Skill points for sale

Well folks, it’s time for drama again. The forum is up in arms, and it’s a devblog once again that did it.

To be honest it’s a little fuzzy:

We also discovered that the vast majority of complexity involved in character sales goes away if you make them more granular. Rather than requiring that characters be sold whole, we could allow them to be broken up and sold in chunks. This means that buyers get to retain all the individuality associated with their characters and sellers can make some money off their training mistakes or unused skills without having to part ways with an entire character.

What does this mean ? I can sell off some skillpoints I never use and sell them for isk ? I guess so. And to add some fuel to the fire, you can buy these with aurum as well. If it wasnt available for Aurum, you could buy some plex with real money, sell them and buy the skill point thingies anyway…

It looks to me that CCP is trying to retain the newer players by letting them buy skill points on the market. It does take away some of the Eve core values (for lack of a better word) though. In eve the older guys always had more skill points, now some one rich can buy whatever skills he wants. So 100+ million skill points won’t mean any thing any more. I don’t really like the way this is going …

BB 66–The charm of duct tape

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Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 66th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are please visit the Blog Banter page.

Caldarification

The art team has been working on many art assets recently and there has been talk of the “Caldarification” of Eve related art. Recently examples have been the WIP images of the Thrasher class destroyer redesign and the citadel. Do we need to keep the lines between the races designs clear cut or is some blending of more generic sci-fi styling a good thing? Should Matari be flying/floating scrap heaps? Should Gallente be ‘all about the bass’? Or is a bit of generic sci-fi styling needed to bring new life to our important internet spaceships even if it leans a bit to Caldari?

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I for one very much love the charm of the four racial flavored ships. The Minmatar ships prove that there can be beauty in ships held together by duct tape. Just look at the wonderful Tempest for instance !

Tempest

The Rokh for me is the ultimate Caldari ships (looks wise). A picture says more than words, just look at them lines Winking smile. Somehow I associate this also with industrial efficiency.

rokh

And the Amarr I do associate with shiny ships. The punisher is a nice example. Most of their battleships are very shiny as well Winking smile.

punisher

And there is one race left, the Gallente. I mainly associate them with French people and/or hipsters. Not sure what style of ships goes with that, so I am a little lost here. I loved the Dominix and the Brutix models though. They don’t really associate well with hipsters, so that’s a bit of a clash. So the Gallente is the race I am not quite sure about.

brutix

As you might gather by now, I love the racial flavors of the ships and I hope it stays that way. Leave the Caldarification for the mixed race ships maybe ? If it has to be there that is.

Blog Banters:

Tetra’s Eve Blog – http://tetraetc.com/blog/2015/08/31/caldarification-bb-66/
Eveoganda – http://eveoganda.blogspot.com/2015/08/bb66-time-marches-on.html
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah – http://www.ninveah.com/2015/09/art-by-any-other-name.html
MMO Nomad ,confessions of a – http://blog.fenjaylabs.com/2015/09/01/eve-online-blog-banter-66-art-style/

SCASS – http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.com/2015/09/bb66-more-red-dwarf-less-caldari.html
Low Sec Lifestyle – http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2015/09/blog-banter-66-escape-from-originality.html

Blog Banter #65–Attributes

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 65th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.

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This months Banter was suggested by Jakob Anedalle

“I liked the discussion on The Neocom’s recent “Tinfoil Factory” on the future of attributes in Eve. Perhaps piggyback on that and invite those folks into the banter as well?
http://theneocom.com/2015/06/21/the-neocom-presents-the-tinfoil-factory-pilot-attributes/“

Attributes and Skills
Does Eve need attributes? It’s been discussed a lot recently. Unlike other MMO’s your characters attributes don’t make a difference in day-to-day gameplay. They simply set how fast you train a skill. Is it time to remove attributes from the game or totally revamp their purpose? Do they add a level of complexity to the game that is not needed? If you really need to use a 3rd party application to get the most from it should it be in the game? Should they be repurposed with each attribute adding a modifier to your ship? Are attributes a relic from the past or are they an important part of Eve – You make your decision and deal with the consequences?

Banter on!

