tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52218491497349366122024-02-20T20:03:23.986-08:00HonorBroAn Eve Online blog, following the adventures of a solo Capsuleer trying to make connections in New Eden.Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-86096744154296960342017-06-17T11:42:00.000-07:002017-06-28T13:59:48.671-07:00Writing for Eve News24<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Wheeling and dealing in New Eden can be a huge risk. The game encourages people to be shady in their dealings, and you can't always take someone at their word. Ambiguity is king, it allows us to become whatever we want and shed our real personality, but also unlocks the door for people to roleplay a person with shady morals. You have to watch your back out there.<br />
<br />
I occasionally do some artwork for ISK, things like logo design, photoshops, or even physical paintings. In real life I work from home as an artist and it is nice to be able to make in game monies that way as well. Dealing with this ambiguity in a business setting can be difficult and I have been burned before.<br />
<br />
I was recently hired by a corp to redesign their corp logo. It was a big job, and they had an idea of what they wanted that changed a few times during the process, making the job take a few days. At the end I turned over my work, and then a few hours later, my contact dropped corp and became incommunicado. After several days I went to the corp leadership, which claimed they had no idea I was working on such a logo, as I wasn't asked to.<br />
<br />
It's the usual run around. I figured I was out the time and effort on this one and like I always do, I inwardly swore to myself to stop doing irl work for video game people. I felt better after firing off an angry mail to the original contact, and went back to playing.<br />
<br />
Well a couple days later I was contacted by that fellow. He was sorry for going afk but had rl issues that sounded serious. He was under the impression that his corp was going to pay me and so he hadn't worried on it. He settled up right away, it was a nice resolution to a situation that usually doesn't go that way.<br />
<br />
Towards the end of our correspondence he mentioned he was the Editor and Chief of <a href="http://evenews24.com/">EN24</a>, an enduring Eve Online news site, and I casually mentioned I had a blog. Much to my surprise he had read and enjoyed it, and asked if I would be interested in writing for the site. I agreed that I would like that and have for the last few been <a href="http://evenews24.com/author/ishtar-komarovo/">contributing articles and design work to the site</a>. A few things from here are cross-posted there.<br />
<br />
I really do like writing about Eve, almost as much as I enjoy thinking about it, and <i>way </i>more than I enjoy actually playing it. I think a lot of the hurry up and wait is negated by having something like that to do in the background. I started writing my first blog entry because I was bored and plexing in factional warfare, and my last one while I was waiting on a delivery of doctrine ships so I could get into some action. This blog isn't read by too many people (trust me I can see the stats) but writing it serves a personal purpose and so its been worth it. Contributing on a greater scale to the narrative is exciting. I heard a popular streamer reference one of my articles and really enjoyed that. <br />
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I will always write here, but this blog is really more of a journal than it is a news source. I like to post stories about cool moments I have, muse about what-ifs, and complain here, I doubt that will change too much. My stuff over at that other site will be focused more toward all players, while this nonsense here is really just between you and I. If you are reading this, thank you for following me here.Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-6322924479632994992017-06-11T00:11:00.000-07:002017-06-11T00:49:45.482-07:00Emergent Gameplay Gone Right; Exploding a Vendetta<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Well, it went right for me anyway. I can't say as much for the other guy.<br />
<br />
The Alliance is spread out right now across two regions. We fight alongside Brave, Tikle, and others for control of Catch against Pandemic Legion, Northern Coalition, and Goons. We are still maintaining Esoteria as our home for ratting, mining, and production. Most groups in Test have home constellations there, and work there to bring the system indexes up and provide tools for the front in the form of ships, modules, fuel, and thousands of other things needed to bring the pain. <br />
<br />
Being so spread out can be tough on the individual pilot. Keeping a second set of ships at the ready for home defense is expensive and keeping track of which ships to keep where is sometimes confusing. Having a Dread and a Carrier on standby in both arenas requires a particularly baller Pilot.<br />
<br />
I keep my main in the active warzone, and my main alt in our home system. The alt usually sleeps and that is fine. While she can fly a lot of ships, I have always thought of her as a support pilot over an actual combat pilot, and I use her mostly for fleet boosting or logi. She maintains a select stack of doctrine ships in case of emergencies, but has rarely broken into them. So rarely in fact I had almost forgotten they were there.<br />
<br />
I have really been liking living in V-3YG7. We are next door to Brave, and I get to piggyback on a lot of content meant for them. There is a constant stream of both fleets and solo pilots coming our way, and it's really rare in Eve that content comes to you like that. We have a jump bridge from here to HED-GP, and from there its a quick run to the middle of Provi. Its been a bastion of content after quite a dry spell and it has really lifted my spirits about Eve.<br />
<br />
I have this crazy dream to be the best in solo pvp in the universe in an inconsequential ship, winning a race nobody knows they are running as it were. I have been flying a Heron regularly to that end, it's really an excellent and versatile ship and I will no doubt write about it in more detail later. In nullsec, the meta for the Heron is as a cheap exploration frigate, very often used by newer players in this area to crack relic sites for dank Sansha loot. I have never seen another out looking for combat, and I really like to use this assumption to get other players to engage me. I can kill most frigs, dessies, and interceptors, and even a t3d on a good day. Drones and rockets are my hard counter but I find that by the time a lot of players realize it is not an easy explorer kill they are getting and adjust, it is too late.<br />
<br />
It is patch day as I fly around, and the salt is flowing through all faucets of Eve from the forums to every discord I am in. This is the most upset I have ever seen our playerbase, and I am not particularly surprised. This has been brewing for a while now and has all come to a head with a series of splits between the players and the management of CCP games. I am not going to get into the rights and wrongs of events that have transpired, mostly because it's still ongoing and hasn't really resolved itself and there is nothing to write about beyond speculation.<br />
<br />
All this patch nonsense and bad feelings towards Eve had taken its toll on New Eden that Friday night. What is usually an excellent night to get involved in some space violence was somber and lonely. We have lost a few members of our corp over this and the remaining ones are finding something else to play. In our corp, there are only three actually online and playing. I have flown many jumps with only two good fights and one blob to test my Heron against.<br />
<br />
I found that blob within a minute and a half of jumping into Provi through our jump bridge, or they found me rather. I engaged a malediction on the first gate I came to and the rest of his friends jumped through and wrecked me in faction cruisers. My roam only lasted a minute or two, and I was back in V-3 with a jump timer, wondering if I wanted to build another Heron or give in and go do something else, when alliance started popping off spam<span style="font-size: small;"> and the call went out over discord and jabber to get into fleet in our home system of D-PNP9, get into canes and dreads, and take the jump bridge to G-M4GK. I was discouraged that I would miss the fleet due to all this jump fatigue, but then remembered my alt was ready and right where she should be. I got into corp comms in time to hear my ceo Kel say, 'I'll bet they caught that Vendetta, it's been flying very recklessly the last few days'. And it turned out, someone had! </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">If you didn't know, t</span>he Vendetta is a Serpentis Supercarrier. They are extremely rare in the game and only a finite amount of them exist due to a multitude of factors. So far in New Eden, only two of these ships had been lost. The first was due to an awox while the ship was ratting, and the second was for a charity event. Never has one died in proper combat. The prospect of getting to fight one of these things was enough to snap everyone out of their doldrums and into action. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Aside from our active war in Catch, we maintain a frontline closer to home in Esoteria, on the border of Period Basis, with the former occupants of the space we now inhabit. These enemies are mostly Russians and the remnants of Stainwagon that stayed in the area. They are sandwiched between us and Goons, who they are friendly to but we are not. While the frontline was hot for a while, it has calmed down as a lot of the content has moved to catch. We have an agreement not to cloaky camp the systems within Period Basis, and they stay out of Esoteria and Paragon Soul. It is an uneasy truce and we still fight all the time. But in truth they only mess with us when we go there. They are not pushovers, and I have lost fleets to them on more than one occasion. I have a lot of respect for the Red Federation. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">So it was like this. A member of Brand Newbros and resident meme (that says a lot if you know Brand Newbros) Drakyll Shadowdancer got super drunk and gated his Dread to Period Basis. That is like 31 jumps and while he was on the way he got the attention of some friendlies who trailed him to see what was going to happen and report his movements to intel. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Once he got one jump into period basis into G-M4GK, the frontline system, he was engaged by a Vindicator, which he engaged and tanked in hopes of escalating the engagement. The Vendetta and a Nyx gated in from next door, the Russian staging system of TCAG-3, and engaged him. He was tanking them while calling for reinforcements and that is when Test began to form. We have a jump bridge to the system and can have a fleet there in just 3 jumps including the bridge. Eventually an Erebus gated in from TC and <a href="https://zkillboard.com/kill/62841635/">doomsday'd Drakyll,</a> but this was as light tackle was arriving in the system.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Out of the four enemy ships, three warped to TC, jumped the gate, and were home free, but the Vendetta bounced off of an anomaly, and then to the gate. This was a critical mistake on his part that left him singled out from his crew and allowed tackle to get ahead of him. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">As he jumped into TC there was a bubble and dictors waiting for him. They had to hold him until the fleet could assemble and arrive and many sacrifices were made to hold tackle. Bubblers were setting stop bubbles in between the gate and the fortizar trying to stop reinforcements from beating us there. The Vendetta was hyperspacial fit, and was burning out of bubbles and killing tackle effectively. There were several points there when pilots nearly lost him. A lot of tackle was dying, and the calls for 'More suicide tackle!' were being yelled over comms by the FC Sajuuk. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">There really was a point were we almost lost him, but then the fleet arrived and the real fight was on. I entered system just behind the main fleet, catching up with many others in a Hurricane, and jumping in with the Dreadnought ball and Carriers. I bounced off a ping, anchored on the FC and started shooting targets with the fleet. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Red
Federation and friends were forming as hard as they could. There were a
lot of cynos going up but we were managing to stay on top of killing
them before too much could get through. A few minutes into the fight we
got a cyno inhibitor up and so their reinforcements were arriving slowly
through gates, getting caught up in various drag bubbles, and generally
trickling in at such a pace that they couldn't get together to help
each other. We traveled in a pack of Hurricanes easily between targets
and tanked them alone instead of as a group. There were several enemy
Force Auxiliary ships on field, and at first we were focusing on them,
until someone got a scan off on the Vendetta and we realized he was
armor fit. The enemy faxes were fit to rep shield, the enemy in their
haste had brought the wrong comp to rep the ship.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Once we focused all fire on the Vendetta, it didn't take long for him to die. I have a lot of respect for the fellow to fly that manner of ship in such an aggressive and macho way. He killed 40 of us in the end, mostly hurricanes, but also 3 Dreads and if not for just a couple mistakes on his part, he would have escaped. I heard he left the game after this, I hope that is not true. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">The remaining enemy pilots on field focused on getting their dreads out, which we were burning down very quickly. We took the opportunity to exfil our supers and dreads while the canes did the dirty work. Most of the enemy were stuck in bubbles. They had brought in fleet of rattlesnakes, but they had not all come together and were spread out. We successfully picked several of them off at range as we burned between larger targets. It took the enemy about 15 minutes in the end to form enough up in their home system to force us off field. We took minimal losses, mostly those canes I mentioned earlier, of which my <a href="https://zkillboard.com/kill/62842528/">alt was one</a>, and the three dreads that died during the initial fight and the unintentional 'bait'. We were left with a whopping <a href="https://zkillboard.com/kill/62842109/">180billion isk killmail</a>, along with another 60billion in secondary targets. We lost 21bil at the end of the day. This was the most expensive Vendetta loss to date. <a href="http://evf-eve.com/services/brcat/?s=4937&b=7594944&e=90&t=uf">Battle Report</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">For a lot of us, it not a huge stretch to say that yesterday was one of the worst days we have seen in Eve. The toxic atmosphere invading every circle we inhabit in this game after the culmination of all these points of contention is enough to make even the hardest Pilot think about walking away from Eve and all they have built here. Seeing our comrades unhappy, depressed, and ultimately abandoning our social circle brings us all down. The discontent is real, and in my opinion mostly justified in some manner or another. Meaning somewhere along the line everyone has a legit reason to think Eve is going downhill, and that our Gods at CCP may not have our best interests at heart. I was glad that this happened for our alliance and for everyone involved on the winning side of this. It was a good time for something to happen that reminds us that Eve is cool and we are happy in it because of the behavior of its players in the universe provided them, and not because some ambiguous person behind the screen allows us to be.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">I hope to remain a CCP atheist.</span><br />
