Archive for December, 2011


If I were you I would… the tyranny of advice

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December 31, 2011

So more recently since I got back from holidays and christmas visiting relatives I have been on and off the game.  I just love the way your character keeps ticking away developing – especially if you have a busy real life like myself.  I have logged back into eve several times ran a few level I’s and then logged out.  In that time I have had a few more discussions with some of the playerbase.  At times I honestly don’t get the advice.  Here is an excerpt from a conversation I had recently in Tweety Pub:

Vissari Nolen “So, Moriarty haven’t seen you around here.”
Moriarity Kanenald “Hi there – I have been away. Just bobbed in here to have a chat a week ago.”

I am wondering what is coming next.  Tweety Pub is full of enthusiastic players and I am always getting tons of advice from them.

Vissari Nolen “Ohh. Hopefully you put something long in your training queue?”

I am not that much of a nubbins. Well thats strictly speaking not true.  I sometimes got distracted by the pub and coffee shops and did not get back in time.  Plus it can slip your mind this training thing.  Anyway this instance I had left quite a long skill on so I replied:

“Yeah I have managed to get Passive Shield Tanking Standard. So working on DPS now. I am very new to the game. Just working out where to go next.”

Nolen replies “o.O your training via certificates?”
“Yeah I think the Certificates are handy.” I reply.  In fact I find them very very useful indeed.  They seem to guide me to where I want to be and after all I am in no hurry.

“Training via certificates is nice if you don’t really know what you’re doing.”  Tell me about it I am thinking!

“….but its better to train by manually selecting your skills, that way you get to your desired ships/modules faster because you don’t have to train anything extra that isn’t necessarily needed for your ship/module.” He has a point but he seems to be making a big assumption and that assumption is that I actually have a clue what ship or modules I need.  I have already tried just loading up a ship with stuff and that failed.  Secondly what is the big hurry?  Its like there is some huge rush to mince the game and hurry through to something.  Although I find the missions boring I am enjoying browsing forums and looking around and figuring things out slowly.  Anyway the conversation continues after I replied that.

“I manually select them but work towards certificates at a time. Its better than haphazardly trying to skill for a bit of equipment as I come across it.”

Vissari then responded by telling me that whilst “this is true…  once you get a good idea of what you actually want you should manually pick your skills you’re Minmatar right?”

Hell yeah I think!  Freedom fighters and tough sons of bitches! Anyway I reply “How can I know what to go for? I am trying to work that out. Certificates seem to help guide me.”

“I’ll tell you what to go for =P. You’re going to want to get into a battleship as soon as possible. So that you can do incursions and make a lot of money.” And there we have it.  The first vestiges of control, I know better I can tell you.

Well honestly how could he?  Whilst I think his advice was very well meaning and hell I liked this bloke.  The problem is he didn’t take the time to see what I am chasing.  Just jumped right in there and told me I need a Battleship.  A big expensive ship that I have to worry about all the time.  Making money.  I need to learn to make money in my virtual internet spaceship game.  I need to treat the game like it is my real life. I need that.  Thats just great!  So I replied by saying “nope!” Except he wasn’t listening.

“Incursions are the best source of income in the game at the moment. By far.”

“So I am looking to get into exploration. I am not after loads of isk….”  A tumble weed seemed to blow past in my head and there was a brief pause before Vissari replied. “hmmm.”

“I just want to explore eve and enjoy it.” I say, but Vissari was not convinced. Rather than bore you with the details of the conversation beyond that he was very supportive but because I was kinda working on a different path to him he did not seem to be able to provide the right kind of advice.  I knew I needed combat skills, I also knew I needed tanking skills.  Maybe nothing too drastic but good enough to be able to handle most of what was in the pockets.  Anyway the truth is he left me because he had to go out.

So whilst I think advice is all and good, sometimes there is a tyranny of control in all this advice.  I think the lesson I am learning about advice is quite an old one it is simply put as follows: caveat emptor—let the buyer beware.

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Looking at Corporations

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December 24, 2011

After the failure of running level II missions it was time to have a look around to see what other player based corporations are out there.  I had a quick browse on the eve forums – Corporations and Alliance Discussion is full of trolls and short posts so no info there.  Then had a look under “Crime and Punishment” some funny stuff in there but once again lots of trolling. So no real info.  The only thing I noticed were a couple of funny posts from The Black Rebel Rifter Club [R1FTA] and another thread with someone blowing his own horn about the size of his multiboxing stack – 20 computers.  I liked The Black Rifter Club’s style so looked them up in game and found they had possibly the funniest MOTD’s in their channel that I have  had seen so far.

