Eurogamer Article

There is a nice article over at Eurogamer called ‘I was patched out of Eve’.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-01-17-i-was-patched-out-of-eve-online

Would you enjoy the responsibility of managing the infrastructure for entire empires, directly impacting the gameplay of potentially thousands of players?

I can imagine this would wear someone out pretty quickly. Especially if you have a regular job ‘on the side’ ;). And that leaves to this quote.

There is a joke that the only way to win Eve is to quit. But how do you quit Eve when people are counting on you?

I can see the dilemma here ! All in all a nice read.

This is the story of my dad

This is the first time ever I post something personal on this blog. And it feels weird to be honest, but here we go. This is not the blog post I would have wanted to write, but that somehow had to be written.

I think I had a pretty normal ‘70 / ‘80s childhood, can’t remember too much about it, which probably means it was good. Things changed (to say the least) when on a Friday night Nov. 1st 1985 my mother almost literally dropped dead. It’s all a bit of a haze to me, probably some sort of brain defense mechanism. Things were tough though, my dad later told me. You have to keep in mind that at the time, shops closed at 17:30 or 18:00. He had to rush out of work, get groceries and then get home and cook and dealing with a teenager. He kept on supporting me in every thing I did. I played baseball from age 12 to 18, his favorite sport, which isn’t too common in the Netherlands. He didn’t miss a single game. Offering me advice but never be overbearing.

Schoneveld 3-page-001

About 5 years later, in the early 90s, my dad hit a huge depression that even landed him in an institution for a few days. He absolutely hated it there and came home quite quickly. Very slowly he got out of it, but this was a process of years with some fall backs as well. All the while I kept living at home keeping a bit of an eye on him as well.

To not make the story too long, I’ll fast-forward to 2011. By this time we were more roommates, at least that’s how I saw it, than a typical father / son relation. It was time to move out and got my own apartment, not too far from where he lived so we could visit each other regularly.

Once I was gone from the house, dad made a bit of a mess of the place. The house was too big and he didn’t show the slightest interest in house keeping. He was always reading his Science Fiction books, he was inseparable from his Kindle, and watching baseball at night. As luck would have it, the building he lived in was up for renovation, and he got offered a much smaller place for 55+ year old citizens not too far away.

The last few years were the best part of our lives. He used to come around for dinner a few times a week. We’d watch cooking shows and science fiction / superhero movies together and just had a good time. He very much enjoyed the new streaming technologies, watching Netflix at home on his TV, while watching baseball on his laptop.

Around the end of the summer his health started to deteriorate though. He complained about his knee hurting and was out of breath very fast. Things got really bad in October when it was getting too hard to get groceries. He would give me a list of things he needed over the phone, which I then brought to him. I cooked for him as well a few times in the week which he enjoyed a lot. Anytime I suggested he’d go see a doctor, he’d panic and told me he didn’t want to go to a hospital …

I made sure the last few days when he seemed really out of it, to wear his alarm around his neck. To be honest I expected a phone call any time now, and that phone call came on November the 13th at 1 AM in the night. He fell and couldn’t get up. He was moved to a hospital near by. As it turned out he had a huge tumor in his groin, which he of course never mentioned to me, and also pretty much explained his decline the past few months. They pumped him full of fluids and vitamins and he improved quite a bit.

Three weeks later after a load of tests the diagnosis was an aggressive type of Lymphoma and he was too weak for further treatment. By that time he was getting sick and tired of the hospital and we figured a best solution would be a hospice. He was taken there (in down town Rotterdam). The first week there was ok, however the last few days he started to get pains in his legs and back. He started on Morphine and would sleep a lot more.

On tuesday 22 december my dad passed away at around 9 AM at the age of 72, he slipped away as the nurse called it. I miss him tremendously, I lost my best friend. Sometimes the grief is overwhelming, sometimes I am just laughing out loud. I am going to have to learn to live without him, which won’t be easy since he leaves such a void in my life. Lots of things I like I learned about through him, my love for books, science fiction, baseball and American sports in general.

Wim Schoneveld 2012

Could he have handled his disease better ? Yes I think he could have at least have himself checked out earlier. And if he wouldn’t have wanted full on chemo, maybe some radiation and light chemo to alleviate the symptoms from the tumor(s) and make the whole experience a bit more gentle (if there is such a thing), He just was incredibly hard on himself. But it’s no use crying over spilt milk, he decided to keep on truckin’ till he almost literally dropped dead, and I respect that.

TL;DR : My dad died and I miss him tremendously.

