tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33756922497422051542024-02-19T20:12:56.396-06:00Warp to ZeroGrimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.comBlogger135125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-7487129440268641762014-05-29T20:56:00.001-05:002014-05-29T20:56:29.211-05:00Moving Day<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
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Dear readers,</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is with some excitement that I have a big
announcement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Warp to Zero is moving to
a new home!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of my future posts,
guides and articles will be posted at Grimmash on Gaming, at <a href="http://www.grimmash.com/">www.grimmash.com</a>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am moving from the Blogger platform to a
hosted Wordpress.org platform.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not much is changing for now, besides the visual layout of
the blog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I felt it was time to move
for a variety of reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While Blogger is wonderful platform, I want more freedom to
really edit the nuts and bolts of the site.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Along with that, I want more experience running a website from the
ground up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My family has always been
involved in using the internet to promote our hobbies and businesses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the resident tech “Expert”, I decided that
learning more managing my hobby website would be a good way to learn how to
help my family reduce their dependency on limited platforms.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Regarding my blog, it was started to be all about Eve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As my life and gaming habits adjust I find myself
still wanting to write about Eve, but also about other games, and other types of
gaming, more extensively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought
about trying to rework this site, but given the nature of Blogger, I decided to
make a clean break.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I said, it is a
great platform, but I want to have more control over how I can share content. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Running my own website with full control
should improve both the reading experience and my ability to curate my
ramblings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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I also want to start carrying more interesting articles for
a variety of topics and games, and the new platform should make these more
accessible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moving forward I hope to establish
a more regular post schedule, with at least two posts a week and better guides
or features like reviews or photo galleries every week or two as things come
up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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All of my content will be carried over to the new
website.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The posts and comments are
already in place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of the guides and
longer articles I’ve written for this site are in need of some serious
editorial work, so they will get much needed attention and revision, and will
find a new home once I think they are suitable as long term reference material.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The categorization system will get a complete
overhaul to take advantage of the Wordpress.org category system.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The new site will be a little rough around the edges for a
bit as I get in and tweak things to the point where I decide to settle in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, no project is ever done, just
abandoned at a certain point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am a
hobbyist in the website creation field, not a professional.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any considerations to improve the website are
more than welcome!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To all those that have been kind enough to link to my site
in blogrolls or link lists, please consider updating the URL and title for my
site.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the least it will keep your
link list dynamic!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To all of my readers, over forty thousand since I started
this blog a few years ago, thank you for reading and commenting, and join me at
my new home!</div>
Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-58755216911348709112014-05-13T20:34:00.003-05:002014-05-13T20:34:37.195-05:00More Changes!Hello!<br />
<br />
I've been so busy playing Eve and working on stuff for me new corp that I haven't had time to polish up any of my articles. I guess that is a good thing...<br />
<br />
Since I have a bit of a backlog, and a tentpole series as Jester would call it, I am going to hold of on posting the longer articles until I get them finished up. I am also going to wait a bit, as I am finalizing a relaunch of my site.<br />
<br />
Yep! Pretty soon I will migrate to a newer, cleaner, more controllable website. All the old stuff here and comments will port over, but I will have better tools to share pictures, archive guides and resources, and some of the other stuff I am looking to try out. So keep an eye on this space, as a belated spring cleaning is on the way!<br />
<br />
Fly smart!Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-51884574670829145942014-05-07T23:53:00.000-05:002014-05-07T23:53:07.416-05:00A Liberating Lack of LocalI am a few weeks into full-time wormhole life. It's becoming quite enjoyable. Aside from the fun of popping around and exploding all sorts of things in all sorts of spaces, so far the biggest appeal of wormhole life has been the sheer variety.<br />
<br />
Many ways of playing Eve kind of prod you down a path of specialization. The skill system rewards this. Focusing intensely on one thing is usually the most effective way to structure a play session. Usually splitting your attention between various flavors of Eve dilutes the whole experience. Wormhole space forces variety, though. The random nature of what sites spawn in the hole has a huge impact on what each day will bring. Your statics and your K162s might bring treasures hidden inside tentacled Sleeper shells or PvP just waiting to happen. You never know, and you usually have a few options to choose from. Logging in and launching probes is the first step to finding out what the game is bringing you on any given day.<br />
<br />
In the last few days I have mined gas and ore, cleared sites, avoided bubbles, run PI, and started planning some low-intensity industry, all with a friendly group of players that like helping each other out. We have flown in every security level besides null, found some great payouts and some lackluster evenings of just chatting while keeping an eye on a combination of daytrippers and WH corps duking it out and hoping to catch us with our probes down.<br />
<br />
All of this is not without effort or without risk. But the balance of activities keeps everything fresh, and the almighty Bob of Anoikis seems to give enough nice payouts to make the whole thing seem worthwhile. I have to commend the design balance in WH space. It really is a great way to see a lot more of Eve than whatever rut you may find yourself in.Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-37668335040744890892014-05-04T12:18:00.000-05:002014-05-04T17:23:56.080-05:00Fanfest 2014: TwitchTVSo, it has been a busy few weeks. I moved, again. I am refinishing multiple pieces of furniture. And in Eve I am making a lot of transitions that have left me with a bunch of half written articles, but no time to edit them into postable stuff. But I did follow FanFest pretty closely.<br />
<br />
There were a lot of things announced: Legion, new ships, the "new" dev cycle, and other stuff I am forgetting. I tried to follow it as close I can, and I bought the HD Stream through Twitch TV.<br />
<br />
While the content of FanFest was great, I have been rather disappointed by the stream. I work during normal business hours in the US EST timezone. Because of this I was hoping to use the mobile app on my iPhone to listen while working as I could, and then come home and watch the other panels while unpacking the new place. This did not really work out so well.<br />
<br />
The mobile app for Twitch is pretty awful. Laggy, drops connections all the time even with good data signals, and worst of all, it plays advertisements on a stream I paid for access to. That last bit is just plain stupid and greedy. Nothing quite matches the experience of the feed dying, reloading the app, and then having to sit through 30 secs of ad roll just to get back to the presentation. Bush league stuff, Twitch.<br />
<br />
Second, and I am not sure if this is on Twitch or CCP, but it is almost a day after the end of FanFest, and of about 54 panels that I can count on the schedule, 16 have been uploaded to watch after the fact. That is 30% of the panels. So paying for the HD stream was not really worth it, from the perspective of being able to see most of what happened.<br />
<br />
<i>Edit: Apparently roundtables were not recorded, at all. That sucks, but I just didn't notice it when I bought the stream. I guess caveat emptor. Still waiting on CCP Presents, or anything from Saturday though. Would have been nice had that been uploaded before the work week starts. </i><br />
<br />
I've delayed a few posts, especially regarding Industry stuff, because I wanted to see what came out at FanFest before writing up my takes on everything. We'll see what gets posted in the next few days, but I am not too hopeful at this point.<br />
<br />
All that said, I enjoyed being able to see the Keynotes and a few other panels, and overall I am impressed with a lot of the decisions CCP is making going forward in the Eve Universe. I hope to get a few posts up this week with the information we do have, especially regarding the future of Eve, as I think a lot of things can be inferred from the news over the last few weeks!Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-92060264658631095632014-04-22T00:16:00.000-05:002014-04-22T00:16:10.303-05:00Iterating Better Worlds
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfGf9tI2ZVwI7CmjVaPhr8LIa52fh_CaHM7G546Kq8rWx5rO57sRFUntkc5xqun4fQ8zEKeke-xTn5R8ZDxzHxo3wAWlFBAXLTsXalHy-sQxgvEJWD2Gzi6VQarci_T22SVkss_VHabNqW/s1600/operative.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfGf9tI2ZVwI7CmjVaPhr8LIa52fh_CaHM7G546Kq8rWx5rO57sRFUntkc5xqun4fQ8zEKeke-xTn5R8ZDxzHxo3wAWlFBAXLTsXalHy-sQxgvEJWD2Gzi6VQarci_T22SVkss_VHabNqW/s1600/operative.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a>First, a minor point before I get started.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The dev blog “Building Better Worlds” could
have lifted the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> quote </span>either from the Weiland Yutani Corporation logo from the Alien mythos, or the Operative from Serenity. In that movie the line is
uttered by a character who believes he is helping create better worlds, but
then finds out that his whole ideology was based on a naïve understanding of
what his superiors were actually doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I hope that was not what CCP was implying with the title…</div>
title from a few places.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ok, that out of the way, let’s get into it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After thinking and reading about the new
industry changes that are coming I think there are a few sides to the topic
that have not been talked about all that much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It all boils down to getting new players while holding on to the old
ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is, after all, CCP’s business
model.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<strong>Access</strong></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First, we don’t know exactly what the new cost will be for the new
slot-less industry design.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We know the
range (0%-14%) and we know it is based on the price of the finished good
(derived from the rolling average?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
we do not know the break points, or exactly how it will play out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am sure smarter players than I can tell you
more about this, but I’m not overly concerned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The spreadsheet wizards will always find a way to win at Eve, and the
casuals will probably have some rude learning experiences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing new to see here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But one thing the new slot-less system will
do, regardless of pricing, is provide a fast, immediate way in for anyone.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is really important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If you cannot remember what being a new player in industry is like, let me
tell you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You learn about Research and
Manufacturing, and maybe get a few BPOs to test things out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You look around High Sec and realize that any
stations worth using are either insanely expensive, full for a month, or
both.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You start looking at what it takes
to get out to Low Sec and the open research slots there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you are really smart, you realize you out
to be using a tech two ship to move your goods to avoid losing your
assets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You then realize that training
for those safer ships, for a new pilot, is not insignificant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The training will take weeks or months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So you have two options.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Either wait for weeks to even start your
jobs, or wait for weeks to safely engage in Low Sec.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both of those options are terrible.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If CCP wants people to engage in industry, it needs to be
accessible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There needs to be an
obvious, easy way to at least get started.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The new changes provide this. Any newbie will be able to create an
account, train Research to I, and get down to getting down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure, it may be a bit more expensive, and
sure it may not be the long term way towards industry in Eve, but it is a
start.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can also think of no other part
of the game that is as prohibitive from day one as industry right now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can run missions, mine, explore, haul, or
