CCP has their reasons for not wanting to have forcefields anymore. The exact reasons got NDA'd out of the CSM minutes, but they are reasonable. As for sitting outside a new POS's docking point, you might be able to do that, but they might also have webs, points and guns to cover that exit. So if you attack that person undocking, they can just dock back up and let their defenses attack you.

I do agree that having some sot of indication via scan probes or d-scan of a pos being offline/out of fuel would be a good thing. I also agree that showing how many people are docked or maybe even what ships they have active would be a really important part of a new system. Frankly, if I have to give that up to get all the other benefits, I think it is worth it though.

Things you get from docking: (off the top of my head, and in no particular order)
1) Markets
2) Contracts
3) Secure Trade
4) Ship spinning
5) Captains Quarters/Whatever other Incarna stuff shows up
6) Assemble/refit T3s
7) Fit from saved fittings
8) Access to personal and shared storage
9) Repackaging, repairing, refining
10) Real container access
11) Real access rights, including the different corp hangar access for "based at" vs "other" stations
12) Possibly in the future, the ability to switch clones (not jump clone into and out of w-space, but switch implant sets)

The main point with docking is that we can see from the current system that CCP is bad at maintaining 2 separate systems for how players interact with hangars and storage. Getting docking means that whatever features and improvements CCP makes to the station interface comes for free for wormhole people.

Clearly I need to write up another blog post about this, because I think folks are missing the point here. I fully agree that docking would change things, but I also think some change is really good for folks.

I also wanted to respond to one specific point from Chitsa and Rroff:


I think this is 100% wrong. W-space is about lack of information, and making people work hard just to survive there. The exact mechanics of a forcefield or no forcefield has nothing at all to do with the reason people enjoy living in w-space. I'd challenge *anyone* to ask people for their top 10 reasons they like w-space and see POSes *anywhere* on that list. POSes (in their current form) are something we all *suffer* through in order to live in w-space, not the reason w-space is good. People like w-space because of the small gang fights, or because there is no local, or because the PVE is harder than most k-space, they don't love bouncing off POS mods when trying to warp or having to enter a POS password every single time you want to pick up some ammo.

So basically you did not address anything. All you did was just say docking games are kinda sorta almost completely unlike force field games so its all cool. Then you said yes, we should be able to find online POSes but because we can possibly steal them and make a measly side profit on them we should now lose the ability to conduct covert recon. You did not address the following points at all:

-Multiple POSes on Grid
-POSes anchorable away from celestials will require active probe scan thus ruining covert aspect of w-space
-Ability for system defenders to conduct d-scan from inside the POS

I don't know man, this seems like a pretty poor response to an extensive discussion. You haven't really addresses any of our concerns, you just expanded on your previous points that were already deemed irrelevant to the regular w-space dweller.