I'd like to request a dev blog, a "state of the game" address. It's coming up on four months since launch and I suspect I'm not alone having started with a one-month subscription and then adding another three months when I liked what I saw. But things have changed...

Now I find myself spending more and more time doing things I don't enjoy just to set myself up for the things I do enjoy (which over the course of a few patches and simple changes in player behavior, I enjoy less than before).

Devs create mechanics; how players use those mechanics determines gameplay. I've recently made a few posts expressing my views on several of what are, for me, core gameplay elements. No doubt other people with playstyles and objectives that vary from mine have done the same.

I'm looking forward to the patch on Friday because, frankly, I want change. The PvE experience I think should be the top priority, even above the PvP elements that were the topics of some of my posts. While the "roadmap" blog gave us a look at future content, I want to know what the devs feel about how the current game delivers the content that already exists.

What, in terms of gameplay, are the devs seeing that you like? What are you seeing that you're not happy with? In particular, which mechanics are not delivering the desired outcome? What gameplay issues are you seeing that you want to change but don't yet have mechanics to address?

If we players know your goals, we can help suggest mechanics to achieve them. As importantly, those of us who must soon make a decision regarding our subscription may find what we seek in your words rather than basing our decision solely on our current experiences.

My friends and I recently discussed what factors invoke a feeling of "need" when it comes to having an alt. Most were tied to the market and economy, a consequence of both game design (e.g., mat requirements for manufacturing) and player behavior (e.g., the desire to not be reliant on others). I'm posting under Balancing because my main point is, I think the game needs to move in a direction that attempts to alleviate feelings that players are missing something critical if they don't have various alts. Since most are tied to the economy, it's a complex issue. But here's a suggestion for one that's a bit more straight-forward... eyes on beta teleporters.

While eyes are undeniably important, being one is not fun. It's not a job for a real player and the burden generally falls on a boxed alt. I'd like to see this role filled by an in-game mechanism that itself can create opportunities for some fun.

By default, the mechanism should report transitions (jumps) with 100% accuracy (meaning it doesn't miss anything) but with a low (30%?) probability of giving precise intel (meaning it'll tell you a mech jumped, but not what type). One type of upgrade will increase the probability of getting precise intel. With another upgrade, it'll gain a detection range (also upgradable) around both sides of the teleporter and will report anything it detects that stays within detection range for a user-specified period of time. Another upgrade adds friend-or-foe capabilities with the option of not reporting friendly contacts.

There could be an electronics substation ~1.5km from each external teleporter. Like intrusions, they would have scheduled windows of vulnerability (45 minutes?), but would not require anyone to sign up. There would be objectives that result in the damaging of each of the intel precision (requiring moderate effort) and detection range (requiring more effort) upgrades. There should also be a way to hack into the system (possibly accomplished by a single bot) and plant a virus that will temporarily drop the system accuracy to about 80% for a short period (2 hours?) at some point in the next 24 hours. The friend-or-foe upgrade can't be damaged as that'd just put people back into the position of having to have alts on the teleporter again.

Unlike intrusions, there could be "partial" success. If, just for the sake of example, you use a mechanism like an active sap and attackers completed half the total cycles, the upgrade would suffer half the maximum damage. Maximum damage should not equate to no upgrade. E.g., maximum damage to detection range may drop detection range to 50%. There should be fairly passive mechanisms for repair (some effort must be put in to begin the repairs, but you don't have to babysit them), with the repair time related to how much damage the upgrade suffered.

Guess who's got more to say? The factors that drive the economy in this game are another big problem for me. I'll start with the most recent system introduced...

Noralgis is necessary in T4 production and the production of a few lower-tier modules. You invest in them but you can't defend them. They're safe only from an enemy that doesn't seek them out. Fortunately the feature is so boring that most people on the beta islands stopped persistently searching after about a week. I suspect this was expected to be a new, interesting source of conflict. Strategically, depriving the enemy of a precious resources is well worth the effort. But as a game mechanic it's missing a key element... fun. Frustration, sure; fun, no.

On alpha, you can hover over it and make sure it gets the proper sun, even play Mozart to help it grow. You can also watch someone drive up and harvest your precious plant and not be able to do a thing about it. On beta, you plop it in some corner and hope that hostile arkhe you can't stop from undocking from your outpost doesn't find it, or your blind (signal detection) harvester doesn't get ganked as you drive 2-3km to your plants.

And the increased Espitium requirements for T4 production along with the addition of Briochit (I so want to say something other than "chit") simply makes production of some T4 modules silly when weighed against their performance improvement over T3 or where else you could use the Briochit.

On to the redistribution of raw resources... I'm not a miner, so I really can't speak first-hand about what happened. But I suspect I know the reason for the change; to encourage people to stop vertically-integrating (doing every step of the manufacturing process, from gathering of all materials to final production in-house) and start specializing in their regional resources and start using the market sell the excess and buy what isn't so easily gathered locally. But I talk to others who are miners. They're convinced the change was done just to piss them off. It should have come with an RP explanation from the Syndicate (suggest to the players how they're expected to adapt) and offer a carrot along with the stick. E.g., a 4% reduction in the VAT (with a floor of 0%) on an island for sales of raw mats that are scarce on that island.

And the distribution of resources to begin with... In a comment I made on the dev blog about the updates to overseers, I said making them more difficult or giving them escorts doesn't make them more risky for all, it simply reduces the size of the playerbase that can take them down with nominal risk. When my buddy rolls out to mine Epriton, he does it no differently than if he were mining HDT. My buddy and I make some modules that use Epriton and others that don't. Because of the quantities of resources needed, they require about the same effort to build. To us, they're pretty much equivalent and we treat/use them as such. But I can turn around and sell one to an alpha-dweller for eight times the price of the other. I cannot fathom a reason why someone would play this game just to live on Alpha. They don't just get the short end of the stick, they get the end of the short end of the stick (especially the non-miners).