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What I remember from creating my first character is that I had no clue what I was doing. Which probably sounds familiar to a lot of people. I thought intelligence sounded good so I went with a somewhat balanced Caldari character. I gave some more thought towards the next characters, they had more perception and willpower so gun skills and the like didn’t take as long.

Anyway, I think the system seem to be outdated now and it needs a revamp. It would be nice to keep in a little rpg and replace it with something else instead of getting rid of it altgether.

I was thinking something along the line of damage (dps), damage reduction (tanking), logistics (healing), learning (to speed up skills marginally, to keep a little bit of the old system in this new one) and tax reduction (for the merchants among us). Maybe some sort of discovery attribute as well for a scanning / loot bonus ?

That would just about cover it all. You can even keep the current attributes even and give them a new meaning. This would also be nice for alts, you can specialize them a little bit.

Of course these would all be somewhat marginally better, otherwise you get into the situation where you must have a certain spec to do something and I would think you would want to avoid that as a game maker.

So those are my thoughts, you can read more here :

Cloaky Bastard – Useless Attributes
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah – Attribution
Eveoganda – My Brain Hurts
Notes from New Eden – At Rebukes
The Ancient Gaming Noob – Not for Attribution
Torchwood Archives – Attributes and Skills
Sand, Cider and Spaceships – Useful Attributes
Target Caller: BB65 – Easiest One Ever
Lexx Jonlan Tweets. I don’t think he gets the BLOG Banter bit!
Low Sec Lifestyle – Blog Banter #65 – What is Interesting?
Crossing Zebras http://crossingzebras.com/a-farewell-to-attributes/ and also http://crossingzebras.com/cz-minutes-attributes/
Jakob’s Eve Checklist – Attribution Needed?

Blog Banter #64–The rare defense missile

The Eve Blog Banters have found a new home at the excellent Sand, Cider and Spaceships blog ! Thanks to Kirith Kodachi for his two year run of Blog Banters. This installment is the first one under the guidance of Drackam.

Torpedo! Torpedo! Torpedo!
With the Aegis release we will see missile boats get their own version of the tracking enhancer and the tracking computer. On the forums there have been calls for new ‘missile defence eWar’ to counter these new modules. Is this needed? Are smartbomb ‘firewalls’ enough? Do defender missiles need an overhaul to make them actually worth using? Do we need the missile version of the remote tracking disruptor? Or do we go all Star Trek and have Point-Defence Phaser Banks? Banter on!

The last time I tried defense missiles was in my rookie days, a long long time ago. I figure almost everybody tried them at some point and notice how they pretty much fail and are a waste of a slot (and training points). If they get upgraded / fixed, they  could be useful if you expect to fight a missile based enemy. They better have some sort of auto targeting / firing system though, because timing those things in the heat of the battle is a no go in my opinion.

Maybe something else, anti-missile shield module might be interesting ? I Haven’t really thought that one through but I am sure someone can work it out Winking smile.

Aegis will be out coming Tuesday as I write this, the current patch notes for 1.0 can be found here.

Banters:-
Tetra’s Eve Blog – Passing of the Baton. (BB #64)
Eveoganda – BB64: Fire All Da Missiles
Eve Opportunist – Anti-missile EWAR, no brainer!
Khanid Kataphract – BB64: New E-War not needed, and Defenders against drones
Jakob’s Eve Checklist – BB64 – Torpedoes Away!
SCAS – BB64 – Missile? Denied!
Warp Drive Active – Blog Banter 64: Take the Flak

Eve True Stories

Never heard of it before, but the comic Eve True Stories is part of the new Humble Gamer Comics Bundle. You can pay what you want in order to get it, as it’s in the Tier 1 selection.

Tier 1
Artbook: The Art of Remember Me by Aleksi Briclot
Comic: EVE: True Stories by Daniel Way
Comic: Fallout: New Vegas – All Roads by Chris Avellone
Comic: Plants vs. Zombies: Lawnmageddon by Paul Tobin

Tier 2 Beat the Average
Price: 6,94€ | Price may change over time
Artbook: The Art of Bioshock Infinite by Julian Murdoch
Comic: Halo: Initiation by Brian Reed
Comic: The Guild Volume 1 by Felicia Day
Comic: Valve Presents Vol. 1: The Sacrifice and Other Steam-Powered Stories by Various Artists

Tier 3 Beat the Average + $5
Price: 11,45€ | Price may change over time
Comic: Dragon Age Volume 1: The Silent Grove by David Gaider
Comic: Mass Effect: Foundation Volume 1 by Mac Walters

 

Blogbanter #63–Modding

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 63rd edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.
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Super Kerr Induced Nanocoating, new structures that can be fit like ships with modules, the promise of player built stargates… the ability to shape your space and change the look of your ships is finally coming to EVE. What other customization options of EVE would you like to have? What would you like to do to be able to shape space and environments? What would you like to change just for you in the client or in any 3rd party tools?

