Archive for category General
CCP In Desperate Need Of Cash
Nothing like a catchy, provocative blog post title ! Maybe I should apply for a job at EveNews 24 ! Whatever the case, I am of course referring to the new 13 plex for $199,- offer ! Seems like a weird deal. It really makes you wonder how desperate in need CCP actually is.
Not much in game news as of late on this blog. My sub ran out (like so many active Eve bloggers it seems ?) late July. I still read failheap challenge, take a peek at evebloggers.com whether there is anything that catches my interest, and now and then the Eve-O forums. Since I hadn’t been playing much the past few months anyway, I don’t miss it much. I must thank the Hidden Agenda corp for making the last year and a half or so in Eve a fun experience. The events like frig tournaments were fun and there was a nice balance between activities and freedom.
My last blogpost refered to the press conference CCP and the CSM did after the events in july. I was reading Life in Losec’s post which refered to a post by Seleen that touches this very subject. I alread thought the statements made in that press conference were a load of crap, but to see a CSM member agree with that is interesting.
If I take a look at eve-offline it seems this time people actually did vote with their feet and a lot of subs are indeed starting to run out. I do find the graphs there somewhat hard to read, but if you look at the ‘past three months’ one you can see a decline in active players. Of course it being summer and all has to do with that as well. And since we’re not getting the economic quartly any more that had sub numbers, we’ll probably be in the dark for a while on the real numbers.
Dat Statement
And finally the CSM and CCP statement about the Reykjavik Peace Summit has been released ! I am not quite sure whether there are winners or losers in this one, but if there were you could say the players won. The very popular eve feature of ‘ship spinning’ will be coming back and furthermore, only vanity items in the NEX store for the foreseeable future. I also liked the statement by the CSM that they very much disliked the leaked email by the CCP ceo, which was very out of touch with reality.
We are convinced that CCP has no plans to introduce any game-affecting virtual goods, only pure vanity items such as clothing and ship skins. We have been repeatedly assured that there are no plans for ‘gold ammo’, ships which have different statistics from existing common hulls, or any other feared ‘game destroying’ virtual goods or services. We have expressed our deep concern about potential grey areas that the introduction of virtual goods permits, and CCP has made a commitment to discuss any proposals that might fall into these grey areas in detail with CSM at the earliest possible stage.
This is pretty much what most people would hope for, and it’s the best CCP could do at the moment. CCP must have looked at the numbers and seen all those unsubscriptions ! Also all the bad press this has giving made them change course. If there was a course to change (well the returning shipspinning is new).
I am sure there will still be drama and forum whining, ‘but they didn’t promise no non-vanity items ever !’. But those people will just have to play the game as it is, and not what it could be in a few years time. From a business point of view they cannot commit to non-vanity forever, as I already stated in my previous blogpost.
Fact remains that I still don’t like where CCP is going. Devoting most of the development time to Incarna, Wod and dust. Releasing crappy ‘expansion’. The sad state their 3d engine is in (this doesn’t bode well for Wod btw) etc etc.. But at least for now we see some light at the end of the tunnel (queue dramatic music).
No plans for golden ammo
A devblog that addresses the recent events in Eve has been posted by CCP Zulu. This one is much better in tone and even says “For that I am sorry”.
There are no and never have been plans to sell "gold ammo" for Aurum
Note that he does not say ‘there never will be’. At this point CCP has committed to the new Aurum store. I don’t think it will ever disappear. Nor will they make a commitment that it will NEVER contain any non-vanity items. CCP Soundwave in his piece in the leaked bulletin mentioned storage for ship fittings. (Feels a bit similar to bags in LOTRO). Something like that can still happen. Or skill points or whatever.
The CSM has been called up to Iceland, but to be honest I see that as a PR stunt. I have no clue what they’re supposed to be discussing. Performance troubles in Incarna ? The Aurum shop is pretty much untouchable at this point. The CSM won’t make CCP change it’s mind.
CCP knows perfectly well that non-vanity items would make a large percentage of people leave, they might at some point in the future when Eve starts dwindling down take that risk and milk the last few dollars from their cash cow. And we won’t like it, but it’s a business after all.
Incursion 1.5
Incursion will be deployed on May 19th, which is tomorrow as I write this. A couple of big things in this one, which quite surprised me as I wasn’t even aware they were coming !
Blueprints
- Unique icons have been created for Blueprint originals and Blueprint copies so you can visibly differentiate between them.
Wow, just wow. A change all industrialists have all been waiting for ! And for years CCP said that it couldn’t be done, because they couldn’t distinguish a copy from an original if I remember correctly. Finally that nonsense comes to an end and finally you can see if you’re dealing with a copy by just glancing at the icon instead of having to click on it and go to the appropriate tab etc..
Ships
- The capabilities of the onboard scanner have been substantially increased. The range is now 64 AU and the delay to return results is only 10 seconds.
- Ships with jumpdrives are now unable to use jump bridges with the exception of ships belonging to the Black Ops ship category.
Mixed response to this one. I don’t dwell in 0.0, nor do I use jump drives so it doesn’t effect me personally. I guess CCP thought traveling around was getting a bit too easy and toned it down. The onboard ship scanner will be improved as well. Nothing wrong with that I guess.
Agents & Missions
- Agent Quality has been removed meaning that all Agents are now +20 in terms of payout and -20 in terms of access. Go forth, Capsuleers, and explore the world outside of Motsu and Dodixie.
