The 6.2.3 patch details a few things that are good but I can't help but still feel "meh" about most of the changes. The best news form the patch is that the valor points are returning.
Like the
Pandarian days of old. It will be interesting to see what Legion brings
when it fully hits the playerbase.
I still have about a month's worth of time left to play and given that I'm now having more fun raiding on weekends with the guild I feel that I may extend it. Time will tell.
A lot of things have changed in the gaming world since I last posted. Both in my own gameplay and the onward progression of all things. News never sleeps as the saying goes.
First up my own news. My last post was about getting my Minmatar alt into Faction Warfare but I have to say that didnt' last long. There was a quick realisation on my part that casual gameplay within that part of Eve was unrealistic.
I did decide to be cheap and hammer away with some Rifters; But all I kept coming up against were T3 Destroyers/cruisers, BC's with logi support. In short ships eating frigs for breakfast.
I can hear screams of players saying that I should find and pick targets
if your going solo or shouts of joining a corp or fleet within FW. And
that is good advice but it is not in any way shape of form a quick and
casual way of playing. I don''t want to spend an hour in a fleet
camping a gate on the off chance that we can pick off something. If I'd
wanted that kind of fleet action I'd have stayed with my other alt in
Nullsec.
FW would take a larger commitment of isk and time to get into it properly. So this time around FW is a no no.
I have a lot to learn in the FW department. Mainly in the geography of systems and the overall lay of the land, after that I could then tackle the pvp learning curve again.
Knowledge is power and the video of the 17 day old alt farming appropriate kills is a good show of that.
I do like the fit he used and with some tweaks it did make an impact on T3 destroyers but would have needed to be a duo or more to take one down... at least for me.
Ah the cosy fit of a battleship and missioning. Home sweet home.
My main alt has completed his stint of plexed skill training and once done I rechecked skills on both my mains. To my horror I found that the Alt had some skills on a higher level than both mains. To add insult to injury there were skills on both mains that were out of sync, one had some skills on lvl 4 where the other had them on lvl 5 and vice versa. Funny to some but a show of how I've concentrated on the alts more than the mains yet again. So with some skill queue tweaking that should all be corrected within the next few month's.
Both mains are still doing PI/Industry and R&D in hi-sec. The main alt is in a semi helping them phase.
The Minmater alt had that "go" of the FW is back to hi-sec with not a lot to do.
My Amarr alt is on the last leg of training for T2 weapons and should then be ready to test the current BS fits in some Level 4's and move onto see how she does in the epic arc.
The Gallente alt finally made the split from null, trashing/reprocessing and moving most of his assets out. One or two items are still on the market.
The alt is currently in a hi-sec corp which contains a lot more newer
players. I can comment and give advice but also connect with what can be
done in Eve. They have no fear of lowsec or jumping into wormholes in uncloaked ships and
unlike me are at a stage where they are not risk averse and not
overthinking the game. It's refreshing.
Eve's golden rules were recently linked on the launcher, the rules on the wiki are here and reinforces the "way Eve is".
I understand them and why they say they are the golden rules; But I was left with a question after reading them all. It was a gut reaction and I said it without thinking. "Wheres the fun". What I mean by that is that most games give you a list of reasons to play, not things to be avoided/watched out for. Just makes me think that Eve is a form of sadism that you can legitimately inflict pain on other players. Or create your own hell. Yeah I'm overthinking this..... maybe.
http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2015/10/conflicted.html
I'm still against it and want the value of my time recognised. I thought the mystery code was for that but no (don't get me started again).
I dont' know why they can't implement :
A skill queue aurum purchased "respec" that refunds the skill points that you can then be reallocated to whatever skills you have already injected.
&
Buying skillpoint packages from the Aurum store that have an injection cooldown timer like the attribute remaping. You can only inject an extra skillpoint package once per 6? month's etc.... if they are worried about pay to win (they are not... they want cash, sod balance).
The Eve keynote (full version) was interesting to watch.
A good write up of details is in this article.
Lots of oooh's and aaaah's. Shiny changes and overall game development.
I was left with a sense of "meh". Yes there are shiny things that a lot of players will get a lot of things out of when they are implemented. And I can understand the oooh's and aaaah's and share a smile and a laugh about it. But the overall sense I got was how boring it was to see another CCP presentation at another CCP hosted event to a bunch of people that want to be the whooping CCP fanboy/girl audience. I'd rather see a CCP stand at gamescon and see if they can get the same attention (besides Valkyrie). Easy for CCP to be CCP to a friendly audience that is chomping at the bit to see any morsel of "news". Maybe I'm being too harsh but self praise is no praise.
