Blink

In late April, I took a business trip.  I blinked and a few weeks had passed, and it was time for our family trip.  I blink again, and it's July 4th weekend and time to BBQ.  I blink again, and suddenly it's August.

I guess I should quit blinking.

Where did Summer go?

This is one of those posts where I say the usual:  I'm still here. I've not really gone anywhere.  I've been busy, but not with internet spaceships, which makes me sad.  I'll be back posting my usual half-baked ideas about highsec PVE sometime down the road, and possibly sooner than you'd like. :)

Winter is coming.  I'll have more time when the weather turns cool.

Bell Curves

I'm a bit late to respond to the June Blog Banter, but I figure I may as well jump in and get the practice.

This killmail spawned this month's question:

Obviously that is a not just a bad fit, its horrific. But the guy might not know any better. We get these all the time circulating social media and corp/alliance chat. How do we educate players on fitting? This guy has been playing four months and can fly a BC, but has no idea how to fit one. What could be done to help bro's like this?

Furthermore, what (if any) responsibility do veterans players have in finding these players and instructing them on the finer arts of ship fitting? If it exists, does it extend beyond them into teaching PvP skills, ISK making skills, market skills, social skills, life skills...

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There are all kinds of players in EVE.  The spectrum from complete expert to oblivious idiot no doubt maps to some sort of Bell Curve.  Most of us are average, or near average and pile up in the big bulge in the middle.  At the tails of the curve are the outliers - the truly gifted people on one side and the people who struggle to find the undock button on the other.

This poor chap, assuming the kill is as bad as it appears to be, is apparently part of the second area.

Here's the thing:  nothing we (players) nor CCP can do can fix this.  There will still be a bell curve.  If we make things idiot proof, a better idiot will just present himself.

Any attempt to improve the situation needs to keep this fundamental truth in mind - anything we attempt will ultimately be futile.  And eventually, if you dumb the game down enough, you'll alienate the old skool playerbase *cough*WoW*cough* and suffer a mass exodus of the old guard.

There are things CCP can do without pandering to the short attention span kiddies.  Examples: continuing to improve tooltips, expanding on the ship fit window, and expanding the Mastery tabs will provide useful info. Adding a popup that says "hey dude, you're undocking with all your low slots open. Continue?" wouldn't offend me.  These things are generally useful to everyone inside the bell curve and aren't only targeted at oblivious players.

I'd like to say that the Community can help, but realistically I think we already are doing most of what can be done.  We'll continue to support E-UNI and similar projects that scoop up noob players.  There will always be growth opportunities for Corps willing to make the time investment.

So, in summary:  CCP can continue to fix little things that will help provide information, but shouldn't pander to a lower IQ pool.  The Community is probably in equilibrium, like any supply-demand market, and I wouldn't expect much more from it than we already see.  But because bell curves apply to our player population, this won't be the last faction ship you see killed in a 0.3 with a civvie shield booster fitted.

And now the bonus question:

And another question you can think about is this: do purposely wrong fits, aka comedy fits or experimental fits or off-meta fits, offend you or your corp? Would you, like Rixx Javix when he was in Tuskers, face expulsion for fitting your ships differently than the accepted standard?

Officially official answer:  "Meh, It depends."

If there are minimum fits required by that particular FC or that particular community, then don't be a douche and try to sneak in a lesser fit or experiment on someone else's dime.  Pull your weight. Don't assume someone else will take up your slack.

Under those circumstances, I get mighty offended when someone gets outed for not meeting X-up requirements.  If an expectation is set in advance, I expect folks to meet it.

But there are tons of circumstances where a min/max'd shiny Fleet isn't a hard requirement, and under those looser terms I'm very okay with experiments that might not work out.  As long as there's some advance agreement, we're cool.

Said another way:  I'm a big proponent of ship fits that aren't copy/pasted from the "accepted" list.  I like it when people rely on skill rather and knowledge of a combat system rather than a meta-du-jour.  I think it's fun to do things that couldn't/shouldn't be done by "accepted" norms.

But in order to dare to be stupid, your alternative lifestyle needs to be cleared in advance with the FC.

IRL: Biking is Good

I debated with cluttering up the blog with personal bits, stuff not related to EVE, etc. etc.  I decided (obviously) that a few personal tidbits wouldn't hurt.

Today was a good day.  I went biking.  As in bicycling.

That statement alone, doesn't mean much to all y'all, so let me explain:  I basically have 2 passions in life.  The first (obviously) is being a gamer nerd.  The second is being a biker and Triathlete.

Horizontal Expansion

Stealing a nugget of a post from one of my comments over on Sugar's blog.

(If you can't plagiarize yourself, then who can you steal from?)

