Playing the market, small scale for now.

Wilhelm over at TAGN was been posting some great stuff about mining/production in EVE, which has given me more than a few ideas on how to play my second EVE account. My second account is a dedicated miner/industrial pilot, with basically zero combat ability. For the first few months, he was largely ignored as I was focused on my combat pilot, getting him into his Rohk and running missions to increase my standing with Amarr. During this time the miner trained up his learning skills, along with the basic mining and production stuff. His learning skills are actually much higher than my combat pilot’s, since it was much easier to stay focused and train skills to level 5 when you don’t log in and play daily. My combat pilot stopped his learning skills at 4, always getting distracted by some combat-related skill he needed to use some new gear, or to get an edge in a mission.

Now that my combat pilot has more or less reached a comfortable level, being able to solo every level 3 mission, and duo most level 4s, I turned my attention to the miner. The first thing I had to do was transfer a good amount of ISK over to him and send him off to the Royal Amarr Institute to pick up some skill books he previously could not afford. With new skills in tow, it was time to set a plan and sink my teeth into the rather complex aspect of EVE production and marketing. I am fortunate enough to be in a Corp that allows us to use their blueprints, most of which are highly researched. This makes getting into production a much quicker process, as I don’t need to bother with the hassle of efficiency research.

Another factor working in my favor was the massive amount of fittings I had built up from running so many missions. While I intend to sell the higher value named stuff, the run-of-the-mill gear I broke down into minerals, building up a nice supply for my miner to work with. This stock, along with the minerals from a few Corp mining missions, meant my miner could get right into production on a large scale, able to produce the maximum amount of ammo/gear off a blueprint. The first series of runs I produced some small and medium anti-matter ammo, and noticed it sold rather quickly in my local system, at a very decent price. While the system I am in is not a high population area, the benefit to this is that hardly anyone tries to sell anything in large quantities, meaning I could lock up the market on many types of ammo/gear. While the sale rate is no doubt slower than in high traffic areas, the price to cost ratio is much higher.

In addition to my own production, I also set up buy orders in the system for the most common drops off rats, at very low prices. My method to this was to look at the market and see what items had no buy orders, meaning no competition. Surprisingly enough, this was the case with almost everything outside a select group, and after a few minutes I was all set, my large net cast to capture any sales other pilots might want to make in haste. Just how effective this will be I won’t know for a few days/weeks, when the buy orders start to fill up.

Frigate Tournament = Good times.

Over the weekend my Alliance held a frigate tournament, open to all and in a FFA format. The rules stated you could use any tech 1 frigate with tech 1 fittings, named fittings were allowed. We flew out to a low sec sector to avoid Concord, and got ready to do battle.

I personally brought a Merlin, fitted with two 150mm rails and two rocket launchers, along with a webbefier, afterburner, a small shield extender, and an invulnerability field. The low slots contained two of those speed increase fittings (someone remind me what those are called again). Looking back, it was not exactly a killer fitting. My reasoning for it was that most of my skill points are invested in hybrid turrets, and at the time I’ve only trained Caldari frigates, so my options were somewhat limited. That and I have NO clue how to PvP in EVE yet. Soon enough, soon enough…

At just over 5 million skill points in total, I was far below the other participants, some being pilots from as far back as 2004. Still, I did not have that ‘no chance’ feeling, as we were all using frigates and t1 fittings, which leveled the playing field considerable. As my Corp had three pilots in the ‘FFA’, we decided to team up and go after the other three pilots, figuring that would give us the best chance to survive, and perhaps pull out a victory.

Things started off on a rather poor note, as one of our pilots got instantly blasted. I locked on to our first target, a Kestrel, and tossed a web on him. Hitting the afterburner, I opened fire while circling him. The damage from my rockets was disappointing, as I have very low missile skills, but my two 150mm railguns were getting in some nice hits on the slowed ship, and soon enough the Kestrel was a floating wreck with a pod near it.

As I locked onto the next target, my shield was at about 50%, so I was in decent shape all things considered. The next target was a Merlin, and he was already into armor by the time I had him locked. I quick web and a few seconds later his ship was another wreck floating in space. At this point it was down to just me and the real powerhouse of the fight, a highly skilled PvP pilot in a Rifter. After a few shots from my turrets, I was looking at my wreck of a Merlin from my pod, my armor and hull getting eating at a disturbing rate.

Overall the event was a success, and I think everyone had a great time. Our next planned event is another frigate tourney, although the rules are slightly modified to allow only standard t1 fittings, no named ones. This not only brings down the cost considerably, but further levels the playing field, while not overly gimping the strategy options of the participants. Hopefully we get more pilots involved, and we can truly have a massive battle.

Challenge thoughts and a bit of a wrap-up.

