My feedback to Equinox as a newbro.
I’ve been playing eve for 2 months now and I basically joined a nullsec corp from day 2.
I learned a lot about the game already, got into industry, exploration, mining, ratting, pvp and even started participating in shaping the sov space my corp owned. When I saw an expansion is coming it got me super fired up and excited, especially as it was aimed at “Reinvigorating Nullsec”. I watched all the demos, streams and YT videos CCP published with great interest. I was so hyped and couldn’t wait to get the patch. Woke up early today, made sure my client is up to date so I can log in as soon as the patch hits. And so much for the good stuff…
As soon as I logged in I realized everything I had hoped for and waited for wasn’t there and was not going to be. Watching the demos shown by CCP in their streams and YT videos, we were shown this:
They spoke at length about how the new resources are going to change the meta, bring new mining into null sec and allow us to make strategic choices and build our systems the way we wanted. I even remember they were particularly excited to show us how we can have multiple upgrades in our systems and how they implemented a method to prioritize which upgrades to shut down first in case our Skyhooks got blown up by enemies. What we got today however is nothing like it. We were shown systems with 125 000 - 250 000 power, where you can install tens of upgrades, prioritize them, shift workforce around and make strategic choices with your space. Instead we got a single mining upgrade costing 1750 power and systems rarely even having enough to online 1 of those upgrades.
I’m glad you guys put so much effort into developing and showcasing the prioritization of upgrades to shut down when power would be insufficient in case of enemy attacks. This is going to be a really useful feature when I have to prio my 1 or 0 upgrades.
Now, I don’t know anything about balance in this game and how powerful systems with 5-10 upgrades would be. And in terms of balance, maybe you’re right to make those changes. Still, who’s idea was it give us the lollipop and then take it away? Couldn’t you let us have 5 upgrades but make them less impactful? (less ore / less ratting bounty etc). I don’t know a balanced solution looks like and will not attempt to propose changes.
All I’m gonna say is that for a new nullsec player, this feels like the biggest troll in MMO’s history.
Everyone in my corp feels like this is a massive NS nerf.
Really, who comes up with an expansion that has an OPT-IN nerf as its main content?
Instead of logging in today and starting to plan how to organize the couple of systems we own, everyone in my corp was stunned and in disbelief. Nobody wanted to touch anything and was hoping this was some kind of an error.
In summary: I’ve been playing MMO’s for 20+ years now and I have never experienced a worse expansion day in any of them, where players are actively doing everything possible to avoid engaging with the new content. I’m disappointed.