I have logged in a couple of times recently to sell off gear in Jita. There will have been something said in a blog or on social media that has brought EVE slightly forward in my consciousness. I can’t remember what it was. Working through some of my To Sell Container is just a mindless task that may or may not prompt me to undock.
I have particularly liked how the reprocessing window makes it easy to identify if an item is worth selling or best just to turn into minerals instead.
During this process I noticed there was a Corporation delivery. I found it was the Pod of an Alt I biomassed a long time ago. There was no reason for it to have been there, and it wasn’t there during my last item sell off. I delivered it to my main, and for a period had a capsule in a ship, and another capsule in my hanger. I left the ship, which left only the alt’s capsule, then boarded the ship again, then left the ship, and I was left just with my main’s capsule. I presume it was a bug – an odd bug.
I received an email from CCP outlining the accomplishments of my main pilot in the last year. Underwhelming comes to mind.
I spent 12 hours in the game. Most of that would have been when I got distracted and forgot to log off. Sadly, that was more time in game than 69% of players.
My wallet balance changed by -3.7B ISK. That placed me in the bottom 1% of players for balance changes. The biggest expense was the Lancer Dreadnoughts skillbook.
I visited a total of 4 systems, made 6 gate jumps, and docked in 3 stations. I expect that was to get skill books.
Last of all I gained 24.4M Skill points. My main currently has 379M Skill Points, 4.2M unallocated. My training queue is very boring.
It won’t take me long to beat that benchmark – likely just by having to log in now to get the daily rewards.
I built myself a new PC and am now going through the process of setting up all the software I require.
I printed out a list of everything installed on my old PC and am carefully considering for each one if I really need it or not.
One of the applications which did not make the cut was RSSOWL. That is the RSS reader I used to keep track of EVE content on blogger. I had not used it for some years.
Of the 20 blogs in the download list, only 2 or 3 were active, and even then, only sporadically. More than a dozen pilots I followed had simply stopped posting. I think only one had a final, neat post. The rest just sort of petered out and then – nothing.
I wonder if they were thinking they might at some point return to the game.
I followed a few other blogs in RSSOWL. One was still active, but his recent posts were confronting. He had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and had decided given the nature of it, the quality of his remaining life would be best met with hospice support than medical intervention.
I realised I felt an unexpected level of sadness. Even grief. I thought it might have triggered something in relation to the passing of my sister last year, which I have been somewhat detached about. I guess however when you have read hundreds of – effectively letters, from someone, you can build a type of meaningful (if mostly one way) connection.
As the title alludes, I only managed 1 post in the last year.
While I occasionally log into EVE to collect rewards, I have only undocked a handful of times since my last post. I try to follow a couple EVE Blogs and CCP’s social media posts to keep up to date on what changes are occurring, but nothing has piqued my interest enough to return to regular play. CCP’s focus has remained almost solely on group destructive play.
Life probably hit the peak of its frenetic busyness over the last year, concentrated mostly around the kids.
My daughter continued her success in hockey, playing for another State Team, being in a couple teams that won state championships, and another league win with her club. Her further progression however is unclear, with some excellent, taller, and older competition for very limited positions. She made the most of opportunities at her school across the arts, sports, and leadership. At home she continues to be a delight if she is getting what she wants, and a very unpleasant banshee when she doesn’t.
After training up to 6 times a week, my son managed to win State and National Championship titles in the somewhat niche sport of Artistic Roller-skating. He played in three school bands, got his first dan black belt, continued to attend speedcubing competitions, kept working, bought himself a car and got his license, maintained a good social life, and just finished the last year of High School and his final exams. He is comfortable he will get the scores required to attend his preferred university. I mentioned last year he has ADHD. It is a blessing when managed well and kept under control – as his achievements allude, but it is a stressful curse whenever it is not.
Next year my son should be driving himself to most of his activities and Uni, and I should finally have some time to catch my breath. The first item on the to do list won’t be EVE. I will have to decide what to do with my career.