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Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-49800958909295961952017-06-09T16:49:00.000-07:002017-06-09T16:49:09.825-07:00Complacency in SOV Space; Why You Suck at Eve Now<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I am an immigrant to fozziesov, having come to live in nullsec after the implementation of the mechanic. I'd like to talk a little bit about what the impression of nullsec is to the non-nullsec dweller as opposed to the reality, and whether the mechanic promotes healthy gameplay. <br />
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While I know that it's not the path of every pilot in New Eden, the way it seems like the linear flow of the game is as follows.<br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><u>HISEC</u></span> <br />
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You are born into Empire space in hisec, a somewhat safe environment. The hisec area offers a taste of the different mechanics of the game, allowing you to learn which ones suit you, and leads you down a path that you will eventually outgrow but with a focus on what you would like to be when you 'grow up'. While I know that many players make hisec their home, it does seem that by limiting the isk and nerfing the progression of the player in many hisec areas that ccp tries to promote a natural progression into the less secure areas of the game.<br />
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Aside from that to get anything out of the pvp side of the game you need to leave hisec behind. When I came into Eve I focused on pve, learning the mechanics, and discovering the universe. I had many adventures in my attempts to gather my fortunes, but eventually came to a conscious decision that I was not even playing the fun part of the game yet. Discovering pvp was a wonderful repeat of my first months in Eve as I became a newbro again in combat, and all those old feelings of excitement for Eve were right there again. These discoveries are at the heart of Eve. If hisec serves as anything, it is that it brings us to a realization that pve is not an exciting part of this game, only a means to an end. This is an important point to my argument later. <br />
<br />
I think a lot of us are chasing the 'good old days' feeling we used to get in New Eden. Those few nights where the content all goes your way and something special happens is as close as we can get, but still is enough of a reminder of what this game can be to keep us playing for years. <br />
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<span id="goog_280007999"></span><span id="goog_280008000"></span><br />
<u><span style="color: #f1c232;">LOWSEC</span></u><br />
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If you ask most players, lowsec is broken. They are not exactly wrong, but that doesn't make it unfun. The same is true of many mechanics in this game. It is the prerogative, even the duty, of every Eve player to break the game in their favor, and even though it sometimes takes a little breaking, lowsec is awesome in my opinion.<br />
<br />
The way the game seems to encourage progression here is that players who want to be more active in combat and make more isk, but still travel with a few provisions from Concord, can move to this 'intermediate' area. It is close enough to empire space that it doesn't require the new player make a major move op, and gives players a chance to exercise that 'risk vs. reward' muscle we are always talking about.<br />
<br />
Players in lowsec can be attacked anywhere aside from hubs of travel. Any site you are running, is fair game for anyone else to take from you. On paper, this seems like a great way to encourage voluntary or involuntary pvp, the piracy mechanic, and justify having a larger reward for doing whatever it is you decide to do for isk in New Eden. <br />
<br />
The reality of lowsec is that is is unbalanced in regard to the rewards offered. There are bastions of wealth to be had. Missions in factional warfare are very profitable at the right times, though fluctuate greatly and effect your standing throughout the game. Belt ratting is profitable due to security tags, and a great way for newer players to make isk. Aside from that, you really only have moon-mining. <span class="st"> </span><br />
<br />
<span class="st">Moon-mining involves using your POS to extract raw materials from a moon. It is a mostly akf activity, only really requiring as much time as you want to put into it. You can easily scale it up, but even the less desirable moons are still free isk. In nullsec, most of the large bloc alliances are fueled by this 'moon-goo', and wouldn't function on anywhere the same level without it. In lowsec, almost all moons are owned by what you would call Old Money. Groups like Snuff and Shadow Cartel own or inherited these moons from groups who long ago had great battles over them. </span><br />
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<span class="st">In it's infancy, the 'model' of lowsec worked. Well, it worked better anyway. Groups fought over resources here before they were so easy to come by in nullsec in the sov era. Content happened and people actually cared enough to live here en masse. To this end, well I think anyway, ccp is reworking the moon-mining system to include more risk, and ultimately more reward, and taking a swing at the afk nature of the activity. Coming 'soon', materials will be salvaged in a much more 'Star Trek' fashion, and require actual miners, coordination, defense, and timing.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="st">I hope to see one of two things come from this. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="st">One would be the old fires are relit under these blocs and they use this as as excuse to move back to lowsec and hold their space in a similar fashion to how nullsec currently works. As most of these groups now hold sov, I don't know how likely this is to happen. Nullsec moons are still more profitable and you can only spread yourself so thin. Even if they return, the space they will be able to police will be finite. There is no doubt that this moon mining will be a boon to lowsec pirates, and will bring more people looking for content from miners and those there to defend them. In short, cool spaceship explosions happen where there were previously only afk blackade runners.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="st">It seems more likely, since these groups are all holding sov now, that</span><span class="st"><span class="st"> it will open the door for smaller corporations or even individual pilots to claim these moons. This is </span>an outstanding outcome in my opinion because it encourages the A to B to C progression that I talked about earlier. Giving players a reason to go to lowsec and learn to pvp as an individual or in a small gang makes for a <i>well rounded pilot.</i> </span><span class="st"><span class="st">Pilots who know how to get content for themselves as
individuals usually turn into good FC's down the line, or at least are
always useful to a group of less experienced pilots. It encourages longevity in the player base. </span>It encourages your endgame into subcaps. It let's you play the game around your pve activity, but still encourages emergent gameplay on both sides. As groups emerge to challenge dead zones of the game, groups will emerge to hunt them. In a perfect universe, moon-mining facilities could act in the same manner as factional warfare plexes. As content generators and a great way to learn pvp outside of being a random in a fleet on hundreds. I have high hopes for the mechanic helping the longevity of pilots in New Eden by teaching self reliance in getting something other than pve content. </span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">I'm not going to touch on factional warfare really in this article, as I plan to give it it's own post in the near future, but I would like to say that pilots who put themselves through the rigors of the factional warfare grinder always come out the other side better for it. FW teaches all the best parts of combat, and should be considered compulsory to anyone looking to really better themselves and be well rounded. Too many players anymore have their sites set on capital ships, and fail to see the usefulness of subcaps. Frigates, destroyers, and cruisers have a lot to teach us about battle, and these force modifiers can be decisive in battles of any size involving ships or any class. I have the ability to fly almost any class of ship in the game now, but I mostly bring a Keres on roams and to our enemies I am always a giant problem. The old rule of loosing 1000 ships before you become a competent pilot has truth in it. FW promotes a small gang, and learning to fly with a small gang teaches you that we are all a band of brothers and we have to be able to rely on each other. This is probably the most important and hardest thing to learn in Eve.</span>
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<span class="st"></span>
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<br />
<u><span style="color: #cc0000;">NULLSEC</span></u><br />
<br />
<span class="st">SOV makes us bad at Eve and skipping steps is for casuals, so if you want any chance of actually being good at this game you had better put some time in and follow the natural progression of it instead of just skipping to the endgame. </span><br />
<br />
I think a lot of players would ask why they should waste their time in areas of the game that aren't profitable when they can go right to nullsec, make dank isk, and fly with veterans who are spacerich beyond their wildest dreams! These other areas are filled with players of their own skill level, all bumbling around trying to figure the same things out with nobody to ask.<br />
<br />
It is the nature of most gamers to min/max their game, and doing the opposite of that and taking it slow is tough to ask of someone. It is especially hard when you are particularly excited about Eve as a newbro and are starting to get a feeling of what it has to offer.<br />
<br />
The old phrase, <span class="_Tgc"><b>Just because you can</b>, <b>doesn't mean you should </b>holds especially true in Eve, so true that our <b>basic rule of the game</b> not to fly what you can't afford to lose is the only 'rule' in Eve universally excepted by it's playerbase. How is skipping into nullsec as a month old character any different from that? You are playing difficult game on hard mode without having done the tutorial, and once you get stuck in that inevitable place every Eve pilot has been where you have lost everything to the whims of some bigger fish, you have left yourself no place to fall back into. You are violating the basic rule of Eve with your character, which is more valuable to both you and us than any ship will ever be. Every player that wanders away from this game for some reason that seems insurmountable is a giant hit to the community and the future and Eve itself. </span><br />
<span class="_Tgc"><br /></span>
<span class="_Tgc">Aside from some artwork, I mostly do 10/10's escalations in two tengu's when I need isk. Escalations are special exploration sites that you can scan down, or that have a chance to spawn while people are ratting. Ratters usually sell them in the form of bookmarks. You can stack many billions in a couple days work with a couple characters, and while boring, it's easy money as long as you know how to keep safe. That said, understanding how to keep safe requires understanding many facets of the game that begin far away from the mission itself. </span><br />
<span class="_Tgc"><br /></span>
<span class="_Tgc">I had bought a couple 10/10's in alliance chat earlier, and the fellow convo'd me and asked me what I ran them in. I showed him my fit and offered to show him how to do it anytime. I explained that if you can string them together it can be as good as super ratting and showed him a screen grab of 10bil in loot in a station. I put stars in his eyes, and then left to do my thing, thinking no more of it. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="_Tgc">That player came back to me a week later, and said he was ready to learn 10/10's and I was still happy to show him how. We fleeted up and warped to a mission he had bought from a corpmate and as we went to punch in he says 'It won't let me go in, it says I need leadership skills.'. If I am honest, I didn't even know you needed leadership skills to get into 10/10's until that moment, but my characters had them, they are needed as prereqs for many skills most pilots should have.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="_Tgc">The comrade seemed particularly crestfallen at the news, and literally only then did it occur to me he was a new player. It had never occured to me that he wasn't an experienced player. I made this terrible assumption that he knew the game well enough to understand how to comfortably do all the things associated with these advanced missions, as well as just being safe and sensible up to that point. </span><br />
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<span class="_Tgc"> As I pressed him I realized he had dumped a lot of money into the skill injector trap, and injected from a newbro into a perfect tengu. I had told him that he needed lvl 5 skill to comfortably fly the tengu in 10/10's, so he injected them all. I had showed him my top of the line fit tengu, worth more than a carrier, so he bought one. In more fact he bought two, after the first one was ganked by typhoons on the Jita undock. He didn't need all that bling to do Sansha 10/10's. I feel really bad about all that, I just had this impression that he was progressing through the game in a different way than he was. I made a really basic error in showing someone the ropes that I don't feel I would have made in another area of space. It has been a month, and he has not come back to me to learn 10/10's. I fear my assumptions in teaching this fellow cost us a fellow spaceman. </span><br />
<span class="_Tgc"><br /></span>
<span class="_Tgc"><span class="_Tgc">Natural progression of the game is not only important to yourself, but in the age
of SOV encouraging new players to grind the game for injectors
has made us veteran players forget how to teach them the ropes of
Eve. One of our corpmates has lost a billion isk worth of ratting VNI's today, the poor guy is just forever pushing a boulder up a hill and I wish someone hadn't given him the impression that that is how you play Eve.</span> </span><br />
<br />
<span class="_Tgc">This scope is not only limited to new players in my opinion. The impressions of veteran players in nullsec and lowsec varies wildly from the reality of what these players actually are. As noted, skipping through areas of the game that might not appeal to you right away takes from your Eve experience and restricts your growth as a pilot. Outside thinking is key in this game and the ability to get into the head of your opponent doubly so, understanding mechanics and anticipating the actions of your enemies in 'away' zones is key to being a good pilot. There is no better understanding than walking in someones shoes.</span><br />
