Credit Where It's Due

EveMail

Subject: Thank you
From: Ty Delaney
Sent: 2014.01.27 03:30
To: Miura Bull

You may not be able to tell, but this kill is all thanks to you.

Kill: Captain Sparro (Claw)

I've learned a lot by studying the ships you fly, how you fit them, and what you take them against. I'm not sure if this firetail is exactly the same as one you flew in the past (I usually change something, because I'm stupid), but the fitting in EFT is saved simply as "Miura" - let's at least assume you inspired it.

Anyway, thanks. I don't always have time or the luck for 1v1s these days - this fight pretty much made my day.

I'm sure if Miura ever gets the chance, he'll try to kill me (I'd be profoundly disappointed otherwise), but that doesn't mean I can't say thanks for providing some great inspiration.

The Unexpected Good

Given my family, busy home life, teaching, learning, recording an audiobook, writing another book (and recording that), writing another book, and... you know... a day job, I don't have a ton of time to play Eve.

I know, I know. Priorities, right?

Since I'm a little tight on time, I try to focus on activities that yield something positive within a fairly well-defined block of time.

Faction Warfare suits me right down to the ground, for example: log in, undock, and a couple jumps to a contested system for either LP payout, PvP, or both. Or, a few bomber missions. Either way, something positive.

Even if I lose a ship, at least something interesting happened.

Scheduled roams can sometimes (not always) work out well. I've had some good experiences with the fairly new Redemption Road roams, and I've mentioned the RvB Ganked roams many, many times. It isn't always a great experience, but most of the time it is, and I like practically everyone I haven't muted on Mumble.

Last weekend was RvB's 100th roam, for which they'd ironically (but earnestly) planned a stationary fight: lots of capital ships and giant "come at me bro" sign. I decided to attend, because as I said, I like the guys and I wanted to celebrate with them.

Unfortunately, it didn't end up being one of those times when a Ganked Roam resulted in a good experience. The two hour (!) fleet muster window ended up stretched to three hours, several ships died just getting through highsec to the target system (one of them the battleship I'd decided to bring - hardly surprising as I always lose ships before ganked fleets even start if I don't bring an interceptor) and, once we got in system, the TiDi was... well, TiDi.

That all this happened at the same time as the HED-GP meltdown at least demonstrated to us (via Twitch.tv) that things could have been worse, but with over 600 "friendly" pilots in system, most of whom were (a) criminally flagged and (b) not in the same fleet, it was a bit of a hot mess, and took a good six hours before I gave up and headed out.

The best fight that whole time?

I was reshipping in a nearby system, and undocked in my trusty Taranis, straight into a Caldari faction war target, flying a Catalyst. After a momentary pause, I thought "I can kill a Catalyst, I bet. Maybe. Possibly... Fuck it!" and broke undock invulnerability to charge his guns. Managed to get in close before he could lock me and took him out with flames trailing behind me. GF, GF.

That said, if the highlight of a 1200-pilot fight is a 1v1 between you and a tech1 destroyer, several jumps away, that probably wasn't time well spent.

Never let it be said, however, that I won't try something twice, just because it was bad the first time!

The next day, GG had a Redemption Roam scheduled, and I put together a few ships to tag along.

Things started out poorly. Flying an interceptor, I was dropped into the scout and skirmish wing and shot out into Curse, but pulled a particularly boneheaded maneuver when I warped to the only station in YKE4-3 from the only gate in YKE4-3, at 100 kilometers. The executioner sitting near the station didn't worry me, as both the character and his ship's name made him look like a cyno alt. He entered warp, and I figured he was leaving...

... nope. He dropped right on top of me at my painfully easy-to-predict location and took out my Ares. I'm so bad at this game.

Meanwhile, the main body of the fleet (armor tanked missile destroyers and interdictors) had completely flubbed an attempt to catch a fleet of bombers and lost about half our ships only four or five jumps into the roam. Whoops.

As I said, things were looking bad. I was about to dock up and log out for the day when someone jumped onto comms and asked if our fleet of ~30 would be interested in a potential carrier kill in wormhole space.

I just want to pause here and reflect on the fact that someone decided to batphone a Redemption Road "RvB Ganked Hangover Fleet", because that was their best option. Wow.

Needless to day, we were interested. I and one other pilot made best speed for Rens (only a few jumps from the wormhole) and cobbled together a pair of Apocalypse battleships to make the carrier a slightly softer, energy-drained target. Once assembled, the SS iNeut set out for glory.

Considering how long mustering took the day before, the fact that everyone either reshipped into bigger stuff or flew 20+ jumps and was ready to attack inside 25 minutes was... refreshing.

We jumped into the wormhole, then over to the next wormhole, which would take us into the target system. Our scout got us a good warp-in, our tackle leap into motion, and a few seconds later I found myself in a lag-free, non-TiDi'd capital and battleship fight - my first time flying a neut/drone ship in anything over a six-pilot gang.

Everything exploded, we scattered back out to known space, I checked the clock, said my goodbyes, and logged.

---

Some days, what looks like the best event of all time turns out more than sub-optimal, and the best fight you get is a 1v1 with a war target somewhere far away from the main event.

Sometimes, you whelp most of the fleet and lose your scouting ship to a clever trap for stupid pilots... and turn around to get a nearly-flawless carrier kill.

You just never know.

That's why I love this game.

When an Apology Isn't About "I'm Sorry"

Mabrick is, as he likes to say, mumbling about CCP's apology to the participants in the HED-GP fight last weekend. He's disappointed in CCP's decision to apologize, and does a bit of math to illustrate his reasons.

