EVE Vegas Day Zero

Mmmmm. Coffee.

Sitting on our balcony looking over the strip as it wakes up for another day.  EVE Vegas day 1 is today, but let's start by talking about yesterday.

Other than being hurtful early, our flight went without incident. It was a direct route with no layover shenanigans.  Normally I travel for work, which means lugging around a laptop, extra clothes for work and play, and perhaps a binder of crap or two.  For this trip, all my stuff fit in a smallish carry on.  This meant no waiting for luggage at the carousel, easy security screen, and much less fuss and overall lower stress.  We didn't rent a car, so our only real pause for consternation was trying to find the taxi stand at McCarran international (which is one of my generally less favorable airports, tho O'Hare and Washington Dulles certainly suck a lot more).

I could get used to traveling light. Soooo much easier.

On the ground, we had a great day walking the strip. From Planet Hollywood we ventured north to the Wynn and back, gawking like the tourists we are. We stopped at the Venetian for a bit for a snack and drink and watched the statue lady living sculpture.  Other than dodging all the folks trying to hand us stuff and give us "free show tickets" it was a great morning.

In the afternoon we caught up with Sugar, and chatted for not nearly long enough.  My sister in-law had a break from her conference at the Bellagio, so we introduced her to Sugar.  Sis in-law is not a gamer, but took the nerd things in stride as best she could. We love her anyway. :)

Sugar took our picture to send to mom (mom thinks its super cool that we're here the same time as sis in-law, who we generally see only a few times a year).

After dinner, Mrs. Durden and I had drinks on our balcony and watched the strip change colors. I managed to stay awake until 8pm, but had been on the move since 00:30 (yes, midnight-thirty) local time.

Today is registration and the keynotes. We will disappear during the keynote to make our show time up the strip a ways. It should be another good day.

Well, the douchbags on the next balcony are smoking weed, yelling at each other, and spitting snot hockers over the rail, so my moment here is ended.  Coffee is cold anyway.  Time to find a real breakfast and go do nerd things.

Packing for Vegas

It's time.

This week has been a mad blur.  I spent the last day in my old office on Friday.  I left the office, put the last of my cubicle crap in the house and then drove 3 states away for a wedding (was a "destination wedding" at a reasonably popular tourist area).  Got in well after midnight Friday, spent the day Saturday shopping and wedding-ing.  Drove back Sunday, crashed into bed ... started new job on Monday.

New job is going fine, but I'm drinking from a firehose and I've come home each night exhausted.

We decided at the last minute to have a friend check on our cats (they're 16 and 18 years old, respectively), and that means we get the added bonus of cleaning the house a bit (not that we're slobs, but I really haven't been home much since Labor Day to care about more than the bare essentials; some might say 'who cares' ... well, I do. :)  ).

We have an o-dark-early flight tomorrow, but the flight is at least direct.  We'll be on the ground in Las Vegas in time for a late breakfast followed by a free day on the strip.  Will spend the evening watching the Bellagio fountain while trying desperately trying to stay awake after our early wake up and timezone changes.  Will swap hotels to the Planet Holleywood on Friday around the time that registration for the EVE event starts, and maybe have lunch with my sister-inlaw who happens to be there on business this week.

I'm only sitting here at the PC while my boarding passes and other essentials hum off the printer, then I'm going to scramble out and try to remember the 12 things I've no doubt forgotten to pack.

I am looking forward to some down-time, and sleeping in, and perhaps an adult beverage or two.  And EVE.

Cya on the other side... // Abavus

What's Playing:  TOOL, Aenima, Jimmy

How to Spot an Abavus in the Wild at EVE Vegas

I don't do social media and generally don't post my picture online.  Long story.

But, if you are reading this and you'll be at Vegas for all the EVE Glory, I'd like to talk to you.

I can't make any promises about after-hours activity.  As luck would have it, my sister in-law (who is non-nerd and mighty confused about a "video game convention" but we love her anyway) will also be in town for work, and we'll no doubt spend some time with her as our schedules permit.  I also got show tix for Mrs. Durden up at one of the other hotels and will probably vanish during the keynote.  But during the day I plan to be in and around the EVE Vegas halls as much as I can possibly stand.  

