After reading the news this morning that Dust 514 would be a PS3 exclusive, I was planning on writing an extensive blogpost about it, but Roc Wieler already wrote one that I might as well link:
He exactly words my sentiments, when he says ‘could I afford a PS3, yes I can, but not for just one game!’. I already own an xbox 360 and quite a few games, but it’s catching dust (!) already. I am not going to buy another console.
Furthermore from what I understood so far, Dust 514 will be free on the PSN network, and you can buy stuff like weapons through the RMT store. On the xbox I have played games like that, or spend a few points in the marketplace to do so, and usually you play these games a few times and then just forget about it. Won’t the same happen to Dust ?
Anyway, I am not quite enthusiastic lately the way things are going in Eve-Land…
In a devblog published 27th of may CCP announced the upcoming Microtransactions Store coming to Eve. You’ll be able to buy cloths (and monocles) for your character from this store. And you’ll need ‘Aurum’ to be able to buy them. Aurum comes from turning in Plexes. So what’s the argument from CCP to it this way ?
So we’re left with the question of how to give you the customizability and uniqueness you want without simply raising the subscription rate.
Aha ! If this is the case then you simply suck at doing business. Why invent a new ‘feature’ that you claim you can’t actually afford to bring at the current subscription rate ? I don’t believe the above argument for a second. Eve is already one of the most expensive MMOs out there. It’s used to fund the upcoming other MMO, and Dust. CCP simply wants to make more money, why not be honest about it.
Basically they have been working on Incarna all this time, and letting the space game slide, while working on a side game which doesn’t even offer gameplay, and you need Real Money to be able to use. Your $15,- a month is only good for an orange noobie overall. Also ship decals, alliance logos on your ship etc will have to be bought through above mentioned store.
This is also is a step away from a player driven economy. CCP will set the price of cloths and no one else.
You might also wonder who is interested in this ? I think they want to just get a new player base that wants to spend money on these kind of things. I don’t see Eve players as the type that enjoy playing Barbie in space. And where will it end ? Faction ammo next ? Faction blaster ? +10% missile damage boots ?
As you might have guessed from the above, I am not enjoying this decision by CCP at all. The responses to the devblog have been mainly negative too and #tweetfleet wasn’t too excited either. But then again as I said, I don’t think we’re the target audience any more.
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..
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 !
Welcome to the twenty-sixth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, 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 or so 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 to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!
This month’s topic was proposed by @KatiaSae of the much praised “To Boldly Go” blog. Katia asks: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As an astrophotographer, I’ve found it in the stars and planets of New Eden. Where have you found it? Perhaps you’ve found beauty in the ships we fly? Maybe it’s the sight of profits being added to your bottom line? Or maybe it’s the pilot portraits you see in the comm channels? Where ever you’ve found it, write about it and post an image.” Don’t be afraid go beyond the simple visual aspects of EVE as well. Is the EVE Community in itself a thing of beauty? What makes EVE the game, the world, the Community, so appealing to you?
This is a tough one ! Where to start ? I decided to pick three
First of all there is the graphics, just a pic here from a while ago which also appeared in one of the earlier episodes of EON. Don’t think I need to add more explanation :). It’s a joy to fly around in Eve.
Second of all is the community. Eve’s community is different from a lot of other MMOs. It’s difficulty and steep learning curve attracts different people. Yes we too have the forum warrior / whiners, but overall it’s a much more tight knit community. I don’t know of any MMO that has something comparable to #tweetfleet for example. Or just an active blog community. People might be fighting each other in game but still be very friendly outside of it.
Third of all is the progression you make. Although this sort of fades a bit when you have been playing for a long time, it’s just a joy when you can finally fly that ship you always wanted. Or to finally be able to do exploration properly, or use those tech II crystals (for the miners amongst us). The time based skill system is very friendly to those who can’t spend 23/7 in the game. You always progress (as long as you keep paying), you don’t have to kill 10 space pirates.
Last but not least: all of the above (and many more) combined in one game. Sometimes the sum is more than it’s parts ! And that for me is the beauty of Eve.
Unfortunately I couldn’t install the test client because of a ‘time out while downloading’. I was planning on making a little youtube video, but unfortunately cannot at the moment. Luckily someone posted a link to a youtube video in the feedback thread, which I have now linked below.
It looks very rough around the edges. After years of development, it’s apparently still in ‘Early Alpha’. It would be quite an achievement if they would get this up and running, in a reasonable shape in a few months time. Somehow I have my doubts, but we’ll see.
Quite a while back I had my eye on this game, I thought it would be interesting, a more action oriented Space MMO ! Then I sort of forgot about it, until I saw a good looking ad on YouTube. Yes I know about ad blocker, but I keep the ads on on some channels to support those who provide great free content. I tried it out over the past few days and will share my first impressions here. I am not going to call this a review as I think you need a lot more game time than the first few levels.
You get a fairly lengthy intro into the lore behind the game, including you taking a seat in a gun turret. This felt a bit Star Warsy for some reason. Also it took a little too long or I didn’t understand the objectives correctly. Whatever the case, eventually you get to fly an escape pod of sorts and that is your first ship. In this game as opposed to Eve you always have only one ship. As you level up and gain experience and skill levels you can pimp out your ship with various weapons, shields and wings. The cockpit determines your speed, mass etc.. You can change your look a little by using paint. One of the first missions shows you how to create paint, you can then apply it to your wings.
