E-War Notifications and Removal of "Brackets"

In the latest dev blog from Tuxford, he lays out the plan for the new system of electronic warfare notification, as well as the ability to remove the icons that you see in space, as well as your overview. The example given involves making all the wrecks disappear after a mission to make it easier to target the single NPC remaining.

Both changes have merit, and the e-war change is definitely a case of, "About freaking time!" Along with the messages for jamming, target disrupting, target painting, and sensor dampening, the sample screen shot shows icons that indicate who is scrambling and webbing you, as well. Given that people were asking for these around the time I joined the game, I think it's nice that CCP has finally gotten around to it, but hey, better late than never, I suppose.

What I don't really like so much is that these e-war notifiers are, in their current form, included as an overview column. Personally, my overview settings are usually pretty crowded, as is, and I'm not terribly keen on adding another column. The icons seem pretty small, so as long as they align to the very left of the column, you should be able to make them small enough to not be too obtrusive. Still, I think some of the ideas put out by players in the past hold quite a lot of merit as well. I know I have seen ideas from Haffrage in the past that involved icons fixed at the bottom of the screen, to the right of the module slots. That has its drawbacks as well (namely having to mouse-over to see the name of the offending e-war party), but it would leave my overview alone.

All in all, I think these changes represent the positive, trend I mentioned in the last post about CCP waking up and listening to its players more intently since the massive rabblage over the carrier nerf discussion a few months ago. Then again, They have been serving me some rather delicious kool-aid, lately...