Hurricane Hilmar

chaos

• 1a: a state of utter confusion. (eg. the blackout caused chaos throughout the city)

• 1b: a confused mass or mixture (eg. a chaos of television antennas)

• 2a (often capitalized): a state of things in which chance is supreme. especially : the confused unorganized state of primordial matter before the creation of distinct forms — compare COSMOS

• 2b: the inherent unpredictability in the behavior of a complex natural system (such as the atmosphere, boiling water, or the beating heart)

-- from Merriam-Webster

When I first heard Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, the CEO of CCP Games, use the term "Chaos Era" in an interview with Talking in Stations, my first thought was, "Why is Hilmar referring to the development process of EVE Online in such a negative way?" Only later, when I heard the phrase used by CCP in other places, did I realize the phrase was CCP's new marketing tag line to describe what CCP hope to make players experience.

From this point forward, I will use CCP's marketing phrase as little as possible. What we are witnessing now is a reset of New Eden. What I don't know is whether the disruption occurring is at the level of rerouting the jump gate network so Yulai was no longer the center of the cluster, of if the brain trust at CCP headquarters intends to perform a WoW Cataclysm style change. What I do know is that what EVE Online, particularly sovereign null security space, experienced throughout most of July and throughout August was not a period of mass confusion. The players experienced an event more akin to a natural disaster like a hurricane.

Like a hurricane, people want to know how many people died. Yesterday, Ripard Teg published an activity chart on Reddit. According to the chart, while activity in general declined in July and August, the average concurrent user (ACU) mark hovered at 20,000 characters until the August release hit. If the introduction of Blackout acted like hurricane force winds, the August release was a storm surge. The combination of recon Triglavians wandering outside of invasion zones, a historically high number of bots banned during the month, the realization that Blackout would not end anytime in the foreseeable future, and the launch of WoW Classic on 26 August giving disgruntled players a place to go saw the ACU plummet down to 17,000. Or, in other words, the storm surge possibly caused more damage than the initial cloud wall smashing into civilization.

After counting the human cost, the real-world media usually looks at the economic damage. In August, to my knowledge, two events occurred for the first time in the history of EVE Online. The first was the ISK sinks removed more currency from the EVE economy than the ISK faucets poured in. While the implementation of delayed local in null sec regions received most of the attention, the increases in the maximum sales tax from 2% to 5% and maximum broker fees in NPC stations from 3% to 5% introduced on 1 August played a significant factor as well.

The second event was that bounties, the ISK players receive for killing NPCs, were not the largest ISK faucet. Commodities, which include blue loot from Sleepers (found in wormholes), red loot from Triglavians (25.7% of the commodities total) and Overseer's Personal Effects (14% of the commodities total) exceeded the value of bounties by 2.6 trillion ISK.

Summer normally sees a contraction of the EVE Online economy, and 2019 was no different. Overall, the New Eden economy contracted 14.1% since June, the last full month before Hurricane Hilmar hit, to August. This year's contraction is 38.2% greater than the average contraction of 10.2% between 2016 and 2018.

Another economic casualty many players faced concerned their investments. The main investment a player can make with their unused ISK is investing in PLEX. Traditionally a safe investment almost guaranteed to increase over time, New Eden's main alternative currency took a major tumble over the past two months. On 12 July, the average price of a single PLEX for sale in The Forge was 3,937,688.10. Even then, players cried out that the price of ISK was too damn high. As of 9 September, the price had dropped 15%, down to 3,346,808.00 ISK. Overall, the price of PLEX has dropped 25.5% since 29 March, when the average price hit a high for the year of 4,489,980.00 ISK. Good news for those looking to PLEX their accounts. Bad news for those PvPers who disdain any form of PvE and choose to pay for their ISK using their real life wallets.

Natural disasters such as hurricanes usually bring stories of looters and other types of lawlessness. During the current storm, the authorities are, if not deterring crime, cracking down on the violators. During the month of August, Team Security banned 4,369 accounts for botting-related activities and another 2,454 for RMT-related activities. To put the numbers in perspective, Unholy Rage, the great bot ban of June 2009, banned a little over 6,200 paying accounts. While we don't know the subscription status of last month's bans, Team Security did act against 6,823 accounts.

