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DevBlog: Sovereignty Playtest Competition

June 10, 2015

Hello everyone! As we announced first at Fanfest, we are running a test server playtest of the new sovereignty capture system so that players can get a chance to try it out before it hits TQ, and so that we can get lots of testing to prevent bugs and issues before they reach the live server.

We accepted signups via EVEMail for a few months, and we’ve now sent response EVEMails to all the interested alliance executors to give them all the details. If your alliance signed up to participate, poke your executors and make sure they’ve checked their EVEMails.

We’ll be revealing the list of participating alliances once we have final confirmation from more of the executors, but for now I’m going to post the rules and preliminary schedule for the competition for all to see. This will also serve as a general purpose thread for questions and comments about the Duality playtest.

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Rules:

All rules and dates are subject to change. The primary purpose of this event is testing of new Sovereignty features. CCP staff reserves the right to penalize or disqualify alliances if they act in a manner which interferes with the goal of testing. The server simulation is taken as is, and we guarantee no reimbursement or compensation for any losses on Duality. The server may go down unexpectedly, and in extreme cases there may be database resets required. It’s a test server running fresh features so a bunch of **** is probably going to break, make peace with that reality.

The Duality server is expected to open up for you all this weekend (approximately June 12th), with the competition beginning early next week (approximately June 15th) and ending on July 6th. These dates are all subject to change, but if we do change them we’ll give you as much notice as possible. A mass test will likely take place at some point during this time period, which may disrupt the competition temporarily.

Alliances are welcome to accept members on Duality even if those players aren’t members on TQ. If you would like CCP to help advertise your Duality recruitment for this playtest, let us know and we’ll help as much as we can.
We do not currently plan on restricting access to the Duality server during this competition, so pilots who are not involved with any of the competing alliance are welcome to show up and interact with the ongoing competition.

This competition will take place in the entirety of Providence and three constellations in Catch (NNLX-K, T-HHHT, and FDR-EQ). Players are not restricted to this area and are welcome to use nearby areas for movement and to base in nearby NPC stations to launch counterinvasions if they lose their space. However be aware that outside of the competition zones server performance will likely be significantly poorer.

Important: There will be some characters on the Duality server with the tag “PTW” in their name, as well as ISD bug hunters and CCP characters. These are QA professionals working on systematically testing the new features. They will generally be in completely different regions than the playtest, but if you do encounter them you are not allowed to shoot them or otherwise interfere with them. If you Entosis their **** we’ll smite you with the banhammer.

Each alliance will begin the competition with sovereignty over one constellation (assigned by CCP) in the competition area. Any remaining constellations will be claimed by a set of neutral placeholder alliances. The neutral placeholder alliances will not make any serious efforts to defend their space during this playtest (I may or may not show up in a Maulus to mess with you). Each system will begin the competition with a TCU and an IHUB, and most systems have stations (because Providence).

The objective of the competition is to have as many of the three core sovereignty structures (TCU, IHUB, Station) belonging to your alliance online in the competition area as possible at the time when the competition ends. Alliances are welcome to make agreements with each other, support each other, and generally scheme however they want. Each TCU, IHUB and Station in the competition area will be worth one point. The prizes (more details below) include special honour for the alliance with the most points, as well as some prizes that are drawn randomly with each point providing the alliance with one “ticket” to the draw. This means that even if you do not expect to be able to come 1st it is still worthwhile to hold as many systems as possible by the end of the competition.

Each constellation will have a market seeded system, and players are welcome to bring their own equipment from the TQ mirror as well.

Please bug report any issues you find, and if you find a clear exploit please report it and then refrain from abusing it.

Prizes:

The names of every alliance that participates in this testing event (by capturing at least one system within the competition area) will be listed in the description of the Entosis Link I blueprint, in order from the highest points to lowest points. The identity of the first place alliance will be incorporated prominently into the lore surrounding the Entosis Link.

We will also be naming four meta variations of the Entosis Link after four of the alliances in this playtest. The meta naming alliances will be drawn in a raffle, with each point counting as one raffle ticket for that alliance. Of the four randomly selected alliances, we will first allow the one with the highest point value to choose which meta variation they prefer to bear their name, and then the next highest and so on.
For instance, if I Whip My Slaves Back and Forth get drawn in the raffle, people could be looting the blueprint for the “J4LP Modified Compact Entosis Link” for decades to come.

Thank you all very much for participating in this playtest, and we hope you’ll have a great time competing and that you’ll also enjoy the results of a more stable, less buggy sov system this July!
-Team Five 0, EVE QA and EVE Community

Game Designer | Team Five-0 https://twitter.com/CCP_Fozzie http://www.twitch.tv/ccp_fozzie/