TLDR - I’d suggest for CCP to slow down and take time to observe what’s happening and take feedback. Disappointing events, sales etc feel desperate and send a bad message.
So I followed changes over last couple months, decided to start a new character and get into the game again. It was immediately noticeable that discussion was more negative surrounding changes to null and such, this didn’t have much of an impact on me but was interesting to read. Now that I’ve been active for several weeks I can understand what the negativity about CCP stems from.
Maybe a good example of this would be Triglavians, it isn’t very clear until you actually play enough to see and experience the implications this has on players. I was not aware of the mechanics and what these rats can do, even though I’ve fought them in a BC a few times I could not imagine that they will warp on top of you and attack randomly. This wouldn’t be the end of the world, but their raw stats are absurd - you’re very likely to lose an exploration frigate while hacking a site, you have very little time to react.
So this gave me a bit more perspective into what’s going on as far as game design, if before I was for the changes now I’m understanding why this is a bad direction. But let’s move away from the obvious and talk about what the implications have been.
Skilling Spree feels like a way to manipulate stats for daily logins, it does not feel like a natural and fun activity but a 0 effort one. During the last week at some point I saw a brief sale on omega which I was considering but it disappeared before I got around to it, this was a disappointing experience overall, prior to these shenanigans I was likely to buy omega anyway but after this it just feels wrong
It seems as if decisions are being made recklessly and desperately, both in regard to the veterans of the game and also the “new” people coming in. While I don’t want to blame specific changes for this, I want to draw attention to how the direction has impacted players of different play styles in different levels of risk. I would urge CCP to just stop for a moment and observe what’s going on, take feedback. Don’t rush with arbitrary events and sales, it’s the wrong message to send at this time.