Feel the love

Interesting times, Incarna and Carbon are coming:

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=916

There has been a huge debate in Failheap challenge about the new vanity items and the payment system (Aurum). Suffice to say I think it is wise that CCP keeps the payment streams separate so they can be tracked better.  Micro transactions are the right path and the way things are moving these days. A steady revenue stream that costs little to an end user is the best way to make money once you reach a threshold number of users.

Computer games make more money than Hollywood, and its non-gamers who spend more than gamers! Farmville on face book is worth 100 million a year:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/4873553/Virtual-real-estate-selling-for-millions

In Singapore they charge 30 cents to pay by electronic transaction. In the taxi’s they do 180,000 transactions a day, or $54,000 a day, or $378,000 a week, or $19,656,000 a year!!! All for 30 cents. OK, so CCP won’t be making this, but it is a worthwhile revenue stream to open up to players and for CCP’s coffers. So from a business sense it makes sense for CCP, but players have rightly raised issues around ‘buying your way ahead’ in EVE (do they know about ISK farmers and do they buy stuff from them?).

For all the negativity spewing forth from Failheap I think it does reflect a large number of big egos and I suspect for many of those egos vanity items will sell well.... Kirith Kodachi’s post is also well worth reading and has some interesting points:

http://www.ninveah.com/2011/05/fury-it-warms-me.html

Also Seleene has reappeared, \0/ :

http://seleene4csm.blogspot.com/2011/05/csm-6-may-summit-reflections.html

Very interesting read, and seems very positive which is excellent news. Seems CSM and CCP are on the same wavelength and the CSM is fairly united (avoiding in game politics) and some great things are coming about as a result. No, it won’t happen fast, but it will happen. This is excellent news. The only down side was wouldn’t it be nice to know more rather than anything interesting is all closed shop under the NDA.... As always just wish we were better informed as this does sound very positive. Suspect, like always so far, we will find out a few days before the next patch in the dev notes. This is not such a great way to go about communicating changes, in fact it sucks. However I take a lot of soclae in the fact that it is at least going in the right direction.

I like the way you move (part 1)

Learning how to move around in EVE can save your ship and pod. Even after 2 years of playing there can still be lessons to learn, most of them the hard way. So here is a brief guide on how to move, comments welcome!

Step one, don’t panic. Where ever you go, whenever you do it you have 30 seconds where you can orientate yourself. You can even force this 30 second window which comes in very handy for station games.

Empire:

You’re a target. Don’t think you are not, that those ships on the gate are just AFK. You’ve just been passive locked and scanned, and that Gurista’s module in the hold of your frigate is worth taking a risk to pop you. Ganking is a profession, people are good at it, don’t doubt they know what they are doing. Sure you will meet some noob’s starting out who are trying it on, but professional gankers make a living off this.

So only auto-pilot (AP) if you have nothing to lose. I use a fast frigate with a warp core stabiliser II (WCS) to auto-pilot around. It’s quick, hard to hit and a few fittings can be the difference between life and death. I have only had my AP Condor shot at once (I also fit an AB as a MWD can be disrupted), and CONCORD killed the Brutix for me. You are never safe, ever. So fly like you have a purpose. You are not on a Sunday stroll; you are going from A to B. So fly to the gate, jump, hit the next one, don’t tool about. If you need a biological break then dock up, or warp somewhere.

Where to warp to?

• Never ever warp to an asteroid belt
• Never warp to zero

Rats hang out at belts, so do greifers and gankers, ninja salvagers and others. Of course there will be harmless miners, who in their hulks have PVP’d and killed the odd wolf, yeah, don’t laugh, I’ve seen it. Rare rats can web and scram you, not so good if you are in a hurry to run away.

Asteroid belts are also where people tend to warp to, so don’t, for that simple fact that others do. People hunting for you will use the directional scanner to check the belts first.

Planets and moons are a good choice to warp to, as long as you don’t run into an unfriendly POS, which is unlikely in Empire. The local star is also not a bad choice.

The advantage moons give is that when you warp off a quick scroll around will show which way you went. This makes warping to a singular object like the sun obvious, now you are left relying on that you didn’t warp to zero so hopefully they hunter won’t drop right on top of you. So a moon, which can be one of many around a planet is a very good choice.

