Brain Dump

Many thoughts have been swirling lately, so let me give you a brain dump.  Just for fun, I'll sort these by word-association.  These are in no particular order and are appearing just in the manner in which I begin typing them.

Behind:
Work sent me to the east coast this week for a series of meetings.  Productive and overall a good experience, but I really didn't have the time at home or at the office to be out of pocket that long.  Lugging the work laptop around, I didn't bring the gaming laptop and have been out of touch with most everything. A modern cell phone can do a lot, but only so much.  I got back to the house after 11pm on Thursday, was too wired from the trip home to sleep and was still awake at 1am.  Alarm clock went off at 5am and I did a full day at the office. Came home and crashed, then took Mrs. Durden for mexican at the local cantina since we hadn't really talked in almost a week.  There were a handful of things I should have done last night and I didn't do any of them.

As I type, I'm staring out the window at grass that's well beyond needing mowed.  So that's task 1 for today.

Discouraged:
Big Dumb Ride prep has again been interrupted.  When I signed up for the ride, I knew that I'd struggle to get the miles I needed in April and May.  The weather is unpredictable, and waffles between "super mega-nice" and "shitstorm rain."  I track all the miles I've ridden since 2013, and April is typically in my lowest mileage months, with some years recording a big fat zero.

Although I've hit some great high marks - longest unsupported ride, and a non-formal-event metric century (100km), I am not getting the less glamorous weekday rides in that I need to maintain and extend my base.  With the work trip this week, I'm behind on a thousand things at the house and the weather is again uncooperative - I may not ride at all this weekend.  The BDR event day is closing in and I'm now beginning to doubt my ability to hang on for the full Imperial Century (100 mile) goal.

Hopeful:
One bonus perk of the cold/windy/wet weather is that I might actually be able to undock this weekend and kill some Guristas or Sanshas.  It's been awhile....

Philosophical:
I've had a sequel post in my head for the previous "85%" bandwagoning, but will spare you the long dissertations and give a few thoughts with bullet points.  Bullet points are cool.

• No, I don't agree with everything in Neville's post.  But I do agree with the overall sentiment.
• I am not against Citadels.  I'm not personally interested in them, but I see the perks, and like the overall size/shape/flavor of the design.  For the past year or more, I've been pretty happy that CCP seemed to be balancing dev investments pretty well.  All corners of the community got something (sometimes big, sometimes small, but SOMETHING) in each patch.  
• My beef with the 2016 plan seems to be that CCP is banking on "trickle down economics" of null driving interactions in other areas of space.  And yah, they will.  But it's that feeling of being second class citizens that chafes.
• As a person pretty heavily invested in capship BPOs, I really do want to see capship Fleet warfare get fixed and come back to being en vogue.  But I wanted it alongside content directly focused at my preferred way to play.
• I am not upset with CCP Affinity.  I think she's done the PVE community a few favors over the past year.
• That being said, I stand behind my previous words about the lack of focus, clarity, and scope control from a project management perspective.  I'm not disappointed with any single hardworking dev; I'm disappointed with CCP as a whole for being unable to demonstrate reasonable management and having the balls to communicate directly with us.
• Is it the end of the world?  Bah, hardly.  I can still rain hot kinetic cruise missile death down upon my foes, save the damsel, and poke the occasional burner in the eye.  I've said before and I'll continue to say: EVE today is the most playable state we've ever enjoyed.  And that's pretty ok with me.

Aging:
Abavus quietly celebrated another birthday.  He was born just after midnight server time on May 10th, 2003.  That's a few days after the original launch.  In those early days, owning a battleship seemed like an impossible goal; having 1B isk in your wallet (let alone 20B) was a laughable thought.  I don't exactly how how I pictured spending my time in EVE, but at the time it probably involved a lot of Merlins and Kestrels.  Every time I think I've peaked in this game, I find another goal and another plateau to climb to.

Pukin' Dogs was actually born several months before EVE's launch, notionally in October of 2002 (though the exact day and even month are now fading with time).  We existed in EVE's beta7 but because of skills and cost didn't actually appear in EVE until 31 May 2003.  So, around Memorial Day in the US, I'll be hefting an icy cold beverage to the Dogs.

Back then, the notion of playing this silly space game in 2016 was absurd.  Perhaps just as absurd as playing the game in another 13 years in 2029.  But who knows?


And with that, it's time to go mow the lawn... fly safe!

I am the 85%

I've been trying to sum up my feelings on EVE lately.  After a generally surprisingly good EVE Vegas experience, some 'meh' things have happened.