So, how to spot me: I'm a fairly normal looking white guy, fairly tall at about 6'3" and more gray hair than I'd like.

Day 1 - Friday - I will be wearing a bright blue (I dare say NEON BLUE) FOO FIGHTERS shirt.
Day 2 - Saturday - I will be wearing a dark gray FOO FIGHTERS shirt.
Day 3 - Sunday - I will be wearing a bright/lime green TwinSix shirt with a winged bicycle wheel logo on the chest.

So that's my plan - wearing bright clothes. (My genius is sometimes astounding.) Hopefully it will be enough to spot me in the sea of guys wearing a black howling triple wolves shirt or whatever that meme was.

Looking forward to chatting with many of you and putting some names with faces.

Countdowns

Tomorrow is the last day at my current office.  I've arranged a transfer down the road to a cousin organization.  It's not exactly a promotion but puts me in line for one, assuming I can perform well in the new environment.  Mentally, I swear I can hear the countdown clicking. Tick, tock.

It's been a surreal couple of weeks since I announced my intent to depart.  I've watched my team go through the 7 stages of change (anger, pain, denial, and the rest).  Which was weird for me because /I've/ known that I'm leaving the team for some time now, so it was not new to me.  Watching the news ripple through the team was an odd experience because I wasn't grappling with the same new information as them. I felt like an outside observer, even though I'd thrown the rock that started the ripples.

They are happy for me; the new gig is actually a pretty good deal.  They are sad for the team and concerned about what I may know that they don't (truth is: nothing, hah). I have known these people most of my career - 16-17 years, depending how you count, and over the past 24 hours I have said a lot of hard goodbyes.  I'll say many more tomorrow.  Although I am the deputy lead today, members of the team are my former team leads and mentors that held those kinds of positions 15-20 years ago.  I've been a part of their family and they've been a part of mine - weddings, funerals, and graduations all shared.  I'm leaving for the right reasons, but I'll still miss my friends.

Another realization as the countdown clicks down:  Today I am the center of attention, surrounded by friends.  Monday will be a new day, and I will be the new guy, and largely alone.

I type this and it perhaps sound like I'm apprehensive, sad, or scared.  In fact, I'm determined.  It's a path I started on over a year ago.  It's a contingency plan that I kept smoldering over several long months.  It's something I wanted; something I wished for.  Perhaps the reality of the situation is finally settling over me; tomorrow I will turn in my badge and walk out the door. Should I return, I will be a visitor and require an escort.  Between tomorrow morning at 7am and Monday morning at 8:45, my life is going to change and be far, far different.

There is of course another countdown running.  A week from today, I'll be standing next to the Bellagio fountain with a big smile.  EVE Vegas is near.  We have our plane tickets, hotels, and even a show lined up.  We're heading out on Thursday and will hopefully meet up with my sister inlaw who will be there on business.  And then it's time to nerd out.  :)

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.  

Hello October

I started this post as a September Wrap Up.  The ninth month came and went with a fury, and I find myself left running around chasing pieces of my life like a herd of cats.  A herd of wild, angry cats.  On fire.

However, writing about it - while cathartic - really isn't all that interesting for a video game blog.  Select all - Delete.

Let's try this again.

I ran my first Lvl 4 mission today since July 31st.  That alone was a major accomplishment.  I've been in and around the game, tending to things that I could tend to (skill queues, my bpc collection, and chatting up old friends), but I hadn't actually undocked to do anything involving spaceship combat in weeks.

I will still be busy in October.  Very busy.  I'm switching jobs, we're going to EVE Vegas, and I have a mountain of chores to do around our 10 acres.

But I also hope to shoot things.  :)

Guristas Anomic Base Live

Vanguard deployed today, which means the Guristas Anomic (cruiser/BC sized) mission is now available from your friendly neighborhood lvl4 agent.

I haven't been able to get on SISI and play due to several consecutive family commitments, work commitments, work drama, and a (woohoo!) pending job change.  But that's the subject of a whole 'nother post.  However, while typing I'll say that things look crazy until well after EVE Vegas and I'm only moderately hopeful for a quiet holiday period.  And at the moment I have a head cold.  Bleh.