In concept, I agree with Mabrick's point. Despite the size of the fight in HED-GP, it was a relatively small percentage of the total number of people who were logged into the game, and everyone else was pretty much fine (RvB TiDi notwithstanding).

In fact, in the past, I've made similar points - as much as Null likes to brag about how their wars churn the economy, even a casual glance at dotlan shows that just as many ships die in high sec, and on more predictable patterns. Yes, really.

If it were just about appeasing the existing player base, Mabrick's entirely correct in telling that lot to HTFU and organize fights that can actually be played within the technological restrictions of the game in which the fight takes place.

But it's not about player appeasement, of course. Not at all.

It's about marketing.

There's two things Mabrick either doesn't consider or chooses to ignore to make the point he wants to make.

1. The groups involved can generate a huge amount of press about the events in Eve, at will. The Goons in particular are well-documented masters of 'controlling their message', and as the Mittani has demonstrated dozens of times, when you control the vocal output of 10 thousand accounts and probably a couple thousand actual players, you can make a pretty loud noise.

2. Successful, glitch-free monster fights grow the playerbase. A large number of players started playing EVE because of the fight in Asakai - it not-so-indirectly lead to the creation of Brave Newbies, now one of the largest player corps in the game. (Was Asakai really a year ago? Huh.) It's free advertising of the best kind: word of mouth.

So... no. Nothing that CCP is saying publicly with regards to HED-GP is really about player appeasement. The apologies aren't to mollify anyone who plays the game.

It's marketing for the people who aren't playing the game.

Just a bit on the Problem of Soul-Crushing Lag

Lots of folks have already written about the current problems with very large fleet fights in Eve, prompted by the events in HED-GP over the weekend.

The short version: 3500ish pilots tried to pile into a single system and blow the hell out of each other and the servers simply couldn't handle it, producing an experience similar to the bad old days (tm) of three or more years ago.

CCP put a band-aid on the problem with time-dilation which, by reducing the speed of what's happening in heavily-loaded systems to as low as 10%, effectively made their servers ten times faster. Great, if the fleets never get any bigger.

But they would. Of course they would. Inevitably. With large, heavily-organized null security power blocs fleets will, as Trebor famously said, "expand to fill the lag available."

So what do you do?

Get better hardware? Unfortunately, computers aren't getting better in directions that benefit Eve's code base very much.

Make the code more efficient? They're working on that, but even if the work done is outstanding, it just puts the same kind of timer on the situation as the time-dilation fix: if the servers and/or code can handle more pilots in big fights, so those fights will inevitably grow til they hit the new crash/freeze barrier, and we're right back where we started.

Don't get me wrong: I think optimizing the code is good and valuable work, but it doesn't fix the main problem, which is that bringing more ships is always the best option if you want to win a fight

The trick to creating a truly long-term solution to this isn't to support the current best option - it's to make other options better and/or necessary.

Competing Objectives

Corelin used this phrase, and I like it. The basic idea is to create a new normal for sovereignty battles where, to put it simply, fights and other ship-based activities need to happen in multiple locations at the same time. Corelin gave the example of having the system's the TCU, IHUB, and Station all run on the same timers, rather than in sequence, so they all have to be fought over at the same time.

Personally, I'd take it further, and in directions that let you simulate the real-world factors of terrain and supply and support chains. There have been some good suggestions along these lines, but the best of them basically boil down to making sovereignty contests more like the current Faction Warfare mechanics. Instead of a single timer revolving around a single point in single system, spread those timers out to a number of locations, with the majority of those sites within size-restricted complexes. And I really do mean spread them out: to create the illusion of ‘defending and attacking supply and support lines,' you might even consider scattering those complexes all around the target system’s constellation - attackers ignore them at their peril, a properly defended complex might set the entire offensive back by resetting vulnerability timers or removing vulnerability altogether.

The size restrictions on those complexes are worth talking about as well. Size restrictions mean that some critical parts of the sov fight would be frigate, destroyer, cruiser, 'all sub-caps' fights, set up so those complexes need to be handled at the same time as each other and/or at the same time as the 'main' battle. This means that the meta of the game changes to effectively split up fleets, spread them out, and call for different tactics (and make multiboxing to get more ships on the field far less effective, since multiboxing a frigate, a cruiser, and a carrier in three different fights/fleets/systems isn't going to appeal to many people).

Obviously the whole sov process would have to change, perhaps incrementally, but it feels like the best direction for (a) more manageable per-system, per-fight load and (b) more interesting Sov gameplay.

Roaming Redemption Road

Had a gap in the residency schedule, so decided not to do the smart thing (take a nap) in favor of the dumb-but-fun thing (go on a Redemption Roam with Mangala as FC).

I don't often go on Ganked or Ganked-related roams, because I generally prefer solo and very small gangs, but that doesn't mean I won't go if it's the most easily accessible fun to be had - they're a good group of guys, and I'm a long ways from home, getting online via my lovely but not-exactly-gaming-grade Macbook Air, so a roam with a few extra pilots around to attract enemy fire appealed to me.

It played out very well. Granted, my lag+slower machine meant I missed out on (quite) a few fights (sixty pilots in frigates means a lot of stuff dies before you can lock it), but I contributed meaningfully to most of the fights I got in on. I was particularly proud of chasing down and getting a critical scram/web combo on a Omen Navy Issue in my little DCU-tanked brawling Taranis. That fight left me trailing flames out the back of my ship for the rest of the roam (hello structure damage), but it was *totally* worth it.