Hurricane Hilmar is gradually losing its destructive power as the survivors of the storm emerge to play the game. One sign of recovery is that the economy only contracted 2.5% in August. The average July to August contraction over the previous 3 years was 3.1%. That's right, New Eden outperformed the previous years' economic performance despite the troubles.

During major storms, some parts of the economy are affected more than others. One can divide the EVE economy into two parts: the RMT token vs the non-RMT economy

An interesting fact is that CCP does not consider PLEX as part of the regular economy. The most likely explanation is that PLEX, like ISK, is a virtual currency, not an object. The RMT tokens that do count as part of the New Eden economy are:

• Daily Alpha Injector
• Large Skill Injector
• Multiple Pilot Training Certificate
• Pilot's Body Resculpt Certificate
• Skill Extractor
• Small Skill Injector

These 6 items made up 33.9% of the economy in August. When PLEX is included, slightly over 49% of the ISK players spent in the game was on these items.

Looking at just the non-RMT economy (everything else but the RMT tokens), an interesting fact emerges. Take away the tokens, and the economy grew by 3.5% in August instead of contracting by 2.5%. The contraction came purely from players not wishing to buy the RMT tokens with their hard-earned ISK. A troubling trend for the corporation with the biggest stake in the health of the RMT economy: CCP Games.

Based on the last three years, the EVE economy should pick up in September. I have my doubts. Just as people who flee a hurricane often don't return home (think the effect Hurricane Katrina had on the population of New Orleans in 2005), I expect many players won't return to EVE due to the massive disruptions to their game play. I also think problems in the RMT portion of the economy will continue and drag down the overall economy. As for the activities that require flying around in space, I fully expect the number of NPCs killed to drop in September, leading to another drop in the bounty ISK faucet. Perhaps growth and activity rates will return somewhat to normal, but for now, I don't see the situation improving until October.

Pavlov's Capsuleer

Classical conditioning (also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning) refers to a learning procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus (e.g. food) is paired with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g. a bell). It also refers to the learning process that results from this pairing, through which the neutral stimulus comes to elicit a response (e.g. salivation) that is usually similar to the one elicited by the potent stimulus.

- Wikipedia

By this time in my gaming history, I have played quite a few MMOPRGs to the level cap: Vanilla WoW, Everquest 2 (The Shadow Odyssey), Star Wars: The Old Republic (original), Guild Wars 2 (original), and Elder Scrolls Online (Morrowind). Currently, when I'm not taking online classes or digging through EVE Online data, I'm playing Final Fantasy XIV. All of the games have one thing in common, besides being themepark MMORPGs. They all have an impressive visual and audio effect when a character reaches a new level.

I'm particularly taken with what I see in FFXIV, Square Enix definitely gives new players plenty of opportunities to enjoy the experience. Currently, my conjurer is level 26, my three gathering professions (botanist, mining, fishing) are between levels 16 and 21, and my eight crafting professions (carpenter, blacksmith, armorer, goldsmith, leatherworker, weaver, alchemist and culinarian) are between levels 12 and 18. If I let myself, I would just keep playing FFXIV.

With the audio and visual stimulus comes rewards. At first the rewards come fast and furious. New spells/abilities and access to new gear and content. As players progress through the games, the effects still kick off, but the rewards come farther and farther apart. Pretty soon, a player is hooked and only needs the occasional experience. Classical conditioning at its finest.

Out of all the MMORPGs I've played over the last 15 years, EVE Online is unique in that CCP really didn't put in all the bells and whistles that games like World of Warcraft and Everquest 2 deployed. First, a game without character levels doesn't really lend itself to flashy leveling experiences. CCP created a rather subdued game, and Aura announcing, "Skill training complete," when a character finishes training a new skill isn't the biggest dopamine hit. Yes, I did enjoy the experience when I heard Aura's voice. But in today's game, much of the training experience disappears and veteran players encourage new players to use skill injectors to quickly join them.

