Category: General

The usual category I will post under

Taking the S out of POS

Last week we got a Dev Blogpost on the upcoming changes to POSes or as CCP calls it Starbase Iterations. It’s not a revamp, but we didn’t expect that at this point, as the CSM minutes revealed earlier. We got this apparently due to the slight uproar after those minutes were released and CCP wanted to accommodate those ‘few players’ that own a POS.

There is nothing wrong with these changes, they’re all very welcome as far as I am concerned. Finally players can get their own little space in the ships hangar and so on. What delight me the most is the ability to finally change T3 modules at the hangar. It’s really dumb you must have 2 or 3 tengus just because you can’t change them on the fly like you’re supposed to.

The starbase code is quite old and complicated; so it is quite possible we will hit road blocks when addressing some of these features, road blocks that in some cases could render one or more of them undeliverable.

Now what is more important is what is missing. What I would really like is a more convenient way to refine minerals. The current modules are probably from  early on in the game when Mining Barges didn’t even exist. A new module or an ‘ iteration’ of those modules would be very welcome. Unless CCP does not want us to be self sufficient in the Wormhole and wants us to ship the minerals to Empire.

Also there is no mention of roles and the corp hangar and ship hangar. Although probably not everything has been fleshed out entirely, but a lot of people would be grateful if this was added. It might be getting a bit too complicated for June however.

Odyssey

Looks like we’ll be going on an Odyssey this summer, as that is the name of the upcoming Eve online expansion. A new re-imagined scanning system ! This will probably have big consequences for wormhole dwellers, and I wonder what kind of things we can discover.

A re-imagined scanning system, intuitive navigation and new exploration modules will aid you as you search the heavens for your next conquest.

This sounds rather intriguing. Another attempt to get people out of hisec ? Or make 0.0 more accessible ?

A rebalance of major areas of space from highsec to nullsec include changes in exploration sites, industrial resources, some types of NPC loot and more

Furthermore a lot of little things, including POS changes, dozens even !

This all sounds promising, I am sure there’ll be more info to come before Odyssey hits Smile.

http://www.eveonline.com/odyssey

The End Of Eon

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The sad news that Eon has come to an end didn’t come as a surprise as printed magazines are dropping left and right. It still is sad to see a part of Eve die.

Browsing through a few older issues, some of the articles get rather outdated, like ship guides and the like. But interviews with devs, the short stories and spotlights on players were always nice. I wrote an article on communication in Issue #21, which was nice to have done. I was supposed to write a guide on the then new P.I., but through some miscommunication (ironically enough) that didn’t happen.

I did take the opportunity to buy the poster bundle at the EON store for cheap though.

In years to come, may you pull an issue from the shelf, blow away the cobwebs and remember what EVE was once like. Until then, fly safe.

Links:

Gameskinny – nice article

Official announcement

ps. Bit odd to come out with this somewhat old news at the moment the Battle of Caldari Prime is going on, but this one had been sitting in my Live Writer for a while, just realised I hadn’t send it out yet.

Retribution 1.1

This totally caught me off guard, as I haven’t been following things very closely lately, but a quite significant patch has been deployed today ! Just looking at the patchnotes there are quite a few interesting things there: Battlecruiser updates and the new armor repair module ! Furtermore UI changes and a Crimewatch / Duel flag.

Patchnotes are at http://community.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp.

Thoughts on the POS revamp

Realising I am coming a bit late to the party, as this all started about three weeks ago when the CSM minutes were released, I still want to throw in my two cents on the subject ! Let me recap the situation first.

In August last year a POS revamp was on the table, or at least thought about. This revamp was going a lot further than just fixes to the current system. There used to be this old thread on the forums called Flogging a dead horse which points out exactly what the shortcomings are. The POS code is old though and I assume no one at CCP dares to touch it so they unsurprisingly came up with the idea to redo that segment of the codebase and decided to make it a bit like player housing in other MMOs and design a modular POS revamp.

Apparently someone had been looking into how to handle this and how many time it would take and soon CCP realised they bit off more than they could chew with this idea and deemed it ‘not beneficial for a lot of players’ as we can read in the Minutes from january 2012. This then let to CSM member two step’s campaign to try and change CCP’s plans for this year. He posted a blogpost and started a forum thread which as of now is 132 pages long.

