This month’s blog banter is a special one, as it is also a contest ! It even made the news on the Eve Online front page. You can read more about it at ck’s blog.
Welcome to the ninth installment of the EVE Blog Banter and its first contest, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!
"Last month Ga’len asked us which game mechanic we would most like to see added to EVE. This month Keith "WebMandrill" Nielson proposes to reverse the question and ask what may be a controversial question: Which game mechanic would you most like to see removed completely from EVE and why? I can see this getting quite heated so lets keep it civil eh?"
It wasn’t very easy to come up with something. I know a lot of things in the game could use some improvement or changes, but totally removed ? Even the things I don’t bother with in game, but other people might like, I wouldn’t want to remove.
Then one Saturday morning when I checked my invention jobs, and 6 out of 7 Hammerhead II jobs had failed, it came to me: RANDOMNESS in invention ! Wikipedia says (amongst other things) : there is the sense of lack of predictability. And that is exactly why I hate it.
Sometimes you’re doing great and 4 out of 5 jobs succeed, then you hit a bad streak and you get one bpc for seven tries. Especially with things like HACs it is really a downer when three jobs, even with expensive decryptors fail in a row !
Of course the cost of invention would have to be changed. Six datacores for a hammerhead invention job, maybe up to 30 for a HAC (from 8 now) and so on. I am sure someone smart at CCP could figure out the economics. But at least you would know what you’re getting and how much it is going to cost ! Especially that last part is important, you can now estimate how much an invention job costs using the online tools, but it’s not ideal.
The title of this blogpost might suggest that I would want to remove all randomness in the game. Well, some of it is needed. Like officer spawns, exploration sites etc. Ecm as well, as loosing control over your targeting really sucks, especially when you would just totally get locked out in a fight, and you know it’s going to stay that way for as long as the falcon or blackbird is on the field. But I guess that could be the subject of another blog banter ;).
So there you have it, my blog banter #9 contribution ! Other participants:
- Diary of a Space Jockey, Blog Banter: BE GONE! (ah just noticed someone else uses this phrase)
- EVE Newb, (EVE) Remove You
- Miner With Fangs, Blog Banter – It’s the Scotch
- The Eden Explorer, Blog Banter: The Map! The Map!
- The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, "Beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, mushroom, MUSHROOM!!!"
- Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, Kill the Rats
- Mercspector @ EVE, Scotty
- EVE’s Weekend Warrior, EVE Blog Banter #9
- Miner with Fangs, Blog Banter – It’s the Scotch
- A Merry Life and a Short One, Eve Blog Banter #9: Why Won’t You Die?
- Into the unknown with gun and camera, Blog Banter – The Hokey Cokey
- The Flightless Geek, EVE Blog Banter #9: Remove a Game Mechanic
- Sweet Little Bad Girl, Blog Banter 9: Who is Nibbling at My House?
- One Man and His Spaceship, Blog Banter 9: What could you do without?
- Life in Low Sec, EVE Blog Banter #9: Stop Tarnishing My Halo
- Cle Demaari: Citizen, Blog Banter #9: Training for all my men!
- A Mule in EVE, He who giveth, also taketh away?
- Dense Veldspar, Blog Banter 9
- Morphisat’s Blog, Blog Banter #9 – Randomness Be Gone !
- Facepalm’s Blog, EVE Blog Banter #9: What a new pilot could do without
- Memoires of New Eden, You’re Fired
- Kyle Langdon’s Journeys in EVE, EVE Blog Banter #9 Titans? What’s a Titan?
- Achernar, The gates! The gates are down!
- Speed Fairy, EVE Blog Banter #9: Down with Downtime!
- I am Keith Neilson, EVE Blog Banter #9-F**K Da Police
- Ripe Lacunae, The UI… Where do I begin… (Eve Blog Banter #9)
- Clown Punchers, EvE Blogs: What game mechanic would you get rid of?
- Estel Arador Corp Services, You’ve got mail
- Epic Slant, Let Mom and Pop Play: EVE Blog Banter #9
- Deaf Plasma’s EVE Musings, Blog Banter #9 – Removal of Anchoring Delay of POS modules
- Podded Once Again, Blog Banter #9 – Do we really need to go AFK?
- Postcards from EVE, 2009.07.02.00.29.06
- More articles as they are posted
I agree that this whole random results thing is very very weird and feels Un-EVE-like, if that is a word, but it makes sense given what it is you do in invention.
I think rather than have it taken out, maybe have a guaranteed result and then have random chances of a better result? Maybe? Or just make it possible to more or less guarantee your results with decryptors?
Random chance of better ME and or PE or an extra run (or two) would be nice indeed :).
Random results isn’t bad in itself, but the application of randomness in a bunch of eve systems(invention, jamming) is such that when you are affected by it you can’t do anything about it. http://www.psychochild.org/?p=679 is a good read on the subject =)
Making it easier to access, with more accessibility to online tools will certainly make invention easier, but remember, that profit is inversely related to difficulty. The easier it is, the more people do it, the less profit there is.
Me personally, I like the randomness 🙂
@reatu, that was an interesting read, thx !
@bel amar, I don’t think taking away the randomness would make it easier. It would just take away the most annoying part of invention.
Great post. Though I’ve not experienced this yet; I empathize. And thanks for the comment on my post as well. You’re site is great.
@MORPHISAT – Sorry for dragging up a zombie post, but my feed reader only just discovered your reply to my post. “The most annoying part” is a barrier to entry, whether or not it is “hard”. If you remove a barrier to entry, you introduce more people competing with you and reduce your profit. That may be worth it for you if you’re that annoyed by the randomness, but you’ve got to realise that what you’re asking for will have a flow on effect