I might try Eve Online again - anyone got a buddy key?
Jamie Kahn Genet
quests with unclear goals, poor writing, incessent spelling mistakes,
help not being under the 'Help' section (that one still baffles me...),
a buggy Mac version... wait, why the hell do I want to try this game
again?!
But I find my longing for a decent Elite/Escape Velocity MMO has grown
to the point where it cannot be ignored. I've been looking at other
Fantasy MMOs, but none are different enough from WoW to really draw me
in (at least of those that still have decent populations). Other space
MMOs seem heavily combat focused (I want a balanced mix of trading and
combat). Thus I'm back to considering giving Eve another go.
Does it suck less now? Have they hired English proofreaders? Or even
real writers? If so I'd appreciate a buddy key so I can get a decent 21
days to try it out and give it a fair go. I gave up on the first day
last time as it sucked so bad. I mean really - how hard is it to hire a
proofreader? For that matter - how in the hell do spelling mistakes
still exist in starter quests years after release?
But nevermind - I want to avoid going off on another rant. So - is Eve
improved in 2010? Or will it still let me down in the basics? If not I'd
love a buddy key if you've one to share :-) Or even if Eve is still very
rough around the edges, I suppose I need to try it out just to know
finally whether my hope of a decent Elite MMO is dead.
TIA,
Jamie Kahn Genet
--
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Peter Knutsen
> Yeah, I know I said it sucked a couple years ago due to crappy initial
> quests with unclear goals, poor writing, incessent spelling mistakes,
> help not being under the 'Help' section (that one still baffles me...),
> a buggy Mac version... wait, why the hell do I want to try this game
> again?!
It's been said that CCP has worked hard on the so-called "New Player
Experience", meaning many more tutorials, and each of them better, than
when I started playing back in 2007.
At the same time as this happened, spring 2009, CCP also introduced
skill training queues for the first time, which I celebrated by buying a
second account, so now I can play two characters simultaneously,
although I never played through any of the new and improved tutorials
with this alt.
I've been unpleasantly busy with school these recent months, so I
haven't played EVE at all, but I still train both my characters, and
they're quite badass now, skill-wize, although when it comes to many
aspects of the game, I'm still a noob.
> But I find my longing for a decent Elite/Escape Velocity MMO has grown
> to the point where it cannot be ignored. I've been looking at other
> Fantasy MMOs, but none are different enough from WoW to really draw me
> in (at least of those that still have decent populations). Other space
> MMOs seem heavily combat focused (I want a balanced mix of trading and
> combat). Thus I'm back to considering giving Eve another go.
>
> Does it suck less now? Have they hired English proofreaders? Or even
> real writers? If so I'd appreciate a buddy key so I can get a decent 21
> days to try it out and give it a fair go. I gave up on the first day
> last time as it sucked so bad. I mean really - how hard is it to hire a
> proofreader? For that matter - how in the hell do spelling mistakes
> still exist in starter quests years after release?
Each patch note claims that more spelling or grammar mistakes have been
corrected, but keep in mind that CCP is an Icelandic company, so English
is their second language. They've hired a lot of staff from various
countries now, to work in their Iceland office or elsewhere (Atlanta and
Shanghai, AFAIK), but the core of EVE was written by people with a
severe case of ESL.
> But nevermind - I want to avoid going off on another rant. So - is Eve
> improved in 2010? Or will it still let me down in the basics? If not I'd
> love a buddy key if you've one to share :-) Or even if Eve is still very
> rough around the edges, I suppose I need to try it out just to know
> finally whether my hope of a decent Elite MMO is dead.
I can send you an invite. That gives you 21 days, and if you later
choose to pay to play, I get 30 days added to my account. (AFAIK if you
pay to play, your paid-for days are added on top of whatever remains of
your 21 days, instead of replacing the remainder, but I'm not 100% sure
of this. I can ask on the CCP forums if you ask me to, though.)
The catch is, with the new skill queues, character creation was also
changed. Before, you'd choose a race, a background and then a
specialization, along a three-step choice tree, and the final choice
would result in you being given 800k worth of skill points, so that you
start the game being able to do something, be it shooting mining lasers
at rocks, or firing guns or missiles, or whatever. you started out ready
to perform an in-game activity, even if at a basic level.
