10 posts tagged “eve online”
At some point in the past 2-3 months, CCP (company that makes EVE Online) started accepting preorders for a collectible card game. You can read about it, if you want. Anyway they arrived today, so I took some pictures.
(Sorry for the length - no vox-cut yet!)
For those of you here at Six Apart, please feel free to come and attend my presentation on EVE Online being done this Thursday (August 3rd) at 3:00 PM in the Matterhorn.
I will be giving the presentation in the Matterhorn. Amidst the fun will be a demonstration of nearly every aspect of the game, explanations of a bunch of it, and then a brief engagement with fellow members of my corporation, Vanguard Frontiers.
The goal is to keep things to 30-45 minutes, so it won't take much of your time. I will also have free trial codes to pass out so you can give the game a whirl at home if you feel so inclined.
Hope to see you ther!
Let us delve briefly into EVE Online and discuss the philosophy of the game. I believe that EVE is the closest thing to a living, breathing world that modern MMOs have ever come. Bar none. (Well, some text-based MUDs arguably have more depth, but we're excluding those as non-modern.)
One of the biggest differences between EVE and other games is that in EVE the goal is to create an alternate reality that is still realistic. While the game is science fiction, loosely based off of a potential future of human life, it strives to be realistic.
Let's take a brief jump back into that other popular game - World of Warcraft. In particular, let's briefly look at the PvP system. Unless you're on a PvP server, combat requires you to do what is called "flag" yourself. This involves turning on a little flag that says "I am willing to engage in PvP combat."
How realistic is that? You're walking down the street, you and your bad-ass level 10 gnome, and some level 60 orc rides up to you. Realistically, he should be able to bop you on your stubby little head and pound you into the ground with ease. After all, if you fought a level 60 creature, it'd take you out in one hit. Pop!
Nope - you're not flagged. That orc has to stare at you as you waltz around outside of his home village, on the very path up to the door, without any repercussions. These guys are practically sworn enemies here! It's so unrealistic it hurts.
Okay, let's put that aside, let's assume that you are flagged. Your little level 10 is running around and that level 60 runs up. Given that you're flagged, he just pops you. Smack. You go down. Okay, maybe that makes sense. Maybe somebody that high should be able to just destroy you in one hit.
Now let's pretend he's not at his computer. He left himself flagged and wandered off. You start attacking him. Do you think you'll ever kill him? Hah! Nope, never. You will never land a hit, and when you do, it will be for so little damage that he'll just laugh. What if you got a dozen of your level 10 buddies and ganged up on him? Nope, that level 60 would still just shrug off the damage. (Note: This was the way it worked when I played, this may have changed.)
That's just wrong, in my book. I forget where I heard it, but I've been posed the question: how many 5 year olds could you take on at a time?
The logic goes that you, being a much bigger and stronger adult, could take on a good number of kids at the same time and win the fight. The reality is that at some number the mob will win out, no matter how inexperienced or ineffective they might be on their own.
Now back to EVE. Remember I mentioned that the goal is to be realistic? It's not realistic to have a magic flag that allows other people to attack you. Man, I wish I had that in real life! I'd leave it off all of the time, and never have to worry about getting mugged. Unfortunately, life (and reality) isn't like that. If someone wants to punch me, they can, and will. (Unless I happen to duck first!)
EVE is like that. If you want to lock your targetting computer on some poor sap and open fire, you sure can. Anywhere and everywhere. "But, what about the poor newbies, undocking for the very first time! Won't somebody think of the children?!" you say. I can hear it now, "But if anybody can attack anybody, isn't it just a haven of pirates and villainy?"
No, not at all. Enter game mechanics that make sense and follow reality. While you most certainly can open fire on another person's ship, this will not endear you in the eyes of the law. If you are in a high security system, you will immediately take a hit to your security status (it shows if you're a good person or a pirate, usually), and will have a "global criminal" flag for 15 minutes.
This flag instructs any sentry guns or police forces that see you to open fire immediately. And let me tell you, the NPC police and sentries are nasty. They will pop your ship - no matter what you're flying - in very short order. Then, even if you do happen to warp away from them, they will send a wing of forces after you. You don't escape. (Although - it is theoretically possible, but I don't think it's ever really done.)
