J'Rela
Black Lotus Heavy Industries
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Posted - 2007.10.23 22:06:00 -
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Edited by: J''Rela on 23/10/2007 22:15:45
Edited by: J''Rela on 23/10/2007 22:14:54
In the beginning, there was no autopilot and no warp-to-zero.
There was a handy-dandy little skill called Navigation which reduced your warp-in distance. At its ultimate level, you dropped out almost on top of the gate, and could be almost immediately and safely in the next system.
But the pirates whined (as pirates are wont to do) and navigation now gives a speed boost.
Meanwhile, the lack of autopilot had reduced all EVE players to button-pushing monkeys. Warp to gate. Go toward gate. Jump at gate. Rinse. Repeat.
Noone wants to be a button-pushing monkey. Computers are good at removing tedium, we said, and so autopilot was born.
Then some wag noticed that jump entry always displaces a ship a fixed distance and direction from the bookmark. This poor design decision on CCP's part led to an irritating exploit and...well, you've had that history lesson. Long story short, now we have warp-to-zero.
I'll be honest. It's been a long damned time since I used autopilot. WTZ cuts travel time entirely too much. And so now I'm a button-pushing monkey again, the useful feature that I once agitated for tossed by the wayside because PvPs want to pwn n00bs.
WTZ simply doesn't make sense without APTZ. WTZ hasn't destroyed the game (it's only made me play button-pushing-monkey in safe space, and that only because I want to get places faster.) Like an autopilot that knew how to use an afterburner (or three) in the old days, it would just reduce tedium.
Tedium is bad. It's the opposite of fun, which is what games are supposed to be. It is our enemy, and must be destroyed whereever it can be found.
Now, that said, I'm against WTZ. I think it takes a lot of fun out of the game. The problems with any kind of bookmark-based instawarp are legion. I'd like to see a return of the navigation skill to its original function (or, since you'll insist, another skill that does what Navi used to) and a random entry displacement that would make warp-to-whatever (not zero) actually make sense.
But as long as warp-to-zero is our solution to instawarps, APTZ just makes sense and couldn't possibly hurt the game any more than WTZ already has.
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If violence never solves anything, you're not using enough.
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