Now you start with only the most basic of skillz, something like 10k
points, but you train at double speed until you hit 1.6M skill points,
as a sort of compensation. (Another thing is, you get to distribute your
attribute points as you wish, instead of being mostly stuck with what
your choice of race gives you.)
The Learning skillz, those that improve your attributes, are still
there. This means that the best long-term choice you can do is set up an
account and then spend the first couple of months (I shit you not!)
training nothing but Learning skillz. So you create your character, set
up training, log off, log on the next day, set more training queue, log
off again, and so forth, although as time passes your log-on intervals
will be greater, until after something like 6-10 weeks you have a
character who is quite good at one or two in-game activities.
The Learning Skillz improve your attributes (of which there are five,
although you can safely ignore Charisma completely, for most character
concepts) which means that you will then be able to train other skillz,
directly useful skillz, faster.
So if you do this 21-day tryout, what should you do?
I think you should train mostly for actually useful skillz, i.e. skillz
that improves your various in-game abilities, such as weapon skillz or
shield skillz, with very little attention paid to Learning skillz. Then
if you end up liking the game, you ought to switch to "Learning
Skillz"-only mode for the next about two months.
The bare minimum of Learning skillz you should train, as in within the
first month of play, is:
Train the four basic Learning skills, excepting the fifth (for Charisma)
up to level 4. This should be doable in a couple of days, although I'm
not sure (it's been a while).
Train the four Advanced Learning skillz (again, excepting the one for
Charisma) up to level 3. This should be doable in a week (again, I'm not
sure).
If you're hardcore, you train the four basic Learning skillz up to 5,
and the four Advanced ones up to 4, but you can postpone that a while,
since each skill level only gives +1 attribute point, so the difference
between 4/3 and 5/4 is +7 versus +9.
To those not in the know (I presume Jamie still remembers this) skill
training is continous. You tell a skill to train, and it keep training
real-time until it finishes its current level (the only change, from
when Jamie played, is that you can now queue up to 24 hours worth of
skillz, with the last skill in the queue being able to go past the 24
hour limit), and that each skill level takes five times as long to train
as the previous.
Usually the first level of a skill takes a couple of minutes, the 2nd
level takes maybe 12 minutes, the 3rd level takes about an hour, the 4th
level takes about 5 hours, and the 5th level (the last) takes about a
full day.
Difficult skills then take a multiplier of that amount, i.e. the easiest
skillz have a multiplier of x1 so they roughly take the above amounts of
time, unless Learning skillz have been trained to improve attributes.
The hardest skillz have a multiplier ofsomething like x16 or so, and it
is fairly common for the 5th level of really difficult skillz to take
several weeks to train.
Each skill level tends to give only a small bonus, though, something
like 5% or often even only a 2% or 2.5% bonus to something, such as ship
flight velocity, ship turning ability ("rotate"), shield HP amount or
shield HP recharge, so the 5th skill level is never something that one
should pursue mindlessly. Only train a skill to 5th if you're really
serious about it.
Skill point accumulation is proportional to attribute values. Each skill
has a primay and a secondary attribute, out of the five (with Charisma
usually not being included at all), with the secondary having "half
weight". Compared to a starting character, someone who has trained the
Learning skillz to level 5 and the Advanced Learning to level 4, might
train about twice as fast.
So one thing you should do is make up your mind about how you're going
to approach the first few days of playing. Play actively, or just train
(perhaps while chatting with other players, although of course you don't
need to be logged on to train). Secondly, what do you want to do in the
game? Fly PVE, fly PVP, shoot at asteroids, physically move stuff about,
or engage in trade, or a combination of the last two? (With that
combination being rare, AFAIK; most traders are station-traders, they
stay in the same station and buy stuff on the cheap then sell it at
higher cost, never undocking. That's nothing like Elite, more like
interacting with a huge spreadsheet)
If you want an invite, what address should I send it to?
--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org
Jamie Kahn Genet
> On 23/05/2010 16:16, Jamie Kahn Genet wrote:
> > Yeah, I know I said it sucked a couple years ago due to crappy initial
> > quests with unclear goals, poor writing, incessent spelling mistakes,
> > help not being under the 'Help' section (that one still baffles me...),
> > a buggy Mac version... wait, why the hell do I want to try this game
> > again?!
>
> It's been said that CCP has worked hard on the so-called "New Player
> Experience", meaning many more tutorials, and each of them better, than
> when I started playing back in 2007.
