I see that for other games, yes. It’s a common thing and adds to the whole intel gathering meta. Other games even have official killboards where you can’t even hide your losses.
I don’t think I am trolling here. You are trolling. You literally shoot yourself in the feet with that paragraph. All these data points direct people to areas where people are active and in space. These data points enable content, not prevent it. How much content was created when these data endpoints were not easily accessible was plenty visible during the blackout months when zkill and dotlan turned off as well. Destruction fell by a lot. Your idea of “mystery” is rubbish and removes content, not creates it.
Any of these activities add value to the experience, they give something rewarding back. What you suggest gives nothing back but frustration. Not a single positive thing comes from your suggestion for structure owners.
No killboard info kills more content. If I cannot check a char, I rather warp off and cloak and wait for them to disappear than wait for them to come to me and gib me without me being able to do anything worthwhile.
That’s not a redeeming value. That is literally CCP’s idiotic idea of making the status quo worse by not giving anything positive in return for a worse experience to keep the same. And I have business owning a structure because I keep fueling it when the game tells me to fuel it. I have to log in to fuel it and that’s already plenty of content for something so utterly menial.
That you have a hard time with “thinking” is not a surprise. Take Blackout as example: People started to use intel pod bots on all sorts of choke points to report people going into an area. It took bot developers days to circumvent most of the new restrictions put in place by CCP. All the while actual players were left off worse because their tool for gathering intel was gone.
My point is that it’s not playing the game. It’s a game where the meta is built around who filters and reports data the best while you don’t have to play the game.
CCP has taken steps before to cut down on this kind of stuff with the change of watchlists and reconfiguring of the log server. If it was only the instantaneous part they took issue with them they could have added a delay to the log server reporting notifications. So while yes lots of supers and Titans died because of that abuse, the major complaint was that it prevented content because you’d know that the guy camping your wormhole was online or that a fleet of super pilots just logged in and they were within swatting range.
What I’m asking is to evaluate the meta of the game. Where you play by not having to play… and think of ideas how CCP can do a little better with some cumbersome aspects (like checking fuel for structures easily in game…) and develop the game into a meta where we actively play it.
Those titan and super kills are a lot less impressive now that we know that they had a tool that would tell someone to login to a specific character. That’s my point.
I’m not here to pitch exactly which endpoints need nuking but for players to evaluate the state of the game… what is made easier or possible with ESI and maybe hold CCP accountable for developing the game where you accomplish similar results by actively playing.
Fair point. Only problem is: CCP cannot. CCP is literally incapable of coming up with good UI. If I had confidence in CCP creating a good, usable and not regularly failing UI, I could be excited for your suggestion. But years and years and years of them failing have removed any pico gramm of confidence in their capabilities. They have not even managed to give us a better way to activate new overview items that they regularly throw at us and that we need to figure out how to find and add to overviews. Their structure browser, as you mentioned already, has been in a barely usable state since structures were introduced and has only seen few additions since then. The new fleet finder is annoying to use and the advert creation window it’s so huge while the old fleet advert window is small and easier to use and doesn’t cover your entire screen. How long have they been talking about revamping and improving the corp roles menus? Does CCP punkturis even work at CCP still? Have I mentioned the new garbage map already? And don’t get me started on the idiocies that they introduced with the latest patch.
Until the time when CCP shows some UI design skills that lead to good UI experiences, I will not support anything that makes me rely more on their UI.
No, that’s wrong. It should not be similar. It needs to be better. And by better I do not mean that CCP simply turns off ESI endpoints or makes them only update once a day to make the ingame UI experience “better”. The ingame UI experience needs to be just as good as the ESI experience or better. Just looking at the structure fueling example: The list needs to be easily filterable with permanent filters applyable, columns need to be sortable, ingame notifications need to be customizable for certain structures. An overview page needs to show at a glance how many structures you have, a sorted overview depending on their fuel level (eg. x months left, x weeks left, x days left, x hours left). And the performance must be fluid. Not like the current experience of many comprehensive UI elements like Industry Window or said structure browser that freeze when you open it just because you have too many things. Those are just some things that jumped to my mind now that such an ingame tool must have to be usable.
Do you not see value in making sure you don’t lose a structure to something as dumb as low power? Structures have the opportunity to provide so much on top of being content generators. So yes it’s kinda like a pet… you don’t check on your dog and make sure he’s kept for and fed and it will die. It’s a responsibility and I’m fine with it being a responsibility because I don’t believe in anything coming to me for free… especially in a game that is allegedly much more hardcore than other games. So if you can’t take care of your pet (structure) much less bother checking on the furry little thing, then maybe you have no business owning one.
See I don’t don’t botting happens. Of course it does but look at what happened during blackout. Wailing and gnashing of teeth from people that couldnt be bothered to adapt to the new bot meta without local. Instead of adapting you had people unsubbing or threatening to… because they could no longer use their old local reporting tools.
So just like when other things get out of hand, CCP I believe can solve some of these botting issues through game development and feature removal / implementation.
And I firmly believe that this data shouldn’t be available to players in any game. Instead of focusing on playing the game you’re trying to analyze what is meta and play that. It’s a game… just… play the game. Yes I’m asking gamers to not be lazy.
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Look you seem like a nice fella and I don’t completely disagree with all your points. Again ultimately this is about changing the culture surrounding how we play this game. I think there ought to be obvious balance to how hardcore or demanding this game is on the average player and I firmly believe that CCP can learn how to implement things well enough where a large part of your cumbersome examples specifically with information filtering and UI elements are put to ease.
While this thread isn’t a perfect example of how CCP can kick up more organic as there are obvious issues… I’m not a game developer. I’ll leave that up to them, but I think we as players deserve the chance to brainstorm concepts.
The most clear example to me is simply how the Mobile Siphon Unit was made rubbish because of API querying container or hangar contents (or whichever pull it was). I’m sure reaction pos owners rejoiced because that’s one less thing to worry about but it IS interesting gameplay.
Because there is nothing remotely equivalent that doesn’t give you irl body damage. During the Blackout, I pressed V so much, that it broke my keyboard, just to keep dscan up to date. And I warped away and cloaked as soon as I saw some ship or probes on dscan. There is simply no reason to stay if I cannot determine if it’s worth it to stay. All the gate guard duty that people in support of Blackout were glamouring about is a ridiculously menial task that no one likes to do for long. Especially not if there are no added rewards for the task and for keeping your space safe. Goes without saying that CCP conveniently failed to provide these additional rewards for people who endeavored in these tasks, which brings me back that they did not make intel gathering and system safe keeping better with Blackout, they simply made the process worse and this was the only alternative – an alternative that has always been there but much like freighter escorts, no one ever used it because it is an atrocious activity. It added nothing positive to the game (not even for hunters because they were left without prey shortly after Blackout started) and made everything worse without any new or additional benefits for people.
And much like structures, your pet alerts you when it has to go out to do their business and when it’s hungry. Exactly like ESI does with structures. You don’t have to check your dog’s or cats gut filling level to see if they need to go out and poop. They tell you. Of course, there are daily routines with these animals, too. But if you wait a bit too long with the dogwalk, they will come to you and tell you “Get the Eff off your couch and go out with me or I make your home a living smell hell.”