[Jester's Trek] It's only rock 'n' roll (but I like it)
It's only rock 'n' roll (but I like it)
The patch notes are out for Kronos and as is my custom, I'd like to go through them and point at things I like and don't like. And as I go through the list, it's rather interesting how nearly everything the least bit contentious has been pushed back to Crius. Kronos turns out to be an unassuming little release, full of lots of fun little items that will make just about anyone smile.
Let's touch on the major stuff.
Audio customization. This one's a big win, and lets you pick and choose those sounds that you wish to hear and those you don't. I'm a bit of a mutant in that I play EVE with sounds on. I find that it helps both immersion and situational awareness, particularly if I'm flying something small and fast (which is most of the time). That said, the jump tunnel sound effect is overwhelmingly loud and annoying for me. In addition, most FCs are issuing orders as you're going through a jump gate or a titan bridge into a battle and this particular sound effect makes those orders tough or impossible to hear. So it will be great to be able to turn this off without that impacting everything else.
Pirate ship rebalance! Yes, please! My particular favorites, in rough order: Ashimmu, Gila, Nightmare (for PvE), Rattlesnake, Bhaalgorn, Succubus, Machariel, Cruor. My least favorites, in rough order: Vigilant, Cynabal. The rest, I'm pretty much neutral on. So way more good than bad in this group, for my money. Can't wait to get busy refitting and trying them out!
Freighter and jump freighter low slots. The change is more boring than rigs, but I guess I can live with it. I don't see it doing much to jump freighters, but it will make freighter fitting more interesting.
Deep space transports and Blockade runners. DSTs? Don't care. I'll buy a couple, but it will be for a stupid reason: so I can put them into my travel carriers and in so doing have the option of carrying another 50-60k of cargo in my carriers or Rorqual. But actually fly the thing? No, not very likely. The blockade runner changes, though? Thumbs way up! There wasn't much wrong with these ships and the little tweaks plus the additional high slot make them more fun and useful. That warp speed change is just flat nifty even though I now have to train Transport Ships to more than Level II.
EDIT (30/May/2014): And now I'm told in comments that DST fleet hangars full of mods won't be able to be stored in carriers after all... charges only. Which means I don't have to buy any DSTs. I'll stick to a couple of Hoarders in my carriers which do the same exact thing and are T1.
Mining barges and exhumers. Don't much care. I don't see it making a lot of difference. Maybe CODE will leave Skiffs alone, maybe they'll gank more of them just to make a point.
Phoenix and Citadel missiles. Don't much care. It'll sell a few of these dreads to Caldari and missile fan-boys but I just can't see these changes making that much of a difference. Phoenix will still be the worst dread for most applications except hysterical shield tanking. That's becoming a thing, I guess.
Various exploration fixes. The big one is the death of the lootsplosion. Thank Heaven!
Mid-grade pirate implants. I'm not quite sure I see the point to this, but it does mean I won't worry quite so much when Ripard is in his one low-grade Snake set. I'm usually in a hurry to get out of that implant set as soon as I can because it feels like he's training slow. ;-)
Medium micro jump drives. OK, this is the one feature in Kronos that I just don't care for. I think they're going to be over-powered on command ships, both in mid-grade fleet doctrines and in the upcoming Alliance Tournament. More modules that make tackling and destroying ships harder is just not a good thing in EVE, in my opinion. They were introduced into the game for DSTs but they're not very useful at all in that application: why would you wait out a 12 second MMJD cycle when you can just do a 10-second MWD-align-and-warp cycle? I suspect I recognize what's being done here: CCP Fozzie wants to encourage more BC use. But this is the wrong way to go about it, I think.
Hyperspatial accelerators. My opinion of these is going to depend heavily on drop rate. Hopefully they will be common enough that you can fit them to freighters pretty routinely. We'll know more about this in a few months. I really really like the idea! It's going to be the implementation that decides this one.
Hull rigs. These should have been stripped when freighter rig slots were. But they're not objectionable in and of themselves. Just mostly useless.
Drone changes. All in all, I'm positive on these changes! I still say drone assist on sentries should have been murdered in its bed, but I was quite literally outvoted. So we'll see what 50-drone assist does. I do like the faster medium and heavy drone MWD speeds, I like drone skills being adjusted to be more new player friendly, and I can even live with the new drone skill. I'm not sure I'm as big of a fan of fighters and FBs receiving the benefit of drone modules: I think this is mostly going to be a buff to super-powers and ratting, two areas that didn't exactly need a buff. But the rest, I like!
New Eden Store. Call me neutral on this one, waiting to see where it goes. I'm positive about the concept but again this is going to come down to implementation and more importantly, follow-through.
Factional warfare changes. I don't know enough about FW to know whether these are good or bad things.
Mordu's Legion ships. Again, this is going to come down to spawn rate, and ultimately, price. If they settle in at the same price as the Angel ships, say, then call me very positive on this one. But if an Orthrus ultimately costs the same as a Vigilant, then I'll be much less enthused. As I've mentioned, these ships dropped right into a pretty crowded niche. I'm enthusiastic about a kiting missile ship, don't get me wrong. But at a high price-point, player enthusiasm for these ships is going to wear down pretty quickly. And I'm still not a fan of the Garmur.
Prospect. Yeah, it's OK, I guess. I'm not thrilled at the additional skill book, for no other reason than it means I'll almost certainly never fly this ship.
Upgraded graphics and some new ship skins. I'm a big fan of the new Moa and Condor models! Very very pretty! The Typhoon is OK. Unfortunately, I feel like the pirate BC/destroyer skins are going to be nothing but hangar queens, which is an enormous shame because some of those ships are gorgeous.
UI changes. And finally, I love pretty much every single thing that CCP karkur and CCP Punkturis have planned for Kronos. My particular favorite is the reload timer for modules, with color-coding broadcasts in second place, and weirdly (since I don't mine any more), the lock indicator on the survey scanner being third. I also like the repair progress bar for nanite repair paste though I have this suspicion that most of the time I won't notice it. ;-)
And that's pretty much it! Lots and lots of interesting stuff in here, and I like nearly all of it! Bring on Kronos!
Source: It's only rock 'n' roll (but I like it)