Category Archives: Community

Communities

Posted on by

My brain has surfaced from the depths of family life. At least long enough for me to compose thoughts into words and sentences! I’ve been dabbling in phone games a lot for the past two years because I love having hopes shattered by bad freemium models. But in that time I’ve played two games that ran into the concept of community in interesting ways. Game the first is Tap Titans 2. This is a clicker or incremental game. You “fight” titans, and can unlock heroes and artifcats that either improve your performance or automatically attack on your behalf. It is a perfect skinner box of the prestige-based clicker loop. The first game was an entire single player affair. Even the tournaments are really just single player races against the clock to see if you can hit an arbitrary stage cap. The second game is also single player, except the devs added Clans. You join a clan, and can contribute to Clan Quest fights. These run for a limited time and each player gets one “free” 30 second attack every hour. Killing the CQ Boss increases your CLan’s “Clan Ship” bonus. The clan ship fires a large hit into your personal Continue Reading →

DMV Meetup

Posted on by

Sugar Kyle set up an event at the Dogfish Head pub in Arlington, VA last night.  It was a blast!  Head count came in around 50, with people from all parts of Eve coming out to have fun.  BRAVE, TEST, PL, Goons, Nulli, Low Sec, Wormholes, High Sec, it seemed like someone came from every corner of New Eden!  The best part was the fact that everyone was friendly, much beer was had, and a good time ensued.  I was worried when I told Lychton I was with ABA (we bagged a few of their guys a few nights ago), and Lychton, being a large fellow, gave me a look.  Then I got a hug.  I love Eve. I can’t say too much to how fun it was to meet a bunch of fellow Eve nerds and shoot the shit for a night.  I got to meet some fellow bloggers, got to talk to Sugar for a while.  I also got to try out the Gear VR, which a Goon kindly broke out and spent the night letting people use.  I saw an arctic water demo, and apparently I shouted “Fucking narwhals!” loud enough that half the bar looked at Continue Reading →

Marking Milestones

Posted on by

Sometime last night I hit 60m skillpoints on my oldest Eve character. For some reason, this milestone seems bigger than others I have passed. There are simple reasons. In the last few months I have finished training all T2 cruisers and medium weapons, and all T3 hulls. That is not completely true, I cannot fly Interdictors, Heavy Interdictors, or T2 industrials, but it is close enough. My main also has moderate competency in mining, industry, research, and a fair portion of invention, as well as the skills to fly an Orca.   He can scan. He can lead a moderately sized corporation. He can anchor and operate any POS array. All in all, he has a very competent skill set across most facets of the game. Training has turned into a question of “What do I want?” not “What do I need?” So how long did this take? My Eve career has been punctuated by long gaps without active subscription time. Averaged out, over 3.75 years Grimmash has accumulated 1800sp per hour. At this rough rate, I should break the 100m barrier sometime late in year 5. It will probably happen faster if I stick to training skills that align with Continue Reading →

Reasonable Foreseeability

Posted on by

In the wake of Burn Jita 2, I have a few thoughts: Who plays Eve, but ignores the metagame? How do haulers, one of the most at-risk groups to events like BJ2, manage to ignore it? What responsibility does CCP have to players in regards to known events that CCP is not actually causing? I’m fairly sure the answers to the first two are something like “many” and “through dumb luck”.  But the anser to the third is not clear.  One very angry pilot posted the following in part of a draft letter he plans to send CCP, and posted on the forums: “Lack of capacity in Jita causing a large amount of ships (likely on autopilot) containing vast wealth to be stuck on the gates around the system.” In the larger context of the letter, he was implying CCP’s lack of ability to meet player demand for access to a system was responsible for a large number of the deaths in Burn Jita 2.  This made me stop and think for few minutes.  What we have here is a player trying to apply a real world legal principle to Eve online, a game made on a pile of interconnected Continue Reading →

Crossing Lines

Posted on by

Poetic wrote a post about a former CSM candidate that is apparently a rather unpleasant person.  Corelin wrote a rebuttal and covered CCP’s decision regarding the issue.  I have no desire to elaborate more, as I do not want to give any more attention to this person, but it brought something back into the forefront of my mind that comes and goes.  That something is the language we use in Eve, and other games. I will not enumerate terms, as they are plentiful and pointless.  But one term, in particular, has become personally relevant to me.  In the world outside my computer, I am a married man with a wife who is extremely tolerant of my gaming habit.  She lets me play quite often, and even lets me schedule things around Eve once in a while so I can make it to a fleet or event.  I’ve never gotten the red-box of wife aggro, and for that I am grateful.  Some of you may think this is stupid, but to all the other married pilots out there, you understand how great it is when your partner lets you indulge in just a few more minutes of fake spaceships. One of Continue Reading →