get into PvP within hours or days of starting an account.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, you will not be doing well at these
tasks, and you won’t be using the same ships or strategies in a month or a
year, but you can start!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This change
lets newbies start exploring industry in the same way as in any other part of
the game.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Think of a bike with training wheels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yeah, the training wheels suck, but many
people need them to get started.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once
you get a feel for the bike, you throw the training wheels away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a lot of ways Hish Sec space is the
training wheel of Eve.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<strong>Null Sec is Best Sec?</strong></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Second, the argument that this new system will push industry
players to null sec decries pushing players into a specific style of Eve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure, that seems like a logical conclusion,
but maybe it is not so bad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Currently
the tinfoil prognosticators say that a very small fraction of players actually
live in Null.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll go with that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But take a look at who has stuck around in
Eve for the long haul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The list mostly
consists of Null sec players, Low sec pirates, FW players, and Wormhole
residents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are some high sec
players that have been around a while, but I would wager the age of those
accounts is a bit lower, and a fair number of those accounts are second or
third accounts of people living outside high sec on the main account.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Go take a look at the blogs and Twitter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The space famous people who both help create
content and help create the community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
tend to live in places that are not Empire Space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There may be a good reason to push people out
into the edges of Eve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is where
they really start to engage with each other. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
CCP has to keep players interested in the game.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>High Sec is not the place to keep
people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It gets boring and dull.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>About the only exciting way to live in High
Sec is to either do industry or play markets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Neither of these, by themselves, provides a whole lot of
excitement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other players provide
that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>CCP seems to be tweaking the game
to push more people out of the middle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>FW got a revamp.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>WH space can
provide lucrative rewards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Null has
better isk if you know what to do, and it has all those big fights, and all
those really big ships.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gently prodding
High Sec players to move out and explore other options helps them learn the
game and build the connections that will keep subs coming in, and keep the
player driven plotlines going.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<strong>Seagull Space</strong></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Third, there is the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Null sec is kind of broken, or at least sov is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If CCP Seagull’s “new space” is any
indication, CCP is more interested in trying something new rather than just
burning the whole world down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Imagine
sitting in CCP’s shoes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have a core
of hardcore long term players that live in the sov of now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those players run or play in the player
organizations that tend to keep people playing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You know that sov is spiraling into irrelevance or stagnation for long
stretches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if you tear down that
whole system and replace it on a patch day, you may lose a whole bunch of
people who worked really hard to get where they are in the broken system, and who
have been paying good money or buying the PLEX that others paid good money for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remember, someone paid for every PLEX in the
game.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if you make enough isk to not
pay real money for Eve, someone else is paying that price.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Instead of tearing apart the sov system these players have
played in for so long, you could start laying the ground for a new system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You start trying to implement the little
things that will make it work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the
same time you continue trying to herd players into the regions and player
organizations that will adapt to major change and create the community
connections that keep online games going.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You do all these little things, and then when the big day
comes and you open a new space, you have all the little pieces in place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You also have the safe haven for the invested
players.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have new opportunities for
new and old players.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And you have a live
test bed for a long term solution to the old space too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let players do as they will for a few months
or an expansion cycle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then CCP can come
back and say “See how well this new thing worked?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, we are going to implement that in the
old world too.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or CCP can say “See how
this new thing almost worked, but didn’t?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We’re going to fix it and not touch the old world.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The process can continue until you get the
desired result.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At least, that’s what I hope is going on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suppose we shall see soon enough, as the
dev blogs and Fanfest approach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do
wish that CCP would be a bit more open about their plans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That might provide a light at the end of the
tunnel for players who see many of the new changes as an attack on their way of
playing Eve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wonder how many people
would respond favorably to an announcement like this:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<em>“Many parts of New Eden are old.</em><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><em> </em></span><em>The players, the game, and CCP have outgrown
what currently exists.</em><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><em> </em></span><em>This is not a
simple problem to fix.</em><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><em> </em></span><em>There is
entrenched code and there are entrenched interests.</em><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><em> </em></span><em>We want to build a better world, but to do so
will take time and effort, and there will be growing pains.</em><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><em> </em></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><em><br /></em></span></div>
<em>
</em><div class="MsoNormal">
<em>Our plan is to release a new cluster, linked to New Eden,
but operating with different rules that govern how players interact with the
universe.</em><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><em> </em></span><em>In this new cluster we will
pioneer that better world while providing a space for new and old players to
explore, build, fight and destroy.</em><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><em> </em></span><em>We’ll
take the opportunity to find solutions that work for all of Eve Online.</em><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><em> </em></span><em>By creating new space, we can preserve what
players have accomplished in the New Eden Cluster, and provide ample time and
space for creating new gameplay mechanics without completely changing the game
you know and love overnight.</em><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><em> </em></span><em>We invite
you to continue flying with us as we continue to expand and refine both New
Eden and the universe beyond.”</em></div>
<br /><br />
I would welcome something along those lines.Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-65091829807580820462014-04-18T00:11:00.000-05:002014-04-18T00:11:24.868-05:00Greedy Little Pig<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWB4FbGJd9b9eOTb-ItNSnfFKJwdT6blFhMcVHga_R5CTOZ2G97rETy3Du9p5UhtVvw6Zwi1ywt2TD3MJ_V-RtGn_FfpKbDn3FgAQTOLtM1KKsZCOq587H6tETfwrP4__10jwU2r-4Njwi/s1600/deathpenalty-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWB4FbGJd9b9eOTb-ItNSnfFKJwdT6blFhMcVHga_R5CTOZ2G97rETy3Du9p5UhtVvw6Zwi1ywt2TD3MJ_V-RtGn_FfpKbDn3FgAQTOLtM1KKsZCOq587H6tETfwrP4__10jwU2r-4Njwi/s1600/deathpenalty-2.jpg" /></a></div>
As is often the case when learning a new part of Eve, I did many things right the last week and half, but the last thing I did, I did about as wrong as you can.<br />
<br />
Wormhole life has been teaching me routines. Log, scan, bookmark, jump the holes, scan, keep going until I find the exits I want or decide that I have looked far enough. Check neighbors for towers. Bookmark them. Come home. Use the directional scanner. Always use the D-scan.<br />
<br />
Our rolls have been getting more interesting of late, seemingly escalating up the series of W-Space system classes. Tonight we rolled a C4, with some company. The C4 led to a C1. That C1 had some company too. It also gave me the high sec opening I was looking for, to bring in a few more ships to use against anyone who came to visit. So I followed the chain out, fitted up some ships, and started the process of ferrying them in. <br />
<br />
I was warping along nicely and jumped into the C1. Then I landed on the C1 to C4 wormhole and saw a Crow. Somehow I hit the target button, which was silly. I immediately jumped, not actually wanting to engage, and landed inside a bubble. The Crow followed, but I quickly got out and continued on my way. Then I just sat for a while, figuring I might as well let any polarization timers wear off before grabbing another ship. For fun I went back to check the bubble, and made some extra warp-ins that would help avoid getting snared.<br />
<br />
A bit later everything seemed clear, so I went out, and sure enough the bubble was gone. Home free! I got the second to last ship in, and realized that if you fly out in a ship, you have to leave it to bring another in. So I had the, ahem, brilliant idea to just pod out, because the bubbles were gone, so nothing could go wrong. Right? I made it to the C1 to High Sec wormhole and landed inside two bubbles. There was that damn Crow! You can probably guess how that one ended. All in all, the new implants and clone cost less than the ship I would have flown back in, so I'll consider it a decent outcome for a stupid idea.<br />
<br />
Turns out my clone was a few jumps from Dodixie. Time to log off in the trade hub and see what the hole rolls tomorrow. At least I got to see the new death animation for the first time.Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-58901010332996061842014-04-16T00:06:00.000-05:002014-04-16T00:06:05.139-05:00Industry Expansions Will Never Happen...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR7x04Y4hQQzv2kOC216t2JDszTZMxmQrx01dOpVAtxBlzv9mKguvV442Ycoy3O5RchdBg7DRSWS9_xKxa2zDRT3lhnIRdvOYhGwkg_BfUWDW4HFittUHxQ6wCMoszZj9EGQ3eqf1XJeCw/s1600/Industry_Window_VisualTarget2_550px.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR7x04Y4hQQzv2kOC216t2JDszTZMxmQrx01dOpVAtxBlzv9mKguvV442Ycoy3O5RchdBg7DRSWS9_xKxa2zDRT3lhnIRdvOYhGwkg_BfUWDW4HFittUHxQ6wCMoszZj9EGQ3eqf1XJeCw/s1600/Industry_Window_VisualTarget2_550px.jpg" height="285" width="320" /></a></div>
Well, I was going to write something about wormholes, but that can wait. <a href="http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/building-better-worlds/">This happened.</a> That industry expansion everyone assumed would just never come is coming this summer. Or at least round one. I can't wait for the NDA'd minutes to come out and see what level of involvement the CSM had.<br />
<br />
There is a lot said in the dev blog linked above, and more to come. I don't have much to say at this point, because it looks like it will take some time to find out how all of the changes are going to fit together.<br />
<br />
Off the top of my head the most exciting parts are:<br />
<ul>
<li>Removing wait times on all manufacturing and research.</li>
<li>POSes in HS will no longer require god-awful standings grinds.</li>
<li>That interface.</li>
</ul>
Again, how this all plays out will be interesting to see, but I think the changes to research waiting will really open up the field to players looking to get into industry. Now you can trade isk for time without building a POS, something that is currently a pretty big advantage for older players with the skills to research outside HS, or set up POSes to research, or who had stacks of BPOs researched to high levels. Now instead of waiting to build a POS or waiting for queues, players can just get researching as soon as they buy the BPO. The copy mechanics changes, shortening the time to copy BPOs, will also make positioning of all aspects of the process more interesting.<br />
<br />
I am excited to learn more. Looks like I might have alts doing a fair amount of research this summer...Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-25237425959808448732014-04-13T22:50:00.000-05:002014-04-13T22:53:22.223-05:00Down the Rabbit Hole<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyFzmFEA3FD1bvLu_3lEHwwzc1CDsNmN3BF5yT7_lke1T5tg2-yf_b4YW7KFqXRJ9B4RdH-T53IC6je6f0ZxnPPa4Bwr2GVVSDMZs0Iopu16v5kv3YqYu91Eq9SRuK6HDDXGDMkIRzHMuw/s1600/wormhole_1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyFzmFEA3FD1bvLu_3lEHwwzc1CDsNmN3BF5yT7_lke1T5tg2-yf_b4YW7KFqXRJ9B4RdH-T53IC6je6f0ZxnPPa4Bwr2GVVSDMZs0Iopu16v5kv3YqYu91Eq9SRuK6HDDXGDMkIRzHMuw/s1600/wormhole_1024.jpg" height="199" width="320" /></a></div>
After wrapping up affairs in Black Rise, selling off a lot of assets,
and moving others, I am ready for my next step in Eve. I am moving
into a wormhole. Or I should say I have already moved into a wormhole.