<span class="_Tgc"><br /></span>
<span class="_Tgc">If danker tics is your goal, you've just scaled up your original goal as a newbean to rat better. Congrats on being the endgame carebear, but now what? Say your good friend joins Eve tomorrow, and he comes to you to teach him the ropes. Do you even know how to teach? Maybe you think you do but do you remember how to get content anymore? Do you have the energy? Is Eve about the game or the compulsion for you? We certainly cannot be teaching our new spacefriends to be excited about Eve by showing them it's wonderful <b>pve </b>content. We need to show them the community, the fun bits, and the wonder of it all. We need to give them the idea that their actions can matter to the universe, and to do that we need to teach them and ourselves how to take action in the first place.</span><br />
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<span class="_Tgc">It's not unhealthy to see Eve as your social circle. The friendships we make here are just as real and legitimate as any, but I remind you that certain types of activities are unhealthy for both mind and body and that doing these things as a group does not automatically make them healthy or justify them. Make sure you are playing Eve for the right reasons. </span><br />
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<span class="_Tgc">It feels great holding all those systems and making all that isk, but you are just pigs being fattened while you slowly forget why you are playing Eve in the first place. Mothball your ratting ship for the summer and get out of your comfort zone, you have enough spacemoney.</span>Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-19766685201430081572017-05-31T17:18:00.000-07:002017-05-31T17:18:14.733-07:00Eve2; Would You Even Want It?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
A while ago I wrote in response to the blog banter question concerning the great reset. If CCP's servers were to suddenly reset, and everyone in Eve started anew, would you come back to the game? In what circumstance would that even work?<br />
<br />
At the time I was of the opinion that this was not something that would ever work, the loss of SP and time would push the majority of the player ecosystem away, what would be left would not be enough to sustain the game. My original post dissolved as so many of my post do, into doom and gloom and what CCP need to do better to even have a game in five years, but this has been something that has been on my mind after a conversation with my good friend Jebi.<br />
<br />
Patch day has recently come and gone, and this one seemed particularly disheartening to a lot of players, myself included. There are many things to be upset about only a few discussed here.<br />
<br />
Finally being forced into the 'new and improved' probe scanner and dscan system was particularly disheartening to me. It's been a year since the option has been available to us and instead of implementing any of the great player feedback on the new system, they just stopped giving the option to use the original unbroken system and moved on. The new dscan option implemented in this update, where you can scan a cosmic anomaly with only the 'v' key is excessively overpowered. In nullsec I can be on top of a ratting boat in about ten seconds now, with no real skill as a scout other than knowing a key command. As a player base I think the thing we should be most offended at is changes that nerf the overall complexity and depth of Eve. Changes like this just make the game more one-dimensional.<br />
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The introduction of several more classes of microtransactions, accompanied by CCP's announcement heralding a stable plex market after the implementation of plex changes meant it was nothing of the sort, hit hard with a lot of people. Months have gone by where players make game breaking amounts of isk ghost training inactive chars and our devs cannot be bothered even to declare it an exploit. I postulate that it is because they are making money off of it. If I may scrunch up my tin foil hat some, I would go so far as to say that while CCP probably didn't create this bug purposefully, they are in no hurry to fix it until after they cash out. Aside from skill extractors costing money, we have a great many players shuffling low sp chars to multiple individual accounts to take advantage of this boon.<br />
<br />
It's like this. CCP creates skill extractors/injectors in multiple sizes and flavors. They include a provision that you may only extract your char to 5mil sp. Many players extract and condense the abilities of their old alts, leaving many 'dead' accounts, sometimes containing multiple chars at 5mil sp. CCP implements a rule that only cash can now be used when transferring chars to other accounts. CCP introduces a bug, either by accident or intention, that causes chars with 5mil or more sp to train 'almost' for free, they just have to buy a plex per account and let it expire. They refuse to address or even declare the bug an exploit for going on six months and counting. Due to this plex shakeup, its not very economic to buy from the in game market right now, and most people see buying a plex from CCP as a better option. Many players split their old 5mil chars into multiple accounts, feeding more money into the system from those $20 character transfers, and from sales of the extractors used to bring those freely trained skills to the market.<br />
<br />
SP farming is already an unassailable wealth tier for players who devote the time into it, more than any other system in the game, including casinos of old. In my bittervet eyes, CCP has completely sacrificed game balance in order to earn extra profits from microtransactions to the point you have to wonder if they believe in the longevity their own game. Only CCP knows the real trends accounting omegas vs. alphas and they may see that their game will eventually end, with a whimper. It could be that they are now switching their focus from game improvements to getting what they can get out of Eve before it tanks.<br />
<br />
So here's a question reflective of the original, what would make all this penny pinching and alienating of your player base worth it? What would be an ends, that would justify these blatant means.<br />
<br />
In the fraction of the time CCP has plugged away at this game, fifteen years now, entire series' of amazing games have been produced by what I would dare to label 'real' game studios. Games that perform better, have more depth, and are developed with a focus and purpose for years afterword. I feel like it is lucky for CCP that there has not been an awesome scifi real-time strategy game produced in the memorable past, because I think a lot of people would shake up to something new.<br />
<br />
I still love Eve, maybe that's why I end up with these salty blog posts, and I believe that it has a lot going for it, but I also think that it wont last forever. The tragedy of all this is that for many of us, Eve is our social circle. I am a 40 year old father who works from home in a small town. The time I spend in teamspeak with my comrades, whether playing or spinning in station, is my time to unwind. I don't think that my choice to sit in my home and socialize over a headset is any different from the urge to go to a bar, coffeehouse, or some other place where you would traditionally seek out the company of others for good conversations. At it's core this is literally the best thing Eve has going for it, and the reason most of us stick around so long. I hope that CCP isn't relying on that sentiment to keep players in the game because it truly only goes so far. Even Sam left Cheers after Diane.<br />
<br />
So, to the point of all this rambling. If CCP released Eve2, a sweeping improvement on the original, would you begin anew in another universe? Would you switch to this new game? Let your imagination run wild, it has everything to make for a really fun experience, no legacy code, and is ostensibly a complete sequel. Maybe it takes place in the our 'original' universe in the days before or just following the collapse of the Eve Gate. Maybe it takes place thousands of years before the terrans even arrived in New Eden and is based around the rise and fall of the Jove. Whatever it is be it walking in stations or seamless first person shooter integration in and out of spaceships, it sounds right up your alley. The catch is, your years of work in New Eden go away. It's my game and so I get to choose the rules, so if you only get to play one, and the other is shut down and discontinued, which do you choose? Is it the new hat or the old one?Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-20241007955261155042017-04-28T00:54:00.001-07:002017-05-12T01:34:30.494-07:00Dank Leaks and Let's Get On with the Memes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
Never get too comfortable in this business.<br />
<br />
The day before yesterday, as I jumped on the Eve Reddit for the first time, I was greeted with the headline<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/66knq6/co2_leak_when_you_want_to_leave_toxic_co2_but/">'[Co2 Leak] When you want to leave toxic CO2, but supers are in build....'</a><br />
<br />
I cringed, Co2 has really been cascading lately and there are often posts like this. Already I'm worried my day is about to get complicated. As I fear, I end up reading a pastebin where my corp CEO discusses membership with another alliance and trashes Co2 leadership and toxic FC's. He's not really wrong on any account, but what was obviously a feeler conversation is now public knowledge and there are consequences doubtless incoming.<br />
<br />
At that point, my initial reaction was anger and frustration. I've written before about how I feel when people who choose to take responsibility for the hobby of another person, a hobby that they pay for, it is disrespectful and haughty. Sast is not a small corp, and there are easily hundreds of billions staged out of Impass right now. The actions of a single person in this game can really have real world effects on hundreds of people around the world, and this one action could easily serve to kill Eve for many of us. I would never fly a ship I couldn't afford to fly, but then again, you don't fly your entire fleet of ships at once. Loosing everything tangible you've managed to accumulate over your career would be pretty soul crushing. I could see myself leaving Eve for any period of time or even indefinitely after an event like this.<br />
<br />
So I logged in, salty, and started trying to get a jump on a firesale of all my doctrine ships and whatever else I wasn't too attached to. Co2 has a trading mailing list which was very helpful, and I listed everything well below either alliance contracts, or Jita buy price. I took a loss, but not as much as I would have if I had gotten stuck with a bunch of alliance fit ships for an alliance I am no longer a part of. I noticed several other members have firesales up, including leadership, and so it is obvious that I am not acting in a reactionary manner. Over the course of the day, I am happily able to sell all my ships, save a Legion, which will just come along.<br />
<br />
A Corp meeting is called for in discord, and I choose to attend. It seems silly but I really am considering not bothering. I am still very upset over the situation, and I tend to make long angry speeches when I am in that headspace. On the other hand, at any minute I'm about to be homeless in hostile space and I literally have no idea what to do, so to teamspeak I go.<br />
<br />
So what happened? The short of it is that our leadership has been discussing leaving Co2 for a little while because of waning participation in fleets, but over the last few days that effort has stepped up and become more serious. There were several catalysts including FC's not dropping response fleets to save tackled super pilots because of personal beefs, but that escalated farther when said pilots were only referred to as retards and denied compensation. Its a lot of drama and not the whole story I'm sure, but it is a prime example of what it's like to try and deal with anyone in Co2 in a position of power, it's all one-upping and posturing.<br />
<br />
I might just be hard to deal with, but I don't ever remember being yelled at so much in all my life as I did in Co2 fleets, and that just stops the fun pretty quick. I think what they are going for is a para-military organization, but that doesn't really work if everyone is the Drill Sergent, it's just a lot of yelling.<br />
<br />
I like the guys in my corp though, it's the only thing that has kept me around Co2. I am still a solo pilot, and I think I will never be able to shake that, but it certainly doesn't hurt to have friends. I worry they think I do not like them sometimes, as I am always off doing my own thing.<br />
<br />
So it turns out Co2 leadership gave us a 48 hour grace to exfil, which is more than they had to do, which is nice. As this was forced upon us, we don't have a lot of options and so we go to Test, as they are blue to Co2 and their space is close. From what I understand, Test alliance is known for not taking the game as seriously as some people like. I hope this ends up being a positive move.Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-52563534326445986842017-03-21T13:46:00.000-07:002017-03-21T13:46:03.643-07:00Space Life: Counterdrop<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Station spinning, wondering what to do, an issue that's been plaguing me lately. I have been making a fortune in space money over the last month running 10/10's on two chars, but I am getting to the point where I am rich enough to welp ships for years, and I'm not seeing the point of continued grinding in this respect.<br />
<br />
I'm still living with Co2 in Impass, I have a love-hate relationship with them. I like my corpies, and my good friend Killa from the old times has been out flying with me which I appreciate. It's important not to let old friendships wither.<br />
<br />
My inbox chimes, a note from the corp head.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>'Wings Wanderers has been reset to neutral, feel free to harass them as you see fit.'</i><br />
<br />
I am happy to read this. Impass is a remote region, and these folks are close enough to make for actual content. I have to admit, I have been having a hard time figuring out how to pvp in nullsec. I have been spoiled with easy access to quick fights for years, and this is a new ballgame for a solo lowsec pilot like me. My pvp experience most involves jumping 25 jumps out of friendly space and dying to a blob on a gate anymore. So I'm often just waiting for an impromptu fleet to form and station spinning.<br />
<br />
Wings Wanderers ratting home was only 10 jumps out from where I am staging, I have been over there running DED sites in their space while we were blue. They roll with some nice stuff, and I took the time to speak in local to those I came across, even buying a 10/10 from one. I get to thinking I can maybe use assumptions that I am doing pve work to my advantage and do some forced pvp.<br />
<br />
I load up into an active rep VNI, with neuts and hybrids in the high slots, and put my alt into a GNI. I load a medium bubble into my hold, along with an improved exile. Training the biology and neurotoxin skills to 5 was a great investment, as I rarely roll negative effects and the boosters last for hours sometimes. A few years ago I manufactured a over 100 of every kind of booster available at the time, and I have yet to run out. Drugs are good.<br />