For players who enjoy PvP, the kill report, frequently referred to as kill mails by older players, seems to serve as the reward that keeps players happy. These players will do the most boring things, such as gate camping and POS bashing, if they know they will get their names on a kill report.

From listening to null sec players, one of the problems with the current Aegis sovereignty system is how boring the entosis system is. If the mechanic is anything like capturing plex in factional warfare, I don't know why people engage in sov warfare. One of the fixes I've seen throughout the past few years is to allow players to shoot the control points and generate kill reports for succeeding. There are those kill reports popping up again.

Until the last few years, PvE players had no comparable mechanic. Some would say, EVE still doesn't, as the Opportunites system was meant to replace the tutorial, not supplement it. I think the Opportunities system has a greater effect on new players than us old-timers. But even then, in FFXIV, I have a hunting log that provides me experience points. EVE players only receive ISK. I guess I can't blame CCP for not offering experience points, though. With the advent of skill extractors and injectors, players would figure out how to game the system if CCP offered a big enough skill point award.

If CCP's classical conditioning consists of "explode enemy player ship, receive kill report," then CCP has a problem. New players are most likely found floating around high sec with no chance to kill another player. Back at Fanfest 2015, CCP Rise famously gave a presentation in which he stated players who die in their first two weeks stick around longer. The questions I have are:

1. Is the retention rate higher for those who receive kill reports (or show up as a killer) vs those who only receive loss mails?

2. How do those two groups compare to those who don't receive loss mails at all?

The EVE Online Blackout: August, The First Full Month

You don't have the data to make a judgment on the effects of blackout. I don't either. CCP does.

- Olmeca Gold, member of CSM 14

August was the first full month of Blackout in EVE Online. Blackout, the introduction of the wormhole-style delayed local chat system in null sec systems, is blamed for a decrease in activity in null sec. Others claim a decrease in player vs environment activity is good, because null sec was intended as a player vs player zone. These same players claim that PvE activity has increased and gotten better since the introduction of Blackout on 12 July.

Players are scrambling to come up with data to judge the effects of Blackout. While the data available to players is not as comprehensive as that held internally by CCP, we have access to quite a bit of data. Among the key performance indicators players can access is the ratting and player ship kills available on Dotlan. As I did last month, I will look at the numbers from the previous month, the first full month of Blackout.

The End Of EVE Vegas

Last week I finally decided to go to EVE Vegas and picked up a ticket. Between buying the ticket for the event and booking my hotel and flight reservations, CCP announced the move of the event to San Diego in 2020.

One of the largest changes we’ll be making to the events roster in 2020 will be how we choose to focus on North American events.

Visiting Toronto for EVE North was incredible, and there are a whole myriad of events in the United States that are springing up in support of internet spaceships.

We want to visit more of North America so that we can reach out to more of our US and Canadian player base, so for 2020 we’ll be transitioning away from Las Vegas and heading to another city in the US.

EVE Vegas has been an incredible ride. It kicked off more than a decade ago as a fantastic player created and hosted event which saw developers arrive on the scene and start attending in 2013 – more than a dozen of us in fact!

Since then, it’s grown year on year consistently and we’re confident that EVE Vegas 2019 is going to be the biggest and best yet!

That said, what we’ve seen with the World Tour is that we’re able to meet much more players by visiting more locations. We’ve been bringing the beauty of an EVE event to more players than ever, and we’ve also had the opportunity to gain a better understanding of various EVE communities. We want to keep that theme going, so it’s time to switch things up, and we’ve decided to make a hop right over to the west coast and host in San Diego for our 2020 North American event.

We’ll be going for a different vibe of course, given that we’re going to the south west of the US. There’s a heavy density of EVE players in the area, so we’re expecting something awesome.

Mine is possibly a minority opinion, but I find Las Vegas a very depressing city. I imagine out in the Gallente Federation is a planet (or fifty) similar to Vegas. Places with a thin veneer of flash covering a pretty seedy reality. If I can give a pro tip, don't go out onto the strip before 10 am. Give the locals time to clean up the mess. Walking around at 6 am is not pretty.