Has it really been since last November that I posted? Goodness.
I log into EVE so rarely that each time I do I commonly have to re-authorise my account details in the launcher. I am almost an X-player, if I didn’t still have a paid subscription, kept half an eye on a number of EVE bloggers, and a slight interest in EVE news. Nothing I do consume however seems to enthuse or inspire me to reconnect.
I did find this interesting today – a blog post from the X-Leader of Brave which was worth a read.
I turned 50 this year. We have friends who are turning their 50ths into a year of them – with holidays and endless socialising and celebrations. I got about 35 minutes of time squeezed in between the comings and goings of the family, accompanied with nervous laughter and embarrassed comments from my wife about how crappy it all was.
Life is even busier than the last time I remarked, which was busier than I could ever have imagined. It turns out the worst of your imagination provides no limit on possibilities. I am just being swept along at this point, assuming there will be some relief after my son finishes year 12 and gets his license, but eyeing off the black maelstrom that is my parent’s health.
On a more positive note, we are keeping our heads above the cost of living tsunami, and I have found a game that substitute’s some of what EVE gave me – Satisfactory.
When I had trouble recruiting my Alt account from my Main, I had guessed it related to both accounts being on the same email. It made sense. Yet – I was still reading about other players who did not seem to have the same issue.
A Casual Carebear Gamer kindly offered up their recruitment link, so I used it on my Alt account.
Success. I then used the link on my Main account.
So was CCP classifying my two accounts as one, because they shared the same email address? Again, makes sense – but didn’t match the experiences of others.
So I went looking for my Free 1M Skill points, and they were not on my Alt account, but were on my main.
So even though I entered my Alt’s account details, it logged me in as my Main. I double checked my Chrome browser and I wasn’t obviously logged into any EVE website / forum / account management with my Main Account. So assuming there must be some glitch where there is a cookie or token or something in Chrome showing me logged in, I tried the process on my Alt account again, using Firefox. (A browser I never use for EVE.) The recruitment process worked and I was allocated 1M free Skill Points on the second account.
Success.
Then finally – when I went to look at what benefits A Casual Carebear Gamer gets when I buy some PLEX or OMEGA time, I notice my Main comes up as being logged in on the recruitment page…
What a silly gotcha.
Given there was a 20% off sale on PLEX I added another 6 months to my main account, which should give A Casual Carebear Gamer 15 days of free Omega time (can take a day or two apparently) and an increase of 1 to their recruit count.
There were a couple new skills recently added to the Game. I undocked – for the first time in a very long time – and purchased them.
I immediately applied unallocated Skill Points to get them to Rank 4. Somewhere in recent past this process must have had a quality of life update. You used to have to read the points required for the next level, and manually type them in. This time they were already pre-populated in the Apply dialog box, making it quicker and less error prone to do.
I then did this – just to amuse myself.
I spent just shy of 14B ISK for the Astronautic Engineering skill. This skill has no use in game, having been removed many years ago. Since then there has been a slowly dwindling supply of the skill books in player hands, that I’ve seen priced for over 25B ISK. This was the one single skill I did not have on my Main. Now I do.
So one of my old, old goals has finally been achieved. To have trained every skill in game to at least Rank 4.
After my undocking, I’ve realised I am going to need to update my overview layout and settings. Things have changed, and on first glance in some positive ways.
For some time EVE has had a bonus mechanism where you get rewards if you recruit new players into the game. The scheme has had a few iterations, some more rewarding than others.
In the past this only worked for new accounts. I was alerted by a comment from Yadot and a blog post by Wilhelm Arcturus that CCP had modified the scheme so that now you could recruit existing accounts. Every account can now become a recruit, but only once.
I’ve noted many people have recruited their own alt accounts. I currently only have two accounts, and they both use the same email address. This meant it did not look like I could recruit my Alt.
