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Mar 02

Banter 25: Sovereignty, Alliances and Power Blocs

By Xeross Posted in Blog Banter, EVE Online Leave a Comment

Welcome to the twenty-fifth 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 or so 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 to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s topic comes to us from @Tetraetc – “Tetra’s EVE Blog” – who asks: “Have Alliances and the sovereignty system limited the amount of PVP and RP potential in Null sec? Imagine a Null Sec where anyone could build outposts wherever. Would the reduction of the alliance game mechanic, and the removal of the sovereignty game mechanics (or the modifcation of it from Alliance level to Corp level for that matter) force more PVP into Null sec, or would giant power blocs like the NC still form themselves?”

Have alliances and the sovereignty system limited the potential amount of PvP in null-sec? No I don’t think they have, they might have impacted the scale of the PvP, but surely not the amount. There’s plenty of PvP in null-sec, actually just as much as you want to do yourself, if you want more, plan more ops, simple.

And has it limited the amount of RP? I don’t think it did that either, it allowed for large alliances to form, of which some are even RP alliances, so I’m pretty sure there’s plenty of RP out there.

And a null-sec without sovereignty, I don’t really think that would really change a lot, it would cause a bit of panic in the beginning but everyone would eventually settle down and not a lot would change, why would groups suddenly splinter without the actual sovereignty mechanics, I just don’t see that happening.

And if you could place a station anywhere it would still require a good amount of control over the location because you would get crushed by anyone if you don’t.

We as the human race will always form groups, and we’ll always end up with power blocs, in New Eden, and in the real world, regardless of explicit ownership of a certain region of space by some mechanic, as we’ve seen before in New Eden, we don’t need an actual game mechanic to achieve things, we’ll just abide by unwritten rules.

~Xeross

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Dec 27

Blog Banter 23: WiS, Ambulation, Incarna

By Xeross Posted in Blog Banter, EVE Online Leave a Comment

Welcome to the twenty-third 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 or so 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 to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

With Incursion giving us glimpses of what Incarna will have to offer (the the Character Creator), this month’s topic, by @Minerpewpew, comes just at the right time. He asks “What are your thoughts on how Incarna will effect the current EVE Online social dynamic?” I’d like to see this questioning go a bit further. How will this affect EVE’s player base? Who will Incarna attract? New players to the genre? Seduce old players back into the game? Will we see new players come in that will never leave their station? Please explore to the best of your abilities!

WiS, Ambulation, and now Incarna, the fabled expansion that would allow us to walk in stations.

This expansion has for a long time been just a concept and something that might come in the future, however recently with the coming of the Incursion expansion and signals given off by CCP it seems it’s definitive that this will be released soon™.

So will it attract new players, I’m sure it will, Incarna will allow for another addition to role-playing, and will satisfy the dress-up need of people. And it will also attract the people that felt disconnected because their character was only a spaceship.

Will it bring old players back, well to a limited extent I think, and for the same reasons new players would be attracted.

Will we see players that never leave their station? Well that would mean the starting areas would get overcrowded, I think there will be players that spend most of their time in stations but they will also travel from station to station.

Now although it isn’t in the scope of this Blog Banter it will be interesting to see how free CCP will let us be with this new expansion, player-owned tailor shops, bars, etc. they can decorate themselves perhaps? One thing I know is that it’s gonna be pretty cool (Well for the first few minutes at least).

Well that’s it again.

Xeross out.

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Oct 26

Blog Banter 22: Corp Loyalty (Oh how original)

By Xeross Posted in Blog Banter, EVE Online Comments (2)

Welcome to the twenty-second 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 or so 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 to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month topic is brought to us by L’Dene Bean of Nitpickin’s who asks: Why, and how did you pick your corporation? Is your loyalty solid or just until a better placed organization “recruits” you. The shorter version: Who holds your Unshakable Fealty and why?

The “Oh how original” part is referencing to the subject of the mail sent out by CK from which I “stole” the post title.

So even though CK has already welcomed you in the above paragraph here I will also welcome you to this 22nd Blog Banter, which in my opinion has a really interesting subject, so let’s get started.