The stability in Content that EVE has enjoyed is based on horizontal expansion. We basically enjoy endgame content at all times and new content rarely goes obsolete. Contrast that with a game that does Vertical Expansion (WoW being the juggernaut here), where every expansion you get a kick in the teeth and a "gratz, the last 2 years were a waste, now level up again and re-earn all your gear. Go on ... get moving."

 This is the stability that's allowed me to leave the game and come back a few times.

There is certainly inflation in EVE's economy.  Rare items, loot-only officer mods, those sorts of things cost a gazzillion isk.  But consider this:  The Phoenix that I bought in 2007 is worth about what I paid for it.  The hanger full of capship bpos that I used to run through my POS for selling bpcs are worth about what I paid for them.  I login after a lengthy absence, and the fit on my Golem still works (it might need tweaked, but it still works).

In no other game I can think of do players change contexts between expansion content over and over and over again so seamlessly.

EVE allows you to go run a lvl4 (2003 content) and then catch an Incursion fleet (2010 content), go sniff out a wormhole to explore (2009 content), or tend to your research agent (2003) or PI empire (2010), clone jump (2007?) to null and hop in a Carrier (2006 ship addition) to participate in a hot drop.

Vertical expansion games usually have a "new area" (new continent, new story act, whatever) where all the action takes place with new dungeons and new tokens/currency/whatever to farm.  The old content is abandoned in place; the accolades you earned become meaningless the moment the patcher finishes installing the new expac.

EVE has needed very little vertical expansion over the years.  What verticality there has been (to make up a word), has been vertical headroom to a particular system.  Capships were vertical expansions to null/sov.  I'd count Wormholes as vertical (maybe tangential) expansion to the exploration system.  Incursions gave some headroom to PVE, but didn't fundamentally change how people saw EVE's overall endgame.

And I think this situation is a good thing.  EVE is the sum collection of many moving parts.  Improving the individual parts (even if it includes a little bit of vertical expansion in a localized area) benefits the whole, as long as it doesn't upset the balance of the system.

I also think that pushing the boundaries of the entire sandbox incrementally is a far better path to take than announcing (for example) the release of Tech4 ships that will replace our entire hangars.  Some other game studios would be tempted to take this approach; in fact, many see no other path to take.  (If Blizzard had done EVE, we'd be on tech52 by now).

I'm glad EVE is the way it is.  EVE needs to maintain its roots.  EVE needs the stability.

Incremental Improvements to Agents, MK1

Editor's note (hey, that's me!):  Been dealing with real life family stuff out of town. Things are looking up, but not been around much.

First in a Series, maybe. Probably.

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CCP has dabbled in "quests" a few times.  Very early on, there were COSMOS agent missions.  They were kind of 'meh' (poor payout, as I recall) and quickly ignored by the masses.

Today we have the SOE mission arcs.  They seem better received, and the one time I've gone through them I found them enjoyable.  They did bring back some memories and make me wish COSMOS had gotten a refinement pass a lot sooner; many of the ideas and mechanics of the the SOE arc are found in the earlier/abandoned COSMOS.  (Said another way:  SOE arc is COSMOS done right).

But, I can only imagine that story arcs are a huge time sink for the devs, and as static content they really don't fit the game very well.

I'll sidestep the whole "eve isn't a themepark" landmine for now and say this:  as a designer, you want to invest in things that will get a lot of player use compared to your investment (call this the play-time to dev-time ratio).  Other game systems get constant replay and have a very high play/dev ratio.  Static content ... not so much.  Folks kind of run it once and then most never return.  So, fun ... yes.  Efficient use of dev time, no.

I do still believe that there needs to be some headroom in PVE content for some more advance gameplay; lvl4's as a game system are beyond stale and could use a good stiff shot of attention.

Keeping in line with the idea of Randomly Dynamic content, and as content that can coexist with Expert Missions, I'd advocate injecting some random escalations into the existing mission roster.  I guess they'd constitute "new" missions, which may be a nonstarter (dev time needed elsewhere).

The idea is basically this:

- You complete your mission and get the timebonus.  Let's say it's the Damsel in Distress.
- Similar to current Storyline missions, you get an evemail from the Damsel ; she'd like to thank you (queue porno music).
- During your dialog with her, she insists that you go back for her dog Fifi, and she offers a reward.
- This turns into a mini-SOE arc - travel to another system, do a mission or three, talk to an agent in space, etc.
- Add a carrot at the end for completion (maybe a faction rat or two to shoot at for a chance at a ship bpc or something); else some folks will see the travel time and simply abandon them.

Key ideas:
1. The escalation should be tied to some measure of your performance. In this case, timebonus (there could be other triggers).  We want the player to feel like he's got to play well in order to get a shot at the bonus.
2. The escalation should ideally get you out of your agent's station and force you to move around a bit; otherwise this is "just another lvl4."  Want to break up the grindy grind of lvl4s.
3. The escalation should be a good thing when it happens; i.e. rare enough that it's not viewed as being a hassle.

