I admit that my enthusiasm for Retribution was low this fall. The biggest interest for me was the new destroyers and revamped cruisers but the rest just felt… meh. Crimewatch? I’m in low sec in a warzone, not really applicable. Bounty Hunting? I’ve always felt it was impossible to do without being exploitable so I was doubtful CCP could pull it off.
But as the days turned over and October became November, more small features were announced that intrigued me and raised my interest level. UI changes with visible timers, tracking camera, better inventory control, faction warfare changes, etc etc etc. As more information came forth my anticipation grew and I was eager to see what Eve would be like with Retribution.
So, now its been a few days, we can evaluate the expansion in whole and give my impressions.
Summary: Overall a better expansion than Inferno but just below Crucible. Two thumbs up.
Retribution may lack the “jesus feature” to grab player’s attentions from afar, but a lot of features in this expansion represent a sea change that should not be underestimated.
Bounties
Perhaps the feature with the broadest implications that I’m only grasping now is the Bounties and Bounty Hunting. I’ll take my hat off to CCP for this one; I did not think a good feature could be done. But the idea of partial payouts for ship kills based on the ship’s estimated cost is a masterstroke and very hard (if not near impossible) to manipulate. The result is that placing bounties is not a waste of ISK and actually may end up causing players to be hunted when they might otherwise have been ignored.
But the largest part of Bounties that will cause ripples and aftershocks for months if not years is that (1) you can put a bounty on anyone regardless of sec status and (2) you can place bounties on corporation and alliances. It was only after Retribution landed that I stopped and thought about that. And when I did my reaction was HOLY SHIT.
Consider you are a fabulously wealthy alliance with wallets in the hundreds of trillions. You want to go to war with another alliance. To provide more incentive for your line members to log in and fleet up, you place a few trillion in bounties on the enemy alliance. Now every enemy kill pays ISK to your line members who are participating in fleets. In addition, it pays your allies who come out to help you, and other third parties just to rain on the parade.Win-win.
Another scenario: you are a rich industrialist and getting hounded by a bunch of pirates. You want to hire a small new merc corp to fight back but want to make sure you get your money’s worth? Pay the mercs a small fee to come fight but put the rest of the reward as a big bounty on the pirate corp (or individual pirates in case you think they might corp hop). The mercs get paid for killing the enemy ships and are rewarded for the bigger kills. Win-win.
Or let’s say someone is being a jerk on tweetfleet. Bounty. Forum scum? Bounty. Cheap PvP tactics? BOUNTY! MUHAHAHAHAH!!
Sorry, lost it there for a moment.
It will be many months before we see what the norm for bounties will be, but I will tip my hat to CCP and say that this has vast potential to change a lot of game and social dynamics, one of the most important being that PvPer’s have potential to get paid for PvPing, above and beyond the loot. Win-win.
Crimewatch
Like I said earlier, I live in low sec and a lot of these changes bear very little on my day to day existence. That being said, the new visible timers with tooltips in the top left corner are long overdue. The removal of neutral remote reppers that you could not engage were a huge hole to fill in high sec and I heartily approve. Overall people seem to be liking the system so I think I’ll go along with that.
New and Improved Ships
I’ve gone on a lot on this blog about what I think of the tiericide (summary: its a good thing) and the new Destroyers seem balanced overall in my opinion. I applaude the work CCP has done in this area and I encourage them to continue. The revamped ships have made the game feel new and fresh in low sec and that really has sparked a lot of enthusiasm all over.
UI Changes
For something so late in the announcements, it has had the most raving. My only quibble is that the target’s hitpoints pixels are a titch small and thus can make telling at a glance the shield/armour/structure balance, but that might be something that I get used to over time. The look is brilliant and the rest are too. Hint icons to tell what is in targeting range? Better damage notifications? More toop tip on modules? Improved inventory control? Easier to buy bulk from loyalty store? And more? Win-win-win.
Faction Warfare Iteration
The jury is going to be out a while to see if the plex changes help encourage more PvP and if the previous patch changes to loyalty point earning can find a balance between being rewarding and being too profitable. So far I’m encouraged that fleets are still going out and fighting each other so we’ll keep an eye on things.
Conclusion
While not reaching the heady heights of Apocrypha, I would rate this expansion in the top half of all Eve expansions, perhaps even in the top 25%. Good work CCP.
We are proud to bring you the stories, opinions and musings of a long time pilot who has dabbled in everything New Eden has to offer. He writes and podcasts about his opinions and adventures at Ninveah.com.
Retribution definetly has been a big expansion in my eyes, especially thanks to the bounties and crimewatch.
Though I have got to say, damn my tempest looks sexy, but I would like them to bring out a clear skies variant for all us old timers.
+1 for the clear skies variation. I'd love for them (or someone skilled in video creation/g-mod editing) to look into making a mini series like clear skies, it was quite good to watch.
Dashi ing what you should have done is post your reply under mine, as you didn't have the courtesy to do that, what I will do is attach my reply to yours.
Dude the bounties don't work. No one would dare to shoot a Goon anyway even with a huge bounty.
We rule high sec and putting a bounty on us is not going to change that.
We will just shoot each other to get the bounties.
