CCP Start Major EVE PvP Changes With Phoebe

See, the wonderful thing about video games is war can change, but only when it optimises fun levels and has been through rigorous testing procedures. Such is the philosophy of Phoebe, the next update for long running internet spaceship generator EVE Online. As the first stage of CCP's multi-year plan to revitalise the massive corporation combat that is EVE's driving force and primary attraction, Phoebe shakes up how movement works in PvP sectors. There's also the usual injection of quality of life changes, specifically targeting skill training and industry this time around.

The movement changes are the biggest deal, and perhaps one of the largest changes to EVE's null-sec (the area of space where corporation wars take place) in years. Detailed in this blog post there is now a pair of cooldown periods whenever larger ships use their jump drives to travel long distances. One simply prevents a player from activating their jump drive again, while the other, longer timer controls the length of that first one. The upshot of this is that large fleets will find it much more difficult to defend bigger amounts of territory and should hopefully reduce the size of alliances.

In preparation for this change, EVE's space-movers and star-shapers have been getting their affairs in order. EVENews24 has the rundown but the major theme is larger corporations selling off territory and restructuring while smaller ones buy it up. None of this actually comes into play until November 4th, so it's likely things will continue to move and change until then. It also seems inevitable that somebody, somewhere is going to use this as an excuse to kick off in the name of old rivalries, new ambition or simply the pursuit of "content" (as the EVE community calls PvP) .

The other large change is what's happening to skill queues. Skills in EVE are the levelling system and everything is done via time - logged in or not, your character is always training. Previously there was a 24 hour queue in which skills could be placed to start training. If you put a particularly long skill right at the end of, it could still last for around a month, but that was the limit. That's now been removed, with a cap of fifty items or ten years in place as a testing number, planned to be increased in future. This removes the need to log in to alts or worry about it while on holiday, with a side benefit for CCP of likely keeping inactive players subscribed a little longer.

The full notes on what's changing are available over on the launch page and in this summary video: