Drone Aggression Nerf and Tech II Salvage Drones Arrive in EVE Online

It is patch day in New Eden again and the big item is the drone behavior change CCP mentioned in the forums two weeks back.  From the Patch Notes:

• The ‘Aggressive’ behavior setting of drones will now only cause drones to respond to direct offensive actions taken by another Capsuleer (player) or their controlled drones. Drones will no longer automatically attack NPCs when their behavior is set to aggressive.

This means you can no longer belt rat, rub Abyssal pockets, defend your mining ship, run missions, or clear null sec anomalies by setting your drones to “aggressive” and letting them do their thing.  Drones will still attack live players, but you will have to target NPCs and send your drones to attack them one by one.  Learn to unironically press F.

That last, null sec anomalies, is the obvious target of the change and is the latest is a long round of nerfs to sov null space. The stated objective is to make ratting a game play style that requires attention.  But that seems to miss the point people have made in the past, which was that if it were interesting game play people would pay attention in the first place.

Players who just ran anomalies while AFK will stop while botting scripts will get updated to target and carry on.  In the end this cunning plan will likely allow CCP to ban anybody caught running anomalies because they will almost assuredly be bots.

Meanwhile, the joy of last month’s Dynamic Bounty System has now spread:

• The Dynamic Bounty System (DBS) is now active across all Low Security solar systems.

That might actually be a net benefit to the few people who collect bounties in Low Sec on a regular basis.

There have also been some tweaks to CCP’s mineral starvation plan.

• Added a guaranteed anomaly containing Arkonor and Bistot to all Null Sec systems.
• Added an extra guaranteed anomaly containing Arkonor and Bistot for systems with true sec between 0.0 and -0.5.
• Added guaranteed anomaly containing Jaspet to all Low Sec systems.
• Updated rules governing the distribution of ice anomalies. After an ice anomaly is cleared it will now be reseeded randomly in any of the systems where ice is known to spawn. More than one ice anomaly may exist in the same system.

So there might be a bit more ore in a system near you.  Low sec still seems like a dubious mining destination as I would expect anomalies, if not camped, to be checked regularly by passing PvP players looking for easy kills.

Then there is the big gimme of the patch, CCP has introduced Tech II salvage drones, much to the joy of Dunk Dinkle who has been asking for them for ages.  I am reasonably certain he ran for CSM previously just so he could lobby CCP for them in person.  And now he has his drones.

Image stolen from his Twitter feed

We actually get TWO new types of salvage drones, Tech II and faction, the latter in obvious recognition of somebody.

• The Salvage Drone II Blueprint can be invented from the Salvage Drone I Blueprint.
• ‘The Dunk’ Salvage Drone Blueprint can be purchased from the ORE LP store.

With a Tech II drone that means there is now a Salvage Drone Specialization skill that you will have to train up to go with them.  Fortunately, unlike a lot of such skills, you won’t need to get it via LP, you can buy it straight from the character sheet.

CCP also tweaked the Active Defense Multiplier (ADM) system which dictates vulnerability and entosis duration when you are attacking a system.

• Increased Activity Defense Multiplier (ADM) Industry modifier to make it easier to increase and sustain high industry ADM.
• Increased ADM Military modifier to increase the delta between where the ADM drops to level 4 and the value where the Dynamic Bounty System reduces the output of the system.

For years the message from null sec has been that Fozzie Sov favors the attacker and, now, in the middle of a war, they decided to change it.  I’ll be interested to see who each faction thinks this will favor.  Does it favor Goons, who are on the defensive?  Or does it favor PAPI as they now hold so many ihubs in Delve that will more difficult to take back.  I’ll let them fight that out on /r/eve and the forums.

The Patch Notes also indicate that full Japanese localization is now live in the client.  I wish I could read enough Japanese to follow the forum thread that will point out the unfortunate errors.

Finally, the award for most cryptic entry in the Patch Notes goes to:

• Updated Daily Login Rewards to make getting Skillpoints more visceral and understandable.

I don’t know what it means, but I guess I’ll find out when I hit the 30 day login reward.  But my gut says that giving people something for just logging in is never going to be “visceral” in any sense of the word.

Otherwise, there are the usual range of fixes that go into any update.  That patch has gone live and the information is at the usual locations below:

• Patch Notes
• General Feedback
• Known Issues

EVE Online Gets the Gathering Storm Login Campaign

With the coming of the new EDENCOM ships CCP has a couple of events planned, the first of which is the Gathering Storm.

The coming arcing vorton projector weapon illustrated

This comes in the form of yet another login campaign and runs from today, June 9th, through to downtime on June 15th, during which Alpha and Omega clones can log in daily to collect five different rewards.

The rewards menu

Alpha and Omega clones alike get some skill points and gift boxes.  Omega clones alone will get skill books for the new weapon system and two of the three coming ships.

You just have to log in for five of the six days of the even to collect them all.  When this event is over the next one will begin.

EQ Aradune Server Remains Over Crowded

In addition to launch day problems on Wednesday, the Aradune “Truebox Dedicated Progression” server remains over crowded.

Nostalgia goes live

Rather than being able to simply log in and adventure, players are finding long queues most hours of the day.  Daybreak has spent some time in the past creating a structure that could absorb more players on these special servers, adding the ability to spawn multiple versions of popular zones and creating a login queue for the launcher.  But the draw of a fresh new, true box progression server remains a bigger draw than they can handle.  The following statement was issued on the forums this morning:

We know lots of you are excited to play on Aradune, and wanted to provide an update. We’ve been monitoring queue times for the server closely and at this time we’re at the maximum capacity it can safely handle. We have noticed, If you have a flexible play time, there have been little to no queues between 12 AM and 7 AM PDT. We have made changes to the AFK timer to improve queue flow and are continuing to look at further improvements to reduce queue times during peak hours.

This does not apply to the Rizlona server, which also launched on Wednesday.  Logging into the game on that server is not nearly as difficult.

Aradune is, of course, a special name, being the handle EQ developer Brad McQuaid used in game, and was no doubt chosen to remember his passing last year.  That no doubt drives a bit of the desire to be on that server.

Also, the Rizlona server is not a “True Box” server, allowing players to multi-box if they like, a practice that has angered some players who have been quite vocal in the forums about Daybreak needing to do something about this sort of thing.  That has probably driven people to choose Aradune over Rizlona as well.

The question now is whether the pressure on the Aradune server is something Daybreak can manage until the population spreads out and the initial enthusiasm wears off, at which point the queues will likely disappear, or if they will need to add an additional server, the old school way to solve this sort of problem.

Adding a new server inevitably ends up with the second server being low population after a while, necessitating a server merge down the road.  We shall see which path Daybreak chooses.