First off, since last cycle I've had my internet spaceship bona fides confirmed by CCP, as I was chosen to be an Expert commentator for the 7th Alliance Tournament. You can find all of the videos at CCP's Youtube channel. When I wasn't confusing Absolutions for Damnations and Thoraxes for Ruptures, I was busy talking shop with the fine people of CCP and I think even though we weren't there for the purpose of game changes, there was a good exchange of ideas between us and the Devs.
The timing of the elections this year is a little sub-optimal I'd say, because we don't know the specifics of Dominion, especially the Sov changes. As I said previously, and this hasn't changed, my focus is on 0.0 space and all that comes with it. While information has been becoming more and more available, especially since Fanfest and the SiSi mirrors, there are obviously going to be things introduced and tweaked that will need to be looked at again and changed.
Planetary interaction is also going to be the next big thing in EVE, and as it's still in the preliminary planning stages, player input is going to be crucial to getting it to a point where people like it and want to take part in the wholesale strip mining of planets.
Aside from that, I'm going to bring up the points from my last run that still haven't been addressed:
- As always, Assault Frigates are still by and large useless. They're relegated to gimmick ships for rich people to fuck around in, and maybe it's just the GoonFleet in me, but I like to see Frigates out there doing useful things. They should at least get a clearly defined role. If they're meant for PvE give them some kind of tanking bonuses aside from the resistances, etc. An Afterburner speed boost bonus has been proposed for AFs, but it may actually make them too good (madness!) so I'd like to explore the issue some more.
- Every Race should get a Sniping Battleship. I would propose it be the Megathron for Gallente and either the Maelstrom or Tempest for Minmatar. I'd like to see the Mega lose the Tracking and Tempest lose the ROF bonuses in favor of 10% optimal. You can already see that T2 sniping fleets are going very, very hard towards being pretty much only Apocs and Rokhs, and as CCP constantly says, that's boring and boring is the enemy of good gaming. At the very least the Tempest needs something, which brings me to...
- Minmatar Battleships need a very serious looking over. I'm not a Minmatar BS pilot, but there's a reason for that. The Typhoon is probably alright, although I think it should be given a little more focus in terms of weapons and slots and whatnot. The Tempest and Maelstrom need serious reconsidering though. If the Tempest got an Optimal bonus, I'd like to see the Maelstrom get a little bit of a mass reduction or speed increase to make it a more viable AC boat, bringing it more in line with the Hyperion. If the Maelstrom got an Optimal bonus in lieu of the Shield Boost bonus, I think it would greatly help the Minmatar BS selection with just that one simple change. CCP has said they are changing Projectile weapons, but even with the proposed changes, I think Minmatar BSes could still use some love.
- POS Setup is a useless time sink that is unreasonably stupid. There is a whole plethora of logistics related stuff to bring up, but this is one that affects potentially everybody. There's no reason that you shouldn't let one person anchor/online one module each, or at least let a POS handle anchoring one mod and online another at the same time. Cutting the time for mods to anchor/online/offline/unanchor was a step in the right direction, but there is still more to be done.
- Minmatar and Gallente Recon Ships is one I almost forgot because I gave up on them after the speed nerf. They really need something. I'd like to see a role bonus for the Minmatar ones that made them webbing death machines again, and I'd like to see the Arazu/Lachesis dampening bonuses turned up so that ECM isn't the only form of EW being used (which is what the ECM nerf was explicitly looking to do away with.) At Fanfest these issues were specifically brought up, so they are certainly on CCP's radar. Now it's just a matter of getting it done. NOTE: I would not push for nor accept another ECM nerf as a solution to this problem.
- The Eos needs another look too. Right now, given the drone bandwidth it has, the Drone Bay size bonus is pointless. I'd like to see it turned into a heavy drone boat again, at the expense of turrets. This would bring it more in line with the other Gallente T2 ships, which are split between Turret-based and Drone-based. This is a rather low-priority issue, but a lot of Gallente pilots seem to feel passionate about it (probably because of the stacks of Eos they bought back in the day.)
- A fresh look at the Bounty system. I read somewhere the idea that CONCORD could sell "Bounty Hunter Licenses" which would allow people to shoot those with bounties even in hi-sec. I think this is a fantastic idea, and the system for administering them could be borrowed from the way wardecs work. There has been no progress on this that I've heard about.
- Asteroid hit detection is totally screwed. The bounding box for asteroids is enormous, much bigger than the actual model and it makes navigating asteroid fields almost impossible without running into an invisible wall and bouncing around until you find the magical path back out. I actually assumed this would have been fixed long ago, but the problem is still there and it's still a stupid problem.
- The Zealot should be red. Seriously, imagine that, it would be awesome. Seriously.
As my last point, I'd like to repeat my closer from last CSM cycle: I'm very good at taking input, filtering out the chaff and building on good ideas. EVE has an enormous playerbase and obviously not everybody will want to be on the CSM. That doesn't mean they don't have a fantastic idea that will revolutionize the way we play the game. If I were on the CSM I would look at as much of the player input as I could and help to develop good ideas and give them the time and energy they require.
