Category Archives: Opinion

You Can’t Stop the Signal

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Bit of a think piece here. There have been many discussion about intel gathering and the function of Local in the various regions of space.  I always find it odd that our comms travel at FTL speeds.  Our ships do too, actually, but that is another issue for another post.  While thinking about the value of local, I’ve had some random ideas to inflict upon you.  These ideas are generally meant to affect communications between systems, not inside a particular system. Comms in Empire It seems odd to me, given sec status and jump gate control by factions, that everyone always gets to see the whole local list and chat.  Why would the Gallente let a known criminal use their gates and their comms?  I’ve always envisioned that the comms system in Eve uses the jump gates to get around the Cluster, with all of our messages making trips similar to our ships.  So perhaps chat could become a function of your standing with the various empires, with high standing payers getting higher priority and criminals or negative standing players cut out of the loop.  Effectively the jump gates would see your pod status and use that to determine your Continue Reading →

The Little Things

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Just logged in to check my orders before heading out.  I clicked the “Show My Orders” option. Best. Update. Ever. I no longer care about anything else ever done in Eve. CCP has won. That is all.

Blobs: An Aesthetic Quandry

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Go take a look at this fleet. I lifted that link from Corelin, and he nicely summed up the gameplay implications that fleet represents, so I don’t need to go there.  But I have a few more examples:  Found here.  Found here.   Found here. The theme, if you hadn’t guessed, was how godawful massive fleets look in big space fights.  Compare that to this: Notice the difference in the fleets?  I think this is something that, long term, could use some love.  Not necessarily now, but some sort of fleet formation component to Eve could make this look a lot nicer, and make AARs look a lot nicer than the current pile of crazy ships all sitting in space looking confused and ready to smash into each other. That’s all, just a random thought about blobs that has nothing to do with the actual mechanics, and everything to do with the visual presentation.

Growing Up

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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 →

My Daddy Was Tritanium Miner Like His Daddy Before Him…

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I never thought mining, drones or salvaging would become the hot topic they have lately.  To read the blogs, you would think Eve is going to implode in a few weeks…  But oh what a beautiful implosion it shall be.  A few things about the incoming changes. Short TermBuy you gear now.  I mean it.  I’ve been quietly building a small stockpile of minerals, and the value is increasing just by letting it sit.  Weapons, modules and ammo haven’t caught up yet, ships are already starting to.   Thinking of moving to that WH?  Buy your Drakes, Retrievers and haulers now.  Maybe some fuel…  I think in a few weeks weeks you’ll be wishing you laid in supplies for a hot summer.  Speaking of which… Update Your QueueWant to gank some shiny hulks?  Best get those last few skills ready now.  I predict miners are going to be hiding for most of the summer.  Better get in on the initial kills, because Hulks are already ~50 mil more than they were this time last year.  Can’t wait to see the price on those pop up over 300 or 400 mil.  Want to be ready for the clear(ish) skies after Hulkageddon? Continue Reading →

Jita Blog Talk

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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 →

PI Redux

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I recently moved back to the same chunk of space where my PI installations are.  I never took them down, so I decided to visit those command centers, clean out the warehouses and reemploy my minions of production.  Mostly I wanted to see if my predictions of doom and gloom were actually true. Well, they mostly weren’t.  The reactivated planets are pulling in a nice little profit, even with the new taxes.  I think it may even be more profitable than before, but I can’t be arsed at this point to dust of the spreadsheets and try and do the analysis at this point.  However there is still the sticker shock of looking at that export fee!  <<834,456.00 ISK>> to get a small pile of plasmoids, yeouch! The export fees do represent a little bit more of a barrier to casual players who may be cashed-strapped though.  Getting your planet set up costs a few millions, usually, and I wonder how many players have set up a planet and then come to pick up the goods only to be oddly disappointed and discouraged by the taxes…  Perhaps the costs could be defrayed by installing a planetary shuttle structure and shifting costs Continue Reading →

April 24th: Welcome to the Inferno

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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 →

Fanfest 2012 Impressions (Part 1?)

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After a few days to process the info from various blogs, video streams and the interwebs at large, I think I have a grasp on Fanfest 2012: WardecsOverall, I think the wardec revamp looks like a good starting point for iterations.  There is no ability for aggressors to retract poorly chosen targets, so I think we will see more selective targeting.  Giving defenders the ability to add support while denying this to attackers should also have the same results.  I am a bit worried about what happens to small corporations that cannot defend themselves.  Poetic has some thoughts on member-disparity based pricing, which may not be perfect, but provides disincentives for tremendously unequal conflicts.  My biggest fear is that small corps will still be “grief decced”, as the 20-30 million range is still rather low to prevent organized griefers. PvPCentralized Killboard?  Yes please.  Crimewatch changes?  Yes please.  I am interested in what these will both actually come out as, but the principles are good.  I would love to see more done to prevent station games, something like longer aggression timers at gates and stations, coupled with some sort of “station view” so pilots in stations can look out the damn Continue Reading →

Man Makes MMORPG Mad

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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 →