Regional Local

This week during Eve Vegas, CCP expressed their long-held displeasure with local as an intel tool, but that they weren’t ready to launch a comprehensive change to the mechanics.

At the core of the problem is a need to communicate with people in the same system that doesn’t also announce the presence of new pilots entering that system. Some players simply advocate wormhole local, in which players don’t show up until they speak, but CCP has been resistant to this in the past for all areas of space, and I tend to think this would take something special away from wormhole space.

At the same time, CCP expressed a general dissatisfaction with the ease of null ratting isk generation and the speed of level 5 mission blitzing. In both cases, a new pilot entering local is a cause for concern, albeit much more so for null ratting. I don’t think the payouts are the problem as much as the early warning detection local provides; when you feel incredibly safe, it’s very easy to earn isk in null, perhaps too easy.

So, let’s kill two birds with one stone: Regional Local.

Ascension Delayed

The Ascension expansion – there’s so much in this update that it certainly deserves the title, compared to “update” – as been delayed by a week to November 15. From those who have been testing out some of the new features on Sisi, it sounds like there are still plenty of bugs to work out, but I’m not certain which yet.

So, alpha clones won’t hit for an extra week. An extra week for corporations to prepare, PLEX prices to rise, the injector market to get ready for a sudden increase in demand, and CCP marketing to fret over the level of success they can expect.

Will alpha clones cause an influx of players? Even two weeks before launch, I still can’t say. To read Reddit, a lot of players are intrigued by the possibilities. Will that translate into an actual increase of players in game? And if so, how many?

Jump Ranges to 7 ly, Boys!

As of a few minutes ago, CCP Larkin announced a pretty badly needed change to jump ranges that will be hitting in the November Ascension expansion. With this change, carriers will have a maximum range of 7 ly (two more than currently) and supers will be able to travel to 6 ly. While that doesn't seem like a particularly big deal to non-capital pilots, try plugging a few routes into jumpplanner and you'll see how important it is. Quite often on long routes, you can end up with the response, "No route is possible" taking only cyno jumps.

Within the post, CCP Larkin stated that the company's goals are to:

• Reintroduce a natural path for capital combat to escalate.
• Differentiate the power projection of Capitals and Sub-Capitals.
• Allow alternative logistics and force projection paths into space that is currently very difficult to access.
• Open up chokepoints and allow jump paths to be a little less predictable.

While this change will be almost universally praised by capital-capable pilots, will it achieve those goals, and are those goals even worthy?

Getting Meta about Clone States

The launch of an Eve free-to-play mode with Clone States has sent the player base into a fervor, spurred by the dual facets of excitement over having more people to shoot and anxiety over having more people shooting.

However, most of this buzz is focused around the level of the forest floor, not the wider view.

After all, CCP just announced a big change by allowing players to enter the gameworld without paying. This is a big deal. CCP is treating it like a big deal, with video blogs, a massive winback campaign sent to lapsed accounts, and a PR team working overtime to generate buzz about this change. Clearly, CCP wants people to take note. They’re doing everything they can to represent this as a big deal.

And that suggests a number of consequences.

Free-to-Play Mode: Not the End of the World... Maybe

CCP dropped a bombshell today with the announcement that they were introducing a free-to-play mode operating within the same universe as the rest of us play Eve. Before we all start biomassing or grabbing our pitchforks, let's dive into some of the consequences (including very good ones) and some essential modifications that will be needed.

First, let's dig into the details:

• Subscribed accounts (ie. all of us playing today), will be considered "omega clones" and have the same full functionality.
• Free-to-play accounts will be designated "alpha clones" and have severe limitations on sp use and training, capping out at around 5 million sp (an eligible skill list is included in the devblog).
• Skill extraction will not be allowed for alpha clones.
• Alpha clones will only be able to train the skills for their particular race (ie. Amarr characters can only train Amarr skills).
• There is no current plan to limit concurrent logins between alpha and omega accounts, but CCP is going to look at this.
• A subscribed account that lapses and becomes an alpha account will only be able to use skills on the alpha list; effectively, that other training is put in limbo and will not confer any bonuses until it's subscribed again.
• Alpha clones will earn sp at a reduced rate compared to omega clones.

Suffice it to say, this is huge. But not, I suspect, as huge as people believe. In general, I think this change will be a net positive to the gameworld, if CCP makes some small adjustments.