Book marks

While sailing along in warp bang in a book mark (open up people and places, then add a book mark as you fly along). When you hit your warp in point warp off to the next point. Then warp to your book mark and add another when you are on the way. Why? This way the second book mark won’t be on a ‘path’ between objects making it much harder to find and next to impossible to scan down without probes.

Station games

When you undock hit CTRL+SPACE and you will have 30 seconds to do nothing. Look around and you can see who is outside and what is going on. Now you can click dock and insta-dock. This works on most BUT NOT ALL stations. Some stations spit you out outside of the docking range, learn which stations undock you close by. (If you hit CTRL+F you can see the timer counting on the upper left hand side of your EVE window so you know exactly how long you have). If you do anything other than sit still after stopping outside of station you are fair game.

Once undocked you can warp to some insta-warp points. Fly anywhere from 100km or more from the station (the more the better) in a straight line form the station undock point. Then add a book mark. Then when you undock, you can stop, look around, choose to insta-dock or insta-warp to a point aligned directly ahead from the station.

Low Sec

Auto pilot is death; expect to die if you use it. There is one minor window where you can use AP, that’s when leaving low sec turn AP on so you insta-jump on reaching the gate.

Don’t panic if someone targets you, or starts, warp off while you can. When you jump in and see a nasty hostile waiting for you, DONT PANIC. You have 30 seconds to work out where you are in relation to the hostile, the gate, and an escape route. Take the shortest if you are fast or the most direct with the alignment of your ship for the fastest warp off.

A cunning hostile will scram you before webbing you, as webbing you will improve your align time and let you escape faster! How? by lowering the speed you need to achieve to hit warp, which is 75% of your top speed without modules activated. Pulsing (activating and deactivating a module) will help your speed reach the 75% threshold faster. In this situation if you get warp disrupted a MWD won’t work so an AB is a good module for evading trouble in low sec.

Null Sec

Ah, now you are the pro, in null sec, now you know how to move you’ll be right. LOL, welcome to a quick podding. Bubbles of various types, such as anchored or put up by HIC’s and DIC’s will soon stop the quick get away. As always, don’t panic. Orientate yourself, who is where, where are you, what are you aligned to? What’s the shortest path out of the bubbles? Will you make it or should you dash to the gate? Only experience will really teach you that, but a cool head will prevail most of the time.

So if you are moving in null sec fit the ship for the purpose. WCS and cloaks are a must. Anything less is death, even in blue space in null sec, when you hit a roving red gang. So watch the intel channels closely and book marks are a must.

Even ratting is not very safe. You are in a belt, so a definite site to be checked by roving reds. So as soon as you warp into a belt or plex ALIGN TO STATION (or POS). This way you uncloak from warp and can engage the rats and insta-warp as soon as a red enters system. A ratting ship is not a PVP ship. If you are slow on doing this then 5 light ECM drones can be a life saver (and if you have a spare slot a large nuet is good for scaring off vaga’s)

More on null sec movement another post.

6 months in a leaky boat

Fleets, great fun but a sod to manage. An FC (Fleet Commander) has their work cut out and is very reliant on people behaving correctly in fleet. So much so that they rely on a few key people and most people in fleet switch off and just trundle along in the mob. I think it’s why small gangs are so much more fun, you know what’s going on. You know who is doing what in fleet and you can stay in touch with the action and the nuances so much better.

As an FC you are often asking questions of fleet ‘X up’ in the fleet channel if you can do ‘blah’. So one of my visions is to give fleets some love. After all they are supposed to be a key part of the PVP EVE experience.

So here’s a rough model:

You can assign roles, so everyone knows who to follow. Maybe everyone could also be on the watch list in each panel, so you don’t need calls to go out for reps’ you simply pay attention. Drag and drop roles, being able to simply move fleet roles would be a blessing. Add another dozen icons that some windows could have could also be interesting. If for example you have the wing commander position you get more icons allowing you to drag tackle, bubble, web, nosf/neut, logistics, DPS, etcetera, icons onto various people in fleet so you know who fills what roles and what you may be missing or have in fleet. This updates to the FC’s window, so they can shift people around and manage fleets easily.
Also when actvities happen of note a highlight can flash around the pilots box, such as they are being shot, typing in fleet, speaking in fleet chat (in game comms). So instead of having to learn peoples voices you know who is what, where and what might be going on with them.

Then allow wing warping as well, so you can send your scout/bomber/bait wing commander off with all his squad would be nice. Delegated control of some aspects would also mean less work for the FC and more relevance for wing commanders in managing fleets. The ships people are in are also coloured by race to help identify who might be who and possible roles, for quick ID.