Huh. So yes, this means that if you're flying your big bad-ass Battleship with big guns and you target some poor sap's frigate or cruiser and open fire, you can obliterate their ship before the police get you. They end up in a pod, but so do you. Is it worth it? Well, I guess it depends. If you have a serious grudge against someone, it just might.
Given the effectiveness of the police forces, you hardly ever run into someone who will engage in piracy in high security systems. I've been playing for almost three years and have never run into it personally. Friends of friends, sure. Me, nah.
Slightly changing topic. Why does WoW have such a flagging system, anyway? Well, realistically, it's partially because the lower level players have absolutely no chance against the higher level ones. If that level 60 attacks a level 10 or 20 or even 50, they will decimate him. The little guy doesn't even really get a chance to run. And even if they try to run, there's nothing they can do to get away fast enough to prevent a quick trip to the graveyard. (Well, there's very little they can do. Some classes have some abilities that make this more feasible, but still unlikely to get away.)
On the other hand - in EVE, should you run into someone that's going to attack you, chances are you can get away. If you're flying a little frigate and the enemy is in a bigger ship, you can get your ship to warp before they even target you. (In general.) It is rather true that a smart pilot never dies. If you know how to use the ship you're in, know the area you're flying around, and understand some basic rules of survival, it's incredibly tough for another player to kill you.
That makes it possible for the week old newbie to fly around through low security space infested with pirates and get things done. Some street smarts is worth way more than months in the game when it comes down to it.
Well, this post has gone on long enough. I hope you enjoyed reading it.
This blog is about EVE Online, and how it's great for casual gamers. This also marks the return from a two week pause in which I wasn't updating! I'm not entirely sure why I haven't posted, I just didn't. Hmmm, oh well.
People who play games come from all sorts of backgrounds, but by and large, you can break them down into two groups. Casual gamers and powergamers. The former have lives -- fulltime jobs, families, pets, responsibilities, hobbies, etc. The latter? Well, they play games.
Most MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games) are setup so that the powergamers get an inherent advantage by having more time to play. They have more time to slay monsters, so they get more experience. This translates directly into levels which then becomes power. No matter how you slice it, a level 60 anything in World of Warcraft will kill a level 40 character.
Let's use an example here. You and your buddy want to start playing an online game together. He's recently unemployed and leading the bachelor life. You are not. He moderates himself somewhat, but still puts in 6-10 hours of gaming every day. You are lucky to get 4 every other day.
If you start playing these types of games (World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot, EverQuest, Anarchy Online, Asheron's Call - all games I've played) in the above scenario, you and your friend will find that at first, you get to work together and have fun. You're both new players with the same skills, so you group up, tackle things together.
A week goes by and your friend is now a little stronger than you, because he's a few levels higher. You're still not that far apart, so you continue to work together. He's now pulling more of the group weight though, because you're doing quests that are tougher than what you can handle alone, and seem a little easy for your friend.
A month goes by, and he's a dozen levels above you. When you're online, he comes back and helps you with your quests. He runs you through areas that you can't go for fear of death. He helps to powerlevel you by getting you lots of experience really quickly. You miss out on a lot of content because you spend a bunch of time trying to catch up to him.
Another few weeks and he's now getting into a guild. He's joined up with some people that run higher level dungeons. He's talking about items in the game you've never heard of. His swords are glittery and throwing sparks while he rides his stallion on the screen to show you the latest and greatest thing. You're still wearing your newbie gear. You start to lose interest at watching him be so much more awesome than you.
Next month, he's in an endgame guild. They're doing raids that have scheduled time and you can't participate. You're not a high enough level. Your friend can't come join you and play anymore, because he's joined this new group. You're alone. You try to find other friends in the game. You get a LiveJournal and whine about it.
Well, maybe the ending is a bit contrived, but you get the point. Traditional MMOs have favored the powergamer by letting them get ahead of casual players. This is something that EVE Online was designed to combat through the way the skill system is built.
