Ecliptic Rift

Massively has a good review of the community backlash regarding the CSM. I know I wanted to stay away from this topic, but I at least thought I’d sum up my comments from the article here. For future reference, if any of you hang out on Massively, I’m “Darkdust” over there.

CCP assigns their developers to spend 20% of the time on bug fixes. This does not include design defects, situations in which balance issues and other game decisions come under review. Bugs are situations in which the actual implementation does not match the intended design.

Players may not like the answers they get through the CSM, but clearly the transparency (if not the accountability) has improved. This means a lot, since CCP formed the CSM explicitly as part of the response to the T20 in an attempt to increase transparency.

And I don’t understand the folks that complain that CCP focuses on the “vocal minority” of nullsec and lowsec PVPers. By the end of this year, three of the last four expansions (Apocrypha, Tyrannis (Planetville), and the “invasions” coming in the Winter 2011 expansion) will have had large PVE components. And I’d like to see what constitutes giving attention to lowsec. Just because 0.0 folks speak up more vocally doesn’t mean that’s what the CSM focuses on to the exclusion of all else. Read their minutes and issues and you’ll see that they take a broad view, because they understand that all aspects of EVE need to work for the game to flourish. Ankh had other problems beyond just preferring to engage in PVE, certainly.

EVE isn’t dying. It’s just going through a transition right now, and in the end I believe our “lifestyle” will have improved for it.

PVP-BASIC class posing after the seminar

Don’t you think everybody needs a little more excitement in their lives? Most of us get up in the morning, go to work (or school, in some cases), do whatever we do there, then come home, maybe watch some television, and point our Internet spaceships in various directions for various reasons. EVE players frequently cite PVP as just about the most exciting thing about the game, but lots of us don’t focus on it overly much.

So, with that in mind, I recently attended the AGONY Unleashed PVP-BASIC course.

The goal of PVP-BASIC is to provide you with the basic skills and confidence required to fly as part of a successful PVP gang, as well as being an introduction to combat in 0.0 space. This class is aimed at players who are new to PVP, or with limited PVP experience.

TL;DR: exactly what it says on the tin.

The course divides into two separate session. The first, a seminar including lecture and discussion, covers basics of fitting a frigate and introduction to the modules you’ll need, such as scram / disruptor, web, basics of EWAR, fitting modules, etc. For players who need it (which includes most everybody who hasn’t engaged in fleet PVP before), this also has an intro to proper voice comms, discussion of signature radius, and practicing some basic maneuvers and directional scanning.

If those things sound like areas where you’re weak, then it’s worth taking the class if only to learn how to keep yourself safe. We had lots of discussion about how pirates will find you and how to avoid that, assuming you don’t want them to find you.

I knew most of the seminar material already, but I did pick up a few tricks here and there, and generally found it worthwhile. Having played for several years and PVPed in the past, I expected that. SkrewedUp did a good job with the instruction, besides occasionally getting things confused like sig radius vs explosion radius. That can happen to everyone, especially after a long day of somebody’s day job, and I don’t think it detracted in any significant way from the actual seminar.

I had to leave the roam a bit early due to RL aggro (saw spousal combat scanner probes on my D-scan and warped out of EVE). However, while Caldak seems very knowledgeable, I occasionally had trouble understanding his accent (South African living in Australia). That’s not a criticism, obviously, just noting what did make things difficult in a few occasions. It got more difficult when the scouts had lots of crosstalk over him.

The larger problems in the roam stemmed from the students, I think: not differentiating “align” from “warp” and “hold” from “j^mp”. I know some of that was probably from nervous pilots having never been in nullsec or possibly even a fleet, but it did cause some operational problems. As simple as it sounds, some folks do need even more explanation in the seminar about the difference between those things.

Also, at least twice we had confusion from secondary FCs giving orders that seemed not to mesh with the primary FCs orders (just before docking at the Freeport the second time in the roam, for example). My bad, apparently I keyed my mic a few times. Subsequently, I changed the PTT key to CTRL+ALT to avoid future recurrences.

And students: when they say artillery is preferably to ACs, they mean it!!! Targets melt fast, and you will likely not get a shot off if you’re trying to burn into range first.

I did enjoy it, considered it well worth my time and ISK, and hope to attend future BASIC roams and advanced classes, however. In fact, if I ever run an actual corp again, I’d make it a requirement to attend as soon as possible for new pilots who hadn’t already.

Side note: The roam did eventually have more success.

New pilots frequently mention “getting podded” as one of the risks they fear in lowsec. Losing implants can indeed get very expensive, especially if you’ve got hardwirings in your head.

