Chaos

Linked in with my previous post, Gevlon very publically makes a stand for what he believes in. I don’t view him as representing the majority in game, but I generally find interest in his posts.

He has a very dim view of the impact Citadels will have on the High Sec market and wealth distribution in game, and has announced he will stop playing in a month.

http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/i-need-suggestion-for-new-mmo-and-you.html

The figures he quotes about possible tax incomes are horrendous, and I know it is plausible that a handful of powerful entities will anchor a new Jita, new Amarr, new Rens and what not next door to these traditional trading hubs. I just truly can’t believe a noteworthy number of risk averse Carebears will actually move to use them exclusively.

Even if there is some unexpected rush of enthusiasm, I think it is inevitable that it will end up costing players much more than the few percent of taxes that they might save. I cannot see my risk averse Carebear brethren making Gevlon’s nightmare come true.

If Gevlon does finish up his EVE experiment, lots of respect to him for what he has achieved. He has made lots of players think about topics in different ways, and generated a lot of in game content. I think he’s been good for the game with the sense of chaos he brings to it.

If his version of the future does hold true, I agree it won’t be good for the game. I would expect however it could be addressed by changes in tax rates.

What isn’t so easy to change – as Gevlon has been trying, is the entrenched stability of the few in game super powers. At the moment they make the game less dynamic and nullify the notion of a true sandpit.

I think the outcome of the current anti Imperium/CFC war will be more telling on the future of the game than Citadels. Will it grind down, destroy and reshape the alliances of old, and bring forth a new landscape? Or will it fizzle out quickly as some of the major players are again paid off or walk away as soon as they get the hint of hard work or boredom?

I fear from the overzealous propaganda and the rush for big battles such as todays Easter War in J-GAMP and M-OEE8, that the so called Allies are hoping for a headshot, and are not likely to be in this for the long haul.  I don’t see the Imperium as dying from a headshot.  Dozens of them maybe, dozens and dozens, but do their enemies have that much stamina and ammunition?

Toxicity

I felt a bit down reading Sugar Kyle’s most recent blog post here –

http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2016/03/hi-there.html

I don’t know the full details, but it is sad seeing another person who I respect having their passion for EVE so damaged by parts of its community.

I read most of what CCP announce or comment on, I follow a hell of a lot of blogs, the EVE related news sites, keep half an eye on my twitter feed, a number of YouTubers, various Facebook groups and I come and go from the main forums. I think I am a relatively informed player.

If I was to describe how I interact with the EVE community I would use the word cowardly.

When I find something toxic I will occasionally blog about it – but far more often I will just stop reading. I like a proper debate. I genuinely like if someone is able to change my mind on a topic – as I think that improves me as a person. However, you rarely get proper debates within the EVE community – you either get an echo chamber or noxious conflict. I just don’t want to put up with too much of that from what is meant to be a source of entertainment.

Yes, I express an opinion in this blog, but I don’t go out of my way to promote it, defend it, or champion it. As such I am thankful for the likes of Sugar and those who have gone before her – exposing themselves to the full venom of the community to fight the good fight, and help steer the game for the good of the silent majority. I know that comes at a personal cost for them.

BB73 – The Wide World of EVE

BB73 – With EVE, Valkyrie, Gunjack and the sometime in future DUST replacement, is there any other area CCP should be looking to expand the EVE universe into?

I am not sure it is appropriate to ask this question yet. EVE will be turning 13 in May this year. Across all those years CCP has only really managed to expand the EVE universe into an about to be shut down and barely successful console first person shooter, DUST 514.

If you were feeling generous you might also add walking in Captain Quarters. That is however probably best left unsaid.

Sure Gunjack and Valkyrie will soon be in the hands of early VR adopters. It might bring CCP great success. But that requires enough people to buy into the hardware, and for CCP to get the games just right for this new and untested market. It seems premature to classify these as a real part of the EVE universe just yet.

The same goes for the DUST 514 PC replacement – which we have sparse details on.

While I commend CCP for trying to ensure they are not reliant on just one income stream, they have spent a lot of time (and I expect money) on expanding the EVE universe, but so far without notable success.

At this point I don’t think CCP should be looking to add any new games – I expect they will be too busy focusing on juggling their current developments.

The only “out of EVE Client” work I would like to see at the moment is a portal app for iOS and then Android. Allow us to read and send EVE Mails, update market orders, and even do Planetary Interaction on a tablet. Give us the option to keep connected to the game between running the full client.  That’s not really an answer to the BB question – but I didn’t just want to write “No”, and leave it at that.