A radical option could be fleet formations, which a wing commander can learn various tactical operations and fleets warp into set formations. You could have a dozen formation types and maybe some skill bonuses and now you fleet can be mapped out better. Tackle up front, logistics lurking at the back, AHACs surrounding your fleet core, Alpha artillery forming a back line, stealth bombers on the flank – all from a formation warp in.

That’s part of my vision for EVE, more tactical command, reduced work load on FC’s, more clarity in operations, battlefield tactics (formations). All this means better PVP, a core aim of CCP I would hope.

Because I have been quiet here's another bit....

Amarr BC & BS recognition ships chart

My parents are over to visit their grandson for his 3rd birthday, so but quieter on EVE than one would hope but only to be expected....

Caldari capital and industrial recog chart

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.  ~Robert Wilensky, 1996

Cruisers to follow soon, completeing the Caldari range, others in progress (some have been done, just not posted yet, one a day is cool)

Caldari large ships

Another recognition chart....

Comments/feedback welcome...

How to get you to come back to this blog....

Most blogs are peoples ramblings and personal opinions, fair enough. You can get those on the forums, too much so. The gems on peoples blogs are what you can get, or take away, its what people really want. Things like guides, or tricks they can learn. So how to make myself a useful idiot? ship recognition cahrts and some guides....

So here is my start, I am working in MS Visio on a number of one page A4 size templates for ship recognition charts. I source the information from EVEMon (CSV export, tidy it up and then add the data to Visio). Then I save the Visio page as a 600 DPI JPEG. (600 is overkill, 200 is normal, 240 DPI for a book, 300 is 'high quality', so 600 is overkill, but its so the small font appears when printing. If people want it in say 300 DPI let me know). The image is 1.6MB, so not to onerous.

There is too be 4 per race:

1. Frigate,
2. Cruiser,
3. Large ships (BS & BC)
4. Capital & others (capital and industrial)

There is also one 'extra' which is to be ORE and misc ships (like CCP gifts).
Here's the first, Caldari Frigates:

Show industry and low sec some love

Ok, everyone is pretty much saying this. My point with this post is to show some of my vision for EVE. The key is there are some great forums out there, we just need to collate everyone’s responses and put them in some kind of order to present to CCP. This is where I think CCP wants the CSM to act and be a front for the wants and desires of players.

I think low sec needs some love, Mynxee (CSM5) started a ‘making low sec matter’ web site, which has been shifted to here:

http://criminallowsec.ideascale.com/

I suggested (a long time back) the letter of marquee for pirates. It is my belief we don’t need to do anything radical in EVE for game play, just look into history and you will find a solution. For pirates look at real life pirates and the letter of marquee. So a Caldari letter of Marque lets you privateer (not pirate) in low sec in the Caldari state, anyone without high Caldari standings is then fair game. Zap a Caldari in Caldari low sec with a Caldari letter of Marquee you are now a pirate and will be shot by all sides. No French, Spanish or Portuguese man-o-wars in Britain’s harbours in the Caribbean thank you very much. Pirates like black beard were people who went rogue and attacked all ships, not just those they had a letter of marquee from a ruling power for.

Ideas people have like the drug rings, pirate factions, pirate missions and stations are great. Now we just need to get CCP to hear them out.

So while we’re at giving low sec some love how about Industry. I think looking at things in isolation leads to some of the issues we have. I think JF’s need some love, think not? Then why does everyone use a carrier to shift things instead of a JF? I thought a carrier was for delivery fighter plane death into enemy fleets as a capital warship, not a mover’s courier van.

Don’t worry about the planes, its only moving them.

Some others have suggested an industrial capital ship, sounds very cool to me. Imagine one that can fly around and do production, scooping rocks and churning out ships, running command modules while it churns out ammo for an ongoing operation. Another could have giant geodesic domes which run chemical operations, or do some PI tasks on ship. Now that would be cool.

Add to that an improvement in industry. Keep all the minerals, have people build components, those are assembled to make T1 ships and/or T2/3 components which are again assembled in higher tech industrial installations to make T2/3 products. Where’s the assembly lines? This would also hopefully put an end to let’s build 5 BS and move them, melt them and use them for a super cap build as it’s smaller than moving the minerals. That’s just totally illogical. What production facilities available in null sec are also farcical.