If anyone who writes an EVE blog wants to drop a comment with your recruitment link, I will become your recruit. It will apparently give me 1M bonus Skill points, and bonuses to the “recruiter” if I sub an account via the account management page or buy PLEX. I can not say for sure if or when I will do either, but you will get a bonus if I do. My main is subscribed until October next year, so it might take a while…
As part of EVE’s latest update, you can pick up 7 days of Omega time on each of your accounts for free. All you need to do is go into the New Eden store.
If you already have Omega, the 7 days is (apparently) added to your subscription. (I did not double check.)
I am not sure how long it will remain available.
As you would expect, while in the store I noticed other things for sale, including a rather impressive 45% off the in store PLEX price of 24 months’ worth of Omega time.
That is certainly worth looking into if you PLEX your accounts.
Always up for a bargain, I decided to check how this compared if I purchased 2 years of Omega time direct from the account pages.
First up was how much 6600 PLEX cost.
Around $270 USD for me.
Next was how much 2 years of Omega time cost directly.
Around $270 USD for me…
So, certainly not worth your while if you need to purchase PLEX, but still a discount if you already have the PLEX and subscribe that way.
In my first post on this blog back on January 16, 2011, I remarked:
“I find myself a little aimless, but not ready to mothball my ships. To help focus my attention, I plan to blog about goals, thoughts, and observations around the game.”
The blog has subsequently helped direct my play, possibility feeding into my Solo game a similar influence that people’s corporations or alliances might. It worked for a decade.
Over the next 1,180+ posts there have been three other underlying themes which crop up.
The first was that I don’t really enjoy social and competitive online games. I try to play them however to help combat my natural inclination towards being a hermit. The older I have gotten, the harder that is.
The second was that my life is impacted by anxiety, but that EVE offered up a cathartic distraction and downtime for my mind away from Real Life.
And third, hopefully without oversharing, was how Real Life intrinsically impacts on my EVE play. In that way I have tried to mimic the example of other bloggers I have followed over the years – in how they humanize the EVE player and attempt to remind us of the complex nuances behind the actions and behaviours in game.
All EVE players are linked like that – motivations to play, benefits, costs, and an ever-present influence of their real life.
My life is currently far busier than I could have imagined dealing with. This year in particular has belittled my attempts to maintain a semblance of balance. I can’t say I am terribly happy about it, but I have not been overwhelmed, and am managing to maintain a glass half full instead of half empty mindset.
I do however miss EVE. Not so much the game itself – I log in occasionally to spin a ship. I miss its old ability to steal my mind away from the busyness and stress of real life. The escape. I blame CCP in part for this. Their focus on making people play EVE the way their statistics suggest earns them the most money. I have tried replacing the gap it has left – but so far have not found anything.
I try to write blog posts, but I never seem to finish them.
A common thread on this blog is me whinging about being too busy. It turns out that can get never endingly worse.
Some of it is good. Our daughter has been the goalie for 8 hockey teams this year and is constantly training or playing.
Here she is, fearsome and fearless, playing for our state.
Our Son managed to get his Karate Black Belt, and while he still attends two classes a week, he is now working towards almost daily coaching for solo and pair roller skating competitions. He has been skating for a decade and is very good at it.
Some of the busyness is not so good.
Off the field our daughter still causes havoc. She was diagnosed with clinical anxiety at a young age. Her coping mechanism is to be very controlling and exploding violently when overwhelmed. With an extraordinary amount of effort and the guidance of a behavioural Paediatrician, multiple Psychologists and Therapists, we have a structure and consistency around our daughter’s life which helps. That has left us however in a Juxtapose where she has no problem throwing herself in front of a hockey ball but threatens never to play hockey again if we try to force her out of the car at a venue until she has seen at least one of her teammates arrive.
Off the rink our son has oscillated between brilliance and being a complete fuckwit. After quite a journey a recent diagnosis of ADHD has gone some way to explain his behaviour, but we don’t seem to be able to stop the worst of it.