• I was underwhelmed by fanfest, I have little use for citadels in their current incarnation, and while the capital ship changes are good follow-thru from Vegas, I was hoping for new and exciting things in 2016 beyond fixes for null.
• I've been largely disappointed by the non-announcement that PVE staff and devs had been redirected, or at best floundering.  Check the CSM minutes and read the Team Astro Sparkle entry (pg 32) and try to figure out wtf is going on with PVE.  If you can figure it out, you might want to explain it to CCP, because it appears they don't know either.  Best I can tell, "PVE" has been relabeled to "engagement" which is actually more about "holiday events."  It smells like a team with changing scope, poor management commitment, lack of clear goals, and no near-term deliverables.  In my day job, I call these "failed projects."
• The PVE roadmap that CCP Affinity talked about apparently never happened.  (Note, I remember CCP Affinity making a comment on Sugar's blog about providing a roadmap, but now I can't find it and the bitter in me makes me wonder if the promise were deleted or perhaps it was all a troll/hoax).

Lately, I have written pages and pages of draft blog posts that basically sound like "I'm Abavus Durden. I quit, but you can't have my stuff."  And then I delete them, because that's not the message.  I'm still here, I'm still a customer of CCP, but I'm not entirely sure where I'm going or what the future looks like for my part of the game.  So I've said nothing, waited patiently for clarity, and written more about bikes.

And then Neville Smitt comes and writes this post that almost entirely captures my current sentiment.  Go read and support if you're of a similar mindset.

Through the Eyes of a Noob

It's been a long, long while since I helped a real life friend through his first evening in EVE, but I was able to last night.

One of my best friends surprised me and sought out the EVE client without any prodding from me, created an account and logged in.  I knew he was vaguely interested after my tales from EVE Vegas, but my surprise when he said he was getting the client was genuine.

He was almost through the character generation process when his internet died and he had to start over.  At that point he (jokingly) sent me a comment about having the hard part out of the way.  I replied with the infamous EVE Learning Curve chart, but I don't think it scared him much.

He rolled Gallente, and once he was ingame, I made my way to Cistuvaert to say hello.  He was part way through the first few tutorial steps, but undocked and met me at the gate.

"Ok, now what?" he asked.

Gah. I hadn't thought that far.  What do you do with a 20 minute old character sitting in his shiny noobship?  The player behind the keyboard is one of the smartest guys I know, but he's got no context for EVE, has no idea where anything is in the UI, and was barely able to undock and find me.

So I did two things.  I began to spam our convo channel with information, and got him into Sugar's public channel so he had help if I wasn't around.  Super high level instruction in terms of what EVE is and isn't; a conversation ensued about how I've chosen to play vs. how others play their particular game.  Topics included the market, system security status, gankers, the tutorial and SOE arc, and the fact that assets don't magically follow you through space (if you want it somewhere else, you gotta haul it).

Throughout this, I was answering questions.  Several times, things that are kneejerk muscle memory for me stumped him.  I'm effectively speaking multiplication and long division at him, and he is still at 3+3=6.  At one point we chatted for awhile before realizing he'd minimized his overview and therefore didn't see ANY of the buttons I was described.  This isn't a reflection on him (he's one of the smartest guys I know), or me (I'm pretty smart too, hah), or even the game (it's all there, really), but without being able to see his screen so I could point and grunt in the right direction, he was really stumped.

The second thing I did was get him in a Fleet and jumped to the system next door.  Basic activity of navigation.  We warped around a bit, and I got him to use autopilot to get home.  Back in Cist, a Serpentis Hideout appeared on scan, so I warped in to begin clearing it.  He came in and assisted, playing with combat, basic maneuvering, and targeting.  This went better, and he killed and looted a few pretty smoothly.

With the evil Serpentis vanquished, it was time for me to think about bed.  I felt guilty leaving him to his own devices and the boring ol' tutorial, but in many ways it'll be far better than I am at some of the nuances.

I don't know if he'll stay past the trial period.  I'm sure his next session will go more smoothly.  But it's certainly been interesting to see the game through his eyes.

What I Want from High Sec

It's been an interesting week; I've been meaning to assemble this post but haven't taken the time to really organize my thoughts.

Sugar kicked over an anthill in this post.  The comments started to balloon, and while I expected everyone to trot out the very tired risk/reward hate, on the whole the conversation was pretty constructive.  I chatted with her in game a bit and got out some semi-coherent thoughts.  But the question is still gnawing at me, so I'll take a stab at answering it here.

Sugar asks:  "What about high sec? When will CCP pay attention to high sec and those that cannot spend their time in dangerous space?  This is somewhat how the day started, sparked by a question from an anonymous poster."

My first, kneejerk reaction before I even read her post was to mentally shake my first at the sky and say "What do I want for High?krikey, stop treating high sec differently than other space!"

From ancient times called 2003 and forward, Players (and to a lesser extent CCP) have reinforced the attitude that highsec is for nubs, and the "real" endgame is in 0.0 (the "0.0" being the term many of us used in beta and after).  This is the notion that players (and corporations) should use high only as a holding pen until players are "ready" for the "harder" areas of the game.