So for industry, more components, more assembly options, more materials used in more ways. A capital industrial and some love for low sec with pirate factions, drug manufacturing, privateering and other ideas from the ideas for low sec and now my vision of EVE is starting. Add some fleet improvements, planetary improvements and now we’re talking, more on that in future posts.

So please go and have a look at the ideas web site show above and give it your support to help make EVE the game you want it to be.

Nerf....

Something is better than something else, quick, nerf it....

Seems to be that any perceived imbalance gets the nerf. Stop it!!!

Slow down! There are a few reasons; I am going to consider three:

1.       Management practice (Deming)

2.       Squeaky wheels (Drake versus Hurricane)

3.       Decision making under stress (examples from military studies)

The current nerf is jump bridges, which pretty much has been roundly condemned in a number of forums. It has some positive aspects, but fundamentally will most likely not achieve its intended purpose. What is the purpose? People surmise (CCP hasn’t explicitly stated) that its do discourage large super-cp blobs and encourage small scale PVP.

The next nerf is agents, due out in about 48 hours. I think this change is very mellow, it tidies up an existing system, hopefully will add a little clarity. However what resources at CCP were required to do this to what in game effect? After all the system works as it currently is, so why ‘fix’ it? So it raises to me what is CCP’s vision? as per an earlier post.  In what way does this change work towards CCP’s goals. I would love to see a list of the intended changes, when, why, how, instead of, justifications and the likes.

Part 1, Management practice:

Edward Deming got the job of helping rebuild Japan’s economy after WW2. His principles later became known as ITIL and Microsoft has their own take on them (with MOF4.0) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

 Some of his key principles can be summarised as quality check everything or nothing. Quality leads to lower costs, profits are generated by loyal customers. Making a system change needs to be carefully considered and managed and based on testing and knowledge – PLAN, DO, ACT, CHECK.

Deming used a funnel suspended over the ground and dropped a ball at a specific spot through the funnel. Then corrections are made in different ways and the results compared. Here’s a simulator and some graphs:
http://www.symphonytech.com/funnelexp.htm

What it shows is the adverse effects of adjusting a process when not required.

So what’s my point? CCP keeps nerfing things, making changes, which while tested on SISI are implemented with a major impact on the game, often it seems not predicted by CCP but by some bittervets (Ripard Teg and Mord Fiddle for example). It seems there is a disconnect between the testing and reality, but how can this be? Seems the testing on SISI is either not relevant to Tranquillity (such as you test PVP but not PVE) or simply dismissed as a blip, a statistical anomaly. Regression testing is about the integration of the code, rather than the impact of that code on the game play. Given the number of patches that follow a patch (seems that there are 3 minor ones that follow one major one) it raises some very serious concerns about the evaluation, testing and implementation of patches. It is extremely hard to manage the code as it grows, and the impact of all the changes one makes. So it is a very hard process. But given the negative impact of a number of patches (nerfs), the number of sub-sequent patches for releases and the screams on player forums Plan, do act, check is not working. The changes seem too radical too often, more on that in part three.

CCP needs to address a significant break down in the change process.

Part 2, Squeaky wheels

Nerf the drake! Who hasn’t heard that? But if you look at the numbers the question I pose about the drake is so what? If you look at the statistics, these are from the ‘Quarterly Economic Newsletter Q3 2010’, the drake is imply another ship in game.

The number of ships in use:

The drake is a level 3 mission runner, and is up there with the level 1 mission runner the kestrel. Given the Caldari race is the most popular it would fit that the predominance of Caldari ships would follow (the raven makes the top 10 as well, but not the caracal interestingly). Given the drake is also good with 7 weapons slots it makes for a good cheap PVP ship too. Like the Hurricane with its BC size and 7 weapon high slots. A BC can easily be reached by players and doesn’t break the bank to lose it, can be insured for full replacement (unlike T2 ships) and is not as skill intensive to reach as many other ships. All in all a BC of any race makes a good cheap PVP ship (Brutix is probably bottom of the list but not bad, and the Harbringer is certainly a good ship).

As for PVP the Hurricane killed 5000 more ships than the Drake, and the Drake died 4000 times more than the Hurricane. On that basis it should be the Hurricane that is nerfed not the Drake. I think the issue around the Drake for CCP is that it fires missiles, which add another computational calculation in PVP, potentially adding to lag. The ship itself, statically speaking, is fine.