And, for a final laugh, I stumbled back to my seat during a break and fumbled my mic back on to say "Why did I just hear my name?"

It seems Greygal and been randomly awarding some prize ships donated to Redemption Road. My number had come up for the final prize ship of the day.

A Thanatos carrier.

I think I'll call it the SS WTF.

I honestly don't know what I'm going to do with the thing. Both I and my carrier alt can fly it (Ty only technically - he's not really capable) but...

Well, I dunno. We'll see. Maybe I'll blow it up at the RvB Ganked 100th roam celebration.

Seems only fitting.

Three Year Eval

On January 22nd, 2011 (a few days before my son was born), I tried out Eve for the second time. (I'd first tried it back in 2006, but it didn't really take at the time.)

It's now almost three years, 65 million skill points, and ~4000 logins later, so I thought I'd do a quick retrospective, as I've done in the past, but looking mostly at hard numbers.

Punching the Clock

As I mentioned, I've logged into Eve on my various accounts about about 4000 times since returning to the game, averaging about 75 minutes per login. I've been active for just over 1000 days, so on average I logged in at least two of my accounts every day during that time. (That's not accurate: for much of that time, I had more than two accounts running, and have had several months where I didn't log in at all, due to other stuff going on.

All that works out to about 2.5 years of 40 hour weeks, if this were a job. Obviously, it's not split up that way in reality, because the online time was often doubled (two characters logged in at once), sometimes tripled, and I'm obviously not only logging in during the work week.

At peak activity, I've had four accounts active, but between CCP promotions and a couple years with a media account, I've at most paid outright for two accounts, at any given time. That's how many I keep active now, with the others mothballed and full of industry toons for which I have no current use. Given that I maintain three yearly family accounts for a couple Kingsisle games we almost never play, I don't consider the costs of Eve particularly onerous.

Given the amount I estimate I've spent on the game for subscriptions and collector's edition and the time logged, I'm getting about two minutes of entertainment per penny.  Compare that to our average trip to the movies, where the ratio is approximately 20 seconds of fun per penny (assuming my wife and I split the tickets and concessionn), and I feel just fine about my entertainment choices.

And that ratio of value only counts online time, of course - I do a lot of entertaining and mentally stimulating noodling, writing, and talking about the game when I'm not playing it as well (not to mention the not-insignificant benefit of maintaining a regular writing habit).  All in all, I consider it all money and time well-spent, especially when I can (and have) spent months largely away from the game for other things (barring updating skill training queues). It's a great game for knowing you're getting something accomplished even when you don't have time to play right now.

Shooting Stuff

Especially in the last year and a half, my focus in the game has largely been PvP. On my main combat character, I've gotten 730 PvP skip kills and 251 losses, total. On average, that's worked out to me getting a kill slightly more than every other day (actually, it works out almost exactly to two kills every three days), which isn't terrible, especially when you figure that I probably went at least a year on the account before getting into PvP in any serious way.

All those wrecked ships work out to 65 billion ISK in losses for my opponents (about $2100 USD, if you pay any attention to largely meaningless ISK to USD conversions worked out based on the list price for a PLEX in- and out-of-game) - and 8 billion ISK in losses (which is less than the value of the ships I currently have scattered around in hangars at the moment). On average, ships I killed were worth about 90 million a pop, and the ships I lost averaged a price tag of about 30 mill. All in all, those are ratios I'm quite happy with.

Plans for the Future

Nothing particularly fancy. Shoot stuff. Blow up amusingly. I'm happy in Faction Warfare with Ty, and I've got a training plan set up for him right now that should have him at level 4 ISIS mastery for every class of sub-capitol in the game (he's got much of that done already) and well on the way to solid Dreadnought and (maybe) Carrier skills by the end of the year. I'm in no rush for the Carrier ship skills, as Bre has Ty covered in that department, with nigh-perfect Logistics skills and closing in on level 4 ISIS mastery with every model of carrier - she makes staying mobile easy. Cyno is green.

Stay Awhile and Listen: Growing the EVE Population with a Good Story

Some of EVE's perpetual zeitgeist is currently swirling around the topic of New Players. Getting them. Keeping them. Breaking into demographics only thinly represented in-game at the current time.
I want to talk about it a bit.

Welcome to the Grinder

I think it's fair to say New Eden isn't the most welcoming place. One of the first developer quotes I became aware of after I started playing went something like this:

"EVE isn't a game set in a grim, dark future. EVE is that grim, dark future."

I read this, grinned, and repeated it to my gaming friends. None were as amused by it as I was. Three years later, it's become clear I'm someone who's wired to enjoy the game that EVE is... and that what it is doesn't immediately appeal to the majority of gamers out there. Many try it - some more than once - but for most it just doesn't stick.

Why?

More to the point, how does CCP fix it?

The Problems

Swing a dead cat around the EVE blogosphere and you'll hit a half-dozen explanations as to why player uptake is so low.

The learning curve joke is funny, marginally true, but I don't think is a (or at least the) real problem - lot's of MMOs are complicated, if we're quite honest. My wife and I have been playing Lord of the Rings for seven years and we still have to call each other over to peer at a new item and try to figure out if it's actually an upgrade for the character in question. I'm a bit of a spec/fitting/stats nerd, and I still avoid some of the derived stats in that game.

[Melee Offense Rating = ((1190/3) * Enemy's Level * %) / (1 - %)]

... and it does what, exactly?

