BB#56 No Reward Great Enough

With Kronos and the upcoming industry changes following 6 weeks behind it, things are set for a vast upheaval in the coming months. Before he packed his bags and left Mord Fiddle asked some interesting questions

The common wisdom in EVE Online is that, beyond the odd high-value moon or Faction Warfare scam, there's little in low sec or NPC null sec to the attract ongoing attention of the big-dogs of null sec, with their large fleets and super cap doctrines. It's assumed that NPC space simply isn't worth the bother of controlling even if one could control it. 
Is this about to change? 
The shift in industrial inefficiencies from high sec to NPC low sec/null sec has begun, adding value to NPC space outside of high sec. In the recent B0TLRD accords CFC claimed two NPC null sec regions, Branch and Syndicate, as part of the CFC sphere of influence. 
What is the future of low sec and NPC null sec as the economic center of gravity shifts from high sec toward null sec? 

Also, you can take this banter as a chance to discuss the ramifications of the style of play in low sec and NPC null sec if it does happen that major industry shifts there.

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Let's establish some ground assumptions real quick.  Null sec alliances are power blocks who have more than enough minions to do their bidding.  They project the image of power and control and with their resources the ability to enforce their rules where they will.  CCP is in the process of "changing" various areas of the game.  While altering things based on what the players could do is not the best of decisions, doing it in a vacuum when there is plenty of historical history which helps give an idea of the consequences is downright silly.

A Year Of Frost

Been awhile since I've posted or updated anything really, but I thought I'd do a sort of year in review since I started this blog.  The whole blog thing was quite fun and I didn't necessarily "quit" but more along the lines of having too many things going on that it fell to the wayside.  Even though the condition of this blog is not where I'd like it be, I am proud of what I accomplished with the time I have spent on it.

Funnily enough the blog is on my mind constantly as I play Eve and participate in various activities because I think of stuff which would either make a good blog post or would be fun to write about.  My time though has been constantly demanding other things.  I'm finishing up my Bachelors in Software Engineering, dealing with illness which keeps rebounding (it's not cancer, just a body showing more age than it should XD), large projects in Eve e.g. my Exploration and PI guides, as well as Captaining the Stay Frosty New Eden Open II Team.  There are also an assortment of other things which creep up.

From the start I have written 72 posts relating in some way to Eve Online.  I have written 2 guides, 19 "Signals in the Void" story sections, participated in 6 Blog Banters, performed 4 "Ransom Adventures" worth writing about, and an assortment of odds and ends.  Not too shabby for a first attempt (imo).  While others may scoff at the numbers; I've had ~12,500 page views during the year with my top posts being A Slice of PI, Odyssey Exploration Guide, and BB#50 The Harbinger Is Coming.

A Slice of PI

You know you always wanted a piece of it.

A Slice of PI
PI Spreadsheet

Ransom Adventure #4

So there I was sitting in space cloaked having just scanned the system and getting ready to run over and run a combat site since the system was empty when all of a sudden, dun DuN, DUN!!!!!  Real life called and I had to step away for a little while.  I return to the system to discover people in local and probes on scan.  But what's this?  There's an Astero on scan!  (Not to be confused with the Stratios which is what I did last time.)  Grabbing my trusty vengeance I zoom to the site I had scanned down previously.

[ 00:34:52 ] (notify) For initiating combat your security status has been adjusted by -0.0073.
[ 00:34:54 ] (combat) Warp scramble attempt from you to Astero

BB#53 Tin Cans Sharing Tables

Today's topic comes from a tweet from @erlendur in a conversation he was having with a pilot about having multiple overview tabs open in separate windows:

So that is the topic this month:  The Overview.  Is it sufficient?  If not how can it be improved?  Is there some way to replace it?  Does it give too much information, or not enough?  Please be creative and specific as the overview currently is the heartbeat of the GUI.

***

Strangely enough the topic of the Overview has been on my mind a lot the past couple months.  Eve is one of those games which looks awesome, and really goes to the effort to make things look good.  But it is also a game built on calculations, equations, and having the necessary intelligence available.  I find it striking one of the questions offered in this month's blog banter has to do with the Overview giving too much information.

I'm not sure how many people think the Overview shows too much but I for one find it to be a very sadistic piece of work.  As I mentioned Eve works hard on providing a beautiful playing experience and then you have the Overview allowing you to do stuff and interact with the universe.  One is a table with columns and characters, the others is a depth inducing background with little cans floating in a sea stars.  (I know graphics aren't everything, I do play Dwarf Fortress.)

Now I enjoy tables and columns as much as an accountant but I want my star sea full of cans as well.  Unfortunately Eve makes it quite difficult to have both.  The art of positioning your Overview in a way which allows you the use of its vital information and not consume your whole screen is something everybody is still struggling with today.

