The Supposed Battle of 49-U

2020-09-24

Art by Quendan Comari

As a US Marine, I got used to waiting for a lot of things: the armory, chow, the LT to figure out what is going on, four hours at the rifle range for the sun to come up, the flight line, firewatch to end. Hurry up and wait might as well be the US Marine Corps’ unofficial motto. None of these came even close to the sheer amount of frustration and rage I felt during the supposed battle of 49-U. I waited more for that allegedly reinforced node in a few hours than I ever waited in my entire time in the Corps.

The fight started off decently enough. The Imperium put their subcap fleets on the Fortizar to be defended. PAPI entered the system not too much later and, after a bit of maneuvering, dropped some dreads on the Fortizar in range to attack the citadel and Imperium subcaps.

To absolutely no one’s surprise (really, if this surprised you, you are not paying attention) the Imperium dropped in a super fleet. Frankly, we’ve been wanting to drop our supers to kill stuff for so long that any excuse is a good one. Oh, look at that, I’ve dropped all pretense of objectivity; might as well go whole hog.

At first, it wasn’t so horrible. I’ve been in big fights before, B-R5, Asakai, the sieges of J5A, and others I’ve forgotten. I’ve been in bigger fights than the one in 49-U, with more people on grid and more ships.

And let me say this, gentle reader, tonight was somehow the shittiest, worst experience that I’ve had in a fight in a long, long time. I spent most of the time watching the outstanding calls list to see just what was going on. Press a button and wait 180 seconds or more for the damn thing to happen. I know there’s TiDi, but this is stupid. We didn’t even get to 4000 people in system! This is a reinforced node! What the actual, and I cannot stress this enough, fuck, over?

The only good thing is, as far as I noticed, things did not get dropped. Server calls stayed in their queues until they were answered. Of course, the queues were as long as the service counter in Beetlejuice, but they still got answered.

Otherwise, things were atrocious. Yours Truly’s client decided to crash and burn like Vily at the bar. Just as soon as I was tethered in my Nyx, the client decided to crash. This is not the situation anyone wants to be in! After taking more than ten minutes to log back in—ten excruciating minutes—I finally was able to reassert control of my ship and jump out of a buggered system. Other pilots in the super fleet also had issues with the client crashing and similar experiences. I cannot speak for them, but while I would gladly lose my ship in a blaze of glory, waiting to see if it died because CCP can’t unfuck their servers long enough for a fight is not fun.

As the Imperium is here to fuck, we obviously went ahead and dropped our supers right on top of the dreads. Cynoing on top of the Keepstar in system and then slowboating the fighters over to the dreads would have been the safe route, but not audacious enough. While the Imperium supers (it would really be wrong to call it the superfleet, more like a bunch of us bored super pilots) were going through dreads at the agonizingly slow rate due to TiDi and a server slower than a 90 year old woman driving a Buick, PAPI sent all their ‘dictors to bubble the supers. Smart so far. However, normally, the bubbles would have been cleared by the Fortizar’s PDS. IF THE PDS WAS WORKING.

Because of whatever server fuckery was occurring, the point defense system on the Fortizar—a giant smartbomb for those that do not know—didn’t work. The bubbles were not cleared, and Imperium supers, who would have otherwise jumped or warped out, died.

One pilot reported that when they jumped into the system, their whole fighter bay decided not to load. Do you know what we call a supercarrier without a fighter bay? Give your best answer in the comments. So, this poor player had to spend the entire fight doing nothing. A whole lot of nothing fast. This isn’t the kind of thing you can just relog to fix either. One does not simply relog into Mordor the middle of a super fight.

No one wants to wait five minutes from clicking a button to it happening. Yes, I know we can see the call queue in our chat window. No one should have to play the game in the console mode. Not a single person walked away from that fight satisfied with how the server performed.

This isn’t even the Götterdämmerung, the Ragnarök, the Armageddon of this war. No titans were dropped; no one was hurfing for a week. Fights will get bigger. And if the node keeps crashing, people are really going to ask if they want to keep playing EVE.

I’ve been told by people that undock for other things than giant fights that the servers have been pretty bad all around New Eden. Look, when the high sec pubbies people start to notice that the server is lagging, things are really bad.

