tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76018121399693449352015-09-17T00:09:26.293-06:00Inanity and DoomMy exploits in New Eden.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.comBlogger104125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-76311379724605710902013-09-09T14:11:00.001-06:002013-09-09T14:11:06.896-06:00No Fun Allowed?CCP has updated the Terms of Service agreement for EVE Online. The full article is located <a href="http://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/eve-online-terms-of-service-update-1/" target="_blank">here</a>, but the meat of the post is that this sentence was added in:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>You may not impersonate or falsely present yourself to be a representative of another player, group of players, character or NPC entity.</i></blockquote>Needless to say, there are some out there who are going to be pretty upset by this. Recruitment scamming is a popular way to separate hapless newbies from their hard-earned ISK, and while I personally think scamming is a pretty reprehensible thing to do (with the possible exception of against declared war targets - economical warfare and PSYOPs, anyone?), I do fully recognize that it was allowed under EVE's ToS. And, technically speaking, scamming is still allowed; you just can't claim to be an out-of-corp Goon recruiting officer, for example, unless you actually are one.<br /><br />As I said, I am not a huge fan of bilking the newbies, so I'm not too concerned about this sort of thing one way or the other. In fact, I think that setting some lines down on player behavior is long overdue - I am literally the only one of my friends who plays EVE, and that's mostly because the game has the not entirely undeserved reputations of "spreadsheets in space" and "home of psychopathic asshats." While there are arguments in favor of both points of view, honestly, it's the second one that, as a community, I think we need to start trying to shed as much as possible. I'm not asking us to turn nullsec into a big blue donut (despite what happens over on Serenity) and I'm not saying that we need to completely stop all scams and ganks in hisec and make non-consensual PVP impossible there. But things like EVE University should be much more commonly known than they are, IMHO. Folks that help newbies figure out how the game works beyond the very basics of flying in space should be lauded, not mocked.<br /><br />In any case, I can't say that I'm particularly bothered by this change. My particular brand of fun - watching spaceships (more often than not my own, to be honest) explode in nullsec - remains untouched.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-76923836842651340992013-08-31T00:50:00.001-06:002013-08-31T00:50:39.876-06:00Well, I finally did it...I am now a member of Dreddit and TEST. (In related news, ohai there spais!) I picked TEST for a few different reasons.<br /><br />One: They're established. I'm not talking about space or in-game infrastructure, I'm talking about metagame infrastructure. They have established (albeit reorganizing) leadership, training programs, out-of-game systems of all sorts on their website including a wiki, Jabber, Mumble, an intel map, and so on.<br /><br />Two: They're rebuilding. Now, some people would look at that as a bad thing; a sign that TEST is in a crisis. They point to membership numbers on Dotlan (slopes for the slope throne!). They point to many experienced TEST FCs leaving. They point to the fact that TEST moved to the Testagon/Soliara/Somalia instead of NPC nullsec. At the risk of using a cliche, I'd point out that the Chinese word for "crisis" uses the characters for "danger" and "opportunity." Yes, TEST is going through a rough patch. Yes, they have issues that they need to work out, and they know it. Yes, TEST lost a lot of good people and kicked out many more. But at the same time, that means that there's room for a relative unknown to potentially step in somewhere - combat leadership, training, diplomacy, who knows? Also, I'd point out that Booda has emphasized that TEST's movement to lowsec is a temporary measure - TEST will be back in nullsec, and back on the sov map Soon(TM).<br /><br />Three: Despite previous comments, I actually like Reddit. I've said before that I disliked the idea of having to join a forum (much less pay to join one, cough cough SomethingAwful cough) that I was unfamiliar with and wasn't sure if I'd even use much just to join an EVE Online group. Well... turns out there's actually a lot of stuff on Reddit I do enjoy. Who knew?<br /><br />So while I'm not getting into space as much as I'd like (hooray retail wage-slavery and working late hours!) I've found myself a new home. Now all I need to do is start training for all these new doctrines...James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-77691811803942323442013-08-16T11:55:00.002-06:002013-08-16T11:55:57.587-06:00And so it begins... again.So, I just pulled the trigger on resubscribing to <i>EVE</i>. While I'm not planning on doing anything immediately besides logging in and picking something to start training (whee work in a couple hours!) I do want to start thinking about what I want to do.<br /><br />So, at this point, I've pretty much narrowed it down to two things: FW or getting back out into nullsec. Pros and cons of both:<br /><br /><br /><ul><li>Nullsec</li><ul><li>Pros</li><ul><li>I've done it before, so I have a legitimate idea of what's going on.</li><li>I've been active in Reddit for a while, so (once they reopen recruitment, anyway) I could join Dreddit with relative ease. As TEST is currently in a rebuilding phase, that would also give me a good opportunity to start getting deeper into the nullsec lifestyle - FCing, for example. (Or I could get a firsthand look at a failcascade, depending on whose propaganda you choose to believe.)</li><li>Honestly, I really do feel like null-sec warfare is where the game really shines, and I enjoy looking at the high-level strategy elements to it.</li></ul><li>Cons</li><ul><li>I've done it before, so there won't be as much "ooh, new stuff" to think about as there would be in FW.</li><li>TEST is, according to some propaganda, failcascading. Personally, I would wait to withhold judgement on that, as they themselves said that they would be doing a purge of inactive personnel and some corps anyway. If they continue to show a slope on Dotlan after, then maybe I'll believe it. Maybe.</li><li>If I don't go with Dreddit/TEST, then I have no idea where I'd go to find a home for this (former?) bittervet who wants to scratch the internet spaceships itch.</li><li>I have no idea what the doctrine meta is like right now. I know Drakes used to be cool, and sniper Rokhs used to be as well. I suppose it doesn't really matter, as I could just start training whatever, but I'd rather not have to wait around while I wait on skill timers.</li></ul></ul><li>Faction Warfare</li><ul><li>Pros</li><ul><li>Never done it, and doing new stuff is always cool.</li><li>Major ISK faucets, which is not a minor consideration.</li><li>Not completely focused around PvP, which means I can do it whenever I can get on, not just during peak hours. Also, if I base out of low/null, no hellcamps. I will always be able to get out and find something to do.</li></ul><li>Cons</li><ul><li>Would need to learn a whole new meta, guaranteed.</li><li>No idea of what corps/alliances are out there.</li><li>No idea of doctrines.</li><li>No idea of how FW works.</li></ul></ul></ul>All in all, I'd say I have some thinking to do. If anyone wants to offer their thoughts on these options, or pitch a different option to me, feel free to do so in the comments.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-65534337136325095782013-08-08T10:49:00.001-06:002013-08-08T10:49:10.615-06:00Why I Don't Believe In "Gudfites"Okay, that's not entirely true. I do believe in roaming gangs just looking for a fight. But in the main, I tend to discount the concept of fighting just for fighting's sake. A case in point: my previous post. On Reddit (seeing my blog on Reddit at all was a bit of a shock, for the record) it was pointed out that TEST may have decided to fight for Delve simply because it was a "good fight," even if it was one that they might not win.<br /><br />And here's why: I don't believe in simply fighting for fighting's sake <i>as it relates to the strategic scale</i>.<br /><br />Now, I figure at least half (so, you know, two or three of you) are wondering what the hell I'm smoking here. Well, I'll try to explain. This may be a holdover from my Army days, but, when I'm envisioning tossing fleets around in space, I tend to think first and last in terms of investment; how many ships, supplies, and lives am I willing to pay in return for whatever the objective is? I realize that, in <i>EVE</i>, the ships and supplies are pixels on my screen and bits of data on CCP's server. But even so, I feel that, as a (notional) fleet commander, it's my responsibility to ensure that any losses are sustained for a good reason. If I lose the fleet and incur all those losses for something that wasn't worth - either directly or indirectly - all those millions of ISK, then I feel like I've failed as a commander.<br /><br />Maybe this means that I'm not cut out for being an internet spaceships fleet commander. Maybe I'm just doomed to forever fly the spacelanes as one more face in a crowd of a half-million others. If so, fine. But I just can't convince myself that the objectives of a campaign should take a backseat to any other consideration. To me, warfare in <i>EVE</i> just doesn't break down that way.<br /><br />And yes, I know I'm in the minority and probably taking this way too seriously. I just wanted to get this off my chest a bit.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-62890958760076529652013-07-30T17:39:00.001-06:002013-07-30T17:39:18.041-06:00Post #100 - Back to analysis.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lovhvwFchM1qi3vlco1_500.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="136" src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lovhvwFchM1qi3vlco1_500.gif" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">100 posts deserves some fireworks, doesn't it?</span></i></div><br />For my hundredth post, I wanted to get back into the analytic game. It was one of the big reasons that I got into <i>EVE </i>blogging, and one of the things I've missed most besides the explodey bits. And so, while doing some reading to try and refamiliarize myself with the greater strategic picture in New Eden, I came across a post from <a href="http://poeticstanziel.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-war-in-fountain-why-does-test-want.html" target="_blank">Poetic Stanziel over at Poetic Discourse</a> which asked the question of why TEST was falling back to Delve when all the valuable moons are held by Pizza. Now, I should note that before I googled to find out what "Pizza" was my first thought was a nullsec pizza delivery franchise had set up shop in Delve, which sounded awesome. Then I found Confederation of xXPIZZAXx and discovered their <a href="http://pizza.eve-kill.net/" target="_blank">killboard</a> has to be the biggest affront to human eyesight ever. Of all time. It is literally painful for me to look at for any length of time, and I have no idea how they stand it. But I digress.<br /><br />Poetic Stanziel points out that not only has TEST yet to show a major post-6VDT-H victory over Pizza (in fact, when they initially arrived in Delve, Pizza was ready with guns hot and scored several kills), but in fact they TEST are making a serious tactical blunder by leaving themselves vulnerable to being besieged inside the very stations they want to protect. Further, she argues that all of TEST's successes in sov space have been due to efforts by their allies, and that TEST has yet to mount a successful campaign on their own, either on offense or on defense.<br /><br />So I decided to try and answer the question of why TEST is trying to fight for Delve at all. Personally, I agree that it might be better, on the strategic level, for TEST to fall back to NPC nullsec to sort themselves out. It's happened to other alliances before, and it will happen again. But this article isn't about what TEST should be doing, it's about what they are doing right now.<br /><br />I suspect a combination of factors. In no particular order:<br /><br /><b>The honor of the flag.