Posts Tagged ‘ eve ’

Farewell

I’m quitting Eve. I suppose I should have done this a long time ago when I first realized that my Eve burnout was not going to end anytime soon. One of the biggest reasons I still remained subbed was because I was afraid that if I came back, everyone would have far more SP than me and I would be “behind the curve” in PvP. But now I realize how silly that is, because I doubt I will return unless CCP somehow manages to drastically increase its player count by attracting new players. And nearly 50 million SP is still quite a lot.

What will I do now that I’ve quit? Well, I have just started college, so I do not have very much time for gaming. But when I do, I mainly play League of Legends. It has the advantage of being far briefer than Eve (60-minute max for a game vs. 3 hours roaming). Plus a lot of my college friends play it (while almost no one has heard of Eve Online). Also, when Star Wars: The Old Republic goes live, I will give that a try with other ex-Pythons.

This blog will go inactive; I do want to blog about other games but do not want to mix content on this blog. I will also stop maintaining the #tweetfleet list. Due to Twitter’s 500-person size restriction on Twitter lists and a lack of any good list management tools, pruning inactive accounts from the #tweetfleet is a fairly time-consuming task. And I feel that my work on the #tweetfleet is done. Just like CrazyKinux’s Blog Pack and blog lists helped promote Eve blogging, the #tweetfleet list helped organize and unify the Eve twitter community (from 15 Twitter accounts in 2009 to over 500 in 2011!). But now that the #tweetfleet has grown, the list has become less practical and less necessary. If someone else wishes to maintain a list, feel free to do so.

It’s been a great two and a half years in Eve. So long, and thanks for all the fish. o/

2011
09/01
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Uncategorizable Fun
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11 comments

CCP is Killing Eve

It is easy to write off the dissatisfied players and bittervets as anomalies. But are they really only anomalies? Why has nearly every recent devblog produced a threadnaught? Why is subscription plateauing? Is it because the players are becoming less thankful toward CCP?

No.

It is not the players who are at fault. It is CCP, for CCP has forgotten what Eve is.

Eve is not remarkable because of its spaceships. It is remarkable because of its players. The players who run the market, engage in huge fleet fights, and create resources in and out of game are unlike those in any other game. The players are not numerous – only a hundred thousand or so – but they are active and passionate.

CCP, like other MMO creators, wants to expand. But that desire has consumed CCP and blinded it to the players’ wishes. CCP no longer cares about the players. It only cares about the revenue.

CCP’s latest actions have been complete fiascos because of their changed mindset and priorities.

Why does CCP want to implement microtransactions and Aurum? Microtransactions in a free-to-play model are understandable. But Eve is a pay-to-play game.

Why licensing fees for anything and everything related to Eve? CCP is trying to stick their hands into the pockets of players who create killboards, apps, and resources for free. Those players create things and share it because of their love for the community, not because they want to make money off of Eve.

Why only new content? CCP releases new features late and broken, promises updates in the future, and never touches them again. Large chunks of Eve are nearly a decade old and feel like abandonware.

This complete disregard for those who made Eve what it is is incredibly saddening, and I cannot help but wonder what Eve will be in a few years if that continues.

2011
06/16
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Uncategorizable Fun
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9 comments

Blog Banter 21: No Man’s Land

Welcome to the twenty-first installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s topic comes to us from @ZoneGhost. He asks, “Is lowsec the forgotten part of Eve Online?” Is it? Is lowsec being treated differently by CCP Games than nullsec or empire space? Can one successfully make a living in these unsecured systems where neither alliances nor Concord roam to enforce their laws? What is needed? Or is everything fine as it is?

It is unquestionable that CCP has neglected lowsec recently. I do not want to rehash this again, as most Eve players and bloggers strongly agree with that statement. I believe that CCP is not intentionally mistreating lowsec – it is simply that their current strategy for adding content to Eve is failing miserably.

Take Planetary Interaction for an example. Theoretically, increasing the amount of resources as system security decreases would make lowsec more desirable than highsec and nullsec more desirable than lowsec. Except that whoever designed such a system never properly took into account risk vs rewards. Maintaining colonies in a 0.5 is infinitely less risky than doing the same in a 0.4. And ironically, friendly nullsec and wormhole space have both greater rewards and lesser risks than lowsec.

