Category: General

The usual category I will post under

Eve Is Pretty

There was some Eve News this week, most notably the blogpost on the new flag / aggression system aka. Crime Watch. It already has a 37 page thread (as I write this) of comments on the forums, with some sensible and some not so sensible feedback ! A nice article on these changes is on the Mittani’s website.

At the moment I don’t have that much to blog about, everything is going well in our hole (and my small industrial endeavors outside) ! So I’ll just post these pretty shots :). Can’t go wrong with screen shots !

Drakes prior to the missile nerf

Mining some sweet Arkanor
One of the prettiest ships in all of Eve (imho) the Legion

Sad, Sad, Sad

Just like almost every EveBlogger, I have to express the sadness I feel over the death of Sean Smith aka. Vile Rat. I never met him, but knew him as CSM 6 member and Goon diplomat. He had a big hand in shaping Eve, as it is now.

And the circumstances under which he died makes his death all the more tragic. I hadn’t expected to feel so sad as I do now, I got this weird ‘One of us died‘ feeling that I didn’t expect to have.

TheMittany obituary

May he rest in Peace and may his family and loved ones find the strength to carry on.

There is a fundraiser at youcaring.com to support Sean’s family.

BB39 – It’s not a house, it’s a home

Blog Banter 39: Home

“Some say a man’s home is his castle. For others it is wherever they lay their hat. The concept is just as nebulous in the New Eden sandbox.

In EVE Online, what does the concept of “home” mean to you?”

In my Eve life there are a few spots I have considered my home over the past almost seven years. First the system I started in, close to Sobaseki. But when you start out you don’t really have a lot of stuff yet, though you think you do ;).

I can’t quite remember what we based out of when I was in Eve Uni, but I don’t think it mattered much. You just moved your frig and cruiser somewhere and that was that. When I joined Rakeriku, we were based out of Kaunokka. This was the first place I would consider my home in Eve. We did missions and mining ops from here (although dot.lan claims it has no belts ?). We build our very first freighter there. And I think we had our first war there as well.

Old school mining op – Kaunokka (?)

Later on we moved to Sivala, it wasn’t busy there at the time, and there was an excellent level 4 mission agent for Sukuuvestaa Corporation down there. Years later there would be at least 100 people in local at peak times ! And most of ships and gear is still there after all these years, and using the station / lab / production facilities next door in Uedama, which you might know for it’s infamous gankers at the Sivala gate.

The few months I lived in 0.0 we rented out in Wicked Creek. It never felt like home though, was overrun way too many times.

Lightning up a cyno in Wicked Creek

When I joined Hidden Agenda, there wasn’t really a need to move all my stuff. Their HQ for events was not that far off, and mining ops and mission running and other activities weren’t always at the same spot, so I had just some gear scattered around.

And now since about a month I also live in a wormhole ! It’s amazing how fast that started to feel like home. I am liking it more than I had expected. But I still have the need every now and then to truck back to Uedama, do some industry stuff, and head back into our little hole. It’s nice to have two homes actually !

Freebooted, the home of BB 39.

CSM 7 – POS ideas

Yes yes I know Inferno 1.2 is out now, but I had this one planned after I read the CSM minutes last week.

In the CSM 7 minutes of last week we can read about CCP’s new ideas for Starbases. Starbases will be replacing the current POSes. The current POS code is very buggy (oh rly ?) and the new code will replace that codebase. There will be a transient periode where POSes and starbases will coexist, but the current POSes will be removed at some point.

So what ideas did CCP have ? Here we go:

New POS structures
1) A sense of ownership. New POSes should be “space housing”, with players feeling that, “a starbase is their starbase, not a generic starbase.” This includes some form of customization
2) Scalability. They need to scale from individual to alliance sized.
3) Get rid of the force field bubble, partly for technical reasons.
4) A single structure. This doesn’t preclude some sort of modular system, but they want a
single actual object in space, partly for technical reasons, partly for usability.
5) They want a path to retire the current starbase system. This may not happen in the first
release, but eventually a new starbase system should comple ely replace the current starbase system. This means that everything that current starbases can do either needs to be replicated in the new system or removed from the game.
6) (added later on by CCP Masterplan) The current starbase system code is  not the best, full of lots of edge cases, and the new one is a chance to greatly simplify things, similar to what CCP is currently doing with Crimewatch.

