Best use of duct tape ever

King of Vert

Here she is, in all her glory. Ain't it awesome to have friends with BPOs and 8 large AC's stashed away for just this occasion? Now to find a way to put all this to the test... Oh, and she should be joined by her other Tier 3 sisters soon >:)

Fly large

o7

The morning after

What an evening of Patch Day that was! I spent pretty much all day yesterday thinking about the expansion I would have to download, and all I had to satisfy my urge to play EVE was the blogs that I could read and a text copy of the patch notes. I had done a little testing on Singularity but very little, but only just enough to find out that the Tornado met and even exceeded my expectations. I had only seen the new nebulas around 6-something in Syndicate (whatever happened to FD-MLJ anyway?) and I hadn't even tried the engine trails. Yes, my gaming time sucks these days!

Yesterday I got to leave work a bit earlier; not because of EVE but the timing couldn't have been better. Got home, put supper into the oven, start downloading and hit the EVE-O forums. Ah the forums... this place has more trolls than the entire army of Mordor! "Waaaa new font!". "Waaaa Naga doesn't shoot missiles!". "Waaaa you broke cloaking!". "Waaaa you broke interdictors!". Trolls: please do not feed them, or if you do make sure the food is heavily spiced :)) But I knew that what little I had seen on Sisi and what I had read about in the patch notes was more than satisfying to me. But once I was finally able to log in the tune changed quite drastically as everybody I had in my various channels was singing the praises of this new EVE. For the first time in as long as some of the oldest players could remember, CCP had finally hit a resounding homerun. The only scratch on Crucible's paint would be the missing fuel block BPO's but this should be fixed soon. And for what I think is the first time ever, nothing that was working was badly broken. If there is it's not something that affects me. Haleluia to that!

So my first impressions on a few things:

The engine trails: having not really seen them on Sisi, I never thought I would like them so much. You see, the majority of the time whether it's for PvE or PvP I play with my camera view zoomed way out. It was one of the reasons why I felt the new turrets didn't excite me much. So with my ship being only a few dark pixels in the middle of my screen sometimes it was hard to see where I was in space in relation to other stuff, but now with the trails manual flying has become tons of fun. I spent almost 15 minutes doing "aerobatics" in my Malediction, giggling like a 10 year old boy! It's only a little thing, but damn is it good!

Auto-jump, auto-dock, loot all, etc: CCP Soundwave, you and Team BFF clearly deserve a medal, a bigger Xmas bonus, a holiday, or all of the above! I have always complained about the tediousness of playing EVE, but by making things easier to manage more time can be spent on more important things. As always, there is still the danger of misusing the auto-pilot, and I simply can't wait to read reports of haulers killed within spitting distance of the Jita undock with ungodly amounts of loot. But I'm sure someone heard my prayers of having the fitting browser and the market interact together seemlessly; in case you didn't know (I found out this morning before leaving for work), you can now drag a saved fit to the market window, and this will create a group from which one can buy the needed modules. It's not the 1-button "buy all" I had suggested but it's a step in the right direction. Less time spent buying and fitting means more time out in space. Awesome!

Nebulas, warp tunnel, ship textures, etc: space started to look better (to me at least) around Apocrypha, and then a bit better in Tyrannis. But now, it's simply breathtaking. I'll have to take a long roam to appreciate the differences between systems, constellations and regions, something that will happen this weekend. I read that Letrange found the region jumps to be a bit jarring, but previously you would have a few jumps were you'd go from blue nebulas to red nebulas in the same constellation. I also liked the much cleaner scanning view. The warping effect though... this has never looked this good! Warping to a star or through a planet is something worth seeing! Not dealing with cap ships these days I will be a while before I see the new cyno effect but from what I've seen in videos it must be great to see in-game. I was really impressed with the new ship textures; they make some truly horrible looking ships (ie: Caldari) better to look at, and some ships that were already nice looking really spiff. I was surprised by one ship that wasn't mentioned in the changes, at least that I know of: the Firetail's new dark brown paint job makes it look A LOT meaner :)

And that's about all the time I had for yesterday. I did give quick spin to one of my Taranii by killing a few Angel rats. Hitting for 200+ while afterburning at 1300 m/s is great, but for a real test I'll have to go up against capsuleer-flown ships, both in consensual PvP and in Surprise ClownSeks. You may have noticed I haven't talked about the new battlecruisers. I'm just not one of those rich tards willing to spend 200+ million ISK to be one of the first to own a new T1 ship. I'll let the dust settle a bit and when my T2 large lasers are ready I'll probably buy all 4 at once. I already have BC V so I should have fun :)

