Stop Touching My WHs

Stop Touching My WHs


So the latest and 'greatest' idea from CCP regarding K162 WH detection is the perfect example of why I'm a huge advocate of as few changes in wspace as humanly possible.

Here is the full proposition as posted by Fozzie here:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=331782

Hey everyone. Team Five O has been working on a few concepts for improvements to wormhole mechanics and we wanted to run one idea by you all to start some discussion in the community. This idea has already been discussed with the CSM, and we don't currently have specific plans to implement it but we think it's at least worth getting discussion started.

We have been thinking about and discussing the way that the Sensor Overlay has affected Wormhole life, mainly in the ease with which players can now observe new wormhole signatures appearing (which often indicates that the entry of hostile players may be imminent).
We investigated what would be involved with delaying the appearance of signatures on the sensor overlay, but that solution is somewhat unsatisfactory since players could always return to the old trick of spamming probe scans to check for the new sigs. Basically, the Sensor Overlay had only made the existing problem more visible, and it would be better if we could get right to the source.

The potential change would be to delay the appearance of the signature beacon when K162 dungeons spawn. This would prevent the dungeon from appearing on probe scans or the Sensor Overlay for up to a few minutes.

This change would make life in wormholes a bit less safe, and increase the sense of real danger that unknown space should include. The flipside is that actively hunting for pvp in wormholes should present more targets that have a slightly shorter notice to your arrival.

The delay could take a few potential forms, either a set timer of a couple minutes, a timer that has random elements or even one that is variable depending on the amount of mass that passes through the wormhole.

This would obviously be a very significant change to wormhole mechanics, and we think it may be a very good opportunity to shake up wormhole life and further encourage the best parts of the wormhole experience.

I'd like to repeat that this change is currently not planned for any specific release, but we would like to start community discussion on the idea and see where it goes.

Let us know what you think in this thread, and we'll be watching closely.
Thanks!
-Fozzie

Ok, so let's break it down in a timeline.

- Life pre overlay meant you had to drop probes to see any sigs and had to watch for new sigs using probes if you wanted to see them.  No one was complaining about this well functioning system.

- Odyssey happens, sensor overlay introduced.  Now you don't need probes to see new sigs, they show up right away automatically.  This change a) wasn't asked for b) wasn't like by basically anyone in wspace c) was hugely demanded for removal from WHs.  All in all a big success.

- Now CCP seem to want to do something about it, ok fine.  So what's the solution?  Is it to put things back to how they were pre sensor overlay? No, apparently not.  Apparently it is to roll the change back even further and make it so that you can't even use probes to detect new incoming WHs for an unspecified period of time.


I have no idea why CCP keep trying to 'fix' or 'make better' WH core mechanics when there's never really been any issue with their core mechanics.

Here we have them adding a very bad feature in the overlay that wasn't asked for, wasn't checked with the community prior to implementation and was universally hated in WHs after release and then instead of simply removing it like we're asking for, adding a new feature again in a detection delay on K162s that, again, wasn't asked for and isn't liked by roughly 75% of people that have been responding to the thread and various polls.  At least this time they asked us about it first so, progress I guess...


Let's look at the proposed change itself and what it would mean for WHs.
The change is pretty simple, it's just adding some period of time after spawning where a new K162 exit WH cannot be detected on the overlay or even with probes.

Assuming the delay is not something absurd like half an hour, this might seem like a small change but in reality, even if it's 30 seconds it is a major change in WH security and makes it completely impossible to have any security in a WH apart from raw numbers of pilots.

The main concern is obviously for people who PVE.
The only WH PVE I've done in years is C5/6 capital escalations and while the risk is increased there too, I'm going to argue that this is the smallest issue of all activities.  The reason for this is that the number of corps that can even warp a fleet into a C5/6 site is quite low and the number of those that can kill a site running fleet is even lower.  It's also very difficult to warp back to your POS when a new WH spawns when you're scrammed and/or in siege/triage so if a group that can fight you does happen to connect, you're likely going to be fighting, delay on sig detection or no delay.

The affect this has on other classes is much more profound. 
If you roll into a C2 and see a Drake + wrecks on scan, how long does it really take to be on grid with it? 1 min? 2 min? 5 min if you're really slow, there are 30+ anoms and you take a smoke break half way through looking for it?
If people running low class sites can't watch probes for new sigs they have very little chance of escaping if a new hostile WH connects to them.

Let's not even get into what this does to the already laughably dangerous activity of WH mining.


This also has an effect on PVP operational security.
If you're bashing a tower, camping a system, conducting a fight whatever, you have no way of knowing when a potential 3rd party connects to you.
Obviously, in a PVP scenario you may well want to take the fight anyway but a non zero amount of time to prepare is generally nice.


Sure, a part of me wants to go along with this change and say 'fuck it, I don't do PVE anyway, let's just kill anyone who does'.  Thing is, you can catch people already anyway, it isn't that hard.
Adding a probe detection delay on incoming WHs is a typical CCP style of change that adds a feature to address an issue in completely the wrong way.

I guess I should be glad CCP seem to be listening and noticed that WHers hate the new overlay but they need to actually fix the issue in the way that we're asking for, not by taking it way too far and doing what they think we're asking for.

Yes, the auto detecting sensor overlay needs to be removed from WHs.  No, a probe detection delay does not need to be added.


All in all this is exactly why I'm always against any changes being made to WH space.
Hell, even in the best case scenario where CCP remove the scanner overlay from WHs and leave probe detection without a delay, where do we end up?  Exactly where we were 4 years ago, in a well functioning wspace.


JM