 This is Witchbase news for Friday the 9th of December 2022, I'm CMDR Buur In Elite Dangerous News this week, Frontier clarifies exactly how the Thargoid War progresses dropping a bombshell that sends the community reeling. A progression rebalance makes human goals in the Thargoid War much more achievable, new anti-Xeno weapons arrive with more on the way and exo-bio rank requirements are rejigged. If you enjoy our stuff please do hit the thumbs up, don't forget to subscribe and ring that little bell to see all our Elite Dangerous content. You can also directly support our work by joining Patreon, links to that and everything else are below. As update 14 continues to rumble through Elite Dangerous this week saw the arrival of two community goals that, upon completion, would expand the arsenal of already very effective off the shelf AX weapons available to commanders. The first which launched on Tuesday was completed so quickly that the new enhanced AX turreted multi cannons actually arrived in the game today while we were putting this video together and are now purchasable from the rescue megaships dotted around the bubble near the Thargoid front lines and very preliminary views on the turrets seem to indicate that they have a very slightly increase in damage with a whole kilometers worth of effective range on top. As I speak these words the second community goal focused on enhanced turreted AX missiles is still running and will likely complete in about a day or two. Just to be clear these enhanced weapons are based on human technology not guardian and are therefore unaffected by the Proteus field generated by the maelstroms currently hitting the bubble or the Proteus site in HIP 22460. There was a post patch this week that brought with it a number of fixes to bugs introduced in update 14. The patch notes also contain a short list of known bugs that are still being addressed so it's worth checking there to see if FDev are already aware of something that's particularly troublesome for you, I've linked to those notes below this video. One of the biggest changes to arrive in update 14.1 was an adjustment to exobiology rank requirements following the buff to exobiopayouts that was delivered as part of update 14. The significant shift in the amount of credits earned for exobiowork has meant that 14.1 essentially moved the goalposts that needed to be achieved to reach exobiology rank. In a number of cases this has meant that the UI is incorrectly showing players progress through a rank as 0% and doggedly refuses to move. FDev have assured that whilst the UI might be showing a lack of progression the progression is nonetheless still happening behind the scenes and the UI will catch up to reflect once you hand in enough data to tip over into the next rejig exobiowank position. As things stand we are hearing multiple reports that we can't yet confirm that exobiow is the new money making meta in the game being far more lucrative than just about any other in game activity. As the end of the first full week of new thargoid war meta game was coming to an end Frontier took to the forums to explain more about how the war system works. As a result of the post we now understand exactly how the progression of the war is one or lost but that understanding also brought no small degree of frustration at how that progress is achieved. I'm going to explain what we learnt yesterday and about some important changes that significantly affect how things move on from here. When you view the system map of a Thargoid affected system and select the Thargoid war information tab on the left it will show you who currently controls the system, what one of the new war states the system is in, how long measured in weeks and days the system has until it changes to the next state and also a progress bar with tasks listed below it that commanders can complete to progress that bar in favour of humanity. As it wasn't explicitly previously explained by Frontier many, myself included, had assumed that the progress bar related to the weeks and days state change that is shown above it, not so it seems. In the forum post yesterday Frontier made it clear that whilst the progress bar is indeed measuring player actions against the Thargoid war effort, unless that bar is filled up by the time the server tick rolls around on Thursdays then it is reset to zero and all that progress is lost, with players having to try again the next week to once again fill up the bar. If the bar is filled by the weekly tick point then the system state moves forward in favour of humanity, if it hasn't been filled in any given week before the weeks and days timer at the top of the tab expires then it falls back one state in favour of the Thargoids. Upon hearing the news there was a fair degree of disquiet in the community to know that all the effort put in across lots of systems was all for nothing and we were back at square one but now with less time available was something of a kick, that kick was also significantly compounded by two major contributing factors, firstly no one knew that the weekly timer would reset our progress if not completed and it wasn't communicated by Frontier until the tick was imminent, secondly despite this last week being the busiest the game has been in the last 18 months we still couldn't move the bar enough. Upon hearing the news the larger task specific player groups like the AXI, Operation Ida and PDES initially halted their operations whilst they evaluated and absorbed the new information and then announced a re-task of their resources toward other efforts rather than waste any further time trying to make a bar move that they had no chance of moving significantly enough. And this sentiment seems to have been reflected in a noticeable suave of the wider community as well, we've seen