Author: Morphisat

Rubicon Announced

The upcoming winter expansion was announced today on twitch ! Why this name ? Apparently it’s the start of more player build things and stuff (?). Rubicon was the river Caeser crossed and start his reign in Rome. So I guess CCP see this as a start of something. I am little skeptical about these things, being a bitter old vet and all that, so  we’ll see where that will go.

Some of the new features:

  • New Sisters Of Eve faction ships. These look very cool, with bonuses for scanning and hacking. DO WANT !
  • Space vacuum cleaner – A deployable unit that will tractor all your wrecks and leave them in  a convenient pile to be salvaged later. Sounds very  handy !
  • New missile launcher that will do Battleship type DPS but will also do decent against smaller targets. Sounds very handy for doing Sleeper sites. And it’s good to have a new  weapon.
  • Pocos  (custom offices for PI) in HiSec  will be destructible and can be player owned. – Not sure this is a good idea. It will be a nuisance for new players and members of smaller corporations to get into PI, probably the pocos will be owned by larger alliances, leaving  the little guy in the dust.
  • Depot – Sort of a mobile POS. Nice to invade wormholes and the like. Maybe we’ll see one in our own hole and we can destroy it Smile with tongue out.
  • Twitch integration – Very interesting addition

Caesar Crossing the Rubicon

Those are the ones that I remember now right  off the bat and that  seemed the  most interesting. The warp speed and interceptor  changes don’t do much for me, but might be  cool for other people.

All in all a nice list of features. With only about 2 months away (it’ll be released on Nov 19th), it’s more than I was expecting. I am sure it won’t be buggy at all Winking smile.

And  yes I know we had BLINKGATE today as well, still making my mind up what to  blog about that, I did take notes so more on that later.

BB #49 Ballad Of A Rich Man

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 49th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.

What is “rich” in EVE? Is it simply having more ISK than most everyone else, is it measured in raw numbers of some other ethereal quality? Can you actually be poor? Have you ever lost nearly everything and had to claw your way back? If you are rich, how do you know and how did you get rich?

There are two types of players, those who see Isk as a means to get to their goal, and those that see Isk as the ultimate goal in game. They play to see their wallet / assets grow, the other group uses said Isk to buy ships and blow them up.

Ok it’s probably not that black and white, but most players would probably fit on one of these two groups. Rich for me in Eve is when you can easily afford the equipment you would like to buy and can replace all your gear without breaking your own bank.

Bitter old vet swimming in Isk

If you have been playing for quite a while, ISK starts piling up. So do all the assets to be honest. I mainly kill sleepers and do PI in our wormhole to get my income these days. Before that I ran missions, and made a bit of isk on the side, inventing T2 drones and various modules. Never on a large scale though. Think the largest run of drones I made was about 100. There are people out there who have several production / invention alts and produce 1000. So those people will be richer than I am.

However it’s still gratifying to see your stuff being sold, and see your wallet grow, even after all these years. When I started out back in 2005, everybody was pretty much poor, compared to today’s standard. People had to save for a battleship, think I had to run endless Level 3 missions to finally be able to afford a raven and so on. Never lost it all though, I might have lost a mission ship once and had to drop down a level in order to replace it, but that’s about it.

Reading the various participants entries it seems Isk and being rich is very relative in Eve. And that’s probably the only conclusion you can make from this blog banter Winking smile.

All Along The Angel Tower

It’s about two weeks ago, our wormhole had it’s hisec out in one of the remote systems of the Heimatar regions, Klir. Together with the neighboring dead end system Jorus, there were about 8 data and relic sites. Even though there 4 people in local, no one seems to be going after these so I decided to give them a go.

I got me a few goodies off the first few sites (Still not a big fan of the loot piñata and the mini hacking game that’s pretty silly). A large mini jump drive BPC, and some invention related items. I didn’t scan the cans first so it was a surprise what I would grab from the cans. The other sites didn’t drop much of value up to the point I didn’t even check my inventory any more what I did get.

angel_towerSomewhat disappointed I headed back to our K162 entrance in Klir and checked my inventory and lo and behold, a faction tower BPC ! It turned out to be the Angel Control Tower BPC, the large one.

I brought it back in a tanky ship to Uedama  where most of my industry stuff is, and decided to put it together there, grabbing the remaining ores and a large minmatar tower from Jita, to give it a bit more value, instead of just selling the BPC. It’s still on the market now for 1.4 Bil. I have been checking the prices and they’re a bit weird. I don’t think these towers are in high demand, only a few are being sold every now and then. There were a handful on sale in Jita for 1.2 bil. Those disappeared and reappeared for over 2 bil ! Someone reselling them perhaps ?