First thing that came to my mind was modding. Modding as in mods for the client. So you can basically make your own UI. Like some other games and MMOs have, for example world of warcraft. The biggest problem with this is that the best mods would become mandatory in PVP. As they might give someone an unfair advantage, or put yourself at a disadvantage if you don’t use them. For example in wow, everybody uses Deadly Boss Mods, you put yourself at a serious disadvantage if you don’t.

I don’t think we’ll see this happen in the foreseeable future. It would take a lot of development resources to adapt the client for mods and even more testing. Also it’s a bit of a support nightmare. Mods can screw things up, especially outdated ones. First thing in wow to do when something goes wrong is ‘disable all mods’ and see if it happens again.

Would it be cool ? Yes, especially because the things people will come up with is amazing. Things added to the client you might never have thought of. Some mods in wow became standard in the default ui, because everybody was using them and were a serious improvement over the default.

More participants over at ninveah.com.

Fanfest 2015

In case you missed it (yeah right ;)), it’s that time of the year again, it’s Eve Fanfest 2015. For those not able to go, CCP has provided a live stream over on twitch. Of course you should also follow #tweetfleet and / or #evefanfest on Twitter :). Don’t forget about reddit either !

Here is the program for the coming 3 days:

Fanfest 2015 FREE HD stream schedule

Thursday 19th March 2015

10:45 Warm up for Fanfest!
12:00 Welcome to Fanfest & the Future of VR
13:00 Sovereignty 5.0
14:00 Game Design Panel
15:00 Meet the Valkyries
16:00 Bro, Do You Even Test?
17:00 Eve Online Keynote
18:00 Eve Symphony orchestra performance from Fanfest 2013

Friday 20th March

10:45 Stream goes live!
11:00 Concept Art Live Session
12:00 Make Eve Real – Creating Planetary Civilizations
13:00 Survival Guide in Legacy Code
14:00 Ship & Module Balance
15:00 CSM Panel
16:00 The Future of Spaceship Rendering
17:00 World’s Collide Tournament: Tranquility vs Serenity

Saturday 21st March

10:45 Stream goes live
11:00 UI Modernization Panel
12:00 Art & Graphics Panel
13:00 Future Vision of Structures
14:00 Using Science to Help Newbros
15:00 CCP Security – Better Safe than Sorry!
16:00 Valkyrie Tournament Final
17:00 Closing Ceremony

 

Blog Banter 62 – Walking in Stations

This time the discussion topic is pretty straightforward :

What is and/or should be the future for walking in stations?

A properly executed version of walking in stations would surely add to the game. Keyword here being properly. With actual things to do, even if it’s just decorating your house / home with war trophies. I don’t think CCP has the resources to do so at the moment, and probably not in the foreseeable future. Even if they did, they still have the PR nightmare that Incarna brought fresh in their collective memory.

Every thing that could go wrong went wrong with the Incarna release. Of course to start off, the version of Walking in Stations wasn’t very good. There was nothing to do except for sitting on a couch or look at your current ship in the hanger. Only one type of station room, very bad performance once inside. Character animation was horrible, you walked like a drunk and probably more issues I forgot. People were mad because it took them 3 years or so to come up with this. Lots of dev time wasted.

Then we got $1000,- designer jeans, monocles, ‘Greed is good’ and the whole thing escalated, almost resulting in the end of the game. Wilhelm over at tagn did a nice write up, no need to repeat it all again here. With this in memory most players as well would cringe at the idea of more walking in stations. Hence the current focus on space ships. And it’s probably for the best. It would take quite some work to do it well, better not do another half arsed version !

More entries over at Ninveah.