As time went on, we (CCP and the playerbase both) differentiated further and created the terms high/low/null/nullsov/wh to describe the 5 basic areas of the game.  Certain parts of the game gained favor in terms of development time and game infrastructure, often at the cost of other areas of the game.  Carrots were added to lure people out of high, but yet the center of the star cluster remained populated.

These definitions/separations perhaps help us have constructive dialog, but they also serve as a mental barrier.  There's an invisible dotted line around the map segregating High from Low.  When you enter low for the first time, the game even has a clickthru warning that basically says: "Abandon all hope; here there be monsters."

Fast forward a decade, and today we have CSM candidates representing various blocks of the game's community, and forum personalities that gain influence by shredding players who prefer certain types of play.

Let's stop and think about all this for a second.  EVE is a fairly small niche game and I wonder if this divisiveness is entirely healthy.   Predicable, I guess, but probably not healthy.

CCP could, I think, set that aside and just generate good PVE content.  The vast majority of PVE is probably going to be done of course in High, but the kinds of things I'd advocate (scaling, dynamic, group and solo PVE) should be deployed across all zones.  High should not be some sort of playground set aside for PVE only activities, and I'd not advocate dev time into "high only" activities.  I wouldn't put more bricks in that Berlin Wall between 0.5 and 0.4 space.

So, what I want for the game (not just Highsec) is more Content.  Big 'C.'

With that rant out of the way, here's my wish list:

• More synergy between contents. Right now if I go blitzing explore points, I have a cruiser for that.  If I run lvl4s, I have a Battleship for that.  What if I undocked, went 2 jumps away to Silence the Informant, and then was still in a reasonable fit to drop in on a couple of exploration spots on my way back?  With align and lock times of the big ships, this isn't something I even think about doing today.  With better content synergy, I could (in theory) react more to opportunities in my environment rather than just be a drone buzzing to the next mission pocket and ignoring everything around me.
• More layers of content.  If the existing lvl4 content is that difficult to change, I'd advocate leaving it and expanding it both vertically and horizontally.  Horiztonal: keep the burners coming; bring on the lvl3 burners and battleship anomic agents.  Layer vertically into more difficult content, and Dynamic schtuff.
• Dynamic Content.  By that I mean content that scales in difficulty based on the number and type of players present.
• Dynamic Events.  By this I mean bad guys that spawn and go on a rampage allowing the local citizens to react.  Something much smaller scale than Incursions.  And in line with the Synergy comment above, the balance point should be fits that mission runners would realistically use, so that if I undock and see shenanigans afoot, I can just jump in.
• Better support for Fleets in PVE content.  Scaling bounties, payout bonuses for using smaller ships or more Fleet members, etc.  Give me a reason to run missions as a group.  I saw comments in Sugar's thread like "well, they're PVE'ers so they're going to be scattered all over the map."  Why is that something we accept as being true?
• Incidental Grouping.  I put this in the comments to Sugar's original post, but I'll repeat for completeness.  Right now in PVE content, people that wander into your pocket are seen as poachers or killstealers.  Loot and Bounties aren't split and aren't shared; in fact the idea of can flipping has its own art form.  Bottom line, when someone showes up near me, I have to assume that they are a competitor or griefer there to steal my resources (isk, whatever).  Barring any sort of pvp-type retaliation, I can escalate against them and try to out-blitz them or I can leave.  This is an early 2000's mentality.  Guild Wars 2 does a wonderful job of scaling content for difficulty and then providing payouts based on your own contribution.  When more people show up, they can certainly troll you or try to awox you, but most of the time folks just work together (surprising, I know) to get the job done.
• Flavor by Region.  EVE is a vast star cluster with a disappointingly low amount of variability  in content from system to system.  More attention to locality and local lore in and around a particular region or constellation would be welcome.  So, for example, if CCP is designing dynamic events, I'd rather that there be several permutations and certain mini-bosses be locked into a specific area of the game.  I am not a lore nerd, but this kind of detail is important to building nostalgia.  Thinking of various events in WoW, GW2, D3, or other games, I know exactly where people are at when they talk about a certain fight; nostalgia can be a very powerful motivator to keeping going in a game.

There, I guess that wraps up the post after a few aborted attempts. Better late than never, I guess.

This time next week, I'll be starting to get things around for EVE Vegas.  

Coffee Politics and Incursions

At work, there are few things worse than what I call Coffee Politics.

We have a small break area with one of those monster coffee makers and several pots.  The coffee itself is free but they do take up a collection here and there for "bonus supplies" like creamer and sugar.  I'm a coffee drinker, but I haven't participated in the Coffee pool for 4-5 years.  I get up every morning and make my own Folger's (French Roast) and bring it in a thermos.