I’m very pleased with the results of my little MMO design challenge below, with a lot of great responses. Thanks to everyone who posted, even the trolls, because we all know trolls need love too.

First the major issues that I agree on.

Non-consensual PvP: While to me this is actually a plus in many MMOs if done right, I understand why some people might simply not want ANYTHING to do with PvP, or allow any player to impact their gameplay unless they themselves allow it. I can respect that, but I would also say they should give it a shot, going into it with a thicker skin and set a timeframe to ‘tough it out’. I think a lot of people would be surprised how much some good PvP can add to a game, and the experience/stories you come away with.

Barrier of Entry: It’s a known fact that EVE can be extremely overwhelming when you first fire it up. Unless you get into the right chat channel or do some research yourself, it’s very easy to have no clue what you are doing and quickly give up. You almost have to go into it with the mind frame that you are going to tough it out for a month, and only then do an evaluation, which is not fair to ask of people. That’s one of the major downsides of giving your players so many options, they might accidentally pick an option they are not ready for and it could lead to a negative experience.

Lack of short term ‘fun’: This is the big one, and the hardest to break down. I think EVE has been home to the greatest events in MMO history, period. The Guiding Hand Social Club event, the first Titan kill, the massive wars, the Alliance tournaments, and countless other events are far and away the pinnacles of what it means to play an MMO. I doubt anyone involved in such events will ever forget them, or the rush that they surely had during them. That said, there was no doubt countless hours spent doing the ‘less fun’ stuff to make this all happen. The mining, the scouting, the planning; all the less glamorous aspects that need to happen behind the scenes to make everything come together.

This all leads me to this statement, and depending on how you take it will likely determine if EVE is the game for you; EVE is more fun out of game than in game.

What I mean by this is that looking forward to what is going to happen in EVE, be it personal goals, Corp goals, or Alliance ones, is often more motivation to play than whatever you happen to do that day. Part of the fun in a mining Op is knowing that down the line it will have a great impact on the Corp, that it will lead you forward and raise your power level with those around you. The actual mining Op itself is not reason enough to do it, it’s not ‘fun’ enough on its own to fly out and mine those asteroids.

I think the difference with EVE is that the scope is so much greater than other MMOs that you get a lot more of the low because the high is so much higher. A raiding guild needs to farm mats for pots/enchants, but that aspect of the game is much smaller than it is in EVE. At the same time, downing a boss with a raid is a smaller accomplishment than launching a Titan, or putting up a POS.

What draws me to EVE is that potential, that possibility of launching that Titan. I know exactly what I can get out of WoW, I know I can level up and gear up and take down Illidan. And that would be cool, no doubt. But for me, it would not be nearly as cool as seeing my Corp move out to 0.0 and have a major impact out there, or to have us become an economic powerhouse and control parts of the market in EVE. It’s those goals that make even the dull tasks of EVE enjoyable, because I know in the end the high will be that much better.

Sick day

Flu is going around, and has gotten me today, so only a short post before I head back to bed. Dedication people, dedication!

I got the full version of Puzzle Quest over the weekend, great game. Simple, easy to pick up and play for a bit, and most importantly, fun. Now if I could only get the multiplayer to work…

I’m also 20 million ISK away from buying a Rohk, and with the payout of a mining Op we had this weekend still coming, I should have it shortly. That should make running level 3 missions a breeze, and I can start thinking about soloing level 4s.

 BTW, nice hack job by the refs in the Pats/Colts game. One of the single worst jobs of officiating I’ve seen in a long time. 9-0 is 9-0 though, so all good for now.

No go on Pirates, EVE cherries.

I wish I could give some comments on Pirates this morning, but it seems the stress test filled up rather quickly Friday night. I’m still not sure what kind ‘stress test” you can have when you limit the amount of people playing that greatly, but I guess that’s why the game is not coming out till late January.

One more point, it would have been nice of Fileplanet to inform people that they were out of account keys BEFORE you had to download the 4+ gigabit file; nothing like downloading for close to 5 hours and installing a game only to find out that you can’t play. Nice first impression for a game that is desperately hanging on to some sort of spotlight, and now one that will be crushed a month after release by WAR.

Moving on to games that I actually could play, I had a fairly successful weekend in EVE. The bank account is sitting around 70 million ISK, and I’m currently selling a good amount of items on the market to get more. Hopefully once everything is sold, I will be at or over 100 million. I also finished a nice 10 part level 3 Storyline mission sequence, completing the final mission with some help from a fellow Corp member who almost lost his tech 2 Cruiser. (Thanks again Reddice) Part 10 consisted of 8-9 Raven battleships, along with a slew of Battlecruisers and other ships split into two groups. The mission states you can rush in and go for a quick kill of the control tower and warp out, but that seemed a bit risky, so instead I called in some help and just cleared the entire area. At 1.2 million per battleship, the bounty money was great. Speaking of killing Battleships, I got my first solo kill on a Scorpion in an earlier mission. As Reddice put it, I finally ‘popped my cherry’, although I still need to kill ANYONE in PvP, but I’m guessing that will come shortly, especially as our Corp draws closer to moving into low sec space.