Other Blog Banter posts on this topic can be found here

856 Days

It has been a busy couple of days in EVE, between PVE, revisiting ship fittings and asset sales. I figured I would round this off with some time in Null Sec. I started with the usual scan down of the constellation using my Alt. He currently does this in a Falcon, which might leave the locals uneasy.

To my surprise I actually found a Null to Hi-Sec Wormhole. The other side was to the ass end of the known Empire, but beggars can’t be choosers. I clone jumped my main down and basically started the process of moving out loot and a pile of combat ships I picked up off contract but which I decided I really wasn’t going to use.

There were a few of the local alliance members around, including one trying to PVE. He seemed to get spooked as I made my way through the system with my second PVP ship and left. Otherwise it was relatively quiet.

It is however never safe following a predictable pattern – and sure enough when moving my third or fourth ship out of station I had a run in with one of the locals.

I did the normal check – 3 people in local, all of them in station.  I assume it is because I play EVE from Australia and response times are slower, but once again between the time I clicked on undock and the overview loaded another player had undocked and activated a ship module.

In this case the overview was blank for a while, then the overview windows loaded but the image remained blank. I could see someone had undocked with me – so the first thing I did was selected my out gate and clicked on warp. The screen then loaded and I had a strange blue or green cyno type thing next to me, which I assumed was a jump field generator.

Sure enough this deposited me 100km off the station with a Pontifex. Given I was in a PVP fit Stabber and with nothing else to do, I figured this was an appropriate time to fight. I started by trying to lock the Command Destroyer, only to find myself almost immediately warping off to my out gate. Rather disappointingly it seems being jumped did not cancel my warp.

Thinking no worse of the local (who as I have remarked don’t seem particularly blood thirsty unless you make yourself an obvious target), I continued with my ship extractions. (The pilot had logged or moved on.)

The next ship was a Svipul. As I landed on my out Wormhole I found a Probe sitting on it with a 6-year-old toon. I waited for them to jump back to Empire space or Warp off, but they seemed AFK. I targeted them – but they still did not move, so fired one volley of artillery and destroyed the ship. The pod then followed.

(Meanwhile in my Captain’s quarters the housekeeper updated the “Days since the last unnecessary killing of another player” sign, crossing out 856 and putting in 0.)

Did I suddenly see the red mist of the killer instinct? After all these years am I about to become fascinated with PVP? No – my only thought in both encounters was a mild interest to see what the kill marks looked like. For the life of me however I couldn’t find it on the Svipul. Maybe I did something wrong?

I finished my session off by moving a Stratios into Null, which I had been wanting to do for a while, along with some of the ship fittings I had been missing. I still need a couple Covert Ops, possibly a Gila, and all the Carrier gear, but it was impractical to use the wormhole to collect those in a timely manner.  EVE game time success.

The Hunt

The short lived Guristas event – the Hunt, is coming to a close on March 29th.

http://www.eveonline.com/thehunt.html

https://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/the-final-weekend-of-the-hunt-is-on/

My existing PVE ships were not clearing the sites quickly enough, so I spent a bit of time in EFT before I came up with the following:

[Gila, Hunter]
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II

Federation Navy 10MN Afterburner
Pithum C-Type Medium Shield Booster
Pithum A-Type Kinetic Deflection Amplifier
Pithum A-Type Thermal Dissipation Amplifier
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script
Omnidirectional Tracking Link II

Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Missile
Small Tractor Beam I

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit II
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I

Vespa II x2
Hornet II x4

You could replace the Deadspace stuff (which is mostly cheapish) with a mix of compact and T2 items, and still be effective.

It comfortably ran the sites in 8 or 9 minutes.

There has been far less competition for the Guristas Detention sites in Hi-Sec than existed in earlier events. I haven’t had to contest one of them – including clearing 8 in a row in a system that got through traffic.

This would relate to the value of the drops – which average (despite what the client tells you) to only 1 or 2M ISK. If you can chain enough of them however the 4.5M ISK in bounties can add up.

The only saving grace I had was that I got a Gila Blueprint drop during one session, which upped the average reward noticeably.

I remarked in my last post that you could use drones in these sites without issue. I don’t know if this was a glitch or by design, but twice after I had run around 10 to 12 sites in a session the NPCs would then start targeting my drones.

