The bomb has dropped on a friday afternoon in the form of a dev blog on the eve online community. You can read the responses here on the forum, lots of references to the SWG NGE.
What’s the problem with the changes posted in the dev blog ? It costs 2bil to fully upgrade a system (yes a single system) in 0.0 and claim sovereignty. How are you ever going to make that system cost effective ? How can a small alliance afford to do this ? Even bigger ones, will be in trouble. They’ll probably just develop a few key systems and lock off the rest of a constellation for the rest of the people. CVA with their NRDS policy is especially screwed. They don’t make anything from their visitors.
CCP claimed that the goal of Dominion was to attract more people to 0.0. As I see it now, this will do the exact opposite. And if you think ‘I don’t do 0.0, this won’t effect me’, please think again. A lot of materials for T2 etc come from 0.0.
If people don’t / can’t bother with those anymore, markets will plummet and it will effect everybody in the game.
UPDATE : CCP Soundwave is now trolling posting in the above mentioned thread and says (amongst some other nonsense) As I said, if the costs become an issue, they can always be looked at.
It’ll be too late. People will have giving up and moved on. Anyone with some common sense can see that these changes are ridiculous.
Update II: CCP Chronotis posted in the feedback thread and it seems CCP is starting to backpaddle already. Which makes you wonder where they pulled the original numbers from in the first place… Post nr. 1000 btw raises some excellent questions.
I think the best response by CCP right now will be to actually announce a delay in the release. This will do two things:
1) Let their players know they do take them seriously and their gameplay
2) Do a little more work – maybe a month more and actually use the feedback that was provided in the forum.
If I were in charge – it is what I would do. I know delay will cost money, but right now they should be in damage control mode….