Category Archives: Opinion

Wormhole Fun

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I have been having some pretty awesome luck with exploration within a jump of my home system lately.  In the last few days I have found multiple Radar sites with about 20 mil of loot (in my opinion these are the easiest isk/time ratio in the game when the streak is on), I found a nice Sansha site with a 90m mod, and we found a nice little C1 that was inhabited. I go in, make some safes, scan down the sites and investigate things.  I get on the horn and call in some backup to clear out a few sites.  Jump clones are activated.  We end up with 2 combat sites outside of D-Scan of the people living in this hole.  There are at least 2 guys logged in flying around in a Tengu and Loki.  Fun!  The best WH sites are those you are stealing out from under the “owners”.  We make sure the warp bubbles are not on our warp lines to the sites.  We proceed to find out two Drakes can clear sleeper sites, but it takes a while. Apparently Sleeper NPCs know how to use EFT unlike the Empire rats, or they are just using Continue Reading →

Escamalations

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Back from the holidays, I hope everyone had a good time and survived the familial mine field!  I got myself a Christmas present, but I’ll talk about that in another post, maybe.  Today, I want to muse about Exploration and Escalations. I like exploration.  As PvE goes, it is the most organic experience one can have in Eve.  No set locations, no promises, each time I hop in my CovOps, it is a new experience.  I’ve made a little money running sites, nothing great, but I generally stay out of low sec when exploring, so there you go.  Yesterday one of my corp mates, who has been talking up low sec escalations for some time, got me out of my mission grinding bliss (deadspace mods don’t pay for themselves!) and into low sec for some escamalationing (I just like saying it that way). We ended up going the full four escalations for the Sansha chain he found, which was awesome.  We also flew through quite a bit of low sec in a Drake and two Ishkurs, saw a hot-drop, and got hounded by a  Hound.  Wel also kept a tense eye on a Nyx that apparently was just passing through Continue Reading →

Hand of the Master

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This post is from the Dept. of Metal Headgear. In no particular order, here are some things that have happened recently: In game PLEX prices have gone up. PLEX sales may have curbed this, but a new, higher equilibrium seems to be forming. PI supply has been constrained, thereby increasing demand, and prices. Further, long term costs of PI via POCOs, have increased, further altering the supply and demand curve New ships (with higher mineral reqs) have been added, eating into the mineral market. Anomalies were adjusted up, slightly. Incursions have increased ISK supply. Taken as a whole I see this turn of events interesting.  Eve has inflation.  Others games have dealt with this via simply resetting portions of the economy, or the entire thing, each expansion.  For an example, look at WoW’s continual rebalancing of rewards and looting mechanics.  CCP is rightfully loathe to do this given the more long-term game Eve players engage in.  But, the ISK faucets flow, and as players amass ISK, prices increase.  The options to combat this are either find massive ISK sinks, or tweak the economy.  Let’s take a quick look at faucets and sinks: Faucets Missions Incursions  Bounties  Insurance Payouts  NPC Buy Continue Reading →

Taking My Ball Home!

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Edit: For a nice dose of schadenfreude, read through the comments on this one. There has been a lot of talk lately about high sec players and how they ruin Eve for everyone else.  I find the volume of chatter unsurprising, given the resent Ivy League and Goonswarm Shrugged antics.  What I do find surprising is the lengths to which each side goes to delegitimize the other side, and using the “Eve is  a Sandbox!” argument to make the point. A sandbox game is in general a game where the world is laid out for players with rules and mechanics to govern interaction, but without an endgame provided by the developer.  I would posit another fundamental assumption of sandbox style games is that if the mechanics allow for something to occur, then it is a valid play style unless it is explicitly addressed by the developers.  In other words, every play-style that a player can engage in is valid, until restricted. So it seems very funny and shortsighted to claim pirates are bad or miners are evil just because you think the mechanics of the game favor or hinder a play-style.  The fact that you can mine, and the fact Continue Reading →

Bounty Hunting

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If you have read some of my previous posts, I would understand if you think I view pirates as the scum of Eve and they should all go die in that fire people talk about.  But this is not true!  I do want them dead, but by the hands of other players!  I have spent some time thinking about the mechanics of sec status and piracy, and I have a proposal. Tweak the boundaries of legal pvp in eve.  Here is a brief, chart based explanation: System Security Status Legal Target Sec Status* High Sec 1 <0.0 0.9 -0.5 0.8 -1.0 0.7 -2.0 0.6 -3.0 0.5 -4.0 Low Sec 0.4 to 0.1 -5.0 Null Sec Null/WH All Of course there are caveats. Any pilot with a negative sec status is a legal target according to the chart above. Only players who have participated in an illegal action can be given a bounty. Legal actions are any hostilities under the auspice of a war dec, taken after another player initiated hostilities in sec of 0.1 or greater, or anything occurring in low sec. Non-sanctioned bounties (i.e. pirate bounties ) can be placed as contracts in null sec. If a player has Continue Reading →

PI Changes – The Carebear Version

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I was meaning to write an article about opportunity cost that was much more eloquent than this will be, but the recent PI changes are great illustration I want to take advantage of.  Also, robo-poster Jester beat me to some of the economics in this post. So here is the second half.  The TL;DR: I’m out (of PI)! Here is why.  I have roughly 24 hours in each day.  In those hours I have to eat, sleep, take care of my loved ones, attend school and work.  Eve usually comes last in that progression, or is something I do in the background while I focus on one of the others.  This is where opportunity cost comes in.  I am a high-sec carebear, mainly because it is a nice place to base out of and accomplish things in Eve while still being able to get up out of my chair if real life calls.  I generally do not have time to scout low sec routes for gate camps, I generally do not have the mental desire to play hours of stations games, and I cannot commit to being available for CTAs or to wake up at 2am for a reinforcement timer.  And Continue Reading →

Sandboxing

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Eve, as we are often told, is a sandbox experience.  The point of the game is what you make of it.   It is equally valid to be a carebear, pirate, null-sec warrior or market trader.  Most players are adamant that their way of playing is the right way, and so is the other guy’s.  But is this true?  Given the current game mechanics, I would argue that there are right and wrong ways to play Eve, because some styles of play are inherently more robust. If you thought I was talking about piracy, you win one internet! Big Disclaimer:  Although what I am about to propose is easy to take as anti-pirate, I am not saying that current pirates are bad or wrong, just that the system heavily favors those who define fun as blowing up non-combat ships. Let’s illustrate this point with a topical example, courtesy of everyone’s favorite group, the GSF.  For those unaware, the current Ice Interdiction is based on at least two pilots flying in tandem in a given system,  a ganker and what we’ll call a tanker.  The tanker flies an Orca with pre-fit Brutixes (Bruti?) ready and waiting.  This pilot has to have above Continue Reading →