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Jester’s Trek: QOTW – Exciting times
Anyone else hear a loud “thud” late last week?
I’m still waiting for the latest Declarations of War pod-cast to be posted; the site for it appears to be down at the moment. During that pod-cast when I was talking to three members of CSM7, Seleene pointed out that one of the reasons that CSM7 seems so much quieter than CSM6 is that they haven’t had a crisis to deal with. I can’t remember if I laughed or not, but I do remember how I responded: “You will.” And then I mentioned the winter expansion and what’s shaping up to be a pretty light slate of spaceship features for it. Seleene carefully allowed as how I might have a point.
The first tiny tremor that presages that potential earthquake landed late last week with the release of the first CCP video dev-blog in several months. The meat of it features CCP Unifex announcing that CCP has completed their release planning for the features that will be included in the winter expansion. This is a process that CCP spends much of the month of August on after their staff in Iceland returns from their traditional long summer vacations. It then sets the tone for the development “sprints” that consume the fall.
EVE’s winter release date hasn’t been announced yet of course, but I suspect it’s about 12 or 13 weeks away.
After an amusing prologue followed by a minute of CCP Unifex talking about this process, the meat of the video starts at 2:10:
Unifex talks for about two more minutes. At 1:49 through 1:51, you can see a art developer working on the upcoming ORE mining frigate. There’s also another brief glipse of an art developer working on… something else. There’s also another brief tease about orbital strikes.
But other than that, the video is DUST, DUST, DUST, and yet more DUST 514 with nary a mention of EVE Online at all. As a matter of fact, the features talked about in this video dev-blog seem carefully chosen to annoy EVE players. There will be the ability to add DUST 514 players to EVE corporations, the ability for DUST mercenaries to change the state of faction warfare, and the addition of DUST 514 players to Local chat in EVE systems.
That last one kind of amuses me. EVE players have been bitching for years that Local should not be one of an EVE fleet’s key intelligence tools. But when you jump into a low-sec system this winter and see 5000 people in Local, only a tiny fraction of whom will be in spaceships… I’m pretty sure this isn’t what EVE players had in mind. We’ll see if CCP decides to implement some kind of filter so that DUST players will be invisible if you so desire.
Now don’t get me wrong: I still think DUST 514 is going to be a successful product for CCP, and it has the potential to be ground-breaking. But if you’re one of those players from last summer that was demanding “Where’s the spaceships?” this might feel like déjà vu all over again.
So, with all that in mind, this week’s QOTW:
Exciting times, and I think this autumn is going to be an amazing time for CCP and our players in both EVE and DUST.
Exciting times? Is that the same thing as interesting times?

There is a filter system in place in local, you can show and hide dust mercs. It's live on the Buckingham server, don't know about Sisi as I'm having issues connecting at the moment.
yay local spam in eve from console kids
oh this will be funny …. just let scammers of Eve get there hands on unsuspecting Dust merc … *lol*
see the wall of flame and nerd rage comming.
Pff, let them. Do you know how agonizingly long it takes to write shit with a controller?
Not long at all.. ccp added keyboard and mouse support.. so all us cs folks were owning the controller folks.
CCP Fozzie has rebalanced a tonne more ships than Ripard lists. Word has it that Fozzie has rebalanced all of the T1 cruisers. Maybe the T2 cruisers as well. But definitely the T1 cruisers. Fozzie is kicking rebalancing's ass.
rebalancing my ass.
new player ships are made slightly more usefull, but t3 is still overpowered,
and again no new content for players that play a bit longer than a hand full of month.
"T3 is still overpowered"
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, which is clearly shown by your use of the word 'overpowered' in relation to EVE.
t3 currently fills the following rules better than the ships intended to fill the role:
- fleet command
- hac
- recon
making 3 ship classes totally obsolete.
If you think hac's and recons are obsolete, you are living in some sort of fantasy world. Command ships aren't obsolete either but they find different roles, like using damnations for smartbombing firewalls, etc.
T3s have certainly replaced HACs for the most part. But not Recons or Command ships.
I see Rapiers in gang.
I see Lachesis' in gangs.
I see Falcons in EVERY.F*CKIN.WHERE. /capslockrage
I see Sleipnirs and Astartes and the like.
I dont see Damnations, Vultures very much, but that's only because T3s can boost from off grid and don't require tank to do so.
Eos' just suck, as does the link Proteus.
I dont see HACs, but only because they (for the most part) suck. Hard.
Vagabonds and Zealots are good, but Cynabal > Vagabond so Vagabonds are out.
Zealots are good, but primarily in AHAC fleet doctrines, not so much in roaming since everyone flies Cynabals/1400 'nados/Other nano ships.
———-
Only gripe I have about T3s is their massive tanks (Exception: Loki), but that could be changed with a simple 10% -> 5% bonus change. NOT that I'm saying T3s need a nerf, just that IF they were to be nerfed, that's how I would do it.