Why?  It's just easier to bring my own and watch the natives self destruct over little things.  Who left the coffee pot on overnight?  Who took the last pour and didn't make more??  There are fights about how best to make the coffee (how strong, how weak, how much water).  There are fights over when to clean the pot (some guys like a mildly dirty pot, yuck).  Why are there grounds in the pot again??  There are fights over getting the supplies from the centralized closet up front.  Who made a pot late in the day and then didn't drink any?  Who left the pot on again over the weekend and left the pot to evaporate down to tar?

Quality of Life for the Mission UI

I've been running lvl4's lately, enjoying the added variety of BC-sized Burners, Team Burners, Single Frigate Burners, and of course... Silence the Informant.

(Side note:  So far I'm still running about a 5:1 burner to vanilla ratio following the Carnyx patch but I really don't have all that much data).

Paying attention to LP payout, burner rates, and how often Buzz Kill seems to spawn (grrr, that mission), it reminded me that I wanted to do a post about the mission log and some Quality of Life UI improvements.

So here are three upgrades that I'd like to see....

Better, Best, Bestest

First - blatent plug - the SURVEY is still active and will be for another day or three.  Responses have been good so far, and fairly interesting.  I do intend to share the results (figured out that I can export it from the Free version of the survey tool).  Please participate if you haven't already.

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Have seen a few conversations lately where the word BEST has been thrown around.  I see it, and I generally roll my eyes.

"Better is the Enemy of Good Enough" was a favorite quote of one of my early mentors.  It really aggravated me when he said it, but now that I'm older I find myself echoing him.

We players sometimes get trapped into the mindset of "X is better than Y when I'm doing Z."  The best hauler.  The best ship hull.  The best fit.  The best weapon type.  I could go on.  We're nerds, so we argue and fight and debate and at the end of it, there's no great insight, just a lot of scrolling text in a chat channel.

But somewhere, as a nerd culture, we transition from a whole slew of potential solutions into a mode where "X is the only acceptable way to do Z."  From there, it's a short trip to ridiculing anything other than X, as in "omg ur duing it rong, dude."

One Wish

Fighting a case of really nice weather here after a pretty crummy February.  It's pretty hard for me to stay focused on the PC when the sun is out and the birds are chirping and it's finally warm enough to venture outside minus the parka.  What a difference a few days make - not awful long ago I was layered up in my Carhartt's plowing snow.

As I mentioned, I have given a little bit of thought to what I would change if I could fix one thing in PVE.  Fanfest is around the corner, so I'll publish this (no doubt will be way off the mark) and see what unfolds.

Here's my wish:  I'd gut the lvl4 system and chuck it in the bin.  Then I'd burn its corpse and dance on the ashes.

That's probably an odd thing to say for someone who's basically a mission runner full time.

I think the game DOES need an agent mission system.  I think it's vital, actually.

I do want a little more depth, and maybe agents that force you to move around a bit.  On the other hand, I do not want "quests" in the way that the SOE arc and the old COSMOS system sent you on.

My replacement system would be a dial-a-difficulty dynamic agent provider.

Example:  If I want to do Battleship Combat, I click on the agent, ask for work.  Agent sees that I have a tech2 equipped Golem active and generates two missions for me to choose from - Silence the Informant and Worlds Collide.  I choose one and run.  (Said another way: No real change to current lvl4 mechanics for those that like humping around in Golems and Tengus and saving the Damsel)

Example:  If I want to do Frigate Combat, I click on the agent, ask for work.  Agent sees that I'm in a Kestrel with low meta modules.  Agent generates a few starter missions with appropriate difficulty and payout.

Example:  I pimp out a tech1 cruiser, and decide I want a challenge.  I ask the agent for 'hard' work and it kicks me over to expert mode and tries to kick my ass.

Example:  If I want to run a courier mission, I fit a Bestower and click on the agent, ask for work.  Agent sees that I have the Bestower and offers a reasonably large-cargo courier.  I could, however, ask for Courier work in my Crow and get a smaller cargo haul of perhaps more hops.

At the core of this system would be a parametric encounter generator that would generate the enemy ships and triggers somewhat randomly.  I say 'somewhat' because the same encounter accepted as a Maller would by necessity be scaled down from the version I would accept in a Bhaal.  And likewise if I continue to run with the Maller, repeat visits to save the Damsel would result in a slightly different kill list, spawn points/distances, mix of target types and sizes, and perhaps a chance at a few named guys.

I don't claim that this would eliminate the grindy grind that missions are.  No way that's possible.  But by fostering a system where more ships are more viable in PVE, we can at least open the flood gates to new fits, new metas, rewarding risktakers doing expert mode missions, and the ability to fly a ship because it looks cool and not because "it's the best."

