Beren Hurin wrote:My guess the speed with which this recent change is happening means that this is more in the timeline for PC that will be occuring for 1.3. I wouldn't be suprised if more space is opening up, given the longer distances that clones can now deploy.
This would certainly be a much greater way to get players involved back into the game.
What they need to be thinking of as a downside though...
If many more players can involve a lot more of their time with planetary conquest, they will either
a) Have to have a lot of their battles be more or less profit nuetral or
b) Have to grind isk in instant battles to make up for PC losses
I assume that right now there are two kinds of burnout in the game.
There's the dopamine burnout which has to do with satisfaction, new experience, and reward. It is happening when players place a high value on novel content, and can't or don't so much care about the pride aspect of beating, dominating, winning, or stomping. After the nth time of winning public matches, or PC matches, or skilling into their best gear and mastering it, they don't feel the incentive to explore new gear or generate new content for themselves. They will go on to expect better and better experiences from the same gear and fits that they have their max skills in. This is an ignorant expectation from my POV. Elite fits will and should have their niche, while some niches will be larger and more forgiving than others. The typical dopamine player will likely gravitate toward the Fit of the Week/Month, given enough skillpoints and expect it to carry his experience regardless of changing context or demands. When contexts change, they are the first player to become disappointed with the lots they are dealt and seem to take this the most personally.
I would note that the players that can find the most creative source of dopamine output, creating content for themselves, through trying to maximize squad strategies, setting personal goals, minmaxing isk intake, getting personal gratification from training others and seeing them improve, etc, will be the ones for whom this game has longevity.
There are also the adrenaline burnouts. These are likely the players that are playing for long stretches, with a greater priority assigned to winning, dominating, epeen, KDR, etc. By their nature, there can only be a limited amount, as not everyone can win. they know their proficiency comes from both skill and SP. Mathematically, the SP curve of the game will only allow the most skilled players having less and less of an effective marginal lead over the rest of the community, as the amount of SP that you can ever use in combat plateus at something like 10m SP. Likewise with skill, the community's skill gap also closes with time. Therefore, the ability to dominate, and exploit one's proficiency should diminish as time goes on (assuming the community can learn...which is currently debatable IMO).
As new players start to climb from 1M to 10M SP their adrenaline and dopamine oriented experiences will very likely increase as long as they are learning how to employ that SP effectively. To the extent that they have no incentive to learn or explore further uses of SP, the dopamine burnout will quickly occurr, and the adrenaline burnout will happen soon after.