Learning Logi

Posted on by

Tonight was an interesting night.  Whenever I log in on Grimmash, one of the first things I do is check the fleet finder to see if any gangs are out and about.  While I have been trying, and failing, to figure out solo pvp in my frigs and destroyers, I find small gang to be both more enjoyable and more effective.  By effective, I mean I might have to actually put more ammo in my ship at some point instead of learning if I insured it or not.  Tonight started slow, with a few losses to bring my ego in check.  Two destroyers and three frigates found the jump gate to the great FW hunting grounds filled with booze and good fights in various ways on April 1, 2013.  I mostly blame my poor choice in engagements.  I keep warping into plexes in situations I think I can handle and finding out the friendlies already popped, or that I misread the situation. But that was not to be my only action on the Day of Fools!  After licking my wounds, doing some *real* shit, and trying to find PvP videos to learn something from, I hopped back in game.  It Continue Reading →

Growing Up

Posted on by

Now approaching its tenth year, the EVE Online player community has matured into an intricate and multi-faceted society viewed with envy by other game developers, but is frequently regarded with suspicion by the wider gaming community.  Is this perception deserved? Should “The Nation of EVE” be concerned by its public identity and if so how might that be improved? What influence will the integration of the DUST 514 community have on this culture in the future? -Seismic Stan, Freebooted, Blog Banter 35 Any discussion of the Eve community is tricky.  When you think of Eve from the inside, there are myriad groups all work with and against each other.  How do you succinctly capture a community that includes the CFC, R & K, Rote Kapelle, Tuskers, Faction Warfare, RP junkies, pirates, miners, inventors, manufacturers, wormholers, carebears, and traders?  Then add the flavors of each in all the various parts of space.  Then look at the meta community, which adds yet another layer.  I suppose the common theme to all the players who keep coming back is one of involvement.  The only way to succeed in Eve is not play, but if you ignore that, you reach a semblance of success Continue Reading →

Jita Blog Talk

Posted on by

MOre than a few people have been talking lately about the upcoming Jitahellcamp.  Ripard Teg thinks CCP have their collective backs to the wall.  Syncaine is musing on the urban planning challenges of holding all the tears that will come and the health ramifications of drinking said tears.  Poetic seems to have not really noticed, with his latest adventures in a stream-of-consciousness pile of posts.  I;m sure you can find some others to read too. I talked about this in regards to the philosophical context of the conflict that is coming.  But what about the day to day?  Here are some thoughts and predictions. I cannot wait for the Jitahellcamp to come, and I think it will be a wonderful moment for Eve.  So I am a bit more Syncaine than Ripard.  There are also some long-term implications if the Gooswarm wins the field. The economy of Eve may finally have to split up and the players will realize one mega-hub is a terrible way to run the economy.  The only reason attacking Jita matters is because it is THE hub of the game.  Sure, other empire hubs exist, but they do not hold a candle to the volume that Continue Reading →

April 24th: Welcome to the Inferno

Posted on by

Bravo Mittens.  Bravo CCP. The Eve community has just been granted an amazing chance to do a lot of things, and we have one month to prepare.  Regardless of your opinions of The Mittani, CCP’s reaction to his comments, and all the other arguments made in the last week, the players of Eve have just had a gauntlet thrown down at our collective feet. To the White Knights:  You have just been challenged by Biggest Bad of Eve to what will either be the largest battle the game has seen, or the quiet acceptance of Dear Leader’s arrogance and bravado.  If you want to take a stand against Goons, against griefing, against everything The Mittani and the CFC stand for, you know when and where to organize.  On the 24th of April you will be given the opportunity to take the field and send CFC back to the fields of nullsec in ruins.  On April 24th you can quietly be elsewhere and let the CFC shut down the hub of New Eden, fueling the burning superiority and pride they so blatantly display.  The choice is yours. To the CFC:  I hope you make good on the speech Dear Leader gave. Continue Reading →

Man Makes MMORPG Mad

Posted on by

I’m going to piss people off with this, so if you don’t like that, you can stop reading. The Mittani got drunk at the Alliance Panel at Fanfest, made some very poor comments about suicide, and now is getting railroaded all over *gasp* the Eve blogoshpere. Players (Human Beings) in Eve use terms like “rapecage”, “rape face”, homosexual slurs, racist slurs, and probably some things I have never heard.  Players in FPS games hump dead opponents.  Duke Nukem talks about sexual acts on amputated body parts.  “Gamers” have a lexicon that would make a nun burst into holy flames due to proximity.  This is insensitive and childish and immature. This is also the state of online gaming, the internet and locker rooms in the United States, and I would wager in the world at large, in the bored male demographic.  What Alex Gianturco said was something I assume he regrets, but was nothing even remotely beyond the pale for gamers to hear.  This incident speaks more to the sad state of discourse in the greater gaming community at large, and if anything should a be point for gamers to rally behind.  Not to rally against one drunk guy, but to Continue Reading →