Both our kids have the world at their feet, and the propensity to throw it all away. Makes for very busy and stressed parents.
The sibling I remarked on back in March as being very unwell has now passed away with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. It was an unnecessarily exhausting journey that was heading towards being an unnecessarily horrific death. Thankfully at the last moment she finally accepted palliative care and had a peaceful passing. She left two orphaned children, and an unprepared, dysfunctional, and messy estate. Trying to get that in order is taking up a lot of my time.
The stress of this hastened the deterioration in my parents and pushed to the forefront signs of dementia. That journey, given the personalities involved, will be utterly awful.
Work continues and I continue to dislike it. I dream about a career change and doing some relatively mindless job for a while, but the reality of doing 3 times as many hours for the same pay traps me.
What else is there in my blog notes.
I passed 350M Skill points on my main.
I started on a post about how important it was for the developers of an online game to focus on having their players habitually logging in.
I mentioned how EVE, like most online games I have played, have daily logon bonuses, frequent and time limited events, and game mechanics that require you to connect often to update queues and processes.
I then pointed out how little of this existed when I first started playing EVE. I suspected that aside from people with addictive personalities or OCD tendencies, that the artificial attempts to get people to log in daily do not work long term. The developers really need to focus on immersive and fun game play and goals.
Oh – there was a note about how everyone in the family has had COVID now, except (as far as I know) me. That remains the case. I did just have my 4th vaccine dose earlier this week. I am not a fan of the side effects.
I had some notes on how I tried to get back into World of Warships. It had new content and updates, so I thought after a long break I would give that a go. On a whim I made use of a sale and purchased another year subscription, but then soon ran into a brick wall. There was enough change that I had to re-learn parts of the game via YouTube. There I found all my old content creators deep in bitter vet status, complaining about the game instead of playing. I felt too far behind the current meta and never logged back in after the first week. I think the same thing happened the previous year.
I had some notes on how I went through a process of buying a whole heap of old PC games. Games I had loved and spent many hours playing. They had been updated to run in later versions of Windows on Steam. Various releases of Command and Conquer, Blitzkrieg, Star Wars, Total Annihilation and so on. None really worked, often crashing. Much of the problem I expect relating to trying to run them on 4K monitors. I reattempted to play these again on a FHD gaming laptop. They keep crashing.
I had some notes on how I went through a process of buying a whole heap of somewhat newer PC games. Games I thought I might get into, like Terraria, Sins of Solar, Rain of Reflections, Northgard, Planet Coaster, Halcyon 6, Galactic Civilizations, Cyberpunk, Cities Skylines, Banished, Ashes of the Singularity, Elite Dangerous. Mostly I could not get past the tutorials. I just couldn’t get into them. I get some value out of Minecraft and Factorio at times, but they do not hold my attention for long.
I also remarked – that from all the entertainment available to me – a PS5, XBOX X, 4K Blu-ray players and a library of movies and shows and books, multiple streaming services, multiple PC’s and laptops, an iPad, and an Android Phone, that my most played game by far is Solitaire on my phone.
And back to life. I need to put tea into a thermos for my son, then go pick up him up from Band practise, then drop him off at Karate, then try to organise tea for the rest of us before going back to pick him up.
I did as I suggested and read up on what had caused the downfall of the enigma that is the EVE Player Mittani. Well, more accurately I did a little reading to get a gist of it. I am pretty sure that now makes me an expert. The initial examples I did read were a bit underwhelming. The deepest outrage coming not from those involved or impacted directly (whose words that I did read seemed measured and reasonable), but by others championing their own causes. It seemed to be the sum of past behaviours which was the problem, with the latest examples being the straws that broke the camels back. It is a pity that the pious and the damning didn’t get their act together sooner, so that there might have been less victims.
If it upsets you that I was not more outraged, I do not care. Indignation is a poor measuring stick.