Colonizing the 30-Minute Session

I’ve been playing a lot of Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO as the kids call it) in the last month or so. Trading really has freed up the time I used to spend ratting in Eve. Really, you can’t ask for two games that are more different than CS and Eve.

Where Eve is all about making your own path and creating opportunities and goals, CS spoon-feeds you one of four or five possible routes on every map and clear objectives. Save the hostages, or plant the bomb. That’s it. There isn’t anything more complicated than that.

Counter Strike is all about a single skill, twitch reflexes. You need to be able to line up a shot and fire as fast as possible. It’s based on physical reaction time, so it’s a much more difficult skill to acquire. Eve, on the other hand, requires many skills that are much easier to perfect. The challenge comes from applying them when you see that yellow box appear around your target. Success in Eve requires a much more difficult skill to acquire: contextual decision-making. It’s borne from situational awareness, something that most games don’t need.

As a result, it takes a lot longer to become proficient. You’re not teaching your hands to do things, you’re teaching your brain to work a different way. It requires commitment over months or years. And each play session of Eve requires significant time. It can often take half an hour or more just to get to your destination. Form-ups may take half an hour again. And then you need to make your way home. It’s unlikely that an op will go faster than two hours from start to finish. It consumes an evening entirely.

And that’s Eve’s main problem.

Remembrance and Idealism

Lately, there's been a lot of talk about Dominion sov and Aegis sov. Caprisunkraftfoods, a former alliance-mate and veteran of Black Legion and TISHU, shared some concerns about where Eve is headed. His concerns are incredibly valid, and demonstrate an awareness about the fundamental nature of conflict within the game. I share his concerns, for instance, about industrial citadels, and agree that I don't want POSes to be completely overridden by citadels.

Another former alliance-mate and fellow writer, Seraph Basarab (leaving out the Roman numerals) countered with his own perspective. In his write-up, he widens the focus conveyed within Capri's write-up to show that the story isn't as narrowly focused as one might think. His arguments are all incredibly reasonable.

Though both of them are in TISHU, they have some different interpretations about gameplay, the trajectory of Eve, and the general quality of recent changes. Both of them are right, and that fact alone reveals the complexity of what CCP is trying to accomplish. The simple fact is that yes, CCP has blindly followed their roadmap while completely ignoring player warnings about the inevitable results. This can have terrible consequences if they do everything they intend to do. Yet, the changes they have made to date have a lot of positive results to the game, as Seraph points out. I don't blame Capri for his lack of faith; that position is well-supported by recent rebalances. But nor is Seraph wrong in seeing the positives.

This discussion, though, has spawned a lot of conversation, though, and through that conversation, I've seen a lot of poorly constructed arguments, filled with fallacies that need to be addressed. This piece isn't an attempt to refute either Capri or Seraph, but rather to unpack and deflate some misconceptions and deliberate tricks being used by those supporting the both of them.

There Is a Reason After All

My corp owns a C6 wormhole, though we’re part of a null-sec alliance. We do that sort of thing; while we all PvP, we each dabble in other areas of the game. Some of us like to do industry, some rat, some do PI, some market trade, and some of us run wormhole sites to earn isk. It makes for a well-balanced group.

We recently dropped an astrahus in our wormhole, so I was eager to get some ships in there. I occasionally scan down WH chains to find targets to kill, and I figured that basing that clone out of the wormhole with my hunting ships made more sense than waiting for a good connection in our null system. Go where the fish are, right?

I had my first ship – a Proteus that could scan down future connections to k-space for stocking a few more vessels – and three separate times, I headed to our connection only to find that the static hole had closed before I could arrive. Finally, on the fourth day, I managed to each the hole. I was ready to clone jump back to known space, happy to have successfully inserted a clone in my destination.

Citadel Traps

I’m a big fan of gameplay that requires plays to do work to catch targets. Generally speaking, if Eve is about improving your skill and defeating a human opponent, using a cheap trick completely defeats the purpose.

That tends to be why I don’t really respect pilots who fly with boosting alts, particularly as they’re still of the off-grid variety. To me, that smacks of throwing money at a problem and pretending it’s skill. It’s certainly a viable, effective, and permitted tactic, but it’s not a very skillful one.

One of the tactics that fit into that category from the moment citadels deployed was dropping a citadel and drag bubbles in line with a gate to pop anyone who warped directly from gate to gate. From the safety of your citadel, you could kill everything with ease. It was a cheap tactic.