As EVE is a game and games are about entertainment and fun you should always do the things that will get you the most fun out of  a game, whether this is endlessly mining some asteroid or placing square blocks on each other to form a tower (Minecraft), the end goal is having fun.

So when it comes to corporations in EVE I will join a corp that does what I find fun at that moment, such as joining a null-sec corp when that seemed fun (Yet that was just coincidental as my corp itself decided to merge into a null-sec corp), or joining a low-sec alliance and becoming a pirate.

Even when I leave a corporation I will miss the people in it (Well some of  ‘em), however it’s hard to maintain social activity with them once you have left their corp (Other than hanging around in their public channel).

So am I loyal to a corp ? Yes, if the time I want to leave is deemed bad I will stay until a better time has come to leave, I wont steal any assets or leave any loans open, or take borrowed items with me, that’s just not something I do.

And even if a corp would disagree with you leaving, if you wouldn’t leave that would end up with you possibly not playing the game for a long period of time so that would do no one any good.

(Oh great another conclusion paragraph) So I am loyal, I won’t fuck anyone over or break a promise (Unless someone else fucks me over first), aaand I ran out of things to list here.

Xeross out.

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Sep 29

Banter 21: Arr, Yer be talkin’ bout me lowsec

By Xeross Posted in Blog Banter, EVE Online Comments (3)


Welcome to the twenty-first 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 to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month topic comes to us from @ZoneGhost who a few month ago asked “Is Low Sec the forgotten part of EVE Online?” Is it? I’d like us to explore this even further. Is Low Sec being treated differently by CCP Games than Null Sec (Zero-Zero) or Empire space is? Can one successfully make a living in these unsecured systems where neither Alliance nor Concord roam to enforce their laws? What’s needed? Or is everything fine as it is?

This couldn’t have come at a better time as I can almost be counted as a full blown pirate know (Just a little bit remaining before -10).

Now is low-sec being treated differently, I’d say yes, but this is because there isn’t a whole lot of content in low-sec and it is the least populated region of EVE.

Yet this shouldn’t be taken as me defending CCP’s current activity regarding low-sec, see it as points of improvement.

I have had a lot of fun the way low-sec currently is, but the periods in between these fun moments are simply too large because of the lack of population, thus an increase of population would equal more fun.

Now what is needed to make it more exciting, I know these probably have been mentioned already but let’s go through them anyway:

  • More reasons for the high-sec carebear to risk his ship in low-sec in search of profit
    • Fix the risk/reward ratio for missions
    • Add more exciting exploration sites (Well more rewarding)
  • Pirate only items/services for the people that have a negative status
    • Items
    • Booster Production
    • Pirate Scripts (Possibly)

Mynxee has been pushing this with her Making Low Sec Matter Ideascale and Forums and they will push some ideas onto CCP, so let’s hope we will see some of this get implemented.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post even though it was a short one, and stay tuned for the next blog banter.

Xeross out.

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Aug 23

Blog Banter 20: Suddenly Ninjas, Hundreds of Them!

By Xeross Posted in Blog Banter, EVE Online Leave a Comment

Welcome to the sixteenth 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 to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

With the recent completion of the 3rd installment of the Hulkageddon last month, @CyberinEVE, author of Hands Off, My Loots!, asks: “Griefing is a very big part of EVE. Ninja Salvaging, Suicide Ganking, Trolling, and Scamming are all a very large part of the game. What do you think about all these things? You can talk about one, or all…but just let us know your overall opinion on Griefing, and any recommendations you may have to change it if you think it’s needed.”

EVE is a sandbox, a game where no single place is safe, it’s cold and unforgiving. This is what CCP envisioned EVE to and what EVE is today.

This means that all the things named above are viable and legitimate playstyles even if the people on the receiving end don’t like it, especially if the people on the receiving end don’t like it.

If all these forms of gameplay would be removed it would kill the sandbox principle, EVE is in some aspects already too limited if you ask me, limiting gameplay possibilities would indeed kill EVE (Or at least part of it).

So guess I brought over my point pretty well there, anything currently allowed by CCP should be kept as is with perhaps a few exceptions in extreme cases, and in some cases it should be even less strict.

