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

So after our successful roam, we decided to go on a suicide gank, Hellfleet had a nice amount of stocked up destroyers so they were handed out and we formed up near the gate.

After everyone was there (Which took a while) we headed on out into high-sec into a system one of the other recruits knew had a shitton of miners in it.

Our scout and warp-in positioned himself and we jumped in, warped at 10 and we accidentally the entire hulk, so my first suicide gank was a fact (And a lot of fun).

So while waiting out the GCC one of us decided to check the belt and it turned out there was a huge amount of CONCORD in the belt, so I decided to check it out and take some screenshots.

After the other recruit wanted to do another run but most of us were tired and it was already past midnight (Hence why this happened on the 15th and the roam on the 14th) and we decided to call it a day.

So I’m having a lot of fun with Hellfleet, however the current bashing of IRC in the dronelands is also pretty enjoying, so this will be a tough decision to make.

~Xeross

So another roam with Hellfleet, we waited for everyone to ship up, had some discussions on how to refit my cruiser without a remote rep, and took off.

So we started to roam towards a null-sec entrypoint, and on our way we passed through the Tusker HQ, we thought they were following us but it was just a lone wanderer.

After a while we arrived in the destination entrypoint system, however there was a big gatecamp on the out gate so we decided to head back.

After this we decided to continue but a Morsus Mihi fleet came through with Vuk Lau in it (Probably leading it), so the fleet warped for shelter, and I decided to just hang outside the station as they’re blue to me.

After this we wanted to continue further but a Rooks and Kings T3 roaming gang was heading our way so we decided to head back toward our HQ.

While we were heading back we caught a Blackbird on a gate and decided to engage it, the Blackbird went down pretty quickly (No killmail yet) and my armor was holding up just fine even with the gate guns.

After this a Pilgrim warped in and we managed to web and scram him too, however when he was almost down a bright light appeared and a Wyvern hotdropped on top of us.

We decided to see if we could get the Pilgrim because the Wyvern takes forever to lock anyways, however me being a wuss warped out too soon, and the rest also warped out before we got the Pilgrim, it had about 30% structure left.

After this we safed up and got a report of a Drake in a belt (He was probably ratting or something) we engaged him, and then pinned him down once his shield was down seized fire and attempted to ransom.

However our friendly neighbourhood Drake pilot was a bit slow, whether his English was bad or he was just panicking out, he didn’t have enough money for the ransom, so we asked him to eject, he waited to long so we popped him.

After we popped him it turned out he did want to eject from the Drake but he was too slow. After this we held and ransomed his pod which still got us 10m ISK (2m ISK each), a small ransom but still a successful (And my first) one.

After this we decided to continue heading back to HQ and dock up, however after this someone came with the idea to try a suicide gank, so after some setting up we headed on out.

So after being in null-sec from pretty much the beginning of the year I grew bored of it. I’m just done with the endless blobfesting (And the lag).

So I have decided to start looking for a different corp, I saw a solo PvP video somewhere (Forgot where) and after seeing it I suddenly that’s what I wanted, small gang and solo PvP.

So after a bit of searching and discarding any corps that didn’t match what I wanted I settles with the Hellhounds. Ga’len suggested that I should join, after some research I decided I’ll try to join Hellfleet.

So I’ve filed my application and have been invited to join up with them in some roaming, and if all goes well I should be in Hellfleet within a week or two.

~Xeross

A system of one of your friends had come under attack and SBUs have been placed, the op would start at 22:00 EVE time or 0:00 local time for me.

We formed up and bridged into the target area, jumping around for a little before jumping into the target system.

When we finally headed into the target system local was quickly rising to about 900 people, of which possibly 600-700 were NC.

We engaged the enemy fleet, and the lag was bad as usual, but with the node reinforcement it was about 5 minutes of module lag on average.

After fighting for about I think an hour the enemy fleet decided it was time to leave, and we pointed and killed as many of  ‘em as we could, however due to the lag the amount of kills I made was limited.

After that it was just a matter of taking down the SBU which took way too long to even be remotely entertaining, and after that head home.

The journey home was pretty calm too, there was 1 red fleet but only a few of the slower people got caught by that.

The main fleet did try to engage them but as it was around 3am I decided I’d just speed home and go to bed. Even though we had lag and the SBU take down was boring I had fun, so all in all, another successful event in my opinion.

~Xeross

Recently I’ve been playing EVE not as much as I used to, this mainly because of the fact that you mostly PvE when you’re on a lot, so instead I’ll just tag along with any PvP ops I can find, this is one of them.