To get a general impression of the gameplay I put up a video on youtube.
The missions consists of ones you can pick up at a docking station at a terminal (these are repeatable) and there are ‘story line missions’ that you get from characters in the game (an Admiral and your Commander for example). They have fairly long intros that are actually voice acted. How long this will last I don’t know though, but I thought that was impressive for a Free To Play game. The missions are usually a go here and check this out and / or meetup with this person. Then suddenly enemies appear etc. It reminded me a bit of Star Trek online.
Your spaceship handles pretty well. It uses the wasd keys for thrust and turning left and right, Q and E are for rolling left or right. Left mouse for shooting. In combat there are some abilities that come into play. There is adrenaline which comes into play when doing special maneuvers. Also there is concentration, you can read up on the website what it does, at the lower levels it doesn’t seem to play a big role.
The graphics are very nice. Even in crowded areas my machine help up pretty well. The space areas do look nice. The interface is at times a bit cumbersome. For example I had to switch to mouse mode (by pressing space) to identify some items in space in order to grab them for a mission. This stopped my thrust and other movement. Maybe I am doing it wrong, but in that case it should be more obvious what you’re supposed to do. The docking interface is a standard affair. There is a dealer where you can buy guns and cockpits and the like, a hangar where you can change your ship layout, and a crafting window where you can for example modify your weapons or craft the before mentioned paint.
All in all the game made quite a good impression on me and I will definitely keep playing it every now and then. The difficulty level is also pretty good, it’s not a straight walker even at the lower levels. I haven’t tried the pvp yet, as I felt I was a bit low level for that. There are pvp missions as well, so it’s not just for shits and giggles. You can also choose sides at level 5 or 6 I think, but it wasn’t quite clear to me at the moment what the point was of either side (I even forgot their names as I write this).
Since it’s free to play, I hear you thinking ‘Can I buy my way to victory ?’. From what I have seen so far, I don’t think so. What is in the store at the moment is mainly stuff that makes you level faster, xp boosts and stuff like that. Also some vanity items, like various paint colors etc..
So besides the somewhat lengthy download (5 Gb for the initial client) there is nothing holding you back trying out the game. It’s not the sandbox game as Eve is (or at least it didn’t look like it from the little I have seen so far), but the space combat is very entertaining and getting better skills and gear is always nice.
You can read the future plans for the game in ‘a letter to the comminuty’ including Walking In Stations !
This week the new forums went online. Apparently CCP uses a modified version of the asp.net Yet Another Forum software. According to the license (GPL) CCP should give back their modifications to the community (as you can read here on their forum), which should be interesting as we can see the authentication code in there. Somehow I doubt ccp intends to do this.
Anyways, the old forums were uhm well, a bit outdated, but we were used to them and readability was ok. In these new forums, readability was worse. Especially the front page and the fonts / colors chosen were not so easy on the eyes. Also the new avatars are a little too big. To me they also seem sluggish. I don’t want to diss asp.net right away (why not create something new in asp.net mvc ? would have been a better choice imho), but snappy isn’t how I would describe them.
On top of all this, through #tweetfleet yesterday came in reports (mainly by Helicity Boson) that the new forums also had several security holes. Pretty soon thereafter they were taken offline to fix those issues ! Let’s hope they also fix some of the readability issues and we’re set to go. Oh fix that like button too while you’re at it ;).
If you really miss the old forum’s look you can use a plugin in firefox called stylish to make it look like the old one.
Update: The new forums were taken down again, obviously the security issues are much broad than just the signature issue. For a good timeline of the events check out Jester’s Trek.
This just in from #fanfest ! CCP’s vision for Eve ! Probably the ground combat combined with space stuff is a bit far off, but at least their vision is good ! This is the type of game just about every SF fan would play.
Last week we had an alliance tournament. Well mainly Hidden Agenda members actually. It consisted of several rounds. First off was the frig free for all. This time I decided to pilot a kestrel with active tanking. I only managed to take down one pilot before I was downed by about four others !
Somewhat discouraged we had a team game coming next. Using the same setup as in the solo round, this went down much better. Sitting in the back, unleashing my missiles I was involved in 3 kills of the 4. Needless to say our team won ! The fifth member that wasn’t killed pulled a Benny Hill and kept zipping around and we couldn’t kill him, Ruffio in all his wisdom declared us the winners.
Next up was a cruiser free for all. I decided to go with a tanky vexor setup, med armor rep with cap injector and an 800mm plate. I was involved in a nice one on one with a stabber with me coming out victorious. Unfortunately I was then jumped upon by Cattis in a rupture who could barely break my tank, but broke it in the end anway !
Last round of the evening’s events was a ladder frig tournament. Unfortunately it was marred by disconnects by a lot of members and other server problems. I did get in my first round and lost against a well tanked rifter using a 400mm plate. I was using a 200mm + repper. The fight was very close, I overheated all my equipment and turned to space dust in the end.
All in all a very enjoyable experience and we had a lot of fun. I certainly recommend every corp, even if you’re just industrialists to do this every now and then.
CCP has put up the fanfest 2011 brochure at the fanfest website. Fanfest 2011 is only a week away ! I won’t be there, but for those that stay at home there is a live stream to follow the important keynote speeches. The HD stream is rather pricy at $20, especially compared to something like Gomtv’s GSL, which gives a load of content for $20,-. The recurring subs there are even only $15,-.