Planetary Interaction is just one example. CCP has applied the same broken thinking to nearly everything else – minerals, NPCs, missions, etc. With lowsec at such a disadvantage compared to other areas of space, it is quite obvious why only 8% of all Eve players reside in lowsec.

Earlier, I mentioned briefly that the risk in lowsec is significantly higher than in any other area of space. Highsec has Concord protection, discouraging most PvP of any kind. Nullsec has powerful alliances, which maintain intelligence channels, jump bridges, and constant gatecamps at key entry points. Wormhole space has collapsing entrances, which gives the defenders a significant advantage and deters all but the most dedicated hostiles. But what about lowsec? All it has are sentry guns, which only deters small ships from attacking (unless you are an outlaw).

With such high risks, making a living in lowsec is extremely difficult. And for the select few who do manage to make a living, the stress saps most of the fun from playing Eve. You cannot run missions or complexes without checking the scanner every few seconds for probes. You cannot mine without worrying about getting caught. You cannot manufacture without having to worry if there is a stationcamp outside waiting to pop your industrial. You cannot even PvP without the fear that losing the ship you’re in will consume a month or more’s worth of hard earned income.

Only a few pilots – mainly those who hunt missioners with cloakies and a gank squad – can hope to break even through lowsec alone. Everyone else must make their living from other areas of space. For example, despite having a 97.38% PvP efficiency and stingily T1 fitting my ships, I still cannot live solely off of loot and ransoms and have to mission and trade in highsec for ISK. And the pressure to survive is brutal: every time I warp into a fight, I find myself worrying involuntarily about the cost of replacing my ship instead of how fun the PvP should be. Clearly everything is not fine as it is, unless CCP intended for lowsec to become a hellish no-man’s-land.

What can be done? Lowsec needs its own unique perks. It should not simply be the “area between highsec and nullsec.” This could take the form of unique lowsec-only minerals or modules or implants or ships. Or it could have higher quality agents than in highsec. Or some sort of bounty hunting system. Or a less punitive GCC and reworked sentry guns. Or outlaw-only items. There are literally hundreds of ways that CCP could make lowsec more enjoyable. I just hope that CCP changes their broken content addition strategy and actually gets around to revamping lowsec.

—

Other Blog Banter articles:

  1. CrazyKinux’s Musing: The Lure of the Wild
  2. Banter 15: Arr, Yer be talkin’ bout me lowsec | TheElitist
  3. Banter 21: Low-sec- Chocolate Heaven
  4. Subs’ suds: Forever a noob in Eve: Low-Sec – the forgotten part of EVE Online
  5. Blog Banter XXI – Lo-sec = Low Priority? | I am Keith Neilson
  6. In the Ghetto | A Mule in EvE
  7. where the frack is my ship?: Blog Banter 21: What’s good for the goose…
  8. Blog Banter #21: Change? | Sarnel Binora’s Blog
2010
09/30
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Blog Banter
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9 comments

Kings of Amamake

July 2nd. While killing a Hurricane in a 6-man frigate gang, we got blobbed by an 8-man AoS (Advocates of Sin) HAC + logistics gang. We lost one frigate while finishing off the Hurricane, and AoS began to smack, saying we were fail PvPers. “Orly?” we thought. “How about we fight with equal numbers?”

So at exactly 00:00 Eve time on July 4th, we undocked a battleship gang with logistics support and began burning towards Amamake. Because our sole goal was to have a fight with the Amamake locals, we did not stop to kill anything along the way. Upon reaching Amamake, we sat in the top belt, told everyone to come fight us, and waited. And waited. And waited. Despite there being 50 in local, nothing appeared on scan. So we began smacking. Apparently our smack was of such exceedingly high quality that the locals petitioned us and a GM gagged several of our members for “inappropriate ASCII art” (Python is the only corp I know of who gets gagged for smacktalking).

After thirty minutes of waiting, we were itching for a fight, so we left Amamake and toured the nearby systems. Everywhere we went, there were consistently 40-50 in local, but no one was willing to fight us. Disappointed, we decided to go to Egghelende to smacktalk Ken Plante. On the way, a BANE alliance scout told us that they were willing to fight us in Amamake (apparently AoS was too scared to fight us but Bane had risen to the challenge). The fact that the hostile fleet couldn’t even move one jump to fight us made us suspicious that they would drop capitals on us, but we were confident that we could hold our own.

