Dominion – Some thoughts

CCP have really hit the nail on the head with the proposed nullsec changes. A few weeks ago I decided to leave my home in EVE, Vanguard Frontiers, of whom I had been a member for over 2 years. Lack of time was the main driver for this, but a contributing factor was the lack of dynamics in 0.0. I’m very into my fleet warfare. Typically not capital scale, but large fleets. I tend not to FC directly, just sit in command chat and keep things moving in the right direction, though I have been known to step up and lead when needed. And it’s gotten boring.

How do I mean boring? Surely, PvP with hundreds of ships can’t not be fun? Actually, it really does get quite boring. There’s the waiting to find some targets if it’s a roam, the waiting for targets to jump in if it’s a gatecamp, the hours of staging and waiting for allies if it’s a major op. And there’s the huge amount of restrictions in any nullsec alliance’s engagement policy- you don’t fight outside cynojammed systems with large fleets if you don’t have to, you never engage unless you’re sure to win, etc. It all leads to a very stale few hours of near-combat, and often opponents will dance around for hours without ever meeting, even between 2-3 systems. And don’t get me started on the politics.

What CCP are trying to do is increase the amount of emergence by increasing population density, decreasing the complexity of combat in 0.0 in terms of cyno jammers, and thus leading to better combat; breaking up the hours upon hours of near-combat (which can be very draining) typically endured by pilots in deep nullsec and encouraging smaller operational groups. This means smaller fleets and more of them, making combat in nullsec actually potentially interesting. And, certainly, more approachable by smaller alliances and larger corporations.

Hopefully this will make nullsec a little more dynamic and thus a little more fun to play. Only time will tell, of course. That and a lot of playtesting on sisi. Hop to it!