Queasy Tom Snot

King Arthur: Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night, he can join us in our quest for the Holy Grail.
French Soldier: Well, I’ll ask him, but I don’t think he will be very keen. Uh, he’s already got one, you see.
King Arthur: What?
Sir Galahad: He said they’ve already got one!
King Arthur: Are you sure he’s got one?
French Soldier: Oh yes, it’s very nice!

~ If you don’t know where this comes from, you should go boil your bottoms, you sons of silly persons.

I was playing some Pirates of the Burning Sea with my brother recently, and we were gutting the available quests in New Orleans.  We’ve gotten to the point where, with the double xp shot from agreeing to have these ridiculous accents…err, be French, that we don’t do any of the “group quests” (too hard, same xp), or any quest that can’t be done the that town’s longboat or instances (more time, same xp).  Even then, we have quest logs that hold 25 quests (half of which at any given time are our solo or bounty quests), and we frequently have to make several trips into town to clear space for the next group of quests.

Basically, we run into the town, collect as many quests as we can, do them, turn them in, and repeat the process until the town is dry.  Then we move on to the next town.  Laugh at PotBS if you want, but this is no different than most other MMO’s.  We now have quest hubs, which direct us to hunting grounds and provide bonuses and fast tracks for advancement.   We lamented that this avalanche of “quests” made for some ridiculous storylines, bizarre encounters, and mostly unread fluff.  PotBS is tricky too in that probably 5% of the quests involve a pathing choice.  Occasionally we’ll play solo, get back together, and realize that in just grabbing the floating “!” without reading, we’ve accepted opposing quest lines.

Eventually we discussed how little “good loot” was available from quests in all the games we play.  Most of the time, quests offer nothing other than cash and xp.  Many times in many of the games we’ve played (WoW, EQ2, Vanguard, Conan, WAR, DAoC, LotRO, PotBS, Wizard 101, SW:G, and even EVE), we get items from quests that are useless to our characters or so low power that we just sell them.

And for those who enjoy, if not RPing, then simple immersion in the game (there’s more than you think), this completely destroys their experience in the game world.

So long story short, we got all nostalgic for EQOA.  And why?  Well, let me list for you all the quests available to my Elf Magician in the game for the first 20 levels:

• 4 Tutorial Quests (1 each, levels 1-4)
• 1 Tutorial Grouping Quest (level 5)
• 5 Class Quests (7, 10, 13,15, 20)
• ~ 22 Side Quests (mostly level 6 or 17, ~ 1/3 unavailable because of alignment preqs.)

That’s it.  The side quests usually gave 10-25% of a level of xp, some money, and a faction boost with whatever literal “side” they were for.  The class quests gave a unique spell or item (or both), and usually a full level’s worth of xp, or close to it.  We complained about this of course, but only because the questing levels were so much more fun and involved, and because the the phat rewards at the end of each.

The result:  more emphasis on grouping, on helping guild mates.  More immersion and rp possibilities.  A requirement for smaller server populations.  Quest rewards and quests themselves were meaningful milestones.   I *miss* that.

I miss that this also meant that the lore of the world was encoded into conversations with NPC’s.  That locations had to have personality and design of their own to attract players and groups.  That having a night where you could call out “ding” in chat gave you a gaming high.  That when you arrived at a new zone or location, your first impulse was not to make all the exclamation points disappear, but to chat with players to find a group or connect with someone you recognized or knew by reputation.

But that’s enough nostalgia.  I know those days are gone.  And I’m sure there are drawbacks that I’m not seeing with my rose colored glasses.  Its just that its been a long time since I’ve worked with a full group in an MMO and felt the rush of coordinated combat and the skill of working as a team.  It been a long time since I’ve had a place or a niche in a game or a group, and I’m really starting to miss that.  ::sigh::

LOL

If you scroll across my side bar, you’ll notice the hovering note about Scott Jennings, aka Lum, a game developer and blogger:  some days I love him, and some days I hate him.  (That, by the way, makes for really good blogging/broadcasting/writing.  Wonder if I can figure out how to do it!)

