EVE: Equinox Patch Notes And Plans For Null Sec, Daily Quests, And SKINs

CCP over the past few months has moved their main patch day from Tuesdays to Thursdays. The dev blog for today's patch notes didn't only cover the contents of the patch but included upcoming plans. I'm guessing the developers expected a better reception from players for the Equinox changes than what actually occurred.

Player counts are down since Equinox launched

Following all the feedback the developers received post-launch, CCP is going to address three key areas:

• Further improving and balancing the Equinox sovereignty system and structures. 
• Balancing and improving the AIR Daily Goals experience. 
• Improving the SKINR experience for both casual designers and dedicated SKINdustrialists. 

I've spent most of the last month playing Final Fantasy XIV so I'm a little more dethatched from null sec life than usual. Is the main concern about the gameplay around raiding orbital skyhooks? I thought the concerns were of a more economic nature.

The new anomalies saw significant enhancements in last week’s update, and work is already underway to make further improvements and balancing changes to the new sovereignty system and structures. The primary focus is on the orbital skyhook, with the goal of improving the balance between raiders and defenders to ensure that defenders do not feel compelled to take extreme measures to secure their materials, and attackers have better opportunities for meaningful engagements. 

The next issue in the dev blog concerned force projection. I'm used to force projection as an issue involving capital and supercapital fleets. From the dev blog I get the feeling the current force projection issues concern the system of Zarzakh introduced in the runup to the last low sec based expansion of Havoc. 

Force projection will also be the subject of focus, specifically addressing certain issues created by Zarzakh. The current accessibility of Zarzakh from all over the cluster allows pilots to quickly traverse different areas of space, which has raised community concerns about stifling fights and making the map feel smaller, as conflicts can be reached almost instantly through the Zarzakh shortcut. Work has already begun on changes set to be implemented this fall to ensure a more balanced and engaging experience for all capsuleers. 

Personally I think the issue began with filaments and heightened with the creation of Pochven. If the issue involved fights in low sec becoming too accessible ... well, that's the way insurgencies were designed.

Next up are daily goals. The developers wanted greater interaction with the game. With today's changes, I'm guessing players haven't jumped on the chance to do dailies.

The AIR Daily Goals system aims to bring more life to New Eden and reward pilots participating in its vast ecosystem. The goals should be fun, engaging, rewarding and accessible to everyone in the cluster. Based on your feedback several changes have been made with the aim of gathering feedback and data to inform further improvements to the Daily Goals experience. These adjustments see an increase in the daily completion bonus and number of Daily Goals to choose from.  In addition, certain goal types that were difficult or geographically challenging for many pilots have been removed, making it easier for anyone to complete the Daily Goals, regardless of location in space. A temporary weekly skill point gift for Omega pilots has also been added to the New Eden Store, replenishing every Tuesday. Balancing will be an ongoing process, and adjustments will continue being made until it feels just right. 

I was going to write a post about receiving 15,000 skill points a week for visiting the New Eden Store until I read the explanation. Here are the details from the patch notes.

• The number of Daily Goals available has been doubled from 4 to 8 active goals to pick from each day.
  
  
• The Daily Completion Bonus reward has been doubled from 5,000 SP to 10,000 SP.
  
  
• 4 Daily Goal types have been removed:
  
• Scan 2 Combat Sites
• Scan 2 Data Sites
• Scan 2 Relic Sites
• Scan 2 Wormholes

I'll need to pay attention to the daily goals to see if the options became more enticing.

Of course, the big changes involved the manufacture of player-designed SKINs. I say of course because this is the feature that most directly brings in revenue. For the multitude of players and especially talking heads who said in the past they'd willingly pay for corporate and alliance SKINs, be careful what you ask for.

First off, I have the feeling players are not participating in the feature at the rate CCP expected. Here's what CCP stated about the current changes in the dev blog.

One of the goals with SKINR for ships is to create new career and specialization opportunities for capsuleers, opening the gates for budding SKINdustrialists. We’ve heard your valuable feedback on SKINR which is already informing current and future updates to the experience. To give more players a chance to fully explore its potential, the cost and time requirements associated with SKINR are being adjusted temporarily while the impact is monitored to inform the next steps. During this period, your feedback will be crucial to help shape future updates.  

And the details from the patch notes.

Paragon Services:

• Reduced Vendor Fees from 30% to 20% for selling SKINs in the Paragon HUB.
• Reduced Sequencing Time and Cost when sequencing new SKINs in SKINR.

We will monitor the effect this has on the Daily Goals, Paragon HUB and SKINR market and continue to adjust and balance this as we've been doing with everything else that launched with Equinox.

And then we get the future improvements in the system, along with an additional change for today.

In addition, more ways to specialize have been introduced, with a new skill that reduces Paragon Hub vendor fees. Later this summer you will be able to further unleash your creativity in the SKINR Studio. All design elements will be available when designing a SKIN, whether you own them or not, and all nanocoatings can be applied to any slot. This allows more freedom when designing your dream SKINs as you can freely experiment with various elements and then acquire the necessary elements to realize your vision when you’re ready. Additionally, several quality-of-life improvements are planned: 

• The ability to share saved skin designs in chat. 
• More filters for design elements, with direct links to the market or Paragon hub. 
• The ability to activate components directly within the Paragon Hub. 

And the new skill came out but I only have details from the patch notes.

Skills:

• Added new skill “Paragon Relations” for reducing Paragon HUB Vendor Fees when selling SKINs by 1% per level.

That's all the devs wrote about, but not the only updates made to EVE Online today. Here are the rest of the changes and fixes.

Features and Changes

Corporation Projects:

• An information window will now pop up if a player tries to create a Corporation Project with insufficient funds in the target wallet.

Graphics:

• Updated Ancestral Fireclay Design Elements to proper shade of red.

Market:

• Marketplace taxes reduced to 4.5%. Down from 8%.

User Interface:

• Refactored the Colony Resources page so that it should now have vastly better client-side performance and the filtering should be significantly improved.
  
  

Defect Fixes:

Gameplay:

• Fixed a bug where if a player died to or took damage from a Rogue Drone NPC in an asteroid belt or at a stargate, it wouldn’t appear on the killmail and the killmail would be partially broken with empty icons where the NPC should have been.
  
  
• Multiple implant sets will now give FW LP when an enemy faction capsule is killed with those fitted. This affects the Asklepian, Savior, Nirvana, Mimesis, Rapture and the Hydra sets.

User Interface:

• Small Ancillary Shield Booster and Small Remote Ancillary Shield Boosters will now display their size as "small" rather than as "None noLabel".