In the game, skills are time based. You specify that you want to start training a skill, and the game tells you how long it's going to take. The length of time it takes depends on the skill (some take longer than others), the required attributes (piloting skills require perception and willpower), and what level you're training it to. Skills range in level from 0 to 5 and usually give you a bonus based on the level they're trained to.
For example, last night I wanted to train the Navigation skill from 0 to 1. This is a Rank 1 skill and happens to require Intelligence and Memory as the attributes. The ticker told me this would take me 18 minutes and 5 seconds. When I started training, I wandered away from the computer to go play with Fudge. Came back 20 minutes later and my skill was done! Hurrah! So I picked another one and started training that.
Later, before I went to bed for 6 hours of sleep and then to get up and go to work, I knew I wouldn't be back at the computer for about 20 hours. I looked through my skills and found that Instant Recall would require 1 day 2 hours 15 minutes to train from level 3 to 4. I set it as my active skill and went to bed. Right now, as I type this, that skill is still training. It will finish at about 2 AM tonight.
But gasp! 2 AM! You'll never be awake for that! You don't have to be. Tonight, before going to bed again, I will switch the active skill to another one. Whatever time I've invested in this one will still be saved and tomorrow I can switch it back and finish the last 2 or 3 hours.
It sounds complicated, but it's really pretty simple in the game. You don't have to be logged in to train the skills, nor do you have to actively be playing if you are logged in. They just train. So if you and your buddy started playing EVE today, and he had more time, a month (or two or six or years) from now, you'll both be at the same level, approximately.
The only difference between the two of you will be how much money you have. If your buddy's in the game a lot, he's going to make more ISK (the in game currency). However, you'll both have the same skills, so if you fit up the same ship as your friend, you'll be able to compete evenly.
So go ahead. Take that vacation to the Bahamas. Set a really long skill training to level 5 (some of those will take a week - my longest skill ever took 40 days). When you come back from sunning on the beach, you'll be that many days closer to world domination.
Next up in the blog series: EVE is not about skillpoints (time in game), how 2 month old newbies can beat 3 year old seasoned veterans.
I have issues #2, #3, and #4 of the official EVE Online magazine as well as a star chart and ship poster at my desk today, if anybody cares. They're good stuff.
I'm writing again about EVE Online, that thing that has captured so much of my non-work hours. Welcome back, faithful readers!
Today we will talk about teamwork and joint activities. Having fun with your fellow player. We will focus today's discussion on what are called complexes. You may think of them as dungeons. They're effectively the same, except in space. They have defined locations, contents, NPCs, bosses, and loot tables. They also range in difficulty from 1 to 10, with a 10/10 (called a "ten ten in game-speak) being the toughest around.
These 10/10 complexes are known to be nasty. They each have different entrance requirements (the one particular one we run requires you to have the skill Leadership trained to 5), and each one has different strategies. Some of them allow capital ships, some don't. There are also only a few of these scattered throughout the universe - all told, numbering less than two dozen.
These complexes are highly coveted, because dedicated players who get a team together and run them regularly can make some serious, serious amounts of cash. The one we run averages 1,000,000,000 ISK worth of loot per day. That's one billion ISK, which is an obscene amount. Granted, given that this averages out over the people who run it, it's not as much as it sounds - but it's still a lot.
To the right you'll see a picture of the complex that I am inside right now. This particular beasty is located in the system D-FVI7, in the Esoteria region. (Space is divided into a few dozen regions, which roughly correspond with areas of sovereignty - player or NPC.)
Right now in this complex we have about eight players. Most of us are staying up relatively late (1:30 AM for us west coasters), but we're working together with the Europeans (10:30 AM for these guys) and we're tearing through the complex. We should have it done in the next 30-45 minutes, depending on how long the final boss takes.
It's a pretty relaxing enterprise, actually. At this point we've got it down to a science. While I don't help out very often (staying up to 3:00 AM on a work night is out of the question), it's fun to pop in and do so on the weekends when I don't have anything else planned.
In the screenshot above you can see my ship (the yellowish thing in the front), an Apocalypse class Battleship. She's a nice ship, costs me approximately 90,000,000 ISK to buy, another 35,000,000 ISK to insure, and then probably another 100,000,000 ISK to fit with decent equipment. Total investment of 225,000,000 ISK. That's pretty hefty. I haven't even tricked her out, either! In a later blog I will get into describing exactly what the different ship types are.