I moved in earlier in the week. This is pretty exciting, and I hope a
good number of the tricks and skills I learned in FW will come in
useful. At least I know how to use the directional scanner!<br />
<br />
About one week in, I am reminded of this quote:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 0.5em 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
Reports
that say there's -- that something hasn't happened are always
interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are
things that we know that we know. We also know there are known
unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't
know.</div>
<div class="templatequotecite" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; padding-left: 1.6em; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
—Donald Rumsfeld, United States Secretary of Defense</div>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
You
might not like Donald Rumsfeld, but that is not the point of the
quote. The point is that you never realize the third category of
unknown unknowns until it decloaks one top of you, points you, and blows
you up. Or you realize that all of your supplies are suddenly
unavailable due to corporate mechanics and a mis-click. <br />
<br />
Lots
of things have changed. Moving from stations to POS towers, removing
local chat, and suddenly having no idea what might be in the next system
over, are now my day to day life in Eve. I have never spent so much
time accomplishing nothing but learning so much about how Eve works as I
have in the last few days. My skill queue has found new and
interesting nooks and crannies to fill out. Previously mysterious parts
of the interface have become a new home. And paranoia has hit a whole
new level.Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-23445425134985494862014-04-03T21:57:00.000-05:002014-04-03T21:57:02.294-05:00Have a Little FaithJust a super quick post tonight. There is a lot of serious business in Eve. Lots of serious topics, in game and out. We rage about the game, we rage about what people do in game. We rage about what people do out of game. We take everything so damn seriously.<br />
<br />
Despite all the seriousness, two things have happened recently that I think highlight how positive the Eve community is despite all the negative press.<br />
<br />
First, when I came back from about six months or so of complete absence from the game, I was a bit worried about what I would find waiting for me on the first log in. Much to my relief, I was still in my old corps on both accounts. When I logged in, instead of bitching about me be gone or having been kicked (a common occurrence of being gone for even a week in some other MMOs I have played), the players simply said hello and welcomed me back. No drama, no bullshit, just a few "Hey, welcome back!" posts.<br />
<br />
Second, in the midst of some evemails with people who don't know me from Adam, and who I have been hounding a little bit, I essentially had to say "Hey, I know I've been bugging you for a week solid about some stuff. Thanks for getting back to me. It turns out I am entering wife-birthday week, so I will now disappear after nagging at you." Great people skills on my end.<br />
<br />
The response was "Enjoy wife week!"<br />
<br />
While there are some terrible things that go down in Eve, on the whole it has the most consistently decent people I have ever anonymously encountered. Considering the stakes of giving out even an iota of trust in Eve are much higher than almost any other game, I think this speaks volumes to the unheard majority of Eve players that just want to have fun, and understand that other people playing the game are people with lives and concerns that go beyond the little corner of a fictional galaxy we choose to spend our free time in.<br />
<br />
So thanks, Eve community. You may get a lot of bad press, but you have an odd way of restoring my faith in the fact that most of you are pretty decent people.Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-9939435900945643182014-04-01T23:02:00.000-05:002014-04-01T23:02:18.865-05:00Quick Thoughts: Banished<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYLQ2kQUJlOl8U6tfspt7E5ob0TVEhfQxpiihwe5r0K4qBZZg9dkXHiwFbbpDtfN6S8Zx0yeUYIay5yLc63MmofUVp4UugeQCQIvgOkn-OrLwDaxiq2QCqB6-VnaSoNREMfNgGDPy_i658/s1600/Banished.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYLQ2kQUJlOl8U6tfspt7E5ob0TVEhfQxpiihwe5r0K4qBZZg9dkXHiwFbbpDtfN6S8Zx0yeUYIay5yLc63MmofUVp4UugeQCQIvgOkn-OrLwDaxiq2QCqB6-VnaSoNREMfNgGDPy_i658/s1600/Banished.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is actually a rather large village.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
As I noted a few posts back, I wanted to take a look at Banished, a new city building game. I got a copy and started up. The game presents itself very pleasantly. I loaded up the tutorials, spent about 15 minutes playing through them. A lot of games could learn from the tutorials in Banished. They are short, to the point, and get you rolling quickly.<br />
<br />
After the tutorials I started up my first town. I decided to go for medium difficulty, as this provides you with a barn already loaded up with your starting supplies, and about 10 or so villagers. I had read a little about the game, but went in and tried to play trusting my gut. I built a farm and a whole bunch of houses and other support buildings. This was not wise. I lost six people the first winter and decided to start over.<br />
<br />
On my second village I only built enough houses for the starting group. This means one house for each "couple" of male and female adults. One of the mechanics of the game is that couples will move into an empty house, and procreate. If you build too many houses all the eligible couples tend to pair off an you get a bunch of kids. This is a bit of a liability in the first few years when food is at a premium. I also ignored farming for a few years. Due to a quirk of the game Gathering Huts seem to be the most efficient method of food production for much of the early game, as long as you put them in the woods. Pair this with a Forester to plant in all trees and you have a nice food supply going pretty quickly.<br />
<br />
Once I had the basics of food and shelter down, I began building out slowly. I would add a few houses and a profession building or two each year as kids grow into adults who can then work the new structures. Now I am at the point where I think I can safely deal with populations of at least 120, having gotten there on a few subsequent cities.<br />
<br />
I stated before that I hoped this game would solve the GUI issues of Dwarf Fortress while providing a solid game to back up the graphics. It comes tantalizingly close so far. By focusing on the core issue of resource management instead of throwing in a whole bunch of features Shining Rock has created a nice, tight little game. <br />
<br />
The game rewards you for playing smartly and cautiously balancing expansion with managing the core resources. These are stone, wood, leather, iron, and many types of food. Pretty much everything in the game comes from this handful of items. The fun bit is in having to choose the balance. Do you sacrifice iron and wood for tools and firewood, or do you build a church for happiness? Do you use your stone for houses or for a new workshop? Do you gamble your stockpiles on getting some livestock or new seeds from the trader, or do you spend them on an increased population?<br />
<br />
The one downside is that one solid evening of play will show you the entire game. I have built every building in the game after a few hours. A fair number of reviews have picked on this a bit unfairly, by my estimation. While there might not be a whole lot of Banished, what is there is done very well. The game is not about the destination of building a metropolis, but rather the journey of carefully expanding just a bit more each year.<br />
<br />
Right now the game is feature locked, but Shining Rock has stated that mod support is planned. If that mod support comes out soon, within a few months or half a year, this game may go from being very good to great. At the moment there isn't much beyond the resource choices presented above. Don't misunderstand, those choices are very fun to play through and are really well done. I see myself playing a few more villages, or maybe taking the game in bite sizes once a month. <br />
<br />
Modding would really allow the game to open up and give it legs. Custom buildings, maybe some sort of limited combat, perhaps more resources and goods. With a few good mods or an expansion of some sort Banished could become a real force in the city building genre. A very solid offering from a one-man shop. Do yourself a favor and buy the game. This sort of game deserves your dollars. At twenty bucks it is an easy way to show the creator and other developers that doing something simple and well is worth doing. Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-19314491880021196092014-03-26T21:35:00.000-05:002014-03-26T21:35:24.734-05:00Slippery SlopesBefore we start: I feel like half of my posts are just responses to Ripard Teg, but the guy writes so much and on so many topics that I find my self not caring. Just a throwaway thought before I get down to it.<br />
<br />
Read <a href="http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2014/03/earthquake.html">this</a>. And then maybe the thread associated, and maybe some of the previous articles. This is the internet, I can wait.<br />
<br />
Now we can start. Most of the debaters in the the topic of what kind of players play Eve and how CCP should treat them seem to accept that both the "Bonus Room" scam and player perpetrating are despicable examples of human behavior. If something like this happened in your work or your family life, you would cut ties with the person and tell others to avoid them. That is a relief. It means that, as I have long suspected and occasionally written, most players of Eve who also participate in the out of game community are either decent people, or are decent enough to recognize truly atrocious behavior. What I find disturbing is that many of those same people think banning players who conduct "Bonus Room" style behavior will somehow start a slippery slope where anyone can be banned for anything.<br />
<br />
This is not a valid concern.<br />
<br />
Bad behavior comes in many forms. Often bad behavior is an isolated incident, where someone gets carried away. You say something nasty while drunk or in a group, and later realize your mistake. Sometimes bad behavior comes from healthy testing of boundaries. Children get in fights or disobeying parents. These sorts of infractions can be dealt with simply and quickly. A little feedback goes a long way, and that sort of feedback is what helps people define acceptable behavior in any society. But some bad behavior is premeditated, cruel and repetitive. Simple and measured feedback doesn't work, because the perpetrator has no regard for the rules.<br />
<br />
In some situations companies have, or choose to assume, a moral or legal obligation to protect their customers. CCP has <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/2080l1/ccp_gave_my_info_to_interpol_because_they_thought/">already shown</a> they are willing to accept a moral right to protect. In that case a player made comment about killing himself after falling for a scam in Jita. While his conversation was in jest, CCP contacted local authorities who then checked in on the player at his home. While the player's initial post was fairly shocked, his first response to CCP in the comments was to thank them. He realized that if he was not joking, CCP may have saved his life. Also reference CCP's handling of The Mittani. I assume anyone reading this is familiar with that event, and will not repeat the story here. <br />
<br />
In most cases companies also have a right to refuse service to customers. This is the opposite side of the coin illustrated above. CCP is completely within rights, in extreme cases, to refuse service without referring to the EULA or complex rules-arguing. They can decide that people perpetrating a certain level of malicious, planned, and orchestrated bad behavior simply do not get to play with the toys CCP has made. They can do this on a case by case basis. If they want, they can put in place stringent internal rules to limit this scenario. But they can do it, and they should. <br />
<br />
It is ok for a company to admit that things may have gotten out of hand or beyond the comfort zone. Especially if the reaction is obviously and, if necessary, publicly done to provide clear feedback to behavior that is well past any reasonable boundary. A few strong examples may do far more good than incrementally adjusting the rules to define the perfect balance for the bad behavior boundary line. There is no slippery slope here. There is truly bad behavior and the opportunity to strongly denounce it.<br />
<br />
And finally, Eve Online is a game. It is for amusement and relaxation, an escape or an adventure. It is not a sacrosanct nation that needs to allow or tacitly support real abuse or psychological manipulation in order to protect the liberties and rights of fictional characters. Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-85723285137487383052014-03-25T19:50:00.002-05:002014-03-25T20:38:18.805-05:00Facebook Rift<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL44NE4fIraK2n_6uwg-HNeaxfYJ7uPOooQEwoK9JaeNOA5muQ4lD7qzdwCUYylnwPj5padbA3ntzzVvrvK_8V4EVyjnjiwAzeikXLMlP63gJCNJwJuXBwUN-soGb9H9aGa6sA5mr3ZU9y/s1600/OculusFB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL44NE4fIraK2n_6uwg-HNeaxfYJ7uPOooQEwoK9JaeNOA5muQ4lD7qzdwCUYylnwPj5padbA3ntzzVvrvK_8V4EVyjnjiwAzeikXLMlP63gJCNJwJuXBwUN-soGb9H9aGa6sA5mr3ZU9y/s1600/OculusFB.jpg" height="244" width="320" /></a></div>
Well. <a href="http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/03/facebook-purchases-vr-headset-maker-oculus-for-2-billion/">This happened</a>. Surprising and disturbing. I'll keep it quick.<br />
<br />
The OR guys built a lot of support out of claiming the Oculus Rift was by gamers, for gamers. They built up a fair amount of seed money through Kickstarter. They secured additional funding from investors. They pulled in John Carmack to buoy this image even more. Then they turned around and sold to a platform whose most famous games include Farmville, scrabble-knockoffs, and other worst-in-breed (or maybe best-in-breed?) examples of micro-transaction fueled cash-grabing. All of this backed by a corporate ethos dedicated to eroding privacy in the name of advertising revenue.<br />
<br />
There is a lot to discuss here. The impact this might have on Kickstarter as a platform for small, innovative ideas. The responsibility of developers to crowd-sourced projects. The enormous power of a few large tech corporations to dictate the direction of multiple interwoven industries. The fate of whatever the consumer version of the Rift looks like. I may come back to those topics later. Each of those sentences is a blog post or two.<br />
<br />
