Local; To Keep or not to Keep?

This has been in progress for like 2 days... Im lazy and I procrastinate, leave me alone...

Didn't realize there was a Blog Banter up about this till after I posted it. So here is the link for those interested parties.

Let me cover another big topic springing up recently in the blogs. Ive read three blog posts about it just in the last few days. Sugar commented on it, so did Drackarn, as well as Logan over at the Opportunist. All of them make good points and for the majority of it, I agree with most of what they say. However I think I need to fully explain how I see this topic.

Local is NOT broken.
Local is functional just the way it is.
The only marginal advantage anyone has over anyone with local chat are those currently in that system (defenders). This isn't going to change.

Local has been used for years as a source of instant intel gathering and a way to connect with new people. The spectrum of its uses it directly correlated with the three sections of K-Space. 0.0 Uses local primarily and pretty much exclusively as a way to gather intel. Low-sec uses it to both gather intel and to chit chat with other players in system. High-sec uses it primarily as a way to connect with people in system (with some use as intel as well).

Point 1: Removing local with turn EVE into a darkened hallway. Sugar pointed this out in their post specifically. Local chat gives people more of a sense of 'togetherness'. It proves in a very tangible way that other players exist and you are not alone in this game. It is a great way to make new friends and make connections that can last throughout your EVE career. This is primarily in Highsec and also some in Lowsec as well.

Point 2: Removing local makes roams harder and much more time consuming. Without the ability to just check local and get an idea of the current population of the system and whether or not you will get any useful targets in that system. Remove local and now they have to sit and spend 5-10 minutes scanning down the system to see if there is any worth while targets or ANYONE even there. Thereby extending the amount of time needed to even go on a roam and making it more difficult to plan out long roams already.

Point 3: This one is 0.0 specific. Lets say you are a 0.0 pilot out running an anomaly. Your fit up in your PVE ship of mass NPC destruction simply owning everything. You check d-scan every few minutes to make sure no one is around and trying to warp in on you. Then suddenly BAM a BS fleet jumps onto your location with no warning whatsoever and you are thereby locked, pointed, and killed. Unbeknown to you they had a recon pilot scouting you out while you were missioning and you didn't even know there was anyone else in system. Had local still existed, you would have known of the hostile and been able to fit into a PVP ship and alert your fellow corp/alliance members thereby starting a mass engagement with lots of epic pewpewing on either side. So yea, take away local and your left with 0.0 ganking running rampant.

Point 4: Replacing local. Out of all the suggestions for merely altering or replacing local, I have yet to find one I actually like. I won't go over the different suggestions made thus far as you can check out the posts I linked above and pretty much find them all there. All of them include extending the amount of time necessary for checking out a system, as well as making it more difficult at the same time.

Point 5: CCP is going to be having a hard enough time juggling DUST into their mixture of juggling balls right now, that pissing people off by not changing local properly or by changing local period will definitely cause amongst the player base. You drop local and you might make a quarter of the EVE population happy, but what about the other 75% that wanted it changed differently? Or that wanted it to remain the same? or the newbies who show up and suddenly they don't know how to converse with people near them in an easy and obvious manner?

This is all opinion and speculation but that is how I see the Broken Local Issue. SO until I finish writing up my next post (which will be like a book)...

Fly Dangerous!

~The Cyanide Pirate