The players, if I'm going to be completely honest, make the game harder to call home, either because many actively drive off new players, are casually dismissive of a newcomer's struggles with the game, or simply don't care and ignore anyone not in their corp/alliance/whatever. I've long since gotten used to it - I self-motivate just fine, thanks - but I freely acknowledge EVE's players don't do the game any favors when it comes time to attract new blood; many take a real pride in being unrepentant bastards, and that can be pretty hard to swallow.

Still, this can be overcome if you manage to find a group to be part of in the game. MMOs are social - even EvE (especially EvE, really - you can't PvP if you can't find someone else to play with). If you can't make some kind of social connection - put down roots in some way - odds are good you'll leave. Now, here's a thing: it's not actually harder to put down roots in Eve than it is in any other MMO.

The thing that almost all MMOs have in common, however, is this: a new player is extremely unlikely to put down roots during a 14-day free trial.

In other words, until the roots actually take, you need to keep the player logging in simply for the enjoyment of playing the game itself.

And that's where EVE falls down.

First Day In the Sandbox?

Now, don't get me wrong: I love the way New Eden works. I love the self-determination. I love the personal projects and goals. I love that it's all up to me, and (although I grumble) I even love that other players can put my stuff at risk and influence when and why I log in. However.

All that stuff - that self-determination, those personal projects, and the effect I want to have on the landscape of New Eden and Anoikis - none of that actually happens until and unless I start giving a damn about the game - until I put down roots.

Very very very few MMO players new to EVE will immediately start formulating plans and goals for themselves when confronted with the blank sheet of paper that is New Eden. I don't know what the percentage is, but I know a really easy way to figure it out:

• Solve X, where X is all MMO players.
• Solve Y, where Y is all EVE players, today.
• Y/X = Rough percentage of MMO playerbase who will start making plans in EVE before they've made any social connections.

In other words: the players who find Eve compelling enough to start sandboxing from day one are already playing the game. Everyone else looks at this star map:

... which is approximately half the total number of systems in EvE, once you count wormhole space...

And just say to heck with it.

So what do you do?

The trick here is not to tell every new player to join EVE University, Brave Newbies, or Red vs. Blue. That's been done (and is being done) and it's not making much of an impact. The trick is to keep new players messing around with the game long enough to get roots down with the people, and there's a really decent way to do that that EVE isn't using.

Better PvE.

Yeah yeah, I know. PvE is boring, lacks challenge, blah blah blah.

But consider this.

There are a LOT of VERY SUCCESSFUL "theme park" MMOs out there in the world. Some of them (like Wizard 101 and other Kingsisle titles aimed at kids, with very tight social controls) are pretty much only successful based on their game elements, not their social elements.

There are VERY FEW (maybe only one) moderately successful pure sandbox MMOs.

Are those themepark MMOs better than Eve? I don't think so. Different, yes, but not better. So what's the difference? How do they snag those big player populations?

They provide interesting content for (at least) long enough to get the players attached to the game. I believe that's the thing Eve needs to do to grow their playerbase.

I'm not talking about becoming a themepark - I am talking about making use of the rich lore of the setting as something other than wiki-filler.

Market Research

I came to this shocking conclusion after talking to my wife. Once upon a time (probably out of a desire to see more than the back of my head on nights I was playing) she tried out EVE. As with most players who tried it, it didn't stick, and before I started writing this piece, I asked her why. Specifically, I asked her what about the game would have needed to be different to get her to stick around. There were a few answers that weren't especially useful (the genre itself doesn't appeal to her very much), but the main thing was this:

There wasn't anything for her to do.

Yes, EVE vets, go on and have your knowing, dismissive chuckle: of course there's an infinite number of things to do in EVE. You're right, and you're very clever. We got it.

Now shut the fuck up for a second.

Pretend, if you're able, that you're a new player who doesn't know anything about Eve or New Eden. You look at that star map up there, and realize that every one of those little points of light is a system, and in each system is anywhere from 0 to hundreds of players, all doing things; 0 to dozens of stations, all full of agents; 0 to dozens of asteroid belts, all waiting for mining; 0 to thousands of ships, all waiting to to be shot. And you ask "What do I do?"

And someone says "Anything you want."

To use a writing analogy, that is one HELL of a blank page staring at you.

And, in all seriousness: why bother? I mean, why run missions, or mine, or anything?

"To make ISK."

"But... why?"

"To buy new ships."

"But... why?"

See, if you don't have something you care about in the game - some kind of root system digging in - everything that EVE's infrastructure is geared to support is utterly meaningless. It's a machine that only runs if you care about it.

So you have to get a new player far enough along to care.

Sure, the tutorials are fine - they teach you how to play the game (basically) - but they don't teach you how to give a shit about the game.

For that, you need a story.

The Current Missions Are Not Stories

With very few exceptions, there are no real stories within the missions of New Eden. And to be fair, that's not what the current mission system in New Eden is for: it exists to introduce ISK and resources into the economy, not engage players' minds and imagination. There are minor events that begin and end within the mission itself. There are jokes, and sometimes punchlines. But there are few - damned few - stories (only the epic arcs, and only barely even then - even the best aren't very memorable), and stories are the connective tissue that hold a game together long enough for a player to care - to stay.

This is what EVE needs to grow the player base: connected stories. Not to create a generation of carebears, but to get all kinds of players invested in the game.

Think about that star map above. Drill down into it and look at a just a single region.

It's full of stars...

Sinq Laison is important in Empire space, right?