For now, I'll leave two thoughts. First, this might be a reasonable explanation for why Valkyrie suddenly stopped being an Oculus Rift Exclusive. Sony may not be the greatest company, but they have a much better track record than Facebook in regards to gaming platforms. Second, this is just disappointing. I had the chance to play with an OR dev kit a few months ago and I was very excited to pony up whatever the 1080p consumer version would have cost. Now... I'd rather not have to deal with the likelihood of Facebook integration.<br />
<br />
Maybe Facebook is going to try and branch out into providing a real gaming platform. If the short history of the company is any indicator, this is another smash and grab for more users at the expense of quality user experiences. I do hope I am wrong, and this is the beginning of something very exciting. We'll have to wait and see.<br />
<br />Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-7463647196573266782014-03-24T21:21:00.000-05:002014-03-25T19:53:16.239-05:00The Championship Tournament of Winners<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]-->Reading through <a href="http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/">Jester’s</a> posts about the recent New Eden Open got me thinking about competitive tournament play in Eve and in other games. I can think of a few broad types of ranked play in gaming. The DOTA/LoL approach, with lots of characters and a set map with set objectives. The FPS approach with identical classes and rankings based on K/D rates and what have you. The RTS approach of winning matches against other players. The WoT approach where you have either informal rankings based on metrics or Clan tournaments. The ad-hoc Eve tournaments with weird buy-ins, metagamey team composition mechanics and various win conditions that have varied. The WoW arena approach. All of these have strengths and drawbacks that are far too numerous to go into at any length. The point is there are a lot of ways to skin this cat.<br /><br />Coming from a rather uninvolved standpoint, I want to come up with a new way to do tourneys in Eve!<br /><br />In my experience the biggest problem to most competitive gaming formats is either a lack of depth, or so much depth that the mental barrier to entry is too high for most people to get into a game. Based on comments, the latter seems to be a big “problem” in Eve. Add to that the cost of participation and you have a rather gnarly set of hurdles to overcome. So here is a half-baked idea:<br /><br />Take the arena system of WoW, in broad strokes. You have XvX teams enter an arena, fight for a certain amount of time, and at the end the one with the most people left standing wins. This is a pretty simple system. Get rid of the stupid arena mechanics. Instead the arena is a grid, Eve-style, say 300km in diameter. That is plenty of room to move around. Both teams start at 200km from the center. No podding. If you go boom, your pod gets put in a station in system, and you go into spectator mode. Go.<br /><br />Next we need to consider ships. The simplest way is to tier it. Tiers could be based on tech level and hull size. The Tier 1 Cruiser bracket, for example, would allow each team their choice of one Tier 1 cruiser or smaller hull for each player. Fittings would be capped at Tech 2, the impact of implants should probably be negated. Just hulls and mods and rigs. This would create 5 hull tiers, and two tiers for each hull size except cruisers. If we discount tech 3 hulls, there are 10 tiers. Maybe have an anything-goes tier for people who want faction fits, implant sets and all that silly stuff.<br /><br />To make sure you can fit before fights, put an option in the fitting interface where you can set your tier and that wipes the affect of implants. Now everyone has a pretty even playing field, and most players would have options that are not too expensive. A T2-fit cruiser or frigate is a pretty cheap investment, generally speaking. Those would want to go all spendy could fly in the Tech 2 tiers.<br /><br />There may need to be some special rules in the fight system. Perhaps a concord-like entity that really bites down on non-sanctioned combat, to allow safe travel in the fight system. Perhaps there need to be a few of these systems set up in order to ease strain. Maybe not.<br /><br />Then you get to the bracketing. Enter seasons. Let’s go with 3 month seasons, as a number out of a hat. Each week you get X matches (5? 10?) that are ranked. Each team gets a ranking as the season progresses, and then at the end you have playoffs at each tier that leads to the finals. If you have 10 matches per week with a 12 week seasons, that is 120 matches. Not a small number for determining ranks. The post season lasts for a month or two. You get two full seasons a year. <br /><br />For added fun, let’s make all this happen on the live server. During playoffs, the playoff system gates get locked down so only the competitors can come and go. Once you lose, you have to leave. Put the feed on in Captain’s Quarters. Or at least a link to the Twitch page or something. I’d say let players bet isk on the matches, but that might be difficult, legally and logistically.<br /><br />Outside the sanctioned matches, put exhibition arenas around the cluster. Little pockets of space where player can queue up to fight each other using the same rules, but without rankings.<br /><br />This whole thing is mostly a thought experiment. Eve’s competitive PvP, as it stands now, is for a select few, and will hold back Eve’s esports presence because there is not much a normal player can do to join in.<br /><br />The whole point of this idea is to create a space for competitive small gang pvp with real leader boards and rankings. The current tournament system in Eve features a crazy buy-in process, expensive ships, and convoluted rules. I want to see people flying normal ships with normal modules where tactics, team composition and flying are the main factors that influence the fights. Not weird metagaming, practicing in wormholes, and PLEX buy-ins for auction spots. <br /><br />The reason there are only a handful of Formula One teams isn’t because people don’t want to drive fast cars. There are only a handful of F1 teams because the barrier for entry is so high. But there are race tracks and racing leagues all over the world where for a small outlay you can throw a car around the trtack and compete against others. If CCP wants players to really get into eSports in Eve, they need players to be able to participate.<br /><br />A more accessible system could provide this entry point, giving new or space-poor players a simple entry point while allowing a venue for those who wish to field more expensive and skill-intensive ships and fits. Instead of dumping a low-SP alt in RvB, players could dump a new character into the ranked system, and realize that this season they can learn to fly frigates, but next season they will be able to fly cruisers. And then they can move into tech two hulls. If you went with one race’s ships, hitting all 10 tiers would probably take you a good two years to fully fit competitive ships. That would also help keep players in the game, and help CCP’s bottom line. When everyone gets to fight in space, everyone in the real world wins.Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-20833149180719292672014-03-17T18:18:00.002-05:002014-03-17T18:18:47.711-05:00BB54 - Grey Suits Me Better...
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<i>Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our <a href="http://www.ninveah.com/2014/03/blog-banter-54-heroes.html" target="_blank">54th edition</a>! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the <a href="http://www.ninveah.com/p/blog-banters.html" target="_blank">Blog Banter page</a>.<br /> <br />Today's topic comes <a href="http://diaries-of-a-space-noob.blogspot.ca/2014/02/day-612-swashbucklin-in-brooklyn.html" target="_blank">Diaries of a Space Noob</a> blog and other sources:<br /><br />"Quick
post. I was listening to a song and a question occurred to me. Where
are the EVE heroes? Against a dark background surely all we have are
anti-heroes? A lot of mockery is aimed at any who attempt to be white
knights. EVE is a dark place and yet pretty much all other MMO's try to
place the player in the role of some form of hero, boosting the ego and
taking the player out of the humdrum 1 in 7 billion that is RL. Why have
I fitted into EVE? Did I never want to be that? So I guess my question
is:<br /><br />"Do classic heroes exist in EVE? Is such heroism even
possible in EVE? How would you go about being one without opening
yourself wide open to scams? Is the nature of the game so dark that
heroes can't exist? How do you deal with that irony? What effect does
this have on us and the psyche of new players coming in from other MMOs?
Is it something special that we don't have classic heroes, or should
we? Are our non classic heroes more genuine?"<br /><br />And I would add to
this, who have we elevated to the level of larger than life heroes
ourselves in the game, and do they actually deserve it?<br />Get Writing!</i> </div>
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One man’s hero is another man’s villain.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This statement defines Eve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But let us take a step back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most
games put the player in the shoes of a protagonist that if not heroic, is at
least anti-heroic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>MMOs tend to do this
by making each character an empty slate for whatever hero’s journey the writers
crafted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This journey may take the form
of a singular bildungsroman, especially in single player games, or paint the
player as part a team of heroes, as is often the case in MMOs where some
concession is made to the fact that you want or need other heroic and powerful
players to help.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Taking this further, the term “avatar”, generally used to
refer to player characters, derives from the Sanskrit term for a deity
descending into human form, often to accomplish some task.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So our very term for player characters derives
from heroic vedas of the Hindu faith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After all, if you are going to play a character, why not play one of the
really important ones?</div>
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Eve gives you this illusion then rips it away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We all play as capsuleers, semi-immortal
pilots that have been gifted the boon of free access to clones and pods that,
upon receiving the signal that our life is imminently to end, snaps a photo of
our brain, jacks some poison into the system, and wakes us up in a fresh new
body. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our price for death is minimal,
requiring only some accounting work to ensure that all those skills and
implants are safeguarded or replaced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are no stakes that matter for our
characters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We do not have skin in the
game, pun intended.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While we are told by marketing material that we are a
powerful force, in reality it is our ships that provide the power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our characters have no innate abilities or
powers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unlike most MMOs, we do not
fight for or against one of the great fictional entities in the lore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The closest we can get is joining a militia
to fight other players, or run missions for the agents on behalf of the four
empires.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even those empires are
complicated. There is no clear good or bad empire faction.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Gallente and Caldari both represent shades of western
values that many players will find easy to identify, but both are bogged down
in the murky realities of politics where each has committed atrocities and
moral slights against the other, for good and evil reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Amarr and Minmatar seem easier to identify, with the
Amarr as religious slavers bent on domination and the Minmatar as slaves
throwing off the yoke of the oppressors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But the Amarr are in large part responsible for the stargates across
much of New Eden, and the Minmatar are ruthless and secretive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, both have shown acts of courage and
caring and acts of brutality and betrayal.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All four empires are woven together in a patchwork of
intrigue and backstabbing underlined by the shifting of balance sheets and
political power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What if we look beyond
empire space?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are no Reapers or
Reavers, no Borg or Cylons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of the
pirate factions have complicated back-stories that belie a simple black and
white reading of who is the good guy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps we can all agree the Serpentis are just… awful at everything? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is no big bad to strive against.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are only opportunities and
liabilities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Enter the players.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we take a very simple view of Eve, there
are four main playing fields.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First,
High sec, where nothing players do really matters more than increasing balance
sheets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Second, Low sec, where players
can nominally fight for one of four factions to gain nerd points, or fight
anything that moves for the joy of blood (Perhaps these players are the
reavers?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Third, Null sec, where
players fight each other, with no pretense in-game as to why this would matter
at all. Fourth, Wormholes, home of Sleepers who we do not truly understand, and
who only attack when we encrouch on their space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, we understand that those nano-ribbons
and hulls sell for a pretty penny, so we’ll blow up the ships that stand in our
way.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Against this backdrop, there is no place for heroes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If anything, we are often playing the
villains or shock troops, committing violence in the name of Empire, Militia or
Alliance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no moralizing about
our actions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no obvious right
or wrong to guide us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is only
space for personalities that can channel the missiles, beams, and plots of
others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this is where Eve shines,
and why despite admittedly middling mechanics and systems, the game rolls
