Since July, gamers lurking within the darkest and crimeiest corners of Eve Online have been denied a priceless instrument for surviving nullsec: seeing who else is in the identical photo voltaic system. The “nullsec local blackout” meant that gamers needed to communicate within the native chat earlier than they have been counted and revealed to everybody else round, which made it so much simpler to lurk all sneaky-like. Developers CCP Games ended the 60-day blackout right this moment, saying they’ve “seen some substantial changes in player behaviour” and realized so much. Given current speak of reintroducing chaos to the spaceskulduggery MMO, that’s maybe equal components risk and promise.
“The blackout has given us an incredible amount of insight in terms of player behaviour, sentiment and ability to adapt to rapid short notice changes,” CCP said right this moment. “This will help to better inform us on where to take the direction of New Eden in future.”
The blackout additionally put the concern up scamps who use bots to farm supplies, with CCP reporting “a massive impact on those we believe to be suspected of botting.” Bots watch warily for folks getting into the system, see, so not seeing the native inhabitants induced them hassle. Though I’ve learn botters discovered methods to work round this, the persistent devils.
Talking on the Talking In Stations podcast in July shortly after the blackout started, CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar stated this was one among a number of “calculated experiments” that they had brewing. He famous they typically overthink plans, so right here they’re doing one thing unusual and utilizing their in depth datagathering powers to attract conclusions.
“Overall we want to decrease the challenge for new players and we want to increase the challenge for veterans,” he informed the pod. “Eve Online has so many super-smart players that, to some extent, the game had already been solved . . . The end-game solution state of the chaos of Eve Online has been drained into order and everyone is slowly reaching a consensus on how things should be. That is a clear signal to us that we need to increase the challenge and we need to shake things up.”
He added that he hoped Eve Online will “enter into a very exciting chaos era” after an period the place “our sandbox is turning into cement.”
Every week earlier than the blackout, an NPC faction launched an invasion and began attacking player-run starbases. Chaos certainly.
Responses from gamers in the official nullsec blackout forum thread vary from gamers who beloved the blackout wanting it again to gamers who hated it saying CCP needed to flip it off as a result of it was making folks flee the game. No tidy consensus, then. Science!