I'll chain grind some missions if I'm able and see if I can get the new mission to drop.  In the interim, here is some guidance from the forums.

• The SISI thread is here.
• This post seems to have a reasonable guide almost in the style that I would write it (Deimos).   Credit goes to Talsha Talamar.  
• This post is another approach (Vigilant) and a good guide.  Credit goes to Chainsaw Plankton.

Both posts are dated today, based on the SISI content but could (in theory) not represent the final live version.  Beware of surprise changes. :)

Pending a confirmation, the mission text is as follows.  Sounds like a fun scenario.

Anomic Base

I have a special optional and extremely difficult mission for you, we won’t penalize you if you decline it. 

The Wyvren-class Supercarrier Antero was recently stolen from the Caldari by a group of hijackers funded by the Guristas. They seem to have somehow double-crossed their employers, and now both the Caldari Navy and the Guristas are after them. Their Supercarrier is severely damaged, but still commands a powerful contingent of heavily modified fighters. 

I wouldn’t normally care too much about this ship, except that it just showed up outside a nearby repair depot demanding repairs and threatening violence. If they damage that depot I’m going to personally lose a significant investment, and we can’t let that happen. If you accept this mission, you’ll need to get over there and convince them that there are better depots to hold up than mine. There’s no way that you’ll be able to kill it, but if you wipe out enough of its fighters I’m sure they’ll get the hint. 

Only medium sized ships can gain entry to the repair yard, so don’t try to bring anything bigger. 

These rogue pirates have waves of heavily modified fighters and fighter bombers with strong shield tanks and small signatures. They deal all four damage types, with their modified Dragonfly fighters spewing Explosive, Kinetic and Thermal at close range, and their modified Mantis fighter-bombers lobbing EM damage from longer ranges. They always fly with Stasis Webifiers and Warp Scramblers fit. To save my repair depot you’ll need to keep destroying waves of fighters until the Wyvren decides to cut its losses and leave.  

A word of warning: these rogue pirates are extremely dangerous and have proven very capable of destroying capsuleer ships. If you choose to decline this mission or if you fail to complete it, you will not lose any standings. 

Declining a mission from a particular agent more than once every 4 hours will result in a loss of standing with that agent.

Guristas Anomic Base in Vanguard

The patch notes for Vanguard, which is due next Tuesday are available.

Two things of note for readers of Dog's Breath:

1. Guristas Anomic Base appears to be in this patch.  I haven't had time to go looking on SiSi, but if I have time this weekend will see what I can find out.

2. Navy Battlecruiser rebalance.  Changes are too long to list here, but I did notice that the Navy Drake is getting a little more tank (skill bonus changed from missile velocity to +4% all resists) and some additional drone bandwidth.

Happy Friday!

Disenfranchising Core Playerbase ... On Purpose

Happened across this article about the Games Workshop AGM annual general meeting.  The whole thing is a good quick read, but will quote a few snippets here.

Background:  GW is a company name you may not recognize, but you probably recognize their primary product lines:  Warhammer and Warhammer 40k.  They're a niche tabletop miniatures company, with licenses for their IP across a wide range of tie in products (including a slew of PC games over the years).

As I've been reading more about the tabletop scene, I've noticed a large amount of angst with GW, and quite a few defectors who now swear to never buy their products again (in favor of most notably Warmachine, but honestly the tabletop market is simply exploding with neat games thanks to Kickstarter and the power of online internet shopping).  GW is the grand-daddy of these upstarts, but from my (very limited) exposure at GenCon and random local game stores, it appears that the upstarts are eating GW's lunch these days.

Part of this is an intentional strategy on the part of GW Management.  GW has been moving itself away from being a "tabletop game" company and towards a "hobby/model kit" company.   In other words - they view their primary audience as guys who assemble and paint but actually don't PLAY the games.  This comes at a time when gamers are pushing their local stores to offer more dedicated game nights but are being turned away because there's no time in the schedule to squeeze in more titles and no room for more tables.

This move isn't being unnoticed by the fan base, who a) actually enjoyed playing the games and b) are generally pissed off about being marginalized after supporting GW over the past couple of decades.

