I have talked to several of the developers of the feature. The AI controller was given rules and a bucket of systems that were set aside either for Serenity or Tranquility but other than that the AI Controller decided when and where to strike.
Furthermore, I was speaking with them DURRING INVASIONS. I didn’t make up my comment about them not knowing that Niarja was going to be invaded. I was talking to them at the time.
So, your only argument are CCP words. Which can’t be trusted.
It is easier to claim there is no evidence if you dismiss the evidence.
You can believe whatever you want, but just calling CCP liars isn’t a really effective way to have a discussion. Especially since a lot of people have told me CCP is lying in the last year or so only to surprise pika when CCP turns out to have been telling the truth the whole time. The formation of Pochven is actually one such example of this.
I don’t call CCP liars. I’m saying that thrusting company is outrageously dumb. They say to public what they want to say and what is good for company. If you really believe that CCP would confirm that invasion was scripted and years of content are worthless, I simply feel sorry for you. This is not how business works
Just to be clear: I don’t take any of the sides. I just try to say that company assertion is no argument.
Well, I am talking about specific developers that I have known and talked to in various settings both publically and privately. So either this is correct, I am mistaken, I am lying, or they lied to me. The nature of the AI Controller for managing the invasion system was a very key piece of the technology they were building with Invasions. Having an AI controller manage the event system was one of the big points of the Chapter 3s technology.
Again. all of this is only information that company wanted to put into public. Even if you are best buddy with all CCP devs. They won’t risk own neck for spreading informations behind NDA.
Since you are only repeating same stuff over and over again, like broken record. There is no reason for me to be part of discussion any longer. I made my point and it’s not like I came here to convince anyone. o7
I’m still looking at the changes since my last visit to SiSi so I’m going to set aside those parts of your post for now.
I did not say the question of ‘which systems’ was trivial, you’re putting those words in my mouth. What I’m saying is there was always going to be a Pochven. That is the very definition of a predetermined outcome. It’s a little spurious to say otherwise, since the only way it wouldn’t eventually come into existence on a long enough timescale is if the player base prevented it perpetually. Since the database works the way it does there was no chance at all that Serenity would have avoided Pochven. It’s ‘possible’ I sprout wings and learn to fly before I hit the ground after a fall, but it’s not likely. The entire event was clearly designed to make Pochven inevitable. I don’t think the ‘save what you can/prevent formation’ distinction is substantive in the sense that it only describes the shape of an outcome that is already predetermined either way. This doesn’t cheapen the achievements of either side, because the deciding how is certainly important, but it is absolutely not the same thing as deciding if.
And as I know you know, systems could be re-invaded unless they were pushed all the way into fortress, so yes it could have gone on quite a bit longer then it did.
Careful now. I am being honest about the event; and unless you’re saying it’s realistic that both clusters could have prevented it forever, my conclusion follows inexorably from the facts of what occurred.
I just don’t think this a problem and I can’t imagine anyone being able to convince me otherwise. It’s not enough that literally every other ship in the game can and does blow up in camps across the cluster every single day, people have to be able to blow up the travelceptor too. It’s greed. There we already sooooooooooo few choices for the mouse against something like this. It’s just another example of agency being taken away from the mouse and given to the cat. They didn’t event do that right, because shuttles are inheriting the nullification Interceptors once had. The campers will simply cry murder about the shuttles now. Why are we breaking the game for half the player base just so gate camps can kill interceptors more easily? It’s absurd.
Have you nothing to say about my arguments concerning the agency of geography?
A more succinct version of what I’m arguing, thank you.
To my knowledge this is indeed how it worked.
Again though, you are conflating choosing how and choosing if. These are fundamentally different things.
This is EXACTLY what you are doing when you conflate choosing if and choosing how. You’re basically moving goalposts.
Not true, we were getting low on candidate systems and the only reason Serenity got Liminalities at all is because WE took them.
I’m confused, this is sort of my point. Serenity got defaulted into Pochven because of us. Wondering If I missed something now. scrolling back up
Were you playing a different game?
If you thought this, I got a bridge to sell you
Any given system could only be completed by one server or the other. The Fortresses we got from Serenity were because on that server they brought every system to Fortress. We did not. We took multiple systems into Final Liminality. In the same way that we got Massive Fortifications thanks to the Fortresses gotten on Serenity, they got Massive Invasions thanks to our Final Liminality. What this means is if we had been the same as Serenity and had Fortified every system that came up, then every system would have been a Fortress.