<br />
I hit up Killa and ask if he would like to come, and am happy to hear he would like to. He has a very tanky Gila in station, and we set out.<br />
<br />
We make our way toward unfriendly skies, Killa is ahead of me as I stopped to say goodnight to my Son. He calls out that there is an unfriendly Gnosis on an outgate ahead, and that it agressed him before he jumped through.<br />
<br />
My alt is just about there, so I send her in as a tackle, while killa waits on the other side of the gate. The Gnosis is happy to agress me, and I tackle and land jams, unfortunately not before he sticks his drones on me. I can rep them for enough time to get clear though.<br />
<br />
I land in my main as Killa comes through the gate and we commence to pounding, but then the cyno goes up, and Naglfar class Dreadnought jumps into the fray. <br />
<br />
We decide to try and finish off the Gnosis, but I drop my jams in order to jam out the Nag. I am not able to apply jams to him, which lets me know he is in siege mode and committed to staying here for the duration of his cycle.<br />
<br />
It takes about a minute to finish the battleship, and he manages to <a href="https://zkillboard.com/kill/60511109/">take my alt</a> out once he can apply a scram. It is notable that while we had been fighting, we noticed that the Nag wasn't applying damage very well to us. Killa was orbiting under his guns with an afterburner fit, and I was repping hard with my improved exile, though I was wishing I hadn't gone with a mwd fit.<br />
<br />
We de-agressed and were getting ready to continue our journey, and in a strange bit of happenstance, fellow Co2 member and CSM candidate The Judge wandered past our battle.<br />
<br />
He jumped into our channel in comms and said he was cyno fit, and we could certainly kill this guy. The catch was that we needed to keep him busy long enough for a super pilot to gate 3 jumps so as to be within drop range.<br />
<br />
What followed was an awesome 20 minutes of fighting above our weight class. The Nag was focused on me in my Vexor Navy, as my increased signature meant he could apply well enough. After the paste ran out in my ancillary rep, I had to bounce to a tactical to reload, otherwise he would have smashed me up. Killa was able to hold his ground and keep point on the sieged Dread.<br />
<br />
Whose friends would get there first to help? Turns out our did, and it sure did feel cool to <a href="https://zkillboard.com/kill/60511181/">kill that thing</a>. Even with the 'expect the unexpected' mentality that you should take in Eve, its sure still can surprise the hell out of you. Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-14754364550551612412017-02-20T16:05:00.001-08:002017-02-20T16:05:24.649-08:00Giant Pain in the Rear or Glorious Space Adventure? Perspective in Eve<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
It all started with an overpriced Sisters Core Probe Launcher.<br />
<br />
I was in 68FT-6, in Impass, sitting in our Keepstar and thinking about going out to Fethybolis to crack some cans in relic sites. I quite enjoy exploration as a pastime, it's how I came up in Eve, and the Sasha loot that spawns in that region often contains intact armor plates, which are quite valuable and worth the time to farm if you like fistfulls of space money.<br />
<br />
In my opinion in explo, you are focusing on speed in every aspect. You want to find sites quickly, and complete them even quicker. Relic sites are the often the realm of the ganker, and the less time you have to spend there the better. The same is true of having your probes out there on scan, they are a red flag to everyone as to what you are up to.<br />
<br />
To this end, and since I am playing in null at the moment, I have been fitting exploration interceptors. This is off meta I know, but I have really strong scanning skills and I feel like I get much better exploration tics in something fast. I find that, even though I am flying a paper thin ship I feel safer than if I was in an astero or a covops frig, and I find that most people think I am looking to probe down and tackle folks in sites, and generally avoid me. I feel more exposed while hacking in sites than I usually would,but that goes quickly with good skills and a fast ship.<br />
<br />
I had a malediction hull laying around, and enough spare modules in my hanger to fit it up, with the exception of a sisters core probe launcher. Checking the local market I saw there were a few in station, but they were going for over fifty million isk, a severe markup of almost twice the cost in Empire space. I balked at the price, not being able to bring myself to click the buy button and keep my self respect. I checked the other ships I had in the region to see if there was one I wanted to pull off of something else, but there wasn't.<br />
<br />
Looking through random modules I was surprised at the large markup on almost every item, especially anything used on a regular basis by people in the region. The alliance has rules against marking things up too much, but I'm thinking there is nobody really bringing the hammer down on offenders.<br />
<br />
Over the years I have amassed a large amount of modules, boosters, ammo, charges, and other equipment in Dodoxie. Whether it is from looting the wrecks of my enemies, breaking down ships I'm not going to use, or any of a number of other reasons. I haven't ever bothered to liquidate all this stuff, aside from the bling. I am pretty good about consolidating it all to one place every once in a while though, so everything is well organized and ready to be reused or recycled.<br />
<br />
My mind wandered to this, and I got to thinking that I should move that stuff out here and undercut all of these fatcats with some reasonably priced equipment. It was a win/win. I get to liquidate several billion worth of dusty junk, and in the long run maybe prices in the region will come down.<br />
<br />
For me, moving things means wormholes. Impass is far enough away from everywhere to be unreasonable to import things in in anything but a jump freighter, which I do not have. The alliance has a program for shipping to impass from Empire space, but I do not wish to pay the collateral, as reasonable as it is.<br />
<br />
I undocked my alt in an astero, and in a moment I had scanned a direct lowsec wormhole right in our main staging system. It wasn't there just a little while earlier, as I had been scanning for combat sites an hour before. It was obviously a gift from The All Mighty Bob, blessed be his name, granting his favor upon me for my righteous endeavor. And where will your good wormhole take me sir? Heydieles! Oh dear. Bob has a sense of humor.<br />
<br />
Should you not be aware, just one jump off from Heydieles in the CalGal factional warzone is Old Man Star. The two systems are notoriously gatecamped, and known to be avoid as large bloc groups make their home there. Personally, I have died there many times, in many embarrassing ways. I will have to take precautions.<br />
<br />
I log in my hauling alt, and put her in an occator. While not as good as a cloaky blockade runner like a viator it does carry a lot more and the mjd trick has gotten me past many gatecamps in the past. So as to not get caught out by gankers (a subject fresh on my mind since getting <a href="https://zkillboard.com/kill/59664323/">ganked in hisec</a> recently) I haul everything in three separate trips to the last hisec system before the pipe. I also have my alt pick me up an extra hunter astero, as <a href="https://zkillboard.com/kill/59478507/">I had lost</a> my last one to a gila. It is off-meta but works really well for what I want it to do, and it's fun as hell to fly, especially when you have backup coming.<br />
<br />
The best Ishtar can do for hauling is a mammoth, which I have out here for moving small loads around and picking up MTU loot. It would take a few trips but I could move everything easily enough with that. I moved it into the wormhole and into lowsec, parked it in a station, and ejected to scout my alt in my pod.<br />
<br />
I was happy to be able to travel like this, bubbles in nullsec mean I have to get out of my good pod whenever I go to do a risky activity. As long as I use tacs on these gates to avoid smartbombs, I am reasonably safe traveling like this. It's only two jumps, and lucky for me both systems were uncharacteristically empty for this timezone. This should go quickly.<br />
<br />
My alt comes into lowsec without incident, and I meet her in the station to trade everything over. Loading up the mammoth, I undock and warp to the empty spot in space that was my way home.<br />
<br />
In real time, it had only been ten minutes since I had used that wormhole, and it was brand new. I went to alliance chat in a huff, to find that someone had brought a FAX though there and collapsed it. I was obviously not the only one taking care of business that day.<br />
<br />
At this point I'm certain of two things. There are no reasonably prices modules going up on the Impass market today, and this mammoth isn't going to be seeing any more service.<br />
<br />
I would usually just deathclone back home, but today, my expensive training/ratting pod keeps me from that solution. I'm going to have to fly back the 50 jumps in this astero I've brought myself. I decide I will bring all my boosters along as they are small, and send everything else back.<br />
<br />
I give everything back to my hauling alt and pilot her away from the station towards hisec, she will put everything in a station container named 'for Ishtar' and one day we will try this again. As I jump her into Old Man Star, where there was nobody ten minutes ago, I find myself surrounded by a gigantic gatecamp. There are around a dozen ships, a good composition including fast tackle, lots of webs, and high slot scrams. My ship is a five billion isk loot pinata, I'm going to be on reddit dammit...<br />
<br />
I knew they were going to catch me, the mjd+warp trick is great, but there are a dozen scrams that are going to land on me before I get to that point. I set my safety to red, and give it a go, aligning to the outgate, cloaking, then activating the mircowarp and microjump quickly after. This trick works great to get you out of a jam, and I have used it many times, but as suspected I was pointed by more than I could break through, and my ship started to take damage.<br />
<br />
In the past I have forgotten that I have a burst jammer, or forgotten to set my safety off green in time, but today I was able to activate it. I turned back toward the gate like I was going to crash back through, and then immediately realigned the outgate. As I hoped, the entire fleet rushed to the gate to jump through, giving me some distance and enough time for the jams to catch, and like magic, they all fell away and I warped away from my doom. They followed me into hisec, and the limited engagement meant that they had another shot before I got into the station, but they weren't set up enough, and I escaped yet again.<br />
<br />
The FC of the gatecamping fleet convo'd me, and expressed his amazement that I had escaped. It was a cool moment and I was proud to have made it away safely. I left my alt in the station and went to see about Ishtar.<br />
<br />
I had a lot of cargo, but I felt safe enough in my fast frigate. The cloak would keep me safe from any baddies along the way, so I set out the long distance with the intention of scouting myself into nullsec with my alt in 40 jumps or so.<br />
<br />
I crossed the galcal warzone without any incident, wondering if I would ever be back to live here in this area again. It was good here until giant roving gatecamps drove away all to solo pvpers. Maybe that's changed since I was here.<br />
<br />
Upon entering hisec I get a notification that I am unable to cloak, because I am am wanted by the local police. I had totally not anticipated this. I usually go to great lengths to appear an upstanding citizen in Eve, even going as far to farm tags to keep up the appearance of being an okay guy. I found it a lot easier to hunt people if you appeared to be something other than a pvp pilot at first glance. I have been doing a lot of ratting recently, and my pvp in nullsec, so my sec status had been up quite high indeed! About a week ago I decided to go on a tear through lowsec for a couple days and gave no fucks about killing pods and aggressing neuts. I dropped my status to -3.9 with that couple days fun, and had not considered this. I was still not red enough for other players to shoot me, so I figured I could probably get away with continuing along my way, one jump later I ran into Marmites. <br />
<br />
Marmites are a group of hisec wardec corps that camp popular stations, events, and trade routes. As a longtime solo pilot I had never paid them mind, but these fellas were wardecced to Co2, and they were here waiting for me.<br />
<br />
There were a number of Garmurs, Proteus', and other fast locking dps ships, along with boosts and logi. For the second time today I stood to lose a ship full of expensive loot in a stupid way, and I was honestly thinking 'I deserve this..'.<br />
<br />
I was in a .5 system, and what I didn't realize was that being .01 away from -4 in sec status meant I could cloak. As I aligned to a station I spammed the cloak module, and miraculously it worked! For a moment anyway, until I did something I have rarely done in the past, I double clicked it and uncloaked myself.<br />
<br />
I got away from those guys, but only barely, and I warped around and made a nice safe. I watched them look for me for a while and then dipped into a wormhole in the system. After a fight with an astero, I was lucky enough to dump out into nullsec some 20 jumps from home, and made my way safely back without incident.<br />
<br />
As with everything I do in this silly game, I started to analyze the entire debacle. There were obviously a lot of mistakes made, and I had gotten lucky to have walked away without an embarrassing and expensive loss on several occasions along the way. I got to wondering, how should I be looking at the whole event?<br />
<br />
Before anything is said, I think that the fact that I escaped the ordeal on all counts really helps me take a positive view of the situations I put myself in. If I had become content, and them become content again, it would be hard to put a cheery spin on this, but as it is I think I could argue that I had a grand space adventure that is completely at the core of the game itself. All these complex variables stacking up to provide all these event are exactly what I love about this game in the first place. If I don't embrace the unexpected in Eve, I don't think I would still be playing.<br />
<br />
Things really didn't go to plan, goddamn if I'm not just fine with that.<br />
<br />
<br />Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-11637493989355754062017-02-05T20:29:00.000-08:002017-02-05T20:33:56.566-08:00Blog Banter 79: Awarding Longevity in Eve<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Blog Banter 79 - Rewarding the Vets?<br />
Should CCP put more effort into
rewards for loyal customers? The mystery code from the collector's
edition hasn't seen much use and whilst veteran rewards have been
mentioned by CCP several times at Fanfests, we have seen nothing. Wasn't
there talk of a special station only 10-year vets could dock in at one
point?<br />
Is this lack of gratitude towards loyal customers alienating?
