How Not To Treat New Recruits

[consoling Bart] What did you expect? “Welcome, sonny”? “Make yourself at home”? “Marry my daughter”? You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.

~ Gene Wilder, Blazing Saddles

The following is an actual in game conversation from my corporation.  Names have been changed to protect the guilty, even though they don’t deserve it.  I hope your corp is doing a better job than mine is.

 

Veteran Pilot 1 > Anyone want to help me kill this drake?

New Pilot* > sorry I am to far away 

[*English is not his primary language]

Veteran Pilot 1 > lol you don’t even know where the WH enterance is

Veteran Pilot 1 > rofl

New Pilot > [system a half dozen or so jumps from where our current home base is]

New Pilot > i AM

Veteran Pilot 1 > Actually the WH enterance is in [system even further away]

New Pilot > 14 JUMPS FOR ME

Veteran Pilot 1 > wow 14 jumps!

Veteran Pilot 2 > taht so many@!

…[discussion of what all is in the wormhole, needed load outs, etc.]

New Pilot > omw

Veteran Pilot 1 > forget it, it’s 14 jumps

New Pilot > are u sure?

Veteran Pilot 1 > yup

New Pilot > as u want

Veteran Pilot 2 > pvp cancelled on account of jumping required.

Veteran Pilot 1 > lol high five Veteran Pilot 2

 

I can think of a half dozen ways this could have been handled better, and so can you.  Which reminds me, I’m corp curious at the moment.  I may pause training on my main for a few minutes to have my alt train corporation management and start one, just so I can play around with the controls and options and such.

Late As Usual

I know I promised an aswer to the poll last night, but I had other things that took precedence.  But better late than never, right?

Anyway, I settled on a Battlecruiser that:

• I already had prequisite training for
• Gave me a versatility of loadouts
• Good survivability
• Looked awesome
• And was cheap

And this is where I landed:

It feels dangerous

I chose it for alot of reasons really:

• The Prophecy was easy to build – it requires no noxcium, so I only had to buy the megacyte and zydrine I was short.  I mined the rest here or there or during missions.  The end result cost me 6.2 million.  A pretty good bargain
• Because the Prophecy has no inherent damage bonuses, it can fit just about any type of loadout.  I can continue to play around with artillery fits (I love the insane damage multiplier), or switch to energy weapons to solve my ammo issues.
• The drone bay allows for a full spread of five drones.   I wish it was a little larger, but in truth, thats why I have the Arbitrator, and I’m a little tired of drones at the moment anyway.
• There is a launcher hardpoint – this is really what kept me away from the Gallente ships – I wanted to be able to have some flexibility on damage or to fit an anti-frigate weapon if I switched to non-combat drones.
• I prefer at this point to armor tank, and its where my skills lie.  The Prophecy’s built in bonus for this was nice, along with its full complement of low slots to play with.

 

Of course, there’s lots of other battlecruisers on the market, and probably a few that are just outright better (the Drake is insanely popular I noticed, along with the Myrmidon).  But this is where I landed, and we’ll see where it takes me.

On the poll – the Harbinger gathered the most number of votes!  Probably because of the name relationship – and I would have gone there, except – no launchers, and the thing is almost as ugly as the Caldari ships are.  Plus it was much more expensive.  Congrats to the one and only person who picked the Prophecy!  If I knew who you were, I’d give you a prize…

Late Nights

So last night, RL wasn’t too kind to me.  In fact, it was pretty crappy.  So I was glad to see my brother’s name on the cell phone, calling for some Pirate Time ™.  But as you know by now – not in EVE.  We only play pirates in the age of sail.  So out came the card and in went the PotBS subscription again.  I had every intention of doing a full on Station Pass, and probably still will next month with some birthday cash, but…truth is, I never was able to find a groove in EQ2, and I had my hands full with EVE, so two games should be enough to hold me for now.

We had fun, clearing out the quests in New Orleans and getting back in the groove of things.  Find a ship is getting to be the hard part.  Theres only so many level 25-30 missions you can tackle with a level 17 fall back ship.  My brother being 8 levels ahead of me helps, but even he has a frigate a good bit below his level.  And even 8 levels up, I’m still usually the boarding ships (for any number of reasons, but mostly because grenades rules).  Last night I sat toe to toe in my Hermes fallback trying desperately to get my crew ratio high enough to board the Cerberus next to me.  It wasn’t pretty.

We closed up our session when I glitched out – again, for the umpteenth time.  It has something to do with bumping the coastline I think, but…oosh, it does not make me happy.  But then RL hit me again, so I trumped downstairs at half past midnight with a bottle of rum and a fierce desire to mine asteroids.