Fortunately, you can take steps to reduce your risk significantly. Experienced pilots generally already know these, and don’t have any world-altering advice. Keep reading, though, if you worry about this happening to you.

In general, only two circumstances will lead to getting podded and lay completely outside your control: lag and bubbles. Every pilot knows about the former. Latency in system response happens to the best of us, and if it strikes you, then just be sure you have the ISK to update your clone. And if you lose your ship in a bubble, then the enemy has an excellent chance of warp scrambling your pod before you can get away due to the nature of the tactical environment.

However, outside of these two situations, you can normally avoid losing your pod. Let’s say you’ve gotten into a fight and you realize you’re going to lose. The enemy has broken your tank (putting on more damage than you can repair) and you will definitely go down in flames before he does. But he’s got a point on you (“you are unable to warp because you are warp scrambled”) , so you can’t get away.

Understand that, while he has your ship pinned down, he does not have your pod. When he destroys your ship, your pod will initially not have any tackle on it. So before your ship actually explodes — when you’ve already dropped into low armor or structure — select an off-grid celestial (e.g. star, planet, gate, station) and start repeatedly issuing a ‘warp to’ command. At first, of course, this won’t work due to the enemy tackle. But as soon as you end up in your pod, it will have the command in queue. Due to the incredibly high agility of your pod, your pod will warp away instantly. The pod’s very low signature radius also means that the enemy will have great difficulty locking you before you get out of sight.

Don’t wait foolishly at the target celestial, though, because someone may follow you. As soon as you land, warp to a safe spot. If you don’t already have one in that system, start making one while you warp your pod away the first time. Create several spots and bounce around the system while you gather your wits and figure out what to do next. I don’t recommend automatically docking until you can evaluate the situation. Depending on the situation, you might warp to a stargate and leave the system, or you might swap to a new ship in a station (watch out for camps, though), or you might just dock up and wait until they leave.

If you have questions, please post them here, or of course ask your favorite experienced pilot who isn’t me…

I completed my bracket, not according to who I would like to see win (because that would have resulted in something very different), but according to how convincingly the teams performed in the first two rounds. A few of the choices proved incredibly hard, and I daresay that anybody making it past round 3 (and definitely round 4) has an excellent chance. Props to all involved.

Click for a better view

In the final match, Circle-Of-Two will defeat Pandemic Legion. I just don’t believe that a team can win the tournament three years in a row, since so many things have to go right for that to happen.

Here’s hoping for EPIC PEW ALL AROUND!

So who else is filling out their AT VIII brackets? I’ve enjoyed the last two weekends tremendously and can’t wait to see the matchups next weekend.

I should have mine up by Friday. Forget March Madness, June Madness has begun!

I don’t think I’m a carebear. Or perhaps, not completely.

Sure, most of my gameplay has little to do with direct combat PVP. I mostly explore, trade, possibly run some missions, or go about some science & industry (invention, manufacturing, etc.) I don’t seek combat PVP, at least not with my main character, and in fact I believe she has zero kills.

But the majority of that activity I just listed occurs in lowsec and, these days, increasingly in nullsec (usually NPC sovereignty). I don’t complain when I get hit — rewards require risk, and that thrill of danger makes the game fun for me. I make most of my ISK from setting buy orders in lowsec and moving the results to highsec to sell. Rens works great for this. This funds the rest of what I like to do, honestly, and if I didn’t do that, I don’t think I’d really stop much in highsec at all.

The reasons why I don’t PVP much have more to do with meatspace than my desire. I have little kids who need (and deserve) attention, and they don’t quite understand “Daddy’s scouting right now, he can’t come see your new drawing / Lego construction / squirrel face”. And frankly, even if they did, I enjoy that latter stuff even more than I enjoy Internet spaceships. Voice chat (a clear requirement for almost any real combat PVP) also suffers because of the background noise from my household. I don’t like the noise very much, honestly, but it goes with the territory. I don’t get to choose one without the other.

So I don’t call myself a “carebear”. I don’t even call myself a PvE player, because running missions in nullsec while having to evade bubble camps and keep a close eye on the D-scan for combat probes seems to me to have lots of PvP to it. I suppose I could say, at most, that I play with a “non-aggressive” style.

I know that others out there feel the same way: they seek out dangerous situations and accept the risk happily, don’t whine when things don’t go their way, but they don’t specifically look for combat against other players, either.

We should stop accepting the false dichotomy of “PvPer versus carebear”, because EVE doesn’t work that way.