We had 11 remote rep battleships, 2 battlecruisers, and 3 Guardians. Knowing our exact fleet composition, Bane brought what they thought would be the ideal counter: a triage Nidhogger, 7 battleships, 1 battlecruiser, 2 HACs, and a Falcon. Two of their battleships were fit solely with neuts just to cap out our remote rep chain, and their Falcon had only anti-Amarr jammers just to break our Guardians.

As Bane had planned, their neuts and jammers wrecked havoc on our Guardians. Despite energy transfers, I was so capped out that I could not even activate my damage control. And the Falcon had our ECCM-fitted Guardians permajammed. Whenever we could, we tried to rep the primaries, but several of our battleships still started dipping into hull. We managed to get a Bane Megathron into hull, but then the Bane carrier entered triage and the Megathron’s shields and armor popped back to 100% nearly instantly.

But the tide started turning. One of our sniper fit battleships alphaed the Falcon, freeing the Guardians. Our FC, knowing that the carrier would have cap issues due to how fiercely it was repping the Megathron, had us focus some DPS on the carrier. As the carrier’s cap dwindled, we were able to kill several more Bane battleships, including an Armageddon flown by Ken Plante. Realizing that they were losing, the rest of the Bane fleet quickly bailed, leaving the carrier behind to die.

As the last Bane pilot exploded and we floated alone amongst the wrecks in the belt, our lemming brains slowly began to realize that we had won – 7 kills for 0 losses. Ecstatic, we began circle jerking in Vent and in local, declaring ourselves kings of Amamake.

2010
07/04
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Yarrbearing
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8 comments

What's In Your Hangar?

Joining yet another Eve blogger meme, Eveoganda‘s “What’s in your hangar?”.

Note: I no longer use most of these ships due to their lack of speed. In Old Man Star and its surroundings, everything flies faster than 2km/s. Anything slower than that either dies horribly or has a cyno.

Rifter – Hunter-Killer. I have not flown a Rifter in a while (although I intend to).
Punisher – Just A Flesh Wound, Legion, Avenged Sevenfold. Being a devout Punisher advocate, I have three of these. The “Just A Flesh Wound” is particularly notable for having seen service against Spectre.
Rupture – Devil’s Advocate. I originally intended for this to be a more nimble replacement for the Maller, but it is still too slow to be useful.
Myrmidon – Fury. I no longer fly this.
Purifier – Hunting Wabbits, Hunting Wabbits #2, Surprise Buttsecks. I fly stealth bombers a lot. The Purifier is great because the majority of targets in lowsec are shield tanked.
Hound – Revelation. Worse than the Purifier, but the explosive bonus may someday be useful.
Wolf – Sharkbait. Like the Rupture, this is too slow. Even with nanos and overdrives, I cannot overtake (or escape from) faction frigates and cruisers. And with nanos I can pretty much get alphaed by a drone.
Hurricane – Carebear Cloud Nine. “Hooray, finally a fast nano pwnmobile,” you say. Nope. It is actually my salvaging ship. It sits unused because I no longer mission.
Drake – A Leaf on the Wind. Once upon a time I stationcamped. Then someone lit a cyno and everyone lived unhappily ever after.
Curse – Black Mesa. I fly this occasionally.
Tempest – Carpe Diem. EFT says it can volley a frigate from 150km. Eve says it can’t. So I don’t undock it any more.
Armageddon – Riot. Speed doesn’t matter when you have 20 battleships on a gate.
Thrasher – Mandated Chaos, Super Duper. Theoretically, this is great for killing those pesky nano frigates. In actuality, you get jumped by a Stabber or Rapier.
Coercer – 00sage00’s Coercer. Makes short work of any overconfident solo frigate pilots.
Malediction – Fail DPS. I caught a salvaging Cormorant once but had to run away when support arrived. Then I caught a ratting Punisher and spent the next 10 minutes trying to break its tank. I don’t ever plan on flying a Malediction again.

2010
04/11
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Uncategorizable Fun
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10 comments