Here Be Monsters

So, running incursions on one character is fun and all, but I need something slightly different with the other character. Thus, I’d like to try wormholes or FW… I’ve only been in to / through a WH once or twice, but probably can adapt easy enough..

The other option is to try factional warfare. I have 8.6 standings with Minmatar, and 8.08 with Gallente so that puts me on that side. No chance to fight for the other side. Still pondering about this one..

So, if you run a WH corp in a C3 or higher, and you can use a 84m SP combat pilot, drop me a comment and we can talk

Incursions are fun, I have to admit. The problem is, armor seems a whole lot less popular than shield, but every few nights I’m able to get in to a fleet. The last few nights I’ve been flying with a particular FC, and we get along well enough. I like his style of doing things, and I hope he slowly is seeing the value in a logi pilot he can rely on. One night we had two Oneiros, and one Guardian. Not the ideal setup for Vanguards. He gave me a Guardian to fly, which had a bit of a odd configuration, and last night I flew it again.

Problem was, last night we had a Abaddon in fleet. It’s a good ship, one of my favourites, but they are cap hungry if you don’t have high skills, and this pilot didn’t. The Guardian was unusual, being a 4/2 setup, but running two dead-space MEDIUM remote cap transfers, four Large t2 remote reps (not ‘Solace’). Mids were two remote sebo’s for the webbing Vindi, and the lows two True Sansha cap relays, two deadspace EANMs, and a 1600mm plate. Where I usually use t2 rep drones, he has t2 Warriors in the bay, to assign to the drone bunny.

There was some concern about capping out, but with two different 3% implants and good skills (my logistics toon has nearly 80m sp), I was able to keep both the cap transfers on the Abaddon, and by cycling the repairers keep both the remote sebo’s on the Vindi and rep anything without causing one of the combat ships to sweat.It took some micro-management to do everything, as I was squad leader as well. Land, orbit anchor, rep tank, then lock up Vindo, remote sebo him, lock up the other logi’s, then deploy drones and assign to drone bunny. It was enjoyable though and made some good isk

The Abaddon pilot needs a bit more training to get it cap stable (which is quite possible unless he is using Tachyon’s), but it was interesting running a different fit Guardian, especially without another cap transfer coming in

Over the last few weeks as I’m slowly finishing my Msc thesis and getting ready for hand-in on the 19th of December, I am left with the strange urge to return to Eve-Online. To do what, I do not know, but I kept my two fairly high skilled characters when I quit a year ago, and have a little isk left. Starting and making good isk should not be too difficult.

The main issue I have is what will I do when I return? I spoke to a few people, and some are still in the same areas they were in years ago, doing the same old shit. I would love to get back in to mining and industry, but with mining and mineral prices still shitty, I doubt I will be able to make that work even if I still have my Rorqual (mothballed for years now).

Then I wondered if I should not look in to maybe doing some incursions, but apparently that is being controlled by one group, and gankings are fairly frequent due to the high ship requirements (faction BS with ‘stuff’). I suppose I could get in to one of the fleets easy enough since one of my pilots is a really good logistics pilot (Loggi V and triage pilot), and when I flew with No Mercy I regularly flew in a Guardian, so I know how to roll in a Logistics ship in a combat situation.

With 0.0 being fairly static at the moment, and without the isk to go all apeshit on combat, I’m left wondering if I’m not going to find myself in a situation where I’m bored again within days should I resubscribe.. Thoughts / Comments?

Due to my shitty internet connection, I didn’t buy ME3 on the Origin store, I waited for a retail store to have it in stock. Finally last week I managed to get one of the last 4 copies in a store.

Eager to fight the reapers, get it on with Miranda and continue the good fight I started playing.

First enjoyable twist was EDI being made mobile in a captured robot body thing. Wonder if Tricia Helfer also did the modelling for the base shape for EDI, and not the voice only.

I ended up using her on quite a few of the missions. Her feelings for pilot Joker comes to the fore, and you start seeing her AI reaching some sort of humanity.