[snip useful info]
Well, it sounds like it's worth trying again, thanks Peter :-) My
address above is fine if you'd care to share a key.
Cheers,
Peter Knutsen
> Peter Knutsen<pe...@sagatafl.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 23/05/2010 16:16, Jamie Kahn Genet wrote:
>>> Yeah, I know I said it sucked a couple years ago due to crappy initial
>>> quests with unclear goals, poor writing, incessent spelling mistakes,
>>> help not being under the 'Help' section (that one still baffles me...),
>>> a buggy Mac version... wait, why the hell do I want to try this game
>>> again?!
>>
>> It's been said that CCP has worked hard on the so-called "New Player
>> Experience", meaning many more tutorials, and each of them better, than
>> when I started playing back in 2007.
> [snip useful info]
>
> Well, it sounds like it's worth trying again, thanks Peter :-) My
> address above is fine if you'd care to share a key.
Sent.
I tend to help out friends and relatives, when they start playing EVE,
giving them gifts of money and cybernetic implants (these improves
attributes, cumulatively with Learning skillz), but frankly you and I
don't have any kind of relationship. You're just a person whose name I
remember from alt.games.warcraft; you're knowledgeable and friendly, but
really just one name among dozens.
Still, I'm perfectly willing to give a small noob gift, that I in theory
give to every new player I come across (it's just that I rarely know,
when interacting with a player, whether he's new enough), of 500k ISK.
That's a small amount, but still nice to have early in the game. Don't
thank me for it, though. Instead, pay it *forward*, to other noobs once
you yourself have progressed in the game.
(When I was new, one player gave me something like 5 million ISK, or
possibly it was 20 million, but I'm vehemently against such large
donations to noobs, because I spent mine very unwisely. Large donations
do no good and can do much harm, but small donations are highly useful,
and I'd rather give 500k each to 100 new players, than give something
like 10 million ISK to one new player.)
The invite has been sent from my in-game persona of Salpad. Send an
in-game mail (EVEmail) to him, then post on here that you've done it,
then I'll log on and send you the 500k ISK noob donation.
Two more pieces of advice: Look into cybernetic implants as one more way
to boost your attributes (most veteran players buy +4 implants, skipping
the top-tier +5 ones because they're hugely expensive. Even a new
players can afford a set of +1 implants). *and* be extremely wary of the
in-game player-driven investment market. It's 100% based on trust, and
you WILL GET SCAMMED. And CCP does nothing, since scams are not an
expoit of the game mechanics, but merely clever utilization of
legitimate game mechanics (the game mechanic of posting to the forums,
soliciting investors, with one throwaway "face" alt identity, then once
the investors pay up, you transfer the ISK to your real in-game
identity, without the investors ever being able to know who your in-game
identity is).
--
Peter Knutsen
PV
>Yeah, I know I said it sucked a couple years ago due to crappy initial
>quests with unclear goals, poor writing, incessent spelling mistakes,
>help not being under the 'Help' section (that one still baffles me...),
>a buggy Mac version... wait, why the hell do I want to try this game
>again?!
I've been playing it for the last few months entirely solo as a pve game,
just to see how things have improved (I think we both trialed it about the
same time).
>Does it suck less now? Have they hired English proofreaders? Or even
>real writers? If so I'd appreciate a buddy key so I can get a decent 21
>days to try it out and give it a fair go. I gave up on the first day
There's no buddy keys, but there's always a 14 day free trial. Just
download the client and register for free time. Having done it before is
no hindrance - I started a new character (Gallente) rather than trying to
using the previous one.
>last time as it sucked so bad. I mean really - how hard is it to hire a
>proofreader? For that matter - how in the hell do spelling mistakes
>still exist in starter quests years after release?
Understand one thing - it's not made by native english speakers. A lot of
things make more sense once you realize that everything you read in the
game has been translated.
>But nevermind - I want to avoid going off on another rant. So - is Eve
>improved in 2010? Or will it still let me down in the basics? If not I'd
>love a buddy key if you've one to share :-) Or even if Eve is still very
>rough around the edges, I suppose I need to try it out just to know
>finally whether my hope of a decent Elite MMO is dead.
Like it or not, EvE *is* the Elite mmo. It was made from the ground up to
be that, and it's all there.
