Friday, April 22, 2016

Fanfest 2016 - Day 2

Last night was the Charity Dinner. A nice meal with some great company. I got lucky and was on a great table. As well as the Space Pope and Fuzzy Steve I was sandwiched between the two CCP seats. From CCP we had CCP Larrikin, Masterplan, Affinity and Falcon. Oh and Hilmar! I didn't get my promised cider from the CEO (for giving him the WW1 Christmas truce analogue he used in the welcome speech) as they didn't have any. I got a charity cocktail as a fine alternative. Thanks boss-man!





So onto Friday!

Coming back from breakfast I exited the lift and practically bumped into Sindel. Spookily she and Baghi in the next-but-one room to mine.

Project Nova
Arrived early to have a go on the prototype FPS. Played two games and really enjoyed it. It is certainly a good step up from DUST514. It felt faster and the map played, inside a carrier, didn't suffer from the issues of the vast open DUST maps with snipers. Weapons and drop suits make a real tactical choice. The heavies weren't the indestructible Tanky McTankyFace that I found in early DUST. So far it's a good, solid FPS in its early stages. It needs a unique quality though. Something that sets it apart from a saturated market. Fingers crossed.



IP Development
Mostly talk about the upcoming frigates book. To be honest Seagull should just give Falcon a free reign to do whatever he wants.




Ships and Modules
Again last yesterday, quick recap of what I thought was important. Want to know everything, go find the video on Twitch.

Started with year recap. Ishtar no longer dominates and Cerb is top HAC. T3 Destroyers still OP. Rapid lights still OP. T2 logi frigates doing well. T1 cruisers most popular by (ship to ship) damage type. BS in second place.


What's coming up? Space left for super capital force auxiliaries (one day). If your carrier has triage mod fitted on patch day it'll be swapped to a FA. Drone mods will affect fighters.

New fighters we knew about but Shadow heavy fighter can kamikaze. A 2.5bn ISK fighter style Doomsday!

Super carriers get projected EW weapons. Pick spot in space. Fire beacon. Boom! Neut, Target Paint, Web etc.

SC can be tackled and have warp strength of +25 at level 5. Reverent to be buffed. Dreads get utility high. High angle dread guns for blapping BS. Titans buffed and new dooms day. Lance, swiping beam and cone AOE plus teleport to random location in solar system.


150+ new modules. T2 XL ammo. Faction XL guns can use T2 ammo (may be rolled down to sub-capital guns in future). Meta cap mods to be made by players. Buy BPO from NPC and combine with T1 version and various components. Faction same but require T2 original plus extra materials and components.


Rat capitals in null. Titan has 3.5m EHP and 240m bounty.

Tracking Score to replace tracking attribute on guns. Easier to understand and bigger is better now. No refitting with weapons timer.

BLOPS to get Space-Aids buff. Higs anchor rig disables interdiction nullification.

Links to be AOE and will last a certain time. So CS can warp off if needed and return. Based on AOE so no need for fleet positions. No stacking. Highest skill wins.

Rorqual gets AOE links too. Super drones. Mass reduction. Super weapon that makes industrials in Fleet invulnerable for a time.

Pirate Nyx in addition to Titan and dread we saw at Keynote. New pirate implants. Armour Implants moved from Sansha to Raiders.


Space-Aids to be reworked. Better experience, easier to understand.

Warping to be a maximum of 3 minutes no matter how much bumping/stuck on structure.

Proposed ship - FC command ship. No offensive capability but massive tank to stop FC heafshotting.

Low-Sec/Faction War/Crimewatch

Questions and answers how I heard them and interpreted them, not 100% accurate because of cider. I have to say, after attending these every year, its the same questions and the same answers every time. Nothing seems to change much. Below is Niden holding his hand up for an impressive 31 minutes (yes I timed it).


Player - Sec bonus for killing pirates. CCP - May be? Now sec status have monetary value.
Player - Supers built in low? CCP - Nope.
Player - Killing rats to gain faction standing with Empire? Tags for sec equivalent possible? CCP - Someday.
Player - Boosters as contraband? CCP - Thinking about making all Boosters legal.
Player - Sec status loss in Low-Sec fleets? Sec loss for engaging someone shooting one of your fleet members. Fozzie - Embrace it! :) Also like bubbling FW in null. Working on that.
Player - Buff to Low-Sec industry? Make it worthwhile? CCP - Citadel rigs will have rigs that will have bonus by sec status (low sec better than high, worse than null).
Player - Stations to hand tags in too spaced out. More? CCP - We want you to travel.
Player - Expanding sec status to encourage pirates? CCP considered ships and skins that only pirates could fly. Need to be -5 or less. Pirate only agents but agent code worse than POS code.

Talk of burning the old POS code once citadels replace them gave us this interesting anecdote - CCP cannot fix the wrecked CONCORD station in Yulia as they lost the original model.

Player - 1v1 only plex. CCP - Looked before. Potential but issues.
Player - Warp core stabs in FW. Still no idea to fix basically.
Player - Crime watch - Sentry guns attack supporting ships? CCP - Issues with chaining. Assisting someone, who is assisting someone who then is a naughty boy.
Player - Warping away and back and guns forgetting is bad. CCP - Not easy to solve. Don't want to go back to 15 minute waiting out flag at safe spot.
Player - Empire shoots me as a pirate even though I fight for them. CCP - Same as RL. If a military person commits a crime what happens?
Player - Logi and links on KM? CCP - New record, 28 minutes until logi on KM question is asked for! It's on the list. May be after links.
Player - More spread out level 5s. CCP - Looking at other ways to encourage low sec action. Exploration. Random encounters. Tag 4 sec etc. Not more level 5 agents
Player - 24th Imperial Crusade should be renamed 25th after conquering Matari and new leader. CCP - It's not a new Crusade.
Player - Smartbombs in FW unusable due to standings. CCP - Smartbombs not smart and could be used by enemy.
Player - And the citadel AOE in FW? CCP - Oh.....
Player - Some really random case about war decs and people ejecting out of a tackled freighter then dropping Corp to make freighter also NPC Corp so you would take station guns/Concord. CCP - Erm....
Player - Mines? CCP - reasons for removing them are still here - server load of mines out there forever looking for targets and AOE Crimewatch problems.
Player - FW stagnating. More publicity needed as militias reduced to fighting mostly pirates. CCP - "We can do more... but it's a big game and lots of other areas." CCP Ghost and new NPE could make FW more prominent.
Player - Neut should get suspect flag entering plex. CCP - Talked about. Potential there.
Player - 3rd party impacts on FW? CCP - Discussed in the past. Claim systemms on behalf of Guristas etc. Good idea but needs full revamp to FW mechanics.
Player - Plex to separate T1 and pirate faction frigates. CCP - Yes we'd like to do this at some point plus encourage bigger ships like BC
Player - What about poor the old AF. CCP - We'll nerf T3 Destroyers, they are OP. What about AF having partial Web resists? AF might not be a good solo ship, might be fleet ship.
Player - Encourage SC use in low? CCP - Thinking about. Plex for capitals and hictors?

Lots of FW improvements they'd like to do. Someday....

Random pictures from Day 2:-







 Pub crawl later!

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