Flashbacks

As we get close to the CSMX election results announcement (and FanFest), I thought I'd put some text down about what kinds of things I'd like to see in the PVE-realm over the next many months.

When I got started, there were really 2 posts that I wanted to get written and published.

While sitting on the airport this week, I started thinking about what I'd change in PVE if I could just change ONE thing. This led in a few tangential ideas, which I'll hopefully be posting over the next few days.

But as a stepping stone, I wanted to rehash a couple ideas from these original posts.  Burners are very VERY similar to my Expert Missions proposal, but don't line up in a couple of important ways.

1. Manifesto
2. Expert Missions

I'd had these sentiments bottled up in my head for awhile, and I began this blog with full intent of working the ideas out into something presentable.  So I wrote, put them out there, and felt better.

And then a funny thing happened:  Burners.  At the point I started this blog to ramble about PVE, our friends at CCP were already well on their way to implement some frigate PVE, and a few short weeks after I set up shop here the content was being released.  Timing, as they say, is everything.

So queue up the flashback sequence....

Being Something You're Not

Lateral thinking is sometimes weird.  Let me try to capture a line of thinking I had while doing chores this morning.

I began thinking this morning that it was hard to write blog posts right now because I'm not really /playing/ the game of EVE.  I'm logging in and checking things every night, but my undocked time has been pretty limited so far in 2015.  I could write about that, I guess, but it's not a very compelling story (real life, weather, work, blah blah blah).

But my train of thought this morning was this:  it's a little weird for me to continue to post as if I'm an active, normal player when at the moment I'm in a lull.  It's not exactly lying, but it does portray an image that's not quite true.

Progression as a Ball of String

Editor's Note:  Happy Holidays!  We're doing the usual tour of family homes that generally leaves us exhausted.  I've not had much time at all for EVE the past week and a half, but I did have this old article gathering dust in the drafts bin.  Let's knock the dust off of her and see where it goes.
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Let's talk a little bit about progression.

I started this post awhile back; before the wave of newbies pulled in by the supercool trailer.

Progression.  That's a dirty word in EVE as it's associated with the themepark mentality. You say the word 'progression' and it conjurs up other words like 'raids' and 'gear treadmill.'  But let's strip that away for a minute and get back to some core game design concepts and adjust our context away from a particular implementation.

Game Theory:  In order to log in every day, a player needs to have an itch to scratch.  He has to get some sort of satisfaction out of it, or he wouldn't do it.  Even if the task at hand is grindy and tedious, he's building towards something bigger and better, and that feeling of progress compels him to log in and get to work.

EVE has nonlinear progression.  In fact, I'm reminded of an old-ish Dr. Who episode with the infamous weebly-wobbly, timey wimey stuff quote.

Another way of saying:  a big ball of yarn.

PVE Discussion Questions

CSM9 Sugar Kyle is hosting a PVE discussion next weekend.  I'll have inlaws in town for a holiday shindig and won't be able to attend.  I thought I'd write out a few questions and point Sugar at them; if she has time, maybe she can work a few of them in.

Just a few questions ... I'll try not to go overboard. :)

Burners

• How well have Burners been Received?  CCP Fozzie gave some initial stats back in an September dev blog; any chance at an update?
• Are there still plans to expand Burners?  Destroyer burners?  Cruiser burners? Battleship burners?
• I run a blog that's basically been focused on burner strats and fits.  I get contacted from time to time from folks wanting to try burners but are put off by the apparent jump in difficulty from vanilla lvl4's to burners.  This results in me seeing a lot of folks say "I'll run burners in 6 months when I have the skills."  I happen to like that burners are hard, but are there plans to add another tier?  Frigate fighting is fun and new player retention is good.
• For example:  any chance at a lvl3 burner equivalent, maybe tuned for tech1 frigs and meta4 fittings?
  

PVE

• Any update on the PVE tools redo?
• People seemed to like the lowsec random spawns (tags-4-sec rats, Mordu's bpc drops); how is this going? Are there still a lot of people hunting these spawns down?
• It seemed like CCP felt the need to apologize for adding PVE content the past few months; how has the response from the playerbase been?  Better than expected? Worse?   (And if it's been positive response ... does that mean that the strategy was effective or does it mean that people were more hungry for PVE than CCP anticipated? Or both?)

I could delve into questions about Incursions and Exploration but that's really out of my knowledge zone, so I'll have to trust someone else will broach those topics.

Thanks to Sugar for arranging this time.  Hopefully I can be available if there's another session.

Should EVE Have Achievements?

I can already hear you muttering, "NO!"

Hear me out.

