Quiet

It has kind of snuck up on me, but many of the older school EVE bloggers I have followed over the years have gone quiet or changed topics. Talvorian Dex mentioned it recently, which opened my eyes to it. I expect the lack of their stories, example and ideas has sapped some of my appetite for EVE.

My logins remain sporadic. For the first time since I started playing EVE I could envision it being fairly easy to walk away with no particular regret. It is a reminder to myself about just how important it is as a Solo Player to keep active goals, else you drift away. It is an interesting place to be – but in an academic sort of way. It is not a decision I plan to entertain until after I hit 10 years.

I also know it is not just EVE. I haven’t played my favourite iPad games for months either. I seem to be having a midlife crisis. Well – crisis is far too harsh a word. It is more a midlife trifling, as I review my career and life in the most boringly analytical way I know how. Throw my troubled and troubling 7-year-old daughter into the mix and there hasn’t been much room left for gaming.

I have gone over the romantically named 118.6 release notes and patched the client.

I glanced at the Shadow of the Serpent Event Opportunities as I logged in. My very first thought was a deflating “oh crap, could I really be bothered running so many sites?” Probably not the most auspicious start.

I then got to witness the new docking animation, which seemed to go on for too long and had the camera pan artistically across the ship in a somewhat annoying way. The concept is interesting, but the execution seems amiss.

I then undocked. I’d like to give feedback on how that animation works, but all I got (and have got since) was a long pause looking at a black screen before appearing undocked like normal.

The patch notes suggest you can cancel this “cinematic” sequence by moving the camera. That didn’t seem to stop it. I then went looking in the menus for a way to turn it off but did not notice anything either. I suspect people are likely to complain about this feature.

While undocked I added 3 tabs to my overview, bringing the number up to the allowed 8. I need to spend an hour or two really thinking about how to make the most of them. To start with I ensured I had all the new event NPC’s added.

I wandered about until I found one of the new Event Sites on my overview. It had a surprising number of battlecruisers and what not in it, but they melted quickly and didn’t trouble my shields. Nothing seemed to drop and my scope network summary showed 1 of 10 such sites complete. There are – as to be expected, a lot of people running these sites initially. I’m going to have to find and compete against other players for 100 odd sites to get the lowest level reward. Maybe I am missing something, or have unknowingly succumbed to bitter vet syndrome, but “Meh” about sums up my initial enthusiasm. I’ll see if I change my tune on the weekend.

For the privileged

The latest o7 show is available here on YouTube –

For something different, it was simulcast across YouTube, Twitch and Facebook.

It was a little more polished than normal, although didn’t have a great deal in it.

They talked about the costing of some of those new Serpentis Capitals – the Vehement Dread will be 35-40B ISK, and the Vanquisher Titan up around 400B ISK. It seems like a fair bit of work to go into something available to a relatively small number of players. They also showed some video of what the Industrial array looks like, from about 22 minutes in.

The patch notes for the June release are also available:

https://community.eveonline.com/news/patch-notes/patch-notes-for-118.6-release

I’ll have to log back in to check out the Shadow of the Serpent event. It was nice to see the Cynosural field range will show on the Tactical Overlay, I’ll have to do some research on the boosters as they haven’t been anything my characters have tried, I will of course make use of the 8 overview tabs and the Cinematic camera sequence for docking and undocking might be interesting.

Not so recurring

A little unexpectedly (at least to me) CCP will be removing the daily SP opportunity during next weeks patch.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6539629

There was a big bump in the number of people who killed an NPC when they were logged in, but there was very little change to login behaviour.  (That’s the pattern I followed.  It certainly did not make me log in, but I used it when I did.)

I understand CCP’s approach and reasoning.  Hopefully the information CCP have learnt helps make future opportunities better.

Meanwhile I gave my study an upgrade today – a couple small Dell 22″ IPS 1920 x 1080 monitors.  I’ve been wanting more screen real estate for things like displaying Dotlan while playing EVE, IM windows, music videos, background TV shows, twitter feeds and the like that I wanted to keep half an eye on but without impeding what I was doing on my main screens.

My wife’s first reaction was “Oh good god, that’s suitably offensive”.

Apparently she can see one of my ears from the study doorway, so I am not completely hidden.  There are some annoying “quirks” with having mixed resolutions of 3840 x 2160 and 1920 x 1080 with different scaling between them.  I am learning some of the tricks to smooth these, but I don’t think I can fix them all.  (Particularly around Icons and text sizes on the smaller monitors.)

Quality Free

In case you missed it, creative EVE player Rixx Javix provided links to download a Free PDF copy of the EVE Fiction and Art book called Empyrean Chronicles Volume 1.

http://eveoganda.blogspot.com.au/2016/06/empyrean-chronicles-released.html

He followed up by re-linking to another free book he published in 2014 with EVE related art he had completed up until then.

http://eveoganda.blogspot.com.au/2016/06/the-art-of-eveoganda-book.html

Both are worth downloading and adding to your EVE collections.