forward and ships explode.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Freed of a moral imperative to do the correct thing, we can
choose to do anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Absent is the
impending doom or oppressive threat of most other games.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are simply given a universe, step into it
as jobbers, and make our way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
connections we form, when they happen, are with other players and groups, not a
fictional band of brothers intent on defeating a lich king or the power of
chaos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our victories in these self-made
conflicts, while not permanent, are at least meaningful because we set the
goal, we make the rules and conditions for victory, and we succeed or fail.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This very absence of a shared nemesis and self-driven goal
setting are qualities that make Eve unique.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>These attributes keep players coming back for more, long after skills
are trained, ships are bought, or defeat is suffered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no end-game to conquer, no best in
slot gear setup that can be used as a proxy for winning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When a player accomplishes one goal, a new
goal is often already in place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know
in my time in Eve I have never had one overarching goal, be it for my skill
queue, my wallet, or the area of the game I want to engage in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have had multiple goals, each of which
strives for my attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some are
completed, some are abandoned, but the game offers so many venues for
participation that I am never lacking a reason to log in. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Can someone be a hero in Eve?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To some players you could be a hero.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You could hunt gankers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You could lead a coalition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You could be a great blogger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But all of these are relative, and you will
never be a hero to everyone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But you do
not need to be a hero for everyone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Look
at The Mittani.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am sure many consider
him a hero.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But many more consider him
the villain of Eve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a game where
social status is relative speaking of heroes and villains misses the point. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What effect does this have on new players?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>INew players that have a future in Eve grasp
the relative nature of social standings in the game rather quickly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many players come to the game from other
communities, so the narrative is already written for them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most players who stick with the game probably
decide what they want to accomplish and follow other players as long as it is
useful or convenient to do so.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The concept of genuine “heroes” is a wonderful idea in
Eve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we agree that a hero is a
relative thing in Eve, I propose a different question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are the personalities in Eve more genuine?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In that light, I think the answer is a
wholehearted yes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When relationships are
relative, personalities and shared history are all we have to judge each
other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the most sordid betrayals
weave an indelible thread into the cloth of Eve’s shared story.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When you think of what defines Eve, do you think of the
lore, or do you think of the Great War?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Do you think of the great corporations of the Caldari, or of the Guiding
Hand Social Club?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you think of Outer
Ring Excavations, or of Hulkageddon?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All
of those events were created by the personalities in Eve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those events, the people who brought them about,
and the fact that we are freed of playing heroes are far more memorable than
any raid you have conquered in another game.</div>
Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-81762859774827775662014-03-15T21:21:00.001-05:002014-03-15T21:21:08.039-05:00On Deck: BanishedWell, I have to thank <a href="http://mabricksmumblings.com/2014/03/12/banished-again/">Mabrick</a> for probably killing the next few weeks of my life. He ran a few articles about Banished, and I'm going to give a try.<br />
<br />
Some background: When I stopped playing Eve last year, it was not due to a lack of time, but a lack of time which I could safely play games without being interrupted. This was due to living in a house with a very ill family member and the need to physically or emotionally support those I was with. This put a damper of my foray into Faction Warfare. So I started to look for games I could pause, leave, or otherwise abandon at any time. I got back into Minecraft, specifically with the modded servers over at Ars Technica. A good group of guys and gals over there, and we still have some mod servers going strong. I also managed to get myself into Dwarf Fortress rather heavily, first in the normal mode and then into the heavily modded Masterwork version.<br />
<br />
If you like Eve, there is a good chance you like very complex games that have a steep learning cruve and that reward your efforts, more often than not, with death. Dwarf Fortress is maybe the best example of an obtuse, difficult and punishing game that manages to be insanely rewarding and addictive. Oh, and it looks like this:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi87H1AWMjlr5LpX-HEaBeyiLqX49WJ4g5-D_7xxcA_MyBoPOZHytpl5qcWTC2JB17K9u85XGSoLFWIR_hKQJ27nQCbaC50ht4U7KHG8ibVH5g7GYNU8hnQor32bzyejTxEdU7PkyfHJ9au/s1600/DF.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi87H1AWMjlr5LpX-HEaBeyiLqX49WJ4g5-D_7xxcA_MyBoPOZHytpl5qcWTC2JB17K9u85XGSoLFWIR_hKQJ27nQCbaC50ht4U7KHG8ibVH5g7GYNU8hnQor32bzyejTxEdU7PkyfHJ9au/s1600/DF.jpg" height="160" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Adding "better" graphics can make it look a bit better.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhYeGNfVfXqfYK_RMcqEGfY9D1kknRgDMlPOb27NY27e1ysBn2ungYEd78lIC3zXC7035ohJG9W87IN4CiJoz5pcOuk0DP8k26dXBUkdOw8nUwnwMMyMHkhoLGyPwhsgPXUVe4viCpjLgR/s1600/DF+Tiles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhYeGNfVfXqfYK_RMcqEGfY9D1kknRgDMlPOb27NY27e1ysBn2ungYEd78lIC3zXC7035ohJG9W87IN4CiJoz5pcOuk0DP8k26dXBUkdOw8nUwnwMMyMHkhoLGyPwhsgPXUVe4viCpjLgR/s1600/DF+Tiles.jpg" height="158" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
It is not a pretty game. However, it is frightfully deep. It also has no real goals. You start with seven dwarves, some food, some supplies, and then you unpause the game. At the core, DF is a resource gathering and managing game. You dig into the ground, build into the sky, create farms and pastures and mines, and generally try not to die. The beauty of the game is the complexity of the fortresses you can build. <br />
<br />
Once you get food, clothing and basic defenses sorted, you are free to build whatever you want. A giant castle, the mines of Moria, a trap infested death machine. Some notable examples are a player who colonized Hell, replicas of the Great Pyramids, or giant statues that contain hundreds of dwarves and all they need to live. On top of that the forum for the game is rife with community games. These consist of games where players create backstories, random objectives, and then take turns leading the fortress for a year each, writing up the story and passing the turn on to the next player. Some of these are even PVP like in nature, with players encouraged to leave traps for the next player to have to deal with. One game I recently finished culminated in us luring the King of all dwarfdom to our fortress, then burying him under a mountain of cheese, stone, and valuables.<br />
<br />
Most fortresses end due to the violent death of dwarves due to starvation, invasion, madness, breaching hell and unleashing the demos within, assualt from flaming disease spreading monsters, or more often than not, simple bad management. The unofficial motto of the game is "Losing is Fun".<br />
<br />
I love this game, and have spent a lot of time playing it and trying to have as much fun as possible.<br />
<br />
There are a lot of games that have tried to take the DF formula and make it pretty. Towns is the best example I can think of. Much like Minecraft most of these new games have tried to address what many see as the main drawback of DF, the utterly horrible graphics and user interface. Most fall rather flat, being either buggy, poorly made, or lacking the odd charms of DF. Things like the random name and artifact generators, the suicidal way dwarves chase after socks lying on a battlefield, and the intricacies of years of development that simulates emotions, moods, and combat, down to each dwarf having meticulously detailed layers of skin, muscle, fat, bones and organs.<br />
<br />
Banished looks like it might have found a middle ground, and I look forward to seeing if someone has finally cracked the graphics code and made an interesting alternative to Dwarf Fortress.<br />
Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-72469762864943782782014-03-14T23:39:00.000-05:002014-03-14T23:44:02.148-05:00Diablo Loot 2.0 Review<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
You might have guessed that I have been playing a bit of D3
lately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You would be right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I even went so far as to pre-order Reaper of
Souls, because D3 is scratching a mindless kill-fest itch I have been having
lately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I’ve put a good chunk of
time in over the last week, I decided I might as well give a snapshot review of
D3 with Loot 2.0, as a bit of a baseline for when I play the expansion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the record, I started playing Loot 2.0 with a 60
Barbarian with no Paragon levels, leveled a Wizard from about 20 to 31, and
started a Witch Doctor up to about 10.</div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-weight: normal;">The Good</span></b></h4>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Loot</span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The biggest part of the patch/update/whatever was, by and
large, a success.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On non-60 characters,
the drops are wonderfully improved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Items get replaced left and right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Crafting yields lots of appropriate gear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I never had the moment of thinking “I really
need to check the Auction House”, which was a relief, considering that was half
of every play session last time around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>On my 60, drops were ok.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And by I
ok, I do mean a damn sight better than before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But good drops are harder to come by.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I think I replaced almost everything except my weapons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is probably some sort of RNG curve
going on here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I was also limited to
Hard mode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More on that in a bit.</div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Difficulty Levels</span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You can change the difficulty on the fly, instead of
starting a whole new campaign.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is
great, but there was one problem, which I will talk about later.</div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Pacing</span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The speed with which I am gaining levels and paragon levels
is, if anything, a little fast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I gained
some 16 paragon levels on my Barbarian, and that is primarily solo, burning
through hard mode from mid Act 1 to the beginning of Act III.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the other classes, I cannot really say
much, as the Barbarian is the only character above level 31 I have at this
point.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So far the new Paragon system seems interesting, although I
am not a huge fan of the gating of points.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You get a rotation of Core, Offense, Defense and Utility points, in that
order, as you gain levels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is
rather frustrating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would have rather
seen the ability to assign freely amongst all the areas, as it seems like this
just slows down tweaking to take advantage of certain builds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nonetheless, the new system provides a
welcome ability to customize the characters you build in some small way.</div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Bad</span></span></b></h4>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Difficulty</span></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I can select any difficulty level in game, as long as it is
easy, medium or hard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I cannot choose
the higher levels without backing out and restarting from the most recent
checkpoint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is annoying because
“Hard” mode isn’t hard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I actually tweaked my Whirlwind Barb into a
Seismic Slam build to slow down the fights and force myself to think about
positioning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On my Wizard, leveling is a
joke.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The real limiting factor is often
clumping enemies together become unleashing AOE, and then the time it takes to
get to the next pack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just fought
Belial on Hard with the 60 Barbarian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
never moved once, and I think my health meter blipped off full maybe