</b> In 17th and 18th century naval combat, when a warship from one side was unable to escape from a superior enemy, what captains would sometimes do is fire a single broadside - usually on the side of their ship pointing <i>away</i> from the enemy so as to not cause the enemy to return fire - and then quickly strike their national colors in signal of surrender. In essence, this is very similar to the final TEST welpfleet that showed up and threw themselves against a single CFC dreadnaught, killing it at the cost of all 200 ships that had been in the fleet. I suspect TEST leadership recognizes, even if they only admit it to themselves, that at this point Delve is a losing prospect. In such a case, we could see them trying to put up a delaying defense while any major remaining assets were evacuated from Delve to NPC nullsec. "Make the Goons pay cash for each system they take," in other words.<br /><br /><b>They may not be willing to give up.</b> Hubris can be the downfall of anyone. This is no less true of TEST leadership than it is of CFC leadership, myself, CCP, or real-world leaders. TEST may believe that they can retake the moons they need to finance the maintenance of Delve. Whether or not that's accurate really depends on too many imponderables - how much is left in TEST's warchest, how fast they're draining it, how much of an effort is CFC going to make to take Delve, what support from N3 and Pandemic Legion can TEST count on, either in the form of men or materiel. However, if Pizza continues to be able to fend off TEST attacks, and especially if the CFC keeps pressuring TEST's borders, I can't see TEST being able to fight off CFC, oust Pizza, <i>and </i>pay the sovereignty bill all at the same time.<br /><br /><b>TEST may have a morale problem, and TEST leadership is trying to motivate the troops.</b> This one is a little twisty, but bear with me. TEST, to my understanding, has had issues recently with getting pilots in space. I point to the fact that they ceded space superiority to CFC in the hours before the battle in 6VDT-H. Both sides knew the timer was counting down, TEST had cancelled ops in preparation for defense of the station, but the CFC showed up... and TEST didn't, which meant that TEST would have major issues for most of the fight getting reinforcements in-system. Combined with the losses handed to them by CFC in that battle, and then the ones inflicted by Pizza as TEST retreated into Delve, and you've got a prime situation for low motivation and morale. TEST may be trying to counter this with the aforementioned "make the Goons pay cash for each system they take" strategy, instead of abandoning sovereignty entirely, while their troops are under the impression of being sent running out of sov space with their tails between their legs. An orderly, planned, and controlled withdrawal would do much to abate that impression, and could mean fewer pilots abandoning the alliance when the inevitable move to NPC nullsec happens.<br /><br />As I said, I think Poetic Stanziel made excellent points, and that a TEST withdrawal from sov space is coming, perhaps sooner than TEST may want. They need the downtime to rest, refit, rebuild their resources, and recruit and train new pilots to replace the inevitable losses after a move like that. Short of CFC suddenly stopping and offering TEST a cease-fire and non-aggression pact (which I would be absolutely floored if it actually happened), I can't see a scenario here where TEST is given the time they need to concentrate on ousting Pizza from their moons so they can hold Delve. I predict we'll see TEST withdrawing from Delve, especially if they can give CFC a bloody nose or two on their way out. That will give them fuel for their internal propaganda machine - "we left on our own terms, and made CFC fight for what they took from us" - and surely would be the more strategically sound choice than fighting for every belt, moon, and outpost in Delve.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-43282382618432323162013-07-30T14:29:00.002-06:002013-07-30T14:29:19.760-06:00Wiping down the windowsSo I've pretty well decided I'm coming back. I have no idea where I left my character, what ships I had, what I was doing, what I was training for, nothing. I don't have any of the training trackers still on my computer, so I have no skill plans sitting around.<br /><br />Right now, insofar as what I want to do, I've narrowed it down between trying to get back into nullsec or trying out FW. I enjoyed my time in null before - I like making things go boom - but if faction warfare is in better shape than it was when I left about a year ago (it wouldn't be too hard, from what I recall), I do think I'll be giving that a good hard look. Either way, I have some time to think things over. I would tend to figure a final decision will come once I get my bearings again. I've resubmitted this blog to the fansite listing; we'll see how that goes.<div><br /></div><div>So, to-do list:</div><div><ul><li>Get money to support my habit - in progress, just gotta wait until that first payday.</li><li>Learn to fly again so I don't seem like a total noob.</li><li>Redownload EFT/EveMon/PYFA/insert-current-training-and-fitting-tools-here.</li><li>Start putting out feelers for a potential home in nullsec.</li><li>Check out current state of faction warfare and potential homes there.</li><li>Make a decision so I can get the hell out of Caldari Provisions for the <i>n</i>th time.</li><li>???</li><li>Space profit.</li></ul><div>So. Anyone want to take bets on where the <a href="http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-laws.html" target="_blank">Demon Murphy</a> will make his inevitable appearance on that list?</div></div>James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-55526483994260036052013-07-29T17:47:00.001-06:002013-07-29T17:47:37.412-06:00Blowing off the dustIn case nobody noticed (which wouldn't surprise me at all), things around here have been pretty silent lately. I dropped out of EVE due to lack of interest (and funds, though ironically it turns out that that wasn't nearly as big a deal as I'd thought it had been because of the fan-site program, albeit I found that out too late!), and despite some vague intentions on taking this blog into more of a general-gaming direction, I ended up letting it lie fallow, thinking either Blogger themselves would delete it for inactivity, or it was possible that I might start playing EVE and writing about it again. Looks like the latter scenario is happening now.<div><br /></div><div>Anyway, as you may have heard unless you live under a rock, CFC and TEST (and friends) ended up setting a new record for the biggest fight in EVE history (and quite possibly in gaming history) with 4070+ ships in 6VDT-H slugging it out through 10% TiDi. The battle even made regular news media sit up and take notice, with <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/29/eve-online-6vdt-battle-_n_3669137.html" target="_blank">Huffington Post</a>, <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57596021-1/4000-plus-duke-it-out-in-epic-eve-online-space-showdown/" target="_blank">CNet</a> and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23489293" target="_blank">BBC</a> even taking note of the goings-on. Twitch feeds from both sides were up and running (albeit on a delay for operational security, which I wholeheartedly understand and approve of), and a post on the battle making the front page on the <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming" target="_blank">gaming sub-Reddit</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>I ended up watching for a bit, and I started to feel the itch to sling my own ship through space. Mind you, I've been having a decent time playing other, free games, but this... this was different. Nothing I've done in any game has given me the same adrenaline jolt that flying a ship in EVE could give me. Understand, I've never been in one of the major nullsec alliances. If memory serves, my time in null was with a renter of Atlas (which I suspect shows how far back it was) and we really never did any major combat ops. We'd do the occasional POS smash, which usually happened unopposed, and we did do a deployment to go help out some allies when the Goons were attacking their space, which ended up with us sitting around for four hours waiting for a fight that never happened.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't know what I'm going to do when I get back in. I might look for a missioning/incursions corporation. I might look to get back out into null - hell, I might even look into Dreddit, given that in the time between now and when I left I started using Reddit a surprising amount. I might volunteer my services to pull security for an industrial corp. I might see if Red vs. Blue is still kicking about. I might end up doing something completely different than what I'm thinking about right now.</div><div><br /></div><div>I've got a couple weeks to think about it and to start poking around to see what's new and different in New Eden. We'll see what happens.</div>James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-61209948075902931992012-08-31T21:24:00.001-06:002012-08-31T21:49:14.971-06:00Out-of-Pod: Paragon Studios hang up their capesI'm sure pretty much everyone has heard about this one already, but I decided that, for reasons, I should probably put together my thoughts on this. It was announced earlier today that NCSoft had decided to close down Paragon Studios and their tights-wearing flagship superhero MMO, <i>City of Heroes</i>.<br /><br />I first heard about the game when it was just in beta, and it pretty much immediately fascinated me. Living at home, and at the time using a family Apple computer, I wasn't paying much attention to the whole "online gaming" thing because, by and large, I couldn't do it, much less convince my parents to spot me the $15 a month to play an online video game over our 56k Internet connection. But this was back in the days when EverQuest was the big kid on the block, and an MMO that promised superheroic hijinks stuck with me for a while.<br /><br />Fast-forward to the end of 2005. I've joined the Army, gotten my initial entry training done, and gotten to my first permanent duty station. What's a nerd to do with months of virtually untouched pay burning a hole in his pocket? Buy a computer, of course. And while I was at the post exchange looking at the various and sundry laptops that they carried, I saw the video game section, and decided that I should probably pick up a couple programs while I'm at it - the cheap military edition of Microsoft Office for one, antivirus, and - hey, it's that superhero game.<br /><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EY2JZUajQY0/UEF6tmN20bI/AAAAAAAAAKc/7dA4mIsVWl0/s1600/Modern_Samurai_by_Juggertha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EY2JZUajQY0/UEF6tmN20bI/AAAAAAAAAKc/7dA4mIsVWl0/s320/Modern_Samurai_by_Juggertha.jpg" width="232" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://juggertha.deviantart.com/art/Modern-Samurai-107950310">Modern Samurai - by Juggertha</a></td></tr></tbody></table>That weekend, I'd gotten everything installed on my computer, gotten the internet hooked up, and am enjoying my return to the various and sundry online groups that I was a part of at the time. When it came to light that I'd picked up <i>City of Heroes</i>, a friend of mine suggested I join the Virtue server. And it was like "These are my people." I wasn't the best gamer on the server - it took me literally four years or so before I finally hit the level cap - but I was having near-constant fun, either from playing the game or just hanging out with the people I'd met there, many of whom I still have contact with through one social media account or another.<br /><br />Years later, I'd still play CoH as time and disposable income would allow. When the game went free-to-play, I was hopeful that I'd be able to pick it up again, get back into the groups that I had known for years and do the (many) things I either hadn't done since I'd picked the game up or that had been added since then... but a lot of the people in my supergroup had moved on, others were doing things behind the pay wall, and without a job of my own, I couldn't justify spending any of my dwindling savings on a video game. And so City of Heroes started to collect virtual dust, sitting in my hard drive and occasionally updated to play for a day or two, then to be neglected again.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TZowd8F0FBU/UEF6vkZqaKI/AAAAAAAAAKk/DmSlnRS-fC4/s1600/commission__belle_liberty_by_johnbecaro-d3bl0tj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TZowd8F0FBU/UEF6vkZqaKI/AAAAAAAAAKk/DmSlnRS-fC4/s320/commission__belle_liberty_by_johnbecaro-d3bl0tj.jpg" width="202" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://johnbecaro.deviantart.com/art/Commission-BELLE-LIBERTY-200855143">Belle Liberty - by John Becaro</a></td></tr></tbody></table>Then, today, I heard the news about the closure of Paragon Studios. And I was floored. Possibly as floored as the staff of Paragon themselves were - the rumor was that, besides for a skeleton maintenance crew, the majority of the staff at Paragon heard the news shortly before we did and were instructed to clear out their desks, and good luck in their search for their next job. (Which is something of a dick move in and of itself, but I digress.)