Do people wish for a change here? Is it too self-righteous to expect
small signs of gratitude for being a loyal customer? Is a customer
purchasing half a year in advance more loyal than someone plexing every
now and than probably missing out a few weeks or months a year? How do
CCP place rewards in game without hurting the economy?<br />
Or is it just a case of there is no need and HTFU snowflake?</blockquote>
<br />
I don't even have a full three years in Eve yet, so I don't count myself a Vet, but I'm starting to feel some of the things that our older players feel after committing so much time to this one game. I hope I can provide a little insight based on that.<br />
<br />
While I don't think that long-time players of Eve should receive actual in-game items for their commitment, I do think there are several things that CCP can do to show these people that they are valuable as customers, help them prevent burnout, and overall help the game by giving even the older players a reason to be excited about Eve.<br />
<br />
The question really scales up or down depending on your perspective on the game. With the influx of new players, I can see how these folks might feel like they could be rewarded by paying for the subscription rather than just going on as an alpha. There is a difference in thinking there. To a vet, paying for your sub is just business as usual. The idea of being an Alpha is not really an option you can exercise and still enjoy your game. CCP already does a good job in my opinion of running in game events, and being a paying customer certainly helps you enjoy these events to their full potential. <br />
<br />
While I have several 'pipe-dream' ideas about things CCP could do to honor those veterans, there is one thing that CCP is generally doing a poor job at and absolutely needs to be corrected, especially for customers who have put a lot of time and money into the organization, and that is to revamp how they approach customer service.<br />
<br />
It has literally always been an issue that players that put thousands of dollars and man hours into their characters can have their work ruined by an intrusion into their accounts. In my opinion, the issue is compounded infinitely more by the introduction of skill extractors, and it is CCP's responsibility to be able to deal with the can of worms they unleashed when they made this move. As a company, they make a lot of money from the feature, but they take little responsibility for the ramifications of it.<br />
<br />
In particular, CCP needs to be willing to do right by victims of obvious fraud, and this needs to apply even more to Vets. It needs to show back the respect we have shown for them all these years and take these incidents more seriously, and they need to devote more manpower to this department of the game. The Devs have recently added more security to the launcher in the form of an email verification, and a 2FA, but this has been especially problematic for our vets, as they are now trying to log into ten year old email accounts. The instances of account hacking are really going up now with all this resetting of passwords.<br />
<br />
CCP has a giant resource of players that it could be using to help curtail this issue. A good use of veteran players would be to put volunteers to work in game as a sort of triage department, a first line of defense group that could pass tickets appropriately up the ladder and expedite the ones that needed to be handled immediately. I believe you could fund such an endeavor with in-game money and not effect the economy of the game in any significant way. <br />
<br />
Over the years CCP has made massive changes to ships, modules, playstyles and just about everything else worth changing. Entire areas of the game that were once vital and engaging professions have suffered greatly. For veteran players, the idea of some sort of SP redistribution is not so farfetched. During the recent Capitol changes this idea was exercised, it is a step in the right direction and is a procedure that should be remembered during future shakeups.<br />
<br />
If there is one thing that vets miss out on, it is special deals and offers from CCP regarding subscriptions. Folks who have put a lot of time and money already in the program deserve a break or reward from time to time just like everyone else. CCP targets advertising toward all its players, but especially alphas or people that might be on the fence about subbing, which totally makes sense. It would also make sense to target advertising and offers towards those that have proven they are the most fanatical about Eve by subbing and playing for years. I'm sure something could be thought up that both makes money for the company, and appeals to this demographic.<br />
<br />
If I were to pick one thing, that would top off my Eve experience going into the future, one thing that I have always hoped might happen, is that somehow I might make my small mark of the narrative of the Eve universe. There is no way I am alone in that dream. What we are lucky enough to be a part of is the most immersive and rich science fiction universe ever imagined. I want our developers to strive to push the boundaries of that everyday. I want them to realize that the reason we all started playing Eve was that dream of what we could find and become out there in the black, and I want them to strive to never let us lose that feeling. Even if we never amount to anything in the big picture of the Eve universe, it is nice to think that it is a possibility. <br />
<br />
It's a tall order but a reasonable one, and in my opinion CCP of old accomplished this very effectively. I've written in the past about how in game events like the Caroline Star and the Drifter invasion helped foster that sense of wonder and uncertainty in Eve, and how they helped the average capsuleers feel like there was actually something out there that was unknown, and there was a chance that they could discover it. Getting players and corps on The Scope is another way CCP can accomplish this, but even more than that, I think it would be advantageous to the game to leave some of the new features for players to discover, rather than knowing everything that is coming out months in advance. Make the average player think he can get involved in the overall history, and he will never stop dreaming about that, no matter how long he has been playing.<br />
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Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-56187587957885317162017-02-02T15:06:00.002-08:002017-02-02T17:22:58.728-08:00Bringing the Boys the the Yard, Getting a Good Fleet Up<div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />
A typical night in Impass these days involves a lot of PVE. From what I understand, the Alliance has been at war for over a year, and recently took this area of space with the intention of slowing things down and refilling their wallets. Players are now in good money making space, and have been taking advantage of that by learning or re-learning an area of the game they had forgotten was even an option. The Angel rats in the area are getting a lot of good kills. <br />
<br />
As predominately a combat pilot, learning new things like this is really fun, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets excited about Eve and all it has to offer when we stop to look at it. Getting roped into a single play style is really easy, the learning cliff in this game extends to veteran players as well. Learning a new area of Eve is uncomfortable, unforgiving, and difficult, but that's obviously how we like we like our video games.<br />
<br />
Last night I was messing around in a Tengu, my new favorite exploration ship, clearing a DED site. These are challenging combat sites that you scan down to fight rats that will sometimes drop faction modules. Its a fun way to make isk, and I prefer it to simple afk ratting.<br />
<br />
As is very often the case a ping went out across Discord to form up for a fleet, leaving from the combat staging system momentarily. I sigh, because I know how this is going to go, but I want to make the effort to be a good line member. I will always show up for a fleet when my schedule allows it.<br />
<br />
So here is what typically happens. I bookmark and discontinue my site, park mine and my alt's ships in a nearby citidel, and then switch to a blank clone. If I have a jumpclone window available, I will consider jumping there, but I don't often have that option. I burn six or seven jumps to staging and switch to the doctrine we are flying, run to the bathroom and fridge because this is scheduled for an hour and a half, and jump into fleet and comms to find the fleet long gone, and the FC upset at the turnout. There is often a lot of pointing fingers at people 'carebearing' too hard and being unwilling to show up for fleets, and it feels like the folks taking charge of leading content and taking care of the business of being a successful alliance and holding sovereign space feel unappreciated. I totally get that, because from your point of view if you can only pull a few dozen pilots away from a group of hundreds away for a operation, that is highly unsatisfactory.<br />
<br />
This is only an example, but it scales to trying to form for anything, be it a fleet in Eve or a gathering in any location.<br />
<br />
As an example, let's use a different game, baseball. (Oh a baseball metaphor how original!)<br />
<br />
Unless you're dead inside, baseball is awesome to play with your friends. I dare you to have a bad time playing baseball with your friends and family in the park. If you've ever randomly picked up a proper game of baseball like this, you can attest that it is always a cherished memory. I am not a skinny man and I am prone to twisting an ankle when I really get going, but I will play baseball anytime the opportunity arises.<br />
<br />
Now, pick up your phone, and text fourteen people to come to the park and play a game of baseball with you. Make sure they bring the correct fit (a glove, maybe a bat), and that they are dressed for the occasion cause it's a little chilly. Tell them they can't bring their kids, cause we want a serious game, and tell them it needs to happen right now or it will get dark and we will lose the ball. How many people do you think are coming to the park?<br />
<br />
On the other hand, send out a text that we are all getting together this time tomorrow for a game, get people into the idea, and you just might get those people to the park. <br />
<br />
For the most part, Eve is populated by adults. Everyone is busy, and while we would almost always rather be at the computer playing this game we love enough to pay for every month, its not often the case that we are in the right place at the right time to be exactly where we need to be. If you can manage to give your average line member enough time to reasonably plan on attending he most certainly will, because fleeting up together to have awesome spaceship battles is why we are here. There is nothing more important to the success of an Alliance operation than awareness and scheduling by the people who have chosen to take responsibility for the gameplay of others.<br />
<br />
We follow the people we chose to in this game because we like and respect them, because we share the same dream and have the same goals. There are thousands of groups like ours out there, it is not by coincidence that we are following the people we are following. We respect what they stand for, so we wear the same proverbial t-shirt. The quickest way for a leader to lose the people who turn out for them is to not share that respect back.<br />
<br />
There is an argument to be made for spies in a game like ours, and it is obviously valid. In my opinion secrecy can hurt your organization more than help it. Spies will know often know a formation is going to happen, because so much of our game is based around timers. And even if they do, risk makes this game fun, let's get in that fight!<br />
<br />
Tools like slack and discord are great for getting a word out, and almost every group uses them. In addition to that, the new mobile app makes in game mails easy to send and receive mails on the go. If you give a heads up to the people who want to follow you into battle, and they can, they most certainly will. Nobody wants to carrier rat over smashing reds, but they know when there is not enough time to make a fleet in time.Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-24063567109043421282017-02-01T01:34:00.002-08:002017-02-01T01:34:17.247-08:00Taking Responsibility for the Gameplay of Others<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJPssIfaUo0_ne1IKkPu9Yq8zCSMM85xiI-2sVTFJCmS-3YVCr3_4WdeyDeOuI0wUT2vlybpQfGx16X7Zdeb93QVEQAihMYfd2_P-_7X9vqUueiKTajnnfeCXMjav5Pe8NbWGepcJFGKs/s1600/lateddst.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJPssIfaUo0_ne1IKkPu9Yq8zCSMM85xiI-2sVTFJCmS-3YVCr3_4WdeyDeOuI0wUT2vlybpQfGx16X7Zdeb93QVEQAihMYfd2_P-_7X9vqUueiKTajnnfeCXMjav5Pe8NbWGepcJFGKs/s320/lateddst.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
When you step up in Eve, and decide to take responsibility for a game that people both pay for, and really take seriously, you take a large amount of responsibility that cannot be taken lightly. On any level, be it as an FC, a leader of your fellows, or in speaking toward anything you feel like your friends should try out, you are taking a risks.<br />
<br />
The most basic level of 'Hey I'm having fun at this you should come do it with me.' Is almost the most dangerous, and I am extremely apprehensive about saying anything of the sort anymore. From my very first eve friend I learned this lesson, as I tried to drag him into factional warfare with me when we were both new players. We had been having fun doing exploration and as is true of so many things in Eve, fw didnt work out to be as easy to get into as was talked about by more veteran players. We bounced around between some very bad corps for a while, and this process burned him out on the game all together.<br />
<br />
I have recently been hanging out in nullsec in a small corp within Co2. I came out here to get involved in the Winter War and kill some goons and crazy Russians. I like Co2 for the most part. They are not as organized, or as large as some of the big block groups I have tried out in the past, but I think that helps their overall likability. It's easier to get involved in a group like this over larger and more elite alliance, it is simply much less clicky. In my first week I was unexpectedly FCing, and I have been leading roams for my little corp. It is nice to be involved in a social circle again, even if I'm not quite sure if I'm a fit. <br />
<br />
I don't have a ton of Eve friends, probably because I was a solo pilot for so long, but I do have two other pilots who I do share a channel with and chat with when I get the chance. Friends also outside the game, we came up learning pvp together, and won the warzone together once upon a time.<br />
<br />
One of these friends had started to seem like he was picking up those Eve doldrums that you will know about, if you have played for a length of time. It happens to us all. Many times you will see someone take a break from eve, step away from the virtual universe and everything associated with it. Sometimes our fellows return from this, but sometimes not.<br />
<br />
When I have found myself facing these feelings about Eve, I have tried to radically switch everything up. In fact this is what brought me to my recent adventure to nullsec, just feeling down about Eve and making it brand new again. You may have noticed I haven't posted in a few weeks, it's just because I'm really using my gaming time to the fullest right now, and breaking away to blog has become less convenient. I'm not spending long amounts of time waiting for a fight, or chasing content. Bad news for readers of my blog I suppose, but I will make it up to you with new stories and insights.<br />
<br />
Anyway, back to my friend, I went ahead and spoke up about the fun I was having, and said that I thought he should come out here and join me. I told him he would feel better if he shook things up, and he decided to go ahead and come on out. I have learned some harsh lessons in the past speaking up for things like this to my friends, and I have a fair bit of apprehension that things may not work out. Things so very often do not work out in this game of ours. When it doesn't it could all be my fault. In my case at least, friendships aren't easy to come by, and by taking this responsibility I am risking that.<br />
<br />
The cherry on the top of that experience is that the very day that my friend joined the corp with me, it cascaded into some extremely silly drama and broke up. It had been a strong group of close-knit, active pilots for years, and by a stoke of bad luck, that was the last day of it. Exactly what I was worried about happened.<br />
<br />
While we settled through the breakup and remained in C02 together, it was a lackluster experience to start off with so much drama, but the drama itself was just another example of the responsibility you actually step into when you decide to take the lead on a game (hobby) that people pay for.<br />
<br />
