YULAI – The Directive Enforcement Department has recently completed initial investigations into the Sleeper drones designated as "Circadian Seekers" and concluded that they are in the process of adapting to perceived threats. We believe this process is well advanced and are issuing an emergency advisory under the provisions of the Yulai Convention.
We especially urge capsuleers not to become alarmed by changes in the behavior of these drones. We recommend that all pilots exercise caution when approaching Circadian Seekers and are sufficiently prepared for retaliation.
Please report any unusual activity to the lawful authorities or your local DED liaison office.Are you one of THOSE people? You know, someone who doesn't follow CCP's channel for EVE Online's game world news? Someone who believes that the game world news is for dirty role players and all someone needs to do is read the patch notes, and perhaps the CSM summit minutes, to keep up with the important stuff?
Well, I have some news for you. CCP has stated (I believe at EVE Vegas, but I don't have a link) that they do not plan to put all changes in the patch notes in the future. Players will need to pay attention to how objects and mobs react in-game as well as read other sources of news like the game world news. If I read the words with my tin foil hat on, the message is, "We're not going to spoon feed you everything. What do you think this is, WoW?"
The second example (the first was Caroline's Star) is the Circadian Seeker, a Sleeper cruiser that began appearing outside wormholes in the Rhea release. Insensitive players began to target and destroy the peaceful little drones. That wasn't a nice thing to do. Circadian Seekers have feeling too, you know!
Now, looking in the patch notes for Proteus, the only mention of the Sleepers is in reference to the new Superior Sleeper Cache exploration site that the patch notes call "challenging". Are the Circadian Seekers part of the reason CCP calls the site challenging?
Reports from the Singularity test server describe how the Circadian Sleepers are "adapting to perceived threats."
@noizygamer @RixxJavix ...to your safespots... even if you cloak... WTB Seekers Cloak Scanner Probes
— Samsara Toldya (@SamsaraToldya) January 13, 2015
@noizygamer @RixxJavix Yes. With ~5 DPS per Seeker it takes some time to lose your pod. No point applied. Dmg might be higher in low/null
— Samsara Toldya (@SamsaraToldya) January 13, 2015
They chase ships off-grid? EVE now has an NPC that actually pods players? And the DED advisory tells players "not to become alarmed by changes in the behavior of these drones." I think Angry CONCORD Guy slipped that sentence in as a joke. He hates capsuleers.
I don't think we've discovered the full ramifications of the new behavior of the Circadian Seeker. Do they follow players through jump gates? How long will they camp a player? If a player logs out, how long before the Circadian Seekers become bored and leave? Can a player go back to the past ala EverQuest and train the Sleeper cruisers around a system, causing them to attack other players? Can a player create a Sleeper gate camp by training a group of Seekers to a jump gate? I think the Circadian Seeker may prove to provide a lot of entertainment in the weeks ahead.
UPDATE: Seems that players still are not podded on Tranquility. Remember, not everything on the test server gets updated to the live server, even when a change is apparently in the final test build.