And there was Light

How many Faction War pilots does it take to change a light bulb?

Okay, so that joke used to be, “How many Amarr does it take to change a light bulb?” and the answer was 4,000 –  1 to change it, and 3,999 to cry about it later.

But now, it’s Faction War pilots, and now the answer resembles some sort of error.

“I’m sorry, but Faction War pilots cannot change light bulbs due to the mechanics of changing light bulbs being broken.”

I had to smile when reading forum posts and talking to the Gallente about how they are going to take over both warzones to prove that the FW mechanics are still broken. I have come to realize (and I think I probably already knew this subconsciously) that the mechanics will always be broken. To someone.

Overall, I’m greatly enjoying Retribution. My absolute favorite new mechanic (or changed mechanic) is by far the Crime Watch change whereby you aren't attacked by gate guns once you leave the scene of a crime.

It’s been so firmly ingrained in me to avoid gate guns in certain ships and situations that I find the mechanic still surprises me sometimes.

“Oh yeah, I can just warp to the gate in my tech 1 frigate and won’t get instapopped…coooool.”

Another favorite is the fact that people in my alliance giving me logi of any sort and won’t go GCC. That was always an odd one and now it’s gone. Someday, years from now, I will be talking to some young, fresh-faced pirate saying “back in the day…we used to have to microwarpdrive to Kamela, uphill, BOTH ways. Oh, and people who repped you went GCCed.”

(To which they will probably reply, ‘what the heck is GCC?”

My favorite plex change is them moving the button closer to the warpin. The whole ‘put a frigate up on the button, and sit here and camp the warpin with the rest of the fleet’ is a thing of the past. And while plexing is still pretty easy for someone who just wants to FARM FARM FARM, it’s pretty risky to do now when you’re more or less AFK. It doesn’t take long for someone to point you if you’re not paying attention.

People can farm all they want, so long as they are forced to waste their life whilst doing so, in my humble opinion.

The NPC change is nice too. Though I still think it should talk to us in local in some sort of absurd, role-playing tone.

 “Dirty slave scum. You shall pay for your insubordination!”


To be perfectly honest, I’m sure there are a bunch of changes I haven’t even experienced yet. I keep finding small stuff and wondering, “cool…was that always like that?” Like the little green bar that shows where you are in your fleet tree, and the fact that you can turn on a setting that closes wrecks when they go empty.

Last night we saw someone use the Micro-Jump drive to get away from our gate camp. He went all jumpy on us and people on coms were complaining. “How did he get way over there all of a sudden? HACKS!” Then there was a collective, “Ohhhh…that module thingy….coool…..”

There are a few things where I’ve gone, “Ey?” on but not many, and mostly small stuff. One thing that I would beg CCP to do is to split the color tag check box options for Friendly Militia and Allied Militia, so that if you want Allied Militia to show up neutral, you can uncheck just them. Right now, if you uncheck it, it also means your own militia shows neutral, which is a bit annoying, if that’s not really what you want. In fact, I will probably suggest that in F&I or whatever forum those suggestions go in. (And nag Hans about it.)

I’m still fooling around with the new notifications. Anyone know how to get it how it was before? I hate all the stuff flashing on my screen, so much in fact that I moved all notifications down, nearly off my screen altogether. But I hate it that way because I can’t see if I’m actually hitting someone or not. I’ll have to play with that more later tonight.

Also, how do I turn of the beepers on those Crime Watch icons? You know, when they make all that racket when they are about to finish.

Anyway, all I can say is I have a lot of writing to do, and so little time! I have some ideas for standings and some other mechanics they will hopefully look at in the future, as well as a few guides that need to be written. (My plexing guide needs a complete rewrite.)

I better get busy.

Oh, and before I forget, since I’ve been asked about this several times already since I got back, I will just state once, for the record.

No. I have no intention of running for CSM8.