But today, he just made me laugh.  Set aside for a minute your PC concerns, and indignent outrage, and everything else, and take a step back until it comes into focus.

Scott Jennings just got trolled hard by EA.  And its just about the funniest thing I’ve seen all year in the gaming industry.

I know, its a personal failing, but I love it when the person who loves to go around tweaking everyone else for fun and profit and flaunts their superiority in the process gets their own chain jerked.  Ah…its a good day.

Blog Banter 10?

Apparently, we’re doing another blog banter.  Nothing on CrazyKinux’s website yet, and many of the blogs are not featuring a full blog roll at the end, so I’m not sure what to make of it, but…whatever.  (-:

Welcome to the tenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s banter leans a little, OK a lot, on the academic side. It comes to us from xiphos83 of A Misguided Adventurer, who asks the following: ” Victor Davis Hanson argues that western culture, comprising of ideals such as freedom, debate, capitalism, and consensual government, are what make western society so successful at waging war. These ideologies create a warrior who’s direct participation in government, ability to think freely, and desire to remain free, fights harder and is willing to suffer more than his conscripted foe. Though a military must remain a structured oligarchy to fight a war effectively, why in a world where military conflict is as familiar as breathing are there so few alliances that embrace these ideologies when governing their members?”

It seems that the responses for this topic have so far fallen into two categories:  either the blogger is adamant that the assertion about there being a lack of corps and alliances embracing these ideologies is incorrect, or they are amused at the attempt to place Hanson’s real world argument in the context of EVE Online’s fictional gaming universe.

First off, I had no idea who Hanson was.  So I went to a trusted source and read all about him.  That lead to reading some of his personal stuff and papers.  I have mixed feelings.  On the one hand, I have difficulty trusting a Banana Slug, but that may be personal bias that ESPN made them number 1 and only gave my alma mater the number 8 spot on the list of cool mascots.  On the other hand, he does say some thought provoking things.

To those who believe that all is democratic fun and games and Western Ways of Warfare in EVE, think again.  I belong to a corp that is run by an individual’s fiat – there is no council, no group decisions.  Other corps joining our alliance must abide by his final decisions – failure to do so results in the removal of your corp from the alliance.

That it is run that way is somewhat ironic, given that our corp leader and many of our vets are themselves ex-members of Atlas, which is itself run (or was at the time our corp was given the boot) by the same dictatorial bent that currently pervades our operations.

It is worth noting also that in EVE we are not dealing with governments – we are dealing with corporations, which, like in our real world, are either public or private companies, which themselves have various types of leadership, both individuals and boards and sometimes even straight democratic functions.  So the application of a real-world theory about nation-based warfare is stretched to limit when applied to virtual world reality of non nation-based warfare.  That the distinction between nation and non nation based warfare is lost on this Blog Banter is indicative of the fact that our entire nation, and even more relative, all of Western civilization, has failed to grasp an important lesson of the history of warfare and nations.  This failure is costing us virtual world angst in this case – and sadly, real world blood.

Despire this bizaare knowlege gap, there is a link, and a proof (of a sort) of Hanson’s theory in EVE Online – factional warfare.  This was an idea that many thought would fail because it did not offer any substational reason for playing.  And yet people still identified enough with in game entities, most centrally, in game NPC Empires – that they were and still are, willing to spend millions of ISK to defend the honor and good name of these Empires.  The purity of this experiment will shortly end with the introduction of factional LP and rewards.  That is not that I’m necessarily opposed to that change, but thinking about it in this way does give one pause, doesn’t it?  Is turning patriots into mercenaries a good thing?

Other Blog Banter 10 posts will be added here, just as soon as I can figure out where the spectral central post is located at.  Feedback, as always, is encouraged and welcome.