Luckily there was light at the end of the tunnel, CCP Gargant responded in the above mentioned thread stating that the OVERHAIL CANNOT HAPPEN ALL AT ONCE. I didn’t even know people were expecting that to be honest. They came up with the modualr thing themselves AFAIK. Then realised it would be rather complicated, also graphically wise. Which I totally understand, but would anyone care if they’d fix the most important issues first and expand later ? Most important are imho the rights management and the lack thereof for the ships maintenance array.

Especially for Wormhole corporation that pretty much live out of a POS it’s very hard to recruit people. You give them either access or you don’t. Since most people in a wormhole will have a nice array of shiny ships at their disposal, you can see how it is a problem to give access to all of that to a new player who’s strapped for cash ;).

Making POSes better is in the benefit of all players. Most people when they come to Eve would love to have a space station of their own some day, it’s a nice goal to have. Also POSes are the backbone of a lot of activities in Eve. Make that better and you have a much better game. But I assume I am preaching for the choir here, we all know how much better it could be, I am glad CCP realises that as well (albeit with a little nudging in the right direction). I hope it’s not just words but that it will result in a better POS system sooner rather than later !

BB 43–Some Random Awards

It’s once again Blog Banter time !

For Blog Banter 43 I would like to invite every participant to nominate their peers for whatever awards you think they deserve. Let’s start the year with some EVE-flavoured altruism and celebrate the best and the worst of us, the funniest or the most bizarre, the most heroic of the most tragic of the past year. They could be corpmates, adversaries, bloggers, podcasters, developers, journalists or inanimate objects. Go nuts.

award1

I had some time to think about this one and a came up with quite a few awards. I have decided that the five mentioned here will be my definite list !

Without further ado, here we go

Award #1 – Module of the year: The Ancillary Shield booster. This module really changed gameplay, especially PVP. I can’t quite remember what other newly introduced module actually changed things and had some people up in arms about it being OP. I am sure there have been, but none come to mind that were introduced in recent history. Ninveah did a nice write-up on them when they were introduced in may.

phantom_akelyAward #2 – Wormhole menace of the year – Akely and his family of alts ! This was an easy one. You simply don’t want to have this guy hidden in your wormhole. No mining op or site running is safe, once the Akelies have infested your hole. And once he’s in, it’s very hard to kick him out.

 

strazdasAward #3 – Commentator on this blog of the year : Strazdas

I have known Strazdas since my days in Hidden Agenda, and he kept on reading this blog since then. Always has a nice word, or a funny comment. Very much appreciated so this one is for him, Congratz !

 

ccp_punkturisAward #4 – Most interesting / funny / nice ccp employee to follow on Twitter : @CCP_Punkturis

Actually the name of the award already gave away why she received this much coveted award for CCP employees, she not only tweets about the game but about other (personal) things as well, which makes her more of a real person than most of the other CCP twitter accounts. Follow her at @ccp_punkturis.

And then finally the 5th award (tension building up, *drumroll*)

award2

Award #5 – Eve related website of the year – evebloggers.com

Actually I pulled a bit of a Rixx Javix here, who gave the eve blogging community an award. It’s very hard to single out one particular website. I frequently visit tigersears, mabrick’s mumbling, eveoganda, freebooted, Ninveah’s blog and some others. But the one site that I refresh a few times a day is still the one, that links them all together evebloggers.com.

So that’s it, the Morphisat 2012 Eve Awards, all winners can claim a Steam Dota2 key in the comments Open-mouthed smile.

Continue reading BB 43–Some Random Awards

Tuskers Frigate FFA

This week I decided to take part in the Tusker’s FFA. I always liked the ones we had in the Hidden Agenda corp, and this promised to be much more massive. Free frigs were given away, which made the logistics thing a bit easier. I still spent much of the Saturday morning shopping for some destroyers and fittings and flying over to the starter system.

pvp meme

Things didn’t start out very well. I warped to a belt in an incursus, and died in a matter of seconds I think. Not quite sure what happened, I hardly had time to activate my modules. “This isn’t going to be a lot of fun, if it’s going to be like this” I muttered underneath my breath. But things turned around and had a lot more fun with missile boats. The breacher I brought myself did reasonable well, and i managed to stay alive a little longer. A few ships later I was handed my favorite ship of the night, a Condor ! The fittings the Tuskers gave us were quite good. Armed with 3 missile launchers and an MDW you can very easily keep distance and keep hitting your adversaries. Only downside was that it wasn’t fitted with a long point, so quite a few targets escaped, but since they probably were shot down elsewhere later you still appear on the killmail :).