A lot of interesting ideas here ! And maybe some not so well thought out ones. These are just concepts though, nothing is set in stone yet, it’s still very early in the design stage. I really like the concept behind the new starbases, a home away from home, sort of like player housing in LOTRO or EQ2, but in space. Modular and scalable sounds good as well of course.

Space Station

However, no shields and a docking module sounds like bad news. As also mentioned in the minutes, there has to be a way to see / check what’s happening outside your starbase. In case you’re camped with no shields, you’re just stuck in your station with no where to go. And who wants docking games at POSes ?

The other idea to being able to plant these where ever in space (with the exception of stargates and stations) will need some rethinking. Remember in Star Wars Galaxies you could plant houses anywhere. Every big city (Mos Eisley, Naboo) was surrounded by a big ring of houses, people wanted to live close to where the action is. Imagine this in the space near Amarr, Jita, Dodixie ! Think we’ll lag to hell and back again ;).

So I’d say overall it’s a nice new direction, but back to the drawing board on some issues !

Pic by DarkLordDc.

BB 36 The good the bad and the ugly

“With the Inferno expansion upon us, new seeds have been planted in the ongoing evolution of EVE Online. With every expansion comes new trials and challenges, game-changing mechanics and fresh ideas. After nine years and seventeen expansions, EVE has grown far more than most other MMOGs can hope for. Which expansions have brought the highs and lows, which have been the best and the worst for EVE Online?”

First of all let me state that I entered the world of Eve during ‘Cold War’ right before ‘Red Moon Rising’. Since I didn’t have a clue what was going on back then I can’t comment much about those two expansions, let alone the very first two ‘Castor’ and ‘Exodus’. Castor must have been exciting though, bringing in T2 components and ships !

I had to consult the wiki page on Eve expansions at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansions_of_Eve_Online to check what features were actually in what expansion. Then it hit me that 2006 – 2008 must have been the golden years of Eve looking back at how much effort was put into these expansions, and how many features they had compared to the very meagre ones CCP released the past few years. Here is a summary of the ones I remember best and enjoyed the most.

Revelations I

Think this is my favourite, it had so much in it, Exploration, Invention, New battlecruisers (ie. the Drake) and battleships, and rigs / salvaging. Also the voice over IP thing was in this, that didn’t really catch on until later, when factional warfare was released and FW fleets started using it. So much new stuff to do and find out and to train for, it was pretty insane looking back on it now. Revelations II didn’t bring that much new features to the table, only overheating comes to mind.
Links to Rev I features:
http://community.eveonline.com/features/revelations/
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Revelations

Empyrian Age
This one introduced Factional Warfare that I really enjoyed a lot when it came out. So this was one of the most game changing ones for me. Especially since I didn’t have a lot of pvp and fleet experience before. I was a proud member of the Minmatar Fleet (and still am in my heart) ! One of the best times I had in Eve was in this period, also met a lot of nice people back then.

Trinity
20 new ships and a graphics engine update ! Also the infamous boot.ini feature ;).

Quantum Rise
Not as big as the previous one, but still nice, the Orca was introduced, very nice ship for us miners at the time. Grouping of modules and  more graphic updates. Also some stuff like StacklessIO was tauted by CCP, but I never understood why serverside things were introduced as features for an expansion.

Apocrypha
The introduction of T3 and wormholes / sleepers ! As it turned out the last major expansion that really added new content. Since I never cared much for wormholes I didn’t care that much for this one, but I know it is widely regarded as one of the best expansions for Eve.

What followed then were a bunch of lacklustre expansions that were lacking in real content and quality control wasn’t so great either. This all accumulated in one of the worst expansion in MMO history Incarna which introduced (or failed to do so) ‘walking in stations’ and the ‘real money monocle’ store. But enough has been said about this I guess, if you want to know more, google around or go back a few pages on this blog ;).

So here we are, some of my favourites and some bad and ugly ones. The other participants of this interesting blog banter will be mentioned below.

Start Post at Freebooted

Inferno Campers (happy or otherwise):


A scientist in Eve has written an excellent summary on BB36.

Resubbed and Confused

Well it was bound to happen sooner or later, I got several offers from CCP after I let my sub go out last June or so. This one was 20 euros for 2 months and I figured it couldn’t hurt to take a look again ! I found myself in an NPC corporation, which felt a bit noobish, I am not even going to mention the chat channel !