On A Wing and a Prayer

 

So (finally) as promised, a screen cap of my near death experience from a few nights ago.  We finally beat the mission last night.  My buddy moved the Mega to active tanking with hardeners dependent on what shots he was taking, switched to AM ammo and just decided to hope he had good accuracy.  That combined with my newfound fangs put us over the top.  We wiped about six cruisers in the first pass, and two battleships per pass afterthat.  The final battleship spawn, and the repair depot itself gave us trouble after that though.  The final battleships, of the Widow type, were using some super-npc rail that was hitting me at 70km for 700-800 damage a shot.  And the repair depot had the tank of a titan.  I went through nearly 8000 rounds of hybrid charges, over 300 artillery shells, and several hundred missles before we finally popped it. 

The final payout wasn’t bad.  My buddy got a ton of Caldari Admiral tags, and we both cleared over two million, enough to cover our costs at least.  So in the end we were fighting for pride I guess, but there’s nothing wrong with that, now is there?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Promises Fulfilled…Halfway

As promised, here’s the updated dps profile for my Prophey for these level 4 missions.  It gets me up to 156 dps (471 burst) @ 30 km, with an afterburner to negate the shorter range:
Linear Flux Stabilizer I
Magnetic Field Stabilizer I
Tracking Enhancer I
Gyrostabilizer I
Damage Control I

Y-S8 Hydrocarbon I Afterburners
F-12 Nonlinear Tracking Processor

250mm ‘Scout’ I Accelerator Cannon, Thorium Charge M
250mm ‘Scout’ I Accelerator Cannon, Thorium Charge M
250mm Railgun I, Thorium Charge M
250mm Railgun I, Thorium Charge M
250mm Railgun I, Thorium Charge M
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I, Widowmaker Heavy Missile
720mm Howitzer Artillery I, Proton M

Hobgoblin I x3
Hammerhead I x1

Still unfulfilled, screencaps.  Hopefully before the weekend’s over!

Firepower

Amelia Earhart: It’s a matter of life and death!
The Thinker: I’ll tell you what’s a matter of life and death, that beautiful lady over there.
[statue of Aphrodite giggles]
The Thinker: Hey baby, check out the gun show going on over here. BOOM BOOM! Firepower!

~ Night at the Museum 2

Frustration my friends, that is what I face.  We tried to tackle another level 4 mission last night, and to put it politely, we failed.  We warped in with our usual gusto, the Megathron tanking and my Prophecy providing additional pew-pew.   And we busted up the cruisers and the lone frigate, which was apparently the token ECM craft.  Which left us facing six Caldari State Raven varients.  We tried….everything.

They hit so hard, so fast, that we only had a few minutes in each run before the Mega was pulling out trailing flames.  A few times it was so close we didn’t have time to fully recall drones before we leapt out, missles clawing after us.  And in those few minutes, we could usually break the shield tank and clear some armor, even some structure if we were lucky, but by the time we got back, we had to almost start from scratch.

Eventually we got a fit we thought was working.  I switched over to ECM jammers and he droped drone links in favor of rocket launchers spewing Defender missles.  It helped cut down on their dps enough that we knocked one Raven from the sky.  But we must have gotten lucky because nothing worked after that.  I even dropped my tank significantly to free up slots and power to add a heavy missle launcher and some additional weapons upgrades.  Still nothing.

So after three hours (!), as 2am approached for me, I had to call it a night.  I knew I had to work today, had company coming to spend the weekend, and I’m still not 100% recovered.  It sucks because at this point, we’ve lost *all* the mission salvage, and the time bonus.  We went from an operation that looked to net us 8 million or so to one that’s going to pay out maybe two million, if we’re lucky.  And we’ve spent a good million or so on the modules we tried out last night.

So here’s my setup.  Please give me any feedback you have on additional firepower, bearing in mind that I have limited funds to work with.