I am happy about the work being done on the new shield effects.
Really looks like shielding now...
That on top of the new propulsion will look really great on ships.
I don't do anything with capital ships and I will probably never see a doomsday activated in an "epic" fleet battle so I doubt that I'll get excited about things like that in the expansion. Overall the quality of life for a player is increasing and getting better and that's a good thing.
The Crimson Harvest has been ongoing for a while and I've done nothing with it and have not interest in going to low sec to become part of the harvest.
Dust 514 has also been part of the Crimson Harvest in it's own event.
514 kills gets you a once off skill reset and 21 wins gets you a Amarrian light frame skin based on the Blood Raiders.
I've played for three days and after getting the 21 wins (and a lot of losses) I've only gotten 100 or so kills. I've found that matches are very poor in doing this event. Poor as in very one sided. My main character has 24 million SP and has a lot of advanced gear but even he is being smashed hard by the amount of officer and experimental gear on the battlefield. For the first time in a long while I've found myself just quiting matches that are very lopsided. Matches that are well balanced I use my "good" gear and in match's where I think I'll get either the kills or the win I'll mix up the gear. Some matches I've gotten good kills with only using the militia suits, because I know that those suits are disposable and I'm really just being a kamikaze for the event. After getting the skin reward I stopped playing.
I found that there were a lot of matches that were fixed. That in a corner of the map players from both sides were gathered to take turns killing each other. To get the kill reward I presume. I enjoyed destroying their equipment to f**k s**t up.
Info on the latest update is here. And there is a lot in it. The patch also contained the community map that will be "turned on" at some stage in the coming day's/week's. I presume they are waiting for a sufficient amount of people to have it downloaded before going live with it. I'm looking forward to it.
I'm still enjoying the night ops as well. There is still a great deal of life in the game yet despite all the other games released since.
I'm still progressing through the game. I'm finding it brings back more simcity memories than any other simcity game that came out. Every now and again as I'm playing it I find myself humming the main tune to Simcity 2000. It brings a smile to my face :)
I really am loving the new game that much.
Cities Skylines is the epitome of the Simcity series done well. I can't praise it enough. The developing company have done a great job. Allowing modding out of the box is great. A company that values having a community of players.
I've played one city but as I was new and was "messing" about with how to play the game I did start a second more "serious" city. It's been fun. Planning and reaction are the key things to the game. You may plan a perfect city but demand may throw your plans out the window as you rezone residential into commercial only to need residential again. Or really needing to educate tour population only for the only school you have to burn down because you decided to get a police station instead of a firehouse. Little examples but fun.
As I've been playing though I've been having major problems with traffic. No matter the amount of time I spend on correcting it or trying something else in the way of traffic flow, it still ends up a mess for me.
Heat map of the traffic flow....
Always traffic...... Always.
The bad traffic holds up the fire engines, police, ambulances and all other traffic, city and civi. I will find an answer..... I doubt it will be roundabouts....
I've finally finished off some skill training on my Minmatar alt and have completed a lot I wanted to do on the PVE side. I still intend to do the Epic arc and to get that final little boost in sec statues so that she reaches 5.0. I can imagine that will all happen together or with a few more missions added in for good measure.
After that I'll be looking into getting to do Faction Warfare. In a clean clone and a cheap hull. It may not be pleasant at first but I'll give it a go and start the PVP route. With luck I'll be still in good sec status by the time I start knowing what I'm doing.
In between mission timers I found myself gathering ships and gear for small scale pvp on the cheap, given I had an eye on Faction Warfare. Ah rifters. It had been such a long time since any of my characters had sat in a T1 Rifter.
This video is a good example of what a skilled pilot can do. I think I will be far far removed from it when I start.
News of the character bazaar/skills revamp and the addition of the re-skill / skill injection for real money / isk is worrying. Eve News 24 says it all; I'm really not a fan of this if it goes through. Makes me wonder what the point of paying a subscription long term would be. CCP is playing a dangerous game in my view. They seem more interested in a quick buck income and are shitting all over the players who have payed month in and month out long term to do it. Really devaluing my loyalty CCP. This goes up there with the Mystery code in my view! That's my first snap reaction.