Knowing this year's event is possibly the last hosted by CCP in the Mojave Desert, I might enjoy the experience more. While I will probably skip the pub crawl, I'll have to go to the event held at Caesar's Palace in Omnia. I mean, how can I pass up what may be Permaband's final North American concert? The band is coming back together, with CCP Guard making an appearance on stage.

Of course, my enjoyment may increase because I'm staying at the Flamingo this year instead of The Linq. Friends don't let friends stay at The Linq. Honestly, the worst hotel I've ever stayed at. Even worse than the Motel 6 outside Columbus, Ohio. Then again, I liked staying at that motel when I would go to Origins.

I mentioned that 2019 is the last CCP-sponsored EVE Vegas. But the event was created by Goons, and they have no intention of letting EVE's presence disappear. I couldn't image Goons not going to Vegas at least once a year.

eve vegas began as a GSF-run event thanks to Zapawork and after a few years CCP ended up taking it over

after they moved it to the linq we began testing entirely parallel goon vegases which have scaled up each year

ensuring eve vegas happens is a sacred responsibility

— The Mittani (@TheMittani) August 29, 2019

Now, I can't end this post without mentioning a very good conspiracy theory laid out by Wilhelm Arcturus from The Ancient Gaming Noob.

.@wilhelm2451 just dreamed up the most epic conspiracy theory between the EVE San Diego & PlanetSide Arena news today and all the studio filings: rhat Pearl Abyss is buying Daybreak. This is super plausible, right? I dunno how serious you are in pitching it, but I'm here for it. pic.twitter.com/aUNrczpOcR

— breetoplay (@nbrianna) August 29, 2019

I have to admit, when I heard the news the event was moving to San Diego, my first reaction was to look up Pearl Abyss' SoCal office. But I don't think Pearl Abyss would purchase Daybreak. Pearl Abyss is into fully exploiting the intellectual properties it owns. I'm not sure how the IPs owned by Daybreak would fit in with PA's plans, especially as the game company is developing new IPs. Planetside 2 would conflict with Project K, while the Everquest franchise would compete directly with Black Desert Online. Still, the only reason I can see for holding the convention in San Diego is so everyone can visit the USS Midway museum and the attendees can boast of boarding a real carrier.

Still, I have to admit that Wilhelm is much better with his predictions than I am, so who knows? Pearl Abyss did mention player meets as a way of improving player engagement on the latest investor call. However, I think the real reason is sticking a bunch of techo-vikings in the middle of a desert just isn't natural. Except for next year's event in Moscow, I think every event will occur in a city with a major port.

I think I can say this is my last visit to Las Vegas. I've attended every EVE Vegas CCP has run. The reason for going is the people I know and meet at the events. If it was only for the city? Wouldn't do it.

A Quick Look At The EVE Online Security Report For July 2019

As the implementation of delayed local in null sec, otherwise known as The Blackout, is in its second month, now is a good time to take a quick look at the monthly security report for July.

In preparation for appearing on Talking in Stations yesterday, I created a graph to show the amount of July bans compared to the monthly average for the first half of 2019. The raw numbers provided in the dev blog went pretty much as expected.

In the category of account hacking, the 58.8% decline in accounts CCP locked down because of hacking declined 58.8% in July compared to the average for the first half. CCP spent time during the first half of 2019 providing tools to help players make their accounts safer from attack. But reminding players of account security, especially in the age of the skill extractor that makes even very old accounts valuable, is probably the security team's top priority. The dev blog pointed out the importance of account security once again:

We cannot stress this enough – we know how much effort goes into character development in EVE Online, and it’s worth the extra login step to protect your accounts from abuse and damage.

Protect it all. Enable two factor authentication on all your EVE accounts, and on the email accounts that are verified against them.

Most hacking cases that we deal with don’t originate from a simple password breach on an EVE Online account – they occur when a player’s email account is hacked, and a password reset request is sent to the email address, which then gives access to your characters and assets.

You can help keep your accounts secure by using 2FA on both your email and your EVE Online account and reduce the risk of becoming a victim of account hacking.

For extra security, you can also make sure you use a mobile authentication token to keep code generation on your mobile device and away from your email accounts.