High:

Malkuth Heavy Missle Launcher (Widowmaker)

2 x 250mm Scout Accelerator Cannon (Iridium)

3 x 250mm Railgun I (Iridium)

Medium:

F-12 Nonlinear Tracking Processor

ECM – Multispectral Jammer

Low:

Energized Thermic Membrane I

Energize Magnetic Membrane I

800mm Reinforced Steel Plates I

Damage Control I

Linear Flux Stabilizer

Results:  120 DPS (265 burst) @ 35km

There are some things already in EFT that I have done to tweak this, so as of tonight:

Swap Damage Control I for Magnetic Field Stabilizer I

Swap Iridium Charge M for Lead Charge M

Result:   137 DPS (321 burst) @ 30km

This is not a great solution though, since the Ravens tend to be approx. 40km out when we warp in, which means more time closing to optimal range.  Time I don’t have.  Possible relevant modules I already own:

3 x 650mm Artillery Cannon

1 x 650mm Medium Gallium Cannon

1 x 720m Howitzer Artillery

1 x Heavy Modal Pulse Laser

Tracking Enhancer (don’t remember which one)

Compact ”Limos” Assault Missile Bay

Willing to spend:  1 million ISK or so.  I’d like to still break even on the mission, just so we can get to the next one and not have to take too much of a step backwards.  Long term here, I’m training and saving to buy an Armageddon, which should help significantly, but I won’t be done with training until Wednesday, and unless we finish off some more missions, I won’t have the cash to buy it and fit it both.

…Go!

Blast from the Past

While on the EVE front, I continue to make good money (another 7 or 8 million last night, I kinda lost count), as I continue to sit on my couch and recover today, I was bored and wanted something I could whittle the day away with.   That though had “browser based game” written all over it, and so I decided to go looking for one of the oldest I know, which happens also to be my favorite.  I’ve played it off and on for nearly a decade now, and could never figure why it wasn’t more popular.

The Reincarnation, or Archmage, as it was originally known, was one of the first (at least that I remember) MMO’s out there.    Sort of a mapless, cardless blend of Hero’s of Might and Magic and Magic: The Gathering, with a pench of the old Falcon’s Eye/Utopia thrown in for good measure.  Quite frankly, every time I come back to it, I fully expect it to have died, and it stubbornly persists, much to my delight.

I’m not very good at it, but I love playing it, so I put in an app with my old guild, The White Raven, also still running after many, many years, and decided to give it another whirl.  Since its turn based, and you accumulate one turn per/x number of minutes, its a great diversion at work or when lying bored on the couch, recovering from a procedure.  (-:

Anyway, I highly recommend it.  Give it a whirl and see what you think.  I recommend you play one of the more straight forward mages to begin with – Verdant, Eradication, or Ascendent, before dipping your toes into the more complex Phantasm or Nether specialties.  And more than that, let me know what you think of it!

Mission Control

So my closest Alliance friend – okay, well friend, since his Corp was booted from the Alliance for failure “stfu and do what theyre told” (I’m paraphrasing there) – in the game of EVE and I have been working together to unlock these higher level missions.   I’ve suspected all along that these are the source of income that allows so many of our veteran combat pilots to recoup their loses quickly.  But we were bored of grinding and looting frigates, especially since I have a nice shiny new battlecruiser sitting in my hanger.

Well it turns out that my buddy already had access to level four missions, but only over in Minmatar space.  And when we realized that this might break the doldrums for us, and that we could probably handle them between his sniper fit Megathron and my CQB Prophecy.

We warmed up on a couple of level 3’s, and the money was good, but with both of us running it, they weren’t too challenging.  In fact, the hardest part was getting hits on all the little frigates running around.  So we decided to bite the bullet and try a level 4.  Now for some of you reading this, you probably solo level 4’s in your Drake and whatever, but this was my first time, and I had a blast!

We had to work for it.  And by work for it I mean, I tanked four Blood Angel battleships, three cruisers, and a frigate while he warped the Mega out for repairs.  I left the scene with 0% shields, 0% armor, and 6% hull (I’ll add some screencaps later tonight).  It don’t get much closer than that.  I probably should have bugged out earlier (obviously), but the experience was invaluable.  My Prophecy is cap stable even with its armor repper running, and I wanted to see how much of a beating it could take.  That’s a tough little nut, and I’m glad I picked it!

