Dust in the wind

"Don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky"  - Kansas "Dust in the Wind"


... And apparently gamers complaining.

When CCP announced the release of Dust 514 there were many bloggers posted in open rebellion. "How dare they not intend to release a PC version?" "What do you mean my game will be influenced by a bunch of low life console monkeys?" "Great, now I need two accounts just to affect sovereignty." On and on went the litany of complaints.  There were also a number of people who seemed genuinely excited about the prospects of this new game, and I have to admit that I fall in with them.

For the record, I am not a console gamer. I own a PS3 purchased primarily to serve as a media center in my house, a DVD and Blue Ray player, and it lets me play Rock Band (and I love me some Rock Band). I never fell in with the Halo crowd, if I'm going to play a FPS I want a keyboard under one hand while my other hand lovingly grips my mouse. Even then I'm not crazy for FPS games. I enjoyed them, I've played the litany from Quake and Doom through Serious Sam, No One Lifes Forever, UT, and of course every game the people who brought us Half-Life even glanced at. So I can't say I'm adverse to the notion of the FPS, but I'm hardly an expert - more of a casual gamer who likes to hang out with friends.

I can't understand why people are so upset about Dust. Yes, it will affect Sov. Yes it will be on a console. But it also has the potential giving Eve players another game to love and it has the chance to draw in some new blood to Eve Online. And to those who think new players in Eve Online is a bad thing, I have nothing to say to you.

I think that the men and women of CCP have proven they can deliver a unique and rewarding product in the MMORPG genre, why not let them have a go at the FPS genre as well? Perhaps they will bring some new ideas to the table that will make the game far more rewarding. Here are some things that I would like to see (let me preface by saying I've only really watched the trailer - so if these ideas are already in, great, if they have already been ruled out then boo.)

Skill System for Weapons and Vehicles - Much like what we have in Eve Online, create a skill system that allows a character to improve over time as a player. Whether they use the same real time training of Eve or whether they require you to be active in the game to improve is up in the air - however, it should not be based solely on in game performance because it would skew the field. The good players would get stronger while the less skilled grow weaker, this is not very Eveian. Real time skill training could mean Older players get more use of support vehicles, better armor, and weapon improvements such as firing rate, increased range, etc. These should be make or break skills, but it would definitely give people and edge.

Give Me Another Way to Play - Let's face it, FPS games are pretty standard. You shoot a gun, climb in a vehicle, you do something, and then you die. Even Team Fortress and Team Fortress Two have only limited class roles. What I really love about Eve is the fact that I can play the game so many ways. I would love Dust to be like that. Sure, it is fun to sometimes bust skulls in FPS glory, but ever since reading Ender's Game I have dreamed of sitting in a commander chair orchestrating the movements of squads, even whole armies. RTS games aren't as fun because the AI is very limited. I don't want a squad of mindless drones, but a team of players who will react independently to changing situations. I would love to lead individuals who could either follow my orders or thing for themselves. Creating a interface to facilitate this role and this style of play would encourage me to plop down the cash for Dust.

Tactics Must be Key - This ties into the skill system, but create tactical roles for players and make tactics important. Create an interface where team mates can clearly and quickly communicate targets without the use of microphones and voice chat. Target labeling, squad and unit formations, etc. Create a "Briefing period before all missions where players can develop strategies. Players with certain skill sets can serve as tactical advisors, given access to overview maps and advanced unit command options while newer players can serve as grunt soldiers, scouts, and other roles.

Variable Terrain and Maps - There are ways to create dynamic shifting maps that would require players to be far more adaptive and would eliminate the edge of map memorization that exists in other FPS games. Easy? Probably not, but imagine the results! It opens up the potential for a scout class that is actually useful, again giving a skill path and variable play styles a role in a genre that has been fairly homogeneous.

Make Death Carry a Meaningful Penalty - No, I don't want this game to be an RPG and I understand that the FPS genre is all about running around and dying a lot while killing people. But the problem is it creates a game devoid of tactics and realism in many cases. If you encourage players to fall back and stay alive rather than suicide Zerg then that would be good. Possible ideas include gear loss, skill loss, clone spawn cooldown. This will have to be carefully balance, too steep and people won't want to play, too weak and people won't care. While it will be hard to get this right it would be completely worth doing.

Create Linked Accounts - If Dust 514 is going to go into the realm of subscription based play (another potential first with an FPS) then they need to allow dedicated Eve Players a discount of some sort. If Dust costs $10 per month then active Eve Accounts should get it for $5. Hell, even better, send all subscribers a $10 off coupon on the release. Basically, if CCP extends an olive branch to the current players they might not feel as hurt.