Rule #4 of this blog's Manifesto talks about having multiple ways to measure a player's progress.  Here, I'll go copypasta it and save you a click:

#4 - Sometimes, we need a different measure of progress than isk/hr.  And I don't mean adding things that convert to isk (like LP/hr or m3 ore/minute).  That's just isk in a different format.   

In PVP, we have killmail and killboards and that's a good way to measure things and keep a score.  Character skillpoints has always been a measure (if over-emphasized) of character progression.  The recently overhauled Ship Mastery is a fun way to generate some bragging rights, maybe.  But here's the point: nothing motivates nerds more than "leveling up."  As I continue to post, one theme you'll see is an attempt to allow progress to be captured.

 So, as CCP overhauls the lvl4 / burner experience, what tools do we want to capture the progress?

Do you want an in-game achievement for killing the Anomic agent?  For solo'ing the Angel burner?  For killing the Serpentis Burner in under 10 seconds?  ... for getting killed by a burner agent?  :)

For PVP, there are information feeds (API) that allow the player-community to establish killboards.  There are in-game killmails to link, and collect.  All of this drives all kinds of behavior, some of it good, some of it ... less savory.  But it's a type of motivation not (usually) rooted in isk/hr.

For PVE, we don't have that, have never had that, and don't even have a log showing what missions we've completed or declined recently.  This past week I went through the game trying to count, and ended up in my Wallet counting mission payouts.  This only worked because I had a screenshot with a datestamp telling me when I should stop counting.  It only told me I'd done a mission, not which mission or even which agent.

Now then, I'm NOT (not!) advocating a WoW-style achievement system with hundreds/thousands of meaningless tasks.  Let me digress a minute and say that the Achievement mentality is something that helped drive me from WoW.  I don't need that kind of instant gratification and constant reinforcement of how cool I am.  I don't want a checklist of to-do items that I must complete or not be considered uncool.  EVE doesn't need that kind of structure or handholding.

But I do think I want something in between the big nothing we have now and the absurd something that other games have.

So for me, I'd start with a killmail-style mission log, included on my character sheet.  Collect some metrics like: which ship I was in, how much damage taken/received, and which agent.  Make it part of the API, and see where the community takes it.  Then adjust accordingly.

Does that count as an Achievement system?  It could.  It could be the foundation of one.  The important part would be starting small and staying small.

Oceanus Burner Changes and Level 4 Tools

I really should pay more attention to the Dev Blog feed.  I missed this one a few days ago, but thanks to Sugar's weekly CSM wrap up, I got caught up.

CCP Seagull posted the summary of Oceanus changes coming at the end of the month.  This blog isn't intended to entirely about lvl4s/burners but it's quickly becoming that way.  Anyway, in case you missed it here's the blurb on burners:

New Burner Missions, now with logistics 

Take on a new set of Level 4 Burner missions with more high powered enemies in frigates which have brought their own logistics support. A dev blog is coming with both information on how Burner missions have fared so far and the details about the new missions.

Sounds like some of us are getting our wish for a more complicated encounter that all but mandates you bring a friend (or five).

Looking forward to the additional details....

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Separate but related topic, there was some news about lvl4's in the last CSM Townhall.  You can get the full mp3 of the conversation here, but I'll attempt to transcribe the part at the end (about 48:20) about CCP's efforts to rebuild their in-house dev tools (I don't know who the speaker was; I am bad matching voice coms to character names):

Something we are now pleased that we can talk about... CCP are working on PVE tools that was [announced on] the [alliance tournament] stream.  Basically, the problem at the moment is that the tools that they have are less than intuitive, and so they are a bit of a pain to make changes with. Which is obviously going to slow stuff down.  They are working on the toolset at the moment, which is going to make it easier for them to add additional content and make changes for other things with it.   

So, on PVE content: once the toolset is back into play, and has been redone, it will be far easier for them to add new stuff.  Don't have a timescale for that, but they are working on it at the moment.

This jives with things that we have been told before.  Investing in a new toolset is a signal to me that CCP wants to continue to extend PVE and breathe some life into decade old content.  Which, if you're a reader here at all, should know that I think is a big friggin' deal.  See also my Manifesto.

Burner Upgrades

Burners aren't perfect.  We can probably agree on that.  CCP has stated that they would like the expand the concept to other ship classes (which I think is a great idea at face value).  However, there's also more that could be done with Frigates.