On a better note there are new ships and ship changes coming for winter. This article spotted the ships on the test server but the full details were released today in this dev blog and video. I'm sure there will be more tweaking and balancing as things are changed and re-changed.
The kickstarter page for Limit Theory has been updated last month with the latest information on the games return to development. #Update43.
As updates for the game are a lot slower in coming (and he explains why) I've not been keeping a close eye on it. Am really glad to see the updated info and the game I'm sure will look better than ever when more info is out.
The new Star Trek Season (expansion) is due in just under two weeks. I'm really looking forward to it.
Star Trek Online: Season 11
Brent Justice has a good update on the upcoming changes to Star Trek Online. It may be a long report but the game changes reflected in it need the time. You could spend a lot longer on the subjects.
There are two main wow blogs I read, The Grumpy Elf and Big Bear Butt's Blog. It seems that BBB has teamed up with his friend to do a new podcast called: The Grumpy Druids.
Grumpy is grumpy. There seems to be a lot of players, in guild, in real life and in general that are grumpy with wow. Complaining about minor things, major things or in general being grumpy. I've been like that for a long time with wow but still find myself logging back in.
Episode one of the new podcast is worth the listen: Episode One.
And worth a read is the latest post from The Grumpy Elf for the upcoming 6.2.3 patch/update.
There is an Eve trailer "I was there". Despite what some people in the Eve community think of it. I do like that trailer. I consider it to be a forerunner of the "This is Eve" trailer. They are both about the emotions the player feels. Eve has generated a lot of emotions for me.
Eve has a fairly small community for an MMO that's been ongoing for 10+ years. That says something.
Many people get a lot from many angles of Eve online. It's not all about the gameplay. It's the total experience. The journey.
This is brought home for me when my heart starts pounding and my hands end up shaking after I've been target locked and being attacked when I least expect it. These day's I'm a lot more stable then that happens but early in my Eve "career" it was a shock. It is the most common emotion/reaction to happened to a higher percentage of the gamers in Eve. Many people never experience it again. Some loved it right off the bat. Some others never experienced it at all.
This article caught my eye and is an interesting insight on an Eve players experienceWhy the Story Matters. Around that time I was interested in seeing what all the fuss was about when the Drifters started attacking Amarr but all I got was this blog entry. It's all about perspective.
I really like watching the video's from FRANKIEonPCin1080p. Particularly his DayZ stuff.
This video is a version of DayZ on Arma 3.
Part 1
Part 2 is here and well worth the watch for those interested. I'll be looking forward to seeing more.
An on a lighter non zombie note he has also done another video on the new upcoming Star Wars game that makes me a little more interested in getting it.
Moving on, Ozzy Man Reviews has done a hilarious video of Battlefront worth a quick look.
The very first game I bought was Sim City 2000. It was recently re-released by EA as a freebie through a dosbox emulation. Since that freebie it's been in the back of my mind. As has a newer version that is not made by EA. And a "version" that outstrips all Simcity games imho. I've had my eye on this game for a while. I was finally pushed over the fence I've been sitting on to get it when I looked up a gameplay/walkthrough from a youtuber called BdoubleO100.
Since getting it I've abandoned a lot of other games and spent a huge amount of time building my cities. It's a great game and well worth the money. More info on it from Steam: Cities: Skylines. The mod/community and game support is a great perk.
Eve News 24's article about
the fall of faction and T2 frigs in favour of the more powerful, if not
so bigger T3 Destroyers. Maybe that gap will only increase with the
upcoming new T3 Destroyers....
Another well made video was released on the Flight Academy. This time about the session change timers.
Sugar Kyles latest post is a follow on from her her taboo post.
I hope that a pinch of salt is taken on account of the large amount of bluster given with feedback is given from the people who wish all space was null.
Eve Hermit had a good response to her original post.
I think the post from the Greedy Goblin is a bit harsh.
Unfortunately I think CCP's headstrong road map makes all fuzzy hi-sec carebears burn.
One big reason that I don't have much of an answer to the problem is that no matter what people say, CCP has already said they don't have the resources to make the big changes that would resolve the hi-sec "matter".
One big step I see would be for Concord to be pro-active rather than being a passive reactionary force. I mean a -10 sec status player in hi-sec, you should get blapped by the police.
