EVE: WH building blocks

April 17, 2012

Gevlon posts + unfiltered comments = internet winning.

That aside, WH life update time.

I like our WH.

Having a low-sec static means we can roll it in an attempt to get favorable Empire access, or roll it to a low population system when we don’t want visitors. It will also allow us to stage future low-sec roams. Actually rolling a hole is still a little hit or miss for us, but I’m sure we will get the exact science down shortly.

I also like how active our constellation seems to be. We get 3-6 Sleeper sites spawning per day, which has become a great source of income and quick, solid content for us to knock out while we gather pilots together. Mag and Radar sites also seem to spawn somewhat frequently, and so far we have always had a grav site to mine.

Speaking of mining, being inside the WH means we are poised to benefit greatly from the upcoming drone region nerf and overall limiting of minerals. Hulkaggedon will only further increase our profit margins. So far we have yet to put together a mining fleet the size we did in Empire, but hopefully we do shortly because the amount of high-end ore is crazy, and now that we have our X-L ship assembly for storage, space is no longer a limiting factor. Our long-term plan is to build a Roquel to compress ore, but even at 75% yield, refining inside the WH and shipping minerals out will still provide a huge amount of ISK.

As Cyndre posted about over at KTR, we are in the process of knocking down the NPC customs offices and putting up our own. This combined with our PI initiative, which has started but is not yet complete, will be an additional, sustained source of ISK. As previously mentioned, the nice bonus of PI inside the WH is you can update your planets inside the POS shields, and with decent scouting the risk of running an industrial to the CO to pick up or drop off goods is not that great.

I expect our Corp’s income to increase significantly now that the majority of our infrastructure has been paid for and is in place. With more ISK going to payouts, I’m hoping more of our members acquire better ships for PvP and we can start roaming and causing trouble.

30 Comments | crafting, EVE Online, Inquisition Clan | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Three amazing games and everyones favorite mistake

April 16, 2012

In shocking news no one saw coming, SW:TOR is doing really well. Someone should start a “is it 6 months yet?” meme. That would be cute. Hey at least the game is free now, how very FFXIV of EAWare.

Speaking of cute, I picked up the Path of Exile beta for $10. Money well spent already. While I’m not the biggest fan of that genre, and it’s hard to play anything but EVE at the moment, PoE has some interesting mechanics and makes for a nice little break. I’d say more but plenty have said it already. If you like this style of game, PoE might be the best example in years.

Random thoughts about Skyrim, as I’m still playing that a bit as well; is it just me or is the game more fun at the beginning and until level 20 or so? I find I complete one major chain (thieves’ guild, mage’s guild, the war, the main quest) and then start a new character rather than use that same one to continue. It’s not just that you get too powerful, but that the whole thing gets… boring. I feel like Skyrim as a world is so amazing, and the stories are so good, that the whole ‘game’ aspect of it, the leveling and different abilities and such, just get in the way. Simple early-game combat and story are what I like.

Also playing with the realistic lighting mod, and having dungeons be truly dark, makes it easier to skip all the little chests and such since you can’t see most of them. Dungeon running now is about seeing the major content and just enjoying the scenery (made even more amazing by the lighting mod), rather than opening ever last barrel for 7 gold pieces.

Quick note about INQ-E: I’ve put a halt on recruitment for the moment. We have enough players in the WH to make that work, and for totally new players we don’t have the Empire presence to make us an appealing corp. If someone is still interested, I would recommend working on your pilot towards WH life, and joining our public channel to hang out. If we end up opening recruitment back up, you will be ready and able to contribute faster.

18 Comments | beta, Combat Systems, EVE Online, Inquisition Clan, Mass Media, Random, SW:TOR | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Wish I had kept that 50 on my account

April 13, 2012

Busy day at work means you just get a link.

/agree with Paragus

Only question left is who came up with this? The Mythic failures, or the “Sundays are busy” crew?

Put me down for $5 on white shades.