These are in no particular order and are just my random musings:

• One of my gripes from yesterday: Burners are too short.  Per the original dev blog post, this is somewhat intentional.  And I'm not advocating adding an intentional timesink (although a separate class/tier of lvl4's called Expert Missions in parallel with Burners would be outstanding).  But keeping with the theme of emulating 1v1 pvp in a lvl4 mission, you could tack on just a little more and have a more satisfying experience ... maybe an appetizer to the main event.  For example, put a (much less challenging) frigate or two at the acceleration gate.  Or add an intermediate room with a Burner Lieutenant, before the final room with the "real" Burner.
• Burner-Lites.  Maybe level 3 Burners.  I'd like something that can be done with tech1 frigs and meta4/t2 loot (non-faction).  Lower risk, lower payout.  The current burners are pretty harsh (in my view, appropriately so), but a lvl3 version might be fun for lower skillpoint characters.
• Burners On Demand.  I don't think a dedicated Burner agent is a great idea; implications of farming are pretty horrendous.  But a scheme where "On Demand" means "for a cost" then maybe it's better balanced.  Would you pay your agent 5,000 LP to locate a Burner for you?  10,000?  Would you maybe schedule some friends for "Corp Operations" around a group chain of Burners?  As a former Corp Party Planner, I'd have loved that kind of content.
• Separate out the Burner Mission like a Storyline mission.  If I am running lvl4's and I am offered a Burner, right now I either decline the Burner and keep grinding, or I stop what I'm doing and get set to do the Burner.  Some players will decline just so they can keep grinding.  Other players will decline because they don't want to be dead in the water (at least with that agent) until their friends login or travel to help.  Some of those players will get the Burner, decide they want to run it but can't/won't run it right that moment and will logoff for the night.  With PCU numbers the way they are, don't give me a reason to logoffski, let me set aside the content until I'm ready. Personally, I'd rather get an evemail from a different agent saying "We've got a special problem that needs a pilot with your skills..." and let me deal with the Burner when I have time.  

That's it for now.  Thanks for looking into my brain with me.

Burner Balance

Reading forums, it's apparent that there's some disappointment with Burners.

Now, it's the EVE community. There's going to be some whining and banging of pots and pans.  But, some of it struck a chord with me and put words to the feelings that I had rumbling around behind my brain.

Folks are saying that there's too much risk for too little reward.  They're saying that that they're too hard.  Or require a big shiny faction fit in order to be completed.

Overall, I think CCP hit pretty close to the mark.  Although some adjustment is probably warranted, I wouldn't do it just yet (let's collect more data), and I wouldn't make sweeping changes.  But I do think that they need to get the balance a nudge or two before cranking things up with Cruiser sized burners.

Things I like:

• I like that burners are difficult.  
• I like that they're making people think about their fits and affecting their skill queues.  
• I like that there's a whole new strategy and tactics being developed for them (I saw the term "drop bait drones" being used as a means to break warp scram during an unsuccessful burner run and thought it was great, i.e. turning the AI's desire to murder drones against itself).  
• I realize these are pretty high level, conceptual bullet points, but all in all, I'm reasonably happy.  All in all, Burners are pretty cool.

Things that Suck:

• I wish that we'd drop from warp a little further from the target, to try to get our bearings before being instalocked and ganked.  Either add some distance or turn down the npc's lock time a bit.
• Balance is tricky, but the current setup yields a little bit of rock-paper-scissors(-lizard-spock).  Each burner is designed with obvious counters, meaning that a relatively narrow range of ships will be successful.  Youtube is yielding a surprising number of different setups for some of the flavors, but given the number of frigates in the game, we're using far too few of them on Burners.
• Balancing around overheated faction webs kinda sucks.  A near mandatory ~95M isk investment is poopy.  Wish Mr. Sansha's orbit range was 10km instead of 15km, for instance (even a 12km orbit would let me do it with meta4 and an off grid booster).
• Once you drop from warp, it's very much about getting all the right buttons mashed to facilitate a kill.  Once guns are firing and modules are blinking appropriately, there's not much to do but wait for the eventual success or fail.  If CCP /really/ wanted to make things interesting, the AI would get smarter and do things like random orbit ranges and other maneuvering switchups that would make you react during the fight.
• It's over too soon.  More on this in the next post.

Some of this goes away if CCP would say the words "Burners aren't meant to be solo'd."  But I don't think they should balance around a gang fight.  The solo frigate fight is the classic duel, and emulating that experience in a lvl4 just kinda feels right.  If they can get the balance right, it goes a long ways towards having a future in PVE, /and/ as a stepping stone to train future PVPers.

Anyway, with 1 week in game, that's my opinion on Burner Balance.  Sometime soon (maybe even tomorrow), I'll chat a bit about how the concept could be extended in future patches.

The Machines are Winning

No, I haven't tried a burner mission yet.  I've knocked over just a few lvl4's and haven't had one pop yet.  Has been one of those weeks at work.... little time for EVE.

The stats posted by CCP Fozzie (see this Mike Azariah post) are interesting.  "On day one, 207 Burner NPCs died, but they killed 1563 capsuleer ships. The machines are winning."  Learning curves are a good thing.