<br /><br />I quickly found the NCSoft launcher, patched up, and got in game... and there were a dozen people there that I hadn't seen in literally years, that had come back for the same reason I had. The community as a whole was in shock, but a lot of us who had moved on to other games were flocking back to the games, seeing that the tights didn't fit as well as they used to, or the old powers seemed a bit less powerful than we remembered.<br /><br />It evoked the memory of the visitation after my mom had died. I was pretty shocky, I remember - I was deployed with the Army at the time and was literally on a plane heading back to the U.S. less than 24 hours after I'd gotten word, and that sort of movement will set anyone back on their heels, regardless of the reason. But I was struck by the fact that there were so many people there that I had known from my days in Scouting, or from cities we'd moved out of a decade or more prior. There were so many old friends and acquaintances there and I remember thinking at the time that it was great to see them, but it was for literally the worst reason in the world. This was all was going through my head as I ran into people that I had known almost literally since day one of my playing the game, or the closest thing to it.<br /><br />Now, there are still a couple of months left to go before the servers close down, the lights go out, and Rhode Island goes back to being just that tiny blink-and-you'll-miss-it state in New England. I hope that NCSoft doesn't just let things quietly go. The first superhero MMO deserves better than that.<br /><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="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gDvL_l4QFuo/UEF-hjqNqfI/AAAAAAAAAK0/OecpJFdqtp4/s1600/crisis-on-infinite-earths-04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gDvL_l4QFuo/UEF-hjqNqfI/AAAAAAAAAK0/OecpJFdqtp4/s400/crisis-on-infinite-earths-04.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From <i>Crisis on Infinite Earths</i>, DC Comics, 1985-86</td></tr></tbody></table>I want to see this game go out with a bang. I want to be fighting up until the last minute. I want to see our characters out and fighting to save the world one last time. Make it a fight we couldn't realistically win. Activate a permanent Rikti invasion in every zone. Send everyone to Recluse's Victory. Whatever.<br /><div><br /></div><div>I just really really hope that the first MMO I ever played goes out with a bang, in true comic-book style, and not with a whimper.<br /><br />In closing, and to sum up everything I'm feeling, and with full apologies to the <i>Deep Space Nine</i> writing staff, I would simply say this:<br /><br />To the best community an MMO ever had. This may be the last time we're all together. But no matter what the future holds, no matter how far we travel, a part of us... a very important part, will always remain here, in the City of Heroes.</div>James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-56434715990656228262012-08-16T03:24:00.003-06:002012-08-16T03:24:55.040-06:00It's the little things you miss.So I've been back in EVE for about a week now. So far I've ended up just sticking on my own, doing more missions and working my way up the proverbial ladder. And I realized something a couple of days ago.<br /><br />I'd honestly forgotten how genuinely <i>pretty</i> EVE is.<br /><br />Consider I'm not running the world's greatest gaming rig, here. Between my (relatively) ancien Core 2 processor, my whopping three whole gigabytes of RAM, and my speedy GTX 295 graphics card, while I'm still capable of running even games like Skyrim and (presumably) MechWarrior Online at decent settings, my stability isn't great - Skyrim, for example, usually runs for maybe an hour or so before the game closes itself due to my RAM overheating. (I didn't know programs could do that, but whatever.)<br /><br />I'm not sure what it is. I know I missed the missile launcher update, and I know that there have been various graphical improvements made since I left about a year-ish ago. (I know I played for a bit back in January, but I didn't really count that so much, since I ended up only playing a couple of days.)<br /><br />For whatever reason, EVE just seems so much prettier now than I remember. I can't wait until I get the cash together to upgrade my computer to hell and back; it's only going to get better.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-51490049365658696052012-08-01T11:57:00.003-06:002012-08-01T12:00:23.285-06:00Who makes the story?I haven't done a Blog Banter in a while, but <a href="http://freebooted.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/blog-banter-38-dogma.html">Number 38</a> kind of intrigued me.<br /><br />(Blogger's note: I did write most of this before I saw Kirith Kodachi's post over at his <a href="http://www.ninveah.com/2012/07/blog-banter-38-dogma-in-his-recent.html">Sanctum</a>, so any similarities there are purest coincidence.)<br /><br />In-universe story has always taken a back seat to gameplay in <i>EVE Online</i>. Even when Incursions came out, the majority of players regarded the backstory of what was going on as purely secondary to the fact that there were huge amounts of targets to kill. A majority of players only paid attention to the stuff said by the Sansha characters in local or on the boards just enough to look for clues to the next major Incursion event, and that was it. And I would wager that a good portion of the players who sided with the Sansha forces were just doing so because they were more interested in shooting at other players and not NPCs.<br /><br />This is normal for <i>EVE</i>. CCP Unifex said as much in an interview with <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/174686/The_secret_to_EVE_Onlines_success_Its_all_bottomup.php">Gamasutra</a>. Players have always been the major driving force in <i>EVE</i>. Every market transaction, every major conflict, every war, every skirmish in nullsec; all of that is because of the players. A new player in <i>EVE </i>will miss any elements of storytelling in the game, unless they specifically go hunting for them... because story in <i>EVE </i>doesn't particularly matter.<br /><br />And that's a part of why <i>EVE Online</i> has a reputation as "Excel Online" and also one as being full of scammers and griefers. In other games - <i>The Old Republic</i>, <i>Star Trek Online</i>, <i>City of Heroes</i>, <i>World of Warcraft</i>, <i>Lord of the Rings Online</i>, and even (presumably) the upcoming <i>MechWarrior Online</i> - the game presents a reason for you to be off shooting/stabbing/punching/whatever-ing the enemies you're given. In <i>EVE Online</i>, and especially outside of NPC missions, you're never handed that; you need to make that decision. Are you just out roaming? Are you probing your enemies for weaknesses you might exploit in a larger conflict? Are you in that larger conflict? What's the mission objective? All those questions are only ever answered <i>by the players</i>. And that's how <i>EVE </i>was envisioned.<br /><br />The problem is, there's a good chunk of the MMO community that wants to be enmeshed in someone else's story. They want to go out and pretend, if only for an hour or so at a time, that they're a hero and they're Making A Difference In The World, even if that world is Middle Earth or Paragon City or the United Federation of Planets. Escapism is the reason a lot of players play games.<br /><br />And <i>EVE</i> is never going to appeal to that demographic. Too much of the game, as it stands, is simple, day-in-day-out boring work. It's rare that you get the opportunity to take part in something that truly reshapes the landscape of the game. It happens, certianly, and more effectively than a lot of those other MMOs I mentioned. (<i>MechWarrior Online</i> is a bit of an odd duck, but that's rather a whole other post.) I can't think of another game that's out right now where players can reshape the political landscape of the map quite like they can in <i>EVE</i>. But all of this mutability in the hands of the players comes at the cost of any scripted story.<br /><br />That's how <i>EVE</i> is designed. Overall, I think it's a good thing, at least for <i>EVE </i>itself, and for CCP. But reliance on the engine of the players to drive your narrative alienates a lot of prospective players. And that's why this is the edge of a knife CCP has to balance on; without new players, a game dies. But change the game too much, and old players will leave, potentially faster than you gain those new players.<br /><br />What's a game designer to do? I don't know; if I did, I'd probably be in Iceland or Atlanta right now. But I will say that CCP seems pretty good at recovering their balance on that knife edge, though they do slip once in a while.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-59876928416699379682012-07-30T15:36:00.001-06:002012-08-01T11:58:51.129-06:00What to do?So, thanks to our friendly community manager and the revamped fansite program, I am now in possession once again of an active EVE Online account! Woo!<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><object class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://1.gvt0.com/vi/VBTRp80Q64U/0.jpg" height="266" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/VBTRp80Q64U&fs=1&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/VBTRp80Q64U&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object><br /><br />So...<br /><br />... now what the hell do I do?<br /><br />When I last logged in, I was off doing missions. It's not entirely fun, nor was I at the point where I was making a lot of money. A touch frustrating.<br /><br />So now I get to decide what I want to do in EVE.<br /><br /><b>Option 1: Keep on missioning</b><br />Easiest option, obviously, would be to keep on doing what I'm doing. Go out, find NPCs, kill them, salvage the good stuff, get ISK. Boring, and wouldn't really lead to a really gripping narrative on the ol' blog.<br /><br /><b>Option 2: Find a corp</b><br />Possible, but the question becomes what sort of corp would I join? Industrial? I know they look for guys to pull security, and I can do that, but that'd also get pretty boring. And it's debatable as to if I could maintain a sufficient flow of ISK to support myself. Missioning has possibilities, but also the problems I mentioned doing it solo.<br /><br /><b>Option 3: Faction Warfare</b><br />This is a possibility, but I've heard that there are serious problems with FW.<br /><br /><b>Option 4: Red vs. Blue</b><br />If I could just pick one, this one would get serious consideration. I enjoy PVP in this game, and RVB is, from what I've heard, a great, low-stress place to do it. Again, cashflow may be an issue, but it's still worth consideratoin.<br /><br /><b>Option 5: Nullsec</b><br />Ideally, on a lot of levels, I'd like to get back out into nullsec. Problem is most of the big alliances have odd and convoluted joining requirements, and I'm not particularly interested in joining a whole separate site and trying to actually seem active there just to play EVE.<br /><br />Thoughts would be appreciated.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-88277997801680557042012-05-12T10:27:00.000-06:002012-05-12T10:27:45.726-06:00Flawless Victory? Well...So Jester over at <a href="http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/">Jester's Trek</a> made a <i>totally not-EVE related</i> <a href="http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2012/05/victory-conditions.html">post</a> that got me thinking. People joke about "winning EVE" all the time, but an MMO like EVE, by it's very nature, cannot and perhaps should not be won - otherwise what would be the point of keeping it open once someone has "won EVE?" So, in the spirit of my previous job as an intelligence analyst (something that has led to some frustration as I try and find a decent - read, preferably non-burger-flipping - job in an already crappy job market; few companies have a use for an intelligence analyst, dammit) I decided to take Jester's idea and run with it, and try and predict the future.<br /><br />So, how could the Goonswarm "win EVE?" As Jester pointed out, the victory conditions in the Civilization games (and I echo his comment about "go play them now!") translate pretty well into how anyone could "win" our serious game of internet spaceships. But, if perhaps taken to their logical extreme, these "victory conditions" would also make EVE a less fun, and less sustainable, version of itself, meaning that someone would have to take action to breathe new life into the metagame.