been playing a fair mix of eve. Fair bit in w space on alts, some manufacture. and a little in null normally either hanging out with some goons in w space or the newbee's of karmafleet, If I rat, a couple of them will often follow and salvage. its surprising how much really new players can make doing that.

I've also been playing a couple other games, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 and Stardrive 2. I only got Starcraft cos I wanted the kerrigan wings from the collectors pack (a shout out to CCP Affinity for telling me about them). This has now lead to all the people I play Diablo with getting them.

Had a few people who are still moaning about me being in goons, I've had a pretty good laugh about this and with some people I speak with often, I'll be including a load of quotes from various people about it when I write this one up. I also love the guy who sent me a notification message with some hate on it, I funny thing about that is I actually have a alt in that corporation that the group doesn't know about.