As I said before, other MMO's have successfully copied elements between each other. Eve is a
beast all of it's own even if there are other space mmo's it could
learn from. I've also said previously that the solo PVE player is a market,
if they (CCP) would do something (meaningfull) to get that market they would see numbers swell, but that's not CCP.
I really have to faith in CCP making changes that will matter to me in regard to Hi-sec. Me leaving the game is more likely.
The upcoming (Soon TM) hotfix for Dust is still getting a lot of speculation.
I'm all for changes that seek to balance things out but there does seem to be a few flaws in the logic.For me at least the changes to swarm launchers is a crazy makes no sense change. But that's just me .... and maybe the community.
While my last entry is all about the upcoming changes and the "good". I feel I have to keep this entry the "bad" separate as it is worthy of it's own entry.
I have ranted about the lack of Mystery code content here on and off and specifically in this entry.
The details of the mystery codes history is one, on the face of it, that shows CCP's lack of interest in a product that once released they immediately backtracked on. I get the feeling that CCP decided they should never have released it. They are trying to put the genie back in the bottle by ignoring the genie and saying what bottle.
With the lack of mystery code content and an ever increasing roadmap for Eve of new and exciting changes/items/events, it prompting me to search the forums.
All previous forum entries had been locked. Now I am no forum warrior and I never post but I wanted to see what else was out there about the mystery code. I wanted to see if there were other people as frustrated as I am. I was surprised to find that there was a newer entry on the forum: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6040309#post6040309
I think I was more surprised that it hadn't been locked and closed off. With no official blue CCP post in it I checked a little further back and indeed found another thread on the subject and this one had a blue post.
But I have to say I was gobsmacked by the response! https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=5785888#post5785888
The amount of frustration I have for this subject and then seeing that reply made my stomach churn. The amount of venom and bile I want to spit out would kill a bull elephant.
Let me just paste the description of the mystery code from the description CCP gave for it.
I've made some of it bold to highlight the main meaning. "This is just the beginning of what the Mystery Code will unlock. In
the future, whenever we have big things happening—not just across the
EVE Universe but across all CCP games—you will find a Mystery Code
element to enjoy.
There’s much more planned we can’t discuss right now, but you can rest
assured that as we continue our journey into the Second Decade with you,
the Mystery Code will be your perfect traveling companion."
What a contrast!
So comparing that quote with the last blue dev post above leads me to think that everything that has been released in Eve, Dust and Gunjack since is sub-par the level of the Mystery code.
My what high standards CCP is holding the mystery code to!
Lets consider the type of previous gifts form the mystery code, such as a ship skin and character clothing. Yea A skin and some avatar clothing, they doesn't really come up to that "super" level do they.
It sickens me.
Just have a look at some of whats been released since February (less Dust 514 content and an entire new game Gunjack), this list will help. It's a joke to think that Mystery code items were not been produced and given to holders. For instance a "little" thing like T3 Destroyers. Really CCP?! No Free ship, no 1 run BPC, not even a skin for one! I have more content from Christmas gift than the mystery code.
CCP the Mystery Code Misers!
Now with the new roadmap listing everything coming in the next few month's insult has been added to the ongoing injury in the form of the new Tribute System.
Described as "In a move to pay tribute to the growing power of
Capsuleers and their efforts throughout the universe, CONCORD has
authorized a fund to fuel extra rewards for pod pilots on a regular
basis."
Wow!.... Fuel to my fire.
Instead of having a few users who paid to be awarded some special items we are going to make everyone special. What a crock.
I wont' be holding my breath for the next mystery code item....
Sometimes with Eve's online presence I'm annoyed that there is so little information about an update, change or feature and other times when there is so much information changing day to day, week to week and that's before anything is implemented in the game. It can be frustrating. CCP is a strange creature.
The news of late has been mainly neutral to me. Nothing has really changed the way I play or the activities I do. Any changes that have come have been improvements to my game times quality of life.
News of the new burner missions made me recheck info on the frigate burner missions. Despite the amount of fitted ships, gear and mission "hubs" I have dotted around I don't think I could become the nomadic frig burner mission specialist. Moving several ships and fits between agents is way over planned and too much of a time sink for my gameplay. Still the ship fits listed here are interesting and the amount of information gathered is staggering considering it's community based. However there is an older blog post that uses one fit to rule them all - burner-teams-guide-using-single-fit-worm. That really sparked my interest. Not is if that is a worthy fit and works with them all, great! Add in higher versions and I'll accept all the burner missions that pop up. Do I see myself doing them ... no... My gameplay style is all about the buildup of overwhelming force before engagement in an activity; But it's all worth keeping an eye on and maybe doing sometime in the future.