The EVE subreddit was not as toxic as I thought it would be. If you can stay away from judging others, there was plenty of interesting and helpful information to be found. Not generally related to the questions being asked by the original poster – people seem so desperate to spout their examples and opinions that it was not always easy to see a link between the questions being asked and the answers being provided. Why don’t these people just start writing their own blogs? Oops – I am judging others. So, if you read everything, filter out the crap, there was worthwhile stuff to be found.
I cringed with embarrassment for them. It is good to know we have yet another mostly toothless moral compass of convenience in our lives. Surely, we do not have enough of them yet. This is not an area CCP wants to wade into. Just give us some clear guidelines about expected behaviour in game, what happens if you don’t follow those rules, and consistently apply and enforce them. There shouldn’t be News posts – there should just be quiet action. Today. Yesterday. Tomorrow.
It has been a couple months since my last post. I don’t believe I have undocked in that time, and aside trying to keep up with a handful of blogs, the game does not generally cross my mind.
I recently had to attend a family get together. I took my gaming laptop along with me – and ensured it was patched and everything was up to date. As I went through that process I could hear distant rumblings from the far away EVE player base.
“Do I just ignore it?”
And that was what I did.
But the rumblings persisted, and my need for a distraction from my family mounted, so today I have finally started to read up on the latest drama. Just a little bit. I am not sure I will feel inclined to comment on it, but I did like what EVE Onion did here…
One of the areas CCP has been working on which has intrigued me is EVE Anywhere. Basically, playing EVE in the Cloud through a Web Browser. I assume a sort of in browser Remote Desktop / TeamViewer / VNC / Citrix Workplace type of deal. I must assume as it is not available yet to people in Australia.
If you live in one of the accepted countries and are an Omega pilot, you have been able to use this service for a while. Today CCP announced that Alpha pilots in the same countries can now also use EVE Anywhere for a price. Paying 30 Plex gives them a 24-hour window to access it. 30 Plex is about $1.50 USD, or $2.10 Australian.
The news item suggested it is the first subscription rate increase since 2004. I don’t remember there being a general across the board increase before, but I do recall there were some price increases for individual currencies.
CCP’s explanation – “This adjustment reflects global trends impacting general production costs and accounts for years of inflation.”
Fair enough.
You can not buy Subscriptions or PLEX directly in Australian Dollars. I think I am forced to pay in US Dollars. That means how much I have paid for my EVE accounts has been impacted by the vagaries of the exchange rates, which causes swings of as much as 30%. I have had price increases and decreases every year…
So how much were the increases (where there is a rough corresponding product)? Assuming my Math is right…
Subscriptions (USD)
1 month – from $14.95 to $19.95 (+33.4%)
3 months – from $38.85 to $47.98 (+23.5%)
6 months – from $71.70 to $86.95 (+21.3%)
12 months – from $131.40 to $149.90 (+14.1%)
Yikes on the 1-month increase.
PLEX prices (USD) are not as directly relatable.
Now 110 for $4.99, 4.5c each. Will be 100 for $4.99, 5c each (+10.0%)
Now 240 for $9.99, 4.1c each. Will be 250 for 12.49, 5c each (+20.0%)
Now 500 for $19.99, 4c each. Will be 500 for $24.99, 5c each (+25.0%)
Now 1,100 for $39.99, 3.6c each. Will be 1,000 for $44.99, 4.5c each (+23.75%)
Now 2,860 for $99.99, 3.5c each. Will be 3,000 for $124.99, 4.2c each (+19.2%)
I understand and accept the need for CCP to be profitable and acknowledge the lack of increases in all those previous years. A 20-30% increase however in one hit is substantial.
It comes at a point in time where I see my EVE subscription being the poorest value it has ever been for a solo / hermit playing the game.
I have spent time in game recently, moving all my assets and clones into the Jita system, readying for a long term or permanent hiatus. This price increase makes that transition easier.