twice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I really hope the increased
difficulty levels change that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Also, aside from a semantic change in the naming of
difficulty levels, I am not sure I see what the big difference is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each character has to go through the game at
least once to unlock all the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Gems</span></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Gems are pretty boring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The stat boosts they give are very small unless they are percentage
based, which does not happen very often.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Any given class really only needs to use 3 of the 5 gem types: Diamonds
for resist-all, red for % life, and then whatever your stat is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope Reaper of Souls brings in some sort of
Rune system, or even the socketing system from WoW, where combinations give
additional bonuses or something to make it more interesting. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hell, steal the Torchlight gems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those were fun and had a lot of variety.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I also assume Reaper will add more tiers of gems, because
gems give 30-50 stat points while items generally drop, for me, with 200-300
stat points per property.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are
almost no situations where a stat is worth trading for a stat property.</div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">NPCs</span></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The game still has lots of moments where you have to stop,
wait for someone to say something, and then wait for an animation, and then
wait for something else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the time you
get through to the door or get to fight the boss, that nifty buff you got
melted away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While by no means crucial,
it would be nice to not constantly get buffs that get eaten by plot
points.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which brings up…</div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Plot</span></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Replaying a turbo-tour of Acts I-II has reminded me of how
silly and disjointed the plot in this game is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It really makes no sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reveal
of Tyreal and Belial both play very poorly after the first time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am looking forward to Act III, which is
such a strong set piece, but I think Act IV is going to be a drag.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once adventure mode is live I wonder if
anyone will be playing Act IV at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hopefully RoS divests the talky-talky and lets our blades, spells, and
jars of spiders do all the exposition.</div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Atmosphere</span></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Diablo took place in an ever descending cathedral of
madness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was dark, dank,
claustrophobic and oppressive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The light
radius mechanic had a huge impact on this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Diablo II was a bit more open, relying on the more massive nature
(literally or figuratively) of many foes to impart a sense of dread.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Diablo III feels rather barren.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The art is well done, but there is n o sense
of lurking doom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think a huge part of
this comes from the removal of the light radius mechanic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can always kind of see around the corner,
or to the edge of the screen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In future
iterations I would love to see the light radius come back, along with the oppressive
black pool surrounding the character.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Having to rely on the harsh lines of the minimap, or even better, your
memory, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>made the journey feel more
isolated and more likely to result in a horrible end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I recall moments of actual fear in
Diablo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would be nice to feel some of
that again.</div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Ugly</span></span></h4>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Skills</span></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Two big issues still bug me about D3:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The way skills are selected and the normal
and elective settings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To keep things
simple, I’ll refer you to <a href="http://warpto0.blogspot.com/2014/03/trees-vs-choices.html">this post</a> regarding the skills system overall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No need to rehash that topic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The second issue is in the very gamey way you
can choose active skills.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By default you
have six skill slots on the hotbar, and can only choose one skill from each of
six categories to fill those.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you dig
into the options menus you can enable “elective” mode, which lets you choose
any skill in any slot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The implication
seems to be that the proper way to play is with one skill from each of the six
categories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can go elsewhere and
find many of the most recommended builds ignore this completely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Diablo 3 was played with a gamepad, this system
might have made sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But Diablo 3 is not played with a gamepad, and many skills
require you to aim with your mouse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Leap, ranged spells, and things like that obviously were built for mouse
and keyboard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this context, the
limited skills seem like a cop-out to make balancing the game easier as opposed
to providing some deeper gameplay mechanic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The first two Diablo titles did not have this issue, nor does the
Torchlight series.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The grouping of the
skills doesn’t always seem to make much sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All in all it is an ugly implementation that I can’t say I like much.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The rune system is still present, although a tremendous
number of runes have been changed or reworked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>However, the pacing of when runes unlock leads to a lot of static
builds through leveling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the Wizard
in particular it seems like Ice is the only build you can really piece together
due to the massive number of skills, passive abilities and runes you unlock
that improve Ice compared to Fire or Arcane builds.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I mentioned this in my previous article, but the current
system implies that the systems in previous Diablo games were too
complicated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The changes to talents in
World of Warcraft seem to support this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If sales numbers can be used as proof people understanding the
skill/talent system, I don’t think anyone was having much of problem getting
the hang of either game series.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ghost Features</span></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know this is a pre-expansion release.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it really bugs me that many of the new
features are present but un-selectable in the menus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would have been nice to have the tooltip
at least recognize if you preordered the expansion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are also a fair number of Crusader
items dropping, which seems like somebody copied the wrong loot algorithm and
table to the server a few weeks early.</div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Pathing</span></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why do the merchant’s belongings’ boxes always mess up my
path in Acts I and III?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why do I always
get stuck on little parts of terrain?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Why can I lead to this platform, but not that one, or for that matter
execute a random half leap for no apparent reason?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>None of these are game breaking, but they are
annoying.</div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Final Verdict</span></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You may think from this article that I don’t like Diablo
III.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The answer is a bit
complicated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve been playing it a fair
amount.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think the game has nice art
direction, has the ability to create really fun moments once abilities start to
unlock, and allow for nifty combinations of attacks and managing enemies. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Loot 2.0 fixes some of the most egregious
faults in the game.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That point is
important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I stopped playing the first
time because the whole game had become a gold grind for the Auction House.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Removal of the Auction House, one of the most
touted features of the game, shows a huge change in direction for Blizzard, and
shows that they still have some ability to push back against the avarice of the
Koticks of the world, and their corporate structure.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However the core design choices with the skill and stats
system and the rather odd writing outside Act III really hold the game
back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This somehow becomes more apparent
with the Auction House removed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
skill system, while allowing for a lot of combinations (Elective mode likely
provides thousands or millions of permutations of skills, runes, and passives),
still feels very empty, at least compared to previous entries and competition
on the market.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The writing is less
memorable than anything else Blizzard has turned out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The atmosphere has none of the visceral
oppression and dread from previous games.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Diablo 3 is polished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The systems that are in place (as opposed to my ideal Diablo III) are
well implemented aside from the aforementioned Leaping issues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sound and music are well done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The graphics live up to Blizzard’s
fit-the-bell-curve approach to such things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If this offering was the first Diablo game, I think it would have set a
nice bar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as a sequel, I think too
much of the past was cast off in the name of marketing and the false idea that
the game needed to be more accessible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps unreasonable expectations prevent me from really letting the
Prime Evils sink their hooks again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Diablo III, especially with Loot 2.0, is good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I still think it could have been great.</div>
Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-48871059284614111592014-03-09T23:49:00.000-05:002014-03-09T23:49:03.285-05:00Trees vs ChoicesAfter spending some time with Diablo III, I was reminded of maybe the most fundamental change between D2 and D3, and in "old" Bizzard and "new" Blizzard. Most of you are probably aware of the skill trees in Diablo 2. Some of you may have played World of Warcraft. Both had skill trees that looked like a flow chart:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje6RVwqlAmabbfdr8eMA53G0RfoqCcv5LC-Obz19FhESoyNkCZHmslIbvhKo8dmlmE1zHCoO8WqWogTVl0n1J-nSc0Gj8hnMgejxVqn73Xy-X8BLeiXTUBhNm2xyvWLwPjqkGh1TnXIedJ/s1600/Sorceress_Skill_Trees_(Diablo_II).png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje6RVwqlAmabbfdr8eMA53G0RfoqCcv5LC-Obz19FhESoyNkCZHmslIbvhKo8dmlmE1zHCoO8WqWogTVl0n1J-nSc0Gj8hnMgejxVqn73Xy-X8BLeiXTUBhNm2xyvWLwPjqkGh1TnXIedJ/s1600/Sorceress_Skill_Trees_(Diablo_II).png" height="198" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Diablo II skill tree.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcWFk9K80szZK-o2C1XC6EeTwp4j4BTuf4ggWBOB1PquwY3b4U7vOeCQn6rv1SodjONE0KzCyye8C4xvwfrwKMCb4l4laHXK88J3Jy6IKFGZBlVWBEVXuRus_ufRmSWaG9Ti4-IXGUOe7Y/s1600/wow+skilltree.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcWFk9K80szZK-o2C1XC6EeTwp4j4BTuf4ggWBOB1PquwY3b4U7vOeCQn6rv1SodjONE0KzCyye8C4xvwfrwKMCb4l4laHXK88J3Jy6IKFGZBlVWBEVXuRus_ufRmSWaG9Ti4-IXGUOe7Y/s1600/wow+skilltree.jpeg" height="230" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An "old" WoW talent tree.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Both operated on the idea that at various experience levels you gained points to spend in the trees. These points either improved abilities or unlocked new ones. Diablo 3 and the new WoW talent trees both dumped that approach in favor of unlocking core abilities at certain levels, and then providing a small number of choices. In D3 this takes the form of glyphs that alter a given ability. In WoW, the system is a little more convoluted, but at each talent tree level you generally get to choose between three additional abilities or modifications.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDOk2xdsBugZolVQveistF4_pwZULklohlHjFzUi-IqyqnLdHf_JO2XylXqhDO-J7eabaDNAGVd6vYEHdxE4m21l_eHbO1NG2ffgX1nq_SntkNbaYTOetWBYw4MxfEy4bssxzbMuf2lr8Y/s1600/d3+glyph.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDOk2xdsBugZolVQveistF4_pwZULklohlHjFzUi-IqyqnLdHf_JO2XylXqhDO-J7eabaDNAGVd6vYEHdxE4m21l_eHbO1NG2ffgX1nq_SntkNbaYTOetWBYw4MxfEy4bssxzbMuf2lr8Y/s1600/d3+glyph.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Picking glyphs for a skill in Diablo 3.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga_IQMiJx6gpnYiESK8zskGjP5bg0GTlIeBR5p9bEi_vzyVqODl0_USzumnvp019VF6xlqmC91ds7EwGMdxj1WtQIW_8TU_6mfzlr9qOHA7xXX3Xf3nUL9JlW_uz4coSC3so5edE6AA60Q/s1600/World-of-Warcraft-New-Talent-Tree1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga_IQMiJx6gpnYiESK8zskGjP5bg0GTlIeBR5p9bEi_vzyVqODl0_USzumnvp019VF6xlqmC91ds7EwGMdxj1WtQIW_8TU_6mfzlr9qOHA7xXX3Xf3nUL9JlW_uz4coSC3so5edE6AA60Q/s1600/World-of-Warcraft-New-Talent-Tree1.jpg" height="198" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The "new" talent tree in WoW.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Another major change in the system was that in the old point-based system respeccing your skills was either impossible or incurred a fair amount of expense. D3 did away with this, allowing you to swap skills and glyphs any time you are not in combat. WoW has slowly made it easier and easier to change you spec, in both the old and new systems.<br />