As for "has it improved"... since my last trial, I would say definitely
yes. There's a couple "epic mission arcs" (you can start on the sisters of
eve one almost right after you start playing), and there are also tutorial
agents who show you the ropes for every major mechanic in the game (combat,
trading, manufacturing, mining, etc.). This is a GIANT improvement over the
last time, where you bascially had to figure it all out yourself, and some
things in the game are very opaque without clues as to how to get started.
I still haven't entirely figured out research though, but unlike the last
trial, I was manufacturing profitable items right away (not telling you
what; figure it out yourself!).
Some things you're always going to be annoyed by, such as the requirement
to go all over hell's half acre for skillup books, and the giant amounts of
training. To make things nicer for new people, they added a giant
skillpoint speedup on your first million or so points, so you no longer
have to waste time in the trial skilling up learning, just so you can fly a
destroyer or cruiser during the trial (though I'm not sure I got to cruiser
right on the two week mark - it may have taken a couple days after
registering for a real account).
Two months in, I'm flying a battleship (a dominix), and am stomping level 3
missions to hell even though I can't use pretty much ANY high-tech items
yet. Just for yucks the other night I tried visiting a wormhole, and ...
well I ran away really fast when I found out that even sleeper BATTLESHIPS
travel faster than 1000KPS. Just barely made it back to the wormhole with a
tiny bit of structure left.
Give it a try. I think the community SUCKS beyond belief, but if you stay
in high sec (.5 or above), you don't meet many of the douchebag brigade. *
P.S. INSURE YOUR SHIPS! Sometimes you can even make a profit doing it - I
was so proud of myself for thinking to do that in a certain tutorial
mission.
P.P.S. Repeating now - the community SUCKS. They will scam you at every
turn, and there is no GM safety net if you get ripped off for
everything you have. Learn where it's safe to sell stuff, and beware
of buy order scamming (like listing 2 million isk items for 100 isk
in the hope a newbie will think it's trash). Hint: Anything over
meta 2 is worth a good chunk of cash.
P.P.P.S. A major expansion is due Any Day Now. If you're going to trial,
take it into account.
--
* PV Something like badgers, something like lizards, and something
like corkscrews.
Jamie Kahn Genet
--
Jamie Kahn Genet
Sorry, Eve crashed again leaving a blank post which was then sent when I
connected. Ironically my first post was to be about how Eve for Mac is
obviously still super buggy and cannot be force quit when it freezes,
forcing me to force restart my Mac - yay!
Peter Knutsen
> Sorry, Eve crashed again leaving a blank post which was then sent when I
> connected. Ironically my first post was to be about how Eve for Mac is
> obviously still super buggy and cannot be force quit when it freezes,
> forcing me to force restart my Mac - yay!
That sucks. Still, send me an EVEmail about the in-game money. 500k ISK
is nothing for me, but would be a serious help for you.
--
Peter Knutsen
Jamie Kahn Genet
Well, it remains to be seen how well I can even get Eve to just run on
the Mac. A sign of how desperate I am for a decent space MMO is I'm
considering using Crossover/WINE and the Windows version of Eve. Thanks
again for the offer of some ISK Peter :-) I've saved this thread so I
won't forget to look you up if I stay.
Peter Knutsen
> Well, it remains to be seen how well I can even get Eve to just run on
> the Mac. A sign of how desperate I am for a decent space MMO is I'm
> considering using Crossover/WINE and the Windows version of Eve. Thanks
> again for the offer of some ISK Peter :-) I've saved this thread so I
> won't forget to look you up if I stay.
ISTR that EVE players on Macs have successfully reported using this
"Wine" or "WINE" thing, but don't hold me accountable. I tend to be
pretty Windows-centric and ignore Mac talk.
Maybe there's something about it on the CCP Forums, or elsewhere on the
EVE website. IIRC you can't post to the forums with a trial account, but
it is possible to read them without even logging in.
--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org
PV
>connected. Ironically my first post was to be about how Eve for Mac is
>obviously still super buggy and cannot be force quit when it freezes,
>forcing me to force restart my Mac - yay!
Um, command option escape is not broken. *
PV
>the Mac. A sign of how desperate I am for a decent space MMO is I'm
>considering using Crossover/WINE and the Windows version of Eve. Thanks
>again for the offer of some ISK Peter :-) I've saved this thread so I
>won't forget to look you up if I stay.