If you see a future in playing EVE however, it might be worth grabbing some extra Subscription time or PLEX now.
(Note I plan on dropping my evehermit domain and paid for Word Press add-ons. When those lapse, I presume the site formatting will mess up a bit and Ads will be inserted into pages and email updates. I am not planning to delete the blog.)
My wife’s COVID infection was short and mild, and she is back out in the world again. So far, my son and I appear to have avoided catching it from her. After you have been positive the State Government here gives you 8 weeks where you can ignore testing and isolation rules. The cycle of repeated infections across a household however is very disruptive.
Some hardware reviews, as I am wont to do on occasion.
. My new PC Case – the Corsair iCue 7000x RGB, is glorious. It looks stunning. It is also extraordinarily heavy, difficult to maneuverer, and requires two people to carry it. The weight is there in the specifications, but I did not pay it close enough attention. The tint is also so dark that it really dulls interior RGB, and it requires almost daily cleaning as it shows every single speck of dusk or touch. A bit too impractical.
. I have a new keyboard – for now. My old 18 Macro Key Corsair K95 randomly stops working, so I replaced it with a Corsair K100 Cherry MX Speed. I did not like the feel of the OPX keys, and the Speed were close to the Cherry Red I prefer. It is however too twitchy for me, registering key presses I don’t want. More interesting is how easy it is to brush / activate the lower function keys – for all sorts of hilarious and unexpected results as you type. I have used Corsair keyboards for years, but I might have to consider a different brand as I don’t like the direction they are taking with their keys. Impractical in day to day use for older hands.
. I have installed two BenQ ScreenBar Plus Monitor Lights. These are overly expensive, and I had expected were overly hyped. Instead, they are fantastic. In my defence I did try a cheaper Amazon option first. I was impressed, but it was too flimsy and a long reach to turn on and off. I then got one of the BenQ’s, which was more practical and lit up half my desk well. That prompted me to get a second one for the other side of the desk. This has been one of the updates which I didn’t expect much of but turned out to be impressed by. Ambiance is nice, functionality of reading stuff on my desk improved, and my eyes get noticeably less tired.
World of Warships is one of the few games I have installed, but like EVE, don’t tend to play. It remains accessible because of the amount of time and money I have invested in it. Most of their frequent social media output seemed to be originally in Russian, and I had wondered what impact sanctions would have.
The Wargaming company have now announced that they had moved their live games business out of Russia and Belarus, and entirely separated themselves from it. It was moved to Lesta Studio – who was until recently owned by Wargaming, so the difference would likely be more technical in nature than a full divorce. Online gaming is one of those mediums that can cross economic, social and political divides, and I think can make their players more worldly. I understand why Russians are being punished for being complicit in the actions of Vladimir Putin – but I can also see the slip into his authoritarian rule has happened over 20 years, with their freedoms lost in small steps along the way. I wonder at what familiar faces will survive on their social media platforms.
I’ve remarked on it before – but when CCP keep using the word “exciting”, you can tell they are probably doing something dumb.
The latest nerf of Upwell structures are in game – creating more “exciting” gameplay for attacking and defending them. Attackers will find them easier to kill – which is more exciting. Defenders will find they require more people and more ships to defend – which is also apparently more exciting. CCP does not want you to get bored by the successful defence of your structure.
The Rorqual can now jump mining ship fleets, which is kind of cool. They also refer to the Porpoise getting a purpose, but then don’t say what that is.
The Proteus has been given a buff. I will have to contemplate looking at my fits. I stopped using them when Drone use became too much of a pain.
The new Feature Preview system is live, allowing you to opt-in early to some of the ongoing and unfinished developments. That might be worth considering looking at.
They have also changed the Daily Login rewards again. I haven’t bothered logging in for them, so the old regime had lost its lustre. They have made more and better rewards available, including skins and regular skill points instead of the blocks of points available after x number of days.