Here's the first quote:

I’ve got bad news for disenchanted gamers complaining on the Internet. The company’s attitude towards customers is as clinical as its attitude towards staff. If you don’t like what it’s selling. You’re not a customer. The company believes only a fraction of the population are potential hobbyists, and it’s not interested in the others. 

.... 

 When another shareholder asks if the company would sell games with pre-painted easy to assemble miniatures like the popular Star Wars themed X-Wing game, there’s a collective growl from the Games Workshop people. It wouldn’t be a hobby business then, it would be a toy company.

It's interesting, but not unexpected, that X-Wing came up in conversation.  Fantasy Flight's X-Wing tabletop game, in particular, appears to be simply printing money.  Expansions sell out before reprints can be shipped from China.  X-Wing is highly accessible to new gamers because, in part, the minis come pre-painted.  Clumsy guys like me can simply buy the ships and play. It's apparent that GW is dismissing this as "casual play" (in EVE terms), but that over-simplification saddens me.  X-wing has it's flaws, no doubt, but at the Club and National level is a nuanced game of strategy and ability to gauge an opponent. As my 4hr game at GenCon shows - it can scale from 3-4 ships to dozens for that 'epic' all-day gaming session that the serious guys love.  (And if X-Wing is too ezmode, its more complicated brother Armada is the X-Wing ruleset on crack.)

In response, GW is waiving their hands saying "Pah, noobs" and retreating from a tabletop market that is thriving.  This is truly puzzling ... I'm not saying that they should clone X-Wing, but simply dismissing the forces at work that is making X-Wing successful instead of trying to step in and grab market share when (not if, WHEN) X-Wing eventually cools down might be a better strategy...

I leave the Games Workshop fortress confident of one thing. Managment have set a course and they will not be deviated.  ... 

Niche businesses are often very profitable and the hard decisions they take is what makes them different, but they’re also vulnerable if unforeseen events reduce the attractiveness of the niche. ...

All of this reminds me of a certain small Icelandic video game company just before there were riots in Jita.  Niche game with a bunch of hard-headed leaders all hyping and reinforcing their own version of reality.  Sound familiar?

I hope it goes better for GW.

CSMX Fall Summit - Minutes Day 1

If you weren't aware, our CSMX Reps are currently at CCP HQ for the Fall summit.

Minutes from Day 1 are available here.

I typically tackle Minutes in a few waves - right now I'm in the mode where I hit ctrl-F for search and look for interesting keywords.  I'll read for content later once more of the content is available (and if things are slow at work).

Note that the words* 'burner,' 'gank,''agent,' and  'pvp' and 'mining' do not appear in the document at all.  Neither does 'Abavus' ... hah.

The word 'mission' appears once, in context of what to do with attribute implants should attributes be removed (something mission runners expend their LP on is attribute implants).  'LP' appears only in that same conversation.  The word* 'pve' appears once in context of pending PVE additions to null that are still NDA'd.  'Incursions' were mentioned once, regarding potential impacts from IGB changes.

This isn't a rant about lack of content for any particular platform/activity. They have a multi-day agenda, and some/all of these things will be discussed later I'm sure.  It's just a quick way for me to scan and see if any of my interests are being discussed.

Note that I wasn't able to load the PDF and then search in it via Chrome.  I'm working from the full text version.

-----
*I know pvp and pve are acronyms. :)

So You Wanna Start a Corp (Part VI)

Previous Entries

1. Part 1 - Starting Up
2. Part 2 - Components of a Serious Corp
3. Part 3 - Fighting Battle Fatigue
4. Part 4 - Questions to Ask at Startup
5. Part 5 - Being a Leader

VI. The Transition
This is the final (and long overdue) installment of this series, As we wrap up, I wanted to talk about the "what happens next" part of standing up a corporation.

In my mind, there are kind of the 3 phases to a corporation:  Startup, Transition, and Stable Execution.

Most of this series has been about the first phase - Startup.  It's perhaps the hardest (though no phase is particularly "easy") to navigate cleanly.

The next phase is what I think of as Transition.  This is the awkward teenage years of the corporation, where the group finds its true voice, begins to mature, and really begins to look towards the long haul of a well-run corporation.

So, how do you navigate through Transition?