UGH, don't do that! The problems you're having are local - I've run the
thing on my mac for close to three months and it's locked up exactly once.
You really need to check out your machine - you seem to always have buggy
experiences with stuff that nobody else does. Maybe you have some marginal
memory or an intermittent thermal issue. *
Peter Knutsen
> the Mac. A sign of how desperate I am for a decent space MMO is I'm
> considering using Crossover/WINE and the Windows version of Eve. Thanks
> again for the offer of some ISK Peter :-) I've saved this thread so I
> won't forget to look you up if I stay.
My account still says that your invitation is not accepted.
EVE was patched to the new expansion (free as always) Tyrannis,
yesterday, so if you had problems logging in, that's why.
--
Peter Knutsen
PV
By the way - a second warning not to bother trying to run the windows
client in crossover. The mac client is written using Cider, which is the
exact same thing as crossover under the hood. It will probably be worse,
because at least in the cider version they addressed some mac-centric
issues. *
Jamie Kahn Genet
Hah, I'm sorry to say I think I used the wrong invitation! I got sent
several when I asked questions here and on the MMORPG.com forums. Sorry
about that - I seem to have given a total stranger 30 free days (or I
should say _will_ give, since I think I'll be paying). Meh :-\
So yeah - aside from that mix up, things are now going fairly well in
Eve. There have been many moments where I've been grinding my teeth and
wondering how on Earth they managed to make simple tasks so freaking
complex, however I can see the value of the game and the Mac client is
far less buggy than when I last tried it.
Yes I had the two instances where it froze and could not be force quit
or command-tabbed out of, forcing me to force shutdown my Mac despite
everything else working ok, so far as I could tell (I could hear my IM
and Email apps getting new messages). But there have been no repeats
since. Back when I first tried Eve for Mac a couple years ago crashes
and freezes were an almost hourly event. So there's improvement there,
thank goodness.
Getting back to the game - it's still not quite the space MMO I want (I
don't believe a deep and engrossing game needs to be so bloody
complicated). I don't quite want WoW in space, but maybe EQ1 in space
would be nice. In other words I want a hard unforgiving space MMO that's
difficult to level and requires time, hard work, and gives an epic
feeling of accomplishment. But the fundamental game mechanics should be
easy to grasp. Eve just hasn't managed that IMO. Not even close. It's
devs seem madly in love with complexity for the sake of complexity as
far as I can tell. Still, it will do for now...
I have to say though - it's going to have to get a hell of a lot better
for me not to drop it in a second when a real Elite/Escape Velocity
style MMO arrives on the scene. Jumpgate's sequel looks promising, but I
fear it's going to swing too far to the twitch combat side. I hope not.
I simply want a space MMO balanced between trading, exploration, and
combat. I don't know why that's so hard. Even single player Escape
Velocity plays better than Eve, and it's... 15 years old now? Sadly it's
still SP, and I want the community of an MMO.
Peter Knutsen
> Peter Knutsen<pe...@sagatafl.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 24/05/2010 11:19, Jamie Kahn Genet wrote:
>>> Well, it remains to be seen how well I can even get Eve to just run on
>>> the Mac. A sign of how desperate I am for a decent space MMO is I'm
>>> considering using Crossover/WINE and the Windows version of Eve. Thanks
>>> again for the offer of some ISK Peter :-) I've saved this thread so I
>>> won't forget to look you up if I stay.
>>
>> My account still says that your invitation is not accepted.
>>
>> EVE was patched to the new expansion (free as always) Tyrannis,
>> yesterday, so if you had problems logging in, that's why.
>
> Hah, I'm sorry to say I think I used the wrong invitation! I got sent
> several when I asked questions here and on the MMORPG.com forums. Sorry
> about that - I seem to have given a total stranger 30 free days (or I
> should say _will_ give, since I think I'll be paying). Meh :-\
All right. If you still think 500k ISK will help you out, at your stage
in the game (because you'll quickly reach a point where 500k ISK is a
"meh" amount) then send an EVEmail to Salpad and write a note in here as
well (the note in here is because I don't log on every day).
> So yeah - aside from that mix up, things are now going fairly well in
> Eve. There have been many moments where I've been grinding my teeth and
> wondering how on Earth they managed to make simple tasks so freaking
> complex, however I can see the value of the game and the Mac client is
> far less buggy than when I last tried it.
