Death to Supers, come to fruition--and other positive developments in EVE at fanfest

There's a lot I am happy about from the CCP announcements at fanfest. To name a few off the top of my head:

1) The massively lessened role of capitals and super capitals in sov warfare as well as "elite" gate camping (i.e. via assigned fighters). Because, let's be frank, the status quo of carrier blobs and, worse yet, super blobs, is not only boring gameplay, it is boring gameplay only a small percentage of the player base has the patience to train for and then play (or, really, endure playing). The game would be better off if supers were quietly deleted and carriers given a primarily non-combat role, despite the protests of a small but vocal minority of the player base. CCP has loved running surveys lately, so I expect them to eventually run a survey about capitals and super-capitals in EVE and, I predict, only a small percentage of the player base will actually "give a fuck" about capitals. I'd rather fly any thing else, personally. The solution? Probably, give capitals and super capitals beneficial non-combat roles, let them all dock, and let them into high sec.

2) The art team is likely the MVP of CCP in the first half of 2015. First of all, every release of 2015 so far (and most in 2014) has either contained fundamentally new art or better processing of old art. If you saw or attended the art team's fanfest presentation "The Future of Spaceship Rendering" on day 2, you'd be crazy not to be impressed with the amount of work the art team has done in the past few months. There is something like 100+ new ship skins coming to EVE in the next few months, plus a completely new system for ship skins, a la the "SKIN" system, wherein many ship skins will be made permanent, bound to the character rather than the ship. Ship skins are pretty much the only thing I collect in EVE, so I am obviously extremely excited about these developments.

3) CCP (fozzie and rise) admits that T3 destroyers are OP, but seem to be willing to release them while they are OP and rebalance them...later? I guess this is an improvement on the past where, say, it took a year of releases to balance a ship as OP as the ishtar. Maybe we will see a rebalance on the T3 destroyers in 2015, if we are lucky. Also mentioned in passing was the OP status of on-grid probing. Maybe we will see a nerf to that as well in 2015? But while T3 destroyers might be OP, I plan to fly the already broken 6-mid caldari missile T3 a lot.  Even so, they mentioned assault ships as a class that they are going to work on again, which I am looking forward to as well.

The universal language for broken

4) Oh, and the plan for structures? Hell yes.

5) CCP Quant is a genius when it comes to graph porn. If you haven't seen his segment in the EVE Keynote, it is worth watching just for that--he could make any economist or quantitative sociologist blush with envy.

So, yeah, I am pretty happy about EVE's direction in 2015. Maybe the main disappointment for me would be that no solo or small gang PVPer was elected to represent on the CSM. But, at least, many of the most popular EVE blogs are written by solo and small gang PVPers. Solo ain't dead it's just takin a smoke break right now.