This slowed the sites down noticeably (I stopped each time) – so if you plan on running a large number of sites in a row a different sort of ship might work better for you.

As with previous events, it did get me undocked and playing more.

Sucking out the life

I have to admit it was with slumped shoulders that I greeted the latest module rebalancing and updates. It flagged almost every one of my active fits as needing to be reviewed. Thanks damage controls. That is particularly problematic for those fits in Null Sec. While I am not spending a great deal of time there, I’ve been having no luck in finding wormhole routes back to Hi-Sec so that I can bring in waiting supplies or take out loot.

I’ve ran a few of those Guristas Detention Facilities in High Sec. The resists and low signatures of the Guristas Rats means I need to setup a different sort of PVE ship to run them. I don’t think I have much time to do that since the event finishes soon. On the plus side they don’t seem to argo drones and the bounties add up even if the loot drops can be poor. I did take the opportunity to grab a couple Frigate skins at 50% off that are on offer during the event.

Trigged by having to review all my ship fits again, and prodded by the proposed increases in transaction taxes, I’ve continued the liquidation and consolidation of my unused assets. Just recently I reviewed my 5 alts and accepted I never use 3 of them, and was not likely to use them either. It surprises me just how many contingencies and options I give myself, and how my backup plans have backup plans of their own. I left one of those Alts for use for Scouting and lighting Cynos, but transferred assets from two of them to my Corp and moved them across to Jita for Skill Point Extraction.

The process is simple enough – you buy Skill Extractor’s from CCP or the Market, select 500,000 SP to take off your character through drag and drop, then it creates a Skill Injector for you.

You cannot lower your characters Skill point total below 5,000,000, so you require at least 5,500,000 Skill points to use an extractor.

I did not plan to keep the characters afterwards (I really am in a clean out mood), so I concentrated on removing the higher rank and level skills to accumulate the Skill points as quickly as possible. If you are removing lots of skills that you no longer want, it can get tedious lowering their rank to 0. The skill – which you have purchased, remains against the character so you can reapply skill points to it later. Those characters wanting no evidence of their mining or industrial past will be disappointed.

The Extractor keeps track of prerequisites and locks skills needed for something else. Hovering your mouse over the locked skill shows a tooltip, which lists those skills.

Each time you complete an extraction you get an annoying dialog box to confirm, and in my situation, a notification that there were no skills in the character’s queue.

I sold the Skill Injectors off to buy orders – given they were close to the sell orders and after taxes I’d not have ended up with much more ISK. Finally I transferred the ISK off the two characters and biomassed them. There was a lot less nostalgia doing this than I thought their might have been – but it had really been a very long time since I had used either.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the process. On one hand – it is just like a subset of my asset sell off. It turns something that is giving me no value now into ISK. Those SP however were generated by money I spent on subscriptions. It is not really money that I have earned in the game. In my situation it is just another variation of selling a PLEX for ISK.  I know in some people’s eyes that is cheating.

So now I am down to four characters – 185M SP Main, 173M SP Pilot Alt, 44M SP Industry Alt, and a 5M SP Scan and Cyno Alt.

You can still launch

I’ve mentioned this before, but thought I’d repost with screen captures after needing to use it again today.

I still find the current launcher – as with the previous one, has sporadic issues. Today there was no login box, instead an unhappy face icon with a tooltip informing me there was a DNS look up error.

If your EVE client is patched and up to date, you can still run the client directly.

Go to the menu icon next to the minimise and close icons, top right hand corner of the launcher, and then select Server List.

This will open a new dialog box and you can simply click “Play on Tranquility” to get the EVE client to run. Today I was able to log in that way even though the launcher log in option was not working.

(The issue was transient and when I logged in later the launcher was working again. I wondered if it had anything to do with the 1900 odd pilots battling each other at the time.)

Ducking Society

EVE didn’t get much of a look in over the last few weeks. I have been focused on the opening of this year’s Duck season in my state.

My father is getting to the end of his hunting life, and has seemingly been self-sabotaging his last few seasons. Talking himself out of going, never getting out on time, and making decisions that don’t give him the best chance of success.

I get the impression it reminds him about how his eye sight, hearing, balance and reflexes are no longer anywhere near as good.

The side effect of that however have been my own experiences have been sabotaged.

This year I decided I really needed to focus on my own hunts. If Dad came along, all the better, but my first emphasis needed to be on my own success. I guess that might sound selfish, but it is more of an acceptance that Dad isn’t enjoying it as much.