These are just a few of the things that I think could make Dust an amazing unique game. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the FPS that CCP puts out will be amazing regardless of the specific features. But I don't just want amazing from CCP. They have to push the envelope, redefine the genre, and deliver a product the likes of which we have never seen. That is what they get for setting the bar so high in the first place.

The Cold Calm of Space

"The Asteroid has been depeleted."

The soothing tone of the computer filled the cabin, the only sound other than the gentle humming whirl of the mining lasers and machinery deep within the ship, the subtle vibrations that play up and down and outer hull, and the soft and distant hiss of airlocks opening and closing as mining drones repeat their endless dance to and from the large rock floating in nothingness.

The soft moan of cushions as the chair moves, a few commands and the lasers shift to the next rock. Another touch and the targetting computers lock onto a new victim, placing the rock into queue for oblivion. A few more quick checks show that the cargohold is nearing capacity. A typed command informs the crew to intiate another transfer to the Orca that looms nearby.

All of the lights are turned low, that is how I like it. The dim readouts on the control panel provide all the needed illumination without taking away from the spendid kalediscope of space. The Orca hangs over my ship, filling up a portion of my view with the steady pulsing glow of her shields playing up and down the ship. I watch as the cargo containers drift from one bay effortlessly to the other, no tractors for guidance, just a simple push and physics to take care of the rest.

My lasers cut across the field of vision, adding their own bands of light to the fireworks display, and all set against the milky green blackness of Abhan's solar system. The sensation of just hanging in the maw of nothingness, a few feet of hull between me and complete emptiness beyond human comprehension is such a powerful feeling. For hours I will sit in the captain's chair and just wonder what it would be like to enter the airlock and hit eject without an egg, without a suit, with nothing but my nakedness touching the cold unfeeling soul of space.

Apparently I tried it once. I don't remember. Sure, I remember getting into the airlock and overriding the safety, but I don't remember what it felt like, to be truly alone in space. The MedLab techs said that it was too quick of a death for their to be any sensation, that my body would have merely vaporized from the depressurization. Another told me that it isn't uncommon to lose those last few minutes, especially if the ordeal is too traumatic for the mind. "Perhaps," she said, "We just aren't programmed to remember what death feels like."

I think it is something else though. Space is outraged at our audacity. We probe and prod and reach beyond all natural limits. We defy space, we defy death, we defy everything in our quest for power and understanding. Space holds tight to her secrets, she holds fast to whatever she can keep from us, making us tear the mysteries from her breast. But what space doesn't understand is I don't want her knowledge, I don't want her mysteries, I don't want her secrets. I just want her embrace.

"The Asteroid has been depleted."

Oh well, perhaps another day.

(My humblest of offerings to the great works of Fiction that Eve has inspired. Please let me know if you enjoyed this installment and I'll be sure to include more in the future.)

Why is Eve Online a good game?

(This is part two of my mini-series comparing World of Warcraft and Eve Online and highlighting the merits of both. My entry "Why is World of Warcraft a good game?" can be found here.)


So, now that I've alienated myself from some pretty fierce Eve Supporters I thought I'd share what I like about Eve as well. Just for background I've been playing Eve for less than a year. I've never been a pirate, never flown a battle cruiser, never ran a level four mission (though I have salvaged a few), I've never engaged in a duel, and I've never even set foot in a wormhole. My interests in the game have been more in the realm of mining, trade, and industry. I know that there are vast amounts of the game that I haven't even thought about let alone experienced. Which brings me to one of the first things I really like about Eve.

Apologies

My severe apologies if my constant edits and reposts of my last article caused any sort of spam notifications in feeds, it was not my intent. Still learning to adapt to the Blogger.com software as it is vastly different from Wordpress, which I use in other sites I manage.

Why is World of Warcraft a good game?

I know that this admission might make me a pariah in the Eve blogging community, but I am a long time World of Warcraft player. Allow me to be perfectly clear. I am not a reformed WoW player. I am not a converted WoW player. I still maintain an active World of Warcraft account. I have a level 80 character who is in a sizable guild that has completed most of the end game content including Yogg-Saron, Trial of Champions, etc. Before a server transfer with friends, I was a guild master in one of the oldest guilds on my old server. I still enjoy World of Warcraft and try to attend one or two of the three major raiding nights each week.

Now I am ‘less of a player’ in the eyes of some citizens of New Eden, and I can live with that. I have seen the trash talk of WoW in the Eve Radio channel and among various people in the more populated Local Channels as well as people within my own corp. However, I think that both games deserve a great deal of credit for what they have created, and I wanted to expound a bit on what I think Blizzard has done right with World of Warcraft and what I think CCP has done right with Eve Online.

