EVE Revenues Down

Saw this on MassivelyOP.  Link HERE.

Hat tip to marketsforISK blogger croda for digging into CCP’s 2015 financials, which were released to the public at the end of March. The good news is that CCP posted record post-tax profits of $20.7 million in 2015. Even if we exclude the one-off sale of the World of Darkness franchise, this a record year for the company, particularly since 2014 saw heavy losses.


The bad news is that studio revenue is down 16% since 2014, thanks largely to a decline in EVE Online, whose revenues are down to their 2009 levels. In fact, croda extrapolates a 16% subscription dip for EVE.

Edit:  Sorry for the horrible formatting.

And Then it was April

Things continue to shuffle along here.  The pace at work has slackened just a bit, and a few things that were hard for me a couple months ago are now getting easier with additional experience.  With the spring thaw has brought the return of yard work, and although I enjoy being outside a great deal, it's also a distraction.

I should have started an 8 week bike training regimen this week and I did pretty poorly.  I actually haven't biked (indoor or out) for over a week and a half.  Random weather and a sudden work commitment kept me grounded this week.  Wednesday was absolutely fantastic weather, but I opted to re-mount the mower deck and spend an hour mowing an acre out front that gets ahead of everything else.

I'm actually off work today; it's a premeditated vacation day with the intent of accomplishing more random things in 3 days than I could realistically hope to get in 2.  With the forecast, today was chainsawing and brush hawging until the rain came around lunch and drowned me out.  This afternoon we'll off for errands and a late lunch at a local diner we found a few weeks ago.

Tomorrow will hopefully be a 35-40 mile bike ride to jump start my training regimen, I need to pick a route that takes into account the amount of wind I suspect we'll get.  I hope to collapse in a heap afterwards.

Sunday's task will be to light the pair of brush piles I've built and toss on all the stuff I cut this morning.  Sounds simple, but will be 4-6 hours outside eating smoke.  Oh, and somewhere in there, I need to clean the gutters and pile some gravel in the hole the raccoons are using to access my pole barn.

This has left precious little time for EVE.  This year has warped past me at a blistering pace; I can't believe it's April already.  I've been in game a few times to try to keep some plates spinning, and I'm trying to follow the onslaught of the Imperium war, but most things I need to do within the game involve a lot of time investment.

Oh wow, now it's hailing outside.  We came inside just in time. :)

5 Random Things

Stealing the format from another blog I read.  Here are 5 random things I did this week:


1) Signed my will.  As in my last will and testament.  We're old enough that we should have one, and it's been on my New Years' to-do list each year for the past 2-3 years (and if I say 3, it's probably been more like 5 years).  Last year I actually logged into LegalZoom but didn't actually purchase the form.  This year we found a local attorney to hammer out the details.  It was painless and far less expensive than I expected.

2) Was a featured speaker at a Lunch n' Learn event at work.  My part was less than 10 minutes, though I also coordinated the other 4 speaker's content and assembled the consolidated package.  I am not a great public speaker but it went well enough.  There were about 50 people in the auditorium and another 30 people online via webex.  Not my largest audience ever, but probably the most free-form speech I've ever given (since I wasn't giving a "briefing" against a standardized agenda).  My boss' boss was in the 4th row and has this eagle-eye stare that unnerved me.  I had to find someone else to look at during my hand waiving.  After starting at the new office in October, it was nice to be asked to speak and be a visible person in my new org.

3)  Rode 20 miles on the bike.  Early season rides are always a crapshoot around here, and normally this time of year I'd be happy getting a "real" ride of maybe 10 miles.  Last Sunday it was sunny and warm with only medium wind so I suited up and went out.  The route I picked started on some of my favorite roads and I ran into a TON of other bikers - the biking community here has really exploded in the past 5 years.  As I considered my return route, I opted to add another 5 miles and went out scouting a new return route on the way home.