I hadn’t really been paying much attention to what exactly had changed and found myself utterly confused with the new UI. Where are my buttons I had been used to since I started ? Ah you have to click on the Eve E at the upper left corner… Took me a trip to the Evelopedia to figure that one out. It’s a nice change though, you can now move your buttons about and leave out the ones you don’t need and the ones you use often you can put on the bar on the left. The Eve Wiki now actually contains useful information. Another shocker to be honest. Been reading up on it on several subjects. Very nice.

Upon the first undock, i was struck by the awesome new nebulas ! Great work there. Makes space come to live a bit more and give each system a bit more character. I went out to pick up some ships I had scattered here and there, figured flying about would make a good start. Even that has changed, the autopilot can now even take you to a specific space station. Also you can now order your ship to jump when you’re not in jumping range yet.

Now of course the big question, what am I going to do in-game ? First of all I really miss my alts. So used to doing things ‘together’. I have joined my own corp that I used to use for my POS. I still got a medium tower somewhere I might start using again. Another shocker (yes there were a few), to see that fueling a pos has changed as well. I have also been reading up on blue vs. red which sounds interesting, or maybe I get in touch with the folks from the VanHemlock forum, they seem to be having fun in-game. I could also go back to Hidden Agenda, but I am afraid I would be doing the same ol’ same ol’ again and be bored soon.

For now Assault Ships 5 is on the skill queue. Was a bit surprised I hadn’t done that one already. Oh there is also a bpc of a Tornado waiting for me, so I can put my stack of minerals to good use. Not sure what I am going to do with that ship, but at least now I can spin it :). All in all I think CCP did a nice job of focusing on space again, and the seem to be back on track. Unlike my Eve career at the moment haha.

Links:

Funny enough a few days after I resubed @jonshute posted this:

http://howtomurdertime.com/blog/2012/02/21/eve-whispers-quietly-in-your-ear-after-a-while.html

CCP In Desperate Need Of Cash

Nothing like a catchy, provocative blog post title ! Maybe I should apply for a job at EveNews 24 ! Whatever the case, I am of course referring to the new 13 plex for $199,- offer ! Seems like a weird deal. It really makes you wonder how desperate in need CCP actually is.

cash_pileNot much in game news as of late on this blog. My sub ran out (like so many active Eve bloggers it seems ?) late July. I still read failheap challenge, take a peek at evebloggers.com whether there is anything that catches my interest, and now and then the Eve-O forums. Since I hadn’t been playing much the past few months anyway, I don’t miss it much. I must thank the Hidden Agenda corp for making the last year and a half or so in Eve a fun experience. The events like frig tournaments were fun and there was a nice balance between activities and freedom.

My last blogpost refered to the press conference CCP and the CSM did after the events in july. I was reading Life in Losec’s post which refered to a post by Seleen that touches this very subject. I alread thought the statements made in that press conference were a load of crap, but to see a CSM member agree with that is interesting.

If I take a look at eve-offline it seems this time people actually did vote with their feet and a lot of subs are indeed starting to run out. I do find the graphs there somewhat hard to read, but if you look at the  ‘past three months’ one you can see a decline in active players. Of course it being summer and all has to do with that as well. And since we’re not getting the economic quartly any more that had sub numbers, we’ll probably be in the dark for a while on the real numbers.

Dat Statement

And finally the CSM and CCP statement about the Reykjavik Peace Summit has been released ! I am not quite sure whether there are winners or losers in this one, but if there were you could say the players won. The very popular eve feature of ‘ship spinning’ will be coming back and furthermore, only vanity items in the NEX store for the foreseeable future. I also liked the statement by the CSM that they very much disliked the leaked email by the CCP ceo, which was very out of touch with reality.

handshaking

 

We are convinced that CCP has no plans to introduce any game-affecting virtual goods, only pure vanity items such as clothing and ship skins. We have been repeatedly assured that there are no plans for ‘gold ammo’, ships which have different statistics from existing common hulls, or any other feared ‘game destroying’ virtual goods or services. We have expressed our deep concern about potential grey areas that the introduction of virtual goods permits, and CCP has made a commitment to discuss any proposals that might fall into these grey areas in detail with CSM at the earliest possible stage.

