Thoughts On The o7 Show

Yesterday's o7 Show probably has lots of people upset.  Not the majority, but lots.  Or, the usual suspects will begin sounding the "EVE is dying/becoming WoW" chant.

The first item on the show, the new Minmatar tech 3 destroyer was interesting in that we now know the ship will appear in the February release.  No stats are known, but the artwork shows the ship is not vertical.  For some reason that matters to some people.

Next up was the replacement for the existing ship skins, Super Kerr Induced Nanocoating.  Instead of applying a ship skin on a ship (which then created a whole lot of extra ship types), the Super Kerr Induced Nanocoating is a license that follows the pilot.  I'm assuming CCP figures that players don't purchase ship skins because they are lost when the ship explodes.  I know I don't.  With the Super Kerr Induced Nanocoating, CCP can make a lot of color schemes and probably sell them to a significant portion of the player base.  I think CCP is thinking of the League of Legends champion skins model.  CCP has certainly infiltrated enough spais into Riot recently to have all of their secrets.

Following a lot of community news, including a teaser for the Fanfest pre-event, CCP Punkturis and CCP Sharq made an appearance to talk about UI improvements.  CCP Punkturis is working on the corporation interface, a sore spot for a lot a players (i.e., everyone who runs a corporation).  What they discovered is that the UI is a lot more complicated than necessary.  CCP Over-complicating things?  I'm shocked, but I'll believe them.  So the goal is to perform a lot of "little things" fixes until the corporations receive a complete revamp.  Roles are also on the table and CCP Sharq seems in charge of that.

Perhaps the most controversial, in terms of potential noise/crying/taunting on the forums, is giving corp leaders the option to turn friendly fire off between corp members.  Everyone looks at the move as one targeted against those who like to go on "safari" (join a corp and then start shooting players until kicked), although the new mechanic will still not prevent corp theft or awoxing.¹  

For me, those were the highlights.  But they were just a taste of things to come, which is what the o7 Show truly is, a tease.  But a good tease.

UPDATE: CCP Masterplan has posted a clarification on the corp friendly fire mechanic on Reddit.

NOTES:

1. Awoxing is the practice of infiltrating a corp, then providing a warp in point to hostile fleets.  As awoxing does not involve shooting at other players, the practice is unaffected by the new mechanic. Remember, every time someone misuses the term awoxing, CCP Fozzie cries.  Or he thinks about nerfing a ship, I'm not sure which.