Some love it, some hate it. Your author is in the latter camp - weird, for his personal circumstances are such that he cannot partake in null sec battles of sov. Be it entosis trolling or whacking the mole.
In truth he does not understand it.
"But Absence that can be said of a great many of things", you point out.... " and just because you don't understand it does not mean that its not a valid mechanism to control sov" you continue.
You're right, and you're right. Don't get me wrong, I get the mechanics. It is the why I do not get.
At all.
To me it is just an incident pit of bad thinking, bad planning and panic. Your author is of the solemn opinion that Aegis Sov is an explicit product of Do Something Syndrome.
Yes dear reader. Doing something for the sake of doing something because some vocal minority has shouted hard enough for long enough.
"We all have moments where we fall victim to the curse of Do Something Syndrome. In fact the modern organization is full of do something syndrome. The key is to try and realize when we are doing it and back away"
Shane Parrish on The Farnam Street blogBecause your author is by nature a lazy bugger it is easy for him to subscribe to the concept of Primum non nocere. That and the fact that he lacks the wherewithal to figure out what to do in even the simplest of calls to action means that he in fact does very little. A trait that has served him well.
I have said this before - Aegis sov feels rushed. Incomplete. Figure-it-out-as-we-go like. CCP is coming around to tacitly admitting this.
"Long story short, we have had long meetings about the structure attack system, and came to the conclusion that, while Entosis Links do indeed achieve our design goals for the Citadels, they are not actually delivering an experience we are satisfied to provide."
- By Team Game of DronesWe have seen this too, with first the speed nerf on entosis ships and reducing command nodes, then removal of entosis links on trollceptors.
Sure the quote by Team Game of Drones is in connection with citadels and not sov, but to my mind it is equally valid where Aegis sov and entosis links are concerned.
"But Absence, this is just a result of listening to players and adjusting accordingly - surely a good thing!?" Ah, yes surely it is, except for the fact that all of those problems were identified before Aegis Sov came to be.
And you're right. There are the proponents of Aegis, and those that like it. And sometimes one cannot know how things will turn out before you actually try them out - I am sure there are a whole slew of predictions relating to Aegis that did not come true. Lamentations that were merely swept under the carpet as insignificant mistakes - forgiven because the critics happened to be a whole lot less prominent than a CCP dev.
And what exactly is CCP to do? Am I now one of those people that you can never please? And yes, this subject is OLD. I should let it go, but I cannot.
To paraphrase the Dixie Chicks - your author is not ready to make nice. He's still mad as hell and unable to forgive and forget.
Aegis to him is fatally flawed. It is a system that does not even fulfil its own stated design goals. It represents wasted effort (in his opinion...).
This perhaps is the most fascinating aspect of it all. Exactly why this should continue to matter. The conclusion your author comes to is that he still cares. For a while there he had to do some serious introspection regarding himself, EVE and bitter vet syndrome.
In this it seems I am in good company - I presumptuously hold as evidence a candidate I would never have though capable of bitterness - the inimitable Sugar Kyle:
I have refused to fly Hurricanes since the nerf almost three years ago because I refused to add to any stats that said Hurricanes where being used as often as pre-nerf. And I've whined about them a lot since then. I couldn't even go, "I'm done talking about them," because really I wasn't. I was bitter and mostly bit my tongue because frothing bitterness wasn't going to make things go back to how they used to be
This in context of the latest battle cruiser buff. What a nice example of a personal protest (and it worked too!! ;-) ). If only I was smart enough to think of that.
Now where Aegis is concerned, your author will have to move on. It is a fait accompli and by the looks here to stay. And he will. It is however to him ok to protest against it some more ;-)
The 'why' of Aegis Sov is to break up the stagnation in nullsec; part of the reason that you're struggling to understand it might be that (based on your 'what you know that ain't so' post) you've interpreted the 'blue donut' concept differently from some of us.
ReplyDeleteI'm not aware of anyone ever claiming that ships weren't dying in nullsec; the idea behind the 'blue donut' allegations was that there were no strategically meaningful fights occuring. Roaming gangs could hunt ratters and shoot each other all they liked, but neither side would ever do something which could damage their positions as the top dogs in nullsec.
That's not absolutely accurate, of course - big battles and wars did occur occasionally - but there were a number of accords between the major nullsec powers explicitly aimed at maintaining the status quo, and by and large they did a good job of keeping the situation stable.
Added to that, structure HP mechanics meant that to hold Sov against a major power you had to be able to defeat their supercap fleets in a pitched battle. Since the only people who could do that were other major powers with their own supercap fleets, and building a supercap fleet required holding Sov, that created a situation where a few organised groups could sit there and hold the entirety of Sov Null, and there was nothing anyone outside the circle could do about it. That's not a healthy dynamic.
Permit me a rephrase. "It is the why this format of sov at this time I don't get"... There weaselled out of it.
DeleteI disagree with the Aegis sov mechanics themselves and the rushing of it. Of course I realise that I may be wrong on both counts - many people like the Aegis sov mechanics and many people feel it is way overdue to be implemented.
We can discuss the interpretation of the "blue" doughnut some more if you want, but I think the answer above is more central to what you addressed? Let me know.
I was about ready to drop the topic of Aegis sov, but now your post might force me to write a something on what I think is so wrong with it. Even worse I might be forced to put forward my own proposal to govern sov - and to be honest, I don't know what I would like to see there... Always easy to criticise - way harder to put skin in the game and suggest alternatives.
I can entirely understand people not liking Aegis sov mechanics - in fact, if I'm right about CCP's plan that was inevitable - but I don't think they're actually that hard to understand. The problem is that they don't make sense under the old rules, so you have to throw out a lot of preconceptions first.
DeleteYou'd have to ask CCP about the 'at this time' part, but I suspect the answer is 'this is when it fit into our release schedule'. 'Why this format of sov' is easier, though: it's (the start of) a ground-up recreation of the entire sov ecosystem. I think a lot of the people claiming that the mechanics are 'rushed' or 'not working' are simply underestimating how big the change CCP is trying to make is. They see that certain playstyles are being made obsolete, and assume that it's a mistake rather than a sign that, under the new paradigm, those playstyles no longer belong in sov null.
Essentially, the new-model sov is intended for 'carebears with claws', not 'elite PvPers'. The burn-all-the-things hard-core PvP crowd still has its place - but it's as the wolf prowling outside the door, not on the inside of the walls. They're no longer supposed to be the ones who hold sov; they're the people you hold sov against.
As I said, I feel like CCP's goals are clear, once you step back far enough to see them, and that they're following a fairly logical course of action in order to achieve said goals. Whether you think they've chosen a good goal is an entirely separate question, and comes down to a matter of opinion. I personally approve, but I'm sure that some of those who are (metaphorically) having their houses bulldozed to make room for a new hyperspace bypass would disagree...