I did go get my Hawk out of deep storage and am wondering what other ships I should go invest in.  Watched a few youtube vids of guys getting their asses kicked by burners; kinda scares me (a good thing).  But, the thought of spending battleship money on a faction frig so that I can lose it the first time I misclick is giving me pause.  Maybe I should go play around on SiSi a bit.

It's a holiday weekend in the U.S., so I'm hoping the lvl4 agent smiles favorably on me.

Apologizing for PVE

Sugar posted her CSM update earlier today, and as I read it on my phone this morning I had to cock my head a bit.  Let me quote and add some emphasis:

At the start of our Term CCP Fozzie told us that he was looking to add a new type of mission. It is one of those things where everyone said "yes please!" On Monday, CCP Seagull released the news and CCP Fozzie followed up with a dev blog about the missions. 

Now, the reaction was not what I expected. I expected that i would sit here and respond to complaints that CCP was working on PvE content. All of the things about it, such as it being skippable, in the regular level fours but not decreasing access to the normal mission pool, and using frigates were supposed to be the defense for them. The idea of giving mission runners something new to try and a reason to try out frigates and fighting styles that are not optimal battleship blitzing seemed amazing.

I find it odd that a game company would find themselves compelled to rationalize/apologize in advance for adding new content, or trying to find ways of reusing existing assets (ships) in new and exciting ways.

I'm sure it's frustrating at times for CCP; they can't seem to make a sandwich for lunch without someone starting a threadnaught to tell them they're doing it wrong.  (OMG! I said NO MAYO! Wtf CCP?  /unsub 57 accounts).

It's just weird, is all, that in a game with fairly poor PVE that the devs would feel so guilty about trying to address some of PVE's issues that they'd let the apology/defense affect the development strategy.

I'm not making a particular accusation for/against CCP or the CSM on this particular addition ... my only point is:  these are strange times we live in.

Back on the Front Burner

Okay, today was the day this blog was built for - the (hopefully) beginning of a long series of PVE additions.   Let's break down today's dev blog on BURNER MISSIONS:

Burner Missions are 100% optional. There will be no standings penalty for turning down or failing these missions. Your friendly neighborhood security agent knows that not every capsuleer will have the equipment or skills to take on these missions and won’t be offended if you decline.

Optional is good.  Some days you'll just not want to fuss with trying to refit a frig, or maybe the chair in your Golem is particularly comfy.

Burner Missions can only be completed in frigate-sized ships. The pirate Burners operate from bases protected by acceleration gates that only allow access for frigates. All types of frigates (Tech One, Tech Two and Faction) can enter the bases.

This is not a surprise given the preview we had a few days ago; still gets a thumbs up from me.  Starting a wave of new content with frigs and working up is fine by me.  Including t2 is a no brainer and mildly mandatory.

Burner Missions pit you against a single enemy NPC. This NPC is an extremely powerful frigate with stats based on those of a player flying a pirate frigate with officer/deadspace gear, pirate implants, and command links. All of these NPCs use warp disruption, and most of them use scramblers that turn off microwarpdrives the same way player scramblers do.

This sounds ... mean.  In a good way.  Very much want to tangle it up with these new little bastards.

I gotta say, though, in my perfect world, we'd have this implementation (i.e. single boss) as well as a more traditional multi-npc armada facing you in any new small-ship PVE encounters (think: mini-mini-incursions).  This sounds like it's being setup primarily to emulate 1v1 fights; I'd /also/ want some group encounters to batphone for backup on.

So, I like the ideas of having a harder AI to contend with and dismantle, and I like the idea of a mock-PVP situation.  I just want more. :)

The fact that these missions can only be received as part of the random level 4 security mission pool should prevent them from being too farmable.

I'd rather queue up for new missions and only new missions rather than have to slog through the old "full sized" missions (legacy missions? what's the terminology to use here?) hoping one will pop.  But I understand the economics/farming concerns.  It all depends how "rare" rare is.  If I can pull 1 or 2 of these a gaming session, I would no doubt be happy.  If I go days without seeing one... meh.  Once CCP learns a bit from the first pass, maybe they'll loosen up this restriction.  

Bottom line:  A solid first step.  There's hints in the blog and on the comments page of a "first of many" approach, and maybe the new content deployment schedule will help us get incrementally more MORE.

Looking forward to flying a frigate again soon....

Hyperion!

I know everyone is combing through the WH changes (and for good reason) but ... just read this in today's dev blog:

A new kind of Level 4 missionsTake on a single, powerful enemy using fitting skills and combat tactics in new optional level 4 missions for frigate size ships that will be available from all security agents in Empire space. An upcoming dev blog will present the new missions.

Love for lvl4's - check.
Small ship PVE - check.

These are words I never thought I'd see in a dev blog.  Sadly, there is already some angst about it.  For me, it's a good thing.  It's not much info yet, but I'll take it!