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 →

Tripping in Rifters

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I put a frigate pilot in RvB recently, and this was a good choice.  A few highlights of the whole RvB experience: People tend to pay attention to comms and be somewhat focused.  This is a great change of pace from some small groups I have previously flown through hostile space with. The PvP ON button.  As long as I get on between lunch and midnight (US TZ), there is usually a 30-40 man fleet cruising around, looking to find the other fleet and make some fun happen. Cheap ships are fun.  I fly T1 fit Rifters, because if I loot one wreck every few fights, I pay for all the ships I lose and then some without really trying. RvB communication.  They tend to try and balance fleets against each other to make the fights at least interesting.  This is not to say there is not some blobbing, or stragglers caught out, but it is generally attempted to make things fair-ish. 89-9 kill ratio, at this point, with 99.5% efficiency.  That’s just sick, and more indicative of how the other fleets call primaries as compared to my skills in a Rifter.  And the fact that my Rifters cost about Continue Reading →

Mass Effect 3: A Lesson in Player Investment

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I don’t often post about other games here, but I wanted to take a look at the uproar over Mass Effect 3 and the endings, and something it says about games and gamers in general.  I promise there is a tie in to Eve at the end, but to explain the ME3 situation will require a lot of background. <There are ME spoilers here, so be warned.  Also I have always played a paragon female Shepard, so I refer to Shep as “her”, and may have only directly experienced portions of the game available to a paragon.> If you have been living under a rock for the last few weeks you may not have noticed the anger amongst players of ME3 over the various endings available.  There are a few complaints, briefly: The ending is illogical, employing a dues ex machina once the Crucible is activated. The behaviors of the team mates are illogical, with them all teleporting to the Normandy, as is the consequence of the Mass Relays being destroyed. The sudden change of the nature of the synthetic-organic conflict does not take into account anything the player has done. The 3 endings are, aside from colors and types Continue Reading →

Homogeneity

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Over at Jester’s, there was an interesting post highlighting what I think is a common view in multiplayer games.  A commenter posted that Eve doesn’t have smarter players, it has less players doing more with alts, and also that CCP has failed to deliver on the “Dream of Eve”.  The poster seems to imply that because players are using alts, and focusing on optimized play-styles, Eve is dead to him.  Ripard seems to take that same premise and draw the opposite conclusion, that optimization is good.  I think both slightly miss a larger function of Multiplayer gaming in general.  The older a game gets, the more people learn the “right” ways to work, and many players will gravitate towards this. Take WoW as an example.  I played a hunter for some time, and during each expansion, there came a point where the optimal gear for each build was known, and if you didn’t use that build and gear, finding a raid spot was tough.  This took some creativity and trial to learn, but once it was found, most groups with progression on their minds demanded you work towards the optimal.  This holds true across classes. Look at TF2.  Each map Continue Reading →

Quickie Update – CSM Endorsements

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Real Life and Eve Corp issues have dominated the last few weeks of my down time and will continue to do so, hence my apparent fall of the face of the earth.  That said, I wanted to get my CSM Votes/Endorsements on the record. I have three votes, and here’s how I cast them: Hans Jagerblitzen I listened to many podcasts, read many blogs and posts, and Hans is my favorite amongst many good candidates this year who seem to be using the logic of a rising tide lifting all ships, as opposed to focusing on one or two pet areas.  But he was the most outspoken and eloquent, and got my vote.  He also found my blog, which means he was looking rather hard for people to ask to vote for him.  I hope he works as hard at solving issues on the CSM and his campaign seems to promise. Seleene Love him, hate him, he knows CCP, he knows how to work with them, and he isn’t afraid to call CCP out on things.  I am voting for him because I think he brings a little “insider understanding” to the CSM side of the table, and he can Continue Reading →

Blog Banter 33: More Options

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Blog Banter 33: The Capsuleer Experience Like mana from Valhalla (yes I know I’m mixing my religious metaphors), the latest Dev Blog by CCP Legion asks questions which make for perfect Blog Bantering. To quote him “…we want to make the first days, weeks and months in EVE enjoyable and not just something ‘you have to plough through in order to get to the good stuff’” and the newly formed Player Experience team will focus on “…where and why people lose interest in EVE…”. “We invite you to pour your heart (or guts) out and tell us what you think is good or bad with the current new player experience and what you think could be done about the problems.” So let’s get self-eviscerating. Banter on.  Cheers, Seismic Stan Response  I started trying to come up with targets tied to the “first days/weeks/months”, but as I wrote this became more of a list of features I would like to see in Eve that would improve not only new player experience, but all player experience.  Without further ado, here is a list of changes I think would benefit all players. Skillbooks Get rid of skillbooks.  Completely remove them from the game.  Having Continue Reading →

Blog-a-Day 19: CSM7

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Poetic Stanziel sometimes posts community discussion questions, with the most recent being: Question #019 Do you know who you will be voting for in the upcoming CSM7 elections? If not, who are you following closely? Here is my response: First off, I have not decided who I will vote for.  I will not be voting for null bloc candidates, as I assume they will have no trouble getting the votes needed.  Those blocs will game the system a bit to try and split the other voting blocs, which are much less organized.  Others have written about this already, and Mittens has talked about the shortcomings and benefits of the CSM voting system in more than a few places.  I am also not terribly concerned about most of the incumbents.  If they are running again, a vote for them is effectively a referendum vote. I am following a few candidates though, so here are my thoughts on the ones I am aware of.  And yes, I used most of Seismic Stan’s links for the candidates, because although I have been browsing Jita Park, it was easier. Hans Jagerblitzen I have a post up already on this guy.  He seems to have Continue Reading →