Angel_tower2

If it’s not sold by the end of this month I might have to move it to Jita to give it a bit more exposure, but I don’t really feel much like moving such a high value item. Probably will be alright in a well tanked Orca.

So if you have always wanted that fancy faction tower, head over to Uedama and grab it off the market Winking smile.

BB #48–Eve Lore

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 48th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.
* * * * *
This month’s topic is a request from CCP Sisyphus who wants to know how important is Lore in EVE Online?

“How important is “fluff” in Eve online? Would eve online be the same if it were purely numbers and mechanics, or are the fictional elements important to the enjoyment of the game? Would a pure text, no reference to sci-fi or fancy names still be an engaging game? Should CCP put more or less emphasis on immersion?”

Lore puts the RP in MMORPGs ! So it’s extremely important for a ‘role playing’ game. I do feel however that most games that call themselves MMORPG are more massive online games, than RPGs to be honest. I feel that the lore is the framework for the game, and that the gameplay should somehow fit within.

Having said that however, another thought pops up in my head that says otherwise. How often have you played a game, or even an MMO where you didn’t give a rat’s ass about the backstory. Rift, Everquest 2 and Tera to name a few I have played in the past, and I had no clue about the backstory. So I am contradicting myself here ! On the other hand, I still play WoW (yes really) and I even got a shelf full of Warcraft books, and I know a bit about Eve’s backstory as well and these are the 2 games that seem to stick with me throughout the years. So maybe it does matter after all. You seem to get more involved and more of a ‘what’s going to happen next’ kind of feeling. Especially now with Wow and the upcoming 5.4 raid where the leader of the Horde will be killed and everybody is anxious to know who will be the next to lead the Horde.

Sansha Invasion

Should CCP put more emphasis on immersion ? I think they’re doing a good job with the live events (that I always manage to miss it seems), and there should be more of those I think. It does move the overall story forward and it seems to suck you more into the game and makes you play more and longer, which should be a good thing for a sub based MMO.

Eve is unique in a way, since a lot of the Lore of Eve comes from the players themselves. BOB alliance has become part of the Lore of Eve, and so has Goonswarm, and maybe someday, a guy that started his trial last week, might become part of the Lore of Eve that people will talk about for years to come ! And that is the beauty of Eve in my opinion.

Participants:
How To Be Terrible At Eve: A Guide – Blog Banter #48 – Lore
Sand, Cider and Spaceships - BB48 – In The Future, In a Star Cluster Far, Far Away…..
Warp Drive Active – Blog Banter #48 The Importance of Lore
Eveoganda – BB#48: Lore is our Soul
Astral’s Eve Trial By Fire – Blog Banter 48
Emergent Patroller - Blog Banter 48 – Our fictional cultural heritage
Mabrick’s Mumblings - BB48: Pile of Bricks
Faction Fit Pod – BB#48 – Life of Lore
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah – Lore. What is it Good For?
Sered’s Lives – Blog Banter 48: Suspension of Disbelief
Space Business, Serious Business – To fluff or not to fluff
Low Sec Lifestyle – Blog Banter #48
Jester’s Trek - My story is the same as yours just one chapter ahead
Roc’s Ramblings – Blog Banter 48 – Lore
Life on the Bubble – Art of War Alliance – BB48: Who Are You?
Fiddler’s Edge – Eve Lore: Blog Banter 48
The Ancient Gaming Noob – Blog Banter #48 – You Want the Lore? You Can’t Handle the Lore!
Wherein Ships Explode. A Lot – Blog Banter 48: Stop! In the name of the Lore!
Morphisat’s Blog – BB #48- Eve Lore
Ugleb’s Journal - BB48 – Lore: the conflict driver
Aggressive Logistics – BB48 – The Dystopia Effect
A Journey Through The Mind - Blogbanter: I reject your reality and substitude my own
Poetic Discourse - The Caldari Alliance Championship 2005 (or Alliance Tournament I)
A CARBON Based Life - Folklore in New Eden… BB48: Lore

Alliance Tournament XI

Pandamic Legion was trailing by 2 in a best of 5. And came back ! The deciding game 5 was won by Pandamic Legion. Congratulations !!!

Great entertainment for a hot sunday afternoon and evening, especially for a nail biting final 5 matches :). That final game was very close, PL fielding 2 rattlesnake that they lost somewhere in the midgame vs. 2 Claymores (Sleipnirs were banned) and Gilas. The Gilas were gone by the time the 2 rattlesnakes were blown up. It was 80 – 68 by the 4 mins. left mark. PL was winning on points and Hydra could not catch up with the remaining PL ships. It all came down to a single Claymore vs. Vulture, and the Claymore couldn’t break the Vulture’s tank.

Now excuse me while I buy a DroneBoat in Jita !

ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ Drink the Waterヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ

BB #47–Wise men say

Intro:

Ripard Teg over at Jester’s Trek wrote a post called Don’t Do Anything Stupid and offered it as the basis of a Blog Banter as he is curious what others feel on the subject. Personally, I’m restarting manufacturing that I haven’t done in years and finding myself having forgotten almost as much as I knew the first time around.

So this month’s Blog Banter will gravitate around knowledge, specifically EVE knowledge. Some examples of topics to cover: Is EVE too complex for one person to know everything? Is it, in fact, too complex for one person to know everything about one topic? How do you maintain any knowledge or skills related to EVE over time with breaks and expansions? Does CCP do a sufficient job documenting the features of the game, and if not, what could they do better? How does one determine where the gaps in their knowledge even are?

My response 

We all know that famous pic of Eve’s learning curve. The thing with Eve in my opinion is that it’s it more overwhelming than it is difficult. There are many things to do and a lot of things to learn so as a new player (and more so in the past than it is now with the new tutorials) that you just don’t know where to start.

Once you learn the basics though, common sense does take you a long way. Fitting ships for example is not too hard once you grasp the basics of shield and armor tanking. Of course there are some specialist roles / ships that need some more knowledge, but that’s what blogs, the eve forums, and the wiki are for. Eve is indeed too complex to know it all. But it’s not necessary to know it all to be honest. I do think after more than 7 years in the game I do know quite a bit, but it’s more general knowledge. I don’t know the first thing about capital ships for example, since I never use them, nor do I have a need for one.

Getting back to that learning curve pic, when you start you feel as if you need to know it all in order to properly play the game and to enjoy it more. But once you start carving out your niche, like industry, mining and maybe a pvp’er, playing tackle in a bigger corp, you start to find out that you don’t need to know it all. Just know your particular area of the game, use some common sense, use the wiki, blogs etc. and you’ll be alright.

Regarding the question how do you determine there are gaps in your knowledge: That is a hard one. I do try to keep up with Dev Blogs on what’s coming and reading Eve Blogs, but sometimes a new module or a new game mechanic does escape me. When people in alliance chat discuss the new thing I do ask what they’re talking about and try to read up on the subject.

Links to the other participants at :

http://www.ninveah.com/2013/07/blog-banter-47.html

MMO Blogging

Two very interesting posts appeared the last few days, I first read the Ancient Gaming Noob’s post and he pointed to Psychochild’s blog. We have covered this subject a while back, also somewhat more Eve specific in the eve blogosphere. The general concensus, or at least how I remembered it, was that blogging wasn’t dead, it’s just past it’s prime time where almost every other Pod pilot seemed to have a blog. Blogs are still a great source of info and a serve a very different purpose from twitter and G+.

How often do you google for something and find the info you were looking for on a blog post ? And how often do you find it by searching on Twitter ? I can hardly find what I tweeted 2 months ago, let along find info from longer ago, 140 characters isn’t enough to express your opinion or explain some new gaming mechanic.

The new thing to do is Let’s Play on youtube. When I started blogging that sort of thing would have been very hard to pull off, bandwidth was limited, let alone processing power to encode a video in a reasonable amount of time. This new trend will probably go the same way as blogging did, a handful of interesting Let’s Players will survive, the rest will slowly fade. It takes a very special personality to pull an engaging let’s play video off. Usually when I try to watch one, I get turned off in the very first minute. Only Beef and Kurtjmac I find very entertaining and a Totalbiscuit video now and then (not really a let’s play but hey I’ll throw him in here).

Anyway, I am getting off track ;). What did struck me was a comment on Psychochild’s blog, that said that the magic was gone. We lost that child like AWE I HAVE TO BLOG ABOUT THIS NOW feeling we had when we started out playing MMOs. I’ll never forget my first walk at level 11 in the night from Thunderbluff to Crossroads surrounded by scary beasts, death lurking at every corner in my first days in WoW. There just is less to write about enthusiastically. When I look at my Eve gameplay nowadays, that is certainly hardly anything to write about, so it’s more metagame posts. How many times can you write about Ice mining, killing some sleepers and doing a bit of PI ?

The two posts mentioned above had a focus on community. I still feel that Eve has a community of bloggers who are then part of a larger community of MMO bloggers. Our numbers might not be as big as they once were, but I feel the quality is better than it once was. We have grown as writers and there is less noise to wade through now.

Odyssey Exploration is popular

As posted in this devblog, the number of pilots doing exploration sites has grown exponentially since Odyssey. This isn’t very surprising as it’s right in your face each time you make a jump ;). And it’s easier to find things with the new and improved scanning interface (yes I said that, it did take a while to get used to it.

Yet not everybody is happy though, I guess there is always someone not pleased. Although he does have a point regarding the loot pinata, not a big fan of that.