EVE: Day one reactions to Crucible, and another war for DiS

Posted on November 30, 2011 by SynCaine

I feel that I greatly underestimated Crucible in terms of its overall impact on EVE (at least day-one impact), which is somewhat surprising to me since I watched all the dev videos and read all the blogs. I thought I knew what was coming and how important/noticeable it would be, but nope.

The new nebulas are amazing. They look phenomenal, and the whole “they actually exist between different systems” is more impressive than I first gave it credit. What was/is obvious, and what I somehow missed, is that the new nebulas improve what you are looking at when in space, and “when in space” is a pretty significant thing in EVE. In other words, this change is more “we upgraded all of the terrain textures in the world” than “we made a single zone look better”, to bring in a more standard MMO example. This also makes traveling between systems more interesting, as rather than seeing similar-looking backgrounds, you now have distinct focal-points all across New Eden, which just happen to look really cool.

The UI changes: Being able to jump to and through a gate is one of those “this just NOW got added?” changes that is a lot cooler in-game than it seems on paper. Same for MOTD in non-custom channels. UI scaling works as expected, but that’s a very good thing. I’m sure in the days to come I’ll notice a lot of other little new things that just make playing more fun.

My Caldari Navy Raven looks like a beast now. Sure digital camo paint makes little sense in space, but whatever, it looks cool. The ship still looks like a Raven, but the changes to it make it look far more deadly. Good stuff. Same but lesser effect on all my other Caldari ships; they just look better than they did pre-expansion, and while that’s something we should all expect from our MMOs, it seems to rarely work that way.

Shots missing + lasers = win. Running a Sansha mission last night was like being in a disco lightshow, but in a good way. Same deal for the engine trails; a little thing that is noticeable the first time, and stays looking cool the 10th time.

And in non-expansion but EVE news, DiS is at war again, this time from a random 7 man corp. DiS members suspect it’s due to this blog, and if that’s true, can someone please comment to confirm so I can take full credit for bringing action to the Corp? Thanks.

Last night one of our members got caught at a gate in his Noctis, and I was able to fly over before he went poof in a lightly fitted Merlin frig. The enemy switched his scram off the Noctis (full of mission loot) on to my ship, suspecting I might be a real threat. I wasn’t (he was in a speed-fit Crow vs my meta 1-fit ship), but the distraction saved an expensive ship full of loot, and my total loss after insurance (go go platinum) was less than 50k ISK (he also flew away before looting me, so I was able to recover what dropped). Sadly I can’t play tonight, but hopefully they stay active and more action happens. No better way to learn how to PvP than by actually doing it, right?

Posted in EVE Online, Patch Notes, PvP | 12 Comments

Bobby does have a point…

Posted on November 29, 2011 by SynCaine

When Bobby talks about generic themepark MMOs that might have trouble retaining players, he is speaking from experience here.

I mean look, what’s more likely to get you to keep throwing $15 into a hole, dated-looking Pandas, or ten blaster shots to the face? A cheap pokemon knockoff sideshow, or a 2004 game with a fan-made-quality Star Wars graphical conversion? Skipping quest voiceovers or raiding with dumber-than-bots anonomous raiders? Welfare epics or welfare Sci-Fi epics?

When Bobby talks of failure, you should listen to the expert!

Posted in SW:TOR, World of Warcraft | 15 Comments

MMO Expansions

Posted on November 29, 2011 by SynCaine

It’s expansion day in EVE today, and Crucible sounds like it will get the game back to its winning ways. What’s interesting about Crucible is that it comes without a ‘killer app’ of a feature. Nothing that really jumps out at you and says “start playing NOW!” Which got me thinking, just how important is that, and furthermore, what exactly should an expansion do?

I commented recently that WoW’s WotLK failed because it stagnated the games growth, while Cata further failed because it’s costing WoW about a million subs every, oh, minute or so now? MoP very clearly has a ’killer app’, pandas/pokemon, and Bobby is praying at his stock-options alter that Kung Fu Panda is still a hot trend among pre-teens when MoP hits stores.

