This week, CCP released several devblogs detailing some big changes coming to EVE Online. The most recent of these devblogs, one detailing changes to the Encounter Surveillance System, or ESS. Currently, an ESS is a deployable structure that can be used to gain more bounties from killing NPCs in null-security space. In a patch coming soon, the ESS will no longer be optional and a portion of the bounties earned from killing NPCs in every null system will go into the ESS. Here are the key takeaways from the devblog:
- The ESS is no longer optional and will be present by default in all Nullsec solar systems.
- The location of the ESS is public and sits behind an acceleration gate with specific ship class access.
- Payouts from the ESS happen automatically to contributing PvE bounty earners and no longer need to be retrieved in person.
According to the devblog, there are two banks that a percentage of the bounties go into– one can be stolen from at any time while the other can only be accessed using a key. The method of obtaining these keys has yet to be announced and will be coming in a later patch.
In the devblog, we do not get some valuable information that is required. Like how much of the bounties go into the ESS. Current Singularity numbers show 50% of the bounty being held by the ESS but those numbers are likely to change. You can read the full devblog to learn more for yourself here.
Another devblog announced the overall Champions of the Abyss, an event which started back in July. The overall winner of the contest was Cable Uta, though the circumstances of his win are contested among the playerbase (particularly those who participated) as a fair amount of collusion was reported to have happened. The collusion in this case was the use of alt characters queuing for the event at times when few people were playing. These alt characters would lose the match on purpose, padding the win count of the player controlling them.
This behavior was clearly not intended by CCP so they’ve implemented changes for future events surrounding the Champions of the Abyss that include disallowing the use of alternate characters to obtain easy wins. Other rule changes are present and can be found on the EVE Online forums.
The Halloween Horrors events are now live with the Crimson Harvest returning to New Eden until 11:00 UTC on November 10th. New sites are located all across high-, low-, and null-security space as well as in wormholes. Rewards include ISK, new and returning ship skins, fireworks, apparel, and more. Also, there’s a corpse tractor unit. That’s a thing now.
The return of the Crimson Harvest also brings back higher loot drop percentages with a 90% chance of items dropping in loot from combat. This is down from the 100% drop rate of last year’s Crimson Harvest which was heavily abused by killboard padders. Until November 3rd, there is a 4-player tech 1 frigate free-for-all event available in the Abyssal Proving Grounds so make sure you jump in (without your alts) for some PVP fun.
As a final part of this event, the Howling Interdictors update is now live, introducing the “web bubble” which players still have not come up with a nickname for. However, wubbles, webbles, weebles, and other names are in contention.
CCP notified us this week that the Guinness Book of World Records has accepted their request to update the world records held by EVE Online’s players for largest multiplayer video game PVP battle and most concurrent participants in a multiplayer videogame PVP battle. The new records stand at 8,825 players and 6,557 participants respectively. Both records were achieved in one battle in FWST-8 that we covered previously. These new records shatter previous ones established by the battles of B-R5RB in 2014 and 9-4RP2 in 2018.
That pretty much sums up the news for this week, let’s move onto the war update. This portion of WINE will cover the developing conflict that is World War Bee 2 where combatants are fighting now over the control of the region of Delve. Since the war began in July, the regions of Fountain, Querious, and Period Basis have fallen (though Fountain has mostly returned to the previous owner’s control) out of Imperium control. The war now turns to Delve as its primary warzone with several constellations completely overtaken by PAPI forces and several other constellations reinforced.
Several battles have taken place recently but nothing on the scale of the fights in 49-U and YZ-9. In addition to these fights, other losses have been incurred and will be included in the following list:
- PAPI Eagle fleet is pipebombed on a gate by Imperium forces.
- PAPI bumps an Erebus off a small structure and kills it.
- Fighting over infrastructure reinforcement in CX8-6K, C3N-3S, and PGNS-2.
There were other battles that took place but, unfortunately, I was not aware I’d be making this for this week. In the future, we will have a better representation of fights that take place. You can help too by submitting your own battle reports to the site.
Next up, we’ve got your weekly dose of r/eve drama which has been mostly covered with memes detailing the missteps of one John Hartley. According to reports, John Hartley was involved in the destruction of over 1 trillion ISK worth of minerals when a service module was removed from a Sotiyo in MO-GZ5. This action canceled all active jobs in the structure, leading to this fantastic meme from reddit. Sources close to the situation tell me it was not, in fact, John Hartley who pulled the plug but continue giving him a hard time for it!
We also were informed that RED Alliance, formerly of FI.RE Coalition, has left the coalition and headed back to join their old allies in Goonswarm Federation, once again forming the RedSwarm Federation (though with fewer member corps). This obviously stirred quite a bit of dramatics as posters brought up the downward slope of alliance members after the announcement.
Future versions of this post will be in podcast and video format for easier consumption. Stay tuned for those!