In the Exploration channel the other night, we started to discuss EVE’s complexity and the infamous “learning curve” graph everyone knows so well.

First, let me note that nearly everyone who refers to this graph or talks about a “steep learning curve” actually uses that term totally wrong. A learning curve depicts the rate of knowledge transfer or skill progress, so that if the curve moves upward very rapidly, in fact the learner will acquire new information very rapidly. Conversely, if it takes a long time to learn something such that incremental learning moves very slowly, you have a shallow learning curve. Remember, every time you communicate ineffectively, Oveur kills a kitten.

Part of the issue with EVE lies, not in the difficulty of learning within the environment, but in how much information a new player needs to acquire. I don’t have any hard data on this (bad hacker!) but I suspect that players learn very very quickly, particularly in supportive environments (e.g. player corps that take time to help newbies).

Then a relatively new player stated that only PVP has this sort of complexity in EVE. When I pointed out how ridiculous that sounded, and used the example of trading, someone else said, “what’s so complicated about ‘buy low, sell high‘?”.

If you want to reduce trading to that one maxim, then you might as well describe Minmatar PVP tactics as “hit orbit, F1, and scram.”

In reality, most areas of EVE have levels of complexity and nuance that the uninitiated don’t understand. Large-scale fleet combat looks to me like getting on grid first, calling primaries and secondaries, and hoping like hell you have more guns and RR than the other side. I don’t doubt in the slightest, though, that I just grossly oversimplified it, mostly because I’ve yet to participate in that scale of fleet combat.

So the player next to you in Local who does something different than you? Sure, he might just be a total n00bbear, but he also might have glimpsed a level of intricacy you didn’t even know existed.

CrazyKinux asks a very good question:

Whether you’ve logged into the game every day since its launch in 2003, or you’ve taken one or several sabbaticals from your capsuleer career, you’ve always come back to New Eden don’t you. Why is that?

We know the EVE Online Community is unique in so many ways, and that EVE Online is like no other MMORPG out there. But what makes the game special for you?

What is it that makes this particular virtual world so enticing, so mysterious and so alluring that we keep coming back for more. Why is EVE one of the very few MMOs to see a continuous growth in its subscriber.

To put it simply: Why do you love EVE Online so much?

I don’t have one single, simple answer. So I thought I’d try something new, because New Eden is just awesome.

New Eden is just awesome


I love the wormholes
I love our avatars
I love the scammers
I love the epic arcs

I love our spaceships
And all the ways we fly

Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da

I love Syndicate
I love cloaky ships
I love Metropolis
I love those sensor scripts

I love the forums
And all our flaming threads

Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da

I love space opera
I love post-cyberpunk
I love PVP
I love to salvage junk

I love New Eden
It’s such an awesome place

Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da


NB: I had most of this written prior to Helicity’s rant. And I generally with much of that rant, actually, but after further reflection I realized it went too far and I needed to respond. Other worthwhile posts include those from Black Claw, Kirith Kodachi, Kant Lavar, and Luccul.

For all the talk about “carebears” in one direction, and “pirate Nazis” or whatever in the other direction, these folks really miss one of the core points about EVE: playstyle diversity.

Pirates and other PVPers need the folks they call “carebears“. Who else will produce their ships and modules and ammo and drones? Who else will buy the loot they pick up from their enemies’ wrecks so that they have ISK for new equipment and other fees?

And the real “carebears” — not just non-combat players, but those who express total moral outrage at not being left alone — need the PVPers. Who else will buy their stuff in significant quantities, or create demand by destroying other people’s stuff (that will then need replacement)? Yes, individuals might take a loss due to ganks or gate camps, but a bit of care can avoid most of that. And at any rate, we still make profits over time. Rewards require risk, after all. (Related to this, not all non-combat players actually count as carebears.)

Look, this should all be really obvious to everyone. But evidently it’s not, whether due to willful ignorance or an inability to play well with others (meaning sometimes you have to lose graciously).

We can’t all get along in-game, because that would get boring. In fact, we really shouldn’t: EVE revolves around competition in various guises. But can’t we all get along out of game?

This patch needs a closer look.

I’ve taken several days off of EVE Online to enjoy some time with my family and loved ones (plus, oddly, a lot of work). However, CCP have released the Dominion patch notes so I thought I’d take a few moments to review some welcome surprises (and reminders) found within! In general, this post will address little bits of the expansion that haven’t already received lots of attention, so no talk about sovereignty and factional ships and such.

And post a comment about your favorite bits!

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