More Dust for the new year....

I've been playing more Dust 514 and still haven't touched Battlefield 4. I enjoyed BF 4 but I'm enjoying Dust a whole lot more. There is something to be said for being able to have an FPS with keyboard and mouse support on a console.

A new update for Dust 514, Warlords 1.0 coming in a week (3rd of Feb) looks to be giving Dust 514 some changes for the better. Details are here. Good to see there is a road map and the dusty part of the Eve universe is still loved.

A new year, same'ol same'ol for Eve Online.

Like my last Eve post I've had this in draft for some time. I've been adding to it bit by bit so I'll start here and make go of it, with luck it wont' be to patchy.

I've mainly been doing PI/daily housekeeping actions like fiddling with market orders or moving assets about. Both in having not enough time to really do anything and finding myself aimlessly playing a longer gaming session without realising it.

In micromanaging my assets I think I like the idea of where my assets are rather than having them in a cost efficient or streamlined manner.
An example is my mains level 4 mission running. There are 3 factions that I prefer to run level 4's for. So it made sense to have ship x ship y and z there. So of course I had to have the same set of ships with the same fits in the three stations housing the agents. This over years has piled up. In the end I think the isk doesn't matter, only the micromanagement.
The game is to interact with people but jay-bus there are a lot of fuppin eejits I'd prefer to have nothing to do with out there.
I got to do a lot of testing of fits and ships I already had in place to be 100% sure they all act as expected since skills were upgraded etc. But Eve is ever changing and the ship/module re-balancing is ongoing. It's all long term.Probably something I can waffle on about for a long time with no end in sight.

The Chrimbo gifts were nice. They added to the collectibles for my characters.
I managed to grab a full set of the chrimbo gifts for an alt for less then 2 mill, which was odd as the other contracts were all going for 25 mill or higher.  I could have made a nice profit on a resale of the items but I kept them all. A lot of players would consider that a waste of isk. Isk that could be used to explode or be exploded. We all have our corner of the universe, welcome to my corner of the sandbox. In saying that I still have a need to get characters involved in other Eve experiences.

The added Chimbo gift of 20 day's alt training made the biggest impact.
I had a recheck of all my characters skill plans, did attribute remaps and bought new implants to help speed things up. I think I went into detail about this last time so I won't go on about it here.

Extra training per alt has yielded more skill points into planetary interaction and has doubled the amount of isk for this semi passive profession. Not a bad thing.

I spent the remaining Aurum (2000) on skip skins that I liked but had not bought yet and also got some more avatar items. Despite the killer looks you'd get from some players for even mentioning an avatar I do like the "characters" and look froward the a new era of WiS or at leas the next step, pun intended.


My mains POS finished with a week of fuel to spare. As part of the reshuffling of assets I was happy to sell on some bpc's for a little extra isk.

My nullsec alt has been acting as a main for some time.
I've found that gaming on that character is restricted due to a lot of roaming reds in alliance space with cloaked hotdroppers being the main cause for concern. This stops mining, ratting and movement in general. Multiple war decs have halted hi-sec activities as being ganked in hi-sec is not a pleasant thing. It's all "content". Even with all that I've still been able to do a lot. I've managed to move all null assets that were not needed including a few ships like a noctis out to hi-sec. Till the null hangers get bloated again...

The expansion changes have all been good, I really like the new visual clutter for asteroid fields.
I've been reading the daily minutes from the winter summit. Makes me wonder why they never did it this way from the start. I'm sure if was a long process but seems like one of those "duh" moments.
The minutes are here.

Of all the things over the summit minutes the thing to strike me most was the Tengu changes coming.
I truly do hope that is it a T3 re-balance rather than the nerf bad they say they will avoid. As for the CSM there I thought it was interesting to see how much venom was spat out from one member to another when there was a mention of some of the avatar items/issues. Interesting reading. 
Eve Hermit has some interesting posts on the minutes that are worth a read. 

The ancient gaming noob's blog had a good post I came across that gives a good perspective on the greedy goblin blog that I found interesting.


I am really stretching for anything to write about and share that would be of any interest.

I had a chance over the last while to create an another trail alt and engage in some antics but mainly ended up as a hi-sec killer of lost MTU's with a side of wormhole peekaboo on the side. This doent' bode well for something to do with a 60 Day pass... Maybe I need to think "bigger".


A friend recently got an Eos and my main splurged on a Mac. We haven't gotten to do much with them of late. Still nice to get something shiny every now and then.