<br /><br /><b>Military Victory</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/34648" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/34648" width="320" /></a></div>In this scenario, the GSF bloats itself out to hold sovereignty over the vast majority, if not all, of null-sec, leaving perhaps only a few pockets of NPC null-sec where they don't exercise effective sovereignty. There are a few issues with this scenario. One, I don't think it's truly feasible. Even if, say, half of the sov-holding alliances were to ally themselves under the banner of the Swarm, that still leaves enough others to make a stand somewhere. Moreover, I would contend that the Goons are a polarizing enough group that any such bid for an outright "military victory" would, almost instantly, solidify a decent-sized opposition bloc to prevent any such victory from occurring in the first place.<br /><br />In addition, I suspect that The Mittani, being who he is, either has no real plans in making such an effort to "conquer the universe," or would, if such a thing seemed likely to happen on its own, would immediately take steps from resetting relations with allies to reorganizing the GSF in such a way to provide an enemy able to provide the much-touted "good fight" that most EVE sov-space members desire.<br /><br /><b>Diplomatic Victory</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_W-Ww8olegy8/TLr9xOT2bFI/AAAAAAAAAAU/tBp_o2KL_Cg/s1600/diplomacy_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_W-Ww8olegy8/TLr9xOT2bFI/AAAAAAAAAAU/tBp_o2KL_Cg/s320/diplomacy_01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Similar to the Military Victory scenario, in this one instead of simply taking soveriegnty by force of arms, the GSF extends alliances and vassals through sov space, giving them <i>effective</i> control over a large enough portion to make them masters of nullsec. Again, this isn't really feasible, given the prevalence of espionage to prevent such a thing from happening quietly, as well as, again, the polarization of the GSF and the inevitable resistance to such attempts for Goon control.<br /><br />Again, I suspect The Mittani would take steps to curtail his own chances for such a victory, given that either a military or diplomatic victory would in fact mean that, like Alexander the Great, he would have no new lands to conquer. Or, in more EVE-ish terms, there would be a lack of good fights.<br /><br /><b>Cultural Victory</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://tagn.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/hagv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="289" src="http://tagn.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/hagv.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Now we get into the interesting bits. An argument could be made, and one that I would tend to agree with, that the Goons are moving toward - if not already at - the stage of controlling the culture of EVE Online. In a comment on Jester's blog entry, The Mittani himself <a href="http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2012/05/victory-conditions.html?showComment=1336761158948#c464165625386769744">commented</a> that "EVE, like all MMOs, has been a misogynistic hellhole for years and that has nothing to do with Goonswarm." While he is certianly entitled to his opinion, I think he's trying to dodge the issue. As the most prominent player organization in the game, the Goons, whether they like it or not, are at least somewhat responsible for shaping the perception of EVE as a game, and also how it's players act. While I grant that a good portion of the playerbase as a whole can be considered poster children for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_disinhibition_effect">online disinhibition effect</a>, regardless of if they're Goons or not, the prevalence of the Goons, especially on the forums, and their attitudes can - and I would surmise they do - adjust the attitudes of other players in the game, partly out of peer pressure, partly out of a desire so as to not appear weak, and partly as a means of social camouflage.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Economic Victory</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://jestertrek.com/eve/blog/2012/2012-04-24_technetium.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://jestertrek.com/eve/blog/2012/2012-04-24_technetium.png" width="313" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">OTEC. 'Nuff said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Okay, I'll say a little more. Of all the victory conditions, this is perhaps the only one I would expect CCP to take steps to ameliorate. Technetium, given that it is an essential element (pardon the pun) for all Tech 2 production, is the crude oil of EVE Online. The Mittani knows this, and this is why he got OTEC started, and one of the reasons why he orchestrated Burn Jita and supports Hulkageddon so strongly - all of that market chaos can only cause the demand for technetium to skyrocket, leading directly to more money into the coffers of OTEC's member alliances.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But it also places a dangerous weapon in the hands of the Goons. Should they so desire, they would have the capability now to cut the technetium supply on the open market down however they wish, and for whatever reason they wish, from simply wanting to drive the price upward even more, choking off the supply for an enemy, making it harder for them to build more ships and equipment, or simply to watch the <strike>world</strike> markets burn. It is a blade pressed against the throat of anyone that wants to strike against an OTEC member, and indeed against the rest of EVE entire.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So what could happen, and what has been rumored to be happening for years, to be fair about it, is that CCP could introduce a new source of technetium into the game. Ring mining is a popular speculative source at this point, but it could be as easy as seeding new wormhole systems - or known-space systems? - into the game with technetium sources in them. I doubt that there would be a conversion of extant moons to become technetium sources, though technically it would be the easiest change to make. I'm not certain of what course CCP would take; Lord knows I'm not as smart as CCP Dr.Eyjog, and he'd probably have a lot to do with the decision-making process here. If CCP were to do anything, my suspicion is that they would add technetium sources in ring mining, and deliberately do so outside of OTEC space. More likely, however, is CCP would maintain their <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire">laissez-faire</a></i> market policies and simply let The Mittani and his OTEC partners do what they will.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Space Victory</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Let's face it, if the Goons can lock down Jita for a weekend, they can do it any time they want, wherever they want. Add in how much The Mittani supports Hulkageddon... I think they have this one.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>The Little Red Button</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v661/SephirothRyu/Comical/Megas/NukeButton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v661/SephirothRyu/Comical/Megas/NukeButton.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I didn't touch on this before, partly because I don't believe it's something that would realistically happen, and partly because it's not something that anyone has ever really wanted to consider in an MMO.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If Goonswarm became somehow unassailable - they were big enough nobody else could realistically hope to take them on, they had established their control of the technetium bottleneck and used it ruthlessly against their enemies and those that simply annoyed them, and so on, CCP does have what amounts to the ultimate weapon in the game. The reset button.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Resetting an MMO - any MMO - is not something that one considers lightly. Insofar as I can determine via some Google searching, the complete and deliberate wipe of all player data, sending everyone back to the start point and putting everyone on an even level again, is not something that's ever been done. But, as CCP has demonstrated before, just because nobody has done it before is not in and of itself a reason to dismiss something. And given their "Fearless" corporate mentality, I don't think CCP would shy from reaching for the proverbial nuclear option <i>if they felt they had no other choice.</i></div><br />Note the emphasis in the last sentence, there.<br /><div><br /></div><div>While wiping out all characters, alliances, assets, and so forth in the game would certainly have the effect of breaking open pretty much every and any barrier in the game, and would possibly win some player support, especially for newer players that consider themselves dwarves in a world of giants, the vast majority of the playerbase would revolt at such a step, possibly to the point of finally walking away from the game were the button actually pushed. And to be fair, I can see the logic on both sides. Yes, especially for a newer player who wouldn't lose as much, the notion of having everyone start over again, on the same level playing field, would be exciting. It would be almost like stepping back in time before the giants of the game became those giants, possibly giving you the opportunity to interact with them as an equal and possibly even get your foot in the door of a rebuilding alliance.</div><div><br /></div><div>But for an experienced player, with millions of SP, billions of ISK, ships scattered all over the cluster, and a history invested in the game, what would be the upside for you? Sure, you would have the benefit of your experience as a player to guide you through the early steps of the game - Lord knows all of us made mistakes in our n00b days that we'd love to go back and correct. But that'd be about it. You'd still have to spend however many years you'd invested into the game rebuilding your fortune, your fleet, and more importantly your character's skills. Few people would want to go through that again, I'd expect.</div><div><br /></div><div>And yet, if the Swarm had that much of a stranglehold on the game, what other steps could a developer take that wouldn't seem unfair to one side or another?<br /><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><b>Obligatory Sheet Anchor</b></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">This is just a very off the cuff prediction set. My reasoning makes sense to me, but it may not be at all accurate to how the parties involved would actually act, especially given that I'm not in any way a part of said parties. I would make some sort of Magic 8-Ball joke here, but honestly I didn't even do that much. This is just my thought process from last night and this morning.</span></div></div></div>James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-16097220926693469952012-05-07T10:40:00.000-06:002012-05-07T10:40:28.931-06:00Hulkageddon and Magnificent BastardsIt's been a bad week or so to be an industrialist in EVE.<br /><br />Between the Goons' "Burn Jita" event - which, apparently, <a href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/spymaster/78">surprised even Mittens</a> with how effective it was - and Helicity Boson's fifth annual Hulkageddon event, there are a lot of Empire-based industrial types that have a lot of red in their profit-and-loss figures.<br /><br />First off, I have little sympathy - some, but not much - for the miners who lose ships during Hulkageddon. First, it is one of the most advertised player-run events in the damn game. If you don't know about it, you've stuck your head in the sand and are missing the "multiplayer" part of "massively multiplayer online game." Second, there are guys, who, I kid you not, take an attitude along these lines:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">PERSON A: Here's my Hulk fit that I fly, that lets me survive most gank attempts long enough for CONCORDokken to occur.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">PERSON B: B-b-but <i>mining efficiency!</i></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">ME: *facepalm*</blockquote>Look, Empire miners, which will cost you more: Losing at least one 300,000,000 ISK ship, or having your mining efficiency drop a bit for however long Hulkageddon lasts? I mean, I'm no industrialist - mining asteroids is too passive for me to do and I go insane after a half-hour - but it seems to me that flying <i>anything</i> that expensive, especially when you know there's a higher instance of players out looking for you to kill you, without it being tanked is just... dumb. Anyway, I'll let you figure out the math on that.