I spent a lot of time over the last month buying camping gear. It has been more than 33 years since I have been camping, but if I want to get access to some of these far away swamps and lakes I need to be able to stay overnight.

On the weekend before the opening I drove a 700km round trip and scouted out where I would go.

On the opening weekend I did the same 700km round trip – camping by myself on Open eve.

I managed to have everything I needed, enjoyed hot and cold drinks and a hot meal, and woke at 5:20am to the most brilliant moonless star filled sky I think I have ever seen. I also got into the area I wanted to hunt and set up with plenty of time to spare so that I could enjoy the quiet and anticipation.

Dad did come along – but only arrived near my camp on opening time. He called me to ask where I had set up – which was the same I had indicated in SMS 90 minutes before, had told him on the phone the previous night, and discussed in person the previous afternoon. I watched the first couple mobs of ducks pass by – unable to shoot as I patiently spoke to him.

In the end I got a good feed of ducks over the weekend, and my Dad remarked a number of times that he really enjoyed the two days of hunting – almost as if surprised.

I think I first went out with my Dad when he hunted ducks some 35 years ago, and have been hunting ducks with him for 31 years, aside one or two years where there was no season. This year there has been a baton pass – Dad will now go on hunts with me, instead of me going on hunts with Dad.

There were two things that otherwise stood out for me about the weekend.

The first was that camping by yourself just doesn’t feel entirely right or comfortable.  (Even for this Hermit.)

The second was the widespread change of tone in the anti-hunting protesters. There are some who have deep anger that the season has not yet been banned – and their social media commentary is full of hate and wishing death on those who disagree with them. They get lots of likes and support for it.

It is not just a Duck Hunting thing – I’ve seen EVE players wish death on other players, seen it in road rage, in fact, just about any sort of disagreement seems to rush head long into hoping death gets involved.

Has society moved so far away from reality that they don’t actually comprehend what death is and means? That they think it is an acceptable reaction?

You hear people say that they cannot comprehend the attacks that were made this week in Brussels, or those in France or the UK or America – or the far more frequent and more deadly attacks across Africa, the Middle East, Asia and so on. I don’t find them hard to comprehend, I am reminded almost daily how barbaric apparently civilised people can be.

Life seems more real and peaceful sitting on the side of a lagoon hunting for your own food. I’m not sure how many more years – if any, that I will get to do it.

Follow Ups

Someone asked me to make available the EVE Wiki web pages I had downloaded for offline reading, just before it was taken offline.  That was done and since removed.  I hope the people who had downloaded got some value from it.

Just a couple more comments about some of my recent complaints.

My launcher seems to be back to working ok.

The client seems more stable (the nVidia driver crashes seem to have stopped) and moving around seems less buggy, but I still have very long blank screens at times when logging in or undocking. I’ve kept away from Null Sec that is the sort of thing which will get you killed.

I read somewhere this morning (and embarrassingly can’t find where) that the 5M ISK jump clone cost is now penciled in to be 900K ISK. That’s an improvement.

I also read this interesting blog post:

http://ceo.starexplorers.net/blog/the-dirty-citadel-secret

I had thought people would not use Hi-Sec Citadel markets due to the risks, but issues around ranged orders, access and how items appear on the market seemingly make it even less likely. If Citadels are more about Corp or Alliance markets, why introduce the big tax increases? To remove more ISK from the game?

I am glad the gong upon ship kills has been turned off.  There still seems to be an unnecessary long delay at times before the target icons shuffle up/across once a target has been destroyed.

Last of all I’ve used the latest update of the new camera – with all the options turned off, for a couple of game sessions. I haven’t tested it in Null Sec (where I use tracking and D-Scan all the time), but in normal moving and PVE efforts in Hi-Sec it now seems workable. I still don’t like it as much as the old camera – it is just not as smooth, but at least I don’t feel the strong urge to dock up and log off.

Ensuring you really leave

There are various ways in which people leave EVE, but there is usually some sort of correlation between the discard of their in-game wealth and the permanency of the departure.

I think people trying to make a clean break can lean towards sabotaging the option of return – giving away all their ISK and assets, or taking the next step to sell or transfer their characters to those who remain in the game.

I had a quick thought – I wonder if the skill extraction process might make really leaving the game a little easier? Rip all the SP out of your characters and give away the proceeds, leaving you unenthused to return to the penniless shell of your former character.

Of course you can also just trash and biomass everything.