I'm curious: What is the complexity that you find superflous? Please
give specific examples.
[...]
> I have to say though - it's going to have to get a hell of a lot better
> for me not to drop it in a second when a real Elite/Escape Velocity
> style MMO arrives on the scene. Jumpgate's sequel looks promising, but I
> fear it's going to swing too far to the twitch combat side. I hope not.
> I simply want a space MMO balanced between trading, exploration, and
> combat. I don't know why that's so hard. Even single player Escape
> Velocity plays better than Eve, and it's... 15 years old now? Sadly it's
> still SP, and I want the community of an MMO.
I don't want a twitch game at all. I tried the latest Escape Velocity
game many years ago and played through most of the allotted free play
time (30 non-consecutive days), but it really didn't appeal that much to
me. The reason I played it for so relatively long is that I had a very
old computer back then.
My main issues with EVE are balance ones, and CCP are fixing them,
albeit very slowly. For instance the non-advanced Caracal variant (Navy
Caracal, it is called, IIRC), used to have a fitting problem, either too
little "powergrid" or too little "CPU" (I think it was the later), Then
after a long while, CCP fixed it in a patch, upgraded the stat, so that
it is much more feasible to outfit it with a complete set of modules.
Likewise, the advanced haulers (Tech 2), the Blockade Runner and the
Deep Space Transport, also got an upgrade last year, so they were more
useful and better fitted their intended roles.
And with the patch 1-2 days ago, the ship insurance problem may have
been solved. Previosly, players could suicide gank each other even in
high-security systems and profit from it, because the insurance payout
was too high on Tech 1 ships and was paid out even if the ship got
destroyed by the cops (i.e. the NPCs tasked with preventing non-declared
PVP in high-sec). Also Tech 2 ships were never insured because the
insurance payout was ridiculously low, being based on some original
default/base raw material values which the real player-driven in-game
economy had long since diverted significantly from.
AFAIK the main remaining problems is one specific category of Tech 2
ships, Assault Ships (a sort of advanced frigate) which are
underpowered, and one weapon type, rockets, which are also underpowered.
--
Peter Knutsen
Jamie Kahn Genet
> On 28/05/2010 01:13, Jamie Kahn Genet wrote:
> > Peter Knutsen<pe...@sagatafl.invalid> wrote:
> >
> >> On 24/05/2010 11:19, Jamie Kahn Genet wrote:
> >>> Well, it remains to be seen how well I can even get Eve to just run on
> >>> the Mac. A sign of how desperate I am for a decent space MMO is I'm
> >>> considering using Crossover/WINE and the Windows version of Eve. Thanks
> >>> again for the offer of some ISK Peter :-) I've saved this thread so I
> >>> won't forget to look you up if I stay.
> >>
> >> My account still says that your invitation is not accepted.
> >>
> >> EVE was patched to the new expansion (free as always) Tyrannis,
> >> yesterday, so if you had problems logging in, that's why.
> >
> > Hah, I'm sorry to say I think I used the wrong invitation! I got sent
> > several when I asked questions here and on the MMORPG.com forums. Sorry
> > about that - I seem to have given a total stranger 30 free days (or I
> > should say _will_ give, since I think I'll be paying). Meh :-\
>
> All right. If you still think 500k ISK will help you out, at your stage
> in the game (because you'll quickly reach a point where 500k ISK is a
> "meh" amount) then send an EVEmail to Salpad and write a note in here as
> well (the note in here is because I don't log on every day).
No, no need :-) I do appreciate the offer, though, but I'm spending
almost all my time just running through tutorials or sitting in station
learning skills. Money isn't really figuring into my play yet. Tell ya
what - if I ever need a hand actually doing something that's difficult
solo I'll give you a yell.
> > So yeah - aside from that mix up, things are now going fairly well in
> > Eve. There have been many moments where I've been grinding my teeth and
> > wondering how on Earth they managed to make simple tasks so freaking
> > complex, however I can see the value of the game and the Mac client is
> > far less buggy than when I last tried it.
>
> I'm curious: What is the complexity that you find superflous? Please
> give specific examples.