After forming up we decided to head into ev0ke space to see if there was any action there. However before we got there we got reports of a red roaming fleet in NC space, and we decided to head there.

Upon arrival in NC space it seemed that the roaming fleet had left and we missed the fight, though we were near Cobalt Edge (My old home), we decided to pay them a visit.

Upon entering their space and letting the scout do, well, some scouting they managed to gather a fleet of around 70 people if I recall correctly, so we decided, even though we were outnumbered, to take on the fleet and see if we could do any damage.

After some jumping around trying to get a tactical advantage IRC managed to drop upon us a bit unexpected. As soon as they landed I should have warped off, but for some reason I don’t recall I didn’t warp away in time, and my Rifter was lost.

After trying to do some damage our FC decided to cut the losses and try to get the remaining ships out alive, though most had already been lost a small part of thie ships was saved.

The remaining forces decided they still wanted to continue roaming so I decided to check if I could dock at a RAZOR alliance station to buy a new Rifter, unfortunately I couldn’t so that meant the roam was over for me.

So even though I lost my Rifter before I could even hit anything I had fun, even just roaming around chatting on Teamspeak is better than the repetitiveness of EVE”s PVP.

Well now to wait for the next PVP op which will probably be the next time I play EVE.

~Xeross

Tips/comments on how to improve my battle reports are appreciated, of course you can also write normal comment for this post

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.

‘Nuff said

Calculated with current market values

So the Meeting Minutes for the June CSM Summit have been released, let’s go through a few of the interesting statements included

Web Based tracking tool for CSM proposals

Pétur showed a potential ready-made 3rd party web tool for issues management. This would not only be available to the CSM, but also players—who could use it to raise, support, and prioritize issues among other potential functionality.

Or in other words, we will have a sort of bug/feature tracker that will contain all CSM proposals and possibly player proposals, complete with tagging, prioritization and alike.

This is a good thing to finally see the results of the work the CSM puts in, which will raise the reputation for the CSM.

We can also see the statuses of bugs and feature instead of just hoping they fix something, and we can get a better idea of what they’re working on.

Free portrait recreation/New character creator

The winter expansion will focus on polish of existing features, mainly planetary interaction, and preparation for coming expansions. The aim is to include new character modeling, which involves new technology and new artwork.

Players will be required, when the new character creator will be released, to recreate all avatars in the new system. CCP will probably continue to provide the paid service of remaking avatars.

So the “Incarna” character creator will be included in the winter expansion, and we get to recreate our portraits with it for free.

Even though we already had the idea they would do this until now it was just a rumour, I’m happy we get it because my portrait sucks in my opinion.

Fixing EVE

The CSM proposed that CCP focus more on existing content, polishing it post-release until it is excellent.

Nathan pointed out that CCP is heavily focused on reducing lag and that resources are currently being applied to the problem.

Good to know the CSM agrees on the fix stuff before adding new stuff  idea we’ve been raising on our blogs and forums for a long while.

And another confirmation that CCP is working to fix the lag.

CCP stated that once Incarna and Planetary Interaction/Dust 514 are fully implemented, focus will probably shift far more towards improvement of existing features.

Hmm, well good they want to shift their focus, but seems we’ll have to wait a while before they do, at least they’re saying they are going to shift focus.

CSM remained unconvinced of CCPs commitment to excellence, even after Nathan’s arguments were heard.

Well that means that either CCP will prove them wrong on the next summit, or that they will keep pushing for it, good to know.

Dynamic missions, eventually…

The CSM inquired about future development of missions, especially with regards to dynamic varied content. The mission team explained that all of its resources for the Winter expansion have been committed and because of that there would not be a lot of room for other matters.

The CSM is also pushing to make missions a bit more interesting, which is good because no one likes grinding, this way it will at least be a bit less boring, too bad it will take a while though, but it’s in the backlog atleast.

Incarna

CSM asked if Incarna will ever allow players to walk around in their ships. CCP stated that Incarna will at first be walking in stations and this could probably expand eventually to other structures but probably not to ships.

Something I was hoping for, being able to walk inside certain structures, perhaps in your POS and alike, would like to see possibility of walking inside a titan too though.

CCP committed to publishing a “state of the situation” dev blog.

More news about Incarna, finally, we haven’t heard about it for a while now.

Lag, Crashes and other technical stuff

Lag will always be an issue however EVE, but EVE is now, from a technical standpoint, in a better state than it has ever been.