Sorry if this is quite short, I somehow ended up saying everything I wanted in just a few sentences, well at least it sounds pretty good.

Regards, Xeross

Participants

Jul 24

Blog Banter 19 (Sort of)

By Xeross Posted in Blog Banter, EVE Online Leave a Comment

So let’s see the supposed question is

This months topic comes to us from @evepress, and he asks: The CSM: CCP’s Meta Game? – The CSM, an eve players voice to CCP.Right? In the grand scheme of things yes, the players bring up issues and the CSM presents them to CCP. But in its current iteration the CSM was supposed to be given small authority to assign CCP assets toprojects that the CSM thought needed work on. As it has not come outthis was not the case. So fellow bloggers, is the CSM worth it, has the CSM improved the game in any way, or is it just a well thought out scamby CCP to give us players a false sense of input in the game? What’s your take?

Now I myself always try to be grammatically correct something that this question obviously fails to do, it also lacks neutrality as also stated by Casiella Truza on Ecliptic Rift.

Now to answer the question, I’m positive about the CSM, CCP really tries their best and it seems that the CSM keeps improving.

CCP however perceived the last meeting as a great success where the CSM still thought the meeting didn’t go all that well as CCP claimed.

On the bright side, CCP has already stated they’re trying to figure out what went wrong.

I also suggest reading my post about the meeting minutes with some further opinions about the CSM and relayed activities from me.

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Jun 16

Blog Banter 18: Our ventures in EVE

By Xeross Posted in Blog Banter, EVE Online Comments (2)

Welcome to the eighteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than me, 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 to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

On May 6th 2010, EVE Online celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Quite a milestone in MMO history, especially considering that it is one of the few virtual worlds out there to see its population continually grow year after year. For some of you who’ve been here since the very beginning, EVE has evolved quite a lot since its creation. With the expansion rolling out roughly twice a year, New Eden gets renewed and improved regularly. But, how about you the player? How has you gaming style evolved through the years or months since you’ve started playing? Have you always been a carebear, or roleplayer? Have you only focused on PvP or have you given other aspects of the game a chance – say manufacturing. Let’s hear your story!

Yes, the next Blog Banter is upon us, first of all a belated congratulations to CCP for EVE’s 7th anniversary.

With most games I’ve always focused on a single part of the game, but well most games don’t give you a choice over what to do other than the class you want to play.

Now in EVE there’s lots of things to do: Mining, PvP, Ratting, Missioning, Trading, Manufacturing, etc. and every one of these activities have all sorts of sub-categories themselves too (For example PvP: Pirating, Null-Sec Roaming, etc.).

So I started my career as a Capsuleer on the 31st of July 2009, knowing nothing about EVE I started following the tutorials to understand it a little better.

After that I still had lots of questions and somehow I got into Corsair Industries after this I had some great people help me out with all the questions I had about the EVE universe, and they’re probably the people that have gotten me through those critical first days in EVE.

Now I quickly got into a Rifter back then and traveled to our headquarters, I joined my corp mates in doing missions, while not being of use it was fun to have some people to do stuff with.

After a while I moved from Corsair Industries to the Escarthian Mining Corporation I got in touch with them through the Corp Recruitment Channel (Yep it’s possible), and moved again to their base of operations.

As their name suggests I got my first taste of mining with them, though I was still mining in a frigate/cruiser back then, and of course I did missions with them (While still missioning myself in a shiny rupture.

Now after this some corp hopping occurred until I settled into Novadyne Dynamics (Corp’s closed now) for a while, however the CEO turned out to be a big fraud as he had stolen billions of assets from corp members (Which he also did when he was the head of the Escarthian Mining Corp).

This discovery was only made when I already left Novadyne Dynamics for Ghosts of EMC (It took a while to join them) which was the corp people that left EMC (Escarthian Mining Corp) founded after they discovered the CEO’s fraud, so I hang out with them for a while in high-sec mining and missioning as usual.

However after a few days when I logged in a mail had arrived we were moving to null-sec, both thrilled and scared by this bold move we started packing and joined Fusion Death inc. which was coincidentally a corp most of us also hopped into a while ago.