Another search I did was for a corporation in game that might suit.  One Corporation that caught my I was the “Tweety Birds of Terror” which at least had a good sense of fun about it.  So I popped into their channel and started chatting with them.  I got a few more cool tips and learned some more stuff about the game UI like how to drag and drop a ship fit into the chat channel.  Handy stuff that!  So I am hanging out there and in “The Autocannon” with the The Black Rebel Rifter Club – I don’t think they will invite me in though as I can barely find the right end of the ship to steer from at the moment.

My other problem was I had to head off for six days and hence the silence on this site (apologies) I was going to post from my mobile but you know how this time of year is what with getting drunk and messing around? So now I am back and the cool thing I have now good is all the skills for the certificate “Passive Shield Tanking – Standard”.  Time in increase my DPS in this Rifter!

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Blog Banter 31: Reviewing Eve Online

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December 22, 2011

Ok this is a post about my first overall impressions of eve.  I am hoping it will be a meaningful contribution to Blog Banter 31.  I have only been in game less than a month and I am a complete nubbins.  My only qualifications are I am fresh to the game and so probably know a lot less than others.

It is sexy (10/10 so far)

The game is beautiful and it is very sexy.  You can chill out and listen to the music whilst you fly around or you can get a bit more worked up when running missions.  Whatever you do it is a very lovely environment to be in and has no doubt matured like a fine wine over the years.  Some of the tunes I listen to on the jukebox are very melancholy (Red Glowing Dust) others very foreboding and dark (War Relics).

Its unforgiving (how do you rate that?)

Others will have said this.  Its a very tough game.  There are no obvious paths to follow and so you are left floundering around.  You buys equipment and find you cannot use it because you don’t have the skills.  You then have a mod and substantially less cash.  You fly a ship that cannot tank the enemies you have to kill and inevitably you will come close to running out of money. But isn’t life meant to be tough?  I came to Eve because I was bored of the standard rinse repeat and obvious pathing of other games from one zone to the next.  So far there is a bit of a grind getting established.  You do have to rinse repeat but you can rinse and repeat in many different locations with many different story arcs to follow.

The ‘Community’ (9/10 so far)

There is a myth about eve that it has a great community.  I can see right from the outset that this is really a huge oversimplification. Anyone can see that there is no one community.  They are Borg and they will assimilate you given time.  I find the forums for the game make my eyes bleed with troll on troll trying to out troll the other trolls, there are few spots to glean any real information and no poster can really claim to be authentic.  If one does seem authentic someone will immediately challenge their views.  This makes it hard to figure out where one should play and what one should do.  There are lots of macho posts and lots of trying to one up on the other.  Go in game however and its an entirely different picture.

Those that post on forums are always going to be different from those that don’t.  In game there are lots of very helpful people, some are pirates, some are what they call ‘care bears’.  But lots of them are around giving healthy advice.  There are tons of scammers running around with the next big money making scheme and then there are those who just quietly get on with making isk (the ingame currency) and losing it. But make no mistake calling this a community is simplifying what it is you will be confronted with when you start to play.

There are speakers of different languages, huge blocs of people from different countries all in different timezones.  On an average Sunday evening they get close to 50 thousand people logging in.  That is not a community.  Thats the population of Gravesend or Clacton-on-Sea.  But that logged in population is supported by a much bigger group of subscribers who are not logged in.  No this is not a simple ‘comunity’ its a bit of a monster and you are in it.  For simplicity’s sake its called a ‘community’ but never underestimate how much that oversimplifies matters.  There are small communities in this game and they are at war with each other.  They are all vying for attention, recognition, power, control and wealth.  The reason for this?  Well maybe that can be found in the Backstory?

Backstory (7/10 so far)

Eve has a developing backstory from what I can gather.  But the thing about it is it is developed and is a living backstory that changes regularly as the creative elements within the game seek to add new dimensions.  I have not had any real time to fully grasp what is happening but some of the blogs you can find out there are fascinating.  There are those like the Goonswarm Federation who are often seen as griefers, then there are others who scam and cheat and there are still others who just want to control you.  The reason why this is all allowed or at least tolerated within the game is because it is essentially an anarchistic capitalist game.  From what I can see CCP have provided players with a structure to play in and after that things have been left open to them.  But I have had little time to get into this side of the game having only just started to talk to a couple of Corporations.