 

New year update....

The last month or so has seen a lot of heavy real life upheaval that still continues. So needless to say gaming and this blog have been effected.

This post is a mix of all my gaming bar Eve, that's a separate post next.

I'll start off here with WoW.  I had intended in mid December to write up a massive post about my main and his adventures in the new expansion, dinging 100 and the gearing up, dungeon runs, raiding and garrison antics that make the game. But in all honesty I really can't be bothered. I'm that put out of it. I've not had a good feeling with wow in the last little while. I think it started by dinging my lock as my second 100. I found it as a massive anticlimax that made me really see the grinding nature of wow once again.  I've not felt like this since the end of Burning Crusade. Where I was into everything on all the characters I had. I enjoyed the camaraderie but dong the likes of 25 dailies on 8 characters was a worry. It took it's toll. I dont' want to repeat that time.
Take last night, I logged in with my wife to do some wow, first we've done in a good while. Within an hour I couldn't quest, I hated the dungeon pugs when they finally happened. Wow has a draw and accessibility, if it were not for the garrisons I would have quit sooner. I'm not the only wow vet feeling like this and not even waiting for the new raids is of any help.
I also feel that in general the wow players you come across have changed a lot and for he worse. I mainly mean attitudes. And how they interact towards other players. Pugs and LRF being the main source of "contention". So much bickering over so small a slight can result in so much hate being released.

When I started in wow there were three times I clearly remember.

1.  Standing by a quest giver in a small town, I was passed by a level 60 player (max at the time). What I noticed first was that he was "walking", no autorun, he was "walking".
He stopped, looked around at his surroundings and walked up to me, then said in /s chat he was new in these lands and asked where he could get a tavern for a drink.  This was obviously a role player. The first time I had interacted with a player like that. It was an intriguing moment, and an interesting conversation/experience that followed. Interaction within the game by a player that wasnt' an npc yet still acted as a cog within the game world. A far cry from any random chat these day's.

2. When I started I hadn't a clue yet I remember going about questing and was introduced to the idea of random buffing players. By crossing random players who would cast what buff they could and you would do likewise to them. Like an understanding nod or salute to a fellow adventurer. These day's your only random player interaction is "random tagged my mob", "random took my ore node/herb", random did x, y or z in a step on player to get ahead.

3. Again when low level questing running back to a town I happened to pass a road and heard combat in progress. I took a quick side glance to see what was happening. I saw a mage fighting and being chased buy a large group of spiders. He had iced them in place, blinked and used what he could to evade them but I could see he was in a loosing battle. So I took a few steps and cast a buff and some heals on him. He was then able to get out of their range and promptly sat down and munched on some mage food. I cast some top up heals and a few friendly comments were passed, he was grateful. Over the course of the next few days questing in the same area's we bumped into one another, friendly hello's and comments were exchanged. We seemed to then be on the same quests and started to party up. That was how I meet my first in game friend. We had a lot of adventures together over the years. PVE and some PVP on a realm on a faction far far away, it happens.

I guess my walk down memory lane is that random player interaction used to be a better experience.

My current guild is a great one, well meaning, fair and helpful. Unlike others, we have weathered and discarded a lot of drama.


I tried to get back into pvp to get me into the swing of wow again but that did little to snap me out of it.

I have about 2 month's of game time left, I can see myself logging in updating garrison daily housekeeping and that's it. I'll do the raids when they are released even if that's just LFR to say that I saw and did it.

I've been talking to another rl friend both in and out of wow and he feels the same, he's just marking time. I think we are both looking forward to Star Citizen coming out more than playing wow. That says a lot. I tried to rationalise paying for more wow time but I can't. This was made clear to me when I thought that I should stop spending on wow and maintain spending on Eve Online. Makes a lot more sense to me. I also have icons on my desktop for Star Trek Online, Rift and Guild Wars 2. Free to play games that I should get back into and make a go of at no other cost. They are after all free to play.

I've stopped playing Battlefield 4, and cancelled the renew on the Gold xbox live subscription. I have spent more time on Dust 514 in place of it. The daily freebies to "work" towards are a great game changer and make me want to play. Another free to play game. And one I dont' need a sub on the PS3's network to get online matches.

On an up note I've played some more Rome Total War, yeap the first one. Despite newer or updated games like it I am always drawn back to it. A true classic. There is something to be said for offline single player games. Like being reintroduced to an old friend, the Pause button.