Empires of EVE

I received my copy of Empires of EVE today.  Unfortunately the packaging (and handling during shipping) wasn’t perfect and it arrived with several noticeable dents, rips and deformities in the cover, plus slight water or glue damaged to the edge of some pages.  That took the shine off things.  I’ve read the first 35 odd pages.  It is interesting and I think I am going to enjoy it.  I’m not sure if it is written in a way that non-EVE players will find worthwhile.  I’ll have to consider that again when I am finished.

I’ve had a busy couple weeks, and the next couple weekends are already booked out.  EVE isn’t getting quite as much of a look in at the moment.

Gong

I don’t like having a run of negative posts – but what the hell was CCP thinking with the ship destroyed gong!?!?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roXhlwDVD4o

I honestly thought it was a troll when I first heard about it – but no, there it was when I logged in, horrendously annoying and without an apparent off switch.  How was that ever allowed into the game?  That is just appalling.

The other thing I noticed immediately upon logging in was that the new camera had been switched back on.  You could tell straight away.  I gave it another go – and while it is still inferior in feel and operation to the old camera, it was working better.  Automatic tracking in particular is much improved, with cleaner movement between each object selected – although it could actually be slowed down some now.  I still don’t think much of the zoom, but at least generally the camera didn’t seem to have as much of a mind of its own.

I don’t have a full review however as the game client was iffy so I gave up playing after a short while.  I had strange notable periods of the client freezing when I tried to jump through Gates.  When I was allowed to jump I’d have the gate launch forward and away from my ship, instead of my ship flying through it.  Once in a warp tunnel or passing through a planet there seemed to be a strange spiral motion.  When you came out of warp or on the other side of a gate the objects around you seemed to jarringly reposition into place.  (This last one is on the issues list.)

It just wasn’t a pleasant experience so I docked up.  I’ll wait for a patch or two.  As it is, almost all my ship fittings need to be reviewed with the mass of module changes – and that will need to wait for EFT to be updated.

*EDIT*

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6386420#post6386420

All I can say is thank god!

Forcing it to fit

If there is one thing that annoys me about CCP, it is their habit of trying to force people to play EVE in a certain way.  It spits in the face of the sandbox.

As I have already remarked, I don’t see any value so far in Citadels for my style of play. They are frankly indefensible bar for a few groups in game.

CCP has put out some initial suggested NPC station changes to make it easier for Citadel owners to profit from making services available to the public. On initial view it seems very much like a nerf to NPC stations to try and force players to use Citadels:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=471995

In particular, an increase from 100K to 5M ISK to install a new jump clone in an NPC station – and an increase from Free to 5M ISK every time you jump to another clone, leaving the old clone in an NPC station. I use jump clones all the time to move between regions and into and out of Null. If I jump my Main and Alt into Null sec for a couple of days, then out to Hi-Sec for a couple of days, then across to my Mission running clones for a couple of days –I’ll end up spending 30M ISK in jump fees.  A sort of disincentive to move around and play the game.

I could use a Citadel – but last time I read you lose your clones if it is destroyed, or if the owner decides to remove the Clone module (deliberately or by mistake).

Further – if you want to use the markets in NPC stations, transaction taxes will increase from 1.5 to 2.5%, and broker fees from 1 to 5-6%. That is a huge impact if you turn over any sort of volume on the market.

I could use a Citadel – but again you are at the whim of the Citadel owner.

But then I read this:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6374373#post6374373

So CCP have come up with some arbitrary cost to run a Citadel with certain services.  To try and make those made up numbers work for Citadel owners, they are going to nerf all NPC stations.  Errr – CCP, your numbers are made up, fricken change them so they work, without nerfing the game of every player who doesn’t intend to use your Citadels, because, well, sandbox.

Sorry but

I’ve not been playing much this week. It is not through lack of trying – it just seems that EVE hasn’t been available or I get issues like this when I try:

I see people logged on, but the EVE Status feed on Twitter will tend to report that they are investigating log on issues for some players. Unfortunately that “some players” reference seems to include me. The move to new hardware and datacentre don’t seem to like me.

In the past I’d have been grumpy about it, nowadays I just shrugging and moving on to something else to do.

*Edit*

There was an interesting forum tip with regards this type of error:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6375996

Run the launcher, click on the E symbol next to the minimise and close buttons (top right), and select Server List.  You can then apparently click “Play on Tranquility” to get a client window up to directly log in instead of having to log in via the buggy launcher.