I bring WoW up because (bashing for my amusement aside) Blizzard’s strategy, reflected in their expansions, is very different from CCP’s. Blizzard, for some time now, has been trying to replace disgruntled WoW players with fresh blood, while Crucible is very much a bittervet-driven release. As TAGN highlights, there is nothing in Crucible itself that grabs him and demands he return, while Blizzard ‘restarting’ WoW with every expansion certainly provides that motivator, be it for totally new players or those on break.

Where CCP will likely see growth is not from a bullet-list of expansion features, but what those game changes will do for the players currently playing. If it’s successful, moral in-game will improve, and current players will be more likely to recommend the game to their buddies, or write blog posts about how much they are enjoying the game. This won’t result it first-week sales of a million copies, but it does result in 7+ years of year-over-year growth.

This is also why WoW’s decline is so shocking. 12 million people have a lot more buddies, and a lot more blog writers/readers, than a pool of 300k. What exactly does it say about your product when a pool of 12 million can’t bring in others, especially when one of the core values of an MMO is the social ties and motivators of playing in a massive, online world?

Whenever I brought players into Darkfall, League of Legends, or now EVE, I’ve always followed up with them and provided a resource for questions. This instantly gave them at least one social ‘hook’, and made the initial experience a bit easier. Many of those players have either joined Inq or DiS, giving them yet another social tie. If they enjoy the game itself, they might bring in a friend, who might know someone, etc. It’s not hard to see why WoW initially went from a beta size of a few hundred thousand, to well over 10 million “back in the day”. The social momentum not only brings in new players, but helps keep existing players around far longer than the actual game content should. MMO content is not months/years-worth ‘better’ than single-player content; playing it with others makes it what it is.

From a player’s perspective, it’s hard to argue against the game you are currently enjoying simply getting better, rather than resetting and changing directions. Crucible is very much an EXPANSION to EVE, rather than a replacement for existing content. This also, in part, explains why EVE players stick with the game for so long. If you loved the content in 2005, it’s still here in 2011, only now you also have X, Y, and Z to play with as well. Oh and the game looks like something from 2011, rather than 2005. And if your buddies play EVE, you play on the same ‘server’. And the conflict they were talking about that got you interested initially? That’s happening on your ‘server’ as well. All of these social benefits, and EVE’s long-running growth, are not independent items.

Posted in Darkfall Online, EVE Online, Inquisition Clan, League of Legends, Mass Media, MMO design, Rant, World of Warcraft | 18 Comments

Back from vacation

Posted on November 28, 2011 by SynCaine

I find it very amusing that Trion has called their latest event currency a “unique snowflake”, considering the actual event sounds like a rehash of every other event. I’m laughing, but not WITH you Trion.

I’m still playing a lot of Skyrim, and I’m still enjoying it just as much as I did initially. My current character is a destro(fire)/resto mage, with a sword/board companion. Initially a mage is very plain, but once you get some additional spells, and start to combo some stuff together, it’s very entertaining. Sending my brute in first and hiding behind him while channeling a healing spell works very well, especially once I got him geared up a bit (this also makes finding heavy armor/weapons not ‘pointless’ for a mage).

I can also safely state that while the main storyline is good, there are side-quests that completely blow it out of the water in terms of surprises or just fun gameplay. The ‘sandboxy-ness’ of Skyrim really shines here, as it’s very easy to bounce between longer quest chains and just hitting up a random cave to bash some skulls. I’ll also grudgingly admit that while it still sucks, the UI has somewhat grown on me and it’s not getting in the way nearly as much as it was previously. That said, selecting chat options is still a huge killer for me, and I can’t wait for a patch/mod to fix this.