4)  Patched up EVE.  I haven't undocked in awhile, but did manage to get my Desktop client patched up and checked training queues.  Everything is where I left it, although I'm noticing that some of my older burner setups are now broken (the Gila fit for the Sansha BC Burner in particular).

5)  This morning, we ran a local 5k.  Every triathlete has a least favorite event; running is mine.  I am neither a great runner nor a horrible runner, but I don't enjoy it and therefore don't train for it.

However, while I am focusing on Bike this season, Mrs. Durden is opting to chase down some running goals.  She signed up for this event long ago and I jumped on board last month (mostly because of the finisher medal, I must admit).

I went into this unprepared ... I have run exactly twice this year - the only other jogging session was a 5k event in February - and the time I got today was pretty good for not actually preparing for the race.  The weather was pretty cold (38 deg F at the start) and after I overheated in February, I undercompensated and was dressed for a day 15 degrees warmer.  Luckily, we were able to hide in a local pub before the start and once on the course I felt really good.  Mrs. Durden did also well and the finisher medal is cool and we're better off for having done it than sleeping in on a Saturday.

6) Bonus:  Tonight we're going to the Opera. We're season ticket holders, believe it or not.  I can take or leave the singing, but I really enjoy watching the pit orchestra. With dinner and the show it will make for a nice evening out.

Early Sunday

It's early for a Sunday.  It's not quite 8am and I've already been out of bed close to 2 hours.

At around 4:30 this morning, I awoke with a start.  I was having one of those pulse pounding dreams, and I wasn't able to really get back to sleep after.  The dream itself was new and interesting - Mrs. Durden and I were making our way somewhere late at night.  It was dark, horrendously rainy, and the headlights weren't cutting through the haze.  The road we were on was in the middle of nowhere, and very hilly, and we had someone tailgating us.  We knew there was a rail line ahead and could see the train in the distance; I began watching for the cross guards.  We descend into a valley, crest a small hill, and suddenly there's a bridge that's washed out by the rainstorm.  Mrs. Durden (who was driving) slams on the brakes.  We skid to a halt (Hollywood style) with our front tires teetering over the abyss of rushing water.  I'm urging her to back up before the bank collapses, and she's saying something about the car behind us maybe can't stop in time.  She begins to back up just as the bank starts to crumble....

...And that's when I woke up.  I'm sure it's going to be an interesting day today.  We have few plans, so I'm hopeful for a long nap this afternoon.


Anyway, the reason I'm here is that although EVE is somewhat on the back burner, I'll try to keep a feed here going, even if it's not game related.

March is already here.  I've done reasonably well with my Winter to-do list around the 10 acres we own, and if the weather cooperates will have knocked out the last of the pre-Spring prep perhaps next weekend.

I'm also looking forward to more miles outdoors on the bicycle.  I have a big event in early June for which I need to train.  Winter training (indoors) has been going well, and I feel stronger now than I did perhaps a year ago.  But the real test will be getting some 25-50 mile rides in to test my endurance in the saddle.

/Time to Ride...

Spring is both a horrible and a great time to ride here.  When the weather turns warm, there's always a strong south wind that brings it.  Wind is a part of biking, but after your 3rd or 5th ride in a grinding 25mph gusty wind, you've really had enough.  (Of course, in July and August when it's 105 degrees F and 95% humidity you're praying for a little wind).

But only so much can be done indoors; eventually you need the real miles on a real bike on a real road.

I have done what I can, I think, to make the season successful, but Spring is always a challenge.  The weather the next few weeks will be very important - if it's too wet, I won't be able to ride, and won't be able to knock off chores around the house.  This is important because the same days that are ideal for biking are also ideal for working outdoors.  I'll have to make hard decisions whether I work or play, and those decisions get harder if the weather windows are few.

If things cooperate, I'll be able to tetris my tasks/training together very nicely and accomplish much.  If things don't cooperate, it'll mean an unruly mess and a lot of compromises.

Last year was an unruly mess with a lot of compromises.  So far, this year is better.  But the next few weeks will set the tone for the entire season.  