Why? Your answer cannot include any mention of markets or player industry.

What's the region's story? What's going on there that isn't going on anywhere else? What can you as a god-like capsuleer do to affect that?

I very much doubt there is an answer to the first two questions (if there is, maybe only two lore-devs at CCP headquarters know), and I know that the answer to the last questions is "No."

But... shouldn't there be answers to those questions? Shouldn't there be an easy, accessible, new-user-friendly way of finding those answers out - of being told those answers even if the new player didn't know to ask?

Let's break it up more. Here's the same map, with the region broken up by constellation:

Taste the Rainbow

That's something like fourteen constellations, each made up of at least a half-dozen star systems. And of those, only one of them (Algintal) KIND OF has a story going on (if you count COSMOS missions) accessible to the players, if they know which third-party web sites to dig into for advice and walk-throughs.

The rest? The other thirteen constellations? No story. None.

What If...

What if every Empire-held constellation had a story? Nanite Paste production run amok on a previously habitable world. Serpentis drug cartels making in-roads in a largely domestic backwater area with an outmatched police force. A politically well-connected young governor that no one can touch, but who desperately needs to be taken down for the heinous crimes she commits with impunity.

What if the people there were just waiting for a capsuleer who would stay awhile and listen?

What if they sent a message to every capsuleer that came through their constellation (a pop-up option that can be disabled, obviously), asking for help and telling them where to dock up for information, and no one ever took them up on it... until you came along.

Leave all the current missions alone, and put in these constellation-specific storyline agents that have to be got through in a specific order and otherwise follow the rules for those once-in-16-mission missions.

What if players had the opportunity to change things, even small things - even just thank-you eve-mails from people in that constellation the next time you come through... or months later... or years later. Some decorations to mark the story - mementos, whatever.

What if you could change sides? Take a political powderkeg and light a match that leaves the area reeling and you making off with a big payoff and a new set of masters. Turn on the locals and side with the pirates - tank your standings with the Caldari government but double it with Mordu's Legion...

What if you could play for months, just exploring each constellation of each region, seeing what was out there, what's going on... what the story is...

... talking with other players about it. Making up crazy theories connecting the industrial espionage in Everyshore and the underground slavery ring in Fror...

Making friends. Putting down roots.

Sticking around.

What if.

Life in Eve: Pretty Good Weekend

Like most ten-year-olds, EVE celebrated its birthday on the nearest weekend (just past), rather than the actual date (today), in order to maximize the fun.

I'm pretty glad they did.

My mom-in-law's in town, the kids had a cool brass concert to go to, I'm wrapping up a bunch of MFA projects at the moment, and had a book review go up at the Mittani -- all of which meant that while I was at my computer a lot this weekend, it wasn't as often as it might have been, and I wasn't always logged into the game.

But I tried.

Saturday was the Tuskers third Frigate Free For all, which was extremely conveniently located all of one jump away from one of our lowsec staging systems. I brought over one ship (a super-long-range Atron that lived a lot longer than I expected), and after that I made use of the prefit ships provided by the Tuskers for the event, trying my best to fly ships from every faction, and as many different kinds as I could. Some of the prefit ships were a little kooky (or shamefully short of ammo), but they were all fun in their own way (probably the most fun was a microwarpdrive + blaster fit Incursus), it was SO NICE to just dock up and say "give me something Gallente" and just get it, and I had a ball, as did the other pilots from our corp who joined in.  A couple mis-clicks cost me a few decimal points of security status, but I'll live.

I could only stay for about one-sixth of the event's duration due to aforementioned kid's brass concert, so I left my corp mates to the carnage and headed out.

(You know: CCP really needs to make it easier to get into a new ship after you lose one. For a lot of pilots, it isn't the loss of a ship that's the problem: it's the pain in the ass logistics of getting together the parts and assembling a new one. Even if you pre-fit a bunch of ships to be ready for whatever happens, all you're really doing is time-shifting that preparation effort, and you always end up with ships you never fly.  Some way to click on a saved fitting and say "Give me one of these, purchased from THIS station, and already assembled. Go!" I can't help but think that would make it easier for people to jump into space and take a fight.)

After the concert, I found out the FFA was still going on, having upgraded to destroyers in my absence, so I ran over to our staging station and picked up a sniping catalyst that has been gathering dust in my hangar and flew around sniping at random stuff, which unexpectedly led to a fun 1v1 fight between me and someone from Black Rebel Rifter Club, above a lonely moon on the edge of the system. Good fight, and I called a personal end to the event with that.

Final tally: due to my limited participation, "only" racked up 60 kills and 14 ship losses. Two of my corp mates made the top 25 killers for the event (one in the top ten), and our corporation registered 252 kills (including a Thanatos carrier) and 49 cheap-o losses. So much fun.

Saturday night, I decided to take the advice of someone from the EVE303 google group (Eve players in Denver) and did a long haul across enemy territory to HED-GP, a null-sec system where "things happen." I noticed a lot of pilots from Bombers Bar in the system, and as I'm known to them, I joined their fleet and spent a little time plinking at various TEST pilots and trying to save as many tactical bookmarks as I could. (Meanwhile, back in our normal stomping grounds, Meg and Sthaz took part in massacring a pirate Battlecruiser fleet, so probably I selected the wrong activity for the night. Oh well.) I left the bomber in a station over in that area, in case I feel the need to terrorize TESTies again, and headed home.