<br />
I think this system works well in Diablo, but feels a bit hollow. This system was one of the key factors that led me to stop playing WoW altogether. The reason is that in both games, a lot of the urge to play is based on investment in your character. Most RPGs and MMOs work this way. Conversely, shooters have little need for this. In a game where you respawn frequently and death is a common feature, investment comes from how enjoyable the mechanics of the game are.<br />
<br />
This change in how players customize their characters leads to a hollow experience, at least for me. Instead of thinking and tweaking and theorycrafting my characters, I get a few choices which can be quickly swapped out until I find the most effective method for dealing the most damage. Instead of taking pride in being a Marksmanship or Beast Mastery Hunter, I was left with a few clicks to make and alter. My investment in balancing my skills and developing a strategies based around my strengths and weaknesses went away.<br />
<br />
An example of this change: In Burning Crusade era WoW, I gained a small amount of notoriety on my server as a hunter who could solo just about anything, an occasionally people would come watch me try out some new strategy to deal with boss level creatures outside Illidan's Temple or tag along to watch me take out Gruul by myself. It was fun, it fostered community, and it really gave me a reason to inhabit the shoes of Grimmash, Orc Hunter. You could even figure out a lot about a character based on the armor set they chose. Seeing a player wearing a particular set of armor told you a lot about how they fought, what talents they likely had, and maybe even about their personality, as certain play styles often drew particular types of people.<br />
<br />
Now, with such customization gone, I have lost most of the investment in Grimmash, Orc Hunter. All that maters is speccing the right way for the fight at hand, and hot-swapping out skills based on the dungeon. This is even more pronounced in Diablo 3, where I have never even considered what the personality of Kul Turas the barbarian. In Diablo 2, you had no choice to change skills once assigned, so your build was often very idiosyncratic and personal. Each character was a significant investment.<br />
<br />
From a gaming philosophy standpoint, this poses a question. To set that question up, it is often assumed that developers must make a choice between complex skill systems that satisfy hardcore players, or simple skill systems that foster a broader casual appeal. The question becomes: Is this supposed balance real, or a figment of developers' imagination? Is the sales and marketing department forcing a false dichotomy on developers?<br />
<br />
I hope the answer is that this is a false dichotomy, but as many marquee games seem to only be willing to try the simple approach, we may be passing into an era of gaming where it will be harder to find rewarding skill systems in the name of casual sales. <br />
<br />Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-53552155545074696722014-03-08T23:28:00.001-06:002014-03-08T23:28:59.178-06:00Diablo III Loot 2.0 ImpressionsBlizzard completely revamped Diablo III a week or so ago, and I decided to take a look. They made a lot of changes to the game, and most of them would have been amazing... at launch. That is a very negative statement, and I think the changes are all very nice. It is just sad to see it happen this way. I'll explain the changes briefly, what I think of them, and then why I'm being such a jerk about it.<br />
<br />
<b>The Past</b><br />
<br />
I bought and played D3 shortly after it came out. Long enough afterwards to not have to deal with the crazy login issues, but I did learn real quick about the joys of the D3 auction house. The AH, which will soon be gone as we know it, was where everyone went to dump all the useful items they found that they had no use for. It was full of stuff, and because there are not too many gold sinks in the game, inflation was nasty. On the face of things, this might not have been so bad. If there is no other real use for large sums of the gold you get, why not spend it on items other players found?<br />
<br />
The problem was that the RNG loot tables were set in such a way that a player was very unlikely to get anything useful. The only real way to advance, even while leveling, was to go look for items that matched your class and build on the AH an buy it. Almost everything you found had to evaluated in very annoying way:<br />
<ol>
<li>Is this a good item?</li>
<li>Can I use it? (Probably not).</li>
<li>Can someone else use it? (Maybe)</li>
<li>What is the market price for this sort of item?</li>
</ol>
Steps 1-3 were rather tedious and unrewarding, as you rarely answered "yes" until step three. Then step four took quite a while because you had to go practice your filter-fu to find similar items, post them, and then hope you were not beaten out. Kind of like the 0.01 iskers in Eve, selling was rather tedious. Compounding this was the fact that the item you wanted to buy of the AH was inevitably very expensive, especially once you got to level cap, and even more so for legendaries or nice set pieces.<br />
<br />
I haven't even touched on the real-money AH, and I'm not going to. Let's just file it away under the "Kotick's Follies" heading and ignore it.<br />
<br />
This all ended up making the game a skinner-box without the reward feedback. I stopped playing after getting a barbarian to 60, because it wasn't much fun to play for 30 minutes, then spend another 30 minutes dealing with the AH. Hack-n-slash games generally do not follow the Eve model for good reason.<br />
<br />
<b>The Present</b><br />
<br />
Loot 2.0 killed a lot of this tedium. Very briefly, the new system adjusted the loot tables to roll preferentially based on the class you are playing with, and tweaked all the stats and drops to give items that are quite often useful for you in the moment. The joy of looting is back. There skinner box is functioning again. Since playing yesterday, I can say I have replaced almost all of my gear on a 60 barbarian and a wizard I am leveling completely through in game drops, and the game feels good again. Legendary items are now pretty much bind on account, which removes them from the AH and creates incentive to go grind. All is good!<br />
<br />
<b>The Problem</b><br />
<br />
Simply put, this is a bit late. I have no hard numbers, but I do not think many people are playing right now, at least not compared to last summer. Anecdotal evidence: Last summer, opening a game up to public multiplayer usually got a few people into the game, increased the number of monsters, and made it a bit more interesting. Since yesterday, on a Friday and Saturday night, none of my public games had anyone join. The train left the station, and it may never come back.<br />
<br />
I really hope that the new expansion, Reaper of Souls, helps fix this. It might. But then again, how many people are going to plop down another $40 for a game that burned a heck of a lot of people the first time?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-4147454151694866752014-03-07T23:56:00.003-06:002014-03-07T23:56:37.609-06:00Where did I leave my keys...Well. I re-subscribed to Eve, on two accounts! Being out of the loop for two expansions really does leave me with a lot to learn. But life is better, if fundamentally different from nine months ago when I started winding down my time in Eve. Luckily I have landed back pretty much where I was. Both my old corps still have me on the roster, so I can take some time to figure out next steps. <br />
<br />
This will be a slow process for a variety of reasons. <br />
<br />
First is life. If you look back a few posts, you'll see that last summer and fall were pretty rough due to a death in the family and the end of the carefree life of being a student. I am fully employed, no longer a student. The family is recovering as best families can. I am now an expecting father, as exciting as that is! So much to do to prepare for the Grimmlet. I am branching back out into tactile hobbies since I have space and money. <br />
<br />
Second is Eve. A lot has changed. Not in big ways, but in so many little ways that it is taking time to both get my affairs back in order and piece together what I want to next. My industrial character in fairly secure. My combat pilot is still in FW land. That is a trickier needle to thread. I don't have the time I used to for roams and the peekaboo nature of fleets, so I need to think about both what to do with the character, and what to do with all the stuff I have all over Black Rise.<br />
<br />
Third is other games. While I stepped away from Eve, I picked up a variety of other games. Modded Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress, World of Tanks, Shadowrun Returns, XCOM, and a host of others. I think there may be a series of posts coming from that time spent with other pixels. Sorry, Eve, it's not you, it's me.<br />
<br />
Fourth is income streams! I was learning a lot right before I left, and I need to pick up those pieces. It is looking to be an interesting summer, and I hope to share it with you all again!<br />
<br />
Fly safe, or at least fly fun!Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-89788797943904253682013-10-07T18:44:00.001-05:002013-10-07T18:44:55.651-05:00Necessary ForceOnly three things in Eve are certain. Death, taxes, and rage. <br />
<br />
Ok, death and taxes may not actually be certain, I'm not really sure. But one thing that can always be counted on is player rage. This week's ragefest has been a nicely simmering stew of CCP missteps, player reaction, and CSM posting. If you guessed that I am referring to the Ishukone Scorpions, you win a tritanium!<br />
<br />
Up front, I don't give an Ibis about what CCP did, if it is favoritism, or any of that. But the facts of the story and the apoplectic response to it are fascinating. Here is my best understanding of what happened:<br />
<br />
CCP decided to give some ships to SOMER Blink's staff and some tournament organizers as a way of saying thank you for their efforts in creating content in New Eden. CCP did this secretly and SOMER advised their staff to keep things on the down low to not draw undue attention to the gifts, as they presciently assumed it would rub some players the wrong way. CCP has also given comparable gifts to other various players and organizations. Some CSM members, due to affiliations and relationships in game, knew about this either during or after the fact. The CSM was not, to take their word for it, made aware of the gifts before the fact. Some CSMs were not particularly eager to talk about it, for a wide variety of reasons. It is worth noting that while the ships given are not particularly useful in-game, they are rare and therefore are worth a lot of isk on the Eve market.<br />
<br />
The player response to this has been rather wide ranging, hitting on all the usual levels of response. I just don't understand it. For a few reasons, in no particular order:<br />
<br />
Everyone who received a ship has done something to drive player created content in New Eden. Some did it for profit, some did it for fun, and I imagine many did it for both.<br />
<br />
The entities involved in receiving the ships were mostly capable of affording whatever they wanted to buy before the ships were given. The ships given are also so valuable that anyone who wants to buy one and has the means to probably couldn't care less about the sums involved. No rank and file player is really affected by the sale of these ships.<br />
<br />
It is true that some people were given gifts and some were not. The rest of this paragraph is hypothetical, I'm not saying that I am in any way a large figure in Eve. I'm just thinking out loud. For example, I have written an Eve-focused blog off and on for the last few years. When active, I have tried to support in-game content to varying degrees of effort and success. CCP has never offered me anything, and I could care less. I would wager that CCP has never offered most community members<br />
anything. There are hundreds (thousands?) of people actively contributing in some way to driving the Eve community, either by writing, by organizing in-game, or by just playing. Honestly, if CCP starts rewarding players for driving content any number of Nullsec entities should be at the top of the list to receive goodies.<br />
<br />
What just happened is nothing like the T20 debacle of the past. The order of magnitude of difference between giving out gifts and actively altering the course of the game is not comparable. If you cannot see the difference between the events, I'm not sure anyone will be able to explain it.<br />
<br />
The point is that gifts are gifts. Anyone who has been in an environment where gifts are given should be well aware that the way the giver sees the gift and the way recipients and non-recipients see the gift can vary widely. If you have a job, you have probably seen your boss give somebody something, and been completely floored at who got what, or why, or you have wondered why one person got something instead of you or someone else. But your boss or the corporate heads probably just thought they were being nice and showing the rest of the company that the leadership does in fact value hard work or some sort of positive contribution. I'm fairly certain that CCP was thinking along the same lines.<br />
<br />
It doesn't help that the Eve player base swings between manic support and rabid rage at the tip of a hat. So it is even understandable that CCP would not go out of their way to publicize what was essentially a "Nice job guys, we appreciate what you are doing" moment. there may have been better gifts to choose (cheaper ships) and there may have been better ways to go about giving those gifts (announcing it). But looking at intent can give a healthy dose of perspective.<br />