Fuckwit, leave my T3s the fuck alone, I trained for em I pay for em and I lose 4 days training if I lose one. Fuck you eat shit and uninstall please. DOG CUNT
The word "cunty" is also known, although used rarely: a line from Hanif Kureishi's My Beautiful Laundrette is the definition of England by a Pakistani immigrant as "eating hot buttered toast with cunty fingers," suggestive of hypocrisy and a hidden sordidness or immorality behind the country's quaint façade. This term is attributed to British novelist Henry Green.[
T3s aren't overpowered, that's like complaining the zealot does more DPS than an omen. Of course the are more powerful, t3 isn't just a nickname. They are the next step beyond tech 2 ships, they are meant to be powerful, with that comes the pricetag and the SP loss risk.
How much local spam are we gonna get from DUST kids if they aren't using a keyboard (which will be 90% of them)? I suspect very little.
The question is … are they gonna get spammed by us? Magic 8 Ball says "It is decidedly so."
you realise most of the words that 14 year olds find exciting are only 4 letters.
nobody cares about spam; local tells you… who's in local! which is the whole point. 500 reds on a planet + you alone = a "clear" system
this fits with CCP's presence on the gamescom in germany.. the only consumer booth they had was a small dust place at sonys booth..
The winter expansion for Eve players is DUST! Those who don't play it are going to be pissed, of course. Of course, CCP will probably definitely push this as well to those who are bitching. I can see it now:
CCP: "We bring you the winter expansion!"
US: "Where's the EVE stuff?"
CCP: "DUST is integrated with EVE, so hence any upgrade to DUST is an upgrade to EVE now."
US: "All hope is lost…"
"But when you jump into a low-sec system this winter and see 5000 people in Local, only a tiny fraction of whom will be in spaceships… I’m pretty sure this isn’t what EVE players had in mind."
Actually…why not? Would be a step towards "nerfing local", wouldn't it?
If dust has an in game browser, then the second any of them click on a local link and see the horrors that lurk within, then their parents will be taking that PS3 to the local charity chop.
scenario: they will integrate DUST and it will be bombing hard after the playstation kids figure out the game is shit (outdated graphics, MMO-mechanics on a first person shooter, etc). From that moment on having spend so much resources in the project CCP will influx any trick they can to somehow still make it work.
Like an autistic kid (like with the monocle-gate thing) it will take extreme measures from the playerbase to cut this deadweight loose. Because they now have half of their already trimmed down staff dedicated to the DUST stuff they will have a hard time shifting back to a decent focus on EVE ONLINE itself. This is already visible in the "babysteps" Unifex talked about. They try to mask it with bugfixes but fail to take on the bigger stuff and stick with what works for the time being.
Having now a whole new market of raging DUST players to satisfy (which they cant because face it they cant compete with nowadays FPS standards like BF3, etc) they will finally roll back DUST after they realize DUST players & EVE players are unsubscribing.
To counter this big blow to CCP they will restructure (DUST team: start searching for a new job) and we can expect a very meager fanfest 2013 full of "we are finally aware that we now swear to dedicate to EVE ONLINE alone" with some new teaserstuff (for instance pos & corp overhauls). Maybe the process of this scenario goes slower and this "ONLY EVE ONLINE FROM NOW ON" will be at fanfest 2014?
EvE is a great game, and that is thanks to CCP, BUT! EvE can always be a greater game and CCP should thank us for being around to push them for improvements.
Thankfully CCP has the presence of mind not to act too swiftly and throw things out of balance (at least not for too long)
There is already so much to do in this game, I can wait until summer until a real expansion hits EvE. Dust is going to keep us busy anyhow, THE NEW BLOB IS ON THE HORIZON.
Sorry to have to put this so bluntly, but…
Shut up, seriously just STFU.
It is exactly this kind of irresponsible posting that nearly broke EVE and CPP last summer.
I mean what are you even saying? "I'm not mad, and no one else is right now, but soon some people should get mad, and I may or may not be one of them… but at least I'll be angry if they aren't angry…"
If you don't want this to happen all over again, don't play a role of inciting anger.
We both know CCP literally "can't afford" to take another hit like that. It is up to us to allow them enough time to get things right. — The fate of EVE is in our hands.
I really hope Dust makes them money, and what it REALLY does is make more EVE players. I'll probably even buy the damn thing in the end just because of it's affiliation with EVE and stick it on a shelf, but I still couldn't give a shit less about Dust. So all this yammering by CCp about something that is not eve is certainly getting annoying to me.
And that local chat thing better not be true, because holy shit all those console players are about to be scarred for life by EVE local spam
Some of u guys are funny.. sound slike a bunch of 4 year olds sitting on a swing in yard screaming at there mom "I want moar!!!.. gimmeh!. This is the real world.. the company will try expand.. no matter if it means its death in the end.. people in the company will set goals and try reach em… its human nature.
So all u little sad cunts with your cunty falafel fingers typing this shit… grow up.. man up.. and stop taking it like a bitch!
So all u little sad cunts with your cunty falafel fingers typing this shit… grow up.. man up.. and stop taking it like a bitch!