Ohh man, finally the ‘discussion’ is open huh? Time to dump my wall of text then.
Campaign
Although it seems useful to give players a form of guide in what they should be doing when playing the game, one of the initial missions is a literal suicide mission.
The description of the mission tells players to take a lynx and go to PB-42. This in almost every case ends up with the poor sucker in the lynx getting slaughtered by the Hunters (more on them in a bit). The description should be changed to just fly to PB-42, it shouldn’t misdirect players into being weaker than they should.
Oh and some of the later rank challenges need fixing. The mission will reset when caches missions expire and rotate and is annoying when going for tougher medal requirement ones.
Open Space
Trying to form a legitimate opinion on this one is hard because there is so much good and so much more _bad. _So instead I’ll just list notes for and against it.
Good
Removal of fuel system means you can fly around for as long as you can
New pirate stash drops finally makes them relevant rather than a rare spawn container with more fodder
‘Rare’ achievement drops are now reasonably obtainable with the removal of all fodder
Random containers giving munitions and premium munitions is fantastic and useful, especially if you know where the cargo drone is
Enemies deal significantly less damage overall, meaning new players won’t be slaughtered if they stop off in the wrong sector, instead they have a chance to escape
The ability to warp to whatever sector you want for a slight fee is nice I suppose
Rare drops from caches might have been boosted or something. Yay I guess, you nuggets weren’t ignoring the problem of module acquisition completely - instead you chose to give the incorrect solution.
Monocrystals becoming a commodity is nice.
Having the ability to select Neodium, Beryllium or Electrum for a timed mission reward is nice, but the Electrum reward should either be 24 or the cost for enriched Electrum should be dropped to 10 ore.
Bad
Aliens got buffed WAY TOO MUCH. Hunters now have a 5km aggro radius and typically will do 7-8k a shot. AKA two shot just about any ship. Whoever is in charge of balancing deserves a slap for this one.
Container drop rate (from enemies) is way too low. A player shouldn’t be able to kill off every enemy in the sector and see no drop at all, especially if when they do get one it isn’t the item they need.
Front Blaster is making PvP far more stupid than before. I don’t know exactly what happened, but now PvP is filled with suicidal Covert Ops nuggets.
Furthermore most of the builds I’ve seen involving the Front Blaster do perhaps ~20k-30k DPS, which if you can’t read numbers is enough to slaughter any fighter and frigates take just over a second to die. Seriously, nerf the absolute sh*t out of this weapon. This is the worst meta yet.
Module, weapon and passive drops seem way too crammed. There are so many sectors and so many different enemy spawns, why aren’t they spread out more?
What is the legitimate point of increasing pilot level above 10 if level 10 is what unlocks rank 17 (aka the final lot of ships)? Currently pushing past former limits seems irrelevant/ a waste of time.
Rank 16 Ships
Now this one is a very annoying cookie, as I’ve had some arguments with Corp members who seem to outright be addicted to these things but let me get my points straight.
These ships require a gigantic resource investment
They are restricted in build
They generally aren’t worth the resource investment
Unless the next batch of rank 16 and 17 ships just blows the meta out of the water, the new ranks suck. Not many people use them (Oh look, a front blaster meta instead), those that do use them die inconceivably quickly and what little that makes them ‘unique’ doesn’t set them apart from a rank 15 premium or a SP ship. So in general the ships need a bit more of a buff and a bit of a resource requirement reduction
The Atlas
This is maybe one of the best parts of the update, since it not only adds a layer of transparency as we are shown upcoming modules and weapons but also gives a clear view of what you have or do not have. The only real negative I can think about this thing right now is there are a lot of items that aren’t sorted correctly or don’t have an assigned category at all. If that was fixed and maybe a search function added then the Atlas would be close to perfect.
New Zones
Although I absolutely love PB-42 and it is maybe my favourite zone in Open Space right now, they should not be outright disconnected from the rest of the game. Currently the literal only way to access PB and the Excavation site is to spend iridium which doesn’t seem right at all. There should be gates in adjacent systems that lead in once the respective campaign quest is completed.
Also how the flying f**k do I get back to Fort Muerto. I can see it on my map but can’t find a way into it.
Summary
This update is okay. It isn’t good but it isn’t terribly bad like a certain other update that occurred at the beginning of the year. Once Front Blaster sees it’s nerfing and people drop the damned meta to try out their new stuff and adjustments are made to aliens and container drop rate in OS then maybe this update can be called good. For now it is just a let down.
Also can we get a fix for:
And G’Thar’Du, Halo Launcher and Pyro Emitter still trigger the Aggressor status in Open Space regardless of Station Protection. Previous report of this bug still applies at it is still occuring