The message, all too often it seems a nerf is based on an emotional response from the player base and not a statically supported one. The jump bridge nerf fits in here.

The squeaky wheel gets the oil.

Part 3, decision making under stress

First read the Psychology of Military Incompetence by Norman Dixon (http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Military-Incompetence-Norman-Dixon/dp/0708814824/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305626347&sr=1-2) and one that helps illustrate this point, the battle of Khafji with ‘Storm on the Horizon’ (http://www.amazon.com/Storm-Horizon-Khafji-Battle-Changed/dp/0345481534). The battle of Khafji can also be read on Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khafji

OK, so what do they say that relevant? Slow down, assess, respond, re-evaluate. When the brown stuff hits the whirly thing people, even very well trained (Khafji with the Observation Post 4) and highly decorated (General Haig) can quickly find themselves overwhelmed by information and the need to make a decision and to make it fast. The Battle of Khafji also showed that if cool heads prevail, that time is taken to ASSESS and then respond a significantly different outcome results, a more positive one.

The message in this section is when you need to make a decision, work can be a stressful place, so slow down (get a grip and calm down, to help you think clearly), assess the situation then make a calculated response and measure its effect.

So what does this all add up to?

CCP needs to ignore the squeaky wheel and look at the statistics (assess). It needs to publicise its findings and what it thinks it MAY do about them. CCP positions then can be debated (evaluated) in the forums and reported back through the CSM. The nerf is then tested (checked) on Sisi and enacted on Tranquillity if it reaches the intended solution. Then it needs to be checked (look at the statistics and further feedback via the forums through the CSM) on Tranquillity to see if it in fact works on the live environment.

Currently smacking things with a big hammer is breaking fingers and still not fitting the round peg in the square hole. The nerf gun doesn’t seem to be the best way to hit the bullseye.

DRF cheats

It’s a controversial title, on purpose. Actually I don’t think they cheat on an individual basis. I am certain that there is a number of very good and genuine players in DRF. It’s just those that do cheat, do it very well and there seems to be a prevalence of questionable behaviour associated with the DRF. And if you are looking for EULA breakers check DRF first it seems. I pick DRF rather than ‘Russians’, as I feel there is a lot of excellent Russian players and very nice people and in no way think that just because the DRF may be behaving improperly that I think ‘the Russians’ do. We also talk about Chinese ISK farmers, it’s just DRF makes a good case in point at the moment to avoid stereotyping.

OK, that’s some very serious allegations, state your case and then back it up with evidence. Breaking it down into three steps:

1.       RMT (real Money Trading)

2.       Attack opponents, the so called meta-game

3.       In game exploits

So let’s look at each one in turn....

A GTC, 30 day plex, can be purchased from CCP for $34.99 for 2 ($17.50ea) and sells in game for 360 million on average (http://eve-central.com/home/quicklook.html?typeid=29668 ).

Personally I think one of the smartest things CCP has done is to sell Plexes. To be involved in the market means you can see trends and patterns, as well as influence outcomes. Don’t believe it? What if CCP halved the price of plexes (for arguments’ sake) in real life, its 99% likely to have an in game impact and will certainly effect RMT transactions. I do however realise that CCP has operational cost, and a number of subscribers and no doubt some careful number crunching has been done (I hope) to ensure that the CCP machine keeps running with its current revenue stream, thus setting the price for in game time. So tooling around with the price of plexes is not so simple, but just a point to debate, to illustrate a point.

So because we have a real life monetary value for plexes which translate to ISK we can price items on the market in real dollar terms. Sites like the 2 below do exactly this I suspect.

http://www.mmovp.com/buy-eve-online-eve-ships-c-25_1002.html

where you can buy ISK:

....and there best ISK sellers are:

http://evegiga.com/

notably they don’t break the ISK RMT rules, so does this mean selling ships is OK?

Here’s the top BS sales out of curiosity (how many over what time period I dont know):

OK, so what, what does all this really mean? It means ISK farming, selling ISK and ships and everything that goes with it is a job, it’s a business, and its big business.

So, as an example, if you live in China you make on average $6K USD a year (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_yearly_income_for_families_in_China )and can farm a billion ISK a day (http://www.evenews24.com/2011/02/12/the-rise-of-the-isk-printing-machines-a-case-study-on-bots/ ) which is 2.77 (avg) Plexes at $17.50ea is $48.48 USD a day, or $17,693.38/yr, or simply put THREE TIMES the average yearly income in China. So in China you could be comparatively very well off ISK farming.