And apparently I should drink while I mine more often.  In what seemed like no time, I was awash in tritanium.  I’m really starting to wonder if I shouldn’t make go ahead and make that push to battleship.  Meanwhile, the corp continues to flounder on the shores of 0.0, desperate to get in.  Our CEO told us yesterday, among other things, that he was not worried about our numbers, because once we got our 0.0 space, we would have “literally hundreds of applications.”  I can’t really argue, because I haven’t been there yet, but as usual I’m skeptical.  Besides, what percentage of those are going to be spies!

I’ll post again tonight with screen shots that will answer the poll (as of this writing, we have a 6 way tie in the voting).  I had intended to bring them with me to work, but forgot them at home this morning.  You can blame me if you want, but I blame the rum.

Poll: Battlecruisers

So I had a few milestones this weekend and today.  The first is that when I log in tomorrow night, I’ll be doing level 2 missions for the first time ever!  Not by coincidence, also when I log in tomorrow, I’ll be ready to sit my pod down in the cockpit of my very first battlecruiser.  But which one?

If you’ve been reading, you’ve probably got a leg up on the competition, but nobody should have a lock on this I don’t think.

Also, said drama did not happen as I thought it would.  Things are…changing, I think.  More to ponder I suppose.

Dragging My Feet

So I’m still a little unclear on this whole move to nullsec thing.  We got the word about making a move some 30 jumps away, our last hi-sec staging area before the move.  When I say we got the word, what I really mean is someone told me by word of mouth we were moving to one system.  Or this other system if we wanted.  Simultaneously, none of our three (!) websites had announcements on them.  And to top if off, a day later when the official announcement actually came down via in game mail, if wasn’t for either of the systems I had previously been told to move to.  See why I’m nervous about this?

So I’m dragging my feet.  I spent last night happily mining.  In part its because I have no idea how to prepare for nullsec.  I read one guide I found yesterday which was…pretty useless.  I don’t know what to bring and what to leave behind, if I’m ready skillwise to handle it, etc.  And as usual, my questions have gone unanswered.  Any advice from the peanut gallery out there?

The other reason I spent last night mining was I thought maybe I would put together one of the Armageddons, complete the switch to energy weapons, pack up what I could that I thought might be useful, and leave everything else behind.  I do not want to do multiple trips this time around.  One of the veteran combat pilots is making probably close to a dozen trips altogether, to move his eight combat ships and various other crap with him.   I just figured I’d mothball my two ships:  I wasn’t sure how well the Arbitrator would do in nullsec combat, and the Rifter is so easy to make I can put one together from scrapmetal.

There’s other stuff brewing too, but I can’t really talk about it right now.  If it breaks like I think its going to though, its going to a) happen in the next 24 hours, b) be insanely overdramatic and c) make a great blog post.  ::evil chuckles:: 

If you have some advice, or want to weigh in on this move to nullsec you know what to do…

Just One More Thing…

Oh wow, I am sooooooo tired.  It’s pre-7am here, which is early anyways, especially since it is my day off.  But even more so because I didn’t go to bed until post-2am.   Its fine though, because this is what gamers *live* for!

Yes, it is.  Those nights where you can’t quit, where you just have to do one more thing.  I’ve got to complete this quest series!  Just a few more silver gold platinum dollars* and I can buy that horse! I’ve got to help Ralph ding – she’s so close!**

For me last night it was a combination of things.  An epiphany of how to set up my hotbars to make the Dirge a hell of a lot more playable (sorry Ysh, didn’t see you on).   And then I had to mess around with a Guardian class some.  One of these days I’ll find a new tanking class that I like (well, the Vanguard Pally is okay, but…), or maybe one of these days I’ll stop alt hopping.

After that, it was already late, but I had to jump in to see about EVE.  I can’t tell you much about the wormhole operation we did, other than I brought a cruiser to a battleship fight, but, I got some kudos for showing up, and maybe a few more for the unique fit I’ve been using on it, which involves using BFG’s FTW.  It worked so well that last night I went looking for a bigger BFG to put on it.

And then I decided I needed to began the process to get myself a battlecruiser, so that I would have a respectable firepower ship for fleet ops.  I spent a good hour trying to decide which one to go for, and also to decide whether or not I should buy it outright or get a BPC (a 15 jump transit).  And so I also decided to buy another 4 million in skill books (another 8 jump transit).  I’m neck deep in Amarr space at this point, a good 30 jumps from home.  But then a corp mate, when I mention my location, says that this reminds him he still wants to buy an Armageddon.   And there just happens to be a cheap max run BPC of that lying another 15 jumps away.  And at this point, what’s another 15 jumps?  Especially since it means I know where my next 50 million will be coming from to fund all the new goodies I’m still eyeballing.