I am me

There was another recent article posted about what your EVE in game behaviour might reflect in your real life personality.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/14/feature/10910/Chronicles-of-a-New-Eden-What-Does-the-Violence-of-EVE-Say-About-Us-as-Humans.html

This is such a complex area and I don’t particularly feel like debating it at the moment, but he made a couple remarks that stood out for me.

The first remark was:

“the sense of empowerment they get through that transaction is meaningful to them in some way”

That is a simple and powerful idea. To expand – if you repeat an action in EVE regularly then it implies you must be getting some sort of real life mental reward from doing so.

EVE is a game that you can play different roles within. It’s back story is harsh and often unjust.

You can behave objectionably in EVE. The definition of objectionable however varies widely. For me personally I judge this less on the in game action, and more on the rewards they seem to take from the game, and the level of respect shown for opponents.

Let’s visit three pirates.

The first pirate spends their days in Low Sec hunting the ships of other player’s. After a battle they offer up only a polite “good fight”, or some helpful advice if their vanquished foe is amenable. Their reward is the skill of the hunt and kill.

The second pirate spends their days in Low Sec hunting the ships of other player’s. In their arsenal of tricks and traps, they use psychological attacks to anger their foes, hoping they might react foolishly and put their ship unnecessarily in danger. Afterwards they might offer a polite “good fight” or some helpful advice, but their vanquished foes tend to be less receptive to communicating with them. Their reward is the skill of the hunt and kill.

The third pirate spends their days in Low Sec hunting other players. When they get a kill they belittle and laugh at their opponent. Their reward is the sense of power they feel.

Some people would find all three behaviours to be objectionable, others none. It is plausibly one of those arguments you will always find people disagreeing on. Instead concentrate on the premise that the person behind the pirate is getting some value and reward from their actions.

The player of Pirate 1 likes pitting their skills against other players in the game.

The player of Pirate 2 likes pitting their skills against other players in the game. They sometimes use tactics others might find unpleasant or unnecessary.

The player of Pirate 3 likes making fun of other players.

It is in this sort of way I am inclined to judge people and how they play EVE.

 

The second remark was:

“New Eden as a whole tends to be far more focused on destruction rather than construction—that most pilots would rather watch something explode than work together to build something”

This I think is patently wrong, and bore out by the statistics which show how few players PVP.

In my experience more players like to build than destroy in EVE.  They are generally called Carebears.

The balance at the moment however seems tipped towards those who destroy, and against those who build.

As a result, the generally quiet majority build less. When they do build, they make less fuss of it, in hope of avoiding unwanted attention.

Event Dress Up

CCP released an interesting Dev Blog about the next in game event, Shadow of the Serpent, coming at the end of the month.

https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/shadow-of-the-serpent-signal-the-dawn/

They have a new framework for how these will operate, which will make them more visible via the client and give players more options for how they might get involved.

I expect some players might complain given it is less sandpit, more MMO handholding, but I don’t mind what I’ve seen so far.  It might give me an excuse to log in more.

They also mentioned you can now test multi-ship fitting on SISI.  This is not really of interest to me (I only have to fit ships for myself), but I can see why lots of people will like it:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=484160

 

This will make me undock for an hour or three

I hope this isn’t a troll, and that we will indeed be getting more overview tabs.

EIGHT OVERVIEW TABS ON SISI! from Eve

It has been something I’ve wanted since soon after starting the game. I’d have to log in and spend a few hours updating all my overview tabs across my characters if/when this hits tranquillity.

Medically unfit for PVP

I mentioned in my last post that Dust514 items would no longer be on the market after a patch (that has since been applied). I thought I might go collect some of the items, just for interest, but it turns out you couldn’t buy any of the gear from within EVE. I probably should have known that.

No idea if I have mentioned it before, but I have Essential Tremors. I’ve had them all my adult life, and they have very slowly progressed over the years from barely noticeable to occasionally embarrassing. It is a common and minor thing, not normally worth discussing. I saw a Neurologist about them recently – a sort of once a decade check in, plus I had a couple questions. He linked in a number of other minor things to the Tremors that I had not realised related. It turns out my adrenaline fuelled shakes that make it almost physically impossible for me to PVP are also tied in to it. I might have a medical excuse for not playing EVE properly.

Speaking of playing EVE. (See that segue? What blogging prowess.) Without realising it I may have tripped into taking an EVE break. Like most things EVE related, I’m not sure I am doing it right. I still log in every other day to update market entries or grab 10K SP, but I am only online for a few minutes. There is nothing I particularly want to do while undocked, and no goals I am working towards.

While I am still reading the release patch notes and anything else CCP talks about, it has been a while since something has grabbed my attention (in a positive way). I’m not inclined at the moment to work hard at alleviating this malaise, and feel comfortable enough to let things slide for a bit. My accounts are still paid up – my Alt until September, and my Main until February next year. I am still looking forward to the 10-year anniversary milestone.

So without drama or fanfare, I may, or may not, post less. You have been forewarned.