When you threaten this income you threaten livelihoods, and people go feral. This is business and it is well known that the DRF is into farming and running null sec as a business.

Really? Prove it, how about the second part, meta-gaming. The DOS (Denial Of Service) attacks on EVE news are from Russia and based around the suspicion of them reporting on ISK farming (as noted in the article above). Furthermore given the current war on NC DOS attacks on NC alliance forums, sites and TS (Team Speak) servers are going on right now. From Russia, with love.

Here’s two snippets from EVE News:

Feed: Eve News24
Posted on: Wednesday, 11 May, 2011 4:50 AM
Author: Eve News24
Subject: GoonSwarm Federation and Other Northern Coalition sites/services under heavy DDoS attacks

If there was any doubts of who was behind or which were the motivations driving the latest round of Distributed Denial of Service attacks a good heads up would be their targeted sites, this time the GoonSwarm Federation main website was hit along other Deklein Coalition and Northern Coalition sites or services. As the battle [...]

Feed: Eve News24
Posted on: Thursday, 28 April, 2011 12:53 PM
Author: Eve News24
Subject: Game. Blouses.

Well, We’re Back. For Good. We were gone. And then back. And then gone again. No, this isn’t a tale by a hobbit, this is what has been happening to EN24 for the past week. While the real culprit behind these latest round of attack could probably never be outed, we have several suspects, I [...]

The third cheat? In game ones. Apparently you can filter your TCP/IP traffic (wireshark or some other tool may show you what packets I guess). Exactly what traffic I am not sure, but it means you can insta-jump to wherever you like (can be seen in kill board stats between two system say 10 jumps apart and kills within 30 seconds of each other) and not appear in local.

I have seen this third cheat, it got me, think I’ve seen the first as well up in Branch. I logged a petition, CCP needed no evidence from me (my screen shot, see below) and they checked their logs. There actions prompt and thorough and they took action. Think Shadowjumper got banned, well for a bit anyway, he was online last night. I was very disappointed to see you can cheat, get caught and still play.

Seems the DRF cheats, it ISK farms, makes a living out of it, launches DOS on those that oppose or even mention it and when people are caught cheating they get away with it.

As they say life isn’t fair and nor is EVE. Still, if CCP doesn’t do something this will kill EVE.

My plan? Using notes from the EVE news site on how to use Dotlan to find ISK farmers think I might go and camp some sites in a cloaky, drop a few bombs and hit them where it hurts the most, in the pocket.

For those that think DOS and cheating in game is the way to win they should GTFO. Oddly I don’t mind people making a living off EVE, couldn’t think of anything worse than turning your hobby into a job and taking all the fun out of it. For those who it is a job it is a grind no doubt, and good luck to them. However ISk farming is business, and its bad business and its bad for EVE.

Just don’t ruin the game for me and everyone else in the mean time who just want to play EVE, my mistress, my beautiful dark mistress.....

What does CCP really want?

This is cool:
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1508536

34 pages, and some great ideas and suggestions, as well as the expected grief. Hats off to CCP for raising it, and here’s hoping with work done by CSM5 and now 6, that more of the players’ voice gets heard.

However I think while this is a great thing for CCP to do maybe it should be given to the CSM (now?) to collate, filter, poll (find out what players think across the demographic rather than individual opinions) and then report back the findings to CCP. The report should be made publically available, and maybe even a website setup in which the issues raised are categorised (high demand, low development/implementation requirement, etc) and UPDATES posted on progress.

This way it would be transparent, players would feel loved, CSM would have a useful role for CCP and everyone would frolic with joy. Naked?

But, I work in IT and have done a lot of different roles. Some of the key questions I ask a business when I start projects have never been raised with CCP it seems. This explains a lot of the disconnect between CCP and the player base.

Key questions ... what is you key business objective CCP? what are you trying to achieve and why? Why are you talking to me? What’s your budget to achieve your business needs?

Ok, they say the premier sci-fi environment, cool. It may sound stupid, jargonistic gooble-de-gook for narcissistic corporate nerds but a VISION is oddly very important. It gives direction, simply, and that filters down. Just like the personality of the CEO is reflected by the senior managers, and filters down to the staff and sets the tone for a company. The vision helps point you in a general direction.

A mission statement expands on it, helping pad it out and give some details. Then the senior team(s) map out strategic plans.