So anyway, long story short, I’m tired, but I feel alive this morning.  That’s what a good gaming session will do for you.

 

* – because here at HZero, we don’t jump on the blogging bandwagon, we make fun of it.  Repeatedly.

** – Every pet I’ve ever had in a game I’ve named Ralph.  I even have a full series of awesome taunting macros that go along with it.  Ralph has crossed gender lines on occasion, and most recently has taken the form of an undead froglok knight.  Because EQ2 Necromancers have a weird sense of humor.

I Boldly Went…

And I was not disappointed.

Khhaaannnn!

Oh hell no.

I’m trying to make that toughest of decisions about what character to play on Lucan D’Lere, in hopes of  having, you know, people to play with.  But not Ysharros, because, you know, she isn’t into that. (Just kidding!  Heh…no seriously, don’t hurt me! ::runs::)

So anyway, I decide to do a Shadowknight, and when getting myself familiar with the ability list again, I start to twitch.  They didn’t.  Tell me they didn’t make the same mistake again.  They did.  They took away the Shadowknight’s pet.

See, when EQOA came out, many of us were surprised at some of the changes to the classes, given that this was just supposed to be EQ on the PS2.  But the EQOA Shadowknight had no undead pet.  The outcry was strong.  That was a trademark of the class, something that made it unique and made it stand out from the other tanks, and especially stand out from the Paladin.  They both got something from outside their archetype right?  Pally’s eventually get a raise, SK’s eventually get a pet.  It was part of what defined them.

The outcry was strong enough that when they launched the first EQOA expansion six months later, they added a pet back in for the Shadowknight.  Sure it was a buffing pet, and you had to wait to epic to get it, but dangit, at least it was an option!  Here in EQ2, it was a “limited pet” but at least, again, it was something!  But we don’t learn from our mistakes! Oh no…that would be smart!

Listen up: the pet was the only reason I play a Shadowknight.  Because without that, there is no reason for me to do it instead of one of the other tanks.  Does the Shadowknight get a Rez or Heals? No.  Dual wield? No.  So what do they get?  What’s their cool bonus ability?  Why are we determined to make them less unique and more like every other tank out there?

So thanks SOE, thanks alot.  You’ve managed to piss me off royally.  And I was *this* close to resubbing.  *This* close.

::grumbles::

The visuals of EVE

I have my hands full with all three of our kids today, for various reasons, so my brain is a little scattered.  Instead, I’m just going to post a few of the best screenshots I’ve grabbed recently.  I anticipate a post about my return to Norrath later tonight or tomorrow.  Enjoy!

 

 

 

SWG Has Something Your MMO Doesn’t…

…I’m not kidding.  An old, decrepit, half-dead MMO has something that seems so basic, so simple, so – necessary – and none of the big boys has even thought to implement it.

The chance to build a customer base.  To earn repeat buyers.  To actually have a business.

EVE doesn’t have it.  They are a step ahead with buy orders and contracts.  And that’s a start.  When I’m looking at BPC’s, once I find someone who has deals I like, I jot down their name and look for when their newest stuff comes up.  But I can’t go to their store.  I’m not even sure I can search by their name.  And even if I could, how can they communicate with me?  Give me a discount for continuing to buy from them?  Give me incentive to continue to go back to them?

And the other MMO’s?  They don’t even make it that far.  Some are just patently ridiculous.  I enjoy crafting, but I gave it up in Vanguard.  If it have to make a few hundred cloaks to advance a level, I’m not interested.  And I can’t sell them to anyone except to the vendor, for a scratch or maybe even a loss.  That’s not fun.  If you are going to invite players in your game to craft, to take part in the economy, then you need to do it in a way makes it fun for them to do so!

And now we come to the part of the post where I eat my own words.  Because I can’t stand Free Realms.  But at least there, when I go to cook something, its fun to do.  Yes, its a mini game, and I’m not big on mini games.  Did I mention yet that I was eating my own words?

The businesses in SWG impressed me more than anything.  I drove out in the wilderness in my crappy starter speeder and started a few harvesting stations, all so that one day I might own my own business.  I loved wandering through the player owned city.  Checking out the shops and such.  I could search them on the index I’m sure, but it was fun to immerse myself in it. 

Its probably a pipe dream, because even SWG didn’t implement it all that great.  And we’re talking about a genre where some major titles can’t even be bothered to offer player housing of any sort (::cough cough:: WAR, WoW), or make housing available to every level of play from beginner on up (::cough cough:: LotRO, Vanguard). 

But I think it would be worth the investment and the experimentation for a game to be able to gives us that something that we haven’t had before.