Without going into too much of the silly details, the CEO of the corp decided that he thought that the corp discord was too immature for him to be a part of, he didn't like the 'adult' content of it, and decided to move the corp to the Drone Walkers coalition. He didn't discuss any of this with his directors, and the meeting in which he announced the impending move was not open for discussion. Within the same meeting, a new corp was announced, and almost everyone left to be a part of it. The CEO realized that he was losing the bulk of his corp, and reversed his decision, but the damage had been done, and the corp split apart.<br />
<br />
By imposing his morals on the people who had elected to follow and fight for him, and by not respecting the process in which organizations come to decisions like this, he lost what he had worked years to accomplish all with one impulsive act. You simply can't take responsibility for others, let them put their trust in you, and then do something that puts a strain on that. It doesn't matter if it's in Eve, or in real life, you are always setting yourself up to fail.<br />
<br />
You wouldn't willingly take a fight you know you had no chance of winning, and if you are a good FC, you won't welp into an overwhelming force, because you respect your fellows and they are trusting you to keep the fleet alive as best you can. This ethos expands to most faucets of this game we love and forgetting it leads to loss, be it in shiny ships or good friends.Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-60208221675962021152017-01-05T17:01:00.000-08:002017-01-05T17:01:12.631-08:00Getting Involved in the Big PictureYou hear that? That my friend is the sweet sound of nothing. The holiday bustle is finally over.<br />
<br />
The house is back to normal, the kid goes back to school, and the wife goes back to work tomorrow. It's snowing outside, but the weather was good enough to wait until after the traveling was done to get really bad.<br />
<br />
Tomorrow I hope to get into some artwork I have been putting off, but tonight I'm shaking up my Eve life a little for the new year. I've decided on a whim to get involved with this latest war popping off in the south.<br />
<br />
I have always wanted to live in Catch/Esoteria, the hunting and pve are excellent, but I have never made it past expeditions of a couple weeks. Since the Goons moved out there after wwb, the area is a lot less accessible. I did notice my last time out to catch before all this began that it had quieted down enough that newbro explorers were coming back to the area, eager to get rich on those intact armor plates the Sansha sites drop.<br />
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Being a solo lowsec player, I really dont have any grasp on the politics and happenings of nullsec. It's just not been my game yet. Knowing nothing besides I want to be involved is quite intimidating, as I could easily make a mistake right off the bat just by joining the wrong coalition. I was lucky to run into <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY-6EqXcvBY">this </a>excellent breakdown by Jin'taan detailing the major players and a little about the history of the area. He has since made a second update video which I would suggest you watch over reading my ramblings if you really want to understand this conflict.<br />
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There seems to be some disparity on what we are calling this war, I have heard the general Eve populace refer to it as the 'Casino Wars', and others refer to it as the 'Winter War'. If you read the Imperium site, you will see they are calling it the 'Traitors War'. It's all in your point of view I suppose, until I know it better I will go with CCP and call it the Winter War as well.<br />
<br />
So what do I want as a pilot out of this conflict? It's hugely important to set goals and outline expectations in Eve and this situation is no different. Well obviously I want to be involved in some of the large block battles that define our game to outsiders. I missed wwb as I was fighting the dirty Amarrs in FW, and my exposure to large scale fights is very limited, so I hope this will be a good opportunity to get the practical experience needed to know how to fulfill different roles in a large fleet skirmish. I also hope to expand beyond dealing dps into more specialized positions such as recon, booshing, and ewar.<br />
<br />
Along with this I would like to try flying some logi. I have an alt with exceptional logi skills, but I have never used her in that capacity. There are a few reasons for this. As a solo pilot, its not easy to logi yourself on an alt and also fly your own ship effectively. The few times I have tried I have failed due to my inexperience on the logi end. Having not had any practice I am hesitant to volunteer to logi in situations where I do come into contact with other pilots, in npsi fleets and the like. I hope the sheer number of engagement popping off at any given time will give me the gumption to jump in and give it a try.<br />
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With all this in mind I decided to join with a small corp within Co2. As far as I can tell, they are the 'traitors' that The Imperium is on about and that seems like as good a reason as any to check them out. I do know I do not want to fight on the side of The Goons, the type of nonsense they parade is exactly the kind of thing that turns me off about the game I love.<br />
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I have not had a ton of success with corps, something I've written about in more detail in past posts, so at the beginning of the process of looking I took an attitude of ambivalence about the situation. In my mind the joining of a corp had a different purpose now than it had had in my past attempts. In the past I was looking for a home/friendship/comradery/etc, this time around I'm just looking at a means to an end. I dont have myself closed off to finding these things, far from it, but I think not getting my hopes up is a smart choice.<br />
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All that said, I may have lucked into a cool group of pilots. While they are a smaller corp, they are all very active and fly together and are friends. You can't really ask for much more from a corp. I have had a lot of support getting set up and I get the feeling that I might be able to be an important cog. I seem to have come at a good time as we deploy to catch in the very near future. I am hoping for some good content!<br />
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<br />Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-72015399282542450932017-01-01T22:10:00.000-08:002017-01-01T22:10:22.988-08:00Battle HeronOld habits die hard, and I thought I would go out and look for someone to shoot at. This is easier said than done in Solitude, and after some running around in a Stratios, I switched to something I'm seeing a lot of out here, a Heron.<br />
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With so many alpha players around this area, and explo being a popular newbro activity, I blend right in. The Heron is the best ship for a new player to explore in, as it has as the most mids of any explo frig, and the scan rigs really help a new player track down sites in good time.<br />
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I have tried a few different iterations of the battle heron over the years. They do well in the factional warzone as you will often be confused with a plexing farmers. There are two fits I'll link here if you want to give one a try. I have varying success, but at least I get fights and content.<br />
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[Heron, Battle Heron]<br />
Damage Control II<br />
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II<br />
<br />
Warp Scrambler II<br />
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II<br />
1MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner<br />
Medium Ancillary Shield Booster<br />
Medium Ancillary Shield Booster<br />
<br />
150mm Light AutoCannon II<br />
150mm Light AutoCannon II<br />
Rocket Launcher II<br />
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Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I<br />
Small Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I<br />
Small Core Defense Operational Solidifier I<br />
<br />
Throw some hobs in that beast and you have a supertanked evil bastard of a thing that eats other frigs alive, as long as you can put down enough damage. The tank reps your full shield with each turn, but's very easy to overrep. Autocannon kite and with a little luck your opponent won't even be able to track you.<br />
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[Heron, Scanner Probe I]<br />
Damage Control II<br />
Small Ancillary Armor Repairer<br />
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1MN Afterburner II<br />
Stasis Webifier II<br />
Warp Scrambler II<br />
Tracking Disruptor II<br />
Tracking Disruptor II<br />
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Small Ghoul Compact Energy Nosferatu<br />
75mm Gatling Rail II<br />
75mm Gatling Rail II<br />
<br />
Small Ancillary Current Router I<br />
Small Anti-Explosive Pump I<br />
Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I<br />
<br />
<br />
Acolyte II x3<br />
Hobgoblin II x4<br />
<br />
Spike S x1000<br />
Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S x1000<br />
Caldari Navy Thorium Charge S x1400<br />
Nanite Repair Paste x22<br />
Optimal Range Disruption Script x2<br />
Tracking Speed Disruption Script x1<br />
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I started rolling in this thing after watching Mira Chieve's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYnineti6RE">excellent video</a>. The thing you want to keep an eye out for are ships that rely on range control to track and hit you. Fighting droneboats is not advised, on the other hand, anything with fixed guns will have a lot of trouble tracking you. This is a great counter for Minmatar ships like thrashers, sabres, and svipuls. You will mitigate almost all damage by keeping the target close to the range of your guns, about 7500km, and letting the optimal range scripts do their jobs. The nos on this fit doesn't get a lot of use, as you are at range, so lose it if you have fitting problems. An antipharmikon Iokira and/or a Quafe will serve you well, maintaining range is important.<br />
<br />
This is a cheap fit! Even better than that, it is a <i>smart </i>fit. It takes advantage of your enemies assumptions, one of the deadliest strategies in Eve. You can easily play a cyno, a plexer, or a salvager, and jump on your prey without seeming like a threat. The use of range scripts is not something everyone knows about and is almost always unexpected. Turning the tides on someone like this is one of my favorite ways to go about the game.Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-27606454423090409992016-12-14T22:17:00.001-08:002016-12-14T22:17:02.201-08:00Like a Virgin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's been a few days since I posted, I am an artist irl and get slammed with Christmas commissions this time of year. It's great, but my time to blog is the first thing to go.<br />
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I have been loving Eve lately, again the idea to throw everything to the wind and reinvent my char has paid off in a resurgence in my interest and enjoyment of the game overall. There is a sadness that goes along with finding your passion becoming dull, repetitive, or uninteresting. It's great to know that setting a few new goals relieves that feeling.<br />
<br />
I have been living in Black Rise for quite some time, the quick access to content was nice as a solo pilot, and it was easy blend in with the mess of militia in the area. Fighting both sides is good for content and kills, but eventually the area has become overrun with these giant groups of pilots, and being the solo guy is a lot more of getting blobbed that gf's. In addition to all that, many of the giant blocks, some former null groups, have chosen to make Black Rise their home, and the area is now more of the thunderdome that Providence ever was.<br />
<br />
Feeling despondent and unsure where to go, I let out in an astero, making hundreds of jumps over several days, just looking into new systems and seeing areas of space I hadn't been to in a while, if at all. I took a few fights along the way, and had a few conversations in local, mostly with newer players, though more often than not the language barriers were to great to overcome. When will ccp release that universal translator?!?<br />
<br />
Everywhere I went, folks are out doing pve. Far more than what I could see of dedicated pvp'ers. I have started to think that maybe there is something to that. I think it's hard to recognize someone elses style of gameplay as equal to your own without trying on their shoes. As experts in whatever profession we may have chosen, it's easy to see other styles as less involved, shallower, uninteresting, etc.<br />
<br />
I'm sure that goes both ways, and the more I experience of the universe the more I realize that is an okay perspective. I might go so far as saying that hubris for your own style of gameplay makes you a better capsuleer and a more accurate depiction of an undying hot-shot pilot, at the top of the food chain in a terrible dystopian future. That hubris is much of the heart of Eve.<br />
<br />
So, let's try that walk in someone else's shoes..<br />
<br />
As is often the case when I star a new endeavor in the game, I felt the need to do some housekeeping and clean up my assets list. It's very easy to let get away, and I really had no idea what I even had, or where.<br />
<br />
I started by consolidating assets from different chars all to one hauling char on one account, my only hauler by the by, who also doubles as a market trader, and theoretically can do industry, though that is something I have yet to explore. Many of these so called assets were just dumps of kill loot, but there were reships all over, along with a lot of randomness. I decided to dismantle my base in the minmatar/amarr system of Auga, as I haven't been back there to play much. Spending some time back there moving assets around, I think I am not the only one. I had over 100 ships there, as well as modules, boosters, ammo, caps, scripts, drones, and other expendables. Other than about a half dozen ships, I packaged everything up.<br />
<br />
I took the hauler to each region, filtered my assets list by region, set waypoints to each station, and then let the computer set a proper course. In low security areas of space I sometimes used my main to scout. I had to break several gatecamps, and did <a href="https://zkillboard.com/kill/58172285/">lose one occator</a> to a gatecamp in Egghelende, luckily it was on a return trip, with no loot lost.<br />
<br />
After a few days I had gathered the bulk of my assets into a trade hub system and my market alt is getting a workout. In fact, I have been using my alts much more than my main lately, as they are the ones trained for all these alternate activities. It's been a lot of different playing with lower skilled chars, and it gives me a sobering reminder to what newer players have to work against.<br />
<br />
As a newer player I had done some missioning in hisec while I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. I also did the required newbro exploration stint, and remembered enjoying it. Somewhere in there I remembered running ded sites, badly, and doing anoms for tics, also badly. But I have a want to rediscover this side of the game. I'm starting to feel like the more I can take advantage of, the more I will enjoy Eve, and the more longevity I will have.<br />
<br />
From what I can remember, I used to do these ded missions in a raven. It's been a while since I flew a raven, so I wasn't sure if they were still good, but I fit one up anyway.<br />
<br />
The area around Egbinger, in Molden Heath, was where I used to run pve stuff. It's right on the edge of null, and the escalations are great. I haven't been out there in a while, but I decided I would head that way again and set out without much research. That came back to bite me pretty quick.<br />
<br />
Even though I was using a cloaky scout alt, I ran into a really advanced set of gatecamps and foes very quickly into lowsec. There was no gatecamp, but a flurry of activity said that there were cloaky alts of their own watching gates around the region, and I picked up a tail. I quickly got aggressed by an alpha in a suicide rifter on gate, which gave me a logoff timer, and combat probes in local meant I wasnt safe at a tactical. With several ships ready to land with me at the next gate, and no structures available, I pulled a crazy ivan. Warping to 70 of the next gate in this bottleneck system, I dropped a bookmark about two seconds before landing, creating an on-grid ping in line with the last gate. The enemy fleet landed at zero on the outgate, and they burned toward me. Warping to my on grid ping made it look like I was warping back to the last gate and every pilot took the bait and warped back. This gave me enough time to take the gate and dock.<br />
<br />