Sunday was a big day, with lots of activities planned around New Eden to celebrate the game's ten year anniversary. The big one was the Flight of 1000 Rifters, in which Marlona Sky arranged to sacrifice a super-carrier to whatever pilots showed up to take the ship down.

Red vs. Blue planned to be there, and started up the day with an early roam/ship move once the location of the event was announced -- I joined their fleet simply to have a couple hundred allies in the impending brawl. Having flown in the Free For All the day before, I wanted to make sure I'd have more than enough ships on hand, and risked a cheap hauler to bring twenty executioners into the just-announced system, then hopped into an Ares interceptor to join the RvB gang on a roam to kill time until the 1000 Rifters event.

After a bit of meandering, the fleet managed to intercept a CCP Developer Fleet that was flying around in brand new Gnosis battlecruisers (prize ships given out to pilots for the 10th year anniversary). Many, many ships exploded, and honestly I'm not as happy about the CCP devs I got to shoot as I am about this ship loss.

I'll say this about the Dev fleet (led by, I'm assuming, CCP Fozzie): they had good target discipline. I was locked, targeted, and then single-volleyed off the field at the precise moment one of the Devs managed to pull my into a hard turn that slowed my Ares down juuuust enough to hit. POP goes the interceptor.

Once we got done shooting devs (I logged a shameful number of CCP kills in a rookie frigate I picked up after losing the Ares), it was time to get to the supercarrier killing.

How to sum this up:

• Pretty cool.


• 2300 people in system.


• OMG so much lag.


• Frigate Free For All: brought 1 ship, used 14. Thousand Rifter event: brought 20 ships, used 1. Oops. (Also: now I need to move ~20 frigates back out to somewhere more useful.)

This is how Eve players light a birthday cake. (The time dilation lag left people lots of time to take screenshots.)


Most of the shooting wasn't really directed at the supercarrier as much as the other pilots (in true Eve style), so many many ships exploded, none of which were mine (surprisingly).

Somewhere in there, Eve set a new record for concurrent connected players, just north of 65 thousand players.

I'm glad I did the 1000 Rifters event, but it was not nearly as fun (thanks to time dilation and unavoidable lag) as the (admittedly smaller, with "only" 300 pilots) Free For All the day before.

Logged out, played with the kids, wrote some more of my final paper, watched Doctor Who, and saw an email from CB that we had some visitors to the wormhole. No one was in comms when I logged in, but I spotted a few unfamiliar ships on scan. After about 15 minutes of stalking, I found a Noctis salvaging ship sucking up wrecks in a Sleeper site, and watched as his four battlecruiser bodyguards warped out and left him all alone.

Welcome to the Wormhole. Watch that first step.


Ooops. I crept up on the Noctis in a stealthy little Tengu strategic cruiser named (of course) Bad Penny, and a half-dozen volleys later I had a dead ship, a hold full of sleeper loot, and a nice little bow with which to wrap up the weekend.

Happy Birthday, Eve Online. Here's to the second decade.

Life in Eve: Illustrated Thought for the Day

There is no way to conduct corp recruitment in Eve without it coming off slightly creepy.

Life in Eve: April Fools

April got off to a rocky start, so I wasn't really sure how things would look as the month wrapped up. Let's review.

After a really, really excellent March, our hunger for good, challenging fun led us to take a lot of fights we probably should have avoided. Adrenaline withdrawal had set in, and the junkies did not react well. One week into April, we'd racked up about a third of the losses we had all through March, and one-twentieth of the wins. Ouch.

It wasn't, in my opinion, that we were flying any worse, but we were making poor decisions, often fueled by desperation for some action. Everyone has nights like that in Eve, I think, but in this case we had about eight days of it, and it had gotten a little ridiculous. Familiarity had bred too much contempt, I suppose -- it seemed the (vanishingly few) Amarr-held systems were full of nothing but off-grid fleet boosters, up-shipping nonsense, or (most often) pilots who simply wouldn't engage.

Our long roams looking for something to fight were exercises in frustration.


In short, we felt we knew the enemy's standard ploys and found them tiresome.

A change of scenery was called for. New territory, new faces, different pirates to shoot. Tuskers and Black Rebel Rifter Club active in the area -- generally always a plus. Gallente loyalty points to earn. More familiarity with the whole war, and basically doubles the space we can effectively roam.

Battlefrogs are go.


Everyone seemed to agree, and off we went. Carriers were unlimbered, beacons were lit, and the HMS Marmoset set out for the "other front" in the war.

Things went moderately well. Probably at least two weeks were chewed up trying to figure out where the best options lay in terms of good opponents, but we slowly managed to pull ourselves out of the hole we'd gotten into.

There were also some cultural shifts to deal with.

• Gallente seem to think actually capturing vulnerable systems is too much work, and are content to sit at a relatively weak level of war zone control, earning decidedly 'meh' levels of LP for their efforts, when they could easily upgrade.
  
  "Nous sommes trop fatigués," come the whispers. "Eet ees too hhhhard."


• Running missions is much more challenging -- not impossible, but trickier. Basically, no one in the Gallente forces runs them, and honestly many of our own guys avoid them as well, as they are the quickest route to tanking personal standings with the Caldari to the point where (compounded with our anti-Amarr activities) pilots would be locked out of half of all known space even if they left the war.


• Our opponent's ship selection is quite different than the Amarr we're used to. Assault Frigates are as thick as gnats. Someone is making a killing on selling Corax destroyers, I imagine. Caldari Navy Hookbills have always been a go-to ship for many pilots, but they are (perhaps understandably) everywhere in Caldari space, as are Condors.