As I kept playing, I marvelled at the story, and how well it was done, same as the previous two ME’s. Some new characters appear, and new twists in the plot. Some of your previous love interests are sacrificed for the greater good. Some decisions are hard. And some are not…(yes the one with the reporter  on your ship)

This was the Mass Effect I loved!

Finally, I’m on earth, struggle to get to the end goal and then…I discovered why everyone was so unhappy at the ending. Yes I knew Sheppard dies..but..

Dear Electronic Arts..what were you thinking?

In October, RAGE was released, highly anticipated first person shooter from ID software (you know those guys known for making awesome titles like..erm..Doom!). Well, locally in the shops it was expensive, and online reviews were giving it a hard time (texture loading etc). Thus, I decided to skip it and during that time I bought BF3 and MW3.

Last week sometime, I spotted RAGE on Steam for $29.99, about half price of what it was going for locally and decided to buy it. At 21gb download it took forever (remember, I live in the 3rd world, the land that bandwidth forgot!). Also, while it downloaded, I went reading up on how to optimize my dual GTX460′s for the game. Turns out RAGE doesn’t support SLI, but one card seems to run fine at 1920 x 1280 with 4xAA etc. The card hits about 74′c under heavy load, and I don’t experience any of the texture loading delays that plagued the console releases. As a reference BF3 at full tilt makes the one card cry at 86′c, and the 2nd card about 76′c.. (yes I have a really good HAF case and upgraded fans).

So playing the last few nights has me happy. The campaign is rather long, unlike some games which end up being finished in 4 hours, and entertaining enough. Sure, most missions are ‘go fetch!’ or the odd ‘kill shit’, but thats mostly par for the course. What I do like, though I suck terribly at it, is the racing section of the game, and the car combat. The game certainly doesn’t have the diversity of say, Borderlands, but then it was never meant to have it.

The enemies are fairly unique, with the mutants, petrol heads etc. Each faction moves differently and requires different weapons and ammo to kill. I’ll get to the weapons in the next paragraph. Every time I face the mutants with their jumping and dodging, I keep thinking of the line in ‘Priest’ when he shoots the vampires aiming for point B “Point A, meet fscking point B”

The weapons are the usual run of the mill, and in true ID software tradition you’re a walking arsenal, instead of the usual carry only two weapons. The fun part is in engineering the different ammunition types. At one stage last night I was having endless hassles going through the power station, until I remembered the explosive arrows. Suddenly the level was easy as pie. There is just something about shooting someone with an explosive arrow and hearing the character go “oh shit!” *whoompf!!* While some of the weapons can be upgraded, I would have liked to see more options earlier in the game, and more overall options for modifying the weapons. One example would have been a red dot sight or some such for the shotgun.

Since I haven’t finished the campaign yet I can’t comment on the ending, though I’ll probably have it done by the weekend. For now, I’m really enjoying the game at the reduced price, and after they’ve issued various patches to fix problems that occurred in the beginning. I am a bit disappointed in the the lack of SLI support, as I would have liked to up the quality even more, but at the level I play I’m quite happy. So, if you see it on special on Steam, grab it, it’s good fun for a few hours.

Apologies for not blogging in months. I’ve moved cities with the family (1500km move), started a new day job, AND had to have a thesis proposal handed on 30 November for the 2nd part of my Msc degree.

Now that we’re settled, the wife has her dining room table and fancy curtains it was time for daddy to spoil himself again.

One of the local online retailers had SSD’s on sale and I bought a cheaper OCZ Vertex Plus 60gb. Not sure how good the drive is, but it was not expensive at all, and if it turns out to be a dud I’ll find some use for it elsewhere.

It’s interesting that CCP’s CEO released a dev blog yesterday with an apology and a lengthy statement on how CCP lost the way and how they are going to focus on fixing their core game (flying in space) etc etc. If you’re reading this blog, I bet you’ve read the dev blog, and have read at least a dozen people’s blog posts on how this is a good thing, or how this is just word play.