The highlight of the night for me though was late in the mission when he warped out again to repair, and I was left facing two Blood Angel battleships alone.  I popped one and tanked the other until he returned.  Watching that Apocalypse go BOOM gave me a pretty indescribable feeling.  Anyway, at the end of the night, I was 4 million richer, and had added a couple of nice pieces of named modules to my hanger, and as an added bonus, had a solid handful of zydrine and megacyte to put towards my own battleship construction. 

More importantly, I had fun.  Alot of fun.  It was challenging without being overwhelming, and I was in that sweet spot of gameplay where even if the Prophecy had gone down in flames,  Iwould have taken it with a grain of salt.  Its nice that EVE allows  you to do this – glimpse ahead to see what the rewards of the grind are.  And I’m all for it. 

Bonus EVE humor:  we were doing the Quafe warehouse mission for the level 4.  That’s right, a horde of Blood Raiders, including four battleships, were fighting us to the death over a case of 10 of Quafe’s new soft drinks.  It reminded me of my wife’s Black Friday shopping trips!

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Then that accounts for it.  In civilized countries I believe there are no witches left, nor wizards, nor sorceresses, nor magicians.  But you see, the Land of Oz has never been civilized, for we are cut off from the rest of the word.  Therefore we still have witches and wizards amongst us.

~ The Wonderful Wizardof Oz, by Frank L. Baum

I was talking with a pirate the other night.  Well, an iPirate to be precise.  Vas and I, while on different sides of the Concord Sec Status in EVE, are on the same team in some sense through the broad umbrella of the Casualties of War guild, having played in Warhammer before this.

I mentioned to him that Null Sec had started to sound alot like Oz to me.  He laughed and agreed.  And here’s why:  in this long strange trip to 0.0 that we’ve been taking, I’ve heard so many things about it, its hard to seperate fact from fiction, legend from truth.  Here’s a short list of what I’ve seen claimed about null sec already:

• Corps in null sec are never short of qualified pilots, because they get hundreds of applications to join their corps.

• A good pilot in null sec can earn three billion ISK a day!

• A decent pilot in null sec can earn one billion ISK a day!

• Null sec is actually *safer* than Empire space, because of War Declarations and gankers.

• Everything is cheaper in null sec, because you have easier access to the more expensive materials.

• In null sec because of the money you’re making, its no big deal to lose a Heavy Assault Cruiser a day in combat.

Now I have a pretty good baloney meter.  In part because years ago I spent time hanging out behind the scenes of Snopes, working on the message board to resolve urban legends inquiries.  And let me tell you, most (if not all) of the above smells like baloney to me.

But I’m willing to try it…just as soon as I find a way in.  One of my corpmates last night tried to.  He made it through the first four gate camps, but theirs only so many interceptors you can dodge and so far luck will take you.  So until then, I’m following up on an invite to put my battlecruiser to use this week.  Wish me luck.

Note:  I’m having a minor, elective procedure done this afternoon, and will probably not feel much like, you know, thinking coherently, or typing posts, for the next 48 hours or so.  I have one post partially done in advance, but there’s a good chance I may miss a posting this week.  Thanks in advance for your patience!

Top Five Things in EVE I Still Need to Learn

5) Probes – I have no idea how to even begin to probe.  I guess I need to buy a launcher and a ship and try it out.  But in truth, I’m not even sure I know what I’m looking for.  Somehow though, it involves the Archeology skill, and that’s awesome.

4) Reasearch and Invention – I know there are agents for it, but as to how they work and who can use them…

3) Low Sec Ratting – last time I tried this, I was assured my Vexor was plenty tough enough.  I warped out a few minutes later short a few drones and with red hashes all the way into my structure.  Clearly I’m missing something here.

2) What Roid Goes Where – I found out this weekend that one can mine Nocxium in hi sec after all.  Go figure.

1) And the #1 thing I still need to learn in EVE  - How To Make Money.  How is that people with characters a month older than mine have, withoyt PLEXing, managed to make hundres of millions of ISK, when I still have yet to break the 40 million mark?  Heck, I’m not even close to 40 anymore after building the Prophecy and some related purchases…

Maybe I need to take a break and give that 2 week Conan return a whirl.