• Pirate presence and activity in this warzone is much higher.


• Random visits from null-sec gangs is more common, as the Gallente-Caldari warzone has at least four connections to null-sec space, while the Minmatar-Amarr front has... zero.

Eventually (following another smaller move where we settled into more permanent digs), we found a hot pocket (heh) of Caldari resistance that seemed to suit us right down to the ground. It called for a fairly significant shift away from frigates and into destroyers, but we'd wanted to try that sort of thing out anyway. The tail end of April saw us back in the brisk business of explosions.

Corp Numbers

Our ship losses for April were down slightly from March and February, and the total and average value of the ships lost was lower, even though we've started flying larger classes of hulls. Our wins for the month didn't match the ridiculous totals we tallied up in March, but they beat February both in raw volume and value -- the first truly active "post Ushra'Khan" months. The rough, rough start of the month hurt us, and it took us awhile to find our feet in the new war zone, but we still ended up ~65% efficient for the month. Several pilots went inactive when we moved to the Gallente front, which affected our numbers slightly, but our active pilots certainly picked up the slack.

Solo kills were down a bit, which I attribute to a general unfamiliarity with the war zone and not knowing if an apparently solo opponent was actually solo or just bait, but started to pick up near the end of the month.

Top ships flown:

Friga -- wait what? Actually, the most-flown ship for April was a destroyer. We racked up almost three times the number of wins in a Talwar then we did in any other hull type, and five other destroyer hulls made the list as well, whereas in March we didn't (successfully) fly any.

Once again, escape pods made the Top 10 list for "ships flown by a pilot during a successful fight." I call this the "putting skin in the game" statistic.

How about me, personally?

My statistics pretty much mirror the corp. April was all right: not my best month, but easily in the top three. I lost a few more ships than I have in the previous two months, but at the same time April marks the third month in a row where the total ISK value of my lost ships has gone down. Overall, I pulled my all-time efficiency up.

I didn't fly quite as many different ships has I have in previous months, but I did vary a bit more in ship classes. Talwars topped the list, followed by Fed Navy Comets. I got wins in some other types of destroyers, one quite memorable fight in a Vexor cruiser, a couple in a Prophecy battlecruiser, and a single very special kill in stealth bomber that earned me both a bounty and a string of invective-filled evemails that culminated in this zinger:

"I hope you die of cancer."

And what about the War?

I've already talked about the differences between the Calliente war zone versus the Minmatar/Amarr, and why our old stomping grounds got a little bit too trampled to bring the fun. I still don't know if I love the new area, but we've got stuff to shoot at, and maybe some null-sec roams in our future, so we'll see how it goes.

---

Could this be you?


As a side note: if you're interested in trying this kind of gameplay out, drop me a comment. The corp has no assets, no bank account, and no intel worth the effort of a spy, so we're pretty welcoming to anyone interested in learning how to blow up, take some guys down with you, and have fun as you explode. So far, our 'new' recruits include former wormholers, ex null-bloc soldiers, people we've blown up and then recruited, and one random guy who opened comms with me as we flew through the system he was in and shouted "Please take me with you!"

Generally speaking, just don't be dick, don't talk in local, don't whine when your shit blows up, and we can talk.

Life in Eve: You Play How You Practice - Putting the Play into Practice (4/4)

Whew.

Okay, let's see if we can pull all this musing into some kind of coherent plan for missions. There's a lot here, so let's boil it down.

Here are the parts of the topic already covered:

• Part 1 and Part 2 talked about the fundamentals of PvP in Eve (as broken down by Ripard Teg), and how those could be applied to new missions.


• Part 2.5 answered some questions that parts 1 and 2 generated.


• Part 3 talked about the ways Ripard's "stages of PvP" could map to "stages of a mission."

From that, I want to boil down some of the rules and guidelines for making new missions based on the precepts of Eve PvP.

1. Current PvE missions are kind of terrible. Outside of the UI, it is in PvE mission content that Eve truly shows its age: dated, primitive, simplistic, and boring.


2. Aside from being boring, all but a few of the missions teach piloting behavior at direct odds to every other part of the game. Yes, running missions will teach you how to interact with Eve's UI, but in all other respects missions actively train that player in ways that makes them demonstrably and steadily worse at every other kind of play in the game, including:




• Poor ship selection. (Bigger is better! Battleships beat everything! Gear determines success!)


• Poor ship fitting choices. (Cap rechargers! Propulsion modules are pointless! What's a Warp Scrambler?)


• Poor target selection/situational awareness. (Shoot the battleship first: it's got the biggest bounty. What do these icons over my HUD mean? Nevermind, don't care!)


• Poor threat assessment. (There's only fifty of them and one of me. No problem!)


• Poor or non-existent manual piloting skills, let alone an understanding of transveral and/or signature/speed tanking. (I'll just approach the next acceleration gate and slowboat that way as I kill everything.)




3. I'm not talking about missions getting harder, unless by "harder" you mean "requiring some preparation and thought."


4. I'm not talking about replacing all the old missions, because the old missions form a backbone of salvage that the market needs. That said, those missions where you're fighting 50 on 1 should CLEARLY MENTION that you're not fighting a credible threat like capsuleers, and mention this OFTEN.




• Corollary to this: mission agents should be dismissive of the threat of normal fleets to a capsuleer, and if anything overreact to the possible threat from even a small group of 'capsuleer' NPCs in a mission.




5. Higher level missions do not automatically (or even often) equate to 'you need a bigger ship'.


6. 
   