- Agent Divisions have been simplified from 20 down to just 3. The new Security, Distribution and Mining divisions now provide uniform types of missions instead of a mission type that was percentage based.
Ah another big one ! The very confusing Agent Divisions will be simplified and you actually know for sure you’ll get a combat, courier or mining mission. Very welcome change in my opinion. Also the quality system is basically removed. I guess putting them all to +20 was easier than just removing it. This will bring in somewhat more cash into the economy I guess, but will spread people out more, which can only be a positive thing. Although I am sure people will still sort of stick together as it’s easier to buy and sell your goods. But still, people will probably spread out. It will be interesting to see what will happen.
Furthermore the various connections skills will be removed as a consequence of the above. Only a few remain from what I read in the patch notes. The skill points for those that have already gotten the skills will be reimbursed.
Players who have the old skills already trained will have those skills removed and receive replacement skillbooks in the hangar of their home station and have the skillpoints reimbursed.
There are some more fixes and changes, but these are the really big ones. Some very welcome changes I think !
Links:
BB26: Sometimes the sum of the parts …
Posted by Morphisat in blogbanter, General on May 1, 2011
Welcome to the twenty-sixth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week or so to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!
This month’s topic was proposed by @KatiaSae of the much praised “To Boldly Go” blog. Katia asks: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As an astrophotographer, I’ve found it in the stars and planets of New Eden. Where have you found it? Perhaps you’ve found beauty in the ships we fly? Maybe it’s the sight of profits being added to your bottom line? Or maybe it’s the pilot portraits you see in the comm channels? Where ever you’ve found it, write about it and post an image.” Don’t be afraid go beyond the simple visual aspects of EVE as well. Is the EVE Community in itself a thing of beauty? What makes EVE the game, the world, the Community, so appealing to you?
This is a tough one ! Where to start ? I decided to pick three
First of all there is the graphics, just a pic here from a while ago which also appeared in one of the earlier episodes of EON. Don’t think I need to add more explanation 
. It’s a joy to fly around in Eve.
Second of all is the community. Eve’s community is different from a lot of other MMOs. It’s difficulty and steep learning curve attracts different people. Yes we too have the forum warrior / whiners, but overall it’s a much more tight knit community. I don’t know of any MMO that has something comparable to #tweetfleet for example. Or just an active blog community. People might be fighting each other in game but still be very friendly outside of it.
Third of all is the progression you make. Although this sort of fades a bit when you have been playing for a long time, it’s just a joy when you can finally fly that ship you always wanted. Or to finally be able to do exploration properly, or use those tech II crystals (for the miners amongst us). The time based skill system is very friendly to those who can’t spend 23/7 in the game. You always progress (as long as you keep paying), you don’t have to kill 10 space pirates.
Last but not least: all of the above (and many more) combined in one game. Sometimes the sum is more than it’s parts ! And that for me is the beauty of Eve.
Participants for Blog Banter #26 :
Eve Forum Gate
This week the new forums went online. Apparently CCP uses a modified version of the asp.net Yet Another Forum software. According to the license (GPL) CCP should give back their modifications to the community (as you can read here on their forum), which should be interesting as we can see the authentication code in there. Somehow I doubt ccp intends to do this.
Anyways, the old forums were uhm well, a bit outdated, but we were used to them and readability was ok. In these new forums, readability was worse. Especially the front page and the fonts / colors chosen were not so easy on the eyes. Also the new avatars are a little too big. To me they also seem sluggish. I don’t want to diss asp.net right away (why not create something new in asp.net mvc ? would have been a better choice imho), but snappy isn’t how I would describe them.
On top of all this, through #tweetfleet yesterday came in reports (mainly by Helicity Boson) that the new forums also had several security holes. Pretty soon thereafter they were taken offline to fix those issues ! Let’s hope they also fix some of the readability issues and we’re set to go. Oh fix that like button too while you’re at it 
.
If you really miss the old forum’s look you can use a plugin in firefox called stylish to make it look like the old one.
Link: Eve24 news article
Update: The new forums were taken down again, obviously the security issues are much broad than just the signature issue. For a good timeline of the events check out Jester’s Trek.
Update II : Helicity Boson did a nice writeup in the day the forums died.
Eve Forever
This just in from #fanfest ! CCP’s vision for Eve ! Probably the ground combat combined with space stuff is a bit far off, but at least their vision is good ! This is the type of game just about every SF fan would play.
Fanfast 2011
CCP has put up the fanfest 2011 brochure at the fanfest website. Fanfest 2011 is only a week away ! I won’t be there, but for those that stay at home there is a live stream to follow the important keynote speeches. The HD stream is rather pricy at $20, especially compared to something like Gomtv’s GSL, which gives a load of content for $20,-. The recurring subs there are even only $15,-.
Luckily CCP also offers a free stream though !
The Finalised Me
We got the opportunity to redo our portraits, I toyed around with some settings, but am still a bit disappointed mainly in the lack of somewhat normal hair options. And why no black hair for Caldari ? Anyway this is it.
Morphisat's new face
Eve Bumper Sticker
The #tweetfleet is having some fun the last few days, people are posting eve related Bumperstickers on twitter. Especially @buckyohair had a few good ones. Like this one:
If you can read this, your Primary!
Or this one by BioChrome
My other car got primaried
You can find them by searching twitter.
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