39 Comments | SW:TOR | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

EVE: Aim higher

April 11, 2012

Back when Gevlon (and countless other bloggers) droned on and on about WoW AH ‘strategies’ I always laughed to myself. Posting that you dominate the kiddy pool just makes you look bad, and the only people who are impressed by such an ‘accomplishment’ are the clueless (I believe Gevlon calls them M&S?) So when Gevlon started playing EVE I was rather excited. Finally his ability to hyper-focus and to grind beyond the average tolerance of a human would be put to the test, and the results would be documented for all to enjoy.

This post, about his ultimate goal now being simply to get into a titan, is disappointing. Getting into a titan is not hard. Literally ANYONE can do it. Troll the character bazaar, buy a pilot, setup a secure (not with Mittens) trade for the ship, boom, done. And joining a null-sec alliance with a titan is like joining a casual raiding guild with an all BiS healer; only the best will reject you, and the best WILL reject you.

If Gevlon truly is on some holy crusade to prove that his way of playing a game (but not having fun, fun is for M&S) is superior, he should aim for something that is an actual accomplishment. Earning 7b ISK in two months of pure ISK grinding is only impressive to the clueless (M&S right?). All those people telling you they earn what you earned as passive income in a day? They are not saying it to upstage you (you are not on their stage, or even in the same building), they are saying it to try and give you some perspective. 7b ISK, or even 700b ISK, is not an impressive amount amongst those who care about large ISK totals. Remember this story? That’s impressive, and not just because of the ISK total.

Forget the titan Gevlon. Aim for something above the easy reach of a M&S. CCP is practically inviting you to try with the upcoming mineral changes, and those who truly care about ISK totals have already started the race. Time to catch up.

27 Comments | Blogroll, crafting, EVE Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

EVE: Getting knocked into the whelp eggs all over again

April 11, 2012

Playing multiple pilots in a wormhole is not smart. I won’t be making that mistake again, but it’s too bad it took losing about 500m ISK to learn the lesson.

I was mining a grav site on one account in a Hulk, clearing a Sleeper site with another. The hulk got jumped by a Loki, and I was able to flip over to him just in time to see his pod scrammed and to witness the always lovable insta-trip to a station. Hey at least my Drake+pilot made it back into the POS…

As more time goes by, WH life in many ways is similar to themepark raiding in terms of its effect on a guild/corp. Its ‘hard’ content, you have to always be on your game, and making a single mistake hurts not just you but everyone around as well. It also somewhat forces you to develop more of an ‘elite’ attitude. You can’t keep playing your for-the-lulz-spec anymore. High-sec is like the leveling game, where you can group up or do whatever solo, but everyone ultimately is moving along at their own pace and progress is made regardless. In a WH, you very much can regress, and quickly.

I think the challenge, bringing in newish players (both new to EVE, and new to how to be a helpful Corp member) into such a space/environment, is an interesting one, and shows off the strengths of the sandbox. In a themepark MMO, you can’t attempt this; the game simply won’t let you. That said, SHOULD you attempt this is another matter, and HOW you do so is tricky. You can’t just switch a mostly casual Corp into an elite WH fighting unit overnight. You might not even WANT to become an elite fighting unit. My days of hardcore raiding and handholding everyone while adding up DKP are behind me, and I’m at the point now where if I need to hold your hand, I just won’t bother and I’ll remove you. I have less patience now than I did back when I was in college. I don’t know what that says about me personally, but considering I’m evil incarnate as it is, I’m not too worried.

Interesting times ahead.

10 Comments | EVE Online, Inquisition Clan, MMO design, PvP | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

EVE: Communism

April 10, 2012

Quick note for today: I’ve implemented communism in our wormhole.

Basically all drops/products that actually make it to market and get sold go into the Corporate wallet, and once the wallet reach a certain amount, all active WH residence get an equal share. Clean, simple, and hopefully effective.

Any WH dwellers try/do something similar?

28 Comments | EVE Online, Inquisition Clan | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

EVE: First weekend in our wormhole

April 9, 2012

Rumors of WH life being slow and boring are greatly exaggerated, at least based on our first weekend. Holy crap did a lot happen.

