0.0 tweaks

We’re going to delve back into 0.0 development in the near future and I’d like to keep you guys in the loop of what we’re doing. There are going to be a few immediate changes coming out very soon and some changes over the long run.

Short term:

We’ve been looking into players interacting and how that ties into movement and security. Jump bridges have become a bit too much of a crutch in terms of getting around, so we’re going to apply a three changes. Basically, it’s become a very easy, convenient and safe way to travel, with little or no downside. That’s not to say you’re invincible when using jumpbridges, but if you’re in an alliance with an intel channel and a semi-decent jumpbridge network, you have a pretty overwhelming degree of safety. That safety is detrimental to interaction, both in terms of meeting friendly and unfriendly players, which is the base of our change. If it’s difficult catching people moving around, roaming/open world pvp becomes more sidelined, which we’re against. On the other hand, we don't want to take jumpbridges out, since they provide a great way of reaching whatever content you’re using quickly. Anyway, this is what’s happening:

The first change is the removal of ships with jumpdrives from the jumpbridge eligibility list. This isn’t very dramatic and long overdue. Basically if your ship has a jumpdrive, it can’t use the jumpbridge (Black Ops ships are exempt from this rule). This change will go in on the 17th of this month.

The second and third changes will go in next month, with the main patch. We will be limiting the number of jumpbridges you can have in a system to one, while upping the fuelbay to 30.000 (3x) to avoid suicide among players who do logistics. We would suggest you start reconfiguring your jumpbridge network as soon as possible.

Hopefully, this will better balance the rewards of fast travel with the risk of getting caught on the way. So you’ll still be able to use jumpbridges, but every jumpbridge link adds a normal gate jump too. Anyway, that’s short term.

Long term:

We’re currently looking into a long term plan for 0.0. I say long term, not because it’s planned for 2014, but because the work will begin this winter and hopefully go on for a while. I think the community as well as CCP feels that 0.0 is in need of a bit of an overhaul, so that’s what we’ll do. The starting point for that is identifying 0.0s weaknesses, and developing guidelines for what 0.0 “should” be. Luckily, the CSM will be joining us this month so the players are adequately represented. We’ll have several sessions with them and hopefully they will be able to contribute to our goal. To give you a quick peek at the type of topics we’re looking at when doing this evaluation (in no particular order):

• Is 0.0 industry currently geared to support the population living there?
• Is the relationship between 0.0 and empire balanced well enough?
• Does the current sovereignty system meet our goals?
• Are there enough incentives for conflict/pvp outside sov?
• Are we happy with movement/player interaction?

We will then start implementing changes that will hopefully end up making 0.0 a better place to live than it is today. This particular area of space should offer a lot more opportunities than it does today, and that’s what we’ll put in. Good things will come. Anyway, that’ all for now. We’ll keep you updated after the CSM visit.