And, with the August patch, it’s no longer possible. Drag bubbles will now only catch ships if placed within 500 km of your warpto location (a gate, a planet, etc.)

What surprises me isn’t that Eve players chose to take advantage of this, or that CCP didn’t anticipate this application of the mechanic. It’s that it took this many months for the change to come. I mean, I can understand that it might require some development, and that citadel mechanics are new and prone to surprising effects when you change.

But in null-sec, a citadel-bubble combination is just ridiculous, and systems were lousy with them.

Regardless, it’s another one of those problems we can relegate to history and the “wow, that was really a thing?” category.

Revamping ECM

With one more post before my 400th (and the typical "past 100" review), I thought I might as well raise another thorny problem. What to do about ECM?

Each race has its own special electronic warfare abilities, of course. For instance, the Gallente warp disruption ability was absolutely vital for many fleets - albeit not as much now with the Orthrus - particularly for any fleet that focuses tackle ability on only a couple ships. This powerful ability was paired with the relatively useless sensor dampening. With the Minmatar, target painting is nice, but rarely makes a difference in small gang or solo fights, whereas the webbing range can help dictate engagement range in a meaningful way.

Perhaps owing to their status as the oldest of the four current empires, the Amarr have the best and most useful advantages for small gang and solo, the neuting range, neuting amount, and tracking disruption bonuses. Those three abilities make the Curse and Pilgrim fearsome beasts, able to hold down, suck dry, and render impotent any turret or missiles ships (with missile disruptors). Really, they only need fear drone boats.

And then, there's the Caldari ECM, the bane of nearly any fleet, of any size. If the other ECM ships can be considered a force multiplier, ECM is really a force halver. For, unlike the other abilities that all diminish the combat or defensive capability of a ship or a fleet, ECM completely annihilates it.

Or, it doesn't. An ECM ship either entirely removes an enemy vessel for the fight for the length of its successful jam, or it has absolutely no effect. It's effectiveness is based purely on chance. Even good fitting techniques - fitting the right jams for the kind of ship you're facing - only increases or decreases that chance. Ultimately, random-number generation determines the success.

That fact alone put ECM on the rebalance block. So, what should we replace it with? I certainly can't say for certain, but there are a few options being suggested.

Flagships or Bodyguards?

At the expense of getting two posts out of a single topic (I'm totally shameless enough to do it), I figured a different take on the "flagship" concept (covered in this month's blog banter) deserved a second post.

The blog banter itself was a reaction to CCP's suggestion about adding a new class of ship to the game, a flagship, which would be highly durable and serve the purpose of allowing a pilot to stay on grid for a significant period of time, specifically to counter headshotting by the enemy fleet.

Suffice to say, this provoked a bit of discussion.

One reader in particular was skeptical about having a special ship class have permanent effects tied to it, and suggested an effect that would buff the FC's ship instead:

I'd have it be a more nebulous mechanic born out of the Fleet window which applies an effect much like a Links but to only one pilot. The real trouble is bracketing this effect to only occur in 'real' fights where headshotting is an issue.

This line of thinking tied in so perfectly with a comment my wife made that I wanted to explore it a bit further.

Such a Small Thing, Such a Big Difference

I'm a big fan of the "lose a hundred ships" philosophy of learning to play Eve. Sure. you need to make sure you learn the right lessons from those 100 losses, but there's no better way to learn to PvP than to simultaneously lose your fear of loss and push the envelope to understand the different ways of flying and the counters to each style. A kiting frigate and a kiting cruiser face many of the same challenges - both when flying and when shooting it - and the lessons transfer pretty well.

Honestly, the biggest pain point to losing 100 ships is getting them to your staging system and fitting them all up. Sure, on occasion I complain about wanting to be able to haul my ships quickly, but generally speaking Red Frog does a great job of moving packaged ships to any high-sec system very cheaply, and a Viator can do the job of getting them into lowsec well enough once you get there.

Yet, until now, fitting was a giant pain in the ass.  Not anymore, ladies and gentlemen.  Bulkfitting is coming to Tranquility with the next patch. Now, you'll be able to plop 100 Tristans and their modules into your hangar, select bulkfitting, and end up with 100 fitted and named ships, all ready to go (after the server recovers from all that work, of course...).

