Lately I find myself actually looking off into space while I'm flying around in New Eden. For the last three years space was mostly the same dark inky place, much better than when I first started playing ( heck, just a month ago I would've sworn it was cool!! ) but still... I mean, just look out of your window!
We all get that. We've seen the purty nebula, the stark contrasts, the deep blacks, the crispy color, the sharp defined edges, the new shaders, models, and other unexplained something or others that make New Eden post-Crucible just friggin awesome to look at. We get it. It sure is real purty.
But there is something else going on here. When I'm looking off into space now, I can see home. It is over there. And it keeps getting smaller and smaller the further I fly away from it. And the place I'm going for nefarious purposes? Why, it keeps getting closer.
For the first time EVER New Eden is an actual place. You can drive thru it and kinda tell where you are headed. And where you've been. Somewhere out there in the twinkly stars is the one star you call home. It used to be those stars were like a randomly generated background not much different than the old Atari Star Raiders star-field. ( And yes, Star Raiders is the direct ancestor of Eve, but that is actually the post for tomorrow! It has been sitting in the dust bin unfinished for long enough. ) But now, even though they still might be randomly generated, they don't feel that way.
One of the biggest reasons is the new wonky Star Gates. They tilt, lean and generally point DIRECTLY at the next Star! In fact you can watch the Gate thingie shoot your disassembled and suddenly incorporal mass directly to the destination star, which is all big and twinkly in the path of said beam thingie.
What an odd and unexpected thing. A sense of place in this vast and virtual universe, a place we like to call home. Huh.
The other day whilst out on a roam, the nebula were all around us. Off in the distance was Cloud Ring and other still un-named ( to us anyway ) nebula. Back behind us though was the one featured in the post image above, which is my own home system of Hevrice. It was much smaller and more distant than when we started the roam. It was actually far away. Really far away.
My point is this. I think the impact of this perception goes way beyond the purty pictures and sense of time and place. In fact, I think this single little thing might very well become the most significant and important change to come out of Crucible. Over the Summer CCP held a contest/event called "Eve is Real" in which players were asked to contribute things that made Eve seem real to us. But we had no clue yet how real Eve could potentially be, how much we were missing this sense of place. You can't miss what you don't know you don't have. Cause we thought we had it. But we really didn't.
And now we do. It sends chills down my spine.
I could almost navigate New Eden without using my map now. Simply look off into the steller distances and see something that interests me... and head in that direction. Like our Fathers before us, navigating vacation without GPS and Navigation Systems, sure we'd get lost every so often. But on those trips getting lost was sometimes the best part, the discovery of the World's Largest Ball of Yarn, or the Weird Hole, or Gravity Hill.
New Eden. One of those twinkly stars is my home.
I was fitting up my shiny new tier3 Battlecruisers the other day and musing on the changes that Crucible has brought to New Eden. A bit stunned, disoriented and overwhelmed by the multitude of paper-cut fixes, the major game-changers seemed lost in the pile at first.
Then, as I was fitting up my shiny new Oracle, I happened to glance at the Zealot sitting in my hanger.
It hit me, that poor ship is dead.
Which made me wonder, what other ships in my hanger are also dead? Gulp. Suddenly Crucible started to seem like a religious death-squad intent on antiquating my personal collection of death-dealing wonder ships! What would it devour next? My Vagabond?!?
For all intents and purposes, the Zealot and the Vagabond have seen their day of glory and will never again be the ships they once were. They have been regulated to the dusty back bin of the hanger, to be brought out only because you were to damn lazy or poor to buy a new tier3 when you were in Jita last week.
The Oracle is twice as cheap as a Zealot, hits for BS damage at better than Zealot ranges, doesn't have the same cap issues and, did I mention, it is twice as cheap? ( It varies of course, but eventually it will be. And while this might be over-simplifying a complex issue, it is the truth. Plus, oversimplifying a complex issue is what I do! ) The Zealot, poor thing, just can't hold up under this kind of pressure.
The story isn't the same for the Vagabond. It wasn't directly killed by one ship, but by a combination of events that put it squarely in the middle. The Tornado started it. Once you introduce a 900 dps warrior that can hit at Drake range with the ( relatively ) same tracking as a Cane, with nano Cane EHP ( close enough! ) you've upset the apple cart. But the Tornado is a tough nut to fit a point on, so how does this kill the Vaga? It doesn't directly, but follow the logic tree down a bit and you'll see why. Once again, it comes down to cost relationships. The Vaga is to expensive. Just like the Zealot, the Vaga is killed by being more expensive than it is worth. Heck, when you can make a Catalyst into a Taranis ( call it a Fat Tranny if you want, but with the right skills the Catalyst is pretty badass right now ) for a fraction of the cost, you begin to see what Crucible has wrought.
After all the Dramiel talk, the nerfs/buffs, the balancing and whatnots that Crucible has brought us. It is fascinating that the most significant changes might be to the overall market value of our traditional thinking. Battleship DPS at Battlecruiser prices is about more than meets the eye.
And we're only in the opening weeks.
I love Twitter. Having banged this around a few times I just wanted to focus the post a bit more on the important point. Cost. Eve is all about risk/reward and ISK balance. I'm not saying the Oracle is a better ship than the Zealot. In many ways it is not. But what I am saying is this - it is much, much cheaper and it does more dps! These are hard facts to ignore. And while the Zealot has a slightly bigger tank and can have a lower sig radius, that dps thing is hard to get past. Especially considering the price.
And that is the thing. Take a look in the comments and notice what Kirith says about the Naga compared to the Rokh. 1/3 the cost, better agility with a damage bonus. Forget the EHP when you can field more of them for the same cost.
Unless something weird happens and T2 prices fall significantly, and they probably can't even do that anymore, the world has changed and it is time to start thinking differently.
And if you are counting on a buffer I wouldn't be so quick. I seriously think this is exactly what CCP wanted to happen.
