“Is CCP Gonna Bust Da Bubble?”

~or “Woe Betide the POS Force Field…  Mebbe.”

For them as did not catch it, I recently commented on Sugar’s blog about the impeding removal of the POS Force Field… This was brought on by section 5 of the BACK INTO THE STRUCTURE Dev Blog… which I quote in toto here;

5.     Housing

Proper housing of player items and ships is a critical must-have if we wish those structures to be used over NPC stations. As such, we have different ideas up our sleeves to make that happen.

First, docking will still be available for the largest structures, as long as you have rights and your ship isn’t too big for this kind of purpose (we are looking at you, Supercarriers and Titans).

For the smallest structures, or if your e-peen is too large for docking, mooring will be preferred option. Replacing forcefield mechanics, this will make your ship invulnerable and not being able to be bumped as long as you are within a specific radius of the structure. Of course, when that is the case you will not be able to interact with the outside world either. The idea for the mooring capabilities are that they are configurable and have a finite limit, so multiple structures will be required to house particularly large fleets.”  (emphasis mine)

Yup… according to the Structures Dev Blog it seems they are seriously considering getting rid of the POS Forcefield, the POS Shield. As a player who has lived almost exclusively in POSes for going on 3.5 years of the 4 I have been ingame… I find this change personally abhorrent and unpleasant… and even more, unneeded.

Unlike my null brethren who screamed and rage quit with the advent of the Jump Changes, getting rid of the POS Shield is not a ‘game changer’ that fixes anything game breaking like Force Projection did… the extreme ease of overwhelping Force Projection made possible due to the way Jump mechanics used to be was wayyy broken… the POS Shield is not and does not affect the game in anywhere near the same way Force Projection did.

I commented on Sugar’s post, CSMX - Post #1, about this… there was some back-n-forth commenting on this then Halycon said;

“Mostly it comes down to it cannot be fixed without a deep level rewrite of how the game functions and handles objects. I'm not talking horror code, I mean a complete rethink of the entire engine that handles objects in space, and therefore a complete ground up rewrite. The impact of that would be far beyond force fields. By it's very nature it'd change the entire balance of how Eve work; from flying ships, to weapons, to just about everything you'd do in space.”

and…

“The devs have wanted to do away with force fields for the better part of a decade, but couldn't. And now that they finally can, they're gleefully going to kill it. I absolutely guarantee the day they turn them off for good, one of the coders is going to have a victory dance.” (emphasis mine)

In four years ingame I have never once heard any of this…

Then Sugar responds… twice…

“Thank you Halycon.

They are trying to keep functionality (things floating in the shields are safe) with things like Intel and fix problems in Eve.

Force fields do not work. I'm sorry that I'm using the wrong words. But they don't work and they have to go. That means what you have now is going to be given to you in a different way.

Thianis the discovery phase of the details and everyone is trying to get it right but its not going to be the same. Your hangars should still be there for storage.

But shields are not staying.”  (emphasis mine)

Well… fuk me. But you know what, if it really is as stated, for the overall good and health of the game, well then I can and will, grudgingly granted, accept it… until I saw this…

During the EVE Online Fanfest 2015: Art & Graphics Panel I saw and heard this…

CCP BasementBen, Development Manager, showed us what you see in the title pic and here (25:52 to 26:50)… a short animation of an “improved” POS Shield… Hrm. Improved? Then CCP Mankiller, Lead Graphics Programmer, tells us it is “…basically a magnetic field with a bit of Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis…” hmmmmm…

Then during the Q&A, here, (44:07 to 44:40) there was this question:

“Hey guys, a quick question with regards to the POS Shields, umm, not sure if this is something that’s going to be covered next with the actual Structures discussion but, are we gonna see, when you’re taking out a POS, impacts on (the) actual shield instead of everything seemingly penetrate as if it’s not there and impacting on a tower, is that gonna change at’all and make it slightly more realistic?”

The response is… “Not for this, ah, this release.” then “Not for these POS Shields because the new structure things that’s the new thing to go and we will, most likely, do it for that yes.”

“…and we will most likely do it for that, yes.” Well… seems the art dept missed the ‘POS Shields have to GO.’ CCP/CSM memo… and I seriously doubt this CCP, the CCP being run as it is NOW, a company that it taking bold aggressive ownership of its product… I sincerely doubt they are going to accidentally allow the art dept to showcase something that is not at least seriously on the table… ESPECIALLY something that has such an impact on one of the biggest changes to come to the game in its going on 12 year run, something as regards the changes to POSes, Null Sov and the New Structures… changes that the players have been waiting for, and begging for, for YEARS…

Oh I know, I know… there are those out there who will LOL and say, “Dude, CCP always steps on their own dick man! It’s just par for the course!” but I disagree. I’m not saying they can’t make a mistake… anyone can… but this is BIG. I sincerely doubt CCP Seagull would allow something that states pretty plainly that they are working on the POS Shield and it is gonna stay when the plan is to take it down.

As for me… I will hold out hope that CCP decides that the POS Shield had uses other than just defense of a POS… for me, for most of us who live out of a POS, meaning all of us who live in Anoikis (wormholes) the POS Shield is so much more than just a defense… The Great POS Window is one of the few truly enjoyable aspects of POSlife... unlike the poor sots in Empire Stations and Nullsuc Outposts we have a huge 360 deg omni-directional WINDOW... we have a 30km of our very own protected space in which we can fly around in and DO shit… move stuff around, goof off with each other, plan ops, reship, prep for fights or just sit back and chill after a day of whatever and enjoy the company of our friends and corpmates… with the best gods damned VIEW in all of EVE…

Sugar also said, "POS shields are they currently are are broken and problematic. They don't work with how Eve functions which leads us to the endless cases of POS shield exploits."

Then FIX POS shields FFS... but don't just get rid of them. Make them work as they should... Like the guy asked… make them the thing you target, make them the thing you shoot, make the POS Forcefield actually impenetrable and everything inside it untouchable until taken down, period.

"They don't work with how Eve functions which leads us to the endless cases of POS shield exploits."

Exploits? It’s EVE, in EVE finding and exploiting cracks in the game mechanics, or ‘gaming the game’ is usually called ‘emergent behavior’… and the POS Shields ‘don’t work with how EVE functions’ how? because Empire Stations and Nullsec Outposts don't have them? Empire Stations and Nullsec Outposts aren't POSes... of course they don't have them... they are huge and invulnerable...

POSes are a western frontier fort with a wooden palisade, a sturdy log cabin out on the prairie with gun ports in the shutters... Anoikis is not Nullsec... we are the wild west of EVE... let us BE the wild west of EVE... please.

Please don’t screw us over once again like you did with the effing Discovery Scanner… don’t burst our bubble.

Fly Wreckless and see you in the Sky  =/|)=