EVE Echoes’ September 24 patch notes listed 32 changes, titled new features, with a few significant sections to examine. To minimize your out-of-game time, we’re going to highlight a few key groups of changes. We also want to quickly note that it has been confirmed by developers that Angel Cartel ships were not performing as intended, and as such were added into this patch as an unnannounced fix.
Botting / Exploits
New Feature #1
The first “New Feature” is a reduction in the spawn rates of ‘Scout’ and ‘Inquisitor’ sites in HighSec space. This has merited a dedicated article, which can be found here.
New Features 11, 14
Guest accounts are now banned from performing transactions. This should make bots and account punishments have heavier weight as it will be harder to spin up a new account. It is only raising the bar a little, but I hope it makes people think twice before doing something that is punishable. Going a bit further, guest accounts are now required to be linked before transferring supplies.
Travel
New Features #4, 15
Rejoice, as you can now clear the daily avoid list for Autopilot functions. Autopilot will now avoid busy systems without the manual avoid inputs. Furthermore, when setting a destination you will be alerted to Low-Sec or dangerous systems along their path. I like both of these features for my High-Sec and Low-Sec characters, but it can be a bit spammy in Null-Sec. I wish there was a more detailed setting than simply on/off, such as not activating such messages if a player is not leaving Null-sec, the message is hidden. Overall it is a good start, and a great starting point from which to collect feedback.
Trade
New Features #3, 5, 30
Some huge quality of life changes happened around trading. Firstly, ‘Trade Lock’ won’t trigger for contracts between players under the same account. This is truly a massive improvement, especially if you’re using one pilot for industrial work and another to make use of the products. Additionally, I have heard this is great for corps that use an alt for CEO and run most contracts through them. Additionally, estimated market prices for items have seen an update, and market order displays have been adjusted down from 30 days to 7 days.
Customization
New Features #28, 29
Players can now change their name and avatar, and Corporations are now allowed to change logo, name, and ticker. These changes come at a cost, however. Individual pilots can change their name and avatar once for free, which is helpful for those players who rushed in to claim a pilot name rather than have a nice portrait. That said, any further changes cost 500 PLEX, or the cost of a single month Combo Omega subscription. Meanwhile, corporation changes come it at the much higher rate of 2000 PLEX per change, with no free alterations. There has been some pushback from the pilot community, who seem to be mostly concerned with the potential for spies to pay the cost and alter the corporation info to unsavoury or even EULA-breaking details.
Sadly, the patch notes post was presented in a more readable fashion both within the game and within the EVE Echoes Official Discord, and it would be nice to see a more easily readable format on the Echoes website. If you have been affected by these patch notes, or any other changes within EVE Echoes, we’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