Maybe beta-dwellers are supposed to have easy access and ample supply while alpha-dwellers are left starving? I just hope it's not meant to be "incentive" for people to move to beta. One of the most important lessons I think can be taken from stEVE is that the vast majority of alpha-dwellers are not there because the economics make sense, they're there because they're (pvp) risk-adverse. It doesn't matter if the goose the laid the golden egg lives on beta; all they'll ever see is the axe poised to chop their head off.

A system with built-in frustration that dictates a huge divide between haves and have-nots doesn't seem the way to go.

I think outposts should be a bit tougher to take than they currently are. One fight whose outcome is as often determined by timezone rather than strategy and equipment seems inadequate. Especially since I feel intrusions should be about taking/making a home. Right now, intrusions are more about delivering your opponent a slap across the face than anything meaningful. (I do, by the way, hope we get more reasons to fight than for the sake of fighting.)

The simplest adjustment I can see is to make it a three-stage process. If in the first stage the attackers take all three saps, the outpost is "under siege" but does not change hands. In the second stage (the next scheduled intrusion time), the attackers need only take two of the three saps to move to the third and final stage. In this final stage, the attackers must take only one sap and the outpost becomes theirs. So while the timing of the additional stages may not be as advantageous to the attackers, their conditions for victory are progressively less rigorous. Blocks cannot be used on outposts under siege. Registration for siege stages is free (and automatic) for the attackers who placed the outpost under siege, but any new entrants into the fray must of course pay. I think under this mechanic, outposts would still fall, but they wouldn't be going back and forth the way they do today, which is important because...

You shouldn't be able to set your home base to the outpost of someone with whom you're hostile. There are so many ways this inhibits a good gaming experience; people undocking arkhe after arkhe to scout/harvest noralgis is the latest. Everyone knows of other, I'll call them abuses, of this mechanic which players haven't yet taken advantage of... But though players haven't yet abused the mechanic (at one time, nobody was taking advantage of the essentially free registration for intrusions to grief people out of their beds), that doesn't mean it shouldn't be fixed now. And, though I know there's no formal alliance mechanism, the same should be true of beta terminals on islands where all outposts are owned by one alliance. Owning your home should confer a home field advantage.

And note I'm talking about a restriction on the act of setting your home, not a restriction on where your home is. I think there should be an 8-day (4 days if the above three-stage siege process is adopted) grace period after losing your "home" outpost before you are required to set a new home. This gives a brief window for the previous owners to attempt to re-take the outpost from within.

Docking rights should remain unchanged (i.e., anyone can dock at any terminal or outpost).

In addition to base materials, the base production time per manufacture unit should be added to the components tab of all player-craftable items.

Accidentally hit the pause/break key on my keyboard. You try to move but you're stuck rubberbanding. Your bot doesn't animate. I can't imagine any use for such a feature. If possible, the client should ignore the pause/break key or at least make whatever it's doing a keybind that can be un-set in keyboard options.

Since launch, I've spent my time on the Help channel. At least of those who come to the Help channel, I think I've identified some major factors that contribute to early player confusion and frustration.

1) Tutorial mission 3a/b: That you need to grab the package from your personal storage and put it in your bot's cargohold needs to be in bold, flashing red letters or otherwise slap the player in the face. (I see the issue of the teleporter waypoint not registering has already been acknowledged.)

2a) In the mining tutorial, because of low skills and a syn-tec scanner, new players often try to mine a tile that the scan indicates should have ore only to be told it has none. I think the syn-tec scanner should be changed to eliminate false positives. The tile-based results should give a binary result: the presence or absence of ore. The result would put a cylinder of fixed size (and maybe a color different from red/yellow/green) on tiles that have ore and nothing on tiles which do not. Obviously, the tutorial would explain the difference between the syn-tec and regular scanners. For the players who don't read, at least their confusion upon seeing results with cylinders of various sizes and colors will be delayed beyond their first hour of playing the game by which time they're hopefully already hooked. Also, the tutorial should make very clear that a scan is a snapshot and will not dynamically update to show depletion as they mine. An optional "advanced" tutorial could be made available for those who get a real geoscanner.

2b) Somewhere in the tutorial it should talk about replenishment of ores, liquids and plants.

3) There needs to be a tutorial on insurance, perhaps when the first faction bot is awarded. (One-time free 50% insurance?)

4) In the tutorial it should talk about corp standings and viewing them via agent profile. Also it should say level 2 agent missions are available with 1.0 standing and how to use the "all assignments" tab to view every assignment available in all locations while docked. It should also discuss the role of faction in facility costs as well as detail what exactly are the benefits of level 2 & 3 facilities.

5) There should be a real geography lesson. Which islands are run by which megacorps and that all terminals/outposts on each island are on the same megacorp standings.

6) Every single tutorial assignment should end by mentioning that more info is available using the in-game help button. The tutorial as a whole should end by mentioning the Help chat channel.

7) Also, that any given assignment will disappear if it accounts for 6 of your last 10 missions must be beat into new player's heads.

I noticed that each time I exit a terminal, I'm facing the same direction I was when I entered. But since much of playing an MMO is repetitive, I tend to be traveling back the direction from which I came. I.e., if I was traveling East when I entered the terminal, when I exit again, I a most likely going to head back West rather than continue East.

I think it would be handy if the default (or maybe configurable) facing upon exit of a terminal were 180 degrees from the direction you were facing when you entered. As it stands now, I have to spin the view around every time I deploy.

When you bring up the info on raw materials, they say they have a volume of 0.00 U. We either need to have more digits shown or volume displayed as volume per 100 (1000?) units.