After the previously reported POS setup failure, the EVE gods smiled on us and opened up a perfect exit for us to move everything inside Friday night. Orcas, Industrials, and PvP ships all come inside, as did most of the goods we immediately needed. We literally had most of the Corp going in and out for hours, all while trying to line up who needs to buy what and where to store things. The whole thing looked like a busy ant colony doing work. Very cool stuff.

We onlined the POS and started setting up the defenses. I had a bit of a fail-fit moment with my placement of guns/ECM, but the next day, and after a humorous forum post, corrected things. As with most things in EVE, the first time you try to anchor structures you don’t really ‘get’ it, and will likely fail. Once you figure out wtf you are doing, the system is actually not that bad. It’s easy to call this bad UI design, but given the complexity and the freedom, it’s likely the best system without totally making things too easy. Learning curve; EVE has one, even after two years of playing.

Saturday night we cleared the available Sleeper sites, and after just a few hours, collected about one billion ISK worth of loot that was successfully delivered to market. This was a rather nice haul, and hopefully the Sleepers keep coming back and bringing their toys with them.

While this was happening, we also started working on a grav site, mining ABC ores. It’s at this point that we discovered one of the challenges with mining in a WH: the refinery you can online at the POS only refines with a 75% yield, and that’s assuming you can get 25% yield from skills. Oh, and that refinery takes three hours to run a cycle, and the maximum volume for a cycle is just 200,000m3, plus you can only refine one ore type per cycle. And speaking of maximum volume, it did not take long to fill the Corporate hanger with ore as well, meaning we had to stop mining until we refined some ore down into the much smaller minerals. Perfecting this whole dance will take some time, but it makes normally dull crafting very interesting.

Sunday was a bit of a shitshow, as we had a high-sec entrance open up on us. Initially this was a huge boon, as we moved a bunch of goods out to market and get more stuff inside. The downside is that we had some visitors, and they did not play nice with the locals. We made some pretty serious tactical mistakes, but total losses were not huge and valuable lessons were learned. I expect us to continue learning such things the hard way as we go, and so long as moral stays up and we keep learning, everything will be fine.

Looking back on the weekend, I can honestly say that WH life is even more interesting and challenging than I had initially expected. There are hundreds of little details that demand attention, and any one of them could result in disaster, be it financial or combat. At the same time, the potential for income is ridiculous, and almost everything encourages your Corp to band together and tackle it as a team.

Oh, and it’s also a hell of a lot of fun in the purest of MMO terms. Cyndre covers some of it in this post, and he also has a post similar to this one about the weekend. It’s been since DF with Inq that I’ve felt this connected to an MMO, the immediate community I have within it, and the overall community as a whole. It’s that connection that I believe is the ultimate selling point of the genre; it sucks you in and makes you care more than any other game possibly could.

EVE-related blog post notice: If you would like to join us, comment here or shoot me an email. If you don’t have an EVE account, I’m more than happy to send a 21-day trial invite, and split the PLEX-related profit if you decide to sign up. Again just comment or email me.

16 Comments | crafting, EVE Online, Inquisition Clan, MMO design, PvP | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

EVE: We are unofficially a wormhole Corp now

April 6, 2012

Last night INQ-E purchased a wormhole and established ourselves in our new home.

Oh wait that was just the plan.

In a very impressive showing, we had the majority of the Corp online and ready for the move. Haulers filled up their ships, PvP escorts were ready to go, and everything was looking good. We got the entrance location from the seller, made our way to it without incident, and got everyone inside the wormhole and to the POS we were set to purchase.

Then things went a bit south. Or more accurately, did not go anywhere.

Our seller, the current owner of the POS, did not leave a pilot with anchoring III behind (the skill needed to unanchor a POS, so that it would be traded). His alt only had anchoring II, but was training towards III and only had ‘about an hour’ to go. About an hour turned out to be closer to two. Oh and after those two hours, he was at anchoring II, not III. Wheee.