Maybe I was wrong to make fun of Piggles when he stood down from a fight because the node was not reinforced. Maybe.1

I don’t know what it would take to fix things. However, if I were CCP, I would utterly eliminate anything that slows down the server in a fight. Bounties: gone. These stupid liminal storms: gone. I don’t know how a fight in the year of Our Lord 2020 can somehow have a worse server experience than larger fights in years past. It really takes a certain kind of special to make that happen: the certain kind of special that lives in Iceland, I suppose.

Right now, the ‘fight’ is still going. And by that, I mean there’s dictors bubbling dreads so the fort can kill them. That’s a far cry from both sides committing massive supercapital forces. A few hours ago, they were absolutely ready to do that. The only thing that stopped them…was CCP.

CCP needs to stop being clever and make sure the server works. All the game systems do not mean shit if they don’t run. Under normal circumstances I would be stoked about getting a killmark on my Nyx. Instead, I’m writing a profanity-laden rant for INN. What do you think, dear reader? Did I have fun tonight?

1Nawwwwwww.

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Comments

  • Why can’t you just be happy with elite 2v2 instanced cruiser PvP battlegrounds and dumb spin-off games you play on your iphone, you ungrateful peasant! How dare you, after Fozzie’s game design team slaved away for literally several whole minutes inventing metaliminal storms! There’s just no pleasing some people 😛

    September 24, 2020 at 7:17 AM
    • WillG Ganthrithor

      Best comment in months

      September 24, 2020 at 12:04 PM
  • Rammel Kas

    Heh… so there was a freedomland time fight. I was wondering. But not even in Delve yet.

    To be honest I sit down with a nice big mug and some stuff for the timers. More often than not the big wait is for the enemy FC team to either trot out another Riggles excuse meme or “slow escalate” their way in. Definitely not ones for a lightning “war” these guys.

    September 24, 2020 at 10:42 AM
  • Havish Montak

    The article is spot on. Server performance has degraded horrifically. Jumping gates with a full fleet in no tidi is resulting in people stuck in tunnel for 30seconds to a minute. I’m really not impressed at the moment.

    September 24, 2020 at 10:56 AM
  • phuzz

    Do you know what we call a supercarrier without a fighter bay?

    Content™!
    (I kid 😉

    September 24, 2020 at 10:57 AM
    • Arrendis phuzz

      My answer was ‘the game’s most expensive jump-bowhead’.

      September 24, 2020 at 2:31 PM
      • You all get gold stars for attempting to answer the question!

        September 24, 2020 at 4:32 PM
  • Sungodra

    This was the reason i stopped playing EVE Online. Whats the benefit having an Aeon if i can’t participate and enjoy a big fight. No thank you. I dont want being anxious and frustated if and when the server decides to work correctly. And this is a sad thing. EVE won’t die or whatever similar. Just will loose players that love and enjoy it. Old players that know what to do and ll help newer players to board the ship.

    September 24, 2020 at 12:53 PM
    • Jonas Nysut Sungodra

      Can I have your stuff then please?
      I can put it to use.

      September 24, 2020 at 2:15 PM
      • Sungodra Jonas Nysut

        nope u cant. still have all my accounts and all my stuff. Play to earn them.

        September 25, 2020 at 12:45 PM
  • Simon Chui

    Given how unreliable the servers are, it seems prudent to have redundancies for every mission critical component going forward. I can’t imagine CCP can fix the servers any time soon, so the war will be fought under these conditions.

    September 24, 2020 at 1:12 PM
  • Maverick Penken

    KVN node dies… goon smug all around
    49-u node stays up and tidi does tidi things… goons suddenly concerned about the state of the servers
    lmao

    September 24, 2020 at 1:17 PM
    • Arrendis Maverick Penken

      KVN node dies when we don’t have any supers on the field. Goon super pilot doesn’t notice.

      49-I node shits itself and only survives because both sides didn’t keep escalating. Goon super pilot is annoyed.

      September 24, 2020 at 2:29 PM
      • Goon super pilot is super annoyed.

        September 24, 2020 at 4:31 PM
    • Garreth Vlox Maverick Penken

      LOL, the node did “tidi things” at UALX and X47 the server was strained and slow but guns fired, you could lock targets, prop mods cycled, what we saw last night was a joke.