In this picture you can see the game's interface. This is the main UI screen, which you spend most of your time in. Down the left side is the menu bar with all of the options you can access. Across the top (where you see the two icons with the bars under them) is the targetting area. This indicates I have two ships targetted. The one on the right has no shields, no armor, and is starting to take structure damage. (That means it's about dead.)
In the middle you can see the notification message area. Important things show up here such as you shooting, someone shooting you, warp scrambling, etc. To the bottom left is the chat panel, showing all of the channels that I'm in. I'll break that down later. In the center of the bottom area is my ship's status. Shield, armor, and structure make up the three grey bars. Below that in yellow is the ship capacitor. Below that is the ship's current speed.
To the right of the status guage is the modules I have fitted. I have 8x Modulated Mega Beam Laser Is, and a bunch of other things. It's not really relevant to this discussion what exactly they are. Suffice it to say - those are what I've equipped.
On the right is the all-important overview panel. This is the infinitely customizeable area in which you dictate exactly what shows up and how it appears. With this you can do such things as say "Show me only NPCs" or "Show me only people that I (or my corporation or my alliance) has negative standings to". (You may not understand that now, that's okay. Another post, I promise. Suffice it to say, with the right overview settings, you can increase your survivability factor many, many times.
Well, I should get back to paying attention to the complex. We're about to enter the final level, with Station Ultima. If you do it wrong, it kills you. Of course, I don't think we've lost a ship here in a long time... but I'd rather not end the streak with me.
Today I will talk a bit about an event that happened yesterday that I had the fortune not to have actually been a part of. I'm just hearing about it, and will probably have to deal with the aftermath of it. Once again, this post is about EVE Online, a space-based MMORPG.
EVE believes in realism. The company that makes the game, CCP Games, doesn't want to place arbitrary restrictions in the game. If you really want to attack another player up in high security space, you are welcome to. Just beware the consequences. In low security space, there are very few consequences, so players have to be smart or they face getting randomly ganked* by pirates.
To enable players to be smart about where they travel, EVE has a universe map system that enables you to view up-to-the-minute data about the thousands of solar systems in the game. Data points you can track include things such as: pilots in space, pilots docked, ships killed in the last hour, escape pods destroyed in the last hour, and jumps in the last hour.
All of this information can be used, in the game, to determine if you are about to walk into a trap. While none of it is going to help you 100% of the time (sometimes you just walk into a roving pirate gang, for example), it can prevent a lot of the pain you otherwise can experience.
Now, let's jump to yesterday.
The Ascendant Frontier regularly runs large convoys of goods from our space down at the southern end of the galaxy up into the more populous areas in the core. This is how we make a lot of money - trading what we have a surplus of or what other people have lots of. We also import goods that we don't particularly care to make.
These convoys are usually a good size. They tend to have 8-12 Freighters (huge ships that are slow and defenseless) and then around 100 escorts (combat pilots). These groups are well organized and are led by very solid commanders. They generally run without issue. Until yesterday.
Without going into too much detail, there are a lot of player organizations that hate us. We are the most successful empire-building organization in the game, and they despise us for our ability to work together and have fun. They are unable to beat us in a fair fight, so they resort to tactics that exploit the mechanics of the game to gain an unfair advantage.
Let me explain.
Yesterday, the freighter run was progressing along from system to system. The commanders were keeping an eye on the map mentioned above, looking for any systems that had abnormal concentrations of pilots, kills, or jumps. One of the best ways to find an enemy fleet is by the number of jumps into and out of systems. If you see glowing dots headed your way - you know you've got trouble.
It was all clear yesterday, however. Until the fateful system, the name of which I won't give out due to security concerns. The convoy jumped into this system, and immediately, they were lagged and unable to move. They couldn't warp, turn, move, or fight. But they didn't see anybody to even fight, so it didn't matter.
Some short period later, a huge fleet of 80-100 enemy ships just appeared. They warped in from every direction around, landing in the middle of the freighters. They started attacking immediately, wreaking havoc. We lost two freighters before they got out. Heavy losses that shouldn't have happened.