There were only so many systems that were eligible. Depending on who you asked it was around 100, which means we were getting pretty close to the end of all candidate systems either way. I think that for CCP the formation of Pochven was a safe bet, and something they could plan for, but players HAVE disrupted and altered plotlines and development with their actions. My issue is that saying it is predetermined, or anything of the sort really cheapens what was truly an amazing milestone in EVE Online and in gaming. Was there flaws? Absolutely. Did EDENCOM allied players get left feeling (rightfully) cheated? Yup. But what we got was three years of development and work by both players and CCP.
Furthermore to assume that CCP would learn nothing from this, in spite of many interviews and other places where developers have lamented many of these very issues, is pessimistic to the point of being unhelpful. CCP has repeated iterated both in Invasions and in Pochven in spite of many people unfounded claims to the contrary. They are interested in exploring what motivated players, and experimenting with making the universe feel more important, impactful, and able to be impacted by our actions.
To this end it is easy to see how a smaller scale event that involves only 8 key target systems could be seen as an iteration based on what they learned from Invasions as they prepare for the next thing. Development time is long, and so adaptation is likely slower than players expect, but the formation of Pochven is still the last “expansion level” event that has happened. Which means while we are due for a new “expansion” (foundations looks promising) it has been less than year since Invasion Chapter 3 even began.
Either way, you don’t have to have hope, good news is the game will develop how it will regardless of if we believe it will work out or not, there are those who feel differently and who are hopeful. There are those in my Alliance that have been calling this the “Golden Age of EVE” because of all the new playstyles and vibrancy to the game recently. It is all a matter of perspective.
All that said to say this, if your going to quit, don’t forget to give me your stuff first. You ain’t gonna need it, right? 
PS: to respond to this -
What chose how was a series of rules based on the Star Type and some disqualifiers like COSMOS systems. So while yes CCP did choose the rules they were not done so with an aim to decide what systems would go to Pochven beyond protecting systems that would be disruptive. The interest in those particular Star types is well founded both is real life astrophysics and in game established cannon.
So yes, CCP “allowed” it to happen, the AI Controller decided when and where to strike. Some candidate systems never got attacked. The AI knew what systems it wanted and would intentionally attack systems that wouldn’t go to distract. CCP referred to this as ‘feinting’. This among other things is how I know there was an AI controller.
You don’t get to redefine what predetermined means because you don’t like the implications. You also don’t get to ignore the parts of the conversation which you don’t have a counter for. Well, I suppose you can, but it certainly doesn’t strengthen your argument. You keep dodging the actual points of contention we were discussing, and I’d like to see you actually address more of them.
You have ignored:
This is all to say nothing of the wider philosophical questions dealing with diversity of playstyle and the nature of MMO games.
You keep trying to bake your conclusion into the starting premise, and that’s the problem.
Absolutely not! If I do, I’ll keep it hidden as dark money so if I ever come back Caleb can complain about its sudden reemergence in the economy. On the rare occasion I troll I take the long game!
I knew we were more alike than either of us want to admit.
Good post though.
@Ashterothi one other thing as a matter of record keeping. Weren’t all the minor victories on both sides eligible for re-invasion? Where there not like 70+ when both sides were taken together?
A player who demands/argues in favor of the elimination of nonconsensual PvP (and by an extent, any kind of “forced” interaction in the game, such as Trig rats for example).
It still can be, you don’t have to join anyone, but I do know what you mean.
The changes they are making are on the brutal side, they are making a lot of people unhappy, and that in turn is making playing a bit less fun.
I’m finding my self logging in a lot and not having any idea what to do with my self and I’m worried that I’m going to turn into another ship spinner twirling my ship in circles in a hanger unable to go out and feel the latest nerf.
I made the mistake today of going on the test server to see what they are doing to nullification, which for me means my Stiletto. I love flying that ship even when I have no real plan it’s just very fun.
On the test server I discovered that in order to have a really crappy version of it I need an implant that costs about the same as eight of the ship itself just to have something worse than what I could do with a Slasher.
If they leave those changes as they are I won’t be flying Stilettos any more, but I will wait and see, maybe they will retract that stuff, it’s pretty disgusting as it is now.
It’s that guy who always goes home with a pocket full of pens.