Today, September 7th, CCP Larrikin announced on the Eve Online Forums that the proposed fleet warp changes will be held off as new options are explored. This has generally been well received in the thread announcing the delay. The full post is transcribed below:
We’re not releasing the proposed fleet warp changes with the Vanguard release. The implementation of the fleet-based bookmarks is more technically costly that we had hoped. We’re not prepared to release this version of the warp changes without the fleet bookmark system.
Regarding fleet warps, we’re going to look at alternative design solutions. We would like to incentivize players rather than remove existing functionality.
Regarding bookmarks, there are very early plans for a technical redesign. This should lead to many advantages, including (but not limited too) fleet bookmarks.
We appreciate the passionate feedback from the community regarding this issue.
While a delay for technical reasons is not hugely significant of its own right, the real meat of the announcement is the statement regarding the rethink of how fleet warp will be changed. The first iteration of changes were a flat nerf to fleetwarps, making it much harder to close range with a target on grid even after it had been probed down. Player feedback in the original comments thread was profoundly mixed about the proposed changes; many wormhole residents expressed concern about the impact on their gameplay, and fleet commanders had concerns that the changes would cripple on-grid mobility and make kiting fleets even harder to catch.
With CCP apparently taking these concerns seriously it remains to be seen what the eventual mechanism for fleet warps will look like. However is heartening to know that if enough players say “these changes will be worse than what we have now” CCP will take a step back and reconsider their plans.
This article originally appeared on TheMittani.com, written by Siaka Stevens.