Blog Banter 69–A kind of magic

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Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 69th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are please visit the Blog Banter page.

Because of Space-Magic

CCP sometimes get stuck between a veldspar ‘roid and a hard place when they try to blend realism with sensible game mechanics in our sci-fi simulator. Sometimes they create a scientific answer such as 4th dimensional drag to explain our ‘submarines in space’. Other times, not so much. When a null-sec Citadel is destroyed players ‘stuffz’ is to be magicked to another station. Why should a citadel be different to a titan? Should CCP ensure that ‘space magic’ always has a plausible explanation or do we need just to say “Well, its only a game!” and engage the willing suspension of disbelief? How should it work when a citadel goes boom, how do we balance risk with reward, and how should any “space-magic” be explained?

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The first thing I thought of when I read the introduction to this month’s banter was this book on Star Trek physics I read a long time ago. From  what I remember I sort of understood only half of it Winking smile. But it was quite an interesting read about what could actually be possible and what could not, with the warp drive and all of that. It’s nice to know that some things could actually be accomplished, albeit in the very far future, if mankind does not destroy itself before it ever gets that far.

Hans-Klok-magic-6846500-354-354

In video games you have to strike a balance in my opinion between convenience and what is sort of believable in the particular world you’re playing in. Will I be able to walk back as a ghost from the nearest graveyard to my body and resurrect when I die ? Probably not Smile with tongue out. But it’s convenient with the gameplay so we go along with it. On the other hand, a lot of things in Eve for example would be somewhat possible in our imagination, probably in another universe in the very far future or after some technological breakthrough we have no clue about at the moment. On the other hand, repper ship that can create more energy than what comes in, always sounded very implausible, so there’s that Winking smile. But at least you have a feeling that somewhere sometime, this universe could be real.

From what I read so far in the other Banters, most bloggers agree that the upcoming change in Citadel where your stuff magically respawns in some convenient place when it’s destroyed, goes totally against what Eve stands for. Once your stuff is blown up / stolen, you can’t get it back. Period. That’s what Eve is all about, and that is what makes the virtual economy going. No idea if it’s set in stone yet, but it definitely needs some reconsideration in my humble opinion.

ps. I just happen to post this on Mophisat’s tenth birthday, well planned !

Contributors:-

Main Post

Suspension of Belief – Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah
Because of Space-Magic – NevilleSmit.com
Loot Fairy Triumphant (Blog Banter #69) – Interstellar Privater

BB69: It’s Not About Space Magic, it’s About Space Money… – A CARBON Based Life
BB69: Oh, Video Game Magic – Eveoganda
BB 69: Because of Space-Magic!MMO Nomad

Blog Banter 68–My Rig

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 68th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are please visit the Blog Banter page.

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This is my Rig, There are Many Like it…

What do you play Eve on? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours! Are you pew-pewing on a laptop? Plotting universal domination on a 12 monitor set up? Mining away on a 50″ TV? Is your set up located where your other half can speak to you or do you lock yourself away for hours in your Eve themed shed? How do you play your important internet spaceships?

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My main PC, is an I7 3770 with an nVidia 770 and a bunch of disks, in a big case under my desk. The L shaped desk is in my own little corner of the living room. On my desk is also a Marantz slimline receiver to power my  audioengine A2+ speakers. The two rear speakers are two cheap Berenger speakers that make quite a bit of noise.

Got 2 consoles also hooked up to the receiver, I usually prefer to sit in my little corner, instead of on the couch to play games. My PS4 is hooked to the TV still, play it every now and then but not too often. Also got another PC hooked up, AMD 8320 with an Asus R9 290. You’d think I’d prefer that to my PC with the 770, but I only used it so far to play Witcher 3 and Dragon Age Inquisition.

Since I also like me some racing games there is a Logitech DFGT next to my desk. It’s very easy to just hook it up and drive a bit. Be is Assetto Corsa or ETS2. The pedals are always under my desk on one of those bathroom anti-slip rugs so they don’t slide away Smile with tongue out.

not-my-rig

The best purchase I did this summer was an LG 27” 1440P monitor. I love the thing. At first when it arrived I thought it was too big and had to move some things around, but now I love it. Much more desktop space, games look great and in racing games you can see more and it’s more immersive to boot. I got another screen on my desk usually showing some Twitch stream or another, with another tab in the browser for Tweetdeck.

Another thing that might be worth mentioning that’s on my desk is the Rode NT-USB mic. I used to have a whole mixing desk with XLR mic setup to record my youtube stuff, but it was a bit of a hassle so I figured I’d just  buy a good USB mic.