It took days to get that raven out of there, and at the end of the day, turns out it really sucks for pve.Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-82270176356576641272016-12-03T14:46:00.000-08:002016-12-03T14:46:03.744-08:00My Eve Birthday, Or, Doldrums and the Cure<div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />
In a week, my main will turn two years old. I know this isn't a huge milestone, many people have played Eve far longer than me, and two years might be considered 'just getting started' to many, but it's worth some contemplation.</div>
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<br />
After two years, I am close to 60 million sp on my main, and 30 million on my main's support alt, and about 11 million on my hauler/industry alt. My support alt is training into combat links at the moment and after that I plan to start the long climb to cyno 5, so she can make for a better hunter. My main is well on his way to training for a capitol ship, with only a couple weeks remaining until his skill are up enough to fly it properly. After that he'll be working on a marauder.<br />
<br />
Across my accounts I have around 16 billion in liquid isk, and close to twice that in assets. I have a bad habit of building fleets of ships, and then letting them gather dust in hangers, I have been thinking lately of liquidating some of those fits, and consolidating. My main reasoning for training into caps in the first place is to have a suitcase to move this stuff around, but the more I play Eve, the more I have found that a lot of these logistics are a time sink, and ultimately not necessary. I am starting to think some of my overpreperation robs me of content in the end, that a lot of my Eve game is preparing for something that never ends up happening. Maybe it's the boy scout in me, I don't know, but it Eve, it's easy to overdo, and I should stop doing that.<br />
<br />
I've been in the dumps a little about Eve lately, an attitude that comes around with me once in a while. It's a never-ending game, and it's important to retain perspective on that. Whenever I find myself feeling like this, I try and shake things up. In the past, some of these off the cuff decisions have been the best things I have done for myself and my longevity. On the other hand, a lot of those stacks of ships scattered around the universe come from these same spur of the moment actions.<br />
<br />
After 'growing up' as a pilot as it were, and leaving factional warfare to see what the universe had to offer some time ago, I have found I approach these points of frustration pretty quickly. Repeated attempts to find my way larger organizations have left me jaded to such groups. The more I experience these the more I realize that most corps that are super into recruiting are, for the most part, not any sort of group worth being a part of. Accepting that you are a solo pilot, even temporarily, is limiting but also freeing.<br />
<br />
I have been living in Nennamaila, in the GalCal warzone, for quite some time. After the Minmater warzone died, it was a great place to get good fights and content. Being a solo pilot in a warzone affords you lots of opportunities to fight with both sides, and to use the assumptions of others to your advantage. When I moved into the area, this was a great staging area, as it was right in the middle of the wz, and easy to travel around. These qualities have not been lost upon my fellows though, and now Nennamaila is the thunderdome, within the larger Eve thunderdome of Black Rise. My station is hellcamped by caps so often that I have taken to logging off in space, and I can only travel in cloaky ships, forget getting anything bigger than a frigate out of the system. I am lucky enough to have a solid scout alt, but it's still very hard to avoid these giant camps.<br />
<br />
It is easy to think of playing Eve and then to decide against it because it seems like too much work. Quick access to content only goes so far if more often than not you are the content. Even the best of us tires of the repetition of constant conflict. It begins to feel like there is no subtlety, and certainly no real accomplishment, as everyone who isn't kidding themselves is expecting to die shortly anyway.<br />
<br />
I have been wandering around a lot when I log into Eve anymore, some nights making hundreds of jumps, trying to feel out different areas of space I haven't been to very often. I feel like it would be good to learn something new and incorporate it into my game. More options for content can only be a positive thing.</div>
</div>
Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-83952035407653771482016-11-30T21:47:00.001-08:002016-11-30T21:47:19.836-08:00Corps, Community, and Training Friendship to VWhile overall, I am a friendly and easygoing guy, I also find myself to be somewhat antisocial. In my real life, I have never been one to go out for the purpose of going out, and I hate sitting in restaurants and bars. I'm not really the kind of guy to get in a vigorous discussion with a random person. I'm not introverted by any means, I enjoy other people and make good conversation in the right settings, I make friends easily, and overall I think people are good. I just wanted to mention all this because it's important to realize that we all do what we do in fundamentally different ways, and that my opinions and experiences with corporations in Eve are very likely to have differed from yours. <br />
<br />
With the Ascension update, we are surrounded by new players, eager and ready for content and glory within our universe. Every forum is filled with ads for rookie corps, and most of the advice is centered around finding a group to help you get your footing. All the major organizations are in a full on recruiting push, no doubt the intentions of some are more honorable than others, but that's not what I'm on about today. I feel I have some unique insight on this, once upon a time I ran a very successful rookie corp.<br />
<br />
When I started Eve I was in no hurry to join with a corp. I started with a buddy who had played a little before we were friends, and we were able to handle the learning curve leaning on each other.<br />
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Like many new players, we turned to exploration. Back in the day, exploration used to be hugely profitable, and many new guys braved nullsec and wormholes for dank drops of intact armor plates. It was good for content, and it was good for the profession of exploration. The nerf to this area of Eve hurt content creation in wormhole and nullsec space, but that is beside the point.<br />
<br />
We joined Signal Cartel, a large corporation of nonviolent exploration monks. I would consider SC an excellent corp for new players, <span class="st">Mynxee is an excellent hands on leader and great at this. I had fun with them, and though my friend left eve during that time, I stayed with them and learned to be a good scout.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">Exploration, at least at the basic level of cracking cans in pirate sites, is a solitary activity. You just make more money when you don't have to split the loot at the end of the day. So, being only very passively involved with the rest of the corp was easy. We were always spread to the far reaches of the universe anyway. At the end of the day though, explo is lonely, you spend all your time doing your best not to be noticed. It's very hard to make connections. </span><br />
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On a whim I decided I was done being an explorer, and that it was time to shoot things, and I joined up in Minmatar factional warfare. I would spend the next couple years here.<br />
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There was not much organization among the Minnies, and they were universally known as the worst fw faction, having been in t1 for years, and outnumbered four to one. I joined the npc corp, Tribal Liberation Force, and did my best to figure out the mechanic. After several months of exploding badly in plexes, I started to meet a few people, and finally started getting my first kills under great minmatar fc's like Renee Chanlin and Jebi Vjeter. Eve was fun alongside these people, and I was starting to get a feel of the social side of the game. I made a few friends, and after bothering him for a few weeks, Jebi let me into his little corp, Kill'em All, Let Bob Sort'em Out.<br />
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When I joined kea there were only about ten pilots, all tight friends and solid in their skills. Since I had spent time with these folks ahead of time, we were all already at least acquaintances, and so flying alongside them was easy, and more of the same. For a long while we did our thing, fighting, plexing, bullshitting in comms. It was a great time in my Eve career.<br />
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Jebi, good man that he is, has never given up on the Minmatar cause. He has, for as long as anyone can remember, led the charge for control of the warzone and The Medal. At the time, the Minnies had never won the war, the only faction who hadn't. During our pushes, he would spend weeks at a time running open fleets for 20 hours a day. Handing out ships and advice, working with new players, and setting the pace for the rest of us, and getting us all good kills and content.<br />
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One day we sat in a plex, and I brought up the idea of making kea a newbro fw training corp. It's an idea I had been playing with for a while. The Minmatar side of the warzone was stagnent. The Amarr outnumbered us 3/1, and no pilot who wanted to make money within fw was going to join a faction in teir one. The only thing we were really rich in, was content, and I was hoping we could build on that.<br />
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Jebi said go for it, and within a month we were over a hundred strong, within three we were twice that. We gave away all the ships any newbro could use, ran multiple daily plexing fleets, and trained every group of rookies in all the basics of Eve and pvp.<br />
<br />
As we started flipping systems, other groups started to want to work with us, and we took this as an opportunity to unify the Minmatar. There had always been infighting, mostly between groups that wanted the win, and those who wanted the content, but as it started to look like we might make a stand, those groups found they had the same interests after all.<br />
<br />
For me, I went from being in a fleet, to leading a fleet, to coordinating a fleet of fleets, in a really short time. Eve for me became more about paperwork and meetings. I would log in for hours just to write mails. Tens of billions of my own isk went into making the project work.<br />
<br />
Eventually, after a sustained siege, we won that war, and it was a hugely proud day for me. We flipped every system in one day, letting the farmers do our work for us, and I called targets in the last battle for the last system.<br />
<br />
I was war weary, and I had spent years in the pursuit of this goal. Now that it was finished, I wanted nothing more to do with any part of that warzone. I was going to go try something new, see the universe. I was really looking forward to making some new friends and being an important part of one of these organizations I had respected and been curious about over the years. <br />
<br />
As you can probably guess, it was a lot harder to create that sense of friendship again, and finding that sense of being an important part of a team, that has never come again for me. I spent time with many larger orgs, from merc groups to pirates and everything in between, but have never found a group that seemed to want to accept new members in the way that I had hoped I would find. When I joined fw, I had all these inherited blues, and a good amount of time to meet people organically. I joined with a small group of pilots that I already had some time to fly with. I think that this contributed greatly to my success in finding a home in those days.<br />
<br />
I think back to that core group of 10 pilots who I joined with in my early days as my personal golden age in Eve. We weren't particularly good, a laughingstock even to some, but we set a goal and through an effort that can never be described to anyone outside this game, we accomplished it. I know how much of a hand I had in that, and I am proud. <br />
<br />
A oldschool pilot in the original group of ten, who I really respected, told me I ruined the corp when I opened it up to the masses. He was right. As we grew, the core group was spread thin. They started logging into teamspeak less or into different channels, and there were new groups and cliche's forming. It was like trying to force a bunch of new friendships on these old pilots, and while eventually it payed off with the victory condition, none of us are really the comrades we once were.<br />
<br />
Since then I have been across the universe, into all manner of groups, always chasing the dream of 'community' that everyone in Eve insists is the basis of the game. I'll admit I've never found it. Large groups that actively recruit are just so hard to break into socially, for me at least, because these cliche's and groups that already exist at the core.<br />
<br />
Nowdays I try to make connections as a solo pilot, but it's not easy. Eve is indeed hard to play by yourself, and not only in the literal sense that nobody has your back. It is just lonely, and to that end it is easy to see how people become bitter and wander away. As a solo pilot, there are a few great nights out here and there, but mostly you are just holding your head in your hands and wondering where the glory days went. Hardly a healthy relationship with a hobby. Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-54838858540482815902016-11-19T22:56:00.002-08:002016-11-22T15:47:57.935-08:00Dawn of the Alphas, a Shift in the MetaToday Alpha clones fly among us, and whether you think this will be of great impact on New Eden or not, it is a big difference in the basis of the game going forward. This update is a strong upheaval in the basic meta of the game, on par even with the introduction of skill injectors.<br />
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While there is a good chance that this will not greatly effect the numbers of 'actual' players in the long term, the thing that really plays into the meta in my opinion is the fundamental change in the psychology of the game. While some Alphas will be easy to identify, most will certainly not be. Older players returning, or inactive alt accounts of current players will be the new norm. Is that four year old militia in that plex an Alpha or Omega, you aren't likely to know. Is this thrasher trying to bait you, or just bad?<br />
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When we started with skill injectors, we changed a similar fundamental assumption within the game. Before then, you had a good idea what you were getting yourself into with just a quick look at a persons history. 'Only been playing a few months? Easy prey.' It is safe to say that method has now fully gone.<br />
<br />
I had a hard lesson in this personally soon after the patch that introduced skill injectors. I was hunting in a stratios, one of my favorite ships, and came through Ouelletta. I noticed t1 scanner probes on scan, and a week old char in local. After warping through the system I noticed with surprise that the newbie is in a stratios himself, and at a medium outpost! He's not in fw, so I figure he just doesn't know what the outpost is, maybe he thinks it's a safe place to scan from. The first of several assumptions on my part, that compounded into a bad situation. I warped right in on him without a thought, expecting an easy kill, and quickly found myself dry on cap and fighting to stay alive. I hadn't preheated, I hadn't put my 'eye of the tiger' face on,<a href="https://zkillboard.com/kill/54855549/"> I had no chance</a>. It was all a trap that I couldn't have fallen into more. It was tough not to feel salty, it is hard being outsmarted by your fellows so heartily. That was a hard lesson, and also a eye-opening moment. The playing field has been leveled. The fundamental meta no longer exists.<br />
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For what it's worth, that stratios ripped up unsuspecting players for about two weeks until it finally <a href="https://zkillboard.com/kill/54941705/">lost to a vagabond</a>. The player immediately biomassed from the game. If I had infinite isk, I think this would be a really fun way to play. I think we all strive to take advantage of the assumptions of our fellows, be it in fittings, hiding our true numbers, or misrepresenting our weaknesses. I hope he's out there having fun with this alpha update.<br />
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I'm not particularly upset at a shakeup of the game like this, as long as it doesn't dumb it down. I like that Eve is hard and unforgiving, and I think we should fight any effort to make more of an 'arcade mode' environment We all need to get rekt for no good reason once in a while, it keeps the dream alive. <br />
<br />