Work is Winning

I logged in to EVE last night for the first time in awhile and got asked, "where ya' been?"

Fair question.

Snarky Answer:  Not in EVE.

Better Answer: Work is winning. I've not been burning extra hours, but have been arriving home exhausted each night.  I've been struggling to make a coherent dinner, and after that I'm without sufficient energy to boot the EVE client.  So I squander the evening on something else, mindless, and then generally fall asleep on the couch before retiring early.  Weekends have been recovery and some quality time on the bicycle when I can sneak in the miles.

The interesting part is that work has been good.  Excellent, even.  Longtime readers will maybe recall that I switched offices in October.  The first few weeks were tough. My coworkers viewed me skeptically and I was drastically undertasked.  The holiday season was interesting as things began to click, and by late January I was firing on all cylinders and picking up task after task after task.

I find it stressful, but stressful in that hectic way.  Every day is like trying to wrestle 27 squirrels into a minivan with all the windows open.  There's a hundred things to do and I need to be in many places at once.

The old job was stressful in a highly negative way.  The relationship with our east coast teammates had eroded to the point of being openly hostile.  I came to work every day and argued against the idiotic (and in my business, downright dangerous/hazardous) decisions that were being made.  And my counterparts were making them intentionally just to go against the advice my team provided.  Every phone call was a fight; every email an argument.  I came home mad every single night.

The old job was list trying to wrestle a grizzly bear into a minivan with someone holding a trash bag over your head tightly, suffocating you while you're trying not to get bit.

I heard from some of my old coworkers today. Their situation is miserable.  Most are biding their time until options are presented and the office is closed down mid-next year.  With pensions, buyouts, accrued vacation, and so on, they're in a position where it's better for them and their families that they "shut up and color" than resign outright like I did (although I got a pretty sweet deal and lost nothing in my transaction).

Contact from the old team made me pause and take stock of where I was.  I'm busy. I'm tired. But I'm happy, and I haven't been able to say that in a few years.

Anyway, I'm still here. Work is winning.  It's winning because I'm letting it.  My change has been a net positive and the opportunities in the new organization are almost endless.  I'm learning a ton. I'm making a difference.

But I'm also very, very tired.

Begone Winter Demons!

This week, I hope, is the start of something different.

Fall and Winter are my favorite times of year.  I hate hot weather, and hate humidity more.  I'd rather be sitting by a fireplace under a blanket than at a back yard BBQ sweating and swatting bugs.  I'd rather be splitting wood outside at 20 degrees (F) than mowing the lawn at 85.

But Winter took its toll on me this year.  The past month has been especially hard.  Week after week I feel further into a funk.  It started with a sinus infection just after the holidays.  There were things I should have been doing outside, but weekend after weekend I'd say "it's too cold," or "it's too windy, and I don't want to get sick again."  This basically amounted to saying "screw it, I'm staying inside today; I'm tired and I earned it."  As things went on, I couldn't seem to get enough sleep, and the sleep I got has been intermittent and elusive.

My funk extended to games.  I've been in EVE very little although I have plenty to do.  I've been on the laptop on the couch a lot; but felt lethargic towards much of anything, including EVE.

The physical toll began to mount.  The longer I kept wollowing in my funk the worse I felt.  Aches, pains, swollen joints, and generally just feeling ... old.

Last weekend the weather was bitterly cold, but began to shift.  The sun came back and through the week the temperatures rose.  I decided it was time to expunge the Winter Demons and get on with Spring.

The only way I know how to do this is to flip the bird to feeling old and getting off my ass to MOVE.

On Monday, I reset my diet and began eating very precisely again; measured amounts at specific times of day.  It takes effort to do this, but it was something I could focus on.

Tuesday we went to a concert downtown at a small, historic theater and ate a fine dinner at a hundred year old building across the street from the venue.  The music was Mrs. Durden's choice, and was good, but perhaps more importantly we were out of the house and doing something social surrounded by young people.