Later investigation revealed that this enemy coalition had employed what is called a log on trap. You station some number of pilots at a location, then log them all off. After an hour, nobody can tell on the map that you were ever there. Until you log back in, of course. This evokes one of the flaws of EVE - the login system is not optimized. Facing a mass simultaneous login, the node running that particular solar system chokes up and is unable to process any commands from people already in the system until the new people are loaded in.
By exploiting this, they were able to score some kills against a superior force.
They would argue that this is a valid tactic. We would argue that it is exploiting game mechanics in such a way as to gain an unfair advantage over your enemy, thereby guaranteeing the outcome that you want.
The truth? Well, we'll let the GMs decide.
* ganked - to have your ship, or your escape pod, blown up. Synonym: popped.
Today I write a bit about the next goal that my player corporation (guild, association, clan, whatever) in EVE Online has decided to pursue. Building an outpost!
You probably don't know what that is, so let me start at the beginning, sorta. The universe of EVE is divided into solar systems, as you might expect. Each solar system is assigned a security rating, which dictates whether it is controlled by some organization, if there is a police presence, whether the sentry guns will guard you, etc etc etc.
Security levels range from 0.0 up to 1.0, in 0.1 increments. A solar system with a security level of 1.0 is super secure. But anything from 0.5 to 1.0 has a full police presence and you can't just attack people there. If you do, you will die. (You may kill your target before the police get you, but still, you die.) Security levels between 0.1 and 0.4 have no police - but they do have active sentry guns. So, if you attack someone at a location without guns - such as in an asteroid belt or at a planet - then you can kill them without repercussions.
Now, what about 0.0? Well, 0.0 is the lawless zone. The only rules in 0.0 are what rules the players set. There are no police, no sentry guns, no secure areas. If you want to attack another player, you can do so, without fear. Well, without fear of automated game mechanics. The whole point of 0.0 is that players are supposed to band together, form an empire, and make their claim.
If you examine the map to the left, you'll see lots of colored areas. Each of these areas is surrounding a bit of this lawless 0.0 space. Each of these areas is a different player alliance. You can see some are huge - Band of Brothers, Ascendant Frontier - while others are a lot smaller. Each one claims a bit of space and defends it.
You can also see that there are constant wars going on. The legend in the top right shows the currently known wars. There are also always little groups of pirates that rove around trying to cause problems. They're really annoying.
As an example of the relative size - the Ascendant Frontier organization (purple on the bottom) has about 3,500 players in it. That's thousands of people who call that space home and will fight for it. At peak time, we can field hundreds of people at the same time. That's almost unheard of in any MMO to have that many people on the same team. And that's only one of many. Band of Brothers to the west is even larger!
Okay, great. So a bunch of players have moved out to this 0.0 space - now what? Well, EVE affords players the ability to create permanent structures in space. These things will never go away. Once they're built, they're there - even if we get evicted from the space. Other people will then own them, use them, while we are banished.
It's a huge investment. Building one of these starbases (called an "outpost") costs 30,000,000,000 ISK (30 billion, ISK being the in-game currency). To most players, that's an unfathomable number. That number is big enough to field hundreds of fully fitted battleships. That number is big enough to field 20-30 capital ships (huuuuge ships).
And it's not just ISK! The actual act of setting up an outpost requires a huge amount of coordination. The sheer amount of equipment required to set the thing up as well as the manpower required to defend it while it gets "built" is just staggering. Hundreds of players either guarding this build site or hauling supplies to it for 12 hours. Huge.
My corporation, Vanguard Frontiers, has decided to build one. For security reasons, I cannot divulge the ultimate location of it, but I will try to post pictures when it happens. Of course, this won't be for some months, probably closer towards the end of the year. We're a small group and we have a lot of work to do in order to make this goal possible.
That's it for now. I'll write more later.
I had someone ask how the siege of E3-SDZ went. (This is regarding EVE Online if you haven't clued in by now.) So I'll give you a bit of a story, and then you can judge for yourself how well it went this past weekend.