So after a few days we packed and headed into null-sec, it was  quite a trip, and even though it was just flying and jumping it was still exciting and fun for me, I was shaking (IRL) the entire trip from anxiety and adrenaline I guess.

Now we settled into null-sec and my wallet that at that point contained 900 million ISK I had acquired through GTC’s quickly shrunk to under 50 million ISK as we didn’t have our ships from high-sec down here yet.

Here we spent ratting and mining and PvPing and we’ve been here ever since, null-sec is awesome and I can’t imagine life in Empire anymore, even just the ratting and mining has been awesome with the corp so we’re here to stay that’s for sure.

After this move I’ve tried various things including manufacturing in both null-sec and high-sec, however those weren’t profitable, however that will change because I’m primarily training for manufacturing now.

I have also recently started a new venture on an alt: trading. After I encountered someone that happened to be a programmer and also a trader in EVE I gave it a real try, and I can say it’s going pretty well.

My NAV (Net Asset Value: Estimated ISK value of everything you own) on my trade alt has doubled in a week and is continuing to grow so I’m going to keep this up to fund my PvPing.

Well that’s my history in EVE from august 2009 to present day, I hope you enjoyed reading it, and you can continue reading with the adventures of my fellow bloggers:

  1. CrazyKinux’s Musing: The Heroes with a Thousand Faces
  2. StarFleet Comms: Life. Evolved.
  3. A Carebear’s Journeu: This Carebear Thinks He Is Developing Teeth
  4. The Elitist: Our ventures in EVE
  5. A Mule in EVE: From a guppy predator
  6. Travels of the Ronin: Evolution and Adaptation
  7. The Ralpha Dogs: The Past Through Tomorrow
  8. Where the frack is my ship: A journey, not a destination
  9. I am Keith Neilson: 7 Year Itch?
  10. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah: Evolution Me
  11. EVE Opportunist: A long history of a short time
  12. Roc’s Ramblings: Things Change
  13. Guns Ablaze: Onwards and Upwards
  14. EVE On Real Life: Haven’t you grown up yet?
  15. The Fang: The path of the ninja
  16. EVEOGANDA: Whoops Apocalypse!
  17. EVE SOB: Learning to swim
  18. The Life of a Dead Jester: My Time with EVE
  19. Personal Files, Ciarente Roth: Personal Diary 18.6.112
  20. Learning to Fly: Change is Good
  21. Depths Unknown: Falling With Style
  22. Morphisat’s Blog: Jack of all trades
  23. More as they get published…
Mar 15

Blog Banter 16: Helping the new guy/gal

By Xeross Posted in Blog Banter, EVE Online, Guides Comments (2)

Blog Banter 16 - EVE University

Welcome to the sixteenth 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 to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The third Blog Banter of 2010 comes to us from ChainTrap of the Into the unknown with gun and camera EVE Blog. He asks us: “Eve University turns six years old on March 15th; six years spent helping the new pilots of New Eden gain experience and understanding in a supportive environment. Eve is clearly a complicated game, with a ton to learn, so much that you never stop learning. So, the question is; What do you wish that someone had taken the time to tell you when you were first starting out? Or what have you learned in the interim that you’d like to share with the wider Eve community?”

Yes indeed the new Blog Banter is upon us, and an interesting question indeed, so let’s get started. When I started as a new pilot in New Eden not too long ago (the 31st of July 2009) everything was of course new and unknown, and after learning a lot of the basics of the game I still discovered a few things I would like to have known earlier, so here they are:

  • Ctrl-Clicking something in the overview will make you lock it (If it’s in range).
  • You can group guns of the same type by shift-click dragging them in the fitting window (Or by using grouping mode when undocked (HUD-Arrow -> Enter Grouping Mode)
  • Make sure you know whether a module is passive or active, else you might end up with an active module you think is passive (Yes it happens a lot)

Other than that I also have some resources for the new players (And the players that are new to certain parts of the game) the list follows:

  • Drone & Rat Damage Types
    A list of the damage types your drones and the average rats/mission NPCs do
  • Null-Sec Guide for Null-Sec Newbs
    A work-in-progress guide to explain the wonders and horrors of null-sec to the average new guy that’s planning to move to null-sec.
  • Simple Chain Ratting Guide
    A simple to follow chain ratting guide. It’s the null/low-sec people so most of the time that’s not the new people, but for some of ‘em it might be useful.