The ‘Sandbox’ (6-10 so far)

Eve is lauded by pundits for the fact that it is a ‘Sandbox’ experience.  In some ways I can see why that is the case although my experience remains very limited.  Initially the skills choices are a pain.  Everything needs skills and as I said above you often lack the very basic requirements to do very much.  However, give it time and gradually each module you can use becomes a little landmark.  Each bit of access to another part of the game becomes something you celebrate in a small way.  There is a certificate planner that allows you to develop your character.  I am working on my Active Shield Tanking Standard before going on to better Gunnery.  This is because my current route into the game is to be able to handle myself in exploration.  But that is already changing.

I have started to talk to some corporations after browsing the forums and discovered something.  Sometimes the good guys are plain boring.  By far and away the most interesting community that I have seen this far are the pirates.  More attitude, funnier channel MOTDs (check out ‘The Autocannon’ channel in game) and much less up tight.  I am kind of against totalitarian control and so far they have been the most entertaining bunch.  But a lot of doors are closed to someone with low experience – something I can understand and just need to be patient with.

Overall (8/10)

At the moment I will give it 8/10 it suits an adult who is extremely busy in real life because your character trains and grows when you are off line.  Already I am talking to a number of corporations who have been really friendly so far.  The biggest issue in Eve is time zone – not many other MMO’s have that as an issue because they are not persistent.  I can find myself leaning towards pirate and freelancer corporations.  There is something about their free spiritedness and those anti pirates are a bit square headed.

Conclusion

Eve is nothing like opening Pandoras Box.  When you play it you are in the box, the box is firmly closed and you are not getting out.

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Failure (again)

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Ok so I had off to try my hand at some level II missions.  The first went very smoothly and then I got a second mission.  The ISK was triple what I had been earning on the level I’s and I thought wow!  Let me at it!

After heading into the dead-space pocket I noticed that ‘Slaughterhouse’ was moving slowly and within a minute or so was swarmed by mission rats.  Fook!  I couldn’t keep them at range and my whole speed tanking skills were not working.  I had to warp out.  Not giving up on my iskies I went back but luckily could come in at 70km.  This time I aligned back to the gate I came from and started hoofing it away from the rats.  Once again though they were onto me in no time and I left the mission in abject failure deep into armour.

This was really dissappointing.  It did not look like I was going to be able to tank this mission and I didn’t have the range to be able to pick the rats off in my frigate.  So it was back to the drawing board.  I kind of want to be certain I have my skills polished off before trying out a cruiser.  Otherwise I am going to half know most things and master nothing.  So I decided to go back and fail the mission.

Then I noticed just how much standing I had lost with the Republic Justice Department.  I was back down to 0.79 and no longer had access to level II agents.  So it was time to go back to Rugnus Lunar with my tail between my legs and that is where I am at.   You shouldn’t run before you can walk!!

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The end of level 1’s

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December 21, 2011

Finally had some time off from work and managed to get into level II agents.  Before leaving Eystur I decided to sell my stuff and realised that it wasn’t worth very much.  Then I noticed that it can be reprocessed.  Wow – what  a difference in price!!  From one item I was going to get 460ISK I reprocessed it and got over 3,000 isk!

Now thats quite a difference.  I am guessing that if I cam going to maximise my profits from these missions this means I need to improve my skills in reprocessing.  I did a quick squizz around the markets and then checked a few boards and discovered that there is a skill.  Scrap Metal Processing but – er bollox.  Really skill intensive.  Will add that one to the queue.

After I have my core tanking sorted out in about five days time I am going to develop the skills for exploration.  I am starting to get a bit bored of the endless grind of missions.  Secondly I am also losing sight of what I am here for.

Eve is a game that has a big reputation for being a ‘Sandbox’.  But what does that mean?  I should confess to having a lot of MMO experience before.  I have played virtually all kinds of games (Dark Age of Camelot, WoW, Warhammer, Guildwars, Tabula Rasa to name just a few) and Eve seems to have the most enduring reputation.  Dark Age of Camelot was for me the best PvP experience by far but that too became boring because the static nature of the game was something that just become tedious.  In fact all game are tedious because of the grind and static nature of the game.  Eve promises something else however.  The key question is will it live up to its name?

Anyway I have moved to Tollus to continue my newbie grind.  Now to try level II missions.  Lets hope the step up isn’t too much…..

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Training Certificates

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December 18, 2011

Ok so my first few weeks in Eve have been a bit hectic.  The first stage of Moriarity’s life as an immortal of New Eden were plagued by failure and real problems being able to secure an adequate income.  With the Purchase of ‘Slaughterhouse’ and the discovery of big guns (read Artillery) his fortunes have turned around.