What's playing:  The Black Keys, Attack and Release, Psychotic Girl

Free Warp

Purely a thought experiment....

What if we had a Free Warp button.  Instead of needing to align to some celestial object or a beacon or a Fleet member, we could just punch a button and dash off into space in that direction?  Then click again to drop from warp at your destination?

Earth and Beyond had this mechanic - you could warp freely, but at much increased capacitor use.  You warped until you stopped again or your cap ran dry.

In EVE, this would change how safe spots were made.  In some ways, it would make safes obsolete, since you could always warp in any direction to escape or lurk; a pre-prepared list of safe spots wouldn't be mandatory.

I think the biggest difference it would make is a sense of "driving" the ship.  Right now, I have no concept of the 3-D map of any system I play in.  I undock, warp to gate, warp to Fleet, warp to moon, warp to belt, all from the UI.  At no point do I need to have a concept of whether the station is ahead of me or behind me, or if the rest of my Fleet is to my left or to my right.

I click, I arrive, I shoot things, I click again, I depart.

I'm not proposing any sort of change here, just a question:  What would EVE be like if you had to remember which direction you had to fly to "get back to town."  

Generation Ship

I'm a big fan of xkcd and the What If? blog over there.  So along those lines, here's this scenario.

Once upon a time while young and naive, I pondered the creation of deep safes using ingame gimmicks, like mwds and superfast ships.  Then the reality check: space is B-I-G.

So, here's the question:  Using only sublight engines (no warping), how far would you have flown by now if you started at launch?

Here's the maths and stuff:  Distance = Rate * Time.

Let's start with Time first:
EVE launched on May 6 2003.  Today is June 20 2014.  That's 4063 days.

Assuming a 23 hour day (most downtimes are shorter, but there have been a few outages over the years, maybe our intrepid player slept in a few times a year), that's 93,449 hours or 5,606,940 minutes or 336,416,400 seconds.

Now for Rate.

Let's say you took this literally and rolled a character, undocked for the first time, double clicked, and walked away until the next day's downtime.  Then you logged in and did it again, picking exactly the same axis of travel.  And the day after.  And the day after.  And the day after....

Let's say your rookieship, in whatever fitting, flew at 150 m/s, every day for 23 hours a day.  From Launch until now, you'd have traveled 50,462,460 km.  That's a big number, but it's only about 0.34 au.  If you started at our (real life) Sun, you'd now be in the neighborhood of Mercury.

But rookieships are slow.  Let's say you somehow managed to get in a cruiser with an afterburner and could sustain 500 m/s.  That's 168,208,200 km or about 1.12 au ... almost back to Earth and just a bit farther.

Somehow, if you managed to get born with a mwd frigate that did 3500 m/s, you'd now be at 7.8 au from the Sun, or past Jupiter and almost to Saturn.

The distance between most gates is further than this, and we cross those distances in seconds while in warp without thinking, yet our imaginary player had logged in for 4063 days straight to accomplish the same.

I know there are faster ship fits out there, but here's my point:  The term Generation ship comes from the notion that it might take a generation or two for humans to travel between the stars.  Using the game mechanics of EVE, we've demonstrated that travelling for over a decade at sublight speeds doesn't get you past the gas giants.

The nearest star from Earth is about 4.22 light years, or 4x10^16 meters.  In your mwd frigate at 3500 m/s it would take just over 378,000 years (using 23h days) arrive in the new star system.

And that, my friends, is a lot of PLEX.

What's playing:  Soundgarden, Blackhole Sun.

The Meatwagon

Here's another good ol' days post.  No particular inspiration, just felt like sharing.

In the early days of our corp (mid-2003), we hung out a few jumps into Lonetrek.  In those days the corp was still pretty centrally located (later on we would be scattered all over high, low, and null).  Once a month or so, we'd have a fun/silly event.

The favorite of these was Ibis Fight Night.  It was probably better termed rookieship fights, but most of us were Caldari and the name stuck.  We'd pick a random moon, and Mrs. Durden would jettison two cans for markers about 40km apart.  We'd split roughly in half and then fight 1v1 in rookieships.  Eventually order would break down and there'd be a big brawl.  Or somebody would race back to station and return in a Blackbird (back when you could fit torps on a BB) and hammer away at 3 or 4 of us at a time.

At the start of each session though, it was serious business, with folks fussing over their fits and trying to get intel on what other guys were bringing this month.  This was in the days before tech2, so we were scrounging through hangers looking for named loot.

The best part of the fight was the start - we'd lunge at each other like jousters on horseback, racing for optimal and wondering if the other guy had fit blasters or rails.  The km would tick down and then the fur would fly.