And finally, congratulations to EVE Uni and huge props for getting us more stuff to shoot at since 2004. Now I’m sure the other blog banter participants also have lots of useful tips so check ‘em out below.

Participants

Jan 12

Blog Banter 14: Plans for 112yc

By Xeross Posted in Blog Banter, EVE Online Comments (5)

Welcome to the fourteenth 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 to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The first banter of 2010 comes to us from the EVE Blog Father, CrazyKinux himself, who asks the following: As we begin another year in New Eden, ask yourselves “What Now?” What will I attempt next? What haven’t I done so far in EVE? Was it out fear, funds, or knowledge? Have I always wanted to start my own corporation, but have never dared doing so? Is there a fledging mercenary waiting to come out of its shell? Or maybe an Industrialist? What steps and objectives will I set myself to accomplish in order to reach my ultimate goal for this year? EVE is what you make of it. So, what is it going to be for you?

Kind of a coincidental subject if you ask me, well let’s get started with the plans for 2010.

First of all I’m going to be focusing more on PvP, I’ve been flying solo trying to pirate people for a few days now and I really like it so far. Currently training up my skills to fit my Rifter even better, and my first kill is a fact.

Other then this I’ll be helping Lord Baltor to bring some life back into Novadyne Dynamics, at the moment we’re kind of inactive and we need to get back into it again, I’ll primarily be helping him and the corp by creating a website and hosting a forum.

And another goal of mine is to fly a Golem by the end of the year, calculations indicate training for it would take approximately 240 days so it should be achievable.

And well, also train up my trade skills to become a better trader, and my mining skills to make mining more profitable.

As you can see I want to train for a very broad spectrum of “Classes” which is kind of difficult with this skill system unless you take your time, So well I guess this is the entire plan for 2010.

~Xeross

Participants

Oct 27

Blog Banter 13: Guristas Invasion

By Xeross Posted in Blog Banter, EVE Online Comments (5)

Welcome to the thirteenth 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 other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The first banter of this 2nd year of EVE Blog Banters comes to us from Zargyl from A Sebiestor Scholar, who asked the following: On the EVE Fanfest 2009 page are pictures of prizes for the Silent Auction that was held during the event. One of these photos was entitled “Design your own EVE mission”. My question now would be what kind of mission would you write if you got that prize? What would the mission be about? Would it be one using the new system of epic mission arks? What would be the story told by it? Feel free to expand upon his questions and put together your very own mission!

Time to write my second Blog Banter post, let’s see design my own mission, I’ll try to go all out on this one and not restrict myself to the current game mechanics.

Mission name: Guristas Invasion (Part 1 of 3)

Mission level: V

Description

We suspect the Guristas are up to something, we need someone to infiltrate one of their bases to get information on what they’re planning to do.

Objectives

  • Gain entrance to their base but make sure you aren’t detected.
  • Steal their plans.
  • Get out, still unseen.

Mission name: Guristas Invasion (Part 2 of 3)

Mission level: V

Description

Thanks to your previous mission we’ve discovered that the Guristas are planning on launching a full fledged attack on X, Go over there and contact Y for further instructions.

Objectives

  • Go to X and report to Y (Talk to him and hit the “Complete Mission” button)

Mission name: Guristas Invasion (Part 3 of 3)

Mission level: V

Description

According to the intel you gathered the Guristas could be here any minute now, join our fleet and fend of the incoming attack.

Objectives

  • Join the navy fleet at the specified location.
  • Fight with them to fight off the Guristas fleet.
  • Report back to Y.

Notes

This mission will make the player automatically join a fleet with other players and NPCs, and because I like them battles big let’s keep it at 200 people/NPCs in that fleet (If there ain’t 200 people those spots will be NPCs)

Well that’s it, I’ve left X (System that’s going to be attacked) and Y (Person to report to) empty because I don’t have enough knowledge about EvE to fill em in. to me it sounds pretty awesome, leave a comment and tell me what you think.

Regards, Xeross

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