With every major patch I try to do an article on how it will effect Pro players in the game. Sadly, Incarna is barely worth the time.
Here's Why...
Incarna is basically, the first step toward CCP's goal of making EVE Online more like WoW so that everyone can walk around stations in their rare clothes and brag about how elite their fashion accessories are while chatting all day.
What worries me is that this plus the addition of Dust will make EVE, well boring.
I like to blow stuff up and I can't do that if everyone's chatting inside stations! People already hide in stations too long.
Anyways, enough of my rant here are the changes...
- You get a captains quarters, so you can put clothes on and well... Yeah, boring.
- They updated the noob tutorial. Hopefully making the learning curve a little less steep?
- You can pay cash to buy rare clothing and accessories so your character can look "hot" while PVPing. Yawn
- Mission rats will ECM you less. A good change for missioners and ratters.
- Jumpbridge Mechanics have been changed. This is the only thing interesting about this patch.
- Amarr Cruisers are having their looks but not stats upgraded. They could use some tweaking because T1 Amarr cruisers kinda suck compared to other races.
- Some performance improvements.
Let's talk about the only one that will affect us... Jumpbridges
Now you will only need one jumpbridge per system. This means some tactics that were used for camping Jumpbridges will no longer work (namely a way to bubble on grid but out of POS range).
However, all inbound and outbound traffic will use the same Jumpbridge, so other tactics become more viable. I will be trying some new tactics to see what I can do with this.
UPDATE 6/22/11: I think I misunderstood this change. From what I'm hear the gates still only work one way, meaning that if someone wants to use jump bridges they will have to jump through a traditional gate to get to another system, before using the out jumpbridge. If this is the case, then it's a big nerf to jump bridges and will tip the scales back in favor of small groups like mine. This system is much easier to harrass and get kills from, plus it will make it harder for the mega blobs of null sec to counter small gangs. Overall a very good move by CCP!
Perhaps bombing the jump bridge before ships can warp away?
Incarna is planned to be released on June 21st... Make sure you have some long training planned before that, just in case.
I think that high sec wars/PvP will be a lot harder when the full walk in station happens as now there are time fillers while you are waiting out a war dec. I can only hope that this will push more PvP players into low sec and 0.0?
Next thing they will release PvP arenas and you will have to accept the battle before it begins 🙂