My favorite Ibis was called Meatwagon, and it went undefeated.  I eventually retired it, the undisputed champ.  Guys got tired losing to it, so I brought more "fair" fits and died a lot more.  The guys asked, but I never gave up the secret sauce in that fit -- a little named autocannon shooting EMP ammo.

Just now I flew across the cluster to grab a screenie of the fit, hoping we'd all get a good chuckle at how horrible it was.  However, I found that while I still have the ship, apparently I gutted the fit at some point. Apparently I needed the autocannon for ... who knows what?  (I did find a Crow with cruise missiles still fitted, and a Blackbird with 3x10mn burners on but that's a story for another time...).

Painting Into Corners

This is an odd post to write because I could come at it from about 3 different angles.

Let's start here:  Once upon a time, I was a WoW player.  There, I said it.  Throw your rotten fruit if you must.  From 2005 through 2012, I traded time between EVE and Orgrimmar.  I co-lead a guild there. I ran a corp and alliance here.  I had great friends in both universes that would roll their eyes when I disappeared for a few months to catch a breather with the "other game."

My heyday in WoW was the Wrath era.  I'd played off and on since vanilla, but Wrath was /my/ expansion. I was at Blizzcon when it was announced; I was hooked instantly.  The grit, the lore, the cold, cold maps of Northrend. The expansion had its warts, but from top to bottom I wouldn't change much.

I dreaded the Cata era that followed, but I muddled through and found a niche I could play in, and spent more time elsewhere.  I liked MoP even less and found myself replaying Wrath content (solo'ing Naxx, yay).  I doubt I'll even buy WoD.

There's a particular post that I wrote on my guild forum that I go and reread from time to time.  The topic was why I disliked MoP.  In it, I said [paraphrasing], "I'm basically in a spot where the only way I'll be satisfied is if Blizzard fails and the game burns down."  

I reread the post because it' bothers me that I even wrote it.  It's too honest, too much of my inner demons there in black and white.  I also reread it because it stirs up all the emotion from the time.  The dumbed-down game design options that set my teeth on edge, the sillyness and watering down of the lore (sentient space goats riding go-karts, I kid you not), and the ever present gear treadmill - these are all things I'd spent hours debating and tearing apart.  If only Blizzard would listen to me, things would be better (hah).

I took a break, a break became a vacation, a vacation became an unsub.  I realized the absurdity of the situation and the negativity that I was oozing.  In order for me to /win/ this absurd argument, to feel satisfied that I was right all along, a game company literally has to fall on their face.

I'd painted myself into a corner.

I've dabbled in EVE for a long, long time.  What made me kick my subscr over for a full year was the EVE: Source book that made me remember the foundation of the game.  The grit, lore, dark, reality that CCP has assembled for us is like no other.  That story/depth has always been there, but we've forgotten it and gotten wrapped up in our own stories and memes.

CCP doesn't always inspire confidence.  From beginning until now, it's clear they're making this up as they go.  I can't control that.  What I can control is my own attitude about the game; keep my expectations reasonable, stay constructive, and latch onto the signs of hope that I see in CSM9.

And try not to paint myself into too many corners.

Fun Fit #2 - Lvl2/3 Heretic

Along the lines of "how small of a ship could I do a lvl3 in" ... here's this.

The obvious way to play this might be in an Assault Frig.  Honestly, I've struggled with them over the years.  And I'd trained Interdictors awhile back but never got to use one in anger.

I came up with this fit out of what I had sitting in the hanger, and I am not a fitting guru.  It could probably be min/max'd a little bit more, but it works as is it sits.  So with a little bit of fiddling, here's this:

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[Heretic, Silly Lvl3 Boat]
Ballistic Control System II
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Small Armor Repairer II

Experimental 1mn Afterburner I
Cap Recharger II
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron

7x Light Missile Launcher II
[empty high slot]

Small Bay Loading Accelerator I
Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst I
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I don't claim to be able to do any lvl3 in this ship.  I don't claim it to be the most fastest isk or lp/hr.  That's not the point.  But it is pretty fun, and the Heretic is a pretty good looking little hull.

So if you're bored ... go play.  It's your sandbox, have fun.

Difficulty vs. Satisfaction

Let's talk about PVE difficulty today.

Just for context: I'm basing much of what I'm about to say on Lvl4s and Incursions, since they're the bread and butter of highsec PVE.

Many (myself included) tend to say things like "PVE should be more challenging."

There's a counter-argument that floats up from time to time that goes something like this:  "CCP shouldn't waste their time making PVE harder.  Any scripted content is ultimately farmable; people will just adapt and in 2-3 months they'll be back to farming risk-free again."  The argument is then (most likely) used as a crutch to prop up why dev time should be spent on pvp aspects of the game.