Finally things in EVE are going very well. Since the loss of my Rattlesnake, I’ve purchased a Navy Raven to run missions in, and it does the job very well. Seven cruise missile launchers put out some serious DPS, while the active shield tank I have going has so far held up in every mission. I initially wanted to save up the ISK for another Rattlesnake, but I’m now leaning towards putting more ISK into the Raven and getting it in really good shape. Currently it’s mostly T2 fitted, but many of the builds I see online use faction mods, and assuming the Raven does not meet the same fate as the Rattlesnake, I can always sell those later on if I opt for a different ship.

I’ve also started messing around with Research agents on my industry pilot, and his Planetary Interaction setup has so far been very profitable. This week I’ll have the sixth and final planet up, which I plan to use as a processing center to turn lower-tier goods into high-end stuff. I’ll have to play around in Excel to see where the best profit margins lie of course.

The Crucible expansion hits this week, and like everyone else, I’m very excited for all the changes. I’m sure I’ll have a post up about that either later this week or early next.

My buddy invites should refresh shortly, so anyone who did not receive one last time will have another chance to try the game out for 21 days. Soon as they refresh, I’ll put up a post.

Posted in EVE Online, Patch Notes, Random, Rift | 6 Comments

Blizzard announces new dev team for WoW

Posted on November 23, 2011 by SynCaine

Odds of these guys producing another WotLK/Cata?

Posted in World of Warcraft | 23 Comments

EVE: Grind leads to greatness

Posted on November 22, 2011 by SynCaine

I found a few comments interested related to the R&K video I posted last weekend. In particular, the mention of ‘grind’ related to getting into Nova.

If getting into Nova was not ‘hard’, Nova would not be worth what it’s worth. It would not be populated by a top-end Corp, nor would it be of interest to another top-end Corp. The work, setup, and billions of ISK in hardware that went into making that final battle so epic would not have happened.

If you could just take your fleet and “queue up” for Nova whenever was most convenient for you, owning it would have little value. It would, you know, be like all those ‘accessible’ PvP objectives in a whole bunch of MMOs with horrible PvP. I’d rather ‘grind’ to get to good PvP than have horrible PvP ‘accessible’ to me, but I’m weird like that.

Posted in EVE Online, MMO design, PvP, Rant | 13 Comments

The real SW:TOR killer

Posted on November 22, 2011 by SynCaine

First, how can SW:TOR be a WoW-killer when Cata already did the job? We should call it WoW-finisher instead, right? Sucks for Bioware that Blizzard beat them to the punch on that one.

Second, and far more important, it sucks that Skyrim already killed SW:TOR huh?

Full voice acting? Check.

Amazing solo adventure? Check.

Popular IP? Check.

Story over gameplay focus? Check.

Additional dev-provided content you pay for after the box? Check.

People expecting silly things like game balance, PvP, or social aspects? Check.

Problem is, if you have the correct version of Skyrim, you also get player-made content, graphic upgrades, UI changes, and bug fixes for free (mods). Not so much in SW:TOR. And unlike SW, I don’t have to disable general chat when I log in, while still having access to vent to chat with people I do want to share the experience with. I also don’t have to wait for mobs to respawn, or have someone skip a cutscene to get the loot NOW!, or stop the story to grind out XP in order to actually progress. Or just in general you get to stay away from SW fans, who make WoW players look like normal people.

But hey, lightsabers… that 5 hit rats. Yo.

Posted in Random, SW:TOR, World of Warcraft | 33 Comments

EVE: Losing the battle, ‘winning’ the war

Posted on November 21, 2011 by SynCaine

My ‘war’ preview linked to my kill mail, and left people guessing at what happened. Pretty interesting to see people try to piece things together. Here is what actually happened.

The war-dec was pulled back shortly after it was declared, but this being EVE it was not clear to me what that really meant. Did the war never start? Was it over? The Corp war list showed the war as still active, yet the times for the war indicated it was done. Wtf…

And of course, this being EVE, I’m pretty sure the war pullback was part of our enemies plan, to get us thinking the war was over when they still had another night to engage. Fool me once and all that. First lesson learned.