Another characteristic of those early days was the constant struggle to get the right skills and to figure out what would actually fit onto Slaughterhouse.  Skill training has been haphazard and chaotic usually determined by whatever I thought would work.  Then a few days ago I discovered ‘certificates’ and wow!  Just how easy can it get?  So Moriarity’s main aim right now is to build some credibility as an explorer in Eve.  But before I can do that properly he needs the right skills to do damage and be able to tank.

I immediately set about getting the Basic Cartogropher skills and since then I have been working on “Passive Shield Tanking Basic’ which apparently

“represents a basic level of competence in passive shield tanking. It certifies that the holder is able to use all Shield Extenders and Amplifiers, as well as Tech 1 Fields and Damage Control Units. The holder is aware that passive tanking is a skill-intensive technique relying on shield regeneration for defence. With this certificate you can configure your ship’s regeneration to absorb considerable amounts of incoming damage.”

I know this is a slow way to develop Moriarity but I want him to have solid basic skills for Minmatar and to be effective at scanning and exploration.  So this is my first stage.  After this I will focus on some damage dealing and then go for the right skills for basic exploration.

So far it has been an interesting process learning the game.  Most pod pilots have been really good to meet others are a bit more obnoxious.  In my next post I am going to introduce another side that I wish to develop to Moriarity.  This side is one of the main reasons for playing Eve.

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The Hidden Stash

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December 15, 2011

This time I got bored pretty fast – I buzzed Rugnus and asked her for something hot.  Rather than popping along to my quarters she offered me something to do with a Hidden Stash from a warehouse and they were working with the Cartel.  My mission was to head over there and fetch anything that looked like they might be having some fun.

The cargo was going to be 150m3 which was a bit big for someone like me who was carrying a lot of ammo and who had such a short attention span.  So I decided to tell Rugnus to get stuffed.  She seemed to get a bit stroppy and for me that was disappointing – after all who doesn’t get turned on by their agents in Eve?  For now it looked like a hot date is out of the question.  Thats one tough bird. Rather than piss her off anymore than I needed to I had a look at my own netcomm.  Wow! A character sheet that has everything about me down to the last statistic.  Some of it was a bit dissappointing and I put a note down to ‘enhance’ certain features the next time I got a new clone.

Another thing I noticed was ‘certificates’.

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Freebies

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December 12, 2011

Shiny!

Ok so I get this new freebie from the company.  Its a shiny chip thing and it doesn’t fit into the jack behind my left ear but it looks really shiny. I definitely need more intelligence and some sort of cap recharging looks better than nothing.  But very quickly I got stuck.  Where does it go?

I looked it up on contracts and some are for sale at 300 million isk.  That is more money than I can ever dream of.  But how can I be sure that this is what I need or what I want? I mean whoever reads the manual when they get a new ship?  Why would I want to check out the manual on my shiny new chip. I went and bought the Cybernetics skill and decided to start learning that it said in the manual that you should not open it without learning something about how it works first.

After getting bored messing around with the chip I chucked it into my quarters and had a wee chat with Rugnus Lunar. It seemed that some Mordus Legion where knocking about next door and I was going to get a cool 130million ISK if I could get rid of them within an hour or so.  Peachy!

So it was back into Slaughterhouse and a quick squizz out to dispatch them.  They managed to scratch my ship which made me mad.  But I paid for a new paint job at the repair shop.  Sometimes its hard to learn new skills and fly at the same time! But soon I will be the new and improved me!  Is there anywhere I can get new clothes?  These ones are starting to smell a bit…..

 

 

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The Slaughterhouse

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December 11, 2011

The Slaughterhouse.

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Pod Pilots Helping each other out.

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So I am flying around Patur trying to build some cash reserves and I notice in corporation chat a conversation by some pod pilots. Here is an excerpt of the conversation:

Thalatos Ronuken > are cruisers better for missions than destroyers (I have a thrasher at the moment), or are they too ungainly?
Kova Arbosa > I think destroyers are horribly bad for missions
nightman 27 > cruisers are better
Thalatos Ronuken > why?
Kova Arbosa > they lack tank and cap . so yes a cruiser beats a destroyer hands down because a good mission ship only needs tank and firepower , and best without running out of cap
Thalatos Ronuken > new to game still… by tank you mean shield/armor?
Kova Arbosa > you dont need speed or ewar etc. Anything that keeps you from getting blown up 😉
Virginee > ah god, have to train alot to play minitar effectively…. missles, projectiles, shield, armor
Kova Arbosa > yes minmatar is a pain to train for, well you can just stick with a cane for a while, then you can focus on guns and armor, or shield if you want
Thalatos Ronuken > cane?
Kova Arbosa > Then after the cane go for a tempest which is guns and armor or shield too. Then once you got these well trained work on issles and such for the typhoon
Thalatos Ronuken > lol only cruiser 1 so far
Kova Arbosa > but its not so important to get missles
Kova Arbosa > after 5 years my missle skills are still mediocre
Thalatos Ronuken > and only about 20 million isk short, think ill go with a bellicose
Kova Arbosa > really for pvp you go shield or armor plus projectiles
Thalatos Ronuken > more in the price range
Thalatos Ronuken > maybe ill stick with the thrasher for a few more days and get cruiser 3 trained up
Kova Arbosa > I would go for the rifter. I used my rifter to run lvl 2 missions, you can have a neat passive shield tank on it.
Thalatos Ronuken > like the firepower of the thrasher more… 3 missile, 3 railgun, 3 cannon, and a salvager
Kova Arbosa > railguns? Boy thats the worst setup ever, but thrashers go boom really easily
Thalatos Ronuken > havent lost this one yet…
Kova Arbosa > dont mix guns, you can have many guns and in the remaining slots a few missles. But not 3 different kinds of guns.
Kova Arbosa > furst things first though, throw away the rails and put on artillery. The thrasher gives bonueses to projectiles I believe.
Virginee > Just use all projectiles. Destroyers can pump out some descent dps on frigs now.
Kova Arbosa > Yeah destroyers were always good against frigs
Thalatos Ronuken > Cannon range is inside 5km, I usually kill crap before it gets to that
Kova Arbosa > Link your fitting. Ughh , yes that is a horrible fit 😛
Thalatos Ronuken > Laughs out loud.
Kova Arbosa > Okay we start off with the guns. On Minmatar ships you fit projectiles, and you fit 1 kind of weapons. Not 3 autocannons and then 3 artilleries because you will suck at dps on any range,
Thalatos Ronuken > So autocannons = projectiles?
Kova Arbosa > Also drop that missile launcehr, you have 7 gun slots. Hang onThalatos Ronuken > and only about 20 million isk short, think ill go with a bellicose. Anyway, with autocannons vs artillery. artillery has longer range, but autocannons has better DPS , gotta chose what you want. The lowest range ammot hits the hardest. Look at the optimal range modifier in the ammos attributes. Now tanking never tank armour and shield at the same time because the slots that are not used for tanking can be used for e.g. more damage , or more cap.

Thalatos Ronuken > i only use armor regen between fights… use shield boost while fighting

Kova Arbosa > and tahts what is wrong

Thalatos Ronuken > oh ok, so only slot one?
Kova Arbosa > Doesnt matter if you go shield or armor.
Virginee > It depends on the ship whether u armor or shield tank.
Kova Arbosa > If you had a good setup , neitehr of the tanks would break.
Acute Delirium > You made same mistake with tank as you did with weapons, mixing types
Kova Arbosa > See like this. It has shield tank, and the low slots are used …. to increase the shield tank and the rigs too and I don’t think theres any risk that the tank breaks in any mission. Ok, so besides the afterburner, everything you have slotted is either for shields or dps. Speed is always good too for small ships, since they dont get hit so often. You could swap one of the lowslots for a gyrostabilizer reduce tank but increase dps and that is what I think is the biggest problem of destroyers, their tank and cap suck. So you cant reliably tank a mission and might have to run away.
Thalatos Ronuken > Thanks alot, tons to think about now; I appreciate the help.

I was so impressed by this and also noticed I had the wrong guns on my ship!!  So I have gone off and bought some artillery.  I am also looking at ‘Slaughterhouses’ stup and decided to go and fetch some new low slot items.  The tank of the current ship is still not right so I want to see if I can improve this aspect of my setup.  After all I have 3 low slots and they are not being used!!

Not all pod pilots are quite as helpful however.  I saw the following conversation as I was flying around:

EVE System > Channel changed to Local : Hadaugago
Reiken Oskold > I need Isk can anybody help me out
Gwawl > Here for less than a day and already begging for money
Reiken Oskold > well how do you make isk fast.
Gwawl > At your level missions and mining, no quick way here.
Jasyn Calontyre > Why do you need it fast.
Reiken Oskold > Or how to make ISK even the tutorials are only giving me like 500 isk and everything seems to be more ISK than I can afford because I want a better ship.
Kao Lor > Just a greedy pig. Pay him no attention.
Jasyn Calontyre > Do all the tutorials, you will get a better ship.
Reiken Oskold > ok
Gwawl > Do missions and you will get a better ship.

So sometime you can get short shrift from these pod pilots….

 


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