To make life a little easier, with recent changes it’s also now possible to use one authentication token linked to all your accounts. You can check out more about this change in this devblog, which was also linked earlier in this report.

Next up are the bot bans. The 62.5% drop in bans for botting is pretty consistent with the data seen both in the monthly economic report and on Dotlan.

We’re happy to report that in terms of the blackout, it seems to have hit botters harder than we expected, and of course it’s made it a lot easier for legitimate pilots who’ve taken up the sport of bot hunting to get out there and surprise these scumbags with direct attacks on their infrastructure.

Ironically, the Drifter assault on nullsec also highlighted several areas where botting was occurring, and the Drifters themselves managed to get in on a few kills that were later revealed to be botters.

Over the coming months, we’ll continue to work with the development team and the community to look at what we can do to make life even more difficult for these guys going forward.

While bot developers try to keep news of bans off their forums, with something as big as The Blackout, that is not always possible.

Seen on a botting forum, 13 July 2019

Seen on a botting forum, 28 July 2019

Finally came the news of an increase in bans for those involved in real money trading. With all the grumbling of players threatening to leave the game, the 20.4% increase in bans for RMT over the average for the first six months is an indicator many players are in the process of cashing out of the game. I did see a decrease in sellers on the popular gold/plat/gil/ISK selling site Player Auctions, along with a 10% increase in prices, which indicated some sort of ban wave occurred. I'll have to write another post after the August numbers are in before I can determine whether the increase in bans is a result of players cashing out, or an increased emphasis on RMT in July.

A monthly security report is probably required in today's gaming market. The fact that I get some additional content to write about is totally irrelevant. The insights we may gain into the effects of The Blackout, on the other hand, are totally worth it.

Bounties In The July 2019 Monthly Economic Report

The July 2019 monthly economic report (MER) came out today and I thought I'd point out a couple of items.

The first is the drop in the amount of bounties collected by players. Dotlan suggested such a drop, but the MER confirms the picture painted by Dotlan's data. From June to July, bounties decreased 39.6%, from 48.2 trillion ISK to 29.1 trillion ISK. Given the trends in August, a total bounties collected total ranging from 21.8 - 23.3 trillion ISK is the number I expect to see in the next MER.

Now for the outrageous predictions. Not only do I expect the game's sinks to exceed the faucets, but I think commodities have a good chance of exceeding bounties as the top isk faucet in New Eden next month. When CCP Rise stated in an interview last week on Talking in Stations that CCP had the faucet/sink issue under control, he wasn't blowing smoke to confuse anyone. I think, at least for now, the faucets and sinks are balanced.

I also want to point out one other fact kind of buried in the MER. Not all PvE is equal. An outsider looking at the statistics for July on Dotlan might believe that most PvE activity occurs in high sec. Or at least a lot more in high sec than in null sec. Below are the top 10 regions in the game in July for NPC kills.

Only three of the top ten regions in killing NPCs -- Delve, Esoteria, and Branch -- were located in null sec. However, when the value of the NPCs is considered, a different picture emerges.

The top 10 regions in NPC value killed were all located in null sec. The above regions combined to collect 52.9% of all NPC bounties in July. Still players killing NPCs. Just not as many as before.

I thought we'd see numbers like the ones above when CCP announced the imposition of delayed local in null sec. That CCP has not backed down from the move, considering the drop in activity these and other numbers in the MER indicate shows the developers are not trying to grab a cheap buck with their latest changes. But we won't know the real world financial cost to the Icelandic studio of the moves until the next Pearl Abyss investors call which should take place sometime in November.

CCP Rise On Why Make The Cyno Change

I have to admit the "Chaos Era" in EVE Online, like most major changes, is passing me by. But the complaints from the null sec whales are so loud I can here them all the way out in Heimatar. The latest outrage concerns the upcoming changes to the capital ship bridging mechanic. 

Talking in Stations broadcast an interview with CCP Rise, a senior game designer on EVE Online discussing the upcoming changes to the game. I figured I'd at least get one answer about the changes posted to the blog, namely, why? What follows below is a cleaned-up transcript of one of the first questions in the interview. I took out some of the verbal missteps, such as the use of the word "like", in order not to trigger Brisc if he happens upon this blog post.