Ransom Adventure #3

It's not all the time you flutter about your system and see a Stratios on scan several times.  Deciding to try my luck I pull out some combat probes, mark the Stratios' location and hope he missed my quick scan.  I decided to for-go my Legion in favor of my Vengeance because I though a legion would be a little overkill.  I also thought this was the Astero and not the Stratios XD

Landing close I begin targeting only to have him cloak, thinking fast I start clicking frantically at his last known location.  Getting lucky I de-cloak him and start my target lock once again.

[ 2014.01.20 21:44:21 ] (notify) For initiating combat your security status has been adjusted by -0.0085.
[ 2014.01.20 21:44:22 ] (combat) Warp scramble attempt from you to Stratios.

*Shooting commences*

*His ECM drones break my lock and he warps out*

Mostly Deleted Ramblings

I think Sugar brings up a subject which is interesting in it's own aspect.  Even more so when specific parts are analyzed and brought to the forefront.  Her post and the comments section got me to thinking and writing which ended in the following post...

I'd like to first start out my response by separating a few distinct words.  My goal with this is to separate some common misconceptions that have oft been presented as fact or as a reason to do something.  Depending on which or combination of these words are used, causes great confusion and leads to horribly bad decisions being made.  Some of the examples I present will probably not be well received...meh.

BB#52 Steady As She Goes

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 52nd edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.

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Go to the always useful EVE-Offline.net and take a look at the All Time (weekly average) graph for concurrent accounts logged in.

For the past four and a half years, the graph has hovered around that 30,000 mark; it is, for all intents and purposes, a plateau. But everything must come to an end sooner or later and that is what this blog banter is about.

What's on the other side of that plateau? 

Is there any path for CCP to follow to raise those numbers upwards for a sustained period, or is EVE going to enter a decline to lower logged in numbers from this point? How soon will we see an end to this plateau? Months? Years? Or will you argue that 'never' is a possibility? Or you can look at the root causes of the plateau and tackle the question if it could have been avoided or shortened if CCP had taken different actions in the past.

I see this plateau in a couple different ways.  I see it as stagnating in terms of expansion, the question of how many of those accounts are unique to one owner, and I even see it as a good investment.  For a video game like Eve, which has a niche type play-base.  It's amazing to see that it's stuck around for 10 years, four and a half of those years have it hovering around 30k concurrent accounts logged in as a weekly average.  While it may seem somewhat disconcerting that it hasn't gained in popularity; on the flip side it hasn't really lost either.

ISK, At What Cost?

Just a heads up, that "Signals in the Void" is postponed a little as I've had a heavy workload and a few health issues I'm dealing with.  I do plan to resume it hopefully here in the near future.

On another note I was thinking of a curious idea I've seen in Eve.  It deals with a long infiltration into a corporation; time-wise taking around a year to work your way up into the proper positions and access roles.  Along the way you continue training your character and hang out and do things with people who come to call you friend.

BB#50 The Harbinger Is Coming

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 50th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.

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With the Rubicon expansion being announced and the SOMER Blink scandals (or non-scandals depending on your point of view) that have erupted on the community at the same time, it truly feels like an age of EVE has passed and a new one is dawning.

But which direction is it going? This blog banter can be about several different topics: 
- where do you think EVE is going? Is it a good or bad vision ahead?
- if you were EVE's new Executive Producer, where would you take the game?
- What comes (or should come) after Rubicon in terms of the mechanics and ship balancing we've seen? (CSM8 not allowed to answer this one!)
- Is there anything in EVE's ten year past that should be resurrected? Or buried and forgotten?
- What is the future of the community? What should or should not change?

(Though I like a lot of these questions, and my original plan was to address a few.  While I was writing, it seems I focused heavily on one in particular.  Maybe I'll get around to the others eventually.)

To Arms My Brothers!

As you may well know CCP has done it again with public relations.  They've managed to ruffle a vocal part of the community and as such pitchforks and torches have been raised.

Rubicon's Assault

This is the second part of my thoughts dealing with the upcoming winter expansion Rubicon.

CCP does expansions twice a year, some blow players out of the water while others are a little lackluster.  There is always a lot of controversy when it comes to the expansions with a lot of play styles feeling "cheated".  This causes dissent among the subscribers upon which "bitter" becomes a tossed around adjective.  While CCP has adopted a newer model and approach to their development and are looking to cover all the areas of play over multiple expansions instead of just one play style per expansion; I predict there is going to be a more widespread effect of "being cheated" among players.  While newer pilots might not feel the effects as harshly, I'm guessing a lot of "bitter" vets out there are used to a big awe inspiring feature for a specific type of play.

