First Steps Into Incursions

Last week’s Saturday I finally got myself to try out Incursions. More than 30 jumps to the Amarr and Khanid homeworlds were a long way for something I expected to be just a possible ship loss or endless wait.

However I was surprised. I’d lie if I’d say I wasn’t surprised a lot. I’ve been playing MMORPGs for pretty much 10 years now and I’ve never seen a community so openly accepting “newbies” into high level content (yes, I consider Incursions to be EVE’s interpretation of high level PvE content). Well, the complexity isn’t that high compared to some of the dungeons MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft or Warhammer Online are offering. However you’re risking a lot more than just having to plea for a resurrection spell or having to return to the dungeon’s entrance. An unexperienced player in an important role (e.g. flying a Logistics ship) can break your whole experience get your fleet killed.

Especially in a world like New Eden, where treason, abuse and scamming are considered part of the gameplay, I never expected to fly there, ask for a group and be invited immediately. I even stated that I’ve never done an Incursion site before – no problem to the fleet commander. No problem? What? Big surprise! This wasn’t an “EVE is real” moment, but it was more like an “EVE is different” or “EVE is surprising” moment. Seeing more than 4 or 5 corp buddies in fleet warp? Epic!

Let me take this opportunity to give big thanks and kudos to all the fleet commanders I’ve been flying with so far, especially Laburous and lord solo for introducing “new” players like me to Vanguards and Assaults without any prejudice or “what a dumb question!” attitude.

So now, about a week later, I’ve seen a lot – and earned even more. I’m not really sure if that’s really intended. A Vanguard site with a good and powerful fleet takes about 6 or 7 minutes to complete, including the time to warp in/out, gather, etc. and it nets you 10 million ISK and some LP. That makes about 10 sites per hour, so 100 million ISK per hour? That beats any activity I’ve seen before. I’m also not sure if you’re able to blitz missions to earn that much. I don’t think it’s possible (feel free to proof me wrong!) but even if it is, it most likely involves more luck, investment and skill training time compared to the Incursions.

Thinking back, I’m a bit annoyed that I didn’t try incursions a lot earlier. Also the mentioned money gain is a bit too excessive to get me interested in going back to missions (for now). But what to do with all the money? I don’t know. I’ll definitely save some for the inevitable loss of a ship, but there’s more than enough on my account now. The new NeX store items aren’t that awesome either. I still haven’t found a fitting for a Machariel or any other Battleship I like.

Maybe I’ll get one to fill a DpS role in Incursions, but so far I’m still on my route to Command Ships and I’m more than happy to help others playing the (sometimes?) unthankful job of being the Logistics pilot. You keep them alive, but if something goes wrong, they might blame you, no matter what really happened. Okay, the game and its community might surprise me once more – but I’m not really interested in elaborating this. So far I’ve seen 3 ships exploding in sites, but there was nothing the Logistics could do due to people not following tagged targets and getting overwhelmed in the end. That could actually count as a surprise, but it was a one time thing only so far. Well, time will tell, although I won’t force it to do so (as I know you all love your internet spaceships after all).

EVE Is Real – Huh?

So, CCP finally released their website for their latest promotional campaign, EVE is real.  What started with a brand new trailer (“I Was There”) – the first EVE Online trailer featuring a real actor – now turned out to be a more or less massive approach to get people into talking about the game in social media. They call it a “virtual museum of the EVE experience”. Obviously the Tweet Fleet wasn’t enough for them. But who’d blame them? It’s all about Facebook, Twitter and Google+ these days.

The museum – or more specific: the campaign – is more than this. It’s also a first approach to seed some amount of Aurum to the player base. It’s meant to be given to all players once several milestones are achieved. So far there are 4 milestones visible, each unlocking a said to be small amount of Aurum: 1,000 Aurum, 1,000 Aurum, 1,500 Aurum and 2,000 Aurum. Doing some easy math this sums up to a total of 5,500 Aurum for every active account of EVE Online? Just as a reminder: 1 PLEX converts to 3,500 Aurum, so they’re essentially giving away items worth about 24 bucks to everyone playing EVE? In addition there’s some contest to win real Hardware by posting images or videos, but I don’t think I’ve got a real chance there, so that part isn’t that interesting for me.

But what’s it all about anyway? Where is this going? For CCP it’s some free advertising on social media sites – what else? Okay, it’s not really free as they’re giving away stuff they could have made some money off, but after all it’s most likely meant to be an incentive for people to try the NeX store, get used to it and possibly buy some more items. It’s basically a nice idea – both from a player as well as a company standpoint – but what will be the real results? Will there be a flood of clothing on the market? Will people buy stuff for themselves only? Will they ignore the Aurum? This might turn out to be rather interesting, also considering people with several accounts who’ll most likely receive 11,000 Aurum or more. Due to missing trading options, they won’t be able to buy monocles off it or simply sell it, but it could still be used to buy several outfits – which doesn’t have to be a bad thing after all.

But how long will it take and how long will the campaign last? That’s still something I’m not really sure about. Will the campaign stall once the real life prices are awarded? Will it stall once the Aurum is given away? Or will it continue to pay off? It will most likely take at least some more time – a time frame that might be rather long judging the rather odd progress on the milestones.

Two days ago they had a 2 digits long number of shares – I think something like 40 or so – and the bar was filled by something like 10 %. This appeared to be rather fast, too fast for my expectations. Yesterday afternoon the numbers appeared a bit more realistic to me: just a bit above 1,000 shares showing a progress of 50 %. So 2,000 shares for the first batch of Aurum? Good! Really? Well, no… Today we’ve got almost 5,000 shares and the bar’s progress can be seen on the image above. The progress seems to be similar to last night (about 2,200 shares). So what’s this? Is it a logarithmic scale progress bar? This is a bit confusing to me as well as disappointing. I know how logarithmic scaling works, that’s no issue here. However It’s something I’ve never seen used on a progress bar.

Well, over all progress bars are meant to show a measure of how much time has passed or how much work has been done and how much is still waiting for us, aren’t they? That’s definitely not true for these. It might be some weird way of caching or some bug, but it’s still something that shouldn’t happen on a “production site”.

Anyway, what do you think about the whole approach? To me it’s still a nice idea, but there are also some letdowns. The weird progress bar, the quite wonky navigation (“Oh no, my cursor went down too far and now the images are gone again!”), impossible to click entries hidden behind other preview images,… It feels like one or two weeks could have been a good investment before it went live or became real. It feels a bit rushed – just like some parts of Incarna’s first release – but that seems to be common these days.

Update: Ah, okay. Seems like CCP Hekatonkheires (ugh, how do you remember such nickname?) confirmed the “progress bar vs. counter” stuff to be broken:

Share tracking for unlocks: You'll notice the share counter and progress bill don't fill at the same rate. Unfortunately we've had some bogus/spam share farming. We thought we had a good solution in place to mediate it; turns out 375,000 people are more clever than the 8 of us working on this. The progress bar is the truth, it doesn't count share spamming or incomplete shares. We chose to spend time making videos bigger than fixing the numerical share button today. <- True fact. When the contest voting round arrives, you will be limited to one vote per category (video/image) per day.

Dress to Impress?

So, upon login I encountered a new EVE promotion greeting me:

Well, I'm not really sure on what I should think about this so called promotion. It's definitely meant to advertise for the new NeX store - something that's actually not hard to guess, given there's a bright red NeX logo included. But no other text, so it's meant to impress me? By the image? Or is it just meant to be funny? I'm not really sure. At least now I know there’s a NeX page on the Incarna site.

As we all know, those login screen advertisements are trying to be a bit funny or interesting. Many might remember the rainbow promotion introducing the new forums or the suggestion to waste the last night on earth playing EVE if the world’s ending anyway. But I wouldn't consider this rendition interesting, sexy or a good pun. In fact I'm even tempted to call it a fail.

The basic idea and promise of the image aren't that bad. I'd even consider it being a good idea. However there's something else causing me to see it as a failed campaign. Dress to impress. So I should buy one of these skirts or a pair of boots for my character to impress others. Alright. It's just somewhere around 300-400 million ISK per item I think. I'll get fancy new dressing options in character re-customization and I'll impress others the moment I finish the process.

Wait! You can't see any clothing except some parts of the upper body stuff, e.g. shirts, vests and such. You can't see the boots nor the skirt right now. That will have to wait till we get the more complete "Walking in Stations" (WiS) experience later this year. So why advertise with the most "useless" NeX store items now? Is it just an attempt to make it look sexy? Or should that be fun, essentially talking about impressing others with stuff they can’t see?

The whole "visible in avatar images only" makes these NeX items, especially boots, trousers and skirts, far less attractive for the moment. Why wear them if others can't see them? Only to see them myself? Well, I'm not sold on this idea yet. I might consider getting some outfit once I'm really able to impress others as long as it won't trigger any kill-on-sight responses upon undocking from a station or entering a new solar system. But it’s definitely too early to buy any lower body stuff to impress others.

Shutdown in… Argh!

I’m not sure if others suffer the same issue, but I feel like they do. Taking a break from work I decide to run one or two missions in EVE. Sometimes I’m just bored and want to shoot down some pirates as well. This doesn’t sound like a issue to you? It’s nice having a break and play something? You’re right! Although there’s the fact that whenever I really feel the urge to log in and play some EVE I’m greeted by a tiny, well known popup window:

Okay, it’s not always the case. When playing in the evening or during the night this won’t happen, but then I’ve got more interesting stuff to do (at least in most cases). So apparently I want to play the game the most when it’s not available. Is this coincidence, on purpose, bad luck or simply my destiny? I know when daily downtime happens, and yet I still keep managing logging in right before downtime. It’s 9 or 10 am, I decide to fly a mission, get distracted by some e-mail before being able to log in and then there it is again…

I’m Sick of the Whining

Well, it’s somehow hard to describe. I can understand the fears of many people about possible additions of “pay to win” to EVE Online. Although I can’t really understand all the – sorry, but I just have to call it that way – whining and sh*t storming on forums, news sites, etc. It’s just too much and far too exaggerated given the information CCP released over the last few weeks. They admitted failures in communication but it doesn’t appear like they’re hiding something – why should they even try to?

It all started with that infamous leak of the internal CCP newsletter “Fearless”. Looking closely at the page numbers reveals that there are several pages that were cut. For example, the document shows the front cover and starts right at page 5. Why doesn’t it show the pages between? Those pages obviously contained content that wasn’t important and I think they didn’t support the overall impression this should give to readers: The contents are made up for discussion and not policy. Someone just had to take the roles of pros and cons – rather similar to what many probably know back from their time in school. Someone always had to be against smoking in public buildings while others had to take the opposite position – just to name an example.

So, there it started, CCP addressed people’s concerns in several Dev Blog entries, but there were still people trying to uncover the biggest conspiracy in the whole history of internet spaceship games. They’re out for our money and they want it now (or in a very close future). After all they’re a company working to earn money. Even a special summit with several CSM members couldn’t calm all the waves that were started by the previous discoveries. There was still that tiny spark waiting to rekindle the fire of rage.

During the whole drama people kept telling others to unsubscribe the game to show CCP that they’re not happy with their plans, etc. Is it really worth it? Honestly, I’m not playing EVE as some kind of “investment” for the future. I play EVE because I want to have fun. Even if the rumors show up to be true in the end – maybe some months or a year later – who cares? If it’s really unbearable in terms of power advantage (using NeX vs. ignoring it) I can still quit. But why should I quit now just because I might have no fun a year later? Just think about it. What happens if I’m having fun today and next week I decide to no longer log in? Should I be sad for being online this week?

So, please, follow this tiny plea that is meant for all those whining, complaining or trying to convince others to quit – and those sitting on the fence: If you’re having fun now, why don’t you just continue to do so as long as possible? If you decide that you no longer like the game – on any day and for whatever reason – you can still stop playing and do something else. If you worry about your money or time spent in a MMORPG you might be no longer playing in the future, don’t play at all and do something different instead. I’m really confident that CCP is aware of the general attitude of the community in regards selling non-vanity stuff on the NeX store or other micro-transactions. Why should they even try to make some additional money risking a huge chunk of their player base? Sure, they want to make money after all, but they’re not dumb as well.

Actually, I think the whole micro-transaction drama should just end and if you still worry, listen to Douglas Adams: Don’t panic!

Command Ship Or No Command Ship?

So I finally decided on taking on the last steps of the road to Command Ships. It’s been a long time since I tried to do it for the last time. Earlier this year I wasn’t sure whether I should specialize in a Strategic Cruiser, essentially the Loki, or one of the Command Ships. Seeing the Loki as a lot more versatile ship I picked that one first. I won’t regret that choice but I’m feeling a bit uncomfortable carrying a ship worth more than 1 billion ISK into Incursions or PvP.

Due to having many skill points in Leadership already (from piloting my Orca) I picked the Claymore as my primary target for now. I somehow prefer the supporting/buffing/defensive role so getting access to Logistics on the route is a nice added plus as well. I just fear the 3 or 4 weeks training for Battlecruisers – again such a long time without getting any real and immediate benefits as I’m not using any battlecruiser right now. I’ve still got my old Hurricane but compared to my Loki I’d consider it a massive downgrade.

As an alternative I tinkered about acquiring a Machariel to do level 4 missions faster but going that way I’d like to obtain the T2 turrets before actually running missions causing another 30 or so days to train. So in the end I’m essentially stuck between 30+ days for a Command Ship or 30+ days for a Machariel. While I really like both ships, the Machariel has to wait – at least till I’m able to pick up Logistics. I’m flying level 4 missions already and I’d somehow prefer something new to do. Doing them faster is nice, but doing something new might be even more fun.

Where to Start?

I’ve thought about this question in almost every detail several times now and I’m still a bit uncertain. It’s the first time I’m starting to blog about EVE Online after playing the game for about a year. Which is actually not 100% true. Back in 2003 (or 2004?) this internet spaceship game drew my attention for the first time – an almost instant buy, despite the rather complicated options to pay for the game without a credit card. Back in these days it wasn’t that convenient after all.

I still gave it a try and played the game for a few days but I didn’t really enjoy it and it just left me flat. Thrown into a universe without any real tutorial (I think they weren’t there or I just didn’t notice them)… I remember doing some trading and some mining, even one or two “mining ops”, but that was it. I still kept an eye on EVE but somehow didn’t feel the incentive to join back in paying at least 15 € for one month. Well, it’s not that much money, but still something to think about, if you’re playing another, more traditional MMORPG as well and you don’t want to stop doing so.

Then, almost 7 years later, Steam’s Summer Sale finally paved the way for me to return to New Eden. You can’t go wrong having 51 days to try the game (buddy trial combined with the 30 days applied by the purchased CD key) after paying only 5 € – something I haven’t regretted so far. I got a feeling for it, the tutorials made the start a lot easier and I really loved this “new” game – which I still do. The option to pay the subscription by ISK felt like another nice addition as well, although I haven’t used it yet. I always felt it’s a better idea to invest the virtual money in some more of those internet spaceships.

Having found new interest in the game I faced new challenges, some of which I still struggle with. I did some exploration, I did some mining and I did some fighting. But I’m somehow never sure on what to do next. During that year I learned to pilot many different ships but I never found the time to really specialize in any, except Orca and Loki. I know it’s not enough to just be able to sit in a ship – I’ve spent many weeks to be able to use almost all T2 modules as well – but I was never really happy with one particular ship. I like the possibility to specialize in a particular subset of skills by spending weeks or months of time training them, but it’s always rather hard for me to pass the time waiting for those skills taking that long. Finishing skills is very rewarding most of the time, but seeing the skill queue’s progress bar not moving for days or weeks isn’t that great at all. In fact I really hate it. But enough about skills, don’t want you falling asleep on my first post.

So, where is this going? I’m not really sure. There are different things I’m thinking about right now, including some thoughts about the whole “They’re going to rip us off our shirts to sell us new ones on the NeX store!” drama. I also thought about starting to write some short stories again. I’ve done it in the past, but so far they never took place in space or any science fiction environment. I guess I’ll have to try to replace dwarves with miners and elves with… I’m not really sure yet… NeX customers enjoying their pretty clothes? I’ll try to answer this later on…

Oh, and one more thing to note: This is the first time I’m blogging in English – not my native language – so bear with me in case there are any spelling errors or grammar mistakes. I keep trying. Feel free to leave me a comment in case you’re missing something important, you’re having a special request, you’d just like to show your opinion or you’re having some kind of issue. You can also contact me using EVE’s mail system (using either English or German) – CSPA charges are turned off, so you don’t have to worry about losing your loose cash.