It was this last change that prompted me to log in last night. I have found despite using my new PC for a while now, I had not done anything to setup the EVE client properly. I’ll have to contemplate that.
After only a two-week absence, COVID returned to our household. This time my wife has it. It is a miracle it took this long for her to catch it. She mixes with a reckless number of people and groups every week. Her symptoms have been mild so far.
I am slowly working through my new PC configuration and resolving issues. I think the 3070 Graphics card I got for it is faulty. On random days one or more of the 4K screens attached to it will flicker off for half a second, every half a minute or so. There are no error messages to be found. A restart or removing and replacing the cable will generally resolve it for a day or three, but then it will return. Since I am using two cards and six monitors, I have plenty of options to swap cables and screens and the ports I am using. Still – it is an awkward problem to get technical support on. I am going to test the system with a 3060Ti I picked up today – which will eventually make its way into my Daughter’s PC.
I am still not logging into EVE – and articles like this makes that an easy state to remain in.
When CCP introduced structures, they made some assertions regards their safety and usability. Since then, they have been nerfing them over and over, making them easier and more profitable to kill, and harder to defend. CCP calls them “improvements”. They were meant to be suitable for Solo use – and I went through the process of building, anchoring and using some of them, but it was borderline if it was suitable. That was many iterations ago – now you would be foolish to use them solo.
Still, I am trying to gather up some enthusiasm for what might be announced at Fan Fest, but the talk of NFTs, Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, pay to earn and so on fills me an with an overflow of Meh. Somewhat more interesting are comments about a UI unification project, and a Feature Preview system.
Call me Nostradamus. We had COVID visit our household shortly after my last post. My 13 year daughter picked it up at school. A week of isolation for the family, with my Daughter further confined to her room and the adjacent bathroom. Copious use of masks, sanitiser and disinfectant, and communication through phones, video chats and yelling at doors, and we got through the week without anyone else catching it. My daughter had moderate cold symptoms for a day, mild symptoms for a couple of days, and then has been fine. I however foresee more isolations in our near futures.
I have my new Desktop PC. I splurged a little more than I might usually, getting some of the latest 12th Gen / DD5 etc tech. I have been reminded about why I don’t historically get the latest and greatest – with little niggly issues and unfulfilled promises. In some cases I am stuck waiting for resolutions to randomly turn up in firmware updates. Meanwhile my Son got his first Desktop PC that he sized and paid for himself from his two part time jobs. He took my sage advice and got 11th Gen / DD4 etc tech, saving himself $1,000 on his build and having it all work effectively straight out of the box.
I installed EVE and Pyfa on the new PC, but have not taken to logging back in regularly. Turns out however that you don’t need to play EVE for there to be plenty of drama to peruse. I am of course talking about the Blackout campaign in protest against being able to buy a Retriever via an Account Pack.
I don’t need to write much about it – Wilhelm Arcturus at The Ancient Gaming Noob covers it well:
To selectively summarise, there are a small number of players protesting, a small number of players championing it, and a “great uncaring mass of players who likely don’t know and probably don’t care either way“.
CCP has been conjuring up ships out of nothing for years. Look at all those special edition give away ships, such as the Praxis and Gnosis from the Society of Conscious Thought. You got extra of these if you were a paid subscriber. I am pretty sure I got extra through purchasing some of the special EVE books – although I stand to be corrected. Those hulls are much more impactful than Retrievers.
While I get the focus on the ship being conjured instead of made by players – people have long been able to conjure up stuff for themselves in game by buying things like PLEX and converting it into ISK. It is not like the game is some pure microcosm.
Having said that – it is worth being mindful of one of Mr Arcturus’ quotes on the possible mindset of some protestors “If you don’t push back today, tomorrow the company will do something worse“.