On Wednesday we hit the gym, and I climbed on the spin bike for a 30 minute tempo session.  Instead of doing a precise "class" style workout against one of the Youtube videos I have on my phone, I queued up some of my favorite music and worked on my cadence.  I backed up and repeated my favorite songs and the session went quickly.  Doing something impulsive (vs. the regimented workout I had planned) and getting into music that I hadn't heard in awhile made the time fly by.

On Friday, I got the bike out of the garage and took a 30 minute loop around a training circuit that I like to use. It was windy but warm - 50 degrees (F) but wind gusting to 30 mph - and at times I was leaning so hard into the wind that I felt like I was riding sideways.  Rides like this can be a real grind; the brutal relentlessness of the wind can really take its toll on you.  But I had gone out impulsively by choice, not by guilt, and ignored the speedometer.  But the return leg was mostly downhill and with the wind and I simply flew home.  I hung up my bike in its place and thought, "this is why I ride."

On Saturday, we were signed up for a 5k trail run at a venue about 45 minutes from the house.  This was basically a bonfire party with a run somewhere in the middle.  We showed up early and hung out by the fire, and then hit the trail.  I hadn't run since last July and was doing the event very much unprepared.  While last weekend was bitter cold, this weekend was spring-like and I was shedding layers of clothes by the time I hit the 1/3 mile mark.  The crowd was big, but friendly.  The trail was challenging, very muddy, but along a gorgeous lake shore on a bright sunny day.  More time by the bonfire and then I splurged on the diet and had a cheeseburger and fries as a reward for a hard race.  We came home tired, but good.  We have already signed up for next year.

Today, I spent about 2 hours doing yard work - pruning my stand of Walnut (aka my retirement fund) - and I feel more alert and alive.

Checking the weather, it looks like Winter will attempt to come back for at least one more try this week.  But as far as I'm concerned, it is already beaten.

Building Roadmaps

Has been awhile.  No good reasons, no excuses.  I just felt like I didn't have much to write.

Sugar posed an interesting question, and instead of cluttering up her comments feed with a few paragraphs of stream-of-consciousness, I'll type here.  Because I can.

First, let's put the question into context.  Sugar is asking about Roadmaps.

We think we might know what that means, but ... do we really?  In response to her post I'm seeing well intentioned folks respond "I want feature X fixed."    That's great, but ... roadmap?  Not really.  That's a feature fix, a singular patchnote.

So back up -- Simply put - a roadmap is a plan.  In order to have a plan you need a goal (a destination).  The roadmap is the master plan of how to get from where we are to where we want to be, top to bottom, the whole game.

But first we need a destination, and we have to have some agreement that we aren't already there.

Agreeing on where we are NOW and where we SHOULD BE is no small task.  But if we could do it, then the gap between those two is the ground needing covered.  And then we can build the plan to get there.

Agreeing on the plan/route to get there is no small task (sensing a trend yet?) but if we could do that, then we have the tasks (or features) we need to implement to get to our destination.

Those tasks, written out and time phased is the Roadmap.

I'll beat this horse some more, but to summarize:
1. Grand Unified Vision (GUV) - Ideal Future State.
2. Assess current position.
3a. Determine Task/Feature List.
3b. Determine time phasing.
4. Generate Roadmap.
5. Execute Roadmap.
6. Review and include stray projects into GUV, then go back to step 1 and iterate.

I sometimes think that CCP thinks that the roadmap itself is the goal, the product, the destination.  As in, "see, Feature X is cool, will fix all our woes. Here's a shiny web page, we are doing stuff, trust us and send us more money."

At Vegas during the PVE panel, I raised my hand and asked for the PVE stuff to be added to the roadmap, or developed into its own roadmap.   Granted, I didn't ask the question very well, and those in the room looked at me like I had 3 heads.

What I was really trying to get to - but didn't articulate very well - was "How does PVE fit into everything else that CCP is doing?"  