Well leaving aside that the exploration tutorials gave zero clue how to
do this (really bad non-intuitive design IMO) or ANY suggestion I'd need
multiple probes and I finally had to search for a youtube video to show
me how... *sigh* ...to scan for salvage/mining/hacking etc sites I have
to launch a drone to scan an area of space with (after taking wild
guesses WTF to scan... but apparently that doesn't matter much either,
or hasn't yet anyway). Then after getting some unidentified scan
results, I have to pick one result, launch four more probes, position
them just so, re-scan, narrow down location of result, re-position and
boost scan signal based on new result, rinse, wash, repeat several times
till I finally get a definite location I can warp to.
I guess I'm just not seeing the fun in positioning probes multiple times
in the hope a scan result turns out to be what I'm after. I fail to see
why it's necessary EVERY damn time. How about at least giving the first
one or two scans a chance to pinpoint a result's location? Make it a
little random, you know? Since when did triangulating become so hard?
Just give results a _chance_ of being useful sooner.
Anyway - it's just not seeming very fun - more like make work really.
I think it would be more fun to have sensors on one's ship constantly
scanning (and not that I even know if this is yet a factor) in either
active and/or passive modes depending on whether you're worried about
giving your location away from scan signals (IS that a factor? If not
I'd have to wonder WHY not). Then as you go about your business if you
should locate a likely result, have your computer notify you. Then you
can begin pinpointing it using at most three probes to perform simple
triangulation.
That would be a smart way of doing it IMO that removes the always
necessary busywork steps of always narrowing down a signal over and
over, and it would make just flying through space fun. Right now I'm
unaware of a way to even just do that. So far as I can tell there is no
way to just _fly_ without a definite location in mind. I just want to
set a direction based on X,Y,Z coords, or set a course based on a route
I specify, or even just fly free.
If is a way to do the above then I'm appalled it's still not revealed
itself to me. Is there?
I have to say there are some gigantic holes in the logic of Eve's
gameplay. Still, hopefully they won't get so annoying I say the hell
with all of it... we shall see.
PV
>I don't want a twitch game at all. I tried the latest Escape Velocity
>game many years ago and played through most of the allotted free play
>time (30 non-consecutive days), but it really didn't appeal that much to
>me. The reason I played it for so relatively long is that I had a very
>old computer back then.
It was a fun game, but not really very deep. It had some nice storylines
though.
>And with the patch 1-2 days ago, the ship insurance problem may have
>been solved. Previosly, players could suicide gank each other even in
>high-security systems and profit from it, because the insurance payout
>was too high on Tech 1 ships and was paid out even if the ship got
>destroyed by the cops (i.e. the NPCs tasked with preventing non-declared
>PVP in high-sec). Also Tech 2 ships were never insured because the
Whoa, I didn't see anything in the notes about canceling insurance if
CONCORD blows up the ship. It's been suggested a lot as a suicide ganker
killer - did it happen? *
Peter Knutsen
> Peter Knutsen<pe...@sagatafl.invalid> writes:
>> I don't want a twitch game at all. I tried the latest Escape Velocity
>> game many years ago and played through most of the allotted free play
>> time (30 non-consecutive days), but it really didn't appeal that much to
>> me. The reason I played it for so relatively long is that I had a very
>> old computer back then.
>
> It was a fun game, but not really very deep. It had some nice storylines
> though.
One thing I didn't like was that it was random what storyline the player
was offered. That's an example of poor game design.
>> And with the patch 1-2 days ago, the ship insurance problem may have
>> been solved. Previosly, players could suicide gank each other even in
>> high-security systems and profit from it, because the insurance payout
>> was too high on Tech 1 ships and was paid out even if the ship got
>> destroyed by the cops (i.e. the NPCs tasked with preventing non-declared
>> PVP in high-sec). Also Tech 2 ships were never insured because the
>
> Whoa, I didn't see anything in the notes about canceling insurance if
> CONCORD blows up the ship. It's been suggested a lot as a suicide ganker
> killer - did it happen? *
I'm not actually sure. I haven't played actively in a long while, due to
school, only logged on to change skillz, and then tried to keep
up-to-date by reading the dev blogs and the player news.
There's a dev blog about the insurance changes, IIRC from last month,
which should have all the information.
--
Peter Knutsen
Peter Knutsen
< http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=746 >
Nothing about being CONCORDed (that is, ganked by the cops for illegal
kinds of PVP) in the blog, so I'm now pretty sure you still get your
insurance.
--
Peter Knutsen