<br /><br />If someone has decided to quit EVE because they got ganked in hisec, honestly, they never really got EVE in the first place. I say this without rancor or enmity, but it's still the truth, as I see it. EVE is not a game for everyone. My own brother, for example, I have said to his face that he should never try EVE. He gets frustrated with video games a bit too easily, and prefers to be left alone to explore them and enjoy their storylines. Given that EVE is so much a "sandbox with landmines," and doesn't really have a provided storyline, he would either get horribly lost and quit, or go wandering, stumble into a fight in low-sec or null-sec, get podded, and then quit. He is not, and has acknowledged that he is not, temperamentally suited for EVE.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: -webkit-left;">And the same goes for those players that think Helicity Boson and The Mittani are cyber-terrorists, should be reported to the FBI, and that hisec should be completely safe. (I'm not making those up. I'm pretty sure I've seen all of those said on the EVE-O forums. I could be wrong, as I'm writing this post without benefit of caffeine, but it'd shock the hell out of me if I were.) <b>There is no guaranteed safety in EVE. There is no opting out of PVP. Everything that you do can be opposed and destroyed by another player for no apparent reason.</b> EVE is as much a social experiment - what do people do when given virtually complete freedom to pick their own paths - as it is a game, and yes, there will be those people that just want to watch the world burn. Or, alternately, EVE is the greatest-ever proof of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_disinhibition_effect">online disinhibition effect</a>, AKA <a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/">John Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory</a>. This is not to say that the guys who blew crap up during Burn Jita and are still blowing crap up today as part of Hulkageddon are bad people - given that EVE has no real-life consequences, a lot of otherwise normal, approachable people will choose a path they, in real life, would never choose; in fact, some might choose it precisely for that reason.</div><br />Anyway, on to the second part of what I was going to say. Mittani, if you read this, this is my general opinion of you:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><object class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://3.gvt0.com/vi/AJXKVOxqkWM/0.jpg" height="315" width="560"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/AJXKVOxqkWM&fs=1&source=uds" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <embed width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/AJXKVOxqkWM&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></div><br />For everything you've done, despite not having logged into the game for the last 30 days, organizing Burn Jita, OTEC, and using Hulkageddon to further manipulate the market so you and your OTEC buddies can continue to line your pockets... you have achieved Magnificent Bastard status. Well done, sir.<br /><br />Understand, I hope CCP does finally introduce a way to break the Technetium bottleneck that you are ruthlessly exploiting - I doubt they will, unless you start going crazy-stupid with price-fixing, but I can hope. (Educational moment: Technetium is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technetium">actually a thing</a>. I didn't know this until I started Googling it to ensure I was spelling it right.) I have been only perhaps peripherally involved in any of the GSF's conflicts, and I have no intentions of changing that, and certainly not by joining the Swarm - though this is mostly because I don't feel like joining some other, unrelated site just to join an EVE Online alliance. Granted, I could be wrong about your recruitment policies, but I digress. And it's moot anyway, given that I'm not active in EVE currently.<br /><br />Still, for playing the economic metagame like it's your own personal violin - or $20 toddler's piano, take your pick - I salute you, sir.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-34017487831329317922012-03-28T20:14:00.001-06:002012-03-28T20:15:48.229-06:00I wish I'd put money on it.And so Mittani-gate comes to a close, with the GoonSwarm leader <a href="http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28576">being removed entirely from the CSM and banned for a month</a>. As I said in my last post, I rather figured that CCP would have to take visible action and quickly, lest the negative PR about the EVE Online community start overwhelming any pushback from said community. I almost went one better and gave my prediction of what would happen to Mittani - I had been thinking removal from CSM, ban for 30-60 days, and being unable to participate in any panels at FanFest 2013 (to clarify: he could attend FanFest just like any other player, he just wouldn't be on a stage).<br /><br />What has been surprising me has been that people have been screaming that to remove Mittani from CSM7 as a whole, instead of simply him declining the position of chairman as he'd already done on his own hook, is "disenfranchising" to the people that gave him his over ten thousand votes. They're also calling for an immediate reelection of the CSM as a whole.<br /><br />Personally, I think a complete reelection is an overreaction. From my understanding of the CSM election procedures, when a CSM member is removed for whatever reason, the open seat goes to the player that received the most votes but did not originally receive a seat. This actually makes more sense than a general reelection, as CSM7 hasn't yet started their term. Moreover, I think it's important, given the single-year term of the CSM and the fact that we are talking about a continually evolving game that the CSM is helping to oversee, that we seat CSM7 without the major delay that would be inherent in a new election.<br /><br />Further, I would point out that Mittani has specifically <i>not</i> been banned for running for a seat on CSM8. If he does so, I expect that he'll face something of an uphill battle against the rest of the pack who will, I'm sure, be quick to revive this whole incident, and use anything the Goons do over the next nine or ten months as proof that Mitten is a bad guy. (The funny thing is, I think he'd take that as a compliment.) But that's nine or ten months down the pipe. And it also assumes Mittens will be willing to give up the leadership of the Swarm to take back his role as an Important Internet Spaceships Politician; according to the TweetFleet, Mittani made a statement during this evening's State of the Goonion that he would not again attempt to hold both the GoonSwarm leadership role and the CSM Chairman role at the same time, and apparently clapping could be heard in the background, presumably from Mrs. Mittani.<br /><br />For now, I think that despite any outcry by the players, the best thing for CCP to do right now with CSM7 is to simply follow their own guidelines - offer the chairmanship to the next player in the line of succession, and contact the first alternate CSM candidate to offer them the open seat. Will it flush Mittani's 10k+ votes down the proverbial drain? Sadly, yes. But maybe that just indicates that the CSM election procedures may be in need of a bit of reworking.<br /><br />Or maybe people just take internet spaceships a bit <i>too</i> seriously.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-20640535994908429332012-03-27T10:19:00.000-06:002012-03-27T10:23:30.708-06:00Mittani-gateYeah, I'm not calling it Suicide-Gate, as I've seen it tagged on the TweetFleet. Just seems to work better, and I think focuses the attention back on where it belongs.<br /><br />I'm of two minds here. First, yeah, what Mittens did on the Fanfest stage was a pretty dickish move - regardless of if the player they were talking about really was entertaining suicidal thoughts. (My personal experience has been that people like to use it as an attention-getting tool, but the bitch of it is you can't assume that. Anyway.) On the other side of the coin... I wonder if Mittens had done this on the Goons internal forums - as opposed to the Fanfest stage - and word came out, would people be screaming about it as loudly? Maybe. But maybe not, as well - this sort of thing simply strikes me as something in line with the "Goon mentality" as I perceive it. Further, Mittens' apology... I could buy it, honestly. I've never met the guy. Hell, I've never met another EVE player in the flesh; to me, you're all just a collection of pixels on my screen and occasionally words in my headphones. But for some reason - and hell, maybe it's just the optimist in me - I could buy Mittani's apology as sincere, especially given the actions that he's apparently already taken.<br /><br />That having been said, I don't know that CCP will have a choice but to sanction Mittani in some manner. Leaving aside the CSM bylaws and the EULA, this has generated a shitstorm of bad publicity for EVE. In looking over the comments in just one article, I see comments like:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Spreadsheets Online: Sociopaths in Space. It's a moral vaccum, basically 4chan with space-ships. Its primary purpose should be to tie up all the detritus of MMO-playing Internet into one condensed wasteland, the hell away from the games played by decent human beings.</span></blockquote><br />But more alarming is this particular comment, and I think this is what CCP's PR folks will be afraid of:<br /><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"></span><br /><div><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="background-color: #eef8fb; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"></span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">And as for the comments about how he did a "good job" as chairman of the CSM; that's certainly a matter of debate. But even if you believe he did well in his role, he should be forced to resign. </span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">If not, then you support is actions and accept the moral compass that he sets as a leader in the EvE community. As for CCP, you either remove him from a representative role or you endorse it. I see no middle ground and a limited time account ban for something this public is simply "going through the motions" of disciplining with no real intent behind the action aside from paying PR lip service.</span> </blockquote>This is just one comment, but I suspect the thought process at CCP will go something along the lines of "How many people think like this? How much attention will this grab? Can we afford to not 'do something'?" And so, it occurs to me that, however much they - and more specifically, we the players - may wish it otherwise, CCP may feel as they have no choice but to at least remove The Mittani from the CSM entirely. That's a tragedy, as, however much I may dislike the attitudes of the Goons as a whole, I think Alex Gianturco (not The Mittani, Alex the actual guy who, I suspect, simply plays the role of a dick on a game of internet spaceships and associated forums) has been the most successful CSM chairman to date, and would have continued to help steer the game along the bleeding edge of the difference between a video game and a simulation.<br /><br />But, sad as it may be, I don't think CCP will see that they have a choice, especially if there's continued focus by the gaming media community on this. Lord knows that there's been enough to draw the phenomena of "cyber-bullying" into the spotlight of the general population, and that sort of thing would draw gaming news writers like sharks. And if that happens, CCP would find itself forced to take even more drastic action, action that might damage the overall "HTFU" philosophy that EVE thrives on. So I expect CCP to slap Mittens down a bit more thoroughly then they might otherwise have. I hope they won't, but I won't be surprised to see it happen.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-59726909240810513592012-03-16T22:40:00.001-06:002012-03-16T22:40:07.229-06:00Out of Pod: Obligatory Mass Effect 3 Post is Obligatory<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: red;"><b>SPOILER WARNING -- SPOILER WARNING -- SPOILER WARNING</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: red;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;">This post may contain spoilers for <b>Mass Effect 3 </b>after the jump. Reader discretion is advised.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I loved the Mass Effect games. Even their less-than-stellar parts (the Mako in ME1, and probing for minerals in 2, though at least in 2 I could pretend I had Tricia Helfer to keep me company...) I got at least some enjoyment out of. And then came Mass Effect 3.