figures suggesting that player activity after the announcement was down by around as much as 20%. So what's going on here? It would be too simple an explanation to suggest that moving the bar is just too hard and that the bubble is doomed. In actual fact since the announcement that demonstrably isn't the case, more on that in a moment, so just what are Fdev playing at? Here at the burpit we stare at Fdev quite a lot and here's what we think is going on. When introducing new features to the player base Frontier have a habit of going high with their numbers, reviewing the player base reaction and then scaling it back as necessary until everyone is happier with the result. By way of an example the council for the prosecution would at this point like to call forth fleet carrier purchase prices and jump call downs as a witness. If you were around for the introduction of fleet carriers in their public beta you'll remember that they were way more expensive in the beta test and there was a huge weight and I mean a huge weight of 2 hours between carrier jumps. Numbers were high, players reactions assessed and then they were dialled back until eventually both Fdev and commanders were more or less happy and that's what made the live game. It's a fact of frankly smart game design that players will almost always respond positively to above and negatively to nerf. Fleet carriers had the advantage of a beta, the Thargoid war however did not as a piece of very significant plot movement and an entire new in game event rolled into one there is the tricky issue of spoilers. Frontier have expended considerable effort building up a crescendo for what is without a doubt one of the biggest additions the game has ever seen. To introduce that event with a beta would be to lose its impact and it's been impactful no doubt whatsoever. It's also worth bearing in mind that for the last week or so Fdev will have been gleaning valuable data on player numbers, engagement with the current content and sub community reactions and engagement and no doubt all sorts of heat maps and metrics that I have no idea even exist all in an effort to understand and gauge just how challenging the war needs to be to still be challenging but not overwhelming but also not too easy to make it a walk over thereby detracting from any sense of achievement. When gathered that data when the community is absolutely at its most fervent and determined they then know exactly what their goidy AI overlord is up against and are able to adjust its aggressiveness just enough to keep things interesting. And to underline my point if you keep a watchful eye on Galnet then yesterday you will have seen a line in a story about the arrival of two further maelstroms noting that the Thargoid front line was now broader and their forces more stretched out as a result. The line read quote with an expanded front line defensive efforts may gain additional traction when defending or recapturing systems from the aliens unquote. Reading between the lines the implicit suggestion here is that defense moving that progress bar is now easier. And even with a slight drop in player engagement since yesterday that dreaded progress bar is already now moving at quite a pace indeed in the time that this video is being put together even there is a visible change in its progress bear in mind this bar was completely reset to zero just 24 hours ago. The reset was a shock to me but I do think with the right balance in the progress bar it's the right way to go. By introducing the reset rather than just a straight take as long as you like progress bar fdev are attempting to encourage players to focus more on specific strategic goals and objectives as part of a coordinated community wide effort. It's a way of bringing players together and focusing their efforts in a more dedicated front line than just allowing everyone to take care of their corner of the galaxy and ignore the wider problem. It also means there will be some losses. Those losses are longer term objectives that will have more meaning when they are recaptured and by allowing the space for losses to happen it adds a greater sense of peril and consequence to what is after all a war. I do think fdev could have handled this better however. The forum post on Wednesday afternoon stated with an exclamation mark no less that whilst the bars would be reset it wasn't too late to save some assets. Realistically that was not the case at all. By the time that forum post was circulating we were less than 15 hours or so from the tick and progress had already been a struggle in the 7 days prior. 15 hours wasn't going to change anything at that point. The galnet news piece was a superb way to weave the thargoid warbot being nerfed into the lore of the game and that is to be commended and encouraged. I would suggest however that a lot of the player base don't read galnet and could have used a much more literal piece of communication to calm their anxieties. Just a couple of lines of text on a forum would have got a long way to healing a challenging day. With all that said I mentioned last week that this update was bold and brave and it continues to be just that. I also firmly believe that with fdev continuing to balance the goals open to us are now completely achievable with the ongoing coordinated community efforts. Have you been furiously scanning plants and what payouts are you seeing as a result? Are you participating in the new community hauling goals and will you be testing out the new enhanced AX turrets this week? Let us know in the comments below. That's it for now, thanks very much for watching, we'll be back later this week with more videos. Until then, 07 commanders, follow the greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack. We very much look forward to seeing you next time.