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A carrier (and a few wrecks) in the Top Belt

There were also a few events, for one a carrier appeared in the top belt, which was quite fun. I was in my condor, and couldn’t resist picking off a few people on the fringes of the battle, which made me feel kinda bad, but in a good way ;).

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The carrier under heavy fire from all frigs

After 21:00 Eve time, all frigs and destroyers were allowed. I did pretty good in the new Caldari destroyer, which armed with 7 launchers packed quite a punch and I managed to get a few kills out of it. Also tried the new Amarr and Gallente ones, but both died pretty fast. By that time there were a number of groups on the field and you’d get instantly smashed once you warped in. I decided to leave around that time, since I had my fun anyway. I even made about 5 million isk in collected bounties. I also noticed there were quite a few young characters, who tried PVP for the 1st time. Hope they got the right impression and had as much fun as I had.

Thanks to the Tuskers for setting this up and providing us with free frigs to blow up !

Favorite kill of the evening

Best wishes for 2013

Hey it’s 2013 already ! 2012 has been quite an interesting year for me in Eve. Was a bit eved out at the start of the year, played a bit more later on, but it was usually just the bit of mining and missioning I always used to do. Joining an alliance and living in a wormhole since July or so sure breathed new life in my  Eve career :). Thanks to all 20 minuters for putting up with me, haha. To all Eve pilots out there and whoever might read this, best wishes for 2013, may it be a good one.

Seven Year Anniversary

And today Morphisat reached the ripe Eve age of Seven ! And what a long strange trip it’s been ;). Don’t have that many skill points for a character this old, a mere 87million. I never used very expensive implants, and I took a few breaks along the way. Since I am not into capital ships (got nothing against them, just have no use for them), it has become a challenge to pick the next skill to train at times. I have started on Amarr ships, since that is the only race I am not skilled at. My alt Belautis is though, so I already had that covered a long time ago.

Below is my a link to my skill list, maybe I am missing something very essential ! Let me know in the comments !

http://eveboard.com/pilot/Morphisat

Halp The Eve Blogosphere Is Dying

Lately there has been a discussion amongst some prominent Eve Bloggers about the future of the Eve Blogging community. The MMOmelting pot has a nice summary with some interesting comments. The whole issue came to my attention when Ryxxx’ post showed up on EveBloggers, ironically enough where he claims that The Mittani.com has killed the Eve Community.

Then I started to realize that I do indeed see less activity amongst Eve Bloggers. There used to be a time when you refreshed EveBloggers every now and then, a whole page of new stuff came up. Now not so much. Some blogs I frequently read are fading away or posting a lot less frequently. I am probably amongst a minority, but I don’t visit TheMittani.com very often. I do like some of the articles, for example when they take a look at the upcoming destroyers or review other games. The book reviews are pretty good. I don’t give a hoot for the 0.0 news though, which makes up a big part of the site (at least in my mind).

Apparently though a lot of people seem to like the site, it has lots of content all tucked in a nice place. I do believe there is still more than enough room for personal blogs like this one. Would an article appear on The Mittani’s front page where a small gang kills a retriever on a sunday night ops in a C4 system ? I don’t think so. So where else would I post such an article ? You might argue that no one cares about it, so write about it ? That is an interesting  questions. It all comes down to a blogger’s personal motivation.

Is the Eve Blogosphere doomed ?

The intention for this blog (from 2005 on !) has always been to make it a bit of a  diary of an ‘ordinary’ pod pilot. There are no glorious articles here, not very often very revealing insights, just tales of what can happen or what people do in Eve. And from time to time comments on what direction CCP is going or what I do like about an expansion or hate about it. There is still a lof of room for blogging in Eve. Maybe blogging in general isn’t as popular as in the best days of the Eve Blog Pack. Maybe there are less people now than back then that care to start a blog and write about their experiences. It would be a shame to see the Blog Pack go though, but maybe it has served it’s purpose and it’s time to move on. I do think that EveBloggers.com still serves great service though, I sure hope that will continue to exist in some form. I would have to have to fire up the old Google reader again !