Brisc Rubal: Starting in the September release, cynos will only be able to be fitted on recon ships and Black Ops battleships. That's a major change in the game. One of the big questions we've been hearing from a lot of people, what's the design goal with this change? What kind of behavior are you hoping to alter by making a change this big?

CCP Rise: There's a few different pieces to it. I've actually been thinking about the best way to talk about this because it has goals coming from a few different directions. One of them that's actually really important is just that cynos on their own have been in this really inflexible place where we don't have the usual leverage to balance them. They are sort of separate from the way balance works in a lot of other areas. If you think of other powerful, really powerful abilities to influence large scale fights -- influence small scale fights -- something like dictor bubbles for instance. They're class-confined, they're expensive, they have a clear set of levers and trade-offs that we can use to find a good place for them in balance.

Cynos don't have that. Cynos have been, for some reason, even though its one of the most powerful abilities we can give a ship, they have complete free reign to use whatever cost risk they want and whatever survivability and sort of tactical application they want. So, things like using interceptors is possible. Things using titans or FAX that can't be killed is possible. And that's just super problematic. I've been talking with people at player events or internally for years and years about how this is an issue. So that's one thing. Is just get them into a sensible place that looks like how we have other powerful abilities in the game balance. That's a big goal.

Second thing, which is something we talked about more in the post, is that part of "Chaos Era" and part of the current strategy is just be more disruptive. Especially for supercap umbrellas, especially for capital game play in general. Make it harder, give better risk/reward trade-offs, make it more dynamic.

Cynos are a huge piece of that. There could have been tons of options for that goal on its own. That's a big thing I'm seeing in feedback. If you just wanted to hit the response time for capitals to PvEers, there would have been other alternatives. That's actually totally true, and we considered a lot of those. But then the last goal, or the last big area goal, is what Hilmar talked about with you guys a ton the last time he was on here. I'm just going to take the opportunity to read his direct quote, which is:

"We want you on your toes. We want you to feel like the blanket is being pulled out from under your feet every single week. Your heart rate is going up. You need to take stress medicine to keep focused."

While that didn't on its own drive -- that's not why we made a change to cynos -- but that's why we chose a really extreme solution. Is that the overall strategic goal right now is to lean towards bigger changes, lean towards more disruption. And so, with all those combined, we wind up with this change.

And as far as behavior we expect to change, that's another whole complicated question. There's parts of it are pretty easy to anticipate. The simplest one is that we don't want Rorquals to be able to cyno freely a fleet in to defend them anytime they are attacked. It's pretty obvious that won't be possible now. You'll either have to have an alt there that is vulnerable to being killed, or a friend. Hopefully not an alt. So that behavior definitely changes.

But when you start talking about how escalations work, or how logistics work, it's much harder to say exactly what will happen or what we expect or want. I think mostly we want a shifting meta where people have to solve these problems and where we have new things we have to figure out and fix afterwards. 

I may transcribe one or two more of CCP Rise's answers to some of the questions asked. I thought the interview with CCP Rise was better and more informative than the one conducted with Hilmar back in July. Given some of what I'm reading and hearing, I think I may want to do so just so I have something to link back to.

Novator Partners, Hilmar Pétursson Invest In Lockwood Publishing

I thought with the sale of CCP Games to Pearl Abyss, I was finished writing about Novator Partners. The English private corporation, owned by Iceland's richest man, Thor Bjorgolfsson, specializes in telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, and financial services.  Novator was also the largest investor in CCP Games, with the Icelandic game company being one of the few assets Thor retained following his bankruptcy as a result of his role in the Icelandic banking collapse in 2008.

According to published reports, Novator is back in the gaming business. Lockwood Publishing, makers of the social mobile game Avakin Life, recently completed a round of investment funding which disclosed some interesting investors. In addition to Novator, CCP Games' current CEO, Hilmar Pétursson, also invested in the company. According to Gameindustry.biz, Former Unity CEO and co-founder David Helgason was also named at chairman of the board. Pocketgamer.biz reported that Helgason invested additional money on top of his initial investment made in 2017.