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Don't get me wrong. Almost everything in Mass Effect 3 was done <i>right</i>. Twenty five or thirty hours of it was pure epic joy to play, even those bits that made me want to reach in and <i>force</i> the game to let me pull a Captain Kirk moment and beat the odds to pull a better solution. And, sometimes, I even got to do that, such as when I managed to broker a peace between the geth and the quarians.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And then I got to Earth. And fought my way through some of the most hair-raising firefights I've had on a video game to date to the last five minutes of the game. I was ready to see all the blood, sweat, and tears my FemShep had invested over the trilogy to pay off. I was ready to see her and Liara go off to some isolated tropical beach somewhere and enjoy the peace and quiet they'd fought so hard for. Hell, I'd even have bought it if Shepard had given her life to give everyone else that peace. I would have been sad, but I'd have accepted it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Bioware, however, had other ideas.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">(After this, I have to get spoilery. So hit the jump, or don't, as you desire.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><a name='more'></a>I lost count of the number of times I thought "what the <i>fuck?</i>" as that damn hologram of the kid from Earth spent the next five minutes basically making everything I'd done mean jack and shit. I wanted to reach in and smack the kid when he said that synthetic life could never co-exist with organic life. "What the hell did I just do with the quarians and the geth?" I damn near screamed the question at my screen.<br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And then, no matter what, I get to choose one of three equally shitty endings. Each of which ends up disabling or destroying <i>every single mass relay in the galaxy, thereby condemning billions of lives to death without humanitarian aid or just normal food shipments</i>. Yes, ships in the Mass Effect universe are able to go FTL without a relay. I got that. But it's too slow to travel between one cluster and another - two or three decades was the number I recall from the Codex.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And then there's what happens to <i>Normandy</i>. First, Joker, what <i>in the hell are you doing</i>? Why is he flying the <i>Normandy</i> away from the battle upon which the survival of every species in the galaxy hinges? And second, no matter what ending you pick, <i>Normandy</i> crashes onto an uninhabited jungle world and, it's implied that they start a colony there. (Which is bullshit, there's not enough genetic variation in the <i>Normandy</i> crew for a colony to survive more than a generation or two, but whatever.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In short, 99% of the game is great. I loved it. I expect I'll keep playing that part of it for a long time. But I'll be ignoring everything that happens after I open the arms of the Citadel, and hoping that at some point, Bioware will give us a real ending.</div>James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-82543895818673295532011-12-20T23:36:00.000-07:002011-12-20T23:36:05.943-07:00Maneuvering thrusters, Mister Sulu<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><object class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://1.gvt0.com/vi/_YZwI8AzJfk/0.jpg" height="315" width="560"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_YZwI8AzJfk&fs=1&source=uds" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_YZwI8AzJfk&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>It seemed appropriate. Plus it's just awesome starship porn.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So, after almost half a year away, I decided to give myself a little Christmas present and buy a couple months' worth of EVE. I'm not sure if I'm going to stick around past that; part of it is because of money, and part of it is because, to be honest, while I'm eager to try out some new things (*cough*Naga*cough*), I don't know if it'll be enough to keep me interested. Plus, one of these days I'd actually like to get past level 15 on Skyrim, and of course there's <i>The Old Republic</i>, which, for its flaws, has managed to work the old Bioware storytellin' magic on me.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So, what will I do when I get back into the pod? That's a good question. When I walked away last, I was in Caldari Provisions, and was stomping my way through L2 missions in either a HAC, a battlecruiser, or a Tengu. While I really do want to try out the Naga - and just the fact that there was apparently some sort of hybrid rebalancing done in Crucible was enough to make me giddy on that - I don't know what my "long-term" (read: what-I-want-to-do-in-three-months) goals are. I'd been kind of mulling possibly checking out w-space, but I also am leery about joining a corp - any corp - when it's more than likely I'll be gone again in a couple months. And God knows, with my luck and relative lack of skills (plus the extreme rust on said skills), trying to go solo pirate in k-space, let alone w-space, would be a quick way to run myself out of money and ships.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Ah, well. We'll see what we shall see.</div>James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-68271479765442485752011-10-13T16:41:00.002-06:002011-10-13T16:43:43.890-06:00Too little, too late.(Yes, I'm still alive. Just not playing, still, thanks to crappy job market.)<BR><BR>So, we have the much-cried-for <a href="http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=2674">supercap nerf</a> happening with the winter expansion (EVE Online: Restitution?) and my take right now is a resounding "meh." I can't point to any one thing. Each individual step is a good one, I think - I'm no expert at capital warfare, I will readily admit. But it seems like it doesn't go far enough.<BR><BR>In my ideal vision of EVE Online and how capital ships "should be," yes, they're powerful, yes, their presence can turn the battle. But they should still be threatened by sufficient subcapital forces (especially and specifically battleships operating in strength), and they should be hard enough to acquire and replace that you're not going to be seeing people out f@*$ing ratting in them. Deploying them should be as much a "political" and "diplomatic" statement as it is a strategic one. When the United States Navy deploys a carrier group to a region, that's a significant move to tell people to calm down and/or that we're ready to back up our allies. When United States Navy carriers start sending their fighters out, that's the hammer being dropped. This is what I would <I>like</I> to see in EVE. Most combat, and again, this is in my mind, should be between fleets of subcapital ships, with the occasional handful of capital and supercapital vessels. It shouldn't just be "HERP DERP SUPERCAP BLOB HOTROP LOL."<BR><BR>Granted, I would rather see combat where tactics and strategy win out against pure blob warfare (yes, I know it can, but that's really really rare - most battles, especially in nullsec, just devolve to blob-on-blob). And I freely admit that I severely doubt that we'll see any sort of combat like this in EVE ever - I just don't think that the game could support what I would like.<BR><BR>But making it so alliances don't just throw supercaps at every single problem? That's doable. That should be CCP's goal in the long term, insofar as rebalancing capital and supercapital ships, especially if they want to give small alliances a chance to break into nullsec as something other than a renter-pet or a pubbie. I just don't think they're willing to go far enough.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-27505261162753680852011-07-22T00:29:00.000-06:002011-07-22T00:29:26.564-06:00Not a collector, really...So, pre-orders for The Old Republic are up. I haven't preordered mine, mostly because I'm broke as hell - short version: Michigan job market sucks and I don't have the money to move.<br /><br />I'm interested in the game, don't get me wrong, and if nothing else I plan on putting it at the top of my Christmas list this year, if I don't take my PS3, which I never use anymore, honestly, in to GameStop and hopefully cover a pre-order for TOR. Not planning on getting the Collector's Edition, honestly, and I'll tell you why.<br /><br />Collectors' editions are getting more and more gimmicky. Halo Reach is a perfect example. I dropped the extra... $30? $40?... however-many bucks to get the Legendary Edition as opposed to the Heroic. The Noble Team statue is kind of cool, but honestly it sits on top of a cabinet in the corner of my room. I barely even look at it. I get more enjoyment out of Halsey's journal, mostly because I'm a sucker for backstory in any game.<br /><br />The Collector's Edition for TOR has the same issue. The Darth Malgus statue would end up shoved off in a corner and barely noticed afterwards. The authenticator... meh. I've never had a problem with account security for any of my games, so maybe I don't see the need. I understand the logic of offering it, though.<br /><br />The rest of the stuff in the Collector's Edition is interesting, and I'd be lying through my teeth if I didn't say I'd probably end up stealing them - at least temporarily - from my brother's copy of the Collector's Edition, especially to copy the soundtrack to my own computer and iPod. But since I can get access to that stuff anyway, without forking over the extra $90 bucks for the Collector's Edition....<br /><br />Of course, the problem with getting rid of my PS3 is that then I won't be able to beta test DUST 514 when it comes out. So there's a dilemma there...<br /><br />Anyway, that's my babble on the subject. You may now continue scrolling through your reader software of choice, assuming you stopped at all to read my drivel.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-88020141747471332822011-06-26T19:46:00.001-06:002011-06-26T19:47:25.635-06:00Stole the words from my mouth.So, as you all are undoubtedly aware by now, CCP Zulu posted a <a href="http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=934">much more agreeable dev blog</a> today.<br /><br />To be fair to the man, yeah, there's got to be a bit of an internal hunt going on to find out who leaked that "Fearless" issue, and who forwarded out the Hilmar email. But CCP is going to sit down with the CSM next week to cover their plans for Aurum and the Noble Exchange in more detail.<br /><br /><b>For the love of God, CCP, make sure that the CSM isn't gagged by NDAs to where they can't tell us stuff.</b> I know you don't want your business plans leaked all over the Internet. I'm cool with that. But at the same time, bringing in the CSM, who are your link to us <i>and our link to you</I>, and then not letting them communicate with us will not help your situation. In fact, it will pretty much be the final straw for a lot of folks in your credibility, and in that of the CSM as the players' voice. You already have too many players who think it's just a PR stunt, that you bring them up to Iceland every few months, wine them and dine them, dazzle them with shinies, and then ignore everything they have to say. I don't think that's true, and I hope you don't either. But I digress.<br /><br />Also in this latest dev blog, Zulu said, and I quote:<br /><br /><blockquote>However, just to prove the point of the Fearless newsletter and give you a further understanding of what it is then there are no and never have been plans to sell "gold ammo" for Aurum. In Fearless people are arguing a point, which doesn't even have to be their view, they are debating an issue. This is another example of how information out of context is no information at all.</BLOCKQUOTE><br />I vaguely suspected something like this would happen, and my only complaint here is that it shouldn't have taken three days to get this message out. As has been pointed out elsewhere (I can't find the post, if someone knows what I'm talking about and can provide me the link I will be more than happy to edit it in here), you cannot be reactive to things like this. You must plan ahead and have ideas of what to do when a situation like this happens. As soon as EveNews 24 posted their version of "Fearless" you should have had someone basically send them that paragraph I just quoted so that they would have your side of the story, and all of this hue and cry - well, at least some of it - would have been avoided.<br /><br />Anyway, I also wanted to touch on this post from player "michael boltonIII". The full thread can be found <a HREF="http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1540455&page=1">here</A> but I wanted to give his post some extra screen time, as it were.<br /><br /><blockquote>Some of you may know me as the ****** from the Alliance Tournament, but in my spare time I'm a diplomat for Test Alliance Please Ignore.