Rhea has a host of changes that could be examined closer but this latest statement regarding the phase out of Industry Teams I find most interesting. I for one thought of industry teams as a needless complication from the beginning and adapted the wait and see approach. It seems CCP has waited long enough and have decided to take the steps to phase out the industry teams feature.
First a quick background is in order. Industry Teams was first mentioned in this devblog spring of 2014 as part of the Industry Revamp. It was supposed to be the extra icing on the cake to change up industry game play I'm guessing? Either way the changes to POSes and blueprint changes have had a much more significant change on the industry landscape coming out of the Crius patch which landed in July 2014.
Fast forward to today and according to CCP's numbers manufacturing teams use is in the single digits and it isn't even used for research jobs. The feature in its current iteration is clunky at best and in my opinion adds a slight amount of add value at a cost of tedious time consumption. CCP had this to say about their plans for the Industry Teams feature going forward:
Our rollout plan for this would be to disable the seeding of new teams by the end of 2014, and to disable the UI features in one of the first releases of 2015. That being said, we want your input and feedback on what is ultimately a fairly unprecedented course of action for us. While we feel we have done our due diligence additional context from you is always appreciated."A fairly unprecedented course" is right. Time will tell if other unpopular features released now and into the future are rolled back like the industry teams. I am of the opinion that if its not hurting anyone leave it be. I mean it only took ten years for a major industry revamp and if we have to wait another ten years why not leave teams be. If you want to take the time and isk to invest in them so be it.
-CCP RubberBAND
Anyway lots of other eye candy and new space coming out in Rhea check out the development video for a quick recap of everything.
I have to agree, adding teams was needless complication to an already complex undertaking. I was considering starting to do some industry (mainly certain ship hulls) a while back but all the recent changes to industry made me change my mind.
ReplyDeleteTeams were the biggest factor behind my deciding not to do it in the end. Now with teams going away I might have to take another look at it and reconsider.