What we do want to set up is a way to put taxes on Jita and we want to set up gank camps that everyone in EvE will have to pay a fee to pass through the Jita gates. We will be the one taking the fees, so don't see how bounties is going to help you.
And idiots like you would are main reason the bounty system was created in the first place. Go ahead and put your real toon's name on here so we can some isk that to bounty you say you are going to collect with an alt. If only CCP were to change the bounty system to reflect the isk loss on a ship that would… wait they did!
Goon responses of "We rule…" reminds me of angry little chess playing grade school kids trying to get revenge.
Ha. Look at the goon scrub acting all tough.
As for everyone else, place more bounty on goons. Their high sec ice miners love it when I gank them for profit
Dude. does mittens know you are shitposting on en24?
Dude the bounties don't work. No one would dare to shoot a Goon anyway even with a huge bounty.
We rule high sec and putting a bounty on us is not going to change that.
We will just shoot each other to get the bounties.
What we do want to set up is a way to put taxes on Jita and we want to set up gank camps that everyone in EvE will have to pay a fee to pass through the Jita gates. We will be the one taking the fees, so don't see how bounties is going to help you.
If bounties don't work then please give us the name of your main and we will see what happens when we stick a few billion isk on your head.
Pretty sure even your goon bro's will start nuking you just for fun on their alt's.
It would be so nice for Goons to hang out on gates as fat juicy targets…bring it on.
You've examined the bounty system right?
You lose more than you gain by shooting buddies, also you overestimate peoples fear of goonswarm, the bigger the name, the more likely the bounty on your head >.< .
Good luck with trying to do the Jita tax thing, might lead to some interesting conflict!
"No one would dare to shoot a Goon anyway even with a huge bounty." Oh man, this made my entire day.
Me too lol, made 6 mil stomping goons + co into the ground Saturday night
GoonTear Ice Cream. Now with isk-sprinkles.
"No one would dare to shoot a Goon anyway even with a huge bounty. "
lol xD Come on: What the bounty system has shown us so far is that the Goons die so often the rest of Eve can't keep a significant chunk of change on thier Alliance bounty on them long enough to ever look profitable…. nice try though
-_- .. srsly?
o.. practice ur troll duder.
Unless that's for reals. If that's the case, I have to ask: Is this you? www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbfBjo-Mw6U
lol goons are sexy beats!
"We will just shoot each other to get the bounties."
Please do! While only making 20% of the ships worth on each bounty you faggots will surely show your intelligence by doing this.
Do us and your owners a favor and leave eve discussions to them.
PMSL, spot the person / alliance that hasn't even read the patch notes.
Crimewatch does affect you, my friend. Sentry guns no longer re-engage you if you warp away and then back. You longer give victims kill rights on you if you kill their ship. Sec status hit for killing someone isn't as high. T1 logistics makes some of the medium FW sites interesting (2 thorax and 2 exequror anyone?). Granted, the first three things I listed are more for the low sec pirate, but still…
What this guy said, and theres more. Your section on crimewatch screams "i live in lowsec but dont actually undock!" How you have failed to notice the incredible implications retribution has for lowsec piracy is beyond me.
lol honestly… biggest changes for crimewatch were for lowsec piracy
T1 cruisers seem to be the new drake when it comes to roaming gangs of 20-40. they're cheap, they actually perform pretty well, and they're fun to fly
Indeed a nice eve expansion , keep up the good work ccp!
Has anyone seen miniluv? I thought this wasnt supposed to effect them, i guess they still havent figured out what that "one extra step" is…
You should all get out more, eve is just a game….
EVE is Real.
I was there!
It's good of you to post a pic of your self. It's always interesting to see what PL looks like in real life.
CCP kinda went overboard with ship rebalancing, which results in some… strange implications.
Like T1 ewar frigs being actually better than their T2 counterparts. Or forgetting about faction cruisers. ESPECIALLY forgetting about faction cruisers. Take a look at the Fleet Scythe (no comments). Or fleet stabber (tracking bonus is nice, but falloff bonus is better most of the time. And that's on a much cheaper hull). Or ONI. Well, sure, ONI can fit heavy pulses without perfect skills/implants, but goes much slower than it's cheap insurable counterpart.
Or destroyers. I mean dessies can now be kited by cruisers. They are completely outclassed in every possible way, and there's always a cruiser out there that can do a given dessies job, only better (except, perhaps, being concorded for suicide).
First: CCP does only T1 rebalancing in the first run, they said it a lot of times in the past. So they will do the battlecruisers and battleships next. But i'll guess after that they will rebalance all faction ships in one patch. So we will see what happens then with them.
Second: Destroyers are anti-frigate ships. Given that cruisers are the next bigger ship class, they SHOULD be better then destroyer in a 1 vs. 1. It would be absolutely unbalanced if it's not the case. And no, destroyers are far better against frigates than cruisers (and i've seen a lot kills since 4th december with destroyers even killing cruisers, but that's maybe because there are noobs in cruisers testing the rebalancing). You would know that if you would fly them.
The problem with dessies being anti-frigs is there are cruisers that do it better. Like Caracal, for example. It does not help that a Throax goes faster than dessies.
You have obviously never PvPed before. If you don't know what you are talking about, please don't post.