<br /><br />In the past week I've seen the forums go to hell in a hand-basket, and I think that maybe the mob mentality has gone a little overboard. People are demanding the total removal of Incarna and a ban on even Vanity Micro-transactions. This **** has got to stop.<br /><br />What CCP should do:<br />1. Reinstate the old hangar as the view for those who have turned off Captains Quarters. The new system makes traditional fitting, especially for capital pilots, more difficult.<br /><br />2. Ensure that Incarna works with an acceptable range of modern graphics cards, and does not launch with graphics cards that will be damaged by it.<br /><br />3. Add some lower priced Items to the NeX store. $60 monocles are fine, as long as you provide a lower price option. There is just as much a market for plastic Mickey Mouse watches as there is for Rolex watches.<br /><br />4. CCP has already promised that there will be “no-gold ammo” so the pay-to win front has been covered<br /><br />That's all that CCP really needs to do, only one of those items is truly difficult to deal with, and I'm sure they've already got a team working on it<br /><br />Now for all you wonderful protesting pubbies out there,<br /><br />Here's what all you protesters need to do/realize:<br /><br />1. CCP is a business, they are a corporate entity designed to earn capital that they can then use to create more capital earning ventures. CCP's product is fun, to many people fun is flying around PVP'ing or mining, and to others fun is collecting unique ships and now dressing up their character. If they have an option to make more money, while providing something that a group of people find fun, they'll ****ing do it. Nobody is forcing you to give them more money than your subscription fee.<br /><br />2. You can already pay to win. Any person with real life wealth, can purchase plex and then use the isk from those plex to buy a super capital pilot off the Character Bazaar and A brand new Avatar with all the fittings. He can do this on his very first day in EVE. The Plex<->Isk link cuts down on RMT and makes it so that a large percentage of EVE players don't pay a dime to subscribe, but inherent in that idea is that you can “Pay2Win”<br /><br />3. All your canceled accounts, aren't really gone. In protest a large group of EVE players have “canceled their account”, but in reality all they have done is to turn of the Auto-repeat on their account charges. You're all still playing. If you really want to make a statement, then send me all of your assets and delete your actual characters, then I'll believe you as I fire-sale all your **** on the market.<br /><br />4. CCP actually gives a **** about this game, they're trying to make it viable both financially and gameplay wise for the foreseeable future. That means having new ways to make money, new ways for people to play, and new ways to attract more customers. The downside of this is that not everything they do will be to make you happy. If all of 0.0 decided to protest in Jita every time something we wanted got passed over for some change to highsec, you would all be getting smartbombed ALL THE TIME. Aside from those people who's graphics cards were damaged or who couldn't run Incarna, how many of you have been truly negatively impacted by this new expansion, I bet the number is only a fraction of the actual protesters.<br /><br />I may only be a fresh faced 21 year-old, but after reading a large percentage of the posts in these massive threadnaughts, I feel like I'm in the top 10% of mature EVE players. That is a ****ing scary thought, considering that I am borderline ******ed. The CSM is getting pulled in for an emergency meeting, and will hear exactly the same things I heard while at CCP, and all their nerd apprehension will be assuaged.<br /><br />TL;DR-The sky isn't falling, CCP gets the message, shut the **** up you sheeple pubbies. Also, we should eat our young</blockquote><br />Now, about the only thing here I would disagree with is his assertion that ISK generated from PLEX sales is the same thing as Aurum. It's not. Granted, I am talking theoretically here, but part of the concern wasn't "pay-to-win" so much as the damage that items bought from the Noble Exchange would do to the market.<br /><br />Let's say I have a time code. I redeem it for PLEX in game, and then turn around and sell those in Jita. Yes, now I have 700-800 million more ISK, that I can turn around and, say, use to buy and outfit a Tengu.<br /><br />In a general sense, yes, I just used real-world money to get a new, very expensive ship. But that Tengu, in all likelihood, has had the virtual fingers of who knows how many dozens of people on it in the construction of it and the subsystems, modules, and charges. Miners, mission runners, haulers, manufacturers - the list could literally be dozens of people.<br /><br />In an alternate universe, I take the PLEX from the time code, redeem them for Aurum, and then magically I have a new Tengu in my hangar. Nobody built it. Nobody hauled parts for it. Nobody mined minerals for it. It's just there. More clicks, and Noble Store elves deliver the parts I need - functionally identical, no way to distinguish them from what the other me bought with ISK, but still, they're just appearing. And if I can do that with a ship that can easily head towards a billion credits in cost, why not capital ships? I bet nullsec alliances would love to cut out the manufacturing steps in maintaining their capital blobs.<br /><br />Hopefully that cleared up my feelings on the matter.<br /><br />Overall, I think a lot of folks at CCP want to do the right thing, and maintain the sandbox universe we all know and love. Lord knows they don't want to lose thousands of subscribers - near on 5,000 last I checked - to other games, such as Perpetuum.<br /><br />I just hope those CCPers are the ones guiding EVE's development, not just Johnny Codemonkey sitting at a desk and plugging in numbers.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-35813177440561802832011-06-24T15:28:00.000-06:002011-06-24T15:28:09.794-06:00Hey, Jon Stewart, do you have a message for CCP?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://thumbnails.truveo.com/0006/7B/EC/7BEC22F4283C15A1D5A3C4_Large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://thumbnails.truveo.com/0006/7B/EC/7BEC22F4283C15A1D5A3C4_Large.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />God. I want to help, CCP, I really do. But unless you're willing to bring me to Iceland, give me the access I need to your people to sit down and talk with them, and, oh yeah, pay my room and board (since I'm broke and all), it's not happening. (And if you were willing to do so, then why aren't you doing it for Mittens and the rest of the CSM?! That's what they're for, not some geek with too much time on his hands and a blog that a dozen or so people read!)<br /><br />I wasn't holding out a lot of hope as it was. But I figured that it wasn't hard to sit down, have a guy type out something along the lines of "Fearless is a tool for a discussion, we assign topics for people to discuss, there is not any intention to bring non-cosmetic items to the Noble Store, things that will be added to the Noble Store will cover a greater range of prices than just the few things we have now."<br /><br />And then CCP Zulu posted <A HREF="http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=932">this dev blog</A>. And it's worse than I feared.<br /><br />The ONLY good point to come from it was that there would be a greater range of priced stuff on the NEX. But your logic on where those prices go still sucks. Items that cost more than $5 do not qualify as micro-transactions.<br /><br />But that's a debate for another time, and since it seems that you've already decided what direction you're going with, I won't try and fight that battle. Like a lot of folks, I don't really care about vanity micro-transactions (or macro-transactions, or mega-transactions, or whatever clever name the community has for them now).<br /><br />What we wanted was a clear message from CCP: "Regardless of what it said in our internal discussion memo, we have NO PLANS to introduce non-vanity items to the Noble Store."<br /><br />That's all. Heck, have someone throw that out on their Twitter while they're sitting on the toilet, possibly adding "More details to follow in dev blog soonish." I don't think that would magically cause us all to settle down, but things would be a damn sight more peaceful than they are now; 200-page threadnaughts and internet spaceship riots clogging up major trade hubs.<br /><br />Mark my words, CCP (assuming any of you read this). We had the Summer of Rage last year with the "18 months" fiasco; this is the Tech 2 version. Unless you handle this clearly, effectively, and openly, this is the end of EVE as we know it, and in more ways than one. You will lose major portions of your player base, and God alone knows how that will impact development of EVE, DUST, and WoD.<br /><br />Good luck. You're going to need it.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-10368560217928638622011-06-24T09:04:00.000-06:002011-06-24T09:04:03.042-06:00I felt a great disturbance in the Force...<CENTER><IMG SRC="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2517/3795244957_5b1c7344a4_o.jpg"><br /><I>...as if a million subscriptions suddenly cried out in terror,<br />and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.</I></CENTER><br /><br />First off, and in no particular order, read <A HREF="http://meissaanunthiel.blogspot.com/2011/06/recent-ccp-fuck-ups.html">this</A> from Meissa Anunthiel, <A HREF="http://eve.beyondreality.se/NeXCQResponse.html">this</A> from Tippia, <A HREF="http://seleenes-sandbox.blogspot.com/2011/06/good-morning-ccp.html">this</A> from Seleene, and <A HREF="http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1536065&page=108#3217">this</A> from Dierdra Vaal. I would imagine a lot of you have already read those, but just in case you haven't, we'll wait for you.<br /><br />...<br /><br />Back? Okay then.<br /><br />CCP, I'm going to say this as gently as I possibly can right now. <B>You done fucked up, son.</B> I give full props to CCP Pann for actually being willing to take one for the team and be the first one to step into the line of fire this week. Heck, I even respect her for owning up to her decision to not make an immediate response to the community. I'm not angry that the decision was made - waiting and seeing what happens can be a legitimate strategy at times, and it takes a good bit of intestinal fortitude to go into a community that's as riled as the EVE community is right now and admit that the decision was a mistake.<br /><br />But you still don't get it. Yes, there's annoyance at the technical aspects of Captain's Closet. Yes, people want ship spinning back. Yes, people are angry that you've apparently misunderstood how microtransactions work in the first place.<br /><br /><CENTER><IMG SRC="http://www.gnorb.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/morbo.jpg"><br /><I>Obligatory image of Morbo from Futurama.<br />(Mostly to try and keep things at least somewhat lighthearted.)</I></CENTER><br /><br />But that's not the main source of FORUM/TWITTER/BLOG RAGE right now. It's that issue of "Fearless" that got leaked.<br /><br />Most of us, I assume, have gotten their hands on the full version of this particular issue of "Fearless." If not, I have helpfully <a href='http://www.mediafire.com/?6d3wvjq06y3odwo'>re-uploaded it</a>. And right there on the first page, it says, and I quote, "The views put forward in this magazine do not reflect general CCP company policies or decisions and are strictly individual opinions, written by CCPers or about CCPers who feel strongly about these issues."<br /><br />But here's where you done goofed. Even though you never intended to have the rest of the world see this document, you are openly discussing the pros, cons, and possibilities of <STRIKE>micro</STRIKE> macro-transactions for non-vanity items... <B>AFTER YOU SAID THAT YOU WOULD BE DOING NO SUCH THING.</B><br /><br />And now you're wondering why the community is up in arms.<br /><br />Honestly, right now, what you need to do is have someone - Hilmar himself would be a good choice - do a dev blog, or better a dev video blog - and explain that the newsletter's articles were written before you made the decision to shelve all plans for non-vanity micro-transactions, you still have no intent to do so for EVE (micro-transactions in DUST 514 - and I mean actual micro-transactions, not the sort of stuff we have now! - you have more wiggle room on, since, insofar as I can tell, there are no plans to have a subscription fee for DUST), and to apologize for the confusion and anger the release of the document has spawned in the community.