Shinies

I bought a Fanfest stream, but didn't get to use it all that often for various reasons. That said, I did hear and see a few of the big things. A week later, here's the six things that stuck with me the most.


- Tags4sec

According to the available literature, the pirate ships bearing the special tags are going to spawn about as often as hauler rats spawn. Being a null-bear, I'd done a fair bit of ratting in belts, and I've seen exactly ZERO hauler spawns. Since January, the only hauler spawn I've come across is a hauler wreck an alliance mate advertised when he needed some help scooping the loot. I sure hope they spawn more frequently in low-sec, or the tags could be collector's items instead of a viable means of increasing security status. That said, best of luck to all those who mine in low-sec. At least you'll be less lonely.

- New gate travel effects

CCP Soundwave hates loading bars. I hate unnecessary flash that slows down my client. If the new gate-travel visual effects work just as smoothly under 60% TiDi and don't cause any extra slow-down, then I'm A-OK with the flash. If a 100-pilot fleet jumping a gate under 60% TiDi causes lag spikes and a 20% increase in TiDi, then no thank you. It's undeniably cool, but at what cost?

- Ice changes

To sum up: Belts will no longer be static, the ice will be in new scannable sites. Once depleted, the site will respawn in 4 hours. The total amount of ice in high-sec will be reduced, placing increased importance on the null-sec ice for maintaining fuel supplies. Cycle times for ice mining laser will be cut by 50%.

Personally, I could care less. However, I've been informed that I might very soon expect to be given a Retriever and told to go mine ice in our null territory. Hurray?

- VR dogfighting

Of all the things recorded at Fanfest, this video may have caused the most nerd-boners. A) It's a virtual-reality dogfighting game using EVE ships, and B) an attractive woman (maybe the only one at Fanfest) got almost as much screen-time as the people who made the game/tech demo.

Aside from the desperate attempt to look cool, the video does show off a great bit of concept work. Add a few more maps, and some more fighters, and you could have something that would really showcase the abilites of the Oculus Rift. With the attention it's been getting, the OR might be the first VR device to actually succeed in doing more than sounding like a cool idea, and getting in on it early could turn out to be a great thing for CCP, especially since they love their....

- Merchandising

That's right, CCP loves the idea of brand expansion. The EVE store is back, we're getting more books, and there's talk of a TV show.

Mel Brooks said it best. It's where the real money's at, after all.

- Colonization

I saw a fair few complaints leading up to Fanfest. The blog-o-sphere wanted Jesus features. Enough iteration was enough, CCP had been iterating since Incarna flopped. Well, I'm pretty sure the 'future vision' section of the EVE keynote counts as CCP delivering a massive backhand slap and telling all the whiners to shut their cakeholes.

Colonization was delivered as a future idea, but it seemed like CCP already has a few ideas of where to go with it. Player-constructed stargates, for example. We got to see a picture of Caldari industrials shooting orange beams at a half-constructed stargate. CCP Seagull also mentioned capsuleers taking over what the empires used to own. NPC null and parts of lowsec becoming sov nullsec?

The ships we saw leaving Earth in the EVE Origins trailer made an appearance in demo of the new archaeology demo, how about some more leftovers from the initial wave of colonization in New Eden? Could we drop a new gate in a system on the edge of the known territories, and find a forgotten colony that was destroyed during the dark times?

Me like.

- Sam.