Is there a coherent answer to that?  I can't really tell.  Or pick a topic - ingame store, PLEX prices, new player experience, mining, ingame social structures (corps/alliances), ship balance, Thera, POS, storyline, Capship rebalancing, small Fleet pvp, Faction Warefare, Planetary Interaction, Offgrid Link Removal, Citadels.  How does /any/ of this fit into the GUV?

So let's go back to step 1.  Grand Unified Vision.  Does EVE have one?  I'm not sure.  Has it ever had one?  I'm even less sure.  There are a lot of un-unified tasks being accomplished, and some sweeping changes being debated, but where is it all really going?  And how will we know when we get there?

EVE is so big that we think that we have to break the game up into these topics so that the context is comprehensible.  And as a communication strategy, that's maybe true.  But somewhere behind it all needs to be the GUV acting as the engine to move everything forward.  Somebody somewhere has to have a master plan.

Convince me that you have a master plan, and then we can debate roadmaps. :)

What's Playing:  Tool, Aenima, Stinkfist

Success Despite Being Sloppy

I came within a hear's breadth of losing my well worn Daredevil yesterday to the Single Guristas Worm.

The Worm is my very favorite burner mission.  I love the mwd-fueled dash under the barrage of the oncoming fire.  I love using blasters to melt his gurista face off.  I love the race of dps - dealing enough damage before my Cap Boosters run empty.  It's a unique fight in the burner world, and I always look forward to it.

I normally run a link ship, which makes the fight much more straightforward and reduces some of the overheat dance for lows and mids required if attempting fully solo.  Over the past many months, I've gotten pretty good at the mechanics of it, and measure myself by how many Cap Boosters that I return to the dock with.  (Normally that's 5, sometimes 6 of the 11 that I take with me).

Last night was a different matter.  The mistakes were mine, and they were many.

It was late in the day, and I am fighting off a case of the plague.  My head wasn't in the fight. I should have deferred.  That was mistake #1.

Mistake #2 was my approach.  I left the mwd run too long and I ended up bumping my target.  This put me out of optimal range, and required two more squirts of mwd to make the correction.  The repeated mwd use consumed additional cap.

Mistake #3 was not minding my armor rep.  With links running, the repper can get ahead of the inbound damage.  Depending on how the damage and rep cycles happen to sync up, I can turn the repper off several times a fight, thus saving capacitor.  Instead, I got distracted by the mwd tomfoolery and let the repper run despite being at 100% armor, pissing more capacitor into the wind.
Mistake #4 was turning off overheat on my highs too soon.  I've been bitten more than once while running burners by letting my guns burn out.  I normally turn my launchers off at about 60% burnt, as the heat grows much faster than blasters.  Blasters I let run to 70-80%.  As the gravity of the other mistakes began to register, I got too eager and unheated at 54%.  Maybe that would have been fine, but with the trouble of getting situated at the start of the fight, most of the overheated dps didn't actually land very well and the target was still at 40%+ shields.

By the time all of this happened, I'd run through my normal allotment of Cap Boosters.  Target is at 40% shields and I had maybe 4 reload cycles remaining on the cap before I'd fold up and explode.

Even this was surmountable, but as the target entered armor, a misclick (perhaps I was trying to spin the camera? not sure) turned off my guns with 4 rounds left.  Mistake #5.  I realized it too late, the target had begun to repair shields.  Instead of reloading, I turned guns back on (Mistake #5 1/2), ran the 4 antimatter out, and then waited for a reload.  Meanwhile the Capacitor clock was ticking and I'd let the target get back to 40% shields or so.

Weighing options, I overheated highs again and began to squint at the screen in preparation for the insurance payout.  Heat climbed higher, 70%, 80%.  I intended to unheat at 90% but now the target was well into armor.  I was loading my last Cap charge and was floating at 50% armor.  The UI's alarm bells were sounding every few seconds.  I made the only good decision of the entire fight and didn't unheat.  Target exploded with my highs at 95% burnt, one Cap Booster loaded but none in cargo.