Five of us from DiS were running lvl 4 missions that night, and the location of our last mission happened to be a dead-end system. I was in my Rattlesnake, Rebecca was in her Sleipnir, we had Kobea (new pilot) in his cruiser, Dex in a Noctis (salvaging/looting ship), and Weshaviopi in her Drake.

Wes was the first to leave the system after the mission, and got caught on the other side of the gate, scrammed, and killed. She was also podded. Kobea also jumped the gate, but he was able to get to a station and dock. This left myself, Rebecca, and Dex in the deadend system.

Rebecca had just joined us, but has PvP experience, so she went into FC mode and started planning for the fight. We got Kobea to quickly put together a tackling ship, and we jumped the gate and stayed cloaked for a few seconds. We then timed us coming out of cloak with him flying in and tackling the enemy Armageddon battleship. The plan was to get our drones on the enemy Rifter frigate and dps the Hurricane battlecruiser. The idea was to chase off the Rifter and Cane, and then blow up the tackled Geddon. Sounded like a good plan to me.

As it turned out, the Cane was pure DPS fitted, and the Geddon was providing remote repping. This made killing the Cane far more difficult than we had anticipated, and Rebecca was not able to tank all of the DPS coming at her. Once she went boom, I was tackled and they popped me as well. We both made it out with our pods. “Gf” went up in local, and we left down around 2 billion ISK.

In retrospect a lot of mistakes were made, the biggest of which was getting into the fight in the first place. We were flying pretty expensive ships, not PvP fitted, and the risk/reward ratio was simply not there. Blowing up that Geddon would not have been THAT worthwhile. That aside, I believe that if we had focused the Geddon first, it would have popped faster than the Cane, and that would have won us the battle. Sending drones on the Rifter was also likely a mistake; that DPS would have been better on either the Cane or the Geddon. In the fight that did happen, the Cane was a volley or two away from structure when Rebecca popped, and the Rifter had already fled, so it was very close. I also made the mistake of sending out my medium drones rather than my heavies. The heavies would have been better vs the Cane/Geddon, and as the fight was in close proximity, their slower speed would not have factored in. Finally I could have warped out when it became clear that the Cane was not going to pop and Rebecca was going down, as I was not scrammed at that point. And I’m sure veteran EVE reader will point out a whole lot more (please do).

I’ll say this though; the moments before we engaged, sitting in a safe spot planning, then at the gate cloaked, and finally the battle itself, that was pretty intense. The kind of high you only get in an MMO, and the kind of experience that, to me, makes it all worthwhile. Screw a steady drip of average; I’ll take my daily ‘grind’ for spikes of pure adrenaline any day of the week. And even in defeat, down a ton of ISK, with that “did that just happen?” feeling in my stomach, well, it’s why I play.

Plus that encounter gives me a ton of ‘content’ going forward. I want to get the ISK together for another Rattlesnake, as it was a lot of fun to use in missions. I certainly want to get better at PvP and get into more fights. And the whole experience was a memorable event for DiS, and something that I think motivated all of us to make this work and improve. ‘Negative sum’ PvP indeed.

Posted in EVE Online, PvP | 18 Comments

EVE: Best 37 minutes of your weekend, possibly your year

Posted on November 19, 2011 by SynCaine

Rooks and Kings: Clarion Call 3

It’s 37 minutes. Watch it. 100% totally worth it whether you play EVE or not.

PS: That’s basically how PvP looks for me. Basically…

PPS: I have no clue wtf was going on in 90% of the battles, but I do know that watching the final battle I was on the edge of my seat. Can’t even imagine what it felt like to actually be a part of that live, or even if they knew just how close it was.

Edit: Right after watching this I loaded up Skyrim, and looking at the title screen I can’t help but question why I even bother. Damn you MMO highs. (And this one’s not even mine)

Posted in EVE Online | 21 Comments

EVE: War story preview

Posted on November 19, 2011 by SynCaine

Yup

Posted in EVE Online, PvP | 8 Comments