I sat in Ryddinjorn, the home system of the Brutor's, all day today, hanging with the new players. I answered questions in local, gave out rookie fitted frigates, and hit everyone in local 5m isk. It was an outstanding experience, and a great way to make some new connections in New Eden. I fought anyone who wanted to try out the combat, and let them all win. I plan to scoop anyone who wants into a little fleet and take them on a roam. CCP has done a great service towards getting new people into the game, but I think if we want this to succeed we need to do our part by including new players into our daily Eve experience. It can be tough to break into a social circle.<br />
<br />
I think my little crew could use a wildcard or two, and I plan to scoop up a newbro with some moxy and give him some cool stories to tell and a reason to stick with Eve. Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-19095490789137020892016-10-28T16:09:00.002-07:002016-10-28T16:09:25.088-07:00A Big PondThe Ascension update was pushed back an extra week in a <a href="https://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/deployment-of-eve-online-ascension-postponed-until-2016-11-15/">dev announcement</a> today, as CCP scrambles to put a layer of polish on what is the most involved update to the sandbox in recent history. This is the hammer on what has been a huge year for updates within the game. CCP's roadmap over this time has been both ambitions and, for the most part, a positive change in my opinion. These have been large updates, and they have all been accompanied by plenty of documentation as to the features that were planned to be added, well in advance. This has been necessary in many cases as player feedback is an important part of the evolution of Eve. All that said, I have really been missing the opportunity for the individual to get involved in the history of Eve, there doesn't seem to be much left to discover.<br />
<br />
When I started playing Eve, the Caroline's Star event was just happening, Drifters were awakening, and making their presence felt across the cosmos, and there was a lot of uncertainty as to what that implied for the rest of us.<br />
<br />
Caroline's Star was named after the pilot who discovered it, and the team of in-game astronomers who triangulated its position in Jove space was featured on the scope. The first pilot to find a Jovian wormhole (and subsequently die there) was heavily featured in the lore, as was the recovery of his body. There are many fine examples over our past of individual Capsuleers getting involved in the big picture. It makes our universe feel more alive and brings us closer to it.<br />
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This is a game of dreams, and the longer we play, the easier it is to become detached from that feeling. These little reminders that this game is all about the individual do well for all of us, they keep us looking to the stars. They keep us invested.<br />
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It used to be that there was on organization of volunteers in game committed to driving lore, called the AURORA. They would write in game news, stage happenings throughout New Eden, and provide voice to in game events. They had the support of CCP, who would help them stage these events in such a way as to dissuade player interference. But should players interfere, they would become part of this living story that was unfolding. As all good volunteer programs within Eve, it eventually dissolved.It would be good if there was an equivalent CCP employee committed to this end.<br />
<br />
I'm not really trying to argue for more roleplay, though I think everyone roleplays in some way, even if it's just an imagined backstory for your character. I just wish there were some small things within these large releases that weren't set in stone long in advance. Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-10503921981673485402016-10-24T19:25:00.002-07:002016-10-24T19:25:37.850-07:00Getting Engagements<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0IAA5A8mailiNYpi_lzMSwyGJPjIF4vG5BbMrDeU02ofEvUuI5U1J7H-qsV8_r5Catk7zEQRhFuw44y4Km-9c5OHw8RyIJbiAEtiM3_pwzqJXPKc6sJVhAcngNmEAiQYyAbiPWOqV0L0/s1600/17125795611_6f10a97b4b.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0IAA5A8mailiNYpi_lzMSwyGJPjIF4vG5BbMrDeU02ofEvUuI5U1J7H-qsV8_r5Catk7zEQRhFuw44y4Km-9c5OHw8RyIJbiAEtiM3_pwzqJXPKc6sJVhAcngNmEAiQYyAbiPWOqV0L0/s320/17125795611_6f10a97b4b.jpg" width="206" /></a> </div>
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On an ideal night, I'm out for blood and pod goo, but I'm finding the longer I play the less people want to fight me. Sure, the guys in pimped out faction frigs are always happy to drop in on a t1 frig, but I sure do like to get a fair fight out of an unsuspecting pilot. I've started to need to either force fights, or trick people into fighting me. Here are some ways I accomplish this.<br />
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Be Engagable. So much goes into being seen as an easy target, but really the biggest one is going to be what ship you are in. Go too hard, and you will certainly deny yourself content, or at the least be forced to punch above your weight. In my mind, unless you are out for some particular purpose, faction ships (frigates especially) have little place in the current solo or even small gang meta, especially if you are chasing the proverbial gudfight. There are certainly exceptions to that, for example if you are sending a tackle scout ahead to tie down targets, or if you are cloaky astero's, but as a rule most pilots are going to run from your dramiel or worm. You may think them cowardly, but any pilot will tell you life is not death. It's on you to bring at least the appearance of a fair fight to your opponent.<br />
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Try and look as little like a threat as possible. The best way to do this is to keep your security status in the positive. For the active pirate type individual, this can be tough. Security tags are expensive, and actually the only thing I farm for in Eve, but they also are usually much more affordable at trade hubs than at concord stations. You can help yourself afford them by overbuying and then reselling the excess at a higher price. If you have the inclination to ratting, you can avoid this cost all together with a little belt ratting. In lowsec, you can help your sec status a lot by refraining from shooting pods, or from camping gates. Someday CCP is going to do away with faction hits inside plexes I feel it, but for now, appearing to be the upstanding individual will go a long way toward being ostensibly invisible. As far as many other pilots are concerned, you are just another cog in the logistics of the universe, and nothing to worry about.<br />
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Strive to outsmart your opponent and use his assumptions against him. A great way to get a good fight is the classic bait and switch. This strategy is applicable in many aspects of eve, but works especially well in factional warfare space. When I am out looking for a fight in a t1 frigate or cruiser, I will look for a system with a low level farmer, and do my best to impersonate him. Ideally the farmer will be docked, or in a ship that is not self named, and I simply rename my ship's name to the default '[character]'s Tristan'. Naming your ship after a module or distinguishing feature also works great, but make sure it is the opposite of what your ship is actually equipped with. For example, I would name my close quarters tristan 'Acolyte I' because it would be assumed I was a kite fit newer player. Can't find a pilot to impersonate? Try offering one a quick 10mil to park in station and go walk his dog, it works every time. You find people will rush to die under your guns. They will be convinced you are going to run, and will be focused on chasing you over fighting you. This gives you a huge advantage.<br />
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Make connections through combat. At the end of the day, it can sometimes be hard to remember that we are all wearing Eve t-shirts. The salt flows through local, and the anger and hate is often real. I try and remember, if I ran into any of you in a social setting, and we discovered we both played Eve, we would be instantly best friends. I recently discovered the checker at my local grocery store plays Eve, and I now wait in his line no matter how long the line is, and the people behind me look on in confusion as we sketch ship fits on receipts. Talk to your opponent after your fight! Be friendly and approachable! Talk about how close it was and share fits.<br />
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So often we wander alone through Eve, taking what we feel is important from our content and our gudfights, but disregarding the faces on the other side of the screen. Do not let your epeen shine so hard that you deprive yourself of one of the fundamental features of Eve, community. Many times, when wondering about a certain corp I was thinking about joining, or a new area of space I was thinking about flying around in, I would take a stack of nothing special ships out and just fight for a few days with the locals. You can tell a lot about people by fighting them. Do they come to fight you fairly? Are they brave? Do they take losses? Are they active in your timezone? I've had great evenings where one at a time, I would fight everyone in a small corp who was online. I would win some and lose some, but at the end of it I had a bunch of new friends and had found a memorable way to meet them. Everyone loves content, but that doesn't all have to come with explosions and fire.Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-78617331734644582272016-10-21T12:05:00.000-07:002016-10-21T12:05:18.846-07:00CCP Confirmed Amarr Alts<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTbW4QA2m7IxcDRJfBkE36JVBE-IF65c8GK5s-EN8BFbr_F2DjJJY2JV46QfD8bgB84-L3d3F50pBiNKDkbOy8HF469eC5ve_MyappgvEN5qlRYwRuTNRkQMXlTZUFcmaT1iCtTrJJLoI/s1600/tin_foil_hat.gif" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTbW4QA2m7IxcDRJfBkE36JVBE-IF65c8GK5s-EN8BFbr_F2DjJJY2JV46QfD8bgB84-L3d3F50pBiNKDkbOy8HF469eC5ve_MyappgvEN5qlRYwRuTNRkQMXlTZUFcmaT1iCtTrJJLoI/s320/tin_foil_hat.gif" width="232" /></a></div>
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I'm just joking with you, but hey, <i>why do</i> the Amarrs get all the love in this game?<br />
<br />
The latest event is underway, and we are again fighting Bloody Omir for the glory of the Empress. Right up front I will say, this is an excellent event, and the balance of reward drops is just right. It inspires capsuleers of all ages into space, and creates content aggregators in systems that would otherwise go unused. This is absolutely an event done right.<br />
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It seems petty to be bothered that the Amarr are again at the forefront of an event, but I guess I am. We all crowded into amarr two weeks ago for the coronation ceremony, the Golden Fleet is still parked there. Not long before that we were witness to the tournament that determined said ruler, a tournament only the Amarr were welcome to participate in. The purity of the throne event just wrapped up, and I really like the white skins, very Star Wars, but this next event is dropping two more flavors of Amarrian ship skins? <br />
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The roleplay in Eve is real, it influences the culture and by extension us. I've seen it in every organization I've been a part of. Whether consciously or not, people care about their race, and they want the opportunity to show it. For example, if the Minmatar had gotten the Iron Sails Skins, we would see cool factional warfare battles of white vs. black, and the lore of this would be awesome, as the righteous amarr fight to bring the infidel back under their heel. The more I think about this, the more I want a black thrasher.<br />
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I will not say it is an easy thing to do, our devs work miracles, but even a slight shift in the rats we are fighting and the story, and we could add some depth to another race for a change. There is no need to work up a whole new event, just sub in something else.<br />
<br />
I am a Minnie Pilot, and was heavily involved in faction warfare once upon a time, so I feel like I have a good grasp on what the Minmatar experience is all about. But I have very little relationship with the other races, even to the point I would have trouble describing them with a single adjective.<br />
<br />
Everyday I fly by stations and beacons, that have the names of factions and companies that I haven't had a chance to get to know. I wish we could add depth the these groups by including them into events like this. Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5221849149734936612.post-53667270471799466852016-10-20T15:17:00.002-07:002016-10-20T15:17:39.890-07:00Rocket ManSir Elton John is singing in my ear as I sit, a cloaky bastard in an Astero, just outside a novice plex. 'Losing everything is like the sun going down on me'. The song reminds me of Eve, and I get to thinking a good Captain shouldn't let losses get to them too much. It's all just ammo to use and abuse for our enjoyment right?<br />
<br />
My thoughts are interrupted by an atron on grid, he lands 5k off me and punches into the plex. The moment he disappears off-grid, I uncloak and punch gate. This technique almost always works to catch a target by surprise on the beacon. The fellow gives me a good fight, but his t1 frig is no match for my faction bling, and he dies in a fire.<br />
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I jeffed in local, and headed out to the next system, thinking that this new fit was going to work out just fine. It's a little expensive, but I should be able to kill a lot of my fellows and travel in relative safety. Definitely worth the faction mods.<br />
<br />
I died in a <a href="https://zkillboard.com/kill/56574665/">blaze of mediocrity</a> to a code gatecamp at the next jump, spawning only about 900km from a wreck and preventing a cloak. Then they <a href="https://zkillboard.com/kill/56574667/">got my pod</a>, ugh. I haven't been caught out like that in a long time. It was a tough loss, poor Vera didn't deserve to die like that, she barely saw space at all. It got me to thinking, in this unforgiving environment, what was the real worth of that spaceship <br />
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A ships true value is not so easy to determine. A vehicle in real life depreciates in value as soon as it drives off the lot. Ships in game are not so different. The nature of sudden and unexpected death in this game means that every successful journey is an allowance from Bob. And really, the longer you fly them, the less valuable they are.<br />
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At some point you have to concede that you have made your monies worth out of a ship. Maybe you are isk positive in kills, or you have ground an acceptable amount of isk to warrant getting caught by the hunter. Maybe you just had a great time in it and so, gg.<br />
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To me, as a ship approaches one of these criteria, it becomes less valuable, even if it's not technically. As long as a ship has had a good life, I am usually happy enough to lose it.<br />
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So thats all well and good, but Eve forces us outside these criteria pretty quick. The goal of many players is to interrupt our activities. Outsmarting each other is a major feature of this game, and making it hurt more is the icing on the cake. Many is the time I have lost a ship to a player I did not wish to fight, or in an unsatisfying encounter with another group, be it blobs, camps, or other dishonorable ends. But on the other hand, much of my day is spent in similar pursuits, trying to outsmart and smother the life from my compatriots, so I shouldn't complain. If I didn't get dunked upon from time to time I wouldn't appreciate the game for what it is. <br />
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New Eden is unforgiving, but we thrive in that. We like hard games, and we like to challenge ourselves. Eve is maybe the last game where losses <i>really </i>hit you in the feels. There are some others that try, DayZ and Minecraft hardcore survival mode come to mind, but they mostly lack the depth that forces you to care that much in the first place. They certainly lack the ability to allow you to set and follow a complex set of goals and come out on top like Eve.<br />
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At the heart of it, that coming out on top gives you a real life feeling of accomplishment, just as much as you feel that loss in your gut. Next time you are there, that feeling comes right back, maybe even stronger.<br />
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Sometimes this game sucks, I better embrace it if I hope to continue as a Capsuleer for any length of time. You can't enjoy the good without perspective, and you really can't play Eve without it either.Ishtar Komarovohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03725383174137269414noreply@blogger.com0