Hello friends
On Tuesday, May 29th 2018 CCP is going to release more actual content to the game. YAY right?
Welllll, its got some goods and bads of course. Here's my take on the new stuff from a day of screaming at my computer screen.
My experience.
So on the 27th (yesterday) I figured I'd log on to Singularity (test server) and try out some of the new stuff. I didn't exactly know where to start so I did what a good boy should and actually read the patch notes.
These new instances begin with these little items you find in Data sites. Well, suppose to find in data sites. I don't know if they are rare as hell or CCP dropped the ball but I spent about 2 hours in my scanning ship flying around the test server hacking data sites and found 0. I hope CCP doesn't do what they did with Ghost sites and make these little nuggets as rare as hens teeth. Because after doing, not making this up, 8 data sites, I didn't find a single 'filament'.
That sucked.
Well, I thought to myself, 'Spear old boy, you should just go to the Null market and see if anyone is selling them', yea well they are, all of them, for 100.00 isk. ... /sigh...
So these little filaments are broken down into 5 levels of difficulty and 5 different flavors of 'bonuss' and 'penalty'. They work exactly like Wspace, but instead of expecting you to know what effect you're in, it just tells you with a little buff/de-buff symbol above your capacitor. Thats nice. :)
I suspect going forward, one type of effect filament item would be easier to run than others, thus the demand for those filaments would be greater. Where the really awful effect ones, would be cheaper.
Heres how the filaments work.
You get your cruiser, as far as I know right now, you must use a cruiser or smaller for these, fly to a spot in space away from other celestial ( just made a safe) and right click "Activate". Why you would try and use something smaller, I can't guess, maybe you just like punishment.
Once the filament is activated, a little window pops up with some warnings and a "are you sure" message. At the bottom is a little 'jump' button, which you push and whoosh, you are taken away to a a new area.
You're aren't in 'local anymore, or I don't think you are, I didn't confirm if you left local or not, but you are in a section of space with little unreadable squiggles for a name. So maybe you're there, maybe you're not. We should look into that, because it might be a cool way to hide a fleet by carrying these lv1 1 things with you on ops and teleporting your fleet out of local for 20 minutes.
I'll just say that the little Abyss area is Gorgeous! Its a maelstrom of rocks, ice, pointy bits, lighting, clouds.. all floating around with different colors. Very pretty. If you don't do anything, fly in there on a cheap one and just experience the graphic layers, it would be worth your pod.
Yes, I said pod.
If you die in these, you're podded. The rats pod you and you can't escape them once you've started. The entire event is timed 20:00. Rats take off and just dodge you to burn up time, dead. Can't dps frigs well because of your larger weapon system, dead. Can't break their reps because you have frig specific damage types.. dead. podded..
Someone said that this was intended for someone to just 'do as a quick thing' on a lunch break. HAHHAHAHA HAHHAHAHAH <-- sarcastic laugh.
Sure, maybe you could hop into your cruiser and knock out a level 1 on a lunch break. But a level 3 or higher, you better have put in your time on the test server to figure out what works with each combination of rats and effects.
The rats as far as I can tell are like sleeper rats, in that they shoot omni damage type and will kite your ass if they feel thats the best way to deal with you. They will kite your drones from you, which is nice... I placed two medium drones on a frig rat and watched as it turned around and ended up 30 from me. Its friends still pounding away on me.
The rats don't seem to follow the typical agro control methods we enjoy in other parts of space. they're smart, and very trolly. Its almost like they know the whole thing is timed and when they are down to 2 frigs about to die and you can go to the next room. The two frigs just fly off, they saw what you did to their friends, know you're going to explode in 5 minutes, so they just make your life that much more miserable before dying.
Worse, I'm fairly sure each room changes based on your fit or the weapon system you use. Perhaps I'm giving the AI more credit than is due, but I swear, if I did great in one room with my drone weapon systems, the next was tailored to do terrible vs my weapon system. After doing about 10 lvl 3s and dying 9 times out of 10... I could swear the game was hacking.
Not only that, but you're podded each time you fail.
The vibe I get from this isn't one of 'casual game play on a lunch break', the vibe I got is exactly like Hard Core mode in Diablo or POE. There is a sword of Damocles hovering over your balls, waiting for you to lose connection from a internet hiccup or the particular combination of resistance/room effects and NPC tower AOE that just places your scrotum exactly where it wants you, and drops the sword.
After 7 straight hours of screaming at computer screen about why a rat that died 3 times before with this type of weapon system, simply won't die now ,and watching the clock ticking down before reaching the end and exploding I gave up and tried to cure cancer in my basement with a toaster and box of rocks. Punishing, is close to the word I'm looking for, but masochistic (not the fun kind) is really more at the heart.
I did get to loot each 'can' in each room though, which I think makes the experience worse for me. See if the loot was in the final room only, you wouldn't really know what you lost if you failed, but the fact that you can hold the loot in your hot little cargo hold and know you can't take it out of the Abyss if you fail.. Then DYING with the potential loot in your cargo hold and seeing it go from gotten to lost... yea, that's seems to raise the stakes that much higher and make the experience that much more punishing when you fail it.
After as much time, ships and, pods as I spent on the test center, I have abandoned any hope of doing these on release. No loot is worth this abuse.
I'm rich enough to pay other people to punish themselves with this shit.
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