Meanwhile in the little I have read on this topic, I note this from CCP:
“We hear your worries about the continued escalation of this kind of sale and want to reassure you that our design will remain directed towards new players finding their footing in New Eden.“
“One of the topics for Fanfest is a new project that we’re in the middle of developing, that will transform these and any future packs – a paradigm where packs of this type will be supplied by players, ensuring that any ship we offer to new players through sales, will have origins from actual player work in New Eden“
A possibly complicated solution to a problem that may not have needed to be solved.
Now I return you to your regularly scheduled program.
Welcome to the first post of the year. Time slips quietly by on the blog, while in real life it is more like a screeching out of control freight train.
Last year a lot of my posts had comments about COVID; on how lockdowns gave me time to play EVE, and a need to play for the distraction. After a couple years of imposing heavy restrictions to suppress COVID, just before Christmas our State flicked a switch and went in the complete opposite direction. Now we live with COVID.
At the moment we were allowed out our front door, my EVE time vanished.
My wife went berserk. Concerts, shows, social events, activities, outings for her and the kids – every day out of the house, usually multiple times. I wasn’t pleased at the extreme risks she took – but she ignored me. As much I would like to use the word irresponsible – it was more a mental health reaction. For her, living is being out of the house doing things, and she had just spent two years not living. That was not good for her.
We went from not knowing anyone who had COVID, to half our friends and colleagues having had it. My wife and kids have had so many close calls that it is unfathomable as to why COVID hasn’t been through our house yet. I expect it sooner rather than later.
My wife’s rampaging made my normally busy schedule worse. Add a chunk of busyness around my daughter moving from Primary to High School, a sibling being diagnosed with cancer, and my father needing care after an operation, and I have ended up more tired and fed-up than my normal high levels of tiredness and fed-up-ness.
So, EVE. I am not playing it. I am so busy – or otherwise brain dead, that I really need something to spur me to login, but there is nothing that interests me enough to want to do it. I thought I might have a look at the Dr Who event. I watched some of the introduction videos and blog posts, but it was just old game mechanics with a different skin. It has been the problem with EVE for a long time – tweaks and rehashes of the old. If something new is added – it tends to be focused on you losing ships.
I have recently ordered a new custom PC. My Desktop gets turned on most days at around 6am and turned off after Midnight. It is used constantly, so I normally replace it every 5 years, to try and keep in front of any catastrophic board / Power Supply failures. This time I am replacing it after 4 years. Over the last two years the availability of PC Parts has been poor and unreliable. It was just starting to improve but now Mad Man Putin is reminding the world that placating megalomaniac bullies entrenched in echo chambers of their own making was never a good idea. So, before the parts disappear again, or even worse happens, I have an i7 12700K / DDR5 / Liquid Cooled / 3070 based system on the way. Maybe that will get me to log in?
I found myself logging into EVE a little more than usual over the last month. I didn’t get up to much – just mindless moving and sorting stuff, hunting down some new skills, plus a bit of trading. Life has been so hectic that I needed a place to retreat too for some downtime.
One of the things I did do was biomass a very old character that I never use. I applied the $6.99 USD Starter Pack to give the account Omega status for 7 days. That allowed me to move stuff around easier, and it also gave me the 13 Days of Nexus Omega Gifts which included a bunch of Skill Points.
After selling off the character’s skill points and assets I went to look for the process of deleting an Account. (They don’t want you too – you have to email a request to CCP, which seems to have been put in place to meet privacy laws.) While looking around I noticed this special offer for the account:
Given I had just purchased about the cheapest pack you could, I was surprised that the personal offer was so expensive. 12,960,000 Million Skill points also seemed very specific.
I also noticed – to my horror, that by buying 7 days of Omega time as part of a pack, that my account had been automatically converted into a paid subscription. I had no payment method attached to it, so it wouldn’t have worked, but to do that without my permission or notifying me is pretty shitty. There are a couple of areas like that were CCP try to tick customers into paying them money. It does not reflect well on them.
Anyway – a Happy New Year to you all. I hope it is a safe year with plenty of time spent with family and friends.
Evehermit 