Now, at first, you may think this isn't that big of a deal, but it's an absolute game changer for anyone who does alliance logistics, setting up all those ships for contract. Bulk fitting ships was tedious work that detracted from any engaging gameplay. You'd have to do it one at a time, laboriously flipping through multiple windows and dozens of mouseclicks to get uniform results quickly.

Don't Occupy, Modify

Well, this is going to be awkward...

Neville Smit is a good writer, a great thinker, and a very dedicated Eve player. He also represents a style of Eve play that is quite different from mine. It's for all those reasons that I have him on my blogroll, read him regularly, and appreciate his insights.

I saw his recent post, Occupy New Eden, before he sent me a note asking for me to comment on it. I confess, I was already going to do so. It's a dense post that packs a lot of issues into a single manifesto. I must apologize for the length of my reply, but there's a lot in there to discuss. You're getting your pageview's worth today.

The tl;dr (for those of that persuasion) is that I agree with his suggestions, but not for anything resembling the same reasons. I also challenge some of his premises pretty fiercely.

A Ship in Every Citadel

Sure, the title of this post wasn't the tagline of Empress Catiz' coronation celebration, but given the timing between the conclusion of the Amarr Succession Trials and the release of the Citadel expansion, it might as well have been. If you're curious about the lore implications of Catiz Tash-Murkon's ascension to the throne, check out the CZ article by Tarek Raimo. It's very good and informative.

Citadels are coming in about half a day, and with them are coming widespread capital rebalances. What was two is becoming three, with fighter damage and logistics being split up into Carriers and Force Auxiliaries respectively. I still hate that awful name, by the way. It's terrible and doesn't really apply. In my mind, auxiliaries have one of two meanings: either allied forces you don't rely upon, but use to "mop up" or a reserve force you keep until you identify where along a battle line you need some help. They should have called them triage and been done with it.

But, I digress. I won't waste your time talking about the detailed effects these changes will have on capital warfare, more because I honestly don't know than because of personal restraint. I'm not a very experienced capital pilot, and couldn't say how it'll affect the meta. I do predict that the new capital modules will provide some local repping power to offset the danger presented by the new doomsday weapons, and I generally expect more caps to die in engagements than in the past. But I'm not putting any money on it.

Upon first glance, it may not appear as if there's a lot in the Citadel expansion that directly affects subcap PvP. After all, we aren't getting ship rebalances, new ships (which, honestly, we don't really need), or the desperately warranted assault frigate rebalance we've all been asking for. And, generally, I get it. Subcaps have gotten a lot of attention, and it's time to let them sit for a while until all of the ramifications of the whirlwind of changes settles down.

But it'd be a mistake to believe this expansion won't affect subcap pilots.

Citadel Fever

Yesterday was a big day for citadels and the folks interested in them. No fewer than a dozen reddit posts leaking "show info" descriptions, build requirements, and skill prerequisites from the Singularity test server popped up, along with plenty of associated screenshots and eye-candy. Today was the formal announcement by CCP that citadel content has been loaded to Sisi; sure, it's a bit anti-climactic, but it serves a confirmation that the data we're seeing is legit.

Add to that, we've been seeing a constant decline in PLEX prices, despite a fairly robust spate of activity in-game (you may have heard something about Pure Blind and Deklein?) and lingering interest among players in spending RL money to buy skill injectors.  So, why are PLEX prices dropping?

The only real explanation that seems to make any sense is that the wealthy are liquidated their supplies of PLEX to free up isk. The need seems to be splti between a desire to build citadels quickly in prime locations - and hopefully capture some of that transaction tax for themselves - and market speculation on components needed for citadel construction. The result, though, is a sudden and significant drop in the price of gametime - as of my writing PLEX sits at 1.085 billion, far lower than it's recent plateau of 1.2 bil. Chances are very good that prices are going to continue to drop as citadel construction gets closer and more and more people start reallocating the isk idling in PLEX.

I wager it's safe to say Citadel fever has gripped new Eden.

About That New Camera

I generally do not like new things. There are a lot of reasons for this, of course. Part of it is that I tend to operate on “autopilot” a lot. I put my toothbrush in the same place, I put the hamper in the same place, I keep the leftovers I take for lunch in the same place in the refrigerator. This isn’t out of some OCD desire, but rather sheer convenience. When I can predict where things are, I can move faster, spend time thinking about and doing other things, and generally save time.  I use my feet to pick up my dirty clothes while I brush my teeth, for instance, and know exactly the arc and angle I need to toss them for them to land in the hamper. When my toothbrush isn’t where it’s supposed to be, or the hamper was moved, it screws me up.