EVE is tracking well, growing nicely, with interesting impacts on the subscription rates with new releases, from http://mmodata.net/

So business wise EVE is doing well to date, and long may it do so we all hope. The key is where to from here? Will the graph dip or rise? Here’s an interesting one:

So is EVE aiming for more women? More players from second life? Thus picking up on a dying market sector with a new environment, namely Incarna and walking in stations. Dust514 is obviously to tap into the massive console market. So these moves make sense from s strategic business sense. But as all the players feel what about the core of EVE, the existing and potential future players. We play for pew pew, PVE and PVP, and all that goes with it. It’s the male demographic here and we like things that go fast and blow stuff up. Lets even be brutal about it – ‘sovereignty don’t work coz its ta hard to blows stuffs up’. The current player base can’t see the bang bang in Incarna, so understandably they shy away. Tapping into a massive potential market draws CCP to Incarna. Like it or not it’s coming and it makes business sense, but only as long as you don’t lose your core player base, and the CSM has done very well at raising this with CCP.  This is why CCP listened to them then, and why other items seemed to drift off into a void.

There needs to be a connect between the business model of CCP and the player base. CSM is it, and it was a very smart thing of CCP to do. How many other MMO’s have such a communication channel? As a result I believe in both CCP and the CSM. But the CSM must understand its role in the business. It is because players and developers at CCP love EVE, and I believe the management at CCP do too, that I think things will move in a positive direction. But we players also need to be positive if we want to be heard.

So when CCP asks for ideas, what they are really asking is not would you like the drake nerfed and the brutix with 50 more cap and CPU, they really want to hear WHAT IS YOUR VISION. Sadly we, as a player base, are being self absorbed focus on the trees and not seeing the woods, we are not telling CCP OUR vision, and we need to. Thankfully hundreds of useful idiots (to quote Lenin) volunteer their opinions and flame others resulting in some kind of synthesis all the same.

I say cool to Incarna. Bars, gambling dens, mini-games, retail outlets, virtual meeting rooms:

Bring it on.

If it brings more role-players and women, fair enough, it helps CCP’s business, so if it’s good for them it’s pretty likely to be good for the existing player base by making CCP’s budget bigger (more revenue = more cool stuff in game). CSM is to let them hear the voice of the bittervets and ‘blow-em-up’ brigade to keep it in touch with its roots. Dust514, more pew pew is cool, as long as both Incarna and Dust don’t mess with the existing game right?

So the crunch now is this – where to from there CCP, what is their vision? and for that matter what is OUR vision of EVE?

My Vision? Some people have some awesome ideas, let’s get the CSM to collect them, collate and manage them and relay that to CCP, some of mine to follow in subsequent posts....
If we love EVE, then we need to tell CCP not the little things we want but the visionary things we want. If that matches where CCP is going as a business then imagine the outcome....

I jumped.....

The jump bridge nerf....

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=908

Seems pretty reasonable to me.

One per system, that’s a bit curious, guess 2 would be too easy, which means JB's are most likely to turn up by edges of systems so you can quickly hop across.

This will create hot spots/bottle necks, which I gather is the point.

But really, is this necessary at all?

I mean I have lived in 0.0 for 2 years and just how good are jump bridges?

They are often camped by SB’s (stealth bombers) and the number of people who currently seem to get themselves popped on them is not insignificant. With a password and ‘blue’ standing requirement they can’t be used by non-allies anyway (even though the passwords are effectively public given spies and changing corpies).

So when the brown stuff hits the whirling thing the JB’s are often a primary strategic target and camped, and I don’t use them.

They fill a role for redeployment for campaigns, and now it will be more cynos and fleet movements, which means more blobs. Expect more titan bridging as well as a result.

Take what’s happening right now in UMI/H-W. The bridges are camped, reds are sniffing for targets of opportunity and the best way to travel is not by JB but in an organised fleet with cynos..... this change simply re-enforces what people are already doing.

The more fuel thing is a nice feature, but any good paranoid null sec pilot should stash some LO (Liquid Ozone) in their hold just in case a bridge is empty, or even just for good manners. Nice touch though as it will reduce the admin required by people, so less emo rage is all good.

What’s most curious about the post is:

·         Is 0.0 industry currently geared to support the population living there?

·         Is the relationship between 0.0 and empire balanced well enough?

·         Does the current sovereignty system meet our goals?

