Invaded

EVE’s latest expansion “Invasion” has gone live, with the Triglavian’s moving into known space in a Sansha Incursion type of way.

I was up at 4am this morning with another serious headache, so while I waited for the painkillers to start working I updated my EVE client and logged in. I found myself, well, invaded.

The system info panel was in Triglavian.

 

The tone of space had gone from a brown yellow to red.

 

And my Azabel looked different (I think it was being scanned at the time).

 

There seemed to be only one main thing I had to update in my overview settings – “Invading Precursor Entities”, to see the new NPCs. There were also some asteroids that may (or may not) have turned up with the same update.

 

You also get this pop up when you undock – and I assume also when you move through impacted gates. That suggests you might not be able to ignore an invasion as you can – for all intents and purposes, Sansha Incursions. In line with this I noticed people commenting about Triglavians camping gates.

I did not engage any of the NPCs I came across – simply as I don’t know what impact negative standings might have. Similarly I did not engage the NPCs from my Azabel. There were some NPC frigates flying around the stations scanning things – but I left them alone and they appeared to leave me alone.

My home system was a Perimeter System – 2 jumps out from the Foothold system. Systems 1 jump out are called Adjacent systems – and are apparently more dangerous. The Foothold system is the most dangerous.

I stayed logged in for a while – watching the invasion chat channel and local.

Some of the locals attacked Frigates on a station and had extra NPCs warp in on them. The suggestion was this little engagement was very difficult to solo, with the pilots having to warp out or dock up to save themselves.

Mostly however I was left in the system alone. Whatever content was available in a Perimeter System didn’t seem to be attracting many players.

I noted you could salvage the NPCs once killed – although it was remarked several times it was more lucrative to loot the destroyed player wrecks instead. It was also commented at one point that Concord still turned up to destroy a Suicide Ganker.

While flying around I happened across this fleet in a belt:

16 Frigates, 4 destroyers and 2 cruisers.

I was almost instantly locked and had them close range at 2K+ m/s. I warped out ok, but they had closed a lot of distance in a short amount of time. Knowing some of them scram, I can see how easy it could be to lose a ship.

About 15 hours after the expansion went live the status of the invasion in my area changed:

“The World Ark is no longer detected”.

I’m not sure if they managed to complete the invasion.  Whatever changed, it did not clear the NPCs quickly.

There were apparently public fleets of up to 40 operating in the Foothold system.

So, some mild excitement.

I’ll have to wait to hear / see / read some of the feedback on just how interesting and well balanced CCP has got this.

 

When you become known on first name basis – the Brisc saga

Most EVE Players who pay any attention to social media would be aware of the Brisc Rubal saga.

On April 8th (2019), CCP Dopamine published a since removed Dev-blog, announcing Brisc had been removed from CSM 13 and had all of his accounts permanently banned from the game after being found to have shared confidential information. Two members of his Alliance were also given one-year bans.

CCP Dopamine went on to say it was the CSM itself who alerted them to Brisc’s lack of integrity, that CCP valued the CSM, and that they would put extra procedures in place to reduce the chance of this happening again.

I did not know Brisc Rubal from a bar of soap – but I did not take what CCP had said on face value. I’ve wondered previously about the quality of their investigations and the level of natural justice in some of their public banning’s.

So, I took the time to read what was being written on the blogs, forums, social media and gaming sites. The general impression I got – right or wrong, was that Brisc was more actively engaged with the EVE community than some of the other CSM members, and that there was some genuine surprise – and even doubt – about the situation.

There were also plenty of detractors – many gleeful about the situation – but none seemed to be saying anything compelling.

Then Brisc Rubal spoke up. He said he had not been aware of the accusation until CCP had published their Dev-blog, that they had not spoken to him as part of their investigation, that he denied it, and that he was waiting for someone at CCP to respond to his urgent queries.

It is seemingly becoming a lost art – but I still find it possible to put myself in the shoes of others. I know how I would feel if I was suddenly banned from EVE after many years of investment – in time, money and social interaction, possibly unfairly, without any opportunity to defend myself.

On April 17th (2019), CCP, via their communications team, released a new Dev-blog. This stated that subsequent to the banning they had held “further” discussions with the affected parties, and that they would be conducting an internal review to substantiate the evidence available and to evaluate their handling of the situation.

https://www.eveonline.com/article/pq436e/interim-statement-on-brisc-rubal-follow-up-investigation

The court of public opinion seemed to have made their own conclusions by this point – but the conciliatory tone of the Dev-blog suggested at CCP feeling the situation might not have been as black and white as they had first alleged.

Last, on April 26th, CCP Grendel announced in a Dev-blog that CCP had too hastily acted upon unsubstantiated assumptions, and that their initial findings and actions were incorrect. None of the players punished had breached the rules as suggested.

https://www.eveonline.com/article/pqiubr/final-statement-on-brisc-rubal-follow-up-investigation

CCP apologised, restored the accounts and assets of the three impacted players, and would provide appropriate rectification. That was to be their final statement on the event.

All’s well that ends well.

But of course, it is not. Understandably Brisc subsequently resigned from the CSM, and opinions and reactions from the EVE player and once were player base have flown thick and fast. Another (to some extent) damaging own goal by CCP.

Up until now I had not planned to remark on it. There was already more than enough thoughts and comments available online, but then I read an article on EVENews24 by Seraph IX Basarab.

http://evenews24.com/2019/05/11/a-brisc-redemption/

I will paraphrase using selective quotes.

“When Brisc Rubal was removed from the CSM and banned from Eve I avoided rushing to judgement”

“CCP back tracked its claim regarding Brisc and the two other players in question and unbanned them all completely”

“Brisc has resigned as CSM as a result.”

“Here is another possibility”

“Maybe Brisc and company did knowingly take advantage of privileged knowledge”

“Maybe CCP had enough evidence to ban them by CCP standards. Question is would they have enough evidence to stand up in a real life court of law?”

“so CCP officially forgives/unbans Brisc while the deal is made that he resigns as CSM”

“there’s really not much else to address on the matter specifically”

Lots of maybes, but a bucket of defamation thrown anyway.

Conspiracy theory, fake news, insightful truth? Who knows – but it is a noteworthy example of what I found wrapped up around the situation Brisc found themselves in. A diverse and complex narrative, different agendas, and a community disinclined to stop and put themselves in the shoes of others.  Equal measure of fascinating and disheartening.

Yet another one

April joined a string of ridiculously busy months.

EVE barely got looked at, aside the obligatory two minutes daily log in to check for War Declarations. I might have managed one PI cycle, and one short BPO shopping trip. Everything else ran down to idle, including one of my training queues.

I think I’ve only had one battle in World of Warships in months. I haven’t done anything in Dungeon and Dragons Online in months. I haven’t kept up with my iPad games for months. Writing anything for this blog has been a struggle for months.

I know it is a common complaint from me – but this year my wife has surpassed all her previous efforts in making our lives unnecessarily busy. It has long since crossed over into pathological.

I have been playing a bit of Minecraft of late – the only gaming I have managed to fit in to my life. I had an odd situation where I stopped having monsters spawning anywhere near my home. In the end I found several waterholes filled to overflowing with water zombies. I used 3 full stone swords to cull just a fraction of them and started having mobs spawn again in the area.

I also managed – just once, to get out and harvest a meal of wild duck.

Mostly however I see no light at the end of the busyness tunnel.