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CCP quietly gave some people a nice present for helping build something they care about, and a large mob heard about it, smashed down the doors and started tossing the joint. What a great way recognize a group of developers trying to reward players actively contributing to the game. I encourage you to stop, consider the scope of what happened and the perspectives of those involved. Take a few minutes to think about how this affects your individual gameplay. Then go about whatever it was you were doing before this. If you are still angry, or feel that you are owed something, I suggest creating your own in game events or organizations on par with those who received the gifts. Unfortunately, there may not be any more gifts after this latest festival of rage.Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-74052464852058483532013-09-12T10:22:00.000-05:002013-09-12T10:22:06.046-05:00Changes...It's been a few months. Due to family illness and unemployment after graduating from my latest round of education I completely left Eve as both an expense I could not justify and a time sink I could not engage in given my play style. The illness continues, but the unemployment looks to be coming to an end. I hope to resubscribe soon, but I'm not sure how much time I will have to play.<br />
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On the blog front, I want to expand what I write about here. I want to write about more than Eve, as I have had a chance to play more casual games that one can simply walk away from when needed at a moments notice. I'm not sure if that means I will renamed or redesign the blog, but I do know it means this will no longer be just an Eve blog.<br />
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My biggest regret is that without realizing it, I let most of my contacts and relationships in Eve just wither away for the last few months, so to all those who had been conversing with me and sharing their time and knowledge, sorry for that. Life outside internet spaceships came first, and will continue to do so.<br />
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I hope to back in game in a month or so, and I hope to see some familiar faces soon!Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-87386120625226304872013-05-23T18:00:00.000-05:002013-05-23T18:00:02.558-05:00Empty SpaceWell, it's summer again. Living in the upper Midwest means swings of 38 F to 95 F within a day or two, leading to the lovely situation where my car is full of winter coats and beach towels. Well, maybe that was a week or two ago. But reveling in the psychotic nature of the season has left me almost no time to play Eve recently, along with my final finals, and an impending three-week trip. I'll be gone until mid June, so I hope everyone has a fun Odyssey launch, and try not to completely wreck the place while I'm gone!<br />
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Maybe the launcher will work by the time I return?<br />
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<br />Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-58011035464388153612013-05-17T23:00:00.001-05:002013-05-18T12:40:26.960-05:00Odyssey Skill ReminderJust a quick reminder, although it might me a bit late or irrelevant to you. Skills for flying a lot of ships are changing come June 4, and you should be ready by doing a few things:<br />
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<ul>
<li>If you have Destroyers V and Battlecruisers V update your clone to hold about 6-7 million more skill points.</li>
<li>If you don't have those skill trained, that sucks, but train them as far as you can.</li>
<li>If you have BC V, train all the racial cruisers to at least III, and inject Command Ships so as to get the <strike>racial Command Ship skills</strike> receive ranks in the skill (<strong>Edited based on comment 5/18/13)</strong>.</li>
<li>Look at the links posted further down in this post to see if there are other ships that you can essentially skill into come patch day.</li>
</ul>
Here is a nice picture that illustrates some of the changes, stolen from a very useful Eve University <a href="http://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=65344&sid=a21276bb3c28d012c7a8ce28c4acd4be">forum post</a>:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht7Cf-3dROGGcCTu35TOL1fPDyfKAwH0KpUKv9GhIOiuEzisQHRh3eU4O5fB0tywT42zhR_bPrXU98ckEzMr1im6P6CQeUl-s58WNTCKXd6LSZr3PAKYYeO66w3E_YH34YUIGUPmY2ZQ7U/s1600/Odysey+Skills.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht7Cf-3dROGGcCTu35TOL1fPDyfKAwH0KpUKv9GhIOiuEzisQHRh3eU4O5fB0tywT42zhR_bPrXU98ckEzMr1im6P6CQeUl-s58WNTCKXd6LSZr3PAKYYeO66w3E_YH34YUIGUPmY2ZQ7U/s320/Odysey+Skills.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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This <a href="http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/74234">dev blog</a> has more details.<br />
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If you are a player who is fairly well along the way to a lot of T2 ships, command ships, or who remembered to train Destroyers and Battlecruisers to V, but forgot about the other requirements, you should troll through both the posts I linked to make sure you get the most out of the skill changes. I just double checked everything, and I'm glad I did. My industry character had a few skills I needed to put in my queue so as to benefit from all the changes. He will retain the ability to fly an awful lot of ships come Odyssey. Even if he can't fit any of the weapons that would make them useful...<br />
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The most important thing is to get all your racial frigate skills to IV, racial cruisers to III, and Destroyers and Battlecruisers to V. </div>
Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-3275531959880376612013-05-17T00:23:00.000-05:002013-05-17T00:23:04.493-05:00The Value of (In)securityI got to reading a bit of the forum thread for the SVT ballot dev blog. There are some wonderful quotes such as "TEST vote, please ignore." (I love that. Sorry TEST. It's just funny, in a dark sort of way.) There is the usual tinfoil hat-ery going on, even though null blocs didn't sweep the elections. There is the important idea that no voting system can represent people who cannot vote. Most interesting to me is the sentiment that null bloc candidates are bad. I'm not a null bloc guy, and don't currently want to be one. But I don't understand the sentiment.<br />
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Sharing time: I've had the fun experience of talking with a wide range of Eve players, with some serious conversations with people from all areas of the game aside from WH space. But I've dipped into that area enough to know a thing or two about it. There seem to be a few major types of players. High sec carebears, in the bad way. High sec carebears in the "I can't be bothered with that paranoia" camp. Low sec FW. Low sec Pirates. Null players. Give-no-shits pvpers.<br />
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Out of all of these groups, one particular mindset intrigues me. A particular quote comes to mind. The context first: On my industrial character I was explaining offhandedly that I was going to have a chat with a Goonswarm player, and I was rather excited to see what was going to happen. I knew very little about the upcoming conversation aside from broad strokes, and was just interested to hear a new perspective. The pilot I mentioned this to said "You shouldn't talk to goons."<br />
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The player who said this is not a bad player. In fact he is a great asset, and knows a lot about the game. But (and I am assuming this) he has bough into the "Null/Goons are Bad" mentality that probably most of the non-goon players have. Being in a new corp on my industrial character, I have been reintroduced to the high sec mindset that low sec and null are dangerous, and people who live there are bad. These assumptions blanket a large number of players. Some rightfully so, some for no good reason I can fathom. Yes, low sec is more dangerous to a usual resident of high sec than just ignoring the orange and red systems. But it's not instant death, and low sec can be a shockingly fun place to fly around in, chat in, and generally mess around with.<br />
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So where is this going? In the forum posts on the SVT ballots there was a lot of talk and inference that null bloc candidates would ruin the game for high sec players. While I think this is categorically false, I think it also shows an interesting lack of perspective. There is, simply put, a lot of game mechanics that do not work or exist in high sec, or only work in neutered ways. Without the perspective of low and null sec players, the CSM would be worse!<br />
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Here a few things most HS-only players will never or very rarely encounter: Cynos, Capitals, many POS functions, player-driven industry infrastructure, non-targeted warp disruption, smart bombs, most black ops functionality, the finer points of aggression and crime watch, anything related to sovereignty, bridging, most forms of pvp aside from ganking, POCOs, and many other topics I am forgetting.<br />
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Those are huge chunks of the game. Some of them have real impacts on players who only live in HS, even if they do not realize it. At this risk of sounding like an elitist or apologist, many of the mechanics I mentioned above also require more planning, investigation, and critically thinking through the mechanics before actually engaging in something, compared to running missions or mining in high sec. One cannot simply cyno anywhere and hope to survive. Managing crimewatch is easier than it was, but still requires a certain understanding beyond "Wait for the other guy to shoot first".<br />
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I am also confused as to what the alternative would be to a CSM with a healthy dose of null representatives. All High sec players? No offense to my empire allies, but that sounds like a bad recipe. If Eve is to have the conflict and tension that it needs to survive, we need people on the CSM who understand the finer points of what is used to create player conflict, and the mechanics by which that conflict is negotiated. If no one blew up ships, Eve would become a very lonely,dull, and economically sterile place. After all, asteroid minerals, salvage, and meta modules gathered in high sec have to be used for something, or those items will lose any real value. I doubt those NPCs are really helping ship turnover rates in New Eden all that much.<br />
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And hey, if all the null sec players bitch and moan about some idea while everyone else is silent tune your ear to understand why the moaning is happening. CSM 7 had, at my count, at least 50% null candidates. Not a peep was heard from them against the moon redistribution. That alone may cause more "strife" for null sec than anything since player sov space was created. You might even think they supported it... So for any carebears in high sec who think null candidates are killing the game, null sec CSMs may just have fought for a huge change that will help keep your goods in demand come this June.Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375692249742205154.post-68639662095981037102013-05-08T22:31:00.003-05:002013-05-08T22:31:24.229-05:00PI: The Second MonthIn my earlier wrap up of my PI challenge, I noted that I was considering running PI on all three characters on one account. I did this. Mainly because I though <a href="http://mabricksmumblings.blogspot.com/">Mabrick's </a><a href="http://mabricksmumblings.blogspot.com/2013/04/you-will-sometimes-pay-price-for-their.html">claims</a> might have a silver lining if I ran it that way. There's more posts over there, you should read them. He has some interesting views on Eve.<br />
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Back to the follow up. As a reminder, here were the results from the first month. The key point is that I netted about 134m in profits.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfgJnT3zyPT2PsoExndG3NJ_vamko6hAe82DFEpS5XnREoJTnGwrQPxPnIXjmb0a9ulVmooSGt3X5wjVCVXwZw5OVRX7DOrexFcN4Wrr9BXygYX9YtNpl9GfHD4eEsKzqs0BbHSWVzoQ0-/s1600/PI+Final.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfgJnT3zyPT2PsoExndG3NJ_vamko6hAe82DFEpS5XnREoJTnGwrQPxPnIXjmb0a9ulVmooSGt3X5wjVCVXwZw5OVRX7DOrexFcN4Wrr9BXygYX9YtNpl9GfHD4eEsKzqs0BbHSWVzoQ0-/s320/PI+Final.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Across three characters on the same account, with 4s in Command Center Upgrades and Planetary Consolidation, I ended up netting this:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpr6RoZCDbMrpa3fwizIND35ANP3_ynd3U56Q0HiUTYFyIj0zBI-ywo9dXrUUWx9dUglEOiPIbt9oJTaW5AUdNYlNFLFhGko03dLIj6GpwiA3gMCKBgZvc5SqBhbsU8GESOqoy0dJAaB_v/s1600/April+Final.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpr6RoZCDbMrpa3fwizIND35ANP3_ynd3U56Q0HiUTYFyIj0zBI-ywo9dXrUUWx9dUglEOiPIbt9oJTaW5AUdNYlNFLFhGko03dLIj6GpwiA3gMCKBgZvc5SqBhbsU8GESOqoy0dJAaB_v/s320/April+Final.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Not quite triple the total, but I had to run 2 factory planets. And 334m isk ain't bad. A few thoughts on this.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>I didn't even have CCU 4 and IC 4 trained at the outset. That took about two weeks or so. So that's lost income. </li>
<li>I was also much less serious this time around, and missed more than a few updates by margins of hours or days. Also failed to move some ECUs when I knew I should have. That's also money lost. </li>
<li>Due to resource imbalances, sometimes I stockpiled, and sometimes I just hauled and sold. Not sure how that impacted things.</li>
</ul>
In regards to Mabrick's original and revised estimates of 500m or 300m/month respectively, I think both are possible if you are willing to run all the characters on an account. With level 4 skills, 300m is more than doable, as evidenced. 500m might be, if you train 5s, pick planets with a bit of luck and wisdom, and pick the right things to produce.<br />
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So here it is, with the caveat that you need to use all 3 characters, in no uncertain terms:<br />
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Mabrick was right.</div>
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There, the crow has been eaten. Tasted kind of like chicken. I'm happy to be wrong, in this case.</div>
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I'll keep this project running. I am moving my operations, as I just started up with a new Corp on my industrialist toon, and humping 22 jumps every two days is not fun. We'll see how the new set of systems I scouted work out. It was much simpler this time, partly from experience and partly from luck.</div>
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*****</div>
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In completely unrelated to game news, I just finished my last final in my last class in my masters program. Just have my defense to schedule and complete, and I will be officially done with higher education! The only way I'll pile it higher and deeper is if someone offers to pay for it next time :). But it's a crazy moment, I'm too tired to go out and drink, so here's to conclusions and momentous events!</div>
Grimmashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07783766179643039253noreply@blogger.com3