And there you go! For the first time since I started playing the game in January 2008 I REALLY want to play EVE, and talk about it, and try to get people to try it, and maybe even get some Bitter Old Vets to come back. Is Crucible good enough to bring back someone like Teadaze? Is it good enough to make a certain Virginia resident regret her decision to give away her well-known character? I can see where these two can be bitter as they spilled blood, sweat and tears over this game at a time when the developers were... what's the term... misguided? But I'm pretty sure that if they came back strictly for the game itself, they would like the brand new New Eden that was delivered to us. I can't wait to have some good quality play time :))

Fly. That's it. Just fly!

o7

Suddenly, the end of Incarna

After surviving some of the worst birth pangs ever suffered by an MMO game since the infamous Star Wars Galaxies NGE debacle (and we all know how well that went), EVE Online's Incarna will now be put to rest. And it will go down as the worst expansion in the game's 8 year history. When a game expansion incites masses to riot, unsubscribe and even quit entirely, something's way wrong. But all this can be left behind now, and we the playerbase can only hope that CCP learned from its numerous mistakes and make good on its promises to make things alright once more.

As I'm writing this in 24 hours people will be making preparations for the massive update that if all goes according to plan will be a major boost for the game. Capital ships will work quite differently (though I believe that still a lot of work needs to be done; supercaps have no business whatsoever in Low-sec for instance), a new class of ships will be born, loads of T2 modules will be appearing, and hopefully hybrid guns will finally work as intended, much to the joy of Gallente and Caldari pilots, and some perfectly skilled Taranis pilots :)

Here's a short list of the things that I'm looking forward to the most:

The new battlecruisers: when I started playing EVE I had asked my friend Letrange what would be a ship that would fit my style of piloting, which is fly fast, hit hard, and GTFO with none the wiser; tank is superfluous. His immediate answer was Vagabond without hesitation, but now I should have a new and cheaper option in the form of the Tornado. It's faster than the Hurricane and the big guns hurt; just make sure you don't let an interceptor, assault frig, or even a lowly Rifter get too close. I have yet to try the Talos, Naga and Oracle; Cozmik just got the ability to fit large T2 blasters, but no T2 railguns yet. And my large lazorz are only trained to a token level III so no T2 guns for a few weeks for the Oracle... just in time for Christmas I'd say. But I really liked what I saw with the Tornado; an AC/nano fit is doable, and the gank fit will simply be hilarious!

The new font and scalable UI: gone will be the days of squarish letters and numbers that look the same. How many people have called me "Cozmik RS" instead of "Cozmik R-FIVE", and how many Null-sec systems have been misread. And of course, the option of scalability will make happy eye balls the world over because the tiny font was tiny.

The new POS mechanics: yes you read right, I, Cozmik R5, am happy about the changes coming to Player-Owned Structures. Please don't choke on your coffee! The simplification of the POS mechanics means one thing: a lazy schmuck like me can now operate and refuel a POS without having to calculate tons of different components in precise quantities to make sure everything works for a precise amount of time. Just fill up the thing will fuel pellets and strontium calthrates and all is cool in the universe! Now why would I be so happy about this? First my noob corpmate is more interested in the industrial side of EVE and at some point we will have to set up a tower somewhere. Second, should I go back to W-space I will be able to help whichever corp I'm with better with POS operations. Hell I may even train up POS guns!

Player-owned customs offices: please don't choke on your coffee some more, I'm not about to start doing some PI. Much too lazy for this (yes, even if it's dead easy and maintenance free). Come on... the things are GANKABLE! I haven't see the HP stats on the offices but I can easily imagine myself and a bunch of friends looking fro trouble out in Low-sec and reinforcing offices for this simple reason: because we can!

That's pretty much it for the Crucible expansion as we should see it tomorrow, but there are still a few things that I hope will be on the drawing board for the summer 2012 expansion:

• The fourth bonus on the Assault Ships: overdue much?
• The fifth subsystems for Strategic Cruisers: they said there would be five... we're still waiting.
• T3 frigates: one of the most requested ship, and yet it remains ignored.
• The bounty system: one of the careers I initially thought I'd be able to pursue, bounty hunting as a viable money-making activity cannot work in the current iteration.
• The Global Criminal Countdown: bring this down to 5 minutes. Non negociable.
• Other stuff I can't think about right now: because I'm sure there is!

