Shadow of Cerberus EVE Community Forum

New Eden Open D2: The illusion is lost

So, day two of the New Eden Open is in the books, and I thought I would again share my impressions.

First off, those impressions are going to be split into two posts, one related to everything except CCP Dolan, one specifically related to CCP Dolan.  That said, I do want to cover one thing that Dolan said that had me face-palming.  Like day one, day two early matches were again dominated by pretty bad Logistics.  But this was turned around at mid-day by two logi pilots that both did excellent jobs.  In one case, a logi was able to save three out of four of his team's frigates with judicious use of early locking, preemptive repairs, and quick repair-switching when it was needed.  It was a great job.

Even better was XXXMity's logi pilot tofucake secundus.  As far as I'm concerned, he was the MVP of the day: he did everything right.  He opened by putting one repper on each of his team's four frigates right from the outset, then pulling off the reps once they had their speed and transversal up.  He then did a simply outstanding job keeping everyone on his team alive under tremendous pressure through the first half of the match.  He really showed off what a clutch logi pilot can do and made possible XXXMity's victory.

And then CCP Dolan criticized his work, calling out the preemptive reps in particular as a point of criticism.  gg Dolan, gg.  Maybe people who don't understand logi should not comment on how logi should be used.  I'm told that The Reputation Cartel half-joked that they wanted to ban Dolan as one of their two pre-match bans.  It wasn't permitted.  ;-)  Cough.  Moving on.

Funniest moment for me today was the constant switching of audio gear between the commentary section and the matches themselves.  Yesterday, I caught CCP Fozzie ready to take off his headset once.  Today, it happened several times including one quite amusing moment where the "big" screen switched away from Dolan and Fozzie both with their hands coming up to their heads waiting for the camera to cut away... only they were still on the little screen in the bottom corner as they switched.  Several times today, headsets were dropped or thumping noises were audible as the switch was made.  At another point, CCP Soundwave joked that "The illusion is lost."

Yeah, I think so.  ;-)

Speaking of set design, the green screen was slightly better today, but still needs a lot of work.  Ghostly shadows were constantly, constantly visible behind Fozzie and Dolan throughout the day and the fuzziness of the lights reflecting on the gloss tabletop is getting to be very distracting.  Hopefully, the set can be improved with a week to work on it.

Good stuff: much more care today was taken by everyone concerned to segregate the concept of the New Eden Open and the Alliance Tournaments.  Someone either read my comments from yesterday or more likely had the same thoughts themselves and passed it on to all three CCP employees.  Amusingly, it was Soundwave that gaffed a couple of times on this topic today.  Dolan and Fozzie (the latter in particular) were a lot more careful about it.  Nice improvement there.

Second most amusing moment for me?  Elise Randolph of the Why Dash team getting tackled in a Machariel by a Kronos about a minute into their match with The HUNS.  The PL team pretty much completely came apart soon after.  That means that both Why Dash losses in the New Eden Open can be placed firmly on Elise's broad shoulders.

Viewership was down today compared to yesterday.  It seemed to peak at 3900 viewers or so.

Best comp of the day was RONIN and Pixies excellent one (with points for each ship): Widow/17, Vulture/16, Basi/13, Cyclone/11, Harpy x2/4, Sabre/3, Merlin/2.  I'm not a big fan of Sabres -- their sig is so large that it's very difficult to actually apply their very nice DPS.  But I think every other part of this team was a very nice balance of "attack, defense, control", to use the new tourney meta.  It was a joy to watch this team in action against Expendables.  Second favorite was the 8 CAS team twin shield Vindicators.  Those things are completely ferocious and awesome.  I have one myself though I have very few kills in it as yet.  It's a ship that's just as scary for the pilot as it is for his opponent.  ;-)

Finally, I'd like to add a few notes about how bans are impacting fleet comps, particularly since Soundwave specifically asked for comments about it.  I have noted several times on this blog that this is a rich player's tournament, and the bans are one of the reasons why.  Because you have to be able to account for four bans per match, that greatly expands the stable of comps that you not only have to practice in, but that you have to have purchased and ready to go at a moment's notice for a match.  That makes it much more difficult on poorer teams to compete at this level.  Today, the range of ships that were banned was simply staggering.  In practice, I strongly suspect this means you have to have five comps purchased and ready to fly before every match.

I assure you that Rote Kapelle did not have five comps ready to fly before everyone of our AT matches.

That's what I mean about this being a rich player's game.

Anyway, other than one factor (which I'll talk about later today), overall day two was an improvement over day one.  Let's hope things keep getting better as we go along!  That said, I'm not sure I'll be able to watch or comment on next weekend's matches.  As I've stated several times, this is U.S. Thanksgiving week and chances are I'm going to miss much of the proceedings of week two.