So Inferno is out and has been around for some time now. Time to take a look at some of the pros and cons me thinks.
First just let me say; I'm a pirate that is also part of Gallente faction warfare, I have a sec status that means I can't enter high sec and that anyone can shoot at me without fear of gate / station guns. That's my situation, one I'm happy with; the one I write from. I don't give a shit how inferno has affected null or high sec, I don't give a shit how it has affected anyone not in my situation, in fact I don't give a shit how it has affected people in my situation either. This is my blog and my opinion, that is all.
So the pros: missiles....beautiful. Finally missile boats have launchers and effects and they are very nice indeed, I see no noticeable performance problems with their introduction so it's all good. Me likey mucho.
Faction warfare: I am a recent (3 months now) convert to FW, so by no means an expert and didn't spend too long working with the old mechanics. The time I spent in FW under the old mechanics was fun; all it meant for me was that there were always valid targets around for fights. I didn't plex, I didn't run missions (I couldn't anyway due to my carebear Caldari / Amarr mission running days resulting in a very poor Gallente / Fed Def satndings). I knew from talking to my corp mates that mechanics for FW in general were broken, but as they didn't impinge on my play style; I didn't care.
With the news that FW changes were coming along with Inferno, we decided that we had to make a choice: leave FW, move system, or horror of horrors, plex the damn system we lived in to ensure that we could dock and gain access to our stuffz. The final week before Inferno came out was crazy, we made half-hearted attempts to take the system, but after 5-6 hrs lost the will to live and all went to bed, only to wake up and find it had been decontested overnight. So with 4 days to go, we made the decision to go for it and not stop until it was done. after about 8 hrs of solid plexing, we got the hub vulnerable and took it down with the help of many Gall mil friends. It was then a case of keeping it in under Gallente until patch day. The Caldari tried, and tried hard at points, but we held on. Those final few days were an amazing all out, wtf? battle for the system resulting in hundreds of kills in our system alone. exciting times. Patch day came and it was a bit like xmas. the enemy faction had to leave system with their tails between their legs, selling off much of their stuffz because there was no way of getting it out of a hostile system. The most noticeable things that happened with the patch: Nobody runs missions anymore, or rarely. With the new system of getting LP for offensive plexing and WT kills, nobody needs to. we quickly saw the benefit of taking the dead end system next door, 10k lp for minors, 17.5k for mediums and 25k for majors, orbit the button, get paid! If wt's came in to the plex, you get a fight and the possibility of more LP if you win. there seems to be only a few downsides to this system. The amount of LP washing about has obviously devalued it, and the process of defensive plexing is utterly tedious with no reward except (for us) we get to keep control of the system we live in, and the possibility of fights in there while you circle the button. Farming is now becoming common. why defend a system with no stations, let them flip it and then earn LP flipping it back, everyone wins. On a personal note, my fave ship was always the drake when I was a none FW pirate, now I seem to fly cruisers and below all the time, which is good in lots of ways, faster, cheaper (almost disposable) ships, and the knowledge of a guaranteed equal fight (if they are in a minor they can only be in frigs or dessies and so can you). SO... FW mostly good, much more enjoyable system, with few teething issues and things that CCp may want to look at rebalancing / changing later.
My one big gripe about Inferno, and I know from brief forays into the sleazy world of forums, that lots agree, is the UI. Not the user interface but the Unified inventory.
I like all my stuff to be in containers in my hangar. It's all sorted. I know how it works, I know where stuff is, I have no issues working with multiple windows, I liked it. Now......I can not express how angry it makes me sometimes. One of the great changes of the past (I can't remember which patch) was the removal of the ship session change timer. when you could dock, open the ship window, change ships / reship and be back out in seconds, it was amazing. A real leap forward for PvPers everywhere around Eve.
Then the UI came along, there is no ship change session timer, but now it takes 30 seconds or a minute for the inventory to open, and there's no way to say, just open my ship hangar, just open my cargo hold...
As mentioned above, the new FW changes mean that we now get lots of fights in and around our home system, which is great, but often one loses ships and needs to reship quickly to get back out there and continue the fight, when you're in a rush, the new inventory system seems to take hours to open. If you're not going to change it back at least give me the option of having the old system...please CCP...please. I know they have been working on it, I know they are trying to make improvements. The only thing I've noticed so far is a little green box around my active ship and the ability to open things in a new window. But they are not persistent. What would make all the difference for me is if I could drag them down onto the left hand quickbar. I want my ship hangar on that bar, I want to be able to add links to that bar that make my life easier. At the moment I think a system that worked and had no real issues has been taken and badly fucked up. Given that there are lots of other areas of the game that require attention, I really don't understand why they did this.
TL;DR - Inferno, mainly great....but the unified inventory makes me want to smash up my laptop.