My approach is slightly different, due to personal circumstances. On Monday I resigned from my job, a large retailer here in South Africa with a near 35 000 work force. During the last two years the company has not done well. For the second time in a year, the company has released a ‘earnings warning”, article here. During the last earnings warning, the CEO did almost exactly the same as the CEO of CCP; that is, released a open letter to the customer explaining where the company has failed, and where the company is doing good, and what the company plans to do to get more in touch with it’s customers.

While I have no doubt that both CEO’s feel passionate about their businesses, the similarity of the approach to a crises in the organisation reeks of “we learned to do this in MBA school”. I’m not saying either is good or bad. That is open for personal interpretation.

I’m not planning on re-subscribing to Eve any time soon, so Hillmar’s blog makes no difference to me any more, but I did find the similarity of approach interesting enough to blog about.

How convenient that just after the latest set of negative media regarding CCP’s lack of caring about “flying in space”, we see this article from MMORPG.com. I quote:

Phew… that’s a lot of stuff, and EVE players have every reason to be excited about Tranquility as it feels like CCP is getting back to the space part of their game with a lot of fervor.

Erm…thats nice, let’s get the players excited and have them wait (and keep them subscribed) another few months until we release some more bullshit walking in stations crap, and hope they buy in to it.

Oh and then there’s this official statement from the CSM here. More NDA shit, and lip service by CCP and buying time. They can’t even publish un-fucked-by-CCP minutes of the emergency meeting, now want to publish more official statements.

I call bullshit on the whole thing. CCP’s against the wall and buying time. Then again, I’d love to be proved wrong…(because then this game I’ve loved for over 4 years would be awesome again!)

“The greatest stories of EVE are not about going into your room and changing into a new pair of sunglasses.”

Can’t say it better any other way! Find the original article here.

Right, so firstly, I stole this graph from Helecity Boson’s blog. Ask him where he got it, not me. Secondly, if anything is true that this graph indicates, Hilmar needs to pull his head from his ass and wake up. I looked at the Eve client tonight, and there was just over 40 000 users logged in, so the accuracy of the graph doesn’t quite make sense.

Nevertheless, if it is possibly even remotely true, it scares me. Where are the days that Eve was smashing records of over 56 000 users logged in or the top record of something like 63 000 users? We haven’t seen that in a very long time. The statements made are true. We didn’t want Incarna and some walking in stations shit, we don’t want new stuff to wear, we want new fucking in game content! If the amount of complaints aren’t proof enough, the numbers are certainly showing it. Less people logging in, less people playing, and I suspect, less people keeping their subscriptions going.

Even if we take the 63000 user peak, and look at the amount of folks logged in tonight (40 000), we’re talking what…30% drop? It’s mid week, and not the weekend numbers, but if we play some averages, and reduce that to 25% less people, that means in the last 8 or 9 months, CCP has lost a QUARTER of it’s customers! The game has been in existence since what? 2003? It took over seven years to build that PSU, and it’s shed a QUARTER of  that in 9 months? For their sake, I hope two things.. One: there is another Twilight movie, so that their vampire barbie game makes them some profit, because we know Eve paid for it, and two: that Dust 91210 is a success, so that it makes them some profit, because Eve paid for it. They will need income from the two games to survive, because the Eve player base won’t be paying their salaries much longer at this rate.

Personally, I’ve been giving shit away, and even gave a friend of mine in game a Nightmare, because, well, he always wanted one and said he can’t afford one because his play style won’t allow him enough time to grind for one. It’s simply me still winding down. I don’t see myself as a CCP customer in 2012, unless they make some very serious changes. I would love some different lvl4′s, some different PvE content, and some serious love for my former alliance mates out in 0.0!

If I can quote this excellent article at Rock, Paper Shotgun: “CCP have created a service, and that has created expectations. They are not being met.”