What is Avakin Life? From the little I know, it looks like Second Life. The description on the Avakin Life website:

Avakin life is free to play 3D mobile app with a huge online virtual community where you can customise your avatar with the hottest fashion trends and hairstyles, make friends, chat, customise your own apartments, visit amazing social spots, listen to your favourite music and own the dance floor with hundreds of dances and poses right at your fingertips!

I was looking for a video to explain Avakin Life more. I think the video for the official Avakin Life YouTube channel might explain the game best.


I'm not advertising the game, as I not only do my best to avoid all things Facebook, but urge everyone else to do the same. But I do think that the largest institutional and individual shareholders in CCP Games before the sale to Pearl Abyss, a studio known for producing a hardcore sandbox MMORPG, putting their money into a studio that produces a social, Second Life-type game is quite amusing. Then again, with over 1 million daily average users, I can't really blame them.

Making EVE A More Dangerous Place - August 2019 Edition

Once again, CCP is shaking up the sandbox we call EVE Online. Some may call the recent round of changes "The Chaos Era", but that's just marketing talk. I'd call the moves a correction for some changes made over the course of time. Every so often, MMORPG developers evaluate the direction of a game and nerf some things. EVE is no different. What some players may consider different is that the devs are bringing change to all parts of the game.

High sec experienced a change Tuesday with the introduction of Triglavian recon ships roaming outside of invasion zones in high sec. Fortunately for high sec dwellers, Triglavian recon ships are not the same as the tech 2 cruisers capsuleers fly.

The only Recon NPCs are Renewing, Starving Blinding and simply Recon. All are Damaviks.
Spawns vary but it looks like up to 4 at once. That tends to be 2 Recons which are similar to Liminal Damaviks best damage to deal is Thermal. @tweetfleet

— Annisir Kaugan (@Annisir_Kaugan) August 14, 2019

Damaviks are Triglavian frigates for those unfamiliar with the terminology. The two plain recon ships will bring DPS while the others are set up for logistics (Renewing), energy neutralization (Starving), and sensor damping (Blinding). Just be careful because, unlike normal belt rats, the Triglavian AI will target drones if the ship does not present a big enough threat. But with no Anchoring Recons present, players are free to just warp off. Assuming they are not AFK.

Triglavians Ate My Drones

Apparently, botters are not happy the Triglavians like to attack drones. The above post was from a disgruntled Orca botter who, while he didn't lose his ship to the Triglavians, lost all his drones as the bot released combat drones in order to take care of the threat. The Triglavian recon ships basically ate his drones for breakfast. Now, he refuses to undock and bot until the bot maker releases a new version that handles the situation. But is that any reason to call the Triglavians names?

Also on Tuesday, CCP Rise announced on Twitter a change long requested by players in factional warfare.

Small announcement #tweetfleet - In the September release ventures will no long be able to capture FW plexes

— CCP Rise (@CCP_Rise) August 13, 2019

Back in the Into The Abyss expansion in May 2018, CCP removed the ability of ships fit with warp core stabilizers to enter factional warfare complexes. Those pilots wishing to have the effect of the WCS would then fly the Venture, which has a built-in +2 bonus to warp core strength. Instead of nerfing the ship's bonuses, CCP is making a change next month to the ship's ability to capture FW complexes. Hopefully, we will find out in CCP Rise's interview on Talking In Stations if the change will lock the Venture out of complexes. I imagine not, as large FW complexes do not have acceleration gates.

The final bit of news affects both low and null security space. I imagine null sec will see the biggest change in everyday game play. CCP Rise posted yesterday on the official forums:

This September we are planning two large changes for Cynosural Fields:

• Cynosural Field Generator I can only be fit by Force Recon Ships and Black Ops Battleships (note: these classes can still fit covert cynos)

• Jump Freighters can jump to Covert Cynosural Fields

During this era of chaos we are eager to introduce new challenges for veteran pilots while working towards a deeper and more balanced capital meta. Historically, cynos have been extremely flexible. They can be used on flocks of alts at nearly no risk or used by the largest and strongest ships in the game. With few options for cyno disruption, capital response time and power has grown to the point that it’s oppressing activity. This change will make it more complex and demanding to get capitals to the field quickly and give more strategic options for those wishing to disrupt capital response.

