Ask on Reddit or other social media about EVE Online and the consensus around developer CCP is likely to be pretty mixed. Gamers and fans of the epic space opera have felt some kind of way about the changes CCP have introduced to the game over the last few years, with many feeling like EVE is in a state of decline.
Although recently, it appears as though the company wants to fight back against this perception, as they have been pushing out a bunch of new content and updates to the game to try and revitalize the in-game economy and bring people back.
CCP has actually been doing a surprisingly good job in this area as of late. What with all the in-game events like the Triglavian invasion and Season of Skills, as well as a series of economic adjustments that have seen plenty of chaos sewn across New Eden. With the next update though, things are mellowing out a little bit.
The big focus for the patch next week is that CCP will be retooling a handful of areas that players have long had complaints about.
One of the key areas CCP is focusing in on is War Declarations. Recent changes to this cumbersome system meant that those involved in wars had to have structures anchored in space that could be attacked, and one of these had to be designated as an HQ. This was designed to give attackers and defenders a target to aim at, rather than just letting certain alliances use the mechanic to pick on small groups who wouldn’t often fight back. As part of the roll0ut of this redesign, CCP grandfathered in certain aspects of the old system, namely certain already declared wars that did not have a HQ involved. This grace period is now ending.
Other new elements include a community fitting system aimed at teaching new players how to kit out their ships for battle, which is really welcome given the dizzying array of different modules in EVE. And handful of items, namely high-end Implants have been renamed to make room for some new items of this type.
Finally, a handful of rendering bugs and texture problems with various ships have been fixed. CCP also patched in some tweaks to various UI elements to make things run a little smoother.
Check out the full patch notes down below. The next update is due to launch for all users on August 13th.
PATCH NOTES FOR AUGUST 2019 RELEASE – 2019-08-13.1
Features & Changes:
Gameplay:
- War declarations: The transition period for non-mutual wars that do not have war HQ structures is now ending. Any non-mutual wars that have been continuing since before the Invasion expansion without a HQ will enter a 24 hour cooldown the next time a war bill belonging to the attacker organization is processed. All of these grandfathered wars will therefore end within the next week.
- War declarations: Reworked the system of enforced peace periods, which are created when surrendering a war or when a headquarter is destroyed. Each direction of an enforced peace is now tracked individually and can have different timers, if different actions lead to an enforced peace (for example a war is surrendered and then during cooldown the HQ is destroyed).
- The community fitting feature is now visible to all players with a small selection of new player fits. This entry in the saved fittings section of the ship fitting window displays example fittings that have been submitted by members of the EVE Online community and curated by the volunteers of ISD. The initial launch of the feature contains a set of new player fittings for the basic tech one exploration frigates as well as the Venture mining frigate. More fittings will be added to the list over time. If you are interested in suggesting fits for this feature head over to the Community Fittings section of the official EVE Online forums.
Implants:
- The pirate implant set formerly known as “Slave” has been renamed to “Amulet” in preparation for a future change to which pirate faction provides them to players. This change does not impact the functionality of these implants in any way.
Missions & NPCs:
- Triglavian Recon vessels have been sighted outside of Invasion zones.
User Interface:
- Added text to the “All Wars” sub-tab in the Wars tab of the Corporation window to explain that the information there is cached for up to 15 minutes.
- Copying text from a text field will now copy it with all formatting. Copying without formatting is possible through a right click menu when some text is selected.
- The right click menu to load charges into modules now has icons representing the top 2 damage types for each of the charges. The charges are also ordered by range (range + 1 falloff).
- Importing of skill plans has been improved. When importing a skill, all the prerequisite skills will also be added if they are not already on the list. The skills that fail to import are now listed in a result window, from where you can buy the skills and add them to the queue.
- The order of the tabs in the Loyalty Point store has been changed so that the station owner’s standard LP store will be shown first.
- Ship group names have been added to the title bar of the Show Info window
- A button, from where skills can be bought and added to the skill queue, has been added to the Show Info window for skills.
Defect Fixes:
Gameplay:
- Updated Meta Level 1 Shield Resistance Amplifiers CPU usage
- Added Warp Capacitor need to Zarmazd and Rodiva
- Addressed issue causing NPCs to not attack Capsules when in Abyssal Deadspace.
Graphics:
- Fixed issue with LODs on Caldari Industrial Crane.
- Fixed blinking killmarks on Caldari Cruiser Caracal.
- Fixed dirt layer on Triglavian Assault Cruiser Ikitursa.
- Fixed Roden logo orientation on Gallente Cruiser Phobos.
- Fixed missing pattern on Permaband Skin.
- Fixed Police Skin not showing GPD text on Gallente Titan Erebus.
- Adjusted shield size on Triglavian Leshak, Zarmazd and Rodiva.
- Adjusted shield VFX from fading out too soon when zooming out.
- Fixed visibility of the Caroline’s Star Nebula when returning from an Abyssal Dungeon.
- Fixed asymmetrical decal inside Gallente hangar.
Localization:
- Updated Triglavian Components and Triglavian Tech I Ships to reflect correct market group
Missions & NPCs:
- Fixed a few cases of NPCs showing incorrect damage types in their ShowInfo windows.
Science & Industry:
- Showing info on industry jobs in progress will now show the blueprint used, instead of the basic BPO.
Text & Descriptions:
- Fixed various punctuation, spelling and grammar issues.
User Interface:
- Updated Skill on Demand tick box to Not Show Again when selected
- Fixed an issue that could result in ESC menu being duplicated when opening game
- The Contextual Offer window should now show the same currency as the purchase page.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the “Warp to Within…” option to appear twice in the right click menu for some celestials.
- Fixed an issue where the “Engage Target” option in right click menus would not show as a suspect/criminal level offence (yellow/red text and skull icon) when in Empire Space with safety set to green.
- Fixed an issue where some Agents in Space would be missing the “Start Conversation” option in their radial menus.
- Fixed an issue that caused the ShowInfo windows of simulated Fighters to be unable to scroll correctly.