Oh and on the wall behind me are two big Eve posters, the one that shows the sizes of all the spaceships and one extra wide one that I got with the Eve mag, if I remember correctly.

Well that’s about it Winking smile. You can read other contributions at Sand Cider and Spaceships !

Skill points for sale

Well folks, it’s time for drama again. The forum is up in arms, and it’s a devblog once again that did it.

To be honest it’s a little fuzzy:

We also discovered that the vast majority of complexity involved in character sales goes away if you make them more granular. Rather than requiring that characters be sold whole, we could allow them to be broken up and sold in chunks. This means that buyers get to retain all the individuality associated with their characters and sellers can make some money off their training mistakes or unused skills without having to part ways with an entire character.

What does this mean ? I can sell off some skillpoints I never use and sell them for isk ? I guess so. And to add some fuel to the fire, you can buy these with aurum as well. If it wasnt available for Aurum, you could buy some plex with real money, sell them and buy the skill point thingies anyway…

It looks to me that CCP is trying to retain the newer players by letting them buy skill points on the market. It does take away some of the Eve core values (for lack of a better word) though. In eve the older guys always had more skill points, now some one rich can buy whatever skills he wants. So 100+ million skill points won’t mean any thing any more. I don’t really like the way this is going …

BB 66–The charm of duct tape

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Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 66th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are please visit the Blog Banter page.

Caldarification

The art team has been working on many art assets recently and there has been talk of the “Caldarification” of Eve related art. Recently examples have been the WIP images of the Thrasher class destroyer redesign and the citadel. Do we need to keep the lines between the races designs clear cut or is some blending of more generic sci-fi styling a good thing? Should Matari be flying/floating scrap heaps? Should Gallente be ‘all about the bass’? Or is a bit of generic sci-fi styling needed to bring new life to our important internet spaceships even if it leans a bit to Caldari?

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I for one very much love the charm of the four racial flavored ships. The Minmatar ships prove that there can be beauty in ships held together by duct tape. Just look at the wonderful Tempest for instance !

Tempest

The Rokh for me is the ultimate Caldari ships (looks wise). A picture says more than words, just look at them lines Winking smile. Somehow I associate this also with industrial efficiency.

rokh

And the Amarr I do associate with shiny ships. The punisher is a nice example. Most of their battleships are very shiny as well Winking smile.

punisher

And there is one race left, the Gallente. I mainly associate them with French people and/or hipsters. Not sure what style of ships goes with that, so I am a little lost here. I loved the Dominix and the Brutix models though. They don’t really associate well with hipsters, so that’s a bit of a clash. So the Gallente is the race I am not quite sure about.

brutix

As you might gather by now, I love the racial flavors of the ships and I hope it stays that way. Leave the Caldarification for the mixed race ships maybe ? If it has to be there that is.

Blog Banters:

Tetra’s Eve Blog – http://tetraetc.com/blog/2015/08/31/caldarification-bb-66/
Eveoganda – http://eveoganda.blogspot.com/2015/08/bb66-time-marches-on.html
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah – http://www.ninveah.com/2015/09/art-by-any-other-name.html
MMO Nomad ,confessions of a – http://blog.fenjaylabs.com/2015/09/01/eve-online-blog-banter-66-art-style/

SCASS – http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.com/2015/09/bb66-more-red-dwarf-less-caldari.html
Low Sec Lifestyle – http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2015/09/blog-banter-66-escape-from-originality.html

Blog Banter #65–Attributes

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 65th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.

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This months Banter was suggested by Jakob Anedalle

“I liked the discussion on The Neocom’s recent “Tinfoil Factory” on the future of attributes in Eve. Perhaps piggyback on that and invite those folks into the banter as well?
http://theneocom.com/2015/06/21/the-neocom-presents-the-tinfoil-factory-pilot-attributes/

Attributes and Skills
Does Eve need attributes? It’s been discussed a lot recently. Unlike other MMO’s your characters attributes don’t make a difference in day-to-day gameplay. They simply set how fast you train a skill. Is it time to remove attributes from the game or totally revamp their purpose? Do they add a level of complexity to the game that is not needed? If you really need to use a 3rd party application to get the most from it should it be in the game? Should they be repurposed with each attribute adding a modifier to your ship? Are attributes a relic from the past or are they an important part of Eve – You make your decision and deal with the consequences?

Banter on!

