Greetings enthusiastic mid warp refitters!

As many of you may have noted in the patch notes for the tomorrows release (posted late last week), we have made a small but far reaching change to the fitting ability of ships in space, restricting their ability to refit whilst in warp, or in the pre-warp state (once their warp drive has been activated).

While this change was triggered by a bug found in the Factional Warfare restrictions to warp core stabilizers (also slated for tomorrows release), we understood that that particular issue was very minor when compared to the far reaching effects of being able to refit while warping, and in itself was no reason to make a change to this. However, as is often the case when a mechanic such as this is brought up for whatever reason, a discussion ensued surrounding whether the refitting in warp mechanic improves EVE or not. Some questions that are often brought up in these situations are things such as:

Does the interesting gameplay outweigh the added complexity and unintuitive hard to discover mechanic?

If we didn’t have warp refitting in the game yet, what would be the arguments in favour of adding it?

Ultimately, after some discussion, we chose to land on the side of removing this feature, and duly added information of this to the patchnotes. Almost immediately after the news reached the eyes and ears of the playerbase it was clear that this feature, however unknown and unintuitive to some, had a really special place in the hearts of many. Some spoke passionately of fights where mid-warp refitting had their hearts racing and swung the tide of battle, others bemoaned the “dumbing down” of the sandbox in order to cater to a minor exploit in one subsection (and although this was never close to the full picture, my personal responses on the subject didn’t help to quell this myth and for that I apologize). Many pilots wrote numerous passionate and reasoned responses. As a result of this feedback and after further discussion today within the team, we’ve decided that the positive effects of restricting warp refitting are far outweighed by the negative sentiment surrounding it, and the interesting gameplay it allows for many.

As such, due to your feedback, we will be reverting this change and pilots will continue to be to refit while in pre-warp and in warp.

We’d like to thank all those who contributed constructively to the discussion surrounding this. As I’ve mentioned in a few places now, while text based conversations are often not the best medium for such things, I personally think that our ability to have a frank and open dialogue with the playerbase is one of the aspects of working for CCP that I take most pride in. We understand that EVE is a game that breeds incredible passion and that when we push forward with contentious changes, that passion can often surface as white hot seething rage in what can often seem like an intentional attack on a certain playstyle or feature, or a complete disregard for how the game is played. While this response is (to some degree) inevitable due to the nature of the sprawling, complex, beautiful, mad, sandbox game we’re all creating together, I want to emphasize that the best way to ensure that we at CCP are able to action on your feedback is to ensure that is reasoned, constructive and backed up with evidence, even if it is based solely on your own specific experiences. That’s not to say you can’t call me names occasionally (This is EVE after all), but I’d ask that you at least stick with the format of:

“You are an idiot, because [reasoned argument with evidence]”

If you want more info on how to make yourself heard to the Dev team, I cannot recommend this post enough, written by now Ex-CCPer Greyscale (hosted elsewhere, RIP old forums)

Thanks again for all your contributions and responses,

CCP Lebowski, for Team Five 0