You may recall my last post about this mentioned, in summary, that we got the enemy to gather their forces in one system, and then we bottled them in by putting twice the number on either side of them. It was a great plan.
A bit of background - the Ascendant Frontier alliance is broken down into several levels. The top is called High Command, or HC. They planned this operation and put it together. HC, however, is not on 24/7 - it's only a few people. They have lives. So, the minute to minute operation of the combat gangs is given to the Fleet Commanders (FCs).
So as a general rule: HC issues the orders and FCs carry them out. Further, FCs have ultimate authority in their gang (group of pilots). If they order you to do something, you either do it, or you leave the gang. We don't tolerate nonsense. One of the fastest ways for a gang to get slaughtered wholesale is for everybody to start pulling in a different direction. If you're all together, even if you're doing it wrong, at least you'll have a good chance of pulling through to SOMEWHERE.
Well, High Command had issued the orders to stay on location on the stargates on the outside of the target system. That was the plan! If we stayed in the next system over - they would have to jump through to us. That means we would be in a defensive position, and we'd be ready for them. That's just good tactics.
Next, HC goes to bed, the night starts dragging on, hour after hour goes by, and people start complaining about how they hate sitting. They want to move! "Why can't we go shoot something! Let's go hunt them for a change! Let's give up our strategically advantageous position to go get massacred!"
Not every Fleet Commander is the type to be swayed by such opinions. However, from time to time, somebody makes a bad choice. This weekend, one of the two groups (we had two groups remember) decided to jump in on the enemy fleet and try to take them out.
Okay; so they jumped into E3-SDZ, right on top of the enemy fleet that is in a defensive position completely ready for us to jump in. Yet the group did anyway. They got slaughtered bad, as you might expect. Well, they put out a call to the group on the other side, "Come help! We're getting killed!"
The group on the other side rushes to their defense - might as well go help a friend, right? Unfortunately, this group also jumped right in on top of the enemy's defensive position, and met the same fate. We lost a lot of ships, a lot of people, due to these bad decisions. Due to impatience to get on with it.
Well, we got on with it - on with the dying, anyway.
And that's how the weekend went down. Luckily I was ofline at dinner when they got the case of the stupids, so my ship is now stuck deep in enemy territory by itself. (And with anybody else who happened to be offline at the time or didn't get killed.) I guess I'll try to fly home in a few days and hope things have calmed down. Sigh.
I want to see Blue Man Group in concert one day. It's just one of those things I've wanted to do for ages. I once had the opportunity when I was going to college out in Massachusetts, tickets were obscenly cheap -- $5 or $10 and that included the bus to and from Boston. But I was too late (they sold out in about 2 minutes). Alas. Apparently they play in Vegas a bunch... hm.
So, this weekend was pretty good. I spent most of the time working on my server, trying to get it resurrected. I ended up using Centos 4.2 as the base operating system and then installing Xen 3 over top of that. I learned a bunch about the whole process and I think it went pretty smoothly this time. (Last time was a horrid, horrid mess.)
Also spent a bunch of time in EVE, as our alliance (ASCN) is totally kicking ass. We are utterly destroying about 4 months of hard work put in by the Imperial Republic of the North (IRON) and G Alliance. They're pretty pissed about the whole thing, but there's not much they can do.
To give you an idea of the scale in EVE, we had 600 people on this one mission on Saturday. That's 600 people. In one place, at one time, doing one thing. G/IRON were pretty much impotent to stop us.
Since then, we've been maintaining around-the-clock defense of the objective, with never less than 80-100 people online. EVE is such a multi-national game, it naturally works out into shifts. The North Americans are on around 0100 GMT up to 0800 GMT, when the Australians start taking over (and the early Europeans), and when they go to bed the Europeans are home from work, and they hold it until the Americans get home again.
We were having French lessons last night, too! In my player group ("corporation") alone, we have an Austrian, a German, a guy from the Netherlands (?), a Swiss, a Frenchman, a Russian, a couple of Australians, a bunch of Brits, and then a bunch of Americans. It's really interesting seeing the diversity and talking to everybody. One gentleman even has an EVE blog that he maintains. It's pretty cool -- lots of pictures, I recommend you check it out.