I know that there is a good chance that "walking in stations" stuff will have to be expanded upon after so much "flying in space" stuff (God I hate segregating EVE like this) but if CCP learned only one thing, and I sincerely hope that they truly learned their lesson, it's that what happens in space cannot be neglected. Ever. To do so is to neglect the reason why a vast majority of the players are playing the game. I'd say maybe bring down the prices in the NeX store to a sane level (to Hell with your 1000$ jeans Arnar!) and add lots, and I mean LOTS of stuff to buy, for those interested in such stuff. And when you actually expand on Incarna, make sure the players get to go places and interact. This has to be done correctly and not rushed the way Incarna was. And obviously not at the cost of further infuriating the player base. CCP survived the 2011 Summer of Rage, but it might not survive more failure of this magnitude.

In the meantime, all that's left to do now is wait for Crucible to be deployed, and hope that fun returns to New Eden. Incarna is over. Good riddance!

Fly hard

o7

Blog Banter #30: CCP's Big Massive Test

It is Banter Time once again, and with the winter expansion just around the corner Seismic Stan from the Freebooted blog (and the most awesome "Fever Dream" mini podcast) has this question for us bloggers to banter about:

"With the Winter expansion possibly being named 'Crucible', it certainly is a melting pot of refinements and tweaks aimed at making the EVE experience smoother and more wholesome. If the developers suddenly found themselves some spare resources and approached you for an additional feature to include before release, what single concept would you pitch them and how would you implement it?

For bonus points, the one thing lacking from this "patchwork" of iterations is a cohesive storyline to package "The Crucible" together. How could this expansion be marketed to potential new customers?"

Link to Stan's original post here.

I haven't done any serious testing on Sisi lately so I cannot have a well-defined idea of all the changes and new stuff Crucible will bring, but apart from the Tier 3 Battllecruisers of Gankiness the thing that I find makes EVE a better and more comfortable place to spend quality time in is the simplification of some of the mechanics. I can already hear the Bitter-Old-Vet purists crying out loud "Why are you dumbing down EVE?", "EVE is supposed to be hard!", "HTFU!", "WAAAAA!". I have only one thing to tell those BOV's: shut the fuck up. A game that is hard doesn't necessarily mean that every single action one can undertake needs to be a complete pain in the ass. When I saw the image of an open wreck with a little button that said "Loot all" I was elated. Dragging and dropping could only go so far; this is supposed to be a sci-fi simulator, not a computer operating system. The same goes with the new POS fuel system. Having lived in W-space I knew how our little back-water cabin had to be maintained, and I was really happy that someone else was taking care of this. But now it's been simplified so even an impatient schmuck like me could easily set up a tower and maintain it. I dare any of the "EVE has to be hard" crowd to tell me that this is a bad thing.

And there are other things I would like to see that go along the same line of thought. The "Loot all" button is a step in the right direction, but I've been thinking, now that we can save fittings for various ships, wouldn't it be awesome if on the fitting browser there would be another button next to the "Fit to ship" button: "Buy all". This would only buy modules in the station where a ship is docked of course. I'm sure a computer can tell pretty easily what to buy between a mod that is 750k ISK, one that's 1 million, and a dorky sell order at 7.5 million. Computers today can do it, so I cannot see why they couldn't do so in warp drive/cyno jump society. I'm sure the scammers would cry rivers at the loss of scam revenue, but my message to them would be to never underestimate the stupidity of the human race; just read this very blog every Wednesday!

The announcement of the eventual reduction of the session timer was also some good news; so far it should be only from 30 seconds to 20 seconds, but I'm sure they could put it as low as 5 seconds and maybe even remove the timer completely. And do not get me started on the atrocity that is called the Global Criminal Countdown, CCP's way of saying "You did a dastardly deed, well sorry, you cannot play our game. Oh you tried to dock up? You cannot play our game some more." Pathetic.

What I'm getting at is this: anything that slows down the game to the point where you cannot even play (and I'm not even talking about lag here) is something that needs to be looked at closely to smoothen the gaming experience all-around. EVE is hard and complicated enough as it is, there is no need to have mechanics that only feel like jumping through hoops on fire, while you're on roller skates, juggling 5 Rubik's Cubes that you're also trying to solve, while singing the national anthem of 5 countries in their original languages.

I have to add that I'm turning down any bonus points. The changes that are coming were too long coming, and as I understand it this is the "please fix everything" expansion every EVE player has been wanting for over two years. EVE doesn't need another half-finished storyline spin. That's my opinion and everyone is entitled to have my opinion.

Fly dangerous; flying safe means you're not trying hard enough.

o7