Yet it’s more than that. Setting things up and getting yourself familiar with a new system takes time. I have a wife, two kids, a full-time job, and gobs of chores I need to do around my house; if I have to give something up, it ends up being my leisure time; I hate that. I loathe new computers for the work it takes to set them up and customize them. I hate new phones because you have to port over your contacts, and the auto-transfer is never 100%.

And, perhaps worst of all, I generally rebel against progress for progress’s sake. I don’t believe new is better, and in fact often times it’s worse; there’s a reason humanity has done things the same way for thousands of years, and “new” tends to be the result of arrogant thinking (“But we’re better than we were!”  No, we’re not.). Invariably, “new” gets pushed a side for traditional again.

And, perhaps most importantly, the first version of software is always riddled with bugs. The first wave of colonists anywhere always gets slaughtered, and the first group of revolutionaries always becomes martyrs. Being first is typically only a good idea in market trading, and even then it’s dicey.

So, with that background, let me say that the new camera is actually a little better than the old one.

Spiral Out, Keep Going...

One of my favorite bands is Tool, for the way they combine complex rhythms with thought-provoking lyrics. One of their songs, Lateralus, has some lyrics that talk about the ongoing desire to pursue knowledge and understanding, constantly pushing the bounds of consciousness.  Here's an excerpt:

Black
then
white are
all I see
in my infancy.
red and yellow then came to be,
reaching out to me,
lets me
see.

There
is
so much
more that beckons me
to look through to these
infinite possibilities. 

As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
drawn outside the lines of reason.
Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

Spiral out, keep going...
Spiral out, keep going...
Spiral out, keep going...

Yes, that's a full Fibonacci sequence (up and back down) within that first stanza and a half of one on he second. That's just some of the awesomeness in those lyrics. But beyond that, there's the meaning of the words... 1) we never know enough, and 2) reality is constantly being remade by what we do know.

Yesterday, it struck me that this really is the secret to Eve's success.

The CCP Dichotomy

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been a little confused about CCP’s behavior. Great, responsive moves that suggest they have the future of Eve well in hand are followed up by evidence of tone-deafness that causes me to lose all hope in their stewardship of the game.

I really want Eve to succeed not only at retaining existing customers, but also drawing in new players. To that end, it’s very important to me that CCP’s cash flow and balance sheet remain healthy and robust. More money for CCP means more development resources and money for salaries to draw the best and most innovative employees. All of that is a win for Eve players.

A lot of players are angry at CCP right now. And I think they have a right to be angry… but I don’t think viewing the company as a unified whole is fair. You’ve got two competing interests in CCP right now; one of them extremely positive, the other negative or – at best – incompetent.

The Part Where I Rip CCP a New One...

Hot off the presses... CCP just announced the pricing for skill extractors on the New Eden Store.

    1 Extractor - 999 aurum
    5 Extractors - 4,499 aurum
    10 Extractors - 7,999 aurum

On the one hand, I'm delighted about this price, because it means the 55 PLEX I puchased a few days ago are going to go through the roof very quickly. 1.5 billion isk is not unreasonable, and that'll net me 16 bil in profits. Thanks for making me that much richer, CCP!

But from every other case, this is a colossally poor pricing decision.  So poor, in fact, that I question whether CCP did any pricing research at all.

Skill Point Injectors - My Strategy 1 Week Out

We're moving ever closer to the contentious release of skill point injectors, due with the February 9th release. Allow me to say how interesting I find it that with the capital rebalance and citadels looming on the horizon, the thing the community is focused on is these little options. And boy, what a focus it has been.

I certainly see the source of everyone's fears about the injectors, although I don't share them. While folks look at the monetizing aspect of skill injectors, I tend not to look at it from that perspective. After all, skill injectors don't allow players to earn anything beyond what they can earn naturally over time. I've long been against the need for newer players to spend upwards of two years being terrible at Eve while they train up essential skills; I'd much rather that they be able to excel as their player skills (not character skills) increase.

NoizyGamer has a great article predicting the price of final, loaded skill injectors. It's a good analysis and worth the read.