A win is a win, but sheesh, that's no way to fly a ship as good as the Daredevil.

I type this out not to brag about the win, but as an example of how these encounters can sometimes trip you up through a cascade failure.  I consider myself a veteran of the burner mission, this one in particular, but I almost bit it last night.  Most of what happened was due in part to the very sloppy approach.  Dealing with that one error distracted me from other things going on, which cost me time and resources I didn't really have.  Had the approach been better, most of the other things wouldn't have happened or wouldn't have mattered.

Fly better next time, Abavus.  Fly better.

Back on Duty

Reposting this and editing lightly. Oddities from using the Blogger app shoved it to January 4th for some unknown reason.

----
Well, Evil isn't going to smite itself, so I have fired up the armada again, jumping back into the front lines against the Gurista, Sansha, and Angel menace.

Actually, I have been trying to get anomic agents to spawn as I haven't checked some of my fits in ages.  Considering the number of missions I got through this week, anomics were quite stingy. I did get World's Collide approximately 27,457 times, but very few burners. (And some of the ones that did get offered repeated.)

I will need to update my fit posts eventually, and ideally work out a more user friendly format.  I don't crave blog hits, but I see from my stats that many of you find this blog via google searching for burner strategies.  So even if I did update my fits and develop a better format, there's some significant web momentum behind the current set of blog posts.

Anyway, I digress.  I did determine that Blood Raider Cruor is still doable in my Jaguar and an off grid linker.  Guristas Worm is still fun in my Daredevil.  The Worm still holds its place as my favorite burner.  But the Team Enyo is no longer soloable in the kite fut Garmur. For that one I grab an alt in a mwd Kestrel to lend some dps.

Playing a Game You Don't Actually Enjoy

It's the end of a game session and as you're shutting down, you think: why am I doing this to myself?

And no, I don't mean EVE.  I mean Hearthstone.

I resisted the game while we were under our data cap; I didn't need another game to patch up and consume data quota. Late last summer we got a different provider and I caved. 

I played horribly but enjoyed it. Single play was fun. And the matchmaker was able to find players as horrible as me.

But now, things have progressed. I'm apparently in a no-mans land of mediocrity. I am no longer horrible but not an expert. The matchmaker doesn't quite know what to do with me. I have very few "good" games. Sometimes I am stomping faces and my opponent concedes very early. Sometimes I'm getting stomped and deciding whether I ride it in or concede. And maybe 1 in 10 or even 1 in 20, I get the nail biter that goes 20+ turns with no clear dominance until a clever move or combo breaks. My point is that most games are decided by turn 3 or 4 and so very few games result in any sort of satisfaction, even the wins.

Last night I played a game where I was at 3 health looking at game-over the next turn. After a long game trading pretty evenly, opponent had 9 health and a small army itching to smash me. I had a few guys out but not nearly enough to win that turn. In a clutch draw I was able to send my guys across for 7 and then play a leper gnome. I then cleverly killed my own leper gnome to yield 2 dmg from his deathrattle. Stolen victory maybe, but it was a good game, made sweeter by my win. I requeued thinking it would be another many games before I got a match that close.

And so, I am here lamenting during my lunch hour, thinking "why bother?".

It's time to back off from the silly virtual card game and maybe check back in 6 months after Blizz has maybe figured out an elegant fix.

More time for EVE.

For Science!

Happy New Year everyone.

While at EVE Vegas, we had a short chat with a nice Ph.D. candidate collecting data for his project on the psychology of MMO players.  He sent an update email today to say that he's close to having enough submissions to analyze the data, but needs a few more participants.

I'm posting the link to his survey with permission.  Please go help out if you have the inclination - I've done it, it doesn't take very long, and may give scientific proof as to why Jita is such a horrible place on local.*

Note:
*Probably not. Some things are best left unknown. :)  Seriously though, I'm not affiliated in any way with the research, just passing along the link to those who may be interested in helping out.