• Memory usage on the server per user has decreased in the last 12 months
• CPU Per User on the server has remained constant for the last 6 months except for a short period in late January where it went up just a bit
• Server log lines have been decreasing significantly since February, meaning fewer errors are being generated by the server
• CCP also moitors the client health such as the memory and CPU usage at different stages in the game (login, char select, game exit)

Well technically it has apparently improved, but from a player perspective it seems worse than it was before Dominion hit, still there are improvements.

Other than that there were some other improvements listed, and some more lag related stuff, read the meeting notes for that.

Low-sec Improvements, not yet

Arnar, Matt and Guilhem responded that Low Sec is a bit broken, is not what it should be and CCP are aware of this. A specific Low Sec expansion is not on the 18 month plan; however CCP is looking into a combat expansion, where combat awareness and information regarding combat would be refined for the user (not the combat mechanics themselves), which would benefit every EVE player rather on focusing just on Low Sec.

So there’s something combat-related on the plan, but nothing low-sec specific in the coming 18 months, not that I hang around in low-sec a lot, but as I might join a pirate corp in the future I’d like to see this improved.

CCP and CSM agree Low Sec needs to evolve into something more fun and dynamic, with the criminal element as a key theme. Many ideas aligned with this theme were presented and discussed in a brainstorming session. Although CCP has no room for Low Sec changes for a minimum of 18 months, CSM was urged to put together a Low Sec foundation story with essential elements defined, then submit it as a proposal for future consideration.

With Mynxee as the head of the CSM I’m sure they’ll come up with something awesome for CCP to implement, I like the sound of this.

GUI Salvation

CCP gave a short presentation demonstrating changes to the UI that involve using keyboard shortcuts for ship actions (like warping) and PvP maneuvers. CCP stated that it is trying to move away from the endless right clicking.

Key bindings, finally, for stuff that requires fast handling, woohoo \o/.

Erlendur says that there will never be a complete UI overhaul due to scheduling reasons but rather a gradual UI improvement. Rewriting would take an unreasonable amount of time since the UI codebase consists of some 200,000 lines of code. The CSM has been waiting for an UI overhaul for 2 years but concedes that even a series of small fixes would go a long way towards addressing player complaints, especially if that involved extending the current good functionalities to as many other UI elements as possible.

Okay too bad they aren’t rewriting it, but with 200k lines I can agree on that. Good to know they’re actually going to fix all the little annoyances the UI has and make gradual improvements.

Other stuff

The CSM was given a very informative presentation on MMO scaling issues and the related technical challenges by Jacky Mallett, Distributed Systems Architect. The CSM suggested that the player base would enjoy the information and requested that CCP publish a dev blog containing the information CSM was given, a suggestion with which Jacky agreed.

Another look behind the scenes us programmers/developers love, and perhaps the rest of the player base might also find it interesting.

CSM firmly stated its belief that CCP is on the wrong track in directing their development power into new things that the players have no faith in while acknowledging that the old things need attention. CSM truly believes that CCP needs to pay much more attention to what players are saying. There is a growing frustration among the CSM that CCP’s apparent refusal to tangibly address well supported player requests will never change.

And that goes on for 4 paragraphs, good that they’re pushing through on that, keep doing that

Closing statements

So all in all there’s a lot of good things pushed by the CSM, and now with the persistent Mynxee on their side I’m sure EVE will be heading in the right direction again.

Also my apologies for this long write-up totalling 1400 words, there just was a lot of stuff that I felt had to be mentioned.

Even after reading this I recommend you read the meeting minutes there might be a lot of stuff that you find important that I haven’t listed.

~Xeross

Today we had a roam with the alliance, we started of in XX9 waiting for any reports on incoming gangs, after not a lot of stuff happened we decided to head into RA-N to see if someone was there, but it was pretty quiet too.

After this we decided to place some bait in HLW and after a while they bit, the gang quickly jumped in and we managed to kill an Oneiros and a Hurricane after this we went back to RA-N and left the bait on the gate.

After a while reports came in of a drake gang, they warped into us and we decided to engage, however it became clear our fleet couldn’t break their tank, and we went home with heavy losses (Though we managed to kill a Lachesis and a Saber).

Luckily for most of us their ship would be reimbursed as it was an alliance approved fit however as I didn’t have the money for the said fitting I had to fly a non-standard fit thus I didn’t get my Hurricane reimbursed.

All in all a successful roam, we had fun and we’ve learned a few things here and there.