Since we were buying the POS, we did not bring our own. Had we done so, we would have been up and running in plenty of time. Lesson learned.

During the initial wait for the transfer, we probed down the entire system, and along with a nice collection of grav and ladar sites, found two additional wormholes. The first lead to a C4, which contained an active POS and a few capital ships inside it. Not wanting to stay connected to our temporary neighbors, we took our first shot at collapsing a hole, moving battleships back and forth in order to destabilize it. Once critical, we left it alone. The other hole was to null-sec, and in our attempt to destabilize that hole, the last battleship to jump back inside actually closed it. This was met with cheers in vent.

Once the seller realized his mistake, he was nice enough to simply give us the WH rather than sell it, which I felt was a pretty standup move by him. We had one of our trailing members buy a POS in Jita and haul it down, but as luck would have it, he got scanned down and suicide-ganked along the way. The truly comical part of this is right before that happened, I was saying on vent how I doubt anyone would suicide a hauler with just a POS inside, considering it’s only worth 300m and its 50/50 whether it survives the wreck. A goonswarm member confirmed that yes, suicide-gankers will take that risk.

One of those “this is EVE” moments happened a few days ago, when I discovered that there is an entire Corporation that runs a WH selling/brokerage service. If there is a demand for some service, you can be sure someone in EVE will do it for a price. The broker’s side of this entire thing went very smoothly. I transferred the ISK to him, along with a 10% fee, and he held the ISK until I had control of the POS. Once it became apparent that the trade was not going to happen, he returned the ISK minus his fee as we had agreed. Considering the whole fiasco took more than three hours, his prompt service and response times were highly appreciated.

While the actual result of the night was not what we had planned for or expected, the whole experience was still very memorable, and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Experiencing something that new as a large group is a lot of fun, and seeing the whole Corp working towards one goal like that was great. ‘Epic’ moments in an MMO don’t always end with a dead dragon. Sometimes, ‘nothing’ happening can be just as, if not more, exciting.

Tonight is round two of actually putting the POS online and setting everything up. What could possibly go wrong?

20 Comments | EVE Online, Inquisition Clan | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

If only it had snowed more

April 5, 2012

EVE is not the only game that people say stupid things about. From everyone’s favorite comments section, I give you this gem:

Linking apparent server populations to subscriber numbers might be an indicator, but in reality, it’s really just conjecture, voodoo science, guesswork.

For example, my SWTOR sub is good thru May, but I’ve been doing other things and have barely been logged in for a full hour in weeks . Mild winter/early spring also moves folk to spend less time at the computer.

That’s right folks. SW:TOR numbers are WAY DOWN not because the game sucks as an MMO (and seemingly, as a game overall), but because.

Wait for it.

The winter was mild.

And have you noticed that, in particular, Sunday’s have been mild? EAWare can’t compete with mild winter Sunday’s. Sometimes you make a great game with amazing retention, and god deals you a rough hand and strings a bunch of warn Sunday’s together to foil your master plan.

This also further proves that EVE players are all sociopaths. Look at this chart. Clearly despite warn Sunday’s, EVE players would rather participate in torture (play EVE) than get a tan or do some yard work. Losers.

PS: Wormhole for 800m should make for some interesting blog posts coming up.

Edit: Suicide watch update.

You will get to hear it from the horses mouth in May that is the next investor call …try not to fling yourself off a building or anything after the announcement.

I’m sure Massively have contacted the police to ensure everyone that comment was aimed at has not killed themselves, and will perma-ban Dunraven_. I also fully expect EG, RPS, CNN, and Obama to address the issue later tonight.

25 Comments | EVE Online, Mass Media, SW:TOR | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Show me where the bad man touched you

April 5, 2012

In the hotly contested “Say the absolute stupidest thing about EVE” category, we have a new winner. Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present:

Is EVE a game, or a platform for abuse?

Congratulations. You somehow managed to make Massively trolls look like rocket scientists with just one short sentence. /hat-tip.

11 Comments | EVE Online | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

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