Speaking of fits, I also found myself looking up T2 hauler fits. Mainly for my Minmatar Alt who recently got to fly a Prowler and a Mastodon. This link on Thera or Bust has some good information on fits for the deep space transport.
The upcoming change to new players in Eve has them starting off with more sill points. That does make me a little bit of a sad panda. Over all I think it was said that the new skills on starting a new character is about 7 days. There is a lot to consider and as a player with older characters I feel a
bit slighted at the change. What
harm if CCP also granted some free sp to whose who started with the lower sp. Anyway it's not like a weeks worth is going
to really close the gap between a new player and a veteran. In a way I'm
glad I started my characters in the "old" way, like I earned my start.
Besides I think the old tutorials were better than the new opportunities
system, but that is a whole other subject. Rather than me rattle on about the details of the change there are better bloggers who have already made good points on the subject. http://nosygamer.blogspot.ie/2015/09/buffing-new-players.html
& http://nevillesmit.com/blog/2015/9/24/kids-these-days-part-2
I think both those articles lead on nicely to these two.
The latest news report continues the ebb and flow of the universe.
I've only noticed recently the specialist packs. I have noticed the avatar clothing that these packs include is plentiful and cheap on the Eve market so I think I just answered my own question on where they come from. A lot of people must use these new packs to upgrade trials.... alts maybe? These packs seem an awful lot like the Dust 514 combat packs.....
The minutes for day four of the CSM summit were released. Again they are interesting but nothing really relevant stood out to me. Eve Hermit had a good blog about his take on the minutes that I agree with. What happens in a CSM summit usually get modified and changed especially now that CCP seem to want a lot of player feedback to do a lot of their work for them. Giving the customer what they want of course.
It just depends on who they consider their customer to be... pvp null sec.... heaven forbid they consider a hi-sec carebear angle.
Many of my characters are Caldari and as such favour missiles as a primary weapons system. The changes incoming for Missile Disruptors and Tweaks to Missile Guidance Mods will be on my watch list.
The "community driven ship updates" is ok for the likes of adding frills or a new paint job but I'd say there is more likely to be stat changes and if a large bloc of "players" say from an alliance decide that a ship needs a nerf then that is trouble... I hope CCP can keep the lid on that can of worms.
The new T2 Expidition Frigate for Ice mining is of interest as well. I do like the idea of frigate sized activities. Worth keeping an eye on as well.
On a side note after reading the comments about the new frig I wonder what the 'fun' v 'isk per hour' ratio is like for Eve online players, nah, too many variables to figure that out....
The new T2 Destroyers look to be a move to change fleet mechanics and should prove to be an interesting change, more for the null powers than anything else.
There is also the new explosions update coming.... who doesn't like to see updates explosions.... I just dont' want to be that explosion.
New drifter space is interesting but sounds specialised and I'm not likely to have anything to do with it.
Falloff for Neuts and Remote Assistance Modules is all pvp and again mainly a null/low sec thing. I wonder if there will be details of what this means (if anything) for the Logi world.
There looks to be a reworking of the E-War modules, very pvp and very not used a lot these days. Although I have noticed recently (last few month's) that my null alt's alliance has been using a lot of e-war of late.
I do really like the new propulsion visual:
The Crimson Harvest listed is best described on another blog. http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.ie/2015/10/crimson-harvest-paint-space-red.html
And as that blog suggests I think that each empire will be split form the others, each will have it's incursion race and all will be fighting in faction warfare. I do think that it is the start of the empire breakup. It is a long term thing and it will take a journey to get there.
Which leads me onto another entry by Sugar Kyle: http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2015/10/taboo-questions.html
Asking about what can be done to improve PVE given CCP's restrictions on altering old code and allocating resources.
It's not an easy question but it really depends on CCP. Other MMO's have successfully copied elements beteen each other. Eve is a beast all of it's own even if there are other space mmo's it could learn from. I've said previously that the solo PVE player is a market, if they would do something to get that market they would see numbers rise well, but that's not CCP.
There was an interesting link in the release list about Eve and Crowd Science within Eve Online.
While the video about Eve online is long and a little tedious (imo), the second video from the main leader in her field Jane McGonigal and is a lot more interesting to view....