Signals in the Void 19

("Signals in the Void" is a character fan fiction story revolving around my adventures in exploration.)

It was a new thing for Jimmy holding an assault rifle, and though it felt almost like holding one of the welding or salvaging lasers the feel of it made him less uneasy.  Moving to catch up to the other mercenaries, Jimmy overhears Blake discussing their options when they get to the jammer drone.  The tone of the conversation didn't sound promising and checking equipment and weapons the rest of the mercenaries move forward with Jimmy following in the rear wondering if they have a plan.

Rubicon's Pre-Assault

I started writing this to include my opinions/observations on the upcoming "features" in Rubicon.  After I saw how much I was writing I decided to break it into two posts.  This mainly just lists the upcoming features and what they have currently planned.

Signals in the Void 18

("Signals in the Void" is a character fan fiction story revolving around my adventures in exploration.)

As my smart-bombs failed to activate around my ship, I continue to increase my speed to try and get behind the station.  I'm hoping to put something solid between the battleship drone's missiles and myself.  Having abandoned my curving orbit around the station to a more direct route past it, the large drone boat is going to have to try and catch up to me.  Though the smaller rogue drones are able to keep up, I will probably be able to keep the large one in a position which better suits me. 

Signals in the Void 17

("Signals in the Void" is a character fan fiction story revolving around my adventures in exploration.)

Forwarding a report of a large object moving within the station, Erhan winces as cruise missiles slam into their shields.  Moving across the command deck toward the crew monitoring the ship's status, Captain Erhan was not pleased with what he saw.  The ship's shields have been depleted and a few of the modules required to recharge them have been overloaded by the mass surge of energy they received from the explosions.  As he is about to turn around, the crew member monitoring the armor integrity of the ship draws Erhan's attention to several positions around the ship where hull breaches are beginning to happen.  Though the locations of the breaches are puzzling, Erhan orders those areas evacuated and sealed shut; now is not the time to worry about a few holes.

BB#49 A Rich Perception

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 49th edition!  For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.

What is "rich" in EVE?  Is it simply having more ISK than most everyone else, is it measured in raw numbers of some other ethereal quality?  Can you actually be poor?  Have you ever lost nearly everything and had to claw your way back?  If you are rich, how do you know and how did you get rich?

I like and dislike this subject for various reasons.  The viewpoint in real life is taken similarly in Eve, and the whole view of "rich" boils down to perception.  Most people when you ask them if they are rich will give the answer "no", because they see someone else who can afford things which they cannot.  I would then estimate a lot of those people would call themselves poor because they can't afford all the things they want.  You then have the few who know they're rich because they see there aren't very many people with more than them.  The actual quantity in the wallet makes no difference in how this is all perceived.  So being "rich" in Eve could be defined as "Everyone else who can afford the things I want" while being "poor" could be defined as "Everyone else who can't afford the things I have".

Signals in the Void 16

("Signals in the Void" is a character fan fiction story revolving around my adventures in exploration.)

Blake leads the way down the corridor with his rifle nuzzled up to his shoulder.  He doesn't bother looking left or right because the other two assault troopers will each be watching their own side, which leave the logistics trooper to bring up the rear and keep an eye on Jimmy.  The party arrives at another set of doors, while the others keep watch and Jimmy does his jury-rigging method of opening doors; Blake consults the path to their destination on his helmet's internal display screen.  It looks like they have another long corridor and set of blast doors to deal with before they can try to make their way down the station levels.

Ransom Adventures 2

Though my skills may be a little rusty, I am a pirate and I try to be the best pirate I can be.  Sometimes it just doesn't work out and you end up not making any ISKies for your trouble. 

Iteron MarkV:  Qybixxx Quime

[  04:24:11 ] (notify) For initiating combat your security status has been adjusted by -0.0797.

[  04:24:12 ] (combat) Warp scramble attempt from you to  (Capsule)Qybixxx Quime [VL EV]

[  04:24:12 ] (combat) Warp scramble attempt from you to  (Capsule)Qybixxx Quime [VL EV]

[  04:24:12 ] (combat) Warp scramble attempt from you to  (Capsule)Qybixxx Quime [VL EV]

Signals in the Void 15

("Signals in the Void" is a character fan fiction story revolving around my adventures in exploration.)

Abandoning my plan of docking near the maintenance hatch, I turn my Arbitrator away from the station and try to put as much distance as possible between me and the drones which are coming out of every nook and cranny of the station.  I leave my combat drones in the hands of my capable pilots, pausing periodically to lock and assign various targets.  By letting my drone pilots deal with blowing up the hostile drone ships; which allows me to focus on maneuvering my cruiser into a nice orbit of the station to see if I can't loop around and gain enough time to extract my salvage team.