This is pretty much what most people would hope for, and it’s the best CCP could do at the moment. CCP must have looked at the numbers and seen all those unsubscriptions ! Also all the bad press this has giving made them change course. If there was a course to change (well the returning shipspinning is new).

I am sure there will still be drama and forum whining, ‘but they didn’t promise no non-vanity items ever !’. But those people will just have to play the game as it is, and not what it could be in a few years time. From a business point of view they cannot commit to non-vanity forever, as I already stated in my previous blogpost.

Fact remains that I still don’t like where CCP is going. Devoting most of the development time to Incarna, Wod and dust. Releasing crappy ‘expansion’. The sad state their 3d engine is in (this doesn’t bode well for Wod btw) etc etc.. But at least for now we see some light at the end of the tunnel (queue dramatic music).

No plans for golden ammo

A devblog that addresses the recent events in Eve has been posted by CCP Zulu. This one is much better in tone and even says “For that I am sorry”.

There are no and never have been plans to sell "gold ammo" for Aurum

 

Note that he does not say ‘there never will be’. At this point CCP has committed to the new Aurum store. I don’t think it will ever disappear. Nor will they make a commitment that it will NEVER contain any non-vanity items. CCP Soundwave in his piece in the leaked bulletin mentioned storage for ship fittings. (Feels a bit similar to bags in LOTRO). Something like that can still happen. Or skill points or whatever.

The CSM has been called up to Iceland, but to be honest I see that as a PR stunt. I have no clue what they’re supposed to be discussing. Performance troubles in Incarna ? The Aurum shop is pretty much untouchable at this point. The CSM won’t make CCP change it’s mind.

CCP knows perfectly well that non-vanity items would make a large percentage of people leave, they might at some point in the future when Eve starts dwindling down take that risk and milk the last few dollars from their cash cow. And we won’t like it, but it’s a business after all.

Incursion 1.5

Incursion will be deployed on May 19th, which is tomorrow as I write this. A couple of big things in this one, which quite surprised me as I wasn’t even aware they were coming !

Blueprints

  • Unique icons have been created for Blueprint originals and Blueprint copies so you can visibly differentiate between them.

Wow, just wow. A change all industrialists have all been waiting for ! And for years CCP said that it couldn’t be done, because they couldn’t distinguish a copy from an original if I remember correctly. Finally that nonsense comes to an end and finally you can see if you’re dealing with a copy by just glancing at the icon instead of having to click on it and go to the appropriate tab etc..

Blue-Prints_2

Ships

  • The capabilities of the onboard scanner have been substantially increased. The range is now 64 AU and the delay to return results is only 10 seconds.
  • Ships with jumpdrives are now unable to use jump bridges with the exception of ships belonging to the Black Ops ship category.

Mixed response to this one. I don’t dwell in 0.0, nor do I use jump drives so it doesn’t effect me personally. I guess CCP thought traveling around was getting a bit too easy and toned it down. The onboard ship scanner will be improved as well. Nothing wrong with that I guess.

Agents & Missions

  • Agent Quality has been removed meaning that all Agents are now +20 in terms of payout and -20 in terms of access. Go forth, Capsuleers, and explore the world outside of Motsu and Dodixie.
  • Agent Divisions have been simplified from 20 down to just 3. The new Security, Distribution and Mining divisions now provide uniform types of missions instead of a mission type that was percentage based.

Ah another big one ! The very confusing Agent Divisions will be simplified and you actually know for sure you’ll get a combat, courier or mining mission. Very welcome change in my opinion. Also the quality system is basically removed. I guess putting them all to +20 was easier than just removing it. This will bring in somewhat more cash into the economy I guess, but will spread people out more, which can only be a positive thing. Although I am sure people will still sort of stick together as it’s easier to buy and sell your goods. But still, people will probably spread out. It will be interesting to see what will happen.

Furthermore the various connections skills will be removed as a consequence of the above. Only a few remain from what I read in the patch notes. The skill points for those that have already gotten the skills will be reimbursed.

Players who have the old skills already trained will have those skills removed and receive replacement skillbooks in the hangar of their home station and have the skillpoints reimbursed.

There are some more fixes and changes, but these are the really big ones. Some very welcome changes I think !

Links: