You Can Die in the Tutorial

Well I've now finished the Military career mission arc. Pretty solid introduction to PvE'ing touching on resists, aiming, firing, moving, etc. It finishes up with a mission that you will be destroyed in unless you were paying attention. It's nice to know some of the true nature of EVE makes it into the tutorial stuff. Also got a new frigate gifted as part of one of the missions. I am now flying a Tristan. Depending on what happens in the near future I may ditch it and get myself a Catalyst.

Now I'm off to a Sisters of Eve agent for what I believe is the start of the beginner epic arc. Never done an Epic arc so this should be quite interesting.

Update on Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 8:59PM by James

Well I've just started up an epic arc. It's interesting so far. A bit more plot then what I'm used to in missions. I did like the ship I was sent to investigate was called "Damsel" A Damsel in Distress you say? ;) :p

And the remote finish, request and accept is nice. No running back a forth just to get the next mission.

Now of course I now that this epic mission that could affect EVE as we know it is of course being run by hundreds if not thousands of other people. But I think the raw size of EVE that you get a feel for helps make it feel a bit more important.

Heh, I liked a touch of EVE lingo CCP dropped into one of the mission briefings.

Woah, I managed to hit my first million in liquid ISK.

EVE Has a Tutorial?

Well here I am in the tutorial every new player gets dropped into.

This is already a vast improvement over the tutorial I got when I started. You get dropped into what I understand is a deadspace complex with a few asteroids and a single rat which orbits around. This is good because it gets people right into the game without being shocked by the menus and everything else you get when docked in a station. This part of the tutorial takes you through the core movement and combat skills. After that's done it gets you to dock up at the only station in system. This is interesting as they get you to use the dock order which warps you to zero automatically instead of getting you to warp to zero first and then dock. I can understand using just the dock as it leaves the explicit warp-to instruction till later. As a 0.0 veteran I'm more used to warping to zero before doing any action so the straight up dock seems a bit odd.

Another interesting addition to the tutorial is this big white box that floats around when the tutorial wants you to do something with the UI. I think this is awesome as it gives new players this big "LOOK HERE" thing to speed up their initial learning instead of the hunting for the 10px x 10px that might have been flashing back when I started. Another really nice feature of this is that if you have a window over the button or item then the overlapping window will become transparent so you can see the button or item the big white box is pointing to.

The way the tutorial only spawns items as you need them for a specific step in the tutorial is nice. Instead of flooding the new user with a million items you start off with nothing but a Civilian Damage Control and the first ship you destroy has the classic 1 piece of Trit waiting for you as loot.

The tutorial also links to EVElopedia pages on subjects that the space and time of the tut doesn't really allow.

The explicit tutorial steps for joining a player corp are great compared to when I started. Mainly because the tutorial now covers them.

The career missions are an interesting addition. I went and bought a combat frig before finding out that the next mission gave you one as a reward. So I'm going to follow the mission arc until finished so I don't jump ahead and waste any more ISK. Especially as I'm not going to help myself to my main's stash.

Well that was an interesting evening. Will continue to work at this and see what happens.

Update on Friday, March 5, 2010 at 11:07PM by James

Hmmm... Forgot to post screenshots of what I meant about the white boxes and transparency. So here they are even if a little late. Click them to get them in fullsize.

The Experienced EVE Noob

It's been awhile since I last played EVE so I've been looking back and trying to figure out why. Was it burnout or just boredom or something else? The conclusion I came to was a combination of burnout of trying to keep up with all the 0.0 and corpie happenings and just getting a bit bored of the ISK grind but I still love the idea and most of the execution of the game.

So the other day an idea popped into my head. Start from scratch.

Now like almost all long time EVE players I have one alt to go along with my main. But that alt was pretty much speed trained right into a role that I wanted at the time. She never had to mission, grind or anything because of her sugar daddy main. But it has been so long since I was that noob we all were sitting in that Moa fitted with missiles and small hybrids that I though it would be interesting to do it all over again but with the advantage of knowing what I'm doing.

Of course I'm making it harder for myself to keep it interesting. I'll be moving into deep lowsec and try to live there. The stomping grounds of loners and pirates. It should be interesting. I plan to post the occaisional update on what it's like to be an EVE noob through the eyes of an experienced player.

CCP CAPSLOCK AND THE PATCH NOTES

Well CCP have released the patch notes for the upcoming Dominion expansion and as usual I've taken a look at them for the interesting, useful and sometimes just funny notes. So without futher ado, here's my review of the patch notes for the Dominion expansion of EVE Online.

• It is now possible to enable warning sounds for when your shield/armor/hull drop below a certain threshold.
• Damage notification plays a warning sound whenever your shield / hull / armor drops below a certain threshold.
• Threshold for damage notification is customizable from the HUD settings.

I hadn't heard anything about this in the past so it came as a bit of a surprise. This could be quite useful during battle, especially when entering structure or low armor. Will be giving it a try.

• The jukebox now uses MP3 format for its music. Additionally, custom playlists may be specified.

Does this mean that all the ingame musiv will be available to pull out and play seperately? I hope so as I quite enjoy the EVE music while programming or doing something else that requires a bit of serious concentration.

• A new "Loot Logging" optional mode has been added for fleets. This works for taking from cans and wrecks as well as for salvaging and mining. Everyone in the fleet will be notified of all these events. You can then export the logs as a text file.

This could prove interesting, especially in the larger fights where it isn't really possible to keep track of things.

• You will now autojoin your fleet again if you connect within 2 minutes of being disconnected. You will not enter your old position within the fleet however.

Now if this applies to intentionally quitting and relogging during a super laggy battle then this will be very useful.

• You can now report players as 'ISK Spammer' from the right click menu of a character in chat. This will remove all their messages from that channel and report it to the GM's

Well that will make the buyers and sellers in the trade hubs happier and should help CCP by making it easier. I'm also sure CCP will be cracking down on anyone who abuses this feature so only use it where appropriate.

• Hacking has the following prerequisites: Science level 3(down from level 5), Electronics Upgrades level 3(down from level 5), Electronics level 1 (down from level 2), Engineering level 1 (down from level 2)
• Archaeology has the following prerequisites: Science level 3(down from level 5), Survey level 3 (down from level 5), Electronics level 1
• Salvaging has the following prerequisites: Mechanic level 3, Survey at level 3 and Engineering at level 1
• Cloaking has the following prerequisites Electronics level 4 ( was 5)

Well as someone who has gone through all the time to train up these skills I'm a bit unhappy. But it should open up the little mini professions to more people which could be useful, especially for the newer players.

• Trial accounts can no longer request missions from agents of level 3 and above.

I'll admit I didn't know this was a problem but I guess if you have a character running level 4's or 5's and get the trial account to fleet up, you could get their standings high enough and fast enough to make it profitable for the macroers.

• You can now right click on a courier package and select "Deliver Courier Package" instead of having to find the contract.

That'll make the logistic monkeys happy. And happy logistic monkeys make happy PvP mokeys.

• You can now add corp/alliances as buddies.

I'm interested to see how this will work.

I'm guessing that it will work by adding that corp or alliance to your buddy list as a single entry that you can use to quickly access their info window. This would mean that you couldn't just add all the memebers of a corp or alliance during a war to know exactly how many and who is online in the other corp or alliance.

• A trial account does not start until the person logs into EVE for the first time, not when the trial is created or activated.

That's a nice little thing that will give trial members more time to get an idea of what EVE is.

• Player owned wrecks can now be marked as "available for all", which allows everybody to take from them without causing aggression.

Well the only case I can see this being useful in is when flying with an alt or allies but generally you wouldn't be shooting them anyway, even if they do have aggro. So odd but nothing harmful.

• Drones would sometimes refuse to attack certain structures; they've been given a stern talking-to and will now obey orders with more diligence.
• Fighter drones will respond faster to return commands, instead of idling around the space coffee machine.

Is it required for drone fixes regarding their following of orders to be in every patch notes? At least they're funny though I still expect drones to randomly attack fleet members and split up without warning. ;)

• The UI is now flatter and squarer.

Ahh CCP. What would we do without this short, descriptive and utterly useless patch note. I'm guessing it's a little easter egg for those of us crazy enough to read the entire patch notes.

• You can no longer create more than 5 tabs when importing an overview XML file.

It was annouced a while ago but as a corp that uses the extra tabs it will mean a rejigging of the corp standard tab layout.

• The items filter is no longer ignoring things with only capital letters for a name. CCP CAPSLOCK approves.

Never seen CCP CAPSLOCK but I approve of his name.

So that's it for the notes I found interesting. It was interesting to see that even with all the dev blogs about all the changes there were a few new ones that I hadn't seen mentioned. If you want to read the entire patch notes yourself then take a look over here.

All in all I think Dominion is shaping up to be a very interesting expansion. Especially as I'm a 0.0 person. Bring on the pewpew!

EVE Blog Banter #8

Welcome to the eighth 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 otherEVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!
This month's topic comes to us from me, Ga'len at The Wandering Druid of Tranquility. He asks: "What new game mechanic or mechanics would you like to see created and brought into the EVE Online universe and how would this be incorporated into the current game universe? Be specific and give details, this is not meant to be a 'nerf this, boost my game play' post like we see on the EVE forums."

Even though this isn't an EVE blog I'm a long time player and fan of it so I thought I'd jump into the blog banter and offer up my view. My first thought was that I'd like to see something like a dueling system where two players or groups of players could agree to a fight without being Concordokkend. But then I remembered an older thought that I've seen put up elsewhere:

"Claimable Low-Sec"

Now the quotes are important. I don't want to see 0.0 style Sovereignty in lowsec. That's what 0.0 is for. What I'm thinking of is something a bit more casual in a sense. And giving pirates and other lowsec corps something fun about lowsec.

The way I see that it could work is by giving corps or alliances the ability to 'register' claims with the Empire that claims a lowsec region. In exchange for a small payment of some sort (ISK, towers around moons, etc.) the Empire give the corporation free reign to destroy ships of corporations with Headquarters or Offices in enemy Empire affiliated stations.

Now to balance it out and to stop the pira... I mean corporations and alliances from having life to easy anyone is allowed to engage the ships of claiming corporations without sentry gun aggro.

Also multiple corporations and alliances can claim a Region of lowsec so they would also be able to shoot each other just to make life more interesting.

Now this would need more work but I think it could make life in lowsec more interesting by reducing the amount of GCC and the consequent sentry aggro.