While most of the impact from this change is on combat, we are sensitive to the effect on Jump Freighters and logistics overall. Jump Freighters will be allowed to use Covert Cynos which can be activated by cheaper hulls like Covert Ops Frigates. This may need further attention and we will be watching this area very closely.

Fly safe o/

I wouldn't consider the cyno change an element of chaos so much as fixing a problem introduced in the expansion of the Alpha skill set in December 2017. In addition to giving free-to-play characters the ability to fly battlecruisers and battleships and train into pirate faction ships, CCP made what I consider a mistake. The change of the level of CPU Management an Alpha could use from level 4 to level 5 meant Alpha characters could now fit a Cynosural Field Generator I.

Oh good. Free cyno alts for everyone. Yes, CCP set up a system that prevented Alpha and Omega accounts from running on the same computer. I've even accidentally tested the feature. However, the feature doesn't work if a player uses multiple computers. VPNs anyone? Considering how often, and for how long, the problem has appeared on the EVE Online sub-Reddit, I think I'm safe mentioning the exploit. Also, since it is an exploit, DON'T DO IT!

UPDATE: Alphas cannot train Cynosural Field Theory. All the change meant was that you didn't need to be subscribed in order to train CPU Management to 5.

Perhaps I'm a bit too cynical. The change does give Force Recons and Black Ops battleships a required role, especially in null sec. After all, the blackout gave a boost to Combat Recon ships, so why not give a couple of other ship classes some love? I'm not sure how much the change will affect Rorquals. Sure, they won't fit cynos themselves, but with the panic module timer, can a group get the proper ship into position to light a cyno in time to save the huge ship if it comes under attack?

Some would say a nerf to the Rorqual's abiltiy to protect itself by lighting its own cyno would help correct another problem. When the ship was massively buffed in the Ascension expansion (which also introduced Alpha accounts) in November 2016, many players pointed out how overpowered the Rorqual became. CCP has steadily nerfed the ship ever since.

I guess I should also mention that the price of cyno ships will go up tremendously, as tech 2 cruisers and battleships are not cheap. Expect cargo transportation prices to go up accordingly.

The above are just my thoughts on the current and upcoming changes. I thought I should put my thoughts down now as Matterall is interviewing CCP Rise today for the Talking in Stations podcast, with the release probably tomorrow. This way, we can see how wrong (or right) I really am before hearing the official answers to everyone's questions.

EVE Online Financial Performance In Relation To Other Games

A long-standing meme amongst EVE Online players is that EVE is dying. But a funny thing happened when Pearl Abyss purchased CCP. We now get to see how well the EVE IP is performing financially. Since Pearl Abyss breaks out financial information by intellectual property, we get to see how well (or poorly) EVE Online is doing, at least until the mobile game EVE: Echoes launches.

Q2 2019 earnings from the NCSoft

I saw Jason Winter, a games journalist who currently writes for, among other places, MMOBomb.com, tweeting about the revenues for Guild Wars 2 and EVE. I've followed Jason's work since his Gamebreaker days and thought I'd take his idea in a slightly different direction. Instead of comparing casual vs hard core games, how about revenue generated by games run by two Korean companies.

Just as an FYI, my initial thought on this wasn't to say "GW2 better than Eve lol" but to be a little confused over the "Casual games are all the rage, it's all companies should make" vs. "Companies should make more hardcore games rather than appeal to casuals" dichotomy.

— Jason Winter 🥔 (@winterinformal) August 12, 2019

I took all of the NCSoft games, with the exception of Lineage, and converted their revenue from the Korean won to the U.S. dollar. That might give some idea of the health of EVE, right?

EVE vs NCSoft (minus Lineage)

Yes, EVE only beats Aion in revenue for the first half of 2019. But I can't help but think if CCP and NetEase had managed to get Serenity up and running in China again, EVE would actually beat Guild Wars 2's performance. If anyone had said that, outside of China, EVE was performing financially as well as GW2, would anyone have believed that statement?