More ‘Sword of Insta-pwn’ talk, and why EVE is better than WoW/EQ!

If you go look at any item database website, you can easily look up any mob in WoW or EQ2 and find out exactly what item could drop off said mob, especially raid bosses. Long before most people kill Illidan (if they ever do), they most likely have his loot table memorized, knowing exactly what he drops, and even the % chance he has to drop each item.

While it is still a rush to see what loot a boss has dropped, part of that thrill is no doubt gone knowing what each item is even before it drops. You know that Illidan has no chance of ever giving you ‘The Sword of Insta-pwn’. You know this because his loot table is static, and limited to only a few items. This applies to all boss mobs, and in general most mobs in a game that is item based, like WoW or EQ2.

Part of what makes EVE Online missions fun is collecting the wrecks once you have handled all the enemy ships in a given space. What makes this more fun, in some ways, to downing even a raid boss is that you never really know what you will find in a wreck. Most likely it will be a common fitting or ammo, which while useful are nothing really special. There is however always the chance that you will find some really nice named fitting, which will either be usable or that you can sell on the market for a decent amount of ISK. In some cases you might find something worth a large amount of ISK, which is what happened to me last weekend. During one of the level 4 missions we were running as a Corp, I looted a wreck and found a named sensor booster fitting. At the time I had no idea what it was worth, but when I went to put it up on the market the initial listing was 3.4 million ISK, and that was 20% below the regional average. I went ahead and listed it for 4 million, and within two days it sold. While I know 4 million ISK is not that much in a game that has 46 BILLION ISK ships flying around and getting blow up, but considering I had 23 million ISK at the time I sold the fitting, 4 million ISK was a big deal. The sensor booster dropped randomly; if we had run that same mission again it’s very likely I might not get anything near that value, but there is also a chance I get something even more valuable, or that I get a few fittings that improve my own ship.

I’m not saying this makes EVE Online better in every way compared to WoW/EQ type games (well, not in this post anyway, haha), but it’s another of those small things that enhances the game, increasing its appeal in the long term. Whether that design was intentional or simply a by-product of a game that is not item based I’m not sure, but I do know it works.

EVE weekend, WAR hype, and Gothic 3.

Played a lot of EVE this weekend, which is definitely a good thing. I finally feel like my skills are catching up to me Ferox, and I’m getting more out of it. Perhaps in a day or two it will be time to give level 3 missions another go, which will speed up the process of gathering enough ISK for a battleship. Focusing primarily on gunnery right now, I’m aiming to get a Rohk, but that’s going to take some time, as I’m currently only sitting at around 30 million ISK, and the best price I’ve seen for a Rohk was around 130 million.

Speaking of ISK, I made a good deal of it on Sunday from the level 4 missions we ran as a corp. To be honest it was overkill, as we had 7-9 members in our gang, with I believe 4 flying battleships. If we had access to a level 5 agent, we would have given it a shot, but sadly no one has the standing for that just yet, although I think a few of us are getting close to the 8.6 standing needed.

Moving on, seems a lot of Warhammer news came out in the last few days, but I find myself somewhat uninterested. Not because I’m not looking forward to WAR, but simply because I’m just not going to get myself overworked with each tidbit released. We all know MMOs more than any other genre change rapidly, and often in dramatic ways, so whatever info is released now is likely to get changed up greatly even before open beta starts, let alone release or 6 months after. At this point, I know I’m going to buy Warhammer, and know I’ll at least enjoy it. Whether it becomes the next big thing for me is not going to be determined by a bit of new info released over the weekend, and I guess that is what makes me so ‘meh’ about the videos and such. That or the fact that I was crazy about Shadowbane before that game was released, literally combing over any bit of info that was released each week. The fact that the game was delayed made the waiting worse, and when the game finally came out… well it was terrible. But it was not terrible based on anything released, it was terrible because of how it all game together, or did not I guess. I think SB was the last game I was REALLY hyped for, and I guess I learned my lesson.