<br /><br />I could also suggest spawning a free PLEX on every account as a way to show that apology would be nice (and would probably also help to depress PLEX prices), but I admit that's pretty unlikely. It would be a nice gesture, but still.<br /><br />You've well and truly shot yourselves in the foot, CCP, if not in a much more vital area. I'm not unsubbing - my account is, if memory serves, paid up through September - and at this point I still plan to see if I can afford to renew my subscription at that point. But you're bleeding players, and if it's not an arterial wound, it's also not a paper cut.<br /><br />You need to do something to renew our faith, or this game that we all love will go out with a whimper. And you need to do it soon.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-82296246134216328692011-06-22T13:19:00.001-06:002011-06-22T13:20:15.295-06:00Getting sucked back inYeah, yeah, I know. This is why I specifically said a while back "no, you can not has my stuff."<br /><br />Anyway, Incarna. This initial rollout is impressive, and yet unimpressive. It's impressive in that it is, in my opinion, the biggest overall change to how the game can be played since the introduction of capital ships. (Not that I was around then, but you get my point.) The actual ability to walk around and see fellow players in something other than starships is frickin' huge. Moreover, visually, it's impressive; EVE continues to set the bar for graphics in an MMO. Pure and simple. And the new agent finder is just frickin' awesome.<br /><br /><center><a HREF="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zG7lKXvljmQ/TgI-83gP8HI/AAAAAAAAAIY/a-7ZfpdoC3k/s1600/2011.06.22.08.46.58.jpg"><img border="0" height="243" width="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zG7lKXvljmQ/TgI-83gP8HI/AAAAAAAAAIY/a-7ZfpdoC3k/s320/2011.06.22.08.46.58.jpg"></A><br /><i>Obligatory character in quarters shot is obligatory.<br />Click to embiggen.</i></center><br /><br />But there are also the unimpressive bits. The door that leads to the rest of the station is locked. Every station uses Minmatar quarters, and as yet, there's no customization for those quarters. I know racial quarters are coming Soon(TM), and I would imagine that, eventually, there may be a way to customize your quarters, at least in terms of decorations. But the fact that it's still just me, in the same tiny room, with a couch, a bed, and no (visible) bathroom... yeah. I'll get more excited when I can go out and see folks. And I've already said that I'll see about organizing a <a href="http://twitter.com/00sage00/tweetfleet">TweetFleet</a> Incarna Meet & Greet & Roam once we have the opportunity to do so.<br /><br />And then there's the fails, and honestly, I lay both of them at the feet of CCP's BizDev team.<br /><br /><b>Fail #1: NEX store pricing.</b><br /><br />One theory I've seen for NEX store pricing, and it's the one that I think makes most sense, is that those prices are there to prevent PLEX prices from skyrocketing. Guess what, guys - literally as soon as you announced the whole "PLEX for Aurum" scheme, PLEX prices shot up somewhere between fifty to a hundred million ISK. I'm not sure they're not done spiking, because with this kind of demand on PLEX, people will jack up their sell order prices. Period. Do what you did with the licensing idea, and say that they were draft prices that you intended all along to adjust as the market reacted, and drop them by half, at least. Especially since for the foreseeable future, the buyer will be the only one to see them, and they get lost as soon as you get podded. (And I thought we were nekkid in those pods, anyhow!) And speaking of the licensing thing...<br /><br /><b>Fail #2: Forcing people to pay $99 a year for API usage.</b><br /><br />(Yes, I know I'm late to the party on this one.)<br /><br />I get it, honestly. It costs you money to run and maintain the API, and even though some argue that that cost should be covered by our subscriptions, you also need to provide legal protection so that someone else isn't making money off of your hard work without you getting a fair share. That's perfectly understandable. But... seriously? Any public sites have to pay the fee? Anyone who gets real-world money or ISK for a service has to pay that fee? That's where the logic kind of runs out of steam.<br /><br />I know, you already said it was a draft of the general ideas you were looking at, nothing's been finalized, <i>et cetera</i>. Personally, I'd only charge if someone was charging real money for a service or product - such as a paid version of a smartphone app, or the like. Folks that have ad exchanges on their blogs or sites... honestly, that'd be a case-by-case thing. Corps, for example, probably do that only to defray server costs if their members don't cover it out of pocket. But if, for example, I put ads on this blog, which I have at no cost to me, then I might see the argument. Folks who provide in-game services (merc corps, for example) or free-but-accepting-ISK-donations-ware like EFT? Leave them alone.<br /><br />Anyway... I'm still stuck in Caldari Provisions, and on some levels it's relaxing not to have to worry about reds/neuts swanning through, plus the other stress points of living in nullsec. It's also boring, since I'm reduced to running L1 missions that I can almost just faceroll, but that problem should (eventually) fix itself. My budget, for now, is essentially nil, so I don't know if I'll be able to resub come my account expiration date (early September, IIRC) so we'll see how long this lasts.<br /><br /><hr><br />Also, just randomly, I stumbled over this image online and I had to share.<br /><br /><center><img SRC="http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/7359/doctorbatman.jpg"><br /><i>The Doctor is the Batman. This explains SO MUCH.</I></CENTER>James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-50767389395562227682011-06-07T09:21:00.000-06:002011-06-07T09:21:32.472-06:00This may not end well.(Hah, and here I thought that leaving EVE would lead to me not blogging anymore. Shoulda known.)<br /><br />First off, <a href="http://rocwieler.com/2011/06/07/ooc-oh-for-dusts-sake/">go read Roc's post about DUST 514 being a PS3 exclusive</a>. I agree with <I>most</I> of what he said, and the points raised in the comments. About the only thing I didn't agree with is his position on Blu-ray being a non-starter; the only reason my family has a Netflix subscription at this point is because it was a Christmas gift last year. Sure, it's handy, but I don't think it will replace having physical media for a long time, especially when <a href="http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20110525">the quality is so dependent on your local network connection</a>.<br /><br />But there's one other thing that's been bugging me about making DUST 514 a console exclusive, and I don't know if this has even crossed the rabbity little things that CCP's collective brains tend to be: <B>Console audiences are nowhere near as permanent as PC audiences.</B><br /><br />Granted, this is just my point of view, and given that I'm not any sort of expert on the gaming industry, everything I say is pure conjecture. But bear with me.<br /><br />Being a fairly ecumenical gamer - I have an Xbox 360 and a PS3 sitting next to me at this very moment - I have no issues with this being on any console. In point of fact, for FPS games, I prefer a controller to a mouse-and-keyboard setup. And the points you and others bring up are well-taken. But in this day and age of being able to just wander out to the closest Gamestop or wherever, and trade in old games for credit towards new, any console game has a limited shelf life, and CCP doesn't seem to understand that, especially since they've said (if memory serves) that they want to tie DUST 514 into EVE's sovereignty game.<br /><br />Console gamers - and to a lesser extent, PC gamers - have a tendency to be distracted by the shiny. I would guarantee that there are few folks out there that, for example, maintain a collection of every year's release of [insert sport game title of choice here], and, after a while of not playing a game, console gamers - myself included - tend to trade those old games in for new ones. There are exceptions - I have all six Halo games, for example - but by and large, after a year or so, most console gamers will trade in their old games for the new must-have game of the year. If they didn't, Gamestop's trade-in service wouldn't meet with such resistance from <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20022957-17.html">certain publishers who want to eliminate the secondary game sales market</a>.<br /><br />So while, overall, I'm not unhappy with the decision by CCP to make DUST 514 a PS3 exclusive - especially given the hardware and third-party-network points raised by <a href="http://rocwieler.com/2011/06/07/ooc-oh-for-dusts-sake/">Roc and his readers</a> - I don't think CCP has thought things through to their conclusion. I don't think we'll see a period where everybody can get their hands on DUSTies and then suddenly they all disappear, I think that, after a while, they'll get more and more scarce, and if you can't take sovereignty in a system without ground troops, you'll see nullsec wars go from full-scale combat to simple roams looking for "good fights" and the borders of various alliances becoming <I>almost</I>, but not quite, as static as the borders in Empire space. After that... well, either we'll see some more EVE players start picking up controllers, or we'll see DUST combat becoming secondary to the sov game, or we may see DUST getting ported to the PC.<br /><br />Either way, the next year or so is going to be interesting.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7601812139969344935.post-42454964162990671272011-05-09T19:18:00.000-06:002011-05-09T19:18:22.295-06:00So, this is goodbye.<CENTER><IMG SRC="http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lijavjVenD1qegd29o1_500.jpg"></CENTER><br /><br />Well, probably.<br /><br />Those of you that remember some of my previous posts will read this and say "You're still here?" But it didn't really hit home until I was flipping through the latest issue of EON, which hit my mailbox today, that I was really going to do it. Come August 12, 2011, I will allow my subscription to EVE Online lapse. About the only thing that I might log in for, if I'm still around when it happens (I think I will be) is the deployment of Incarna, but past that... I just don't have anything to do to log in for, besides maybe skill training. And if I'm going to let my account lapse, I don't see much of a point of keeping skills training.<br /><br />It's probably mostly my fault. After Primary. started getting out of the nullsec game, which wasn't something I wanted to do, I had nowhere to go. I briefly joined EUNI - and then promptly went inactive again, getting kicked out. And so far, none of the corps I've seen have been that interesting (renters, carebears, missioners) or would turn me down (pretty much all the big sov-space alliances) for one reason or another (no experience as anything but a shooter, don't have skills in non-Caldari ships). So my motivation to log in has gone from "little to none" to just plain "none." And then earlier, I was reading EON - specifically, I think it was <A HREF="http://rocwieler.com/">Colonel Wieler</A>'s writeup on FanFest 2011, and as I realized that it was an awesome thing that I'd probably never make it to, my mind segued into "same thing with just about anything cool in EVE." I guess, subconsciously, I'd made the decision, and unless something happens to pull me back into EVE (unlikely), I'm going to just quietly pull my stakes and wander off.<br /><br />I haven't decided what this means for the blog. Obviously, it's going to be dropped from the EVE Blogroll and OMPL, and in all probability CCP's going to drop me from their fansite listing (unless that's something I have to do myself). And that's all fair - if I'm not writing about EVE anymore, why should I still be listed as such, right? I don't really do much in other MMOs - by and large, I suck and fail at the social aspect of games and usually end up just killing stuff on my own, rather than finding a team for anything, much less a guild/league/fellowship/supergroup/fleet/insert-synonym-here. So it's entirely likely that, one day, I'll just quietly click the "delete blog" button on Blogger and all will vanish into the mists of time.<br /><br />Regardless, I would like to thank everyone who read the blog (all three of you), the fine folks in the <A HREF="http://twitter.com/#!/saved-search/%23tweetfleet">#TweetFleet</A>, and, obviously, CCP, for creating the sandbox that we all know and love.<br /><br />Good hunting, capsuleers.James Stephenshttps://plus.google.com/118038815537803008599noreply@blogger.com0