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What I remember from creating my first character is that I had no clue what I was doing. Which probably sounds familiar to a lot of people. I thought intelligence sounded good so I went with a somewhat balanced Caldari character. I gave some more thought towards the next characters, they had more perception and willpower so gun skills and the like didn’t take as long.

Anyway, I think the system seem to be outdated now and it needs a revamp. It would be nice to keep in a little rpg and replace it with something else instead of getting rid of it altgether.

I was thinking something along the line of damage (dps), damage reduction (tanking), logistics (healing), learning (to speed up skills marginally, to keep a little bit of the old system in this new one) and tax reduction (for the merchants among us). Maybe some sort of discovery attribute as well for a scanning / loot bonus ?

That would just about cover it all. You can even keep the current attributes even and give them a new meaning. This would also be nice for alts, you can specialize them a little bit.

Of course these would all be somewhat marginally better, otherwise you get into the situation where you must have a certain spec to do something and I would think you would want to avoid that as a game maker.

So those are my thoughts, you can read more here :

Cloaky Bastard – Useless Attributes
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah – Attribution
Eveoganda – My Brain Hurts
Notes from New Eden – At Rebukes
The Ancient Gaming Noob – Not for Attribution
Torchwood Archives – Attributes and Skills
Sand, Cider and Spaceships – Useful Attributes
Target Caller: BB65 – Easiest One Ever
Lexx Jonlan Tweets. I don’t think he gets the BLOG Banter bit!
Low Sec Lifestyle – Blog Banter #65 – What is Interesting?
Crossing Zebras http://crossingzebras.com/a-farewell-to-attributes/ and also http://crossingzebras.com/cz-minutes-attributes/
Jakob’s Eve Checklist – Attribution Needed?

Blog Banter #64–The rare defense missile

The Eve Blog Banters have found a new home at the excellent Sand, Cider and Spaceships blog ! Thanks to Kirith Kodachi for his two year run of Blog Banters. This installment is the first one under the guidance of Drackam.

Torpedo! Torpedo! Torpedo!
With the Aegis release we will see missile boats get their own version of the tracking enhancer and the tracking computer. On the forums there have been calls for new ‘missile defence eWar’ to counter these new modules. Is this needed? Are smartbomb ‘firewalls’ enough? Do defender missiles need an overhaul to make them actually worth using? Do we need the missile version of the remote tracking disruptor? Or do we go all Star Trek and have Point-Defence Phaser Banks? Banter on!

The last time I tried defense missiles was in my rookie days, a long long time ago. I figure almost everybody tried them at some point and notice how they pretty much fail and are a waste of a slot (and training points). If they get upgraded / fixed, they  could be useful if you expect to fight a missile based enemy. They better have some sort of auto targeting / firing system though, because timing those things in the heat of the battle is a no go in my opinion.

Maybe something else, anti-missile shield module might be interesting ? I Haven’t really thought that one through but I am sure someone can work it out Winking smile.

Aegis will be out coming Tuesday as I write this, the current patch notes for 1.0 can be found here.

Banters:-
Tetra’s Eve Blog – Passing of the Baton. (BB #64)
Eveoganda – BB64: Fire All Da Missiles
Eve Opportunist – Anti-missile EWAR, no brainer!
Khanid Kataphract – BB64: New E-War not needed, and Defenders against drones
Jakob’s Eve Checklist – BB64 – Torpedoes Away!
SCAS – BB64 – Missile? Denied!
Warp Drive Active – Blog Banter 64: Take the Flak

Eve True Stories

Never heard of it before, but the comic Eve True Stories is part of the new Humble Gamer Comics Bundle. You can pay what you want in order to get it, as it’s in the Tier 1 selection.

Tier 1
Artbook: The Art of Remember Me by Aleksi Briclot
Comic: EVE: True Stories by Daniel Way
Comic: Fallout: New Vegas – All Roads by Chris Avellone
Comic: Plants vs. Zombies: Lawnmageddon by Paul Tobin

Tier 2 Beat the Average
Price: 6,94€ | Price may change over time
Artbook: The Art of Bioshock Infinite by Julian Murdoch
Comic: Halo: Initiation by Brian Reed
Comic: The Guild Volume 1 by Felicia Day
Comic: Valve Presents Vol. 1: The Sacrifice and Other Steam-Powered Stories by Various Artists

Tier 3 Beat the Average + $5
Price: 11,45€ | Price may change over time
Comic: Dragon Age Volume 1: The Silent Grove by David Gaider
Comic: Mass Effect: Foundation Volume 1 by Mac Walters