In a somewhat random note, I downloaded the demo of Gothic 3, as it was a game I was interested at when it neared release, and then it just fell off the radar. Well now I understand why. Simply put Gothic 3 is a poor mans Oblivion, with a whole bunch of bugs thrown in for fun. The game, while not ugly, is not nearly as good looking as Oblivion (both games turned to max), yet runs a good 5-10 FPS worse. Same with the controls, not terrible, but somehow they feel less responsive and natural compared to Oblivion’s. I will give it credit for having the main character voice responses to quest dialog, and the dialog is presented in a somewhat stylish way, with the camera jumping back and forth between characters. The fact that you could not pick a class/race/look really did not bother me, as I think that’s a somewhat overrated feature in a single player game. I encountered a rather crippling memory leak that would drop the game into slide show mode before finally crashing. I almost want to say the demo is some old version that has since been patched and improved, but that might be a long shot. If anyone has played the full version, I would love to hear about it.

Friday randomness.

Bit absent minded today, I blame it on today being Friday. EQ2 is going well, level 13 now. Heroic Opportunities still confuse me, I mean I get that you use the skill that is blinking to get a greater effect, but the NPC who tried to explain it referred to some kind of chaining effect. Perhaps with more time, I’ll figure it out.

As for EVE, still running missions and doing some occasional mining. I finally have enough LP to buy a +4 attribute implant, now I just need a little more cash, as it also costs 12 million ISK to purchase. I’m leaning towards Perception, but might go Intelligence. Currently my pilot sits at 22 Perception and 16 Intelligence, and that’s with all +1 implants. Considering he is going to focus almost exclusively on combat skills, Perception seems like the safe bet.

I’ve sadly had to go back to level 2 missions for now, as even in a Ferox I was having too much trouble with level 3s. The ship itself is fine, but I simply don’t have the skills to support it correctly. Soon enough however I should have enough of the combat related skills to level 3 to give it another go. I think I also drew some bad luck in getting “Massive Attack” as one of my first level 3 missions, as that mission can be a monster. “The Blockade” did not really help either. Good thing both times a Corp member with a BS was around to give me a hand and help me finish each mission, so thanks to Tao and Mord for that!

Mining Op = Success

The good thing about three day weekend is you get three days off. The bad thing is after three days, you go back to work. The terrible thing is the next three day weekend is far away, and you just had one. On the plus side, only four work days till the normal two day weekend is here again…

As stated in the post below, my Corp had a mining Op planned for Saturday, and overall it was a huge success. We managed to strip mine three belts in Ghesis, coming away with a good bit of minerals to produce new ships and fittings. Overall it was fairly uneventful, not unexpected considering Ghesis is a 0.5 security area, as well as being fairly low traffic. It was nice to see 6-12 (depending on the time) of us working together and as a team to accomplish a common goal. The final minerals count also shows exactly how far a Corp can get when its members work together, as we mined far more than we could have working alone. Perhaps when more of us are closer to combat ready, we will trek out into a .0.4 or below system and get the more valuable ores. Currently only a few of our members are truly skilled at flying a battleship, although those members have been playing EVE for two years or more, so they are very skilled. It’s up to us new guys to catch up and prove our worth. In time I’m sure we will, until then, the training continues.

Noob lessons in EVE, long weekend of goodness.

I got my first Cruiser a few days ago, a shiny new Caracal. Having been on some level 4 missions with my Corp, I picked up some fittings off the wrecks, and after a bit of shopping, the Caracal was all set and ready to take on some level 2 missions. I set the destination and hit auto-pilot. As the Redsox game was on, I walked away and watched a few innings, as the auto-pilot had 17 jumps to go. I came back to the computer to find myself looking at a pod. I’m an idiot. I had not noticed that the course auto-pilot had picked took my though a 0.3 security zone, and sure enough, a Pirate must have been waiting for silly noobs like me to fly in and make an easy score off of. So my first Cruiser lasted all of about an hour, and fired off exactly 0 missiles before getting blown up. At least the pirate was nice enough not to pod kill me, so thank you MirrorGod for that. Lesson learned.

As usual, the Corp had my back and donated a new Caracal to the ‘help noob Syn’ cause. Sadly I had to buy all the fittings, and so now my Caracal is fling around without a single named pieces, and overall an odd setup. I have one heavy missile launcher, five assault launchers, two large shield expanders, 2 passive shield recharge fittings, an explosion dampener, and two ballistic control systems. It’s been working so far in level two missions, so good enough for now. No afterburner does make for some slow wreck cleanup though. Top speed of 206, wee.

This weekend should be a good one, and not just because Monday is a holiday. My Corp has scheduled a mining op for Saturday, which I am looking forward to, as I’ve only mined with 2-3 people before, so I am curious to see how it goes when we get a good sized group together and wtfpwn some asteroids. Sunday we have our level 4 mission day, which is always a blast. I’ll have to pick up a few more heavy missile launchers before that to hopefully contribute a bit more in terms of dps. Cross your fingers that I don’t get mass targeted and blown out of the sky, but odds are good that I will.