Metaliminal Storms Arrive in New Eden

With the Thursday morning update, the patch notes indicated that the previously announced metaliminal storms were now on the scene.

Unusual subspace distortions have begun to be detected in nullsec space. The first Metaliminal storms will arrive soon.

For once in game development “soon” meant “now.”

They’re here

They were coy in the patch notes and the news piece they posted, but when you logged into New Eden there was already a storm brewing in Providence.  Like most in the Imperium, I had money on Delve being the first location, just to go along with CCP tradition, but I guess the rotting carcass of ProviBloc gets the first storm raining on it.  The storm started centered on KBP7-G, which is adjacent to high sec, so high sec systems get a bit of the new weather as well.

The good news is that nobody has to build a New Eden Weather site, because CCP actually took the time to add storms to the map.

Storm option on the map interface

They actually put it on both maps, the old map above, which is still the better of the two, and the new map, as shown below.

The storm option on the years old “new” map

I have to say that the storm shows up marginally more visible on the new map.

The new map shows the storm

While the old map is not quite as clear.

The old map shows the storm

Though, honestly, neither is as clear or useful as the logical map view that DOTLAN gives you of space or than more “shape of space” view that GARPA displays.  Again, how CCP can have gone 17 years and still not produced a clear and useful in-game map remains a mystery to me.

The map doesn’t tell you what type of storm however… so maybe we do new NewEdenWeather.com.  So I flew an alt out to take a look.  As it turns out, the center of the first storm is very close to Amarr, being just 10 jumps out.  When I got into the outlying systems of the storm, I discovered it was an electrical storm. (I wrote about all the storm types previously, and the stats do not appear to have changed.)  You get an indication of the weather above your capacitor display, just like in Abyssal space.

The storm is weak in outlying systems

Naturally, the first storm was an electrical storm, because that is the one that prevents cloaking, which is the only big deal about the storms so far.

Closer in, you get stronger storm conditions.

Towards the center, the effects get stronger

As I said previously, the knock to cloaking feels like CCP playing towards those who don’t like cloaky camping, throwing them a bone without really doing anything one way or the other about the issue.

I also don’t think people get how long these storms could potentially linger.  I seen some HTFU attitude on this front, but I will be interested to see how those same people will feel when a storm comes to their part of space and lingers for days, moving one system a day, with the effects out to five gates.  Wait until a storm gets caught up in your region in a dead end path and the RNG keeps pushing it back and forth.  It is all fun and games until the turd is on your doorstep.

CCP said there would be eight storms running, so seven more will likely be spawning as time runs along, with two of each of the four flavors in play at any one time.

And, as often happens, it feels like CCP has missed the risk vs reward when it comes to these storms.  The incentives are so paltry, and the penalties so annoying, that my bet is that most people will avoid the storms if at all possible.

They do have a nice storm effect in space though.

My Ares in the electrical storm

We shall see if that is enough of an attraction.

Oculus and the Facebook Account Requirement

And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like “Log in with your Facebook account!”

–Somethin’ Stupid, lyrics slightly altered

I remember back when Facebook bought Oculus back in 2014 and the panic it tended to induce in people.  The quotes I gathered at the time indicated that some people did not like Facebook.  I am not sure why, given all they had done for gaming up to that point, like… um…

Oh yeah, social gaming, and that crash when the accurtate description of the average game on the service became “spammy piece of shit,” was still living large in our collective memories back then.  FarmVille!

Happy FarmVille Memories

But we don’t hate Facebook as much now… oh, right… yeah, Zuckerberg’s decision that money from people seeking to subvert democracy and spread false rumors spends just as well as money from any other product has not made him any more popular.

At least, however, he seemed to be content to leave Oculus and its VR headset business alone.  That was likely because the VR market has yet to meet early expectations.  CCP didn’t get out of the VR space because business there was booming.  So Oculus has been able to improve its hardware over time as they continued to sell units at a decent, if more modest, rate.  That latest model from them is better, smaller, cheaper, and no longer requires so many connections to your PC.  All of that is likely to make VR more viable in the market.

Things have been quiet enough that you might have even forgotten that Facebook bought Oculus… until this week.

This week it was announced that Oculus users would eventually have to migrate to using a Facebook account to log in.  The full announcement is here.  The crux of it is:

Starting in October 2020:

• Everyone using an Oculus device for the first time will need to log in with a Facebook account.

• If you are an existing user and already have an Oculus account, you will have the option to log in with Facebook and merge your Oculus and Facebook accounts.

• If you are an existing user and choose not to merge your accounts, you can continue using your Oculus account for two years.

Starting In January 2023:

• We will end support for Oculus accounts.

• If you choose not to merge your accounts at that time, you can continue using your device, but full functionality will require a Facebook account.

• We will take steps to allow you to keep using content you have purchased, though some games and apps may no longer work. This could be because they require a Facebook account or because a developer has chosen to no longer support the app or game you purchased.

They are billing this as an ease of use and improved experience, but a statement in that post seems a little more on point as to why they are going this route:

…when you log into Oculus using your Facebook account, Facebook will use information related to your use of VR and other Facebook products to provide and improve your experience. This information is also used to show you personalized content, including ads. For example, we might show you recommendations for Oculus Events you might like, ads about Facebook apps and technologies, or ads from developers for their VR apps.

You will be in the Facebook targeted advertisement ecosystem, which is where Facebook makes its money.  You get to be both customer and product.

Now, does this really change anything?  Theoretically, since Facebook owns Oculus, your account was a Facebook account already.  But I suspect that it wasn’t fully integrated into the Facebook authentication services.  Facebook, like Google and Apple, has made their authentication system available to other services.  And I actually us Google for a few things, as I have 2FA setup on my main Google account.

But would I use Facebook?  With the way that the company has shown itself to be over the last few years?  Maybe not.

I wouldn’t avoid getting an Oculus VR headset because of this, but I also wouldn’t put it on the list of things in favor of getting one either.