Fozziesov has finally hit. It isn’t as bad as people thought — or at least, it isn’t bad if you are in Goonswarm Federation/Imperium, but that’s beside the point. There is something to be said about a system that is driving out fleets to contest timers every day and is consistent with it. Perhaps this is due to one thing: newbros.
It is no secret that the powers of EVE have been scrambling to figure out a way to weaponize new players into their fleets as damage dealers, but there is one thing that newbros have that even the most grizzled veteran doesn’t have: zeal. I have met many new players, fresh faced from the time they undocked, eager to engage in a fleet. Even as a player who has been playing for over a year now, I still feel a rush when participating in a massive frigate fleet as a line member.
Your typical newbro, in my experience, wants two things. One is to fly a titan, and the other is to participate in massive fleets blowing up other players in a space naval skirmish, or a massive cluster-wide fight like B-R5RB. Either way, their zeal will drive them to dedicate themselves to fly bigger and better ships.
In the process, however, they become incredibly useful. GSF line members will be familiar with the Harpy doctrine fleet, and other alliances have their own specialties. However, what these doctrines have in common is that they are easy to get into, with up to a month of training needed at most to get into a decent frigate fleet, and that they are surprisingly effective. Forty Hawks or Harpy’s is enough to kill a lot of cruisers, and even some battleships. Doctrines designed specifically for new players have power through the weight of numbers. It does help that often these new capsuleers are perfectly willing to throw themselves into a death trap just for the sake of killing a single ship.
Now how does Fozziesov tie into all of this?
Newbro zeal is, surprisingly, easy to direct. Telling someone that they and 70 other people are going to turn a ship into a pile of corpses and broken scrap in a fun brawl will make a lot of inexperienced people curious.
This is part of the reason that so many groups have been weaponizing the potential of new players. Sure, they don’t have much experience. But that is not what FC’s need. They need numbers, because in the grand scheme of things, you don’t need a fleet of grizzled veterans to solve your problems. Sometimes, a couple dozen frigates is enough to scare off most solo intruders, and is vastly cheaper than some other options. This is good, as it doesn’t burn out the precious few vets that are willing to go out on fleets.
Any corp that utilizes new players to an extent will surely win the sov game, as the zeal of their newer players will allow them to engage in fights that otherwise would be pointless to most veteran players, who likely have other duties to attend to. This would likely make nullsec much more appealing to new players, who may no longer feel intimidated by the massive skill requirements of before.
And even better is the fact that FCs will arise from these fleets. Expect a lot more leaders in fleets ready to throw themselves in harm’s way for a little thrill and the chance to brag about their exploits.
On the flip side of the Fozziesov coin, I am also expecting burnout to be common, as fleets sent to catch ghosts don’t often enjoy doing it three times a day. This will be a problem that needs to be addressed soon, as trollceptor spam will not be well received if it happens many times a day by some bored pilot.
What needs to happen if Fozziesov is to stay is to make sov warfare fun without the need of supercaps or masses of skill points. But at the same time, it can’t be a tedious process that will make players quit as the experience becomes more frustrating than rewarding. A happy balance is what is needed, and perhaps the inclusion of more restrictions upon the sov modules will help, such as limiting them to cruiser classes and above.
This may not fix the problem completely, but it would be more helpful than what is going on with it now. I am pretty sure that the devs envisioned Fozziesov to be a system where cruisers and battleships can finally be able to contest timers, and that this system would break the monotony of sov warfare, but it still is a heavily flawed system, and to keep it this way is disastrous, even to newbros who would be burned out even by this system.
All in all, this is a great system that brings in the new player to the happenings of null, but still needs a significant amount of improvement before it can really begin to feel like a better system than Dominion-sov.
Editor’s Note: As an opinion piece, the opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not TMC as a whole.
This article originally appeared on TheMittani.com, written by Vos.