      September 24, 2020 at 10:13 PM
      • TommyShifter Garreth Vlox

        This is very true, Server performance was absolute garbage, Not sure what they’ve done, but big battles in the past weren’t this bad.

        September 25, 2020 at 5:43 PM
    • hanabal Maverick Penken

      Actually there was plenty of goons myself included that weren’t happy with kvn just cause we thought it was funny about you crying about it and blaming us doesn’t mean we don’t acknowledge the server is performing worse then it has in years

      September 27, 2020 at 12:51 PM
  • Þòròlfur Júlían Dagsson

    As a mechanic on a fishing boat, i am used to having to fix things, and there was no need to fix, goons where geting killed and every thing was running, not super smoothly but the engine was running the same speed for every one. now i have done my fair share of fishing and id say the ocean was crawling with big fish, there was one good blue fin tuna we got some regular tuna and the usual machrel with a side of cod that night

    September 24, 2020 at 2:24 PM
    • Everything was definitely not running. Or do you consider ‘my fighter bay has vanished from the UI and from my cargo’ to be ‘running’?

      September 24, 2020 at 2:31 PM
    • I just imagine you with the most fucked up boat in the world, with giant holes in it, an engine with one cylinder not working, leaking oil, and you insisting the boat is fine.

      September 24, 2020 at 4:00 PM
    • LOL, spin harder, I sat there in a sub cap attempting to and failing to do anything. Locking didn’t work, prop mods didn’t work, tank mods took almost 15 minutes to show up as activated, the handful of times the game decided I had locked a target out of the 60 or so times I attempted to lock a primary i was allowed to fire exactly 2 vollies. If you think that’s “working” I can’t figure out how the people on the boat you were a mechanic on got back to shore alive. I was at X47 all 3 times I was at UALX, in both cases the server was strained by massive numbers but it functioned, this was garbage. The servers have degenerated to the point that simply jumping a battleship game through a gate triggers 50% tidi, this is insulting to anyone who came back for the hellwar because apparently CCP isn’t going to let us have one.

      September 24, 2020 at 10:12 PM
      • Sounds like the good old days of ~2007-2008: log in, attempt to jump to target system, black-screen. After 30 minutes of black screen, get desperate enough that, “Maybe if I re-log I’ll get in!” sounds like a compelling argument. Re-log. Another hour of black screen. Finally you enter space. Ten minutes later, you load grid. Your Rokh is there with flames coming out of it, and for ~*some reason*~ only a third of your modules appear to be equipped. Try to lock something. Try to warp. Try to do anything at all: “Your ship is out of control.” Another 45 minutes later your ship finally dies. It being several hours after the initiation of the fight, numbers begin to fall as people give up and the server begins to work again. You are podded back to your medclone station by some elite PvPer in a Zealot who was lucky enough to be on grid when the fight began. Good times!

        September 26, 2020 at 4:24 PM
        • Garreth Vlox Ganthrithor

          That’s exactly what if felt like which is incredibly disappointing given how many “upgrades” CCP has performed and how previous massive fights somehow functioned better than this shit show did.

          September 27, 2020 at 12:36 AM
  • Total Newbie

    But at least there are some really cool skins and NPC events ! ! !

    September 24, 2020 at 7:32 PM
  • Tomoko Tanue

    Do you know what we call a supercarrier without a fighter bay? Give your best answer in the comments.

    uh..vietnamese hooker in the middle of the russian red army?

    September 25, 2020 at 11:17 PM
  • Garreth Vlox

    … that’s how you clear dictor bubbles…

    September 26, 2020 at 4:39 AM
  • Kirk Bergere

    Im on the other side, but i totally agree with you.

    September 27, 2020 at 6:34 AM
  • hanabal

    Server is really not performing well at all lately ccp need to do something about this how are we meant to have these battles if the server is performing worse then it was 2/3 years ago if they need to shut down some systems to make this happen that that’s what they should do after all these fights are a huge advertisement for eve as it’s one of the main things that makes it so unique but that fight was fucking cancer i have ó doubt that if either side had escalated the servers would ha e shit themselves again

    September 27, 2020 at 12:58 PM
  • Arrendis

    The PDS worked after 2 different people usurped command of the Fort in order to try firing it off. 66% of the attempts to use the PDS getting no response is not ‘everything responded in time’.

    September 29, 2020 at 9:08 PM