Over 11 Million Served
Yes, numbers are not everything, but let that number sink in. 11 million people shell out $15 per month for World of Warcraft. This is compared to the much smaller number of approximately 250,000 Eve subscribers. Perhaps it is the type of game, perhaps it is the accessibility, perhaps it is superior marketing, but World of Warcraft is doing something right. Now, many people say “McDonalds serves billions of burgers, but it doesn’t mean they have the best burger in the world” and they are right. However, most people try to compare a McDonald’s burger to a steak house burger and miss the issue of price point and scope. No other business than McDonald’s serves as many $1.00 cheeseburgers daily, so in that regard they are doing something right. In comparison, Eve is like Wendy’s, similar product, similar price, not as popular. That does not mean that Wendy’s is bad, but they are definitely not the same corporation as McDonalds.

Responding to the Wishes of the Players
This is something I think both Eve and World of Warcraft have done rather well. I have not played Eve as long, but it seems to me from the developer blog and from the forums that the people down at CCP maintain a very bidirectional flow of communication. This is something that Blizzard has perhaps done too well. The belief of many in the WoW community is that he who complains most gets buffed. There are exceptions to this, the paladin class had issues for over a year before it was addressed, and warriors still have problems.

Nevertheless, no one can rightfully accuse the Blizz developers of not adjusting and tweaking their game to put more shine on it. Final Fantasy 11 failed because it was too slow to adapt and change, Everquest never really changed at all. Yes, there are things to be said for consistency, but it takes a much braver set of developers to release something that may have issues and then fix them afterwards. This development style is actually something that another “evil” corporation is famous for, and that is Microsoft. They would knowingly release a version of Windows before it was 100% tested and then just patch the bugs afterwards. This is predominantly becoming the norm in the industry as evident by Apple’s latest OS release.

New Content
Yes, World of Warcraft makes you pay for expansions. This is often cited as a “sin” of Blizzard and hailed as something that makes Eve better than all. I am going to be direct and make a few more enemies by calling bullshit on this count. The average expansion costs about $60 and lasts for about 30 months. If you play the game regularly that comes out to about $2 per month, it really is not a huge additional cost when you think that the average player is dropping $180 on subscription fees a year for either game. The people who it hurts the most is those who maintain multiple accounts, however WoW is not a game that is designed around the idea of players having multiple accounts while in Eve it seems more the rule rather than the exception.

Even outside of the expansions, Blizzard is constantly adding new content in terms of Festivals, new Dungeons, New Quest lines with every major patch. Wrath of the Lich King has had 2 entirely new Raiding Dungeons added since its release. The previous expansion saw several raid Dungeons that were approached in a systematic order as well as the addition of a new raid dungeon right towards the end of the expansion.

With each expansion and patch World of Warcraft is not only creating new content, they are fundamentally changing the nature of the game. Here is just a short list of things that have been added to the game since its original release.

• Hard Mode Encounters
• Arena Teams
• Battle Grounds for PvP
• RP PvP Servers (originally all RP servers were PvE)
• Tier Tokens
• Raid and Dungeon Instancing (huge idea that made WoW better right off the bat)
• 10 Man and 25 Man dungeons to make end game content more accessible to different guilds.
• Vehicles
• Flying Mounts
• Duel Specs
• Two New Player Races (soon to be 2 more as well)
• Death Knights as a Heroic Class
• Glyphs
• Two New Professions – Socketted Gear for Gems
• Over 10 different season events
• Duel Spec Sheets to allow for more character versatility
• Badge Gear
• An Honor system and Honor Gear

I’m sure I’m missing quite a few, but you can see why I find it somewhat foolish for people to say that we have to pay for expansions. To me it seems similar to complaining when you go to see Rush Hour Two that you have to pay again, because you already  paid for Rush Hour. Personally, I think we get our money’s worth.

To Wrap it All Up
I don’t think that World of Warcraft, or any other game, is perfect. There are plenty of flaws with WoW. The level gain can be a grind. The loot system is very arbitrary (though they’ve worked to improve that with Badge and Honor gear.) The reputation system and faction grinding can make you want to punch kittens (not that Eve players would know anything about that.) However, at the end of the day World of Warcraft is one of the most successful MMORPGs ever both in terms of player base and financial success. When you are at the top of the heap you tend to draw a lot of hate from smaller groups. For examples of this look at rabid Mac users get towards a PC user or how a Linux user scoffs at someone running Windows. Watch how defensive people who feel they belong to a niche group can become towards others. Eve is a tight knit community that is vastly different from World of Warcraft, but to say WoW is a terrible game is just very narrow minded

Stay tuned for my next post where I’ll share with you some of the things that I really think Eve has done well – it probably won’t be as detailed as this, I’m a vet player of WoW and a newb in Eve, but I hope you enjoy my perspective.

Pictures of my baby

Well, I was able to get all three cargo optimization rigs - amazing how much easier it is to secure large amounts of ISK when I can somewhat quickly move 7,000,000 tritanium to the highest price area in the region.

So there she is. I'm very happy with her - currently fitting Salvagers and a Tractor Beam because I can't use my gang links yet, but by the end of the week those will be online and ready to go. It is definitely a milestone for me as a Citizen of New Eden. It is bigger than getting my Hulk. I hope that I have as much love for my Obelisk when I'm finally cruising in that.

A Whale of a Ship

I apologize for the post title, I'm sure the pun has been used before, but if it has it is only because it is so bloody accurate. My alt got into their Orca for the first time today, and it is a beautiful thing. I'm now 5 days out from training Leadership 5 so I can start using all the Ganglink modules. Two quick impressions, and then I have to run to a Saturday morning workshop (stupid real life).

1. Holy cubic fuckton of space. I could pretty much fit almost everything I own in every station in my Orca (and I'm not even running 3 cargo rigs yet.) I know this probably means I just don't own a lot, but it is still impressive.

2. Dear god it warps slow. It is like watching my grandmother trying to parallel park a huge Oldsmobile, just slowly turning and inching along.

I'm sure I will post more about this later and let you all know what type of rigging I come up with for it (probably cookie cutter) but, man, good times so far.

Where do we go from here?

So, I find myself closing in a few benchmarks. On my main character I have the short term goal of training to fly an Obelisk. On my alt I have the short term goal of training and Orca (less than 3 days away) and the slightly more long term goal of training all the skills to use Mindlinks and other modules to essentially pimp out my Orca.

But where to next? I see my main character working on refining skills and trade skills to go along with the fact that I'll be able to move massive amounts of cargo in my Obelisk for higher rates of return. However I'm at a loss over what to do with the alt. I have him relatively trained to run some level two missions, and I'm sure I could get him running threes and fours in his Myrmidon. But to what end? Extensive PvP holds little interest to me at the time, and while shooting rocks is a lot of fun (yeah, I'm sick) I'm not sure where to take my "end game" for it.

What do you people enjoy? I know there is far more to the game then what meager scraps I take from it right now, but I'm wondering what pool to wet my toes in next.

Loose Lips (and Wives) Pod Ships.

I've been rather busy this past week and a half. I'm a teacher and school just went back into session after summer vacation. That means that I've been back to work and trying to get a classroom set up, student names learned, lesson plans created, so forth and so on. Needless to say that the job that pays for Eve has to take some precedence over Eve itself so my time mining has been woefully limited.

Finally I get a chance to play with the holiday weekend, so this morning I fire up my two copies of Eve (what good miner doesn't have an alt account training an orca?) and head out to grind some roids. Cue wife who needs a few moments of my time. Thinking that she means "a few moments" in the sense of a regular human I decide not to bother docking both my ships and run downstairs to see what is up.

I'm sure now all the vet players are shaking their heads or beating it against the edge of their desk.

Needless to say, "a few seconds" turns into several minutes - it isn't like I could tell my wife "Hold on hon, I need to check on how my ships are doing since you are talking too much." During which rats show up, eat my mining drones, and pop my retty (fortunately my Hulk is much sturdier and they didn't get that). I come back to them chewing on my Hulk's shields. End result I lost the following:

5x Mining Drone 1
1x Retriever
2x Expanded Cargohold 1
2x Hobgoblin 1
1x Survey Scanner 1

After the payout from insurance I really didn't lose that much ISK (less than a 1M overall) but I did lose valuable mining time getting a replacement. This probably never have happened had I launched all my combat drones, or if I had realized that my wife's definition of "a few seconds" was considerably longer than that of a normal humans.

Lesson learned, isk payed.Definitely glad I always insure my ships though.

Capsuleer for the iPhone

For those who have an iPhone and play Eve and haven't bothered checking into iPhone related Eve apps allow me to point you to Capsuleer. It is an extremely useful app that contains lots of great features, here are just a few of the things it offers:

• Skill Training Queues for all your characters
• A complete skill library, look up any skill in the game.
• Server status (not terribly useful, but not bad to have)
• *NEW* Push Notifications for when your current skill dips below 24 hours training time!

And my favorite feature of all -

• A partially customizable blog pack including CCP updates as well as over 20 popular Eve Blogs.

I can't begin to tell you how much I love this app and how much my wife hates it. I can read up on the latest Eve news as well as a wide range of very interesting blogs including CrazyKinux, Eve Druid, and more. If you have an iPhone and play Eve then this app is clearly a no brainer.