·         Are there enough incentives for conflict/pvp outside sov?

·         Are we happy with movement/player interaction?

That’s the real crunch. If this is on the agenda then it seems the CSM and the Mittani are well placed to have a real impact on the game, for the better.

Industry in 0.0 is utterly broken and completely unable to support living there. This flows into low sec as well which I hope gets some over flow of love.

Sovereignty and PVP, POS bashing and blob supercaps, hmm, null sec isn’t working the way anyone really hoped I think. It is fun, it just could so much better.

I was hoping, beyond reasonable expectation, that Planetary Interaction (PI) was going to bring a splash of the SIMS or maybe the old Masters Of Orion (MOO) to EVE. But more on my deluded hopes another post, as well as on nerfs....

Update:

Just read Rifter Drifters post on JB's, curious.
http://www.rifterdrifter.com/2011/05/baby-dont-nerf-me-dont-nerf-me-no-more/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RifterDrifter+%28Rifter+Drifter%29
Must admit I feel that logistics should be for exactly that and using dreads and carriers to move stuff seems simply wrong, aren't they warships not courier company vans? [quote: renewing the roles of dreadnoughts and carriers in long-distance logistics].

So whats a JF for?
Mord Fiddle also did an excellent post earlier on JF's
http://fiddlersedge.blogspot.com/2011/02/unanticipated-macro-level-outcomes.html
Also I can only see this encouraging the super cap blobs, which I thought the idea was to move away from. More short range JB's would be cost ineffective for super caps, and more practicle for sub-caps I would have thought. The range reduction is smart, the one per system not so much so.

Oh, and nerf them as well, stop with the nerf everything! more on that another post, and why...
But still, a good article overall and worth a read, I dont have to agree with it to be good.

We live in interesting times, happy hunting 07

PS: Damn, Kane Rizzel just posted he too is going quiet on the EVE blog front. Liked his style, good luck with the shift to London and the new job Kane.

Podded

Yet another blog, why bother?

http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/003674.php
• On July 31, 2006, Technorati tracked its 50 millionth blog
• The blogosphere is doubling about once every 6 and a half months
• About 175,000 new weblogs are created each day
• There are more than 2 blogs created each second of each day
about 1.6 Million postings per day, or about 18.6 posts per second.

I dont expect many, if any, to really read the first post, only in hindsight.
So why did I start?

Mynxee is KIA
http://lifeinlowsec.blogspot.com/
Jester is KIA
http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/
Fiddlers edge with Mord Fiddle is MIA
http://fiddlersedge.blogspot.com/

These 3 blogs were my main EVE reading. Yes, I read Roc Wieler, Kane Rizzel, Rifter Drifter, Kirith Kodachi, Saleene and more. But these 3 were my main required EVE reading.

And now they are dead.
(Mord Fiddle is admittedly still active but is moving on in life with things such as his writing, and good on him).
So I am going to give it a go, see if I can step in and follow where people better than me have gone.

Why are they dead? bittervet syndrome it seems sadly.
And I'm a bittervet LOL, but I have no plans to quit for some time.
I've had the humps, hit the wall and moved on. I am at 62 million SP now. This is not to say I am successful in the slightest!!! I have at best a 50/50 kill board rating and for all my time and efforts still suck.

Welcome to EVE.
Why I am still here is also why I am going to try a blog.
It is my mistress, as my wife calls it, and I tease her at least she knows where I am and how my mistress is.

I started in 2008 with the predictable Caldari. Its what most people statiscally do. I didnt want to be a salve owner arrogant Amarr, the flakey drone (think buzzy flies) Galentee, or the chip on my shoulder bit mixed up Minmatar. So I went for the industrial ISK machine, the Tuetonic space race. I loved my Caracal and Kestrel which i flew for too long as I wasn't very good. I ground standing without social skills and took a long time to learn.
But learn I have, the school of hard knocks.
So it is from this I hope some of my scrawlings are useful, or insightful, or maybe even helpful.

I spent too much time being solo, but had a great corp where all my friends were. I started a second account so I could fly with them. Now, I have spent over 2 years in Null Sec, a bitter vet(?), but still learning.
I shifted from New Zealand to Singapore and time zones killed my time with my friends. I had to find a new place for me in EVE. In about 2 years I should return and once again play EVE with my friends. However it means I'm in for the long haul.

So here we go, warp drive active, bleep, bleep, bleep.... dammit podded already....