   The level of the mission should determine how much "ship fitting" hand-holding the player gets beforehand.
   
   
   
   

   
   
   • Level 1 and any Training missions: “Okay, this is the situation, in Detail. Because of those Details, that means you need a ship that can do X, Y, and Z. So: get a ship of [this class] and [this role], which includes ships like the [names here], and make sure that it has [this module], [this module], and [this module]. If you don’t have that stuff, you’re going to have a bad time.”
   
   
   • Level 2 missions: ”This is the situation, in Detail. You will need to do [These Things], which probably means [this general ship class] with appropriate modules to perform [X, Y, Z]. I leave it up to you to make sure you can perform as needed.
   
   
   • Level 3 missions: “This is the situation, pretty much. This is what you have to be able to do. Handle it.”
   
   
   • Level 4 missions: ”This is what little intel we have. Further instructions once you arrive and can give us eyes on the site. Good luck. We trust you.”
   
   

   
   

Important:  This is about bringing the skillset of the PvE pilot closer to skillset of the PvP pilot, so that acclimation from one mode of play to another is easier and, thus, more likely to see crossover.

This is not about moving higher level missions to low- or null-sec. Doing that won't 'force' anyone in the game anywhere, except "out of the game." It's a GAME, people will play how they want, and if you try to force them, you're just hurting the game.

Now, with all that TL;DR summary in place, let's talk some specifics.

1. It's Not the Size of the Ship...

Different ships fit different roles. Each class of ship has areas were they excel, and others where they are weaker. Bring only one type of ship to a fight, and you are that much more likely to encounter a "hard counter" that will annihilate you.

Missions should drive home an understanding of the strengths of various ship classes.

FF (Frigates): Excellent Tackle. Excellent Scout. Decent bait, provided support is nearby. Moderate to Good EWAR platform. Not-bad support option, in some situations. Reasonably good damage mitigation versus larger ships, thanks to high speed, but otherwise comparatively fragile. Comparatively poor damage.

DD (Destroyers): Serviceable tackle, if nothing else if available. Serviceable Scout, if nothing better is available. Decent bait, provided support is nearby.Generally poor EWAR platform. All but non-existent support capability. Moderate to poor damage mitigation (tank can be matched by some frigates, too slow to speed tank very well.) Comparatively OUTSTANDING damage: Excellent versus frigates or other destroyers. Excellent cost-to-damage option versus larger targets.

CC (Cruisers): Generally poor tackle versus smaller targets, good "heavy" tackle versus bigger targets. Not recommended for scouting, but often decent bait. Potentially excellent EWAR platform. Potentially excellent support capability. Good to great damage mitigation. Good to great damage (though you probably won't get that AND good mitigation). Great all-around ship versus moderate resistance, and can tweak fittings to deal with many different types of ships. Best versatility for cost.

BC (Battlecruisers): Generally as a cruiser, but more so. Exceptions: poor EWAR or support except in gimmick small-gang fits. Even more flexible options in terms of modules makes it potentially more versatile than a Cruiser (giving up less to get what it needs) at higher cost that may or may not be worth it.

BB (Battleships): Poor tackle. Terrible scout. Obvious bait. Rarely used as ewar, except on dedicated ships. Support options are often somewhat gimmick fits. Great damage mitigation. Great damage (and can easily do both at once, by comparison to smaller ships), though applying damage to any smaller targets may require specific modules (webs, scramblers, target painters, et cetera).

One of the main reasons to make sure missions continue to ask for all classes of ship, regardless of mission level: it helps players understand that no class of ship ever becomes 'useless', regardless of the level of play you reach.

2. Your Role in this Mission, Should You Accept It...

Damage: We have a lot of missions like this already, and if any more are added, they should be against "capsuleer"- grade opponents, to teach pilots to access threats in way that more closely represents every other part of the game: one-tenth the number of ships for the same amount of overall threat.

1v1: Get capsuleers challenged to 1v1 "duels" versus NPC capsuleer opponents (or arrange for them to "challenge" an NPC via the agent). This can be balanced by level of mission, with ship restrictions to ensure the player doesn't steamroll. Even better: don't worry about the ship restrictions, and just have the NPC warp out if you show up in an inappropriate level of ship or bring backup. Have this sort of thing cause the failure of the mission, since the point is to get the guy to fight, pin him down, and kill him, whereas scaring him off will "set our pursuit back by months, if not years." HOWEVER: if you can get a scram on the guy and THEN bring in backup, that should work. It does in the rest of the game. Honor-shmonor.

I'm not going to do more of these, because most of them show up in some other area: Damage dealing is requisite.

Wait, one more consideration: Range. Some missions should specifically call for sniper fits, mid-range fits, or brawler fits, and what the means should be different for different classes of ships.

Long range artillery: Awesome, though maybe not THIS awesome.


Tackle: Oh what fun we can have here.

First guy through the accel gate. Sort of like 'cheating' at the 1v1 above. The idea is to go in on an otherwise superior opponent and get a tackle, holding it until your (NPC) backup arrives. Higher level missions provide the NPC target with webs, neuts, scrams, smartbombs, backup of his own, and may mean the backup takes longer to arrive.

"I was there."

Speaking of giving your NPC forces a chance to warp in, why the hell don't we have a mission like this?

That would be cool.

“There are pilots camping our station in snipe battlecruisers.” - I'd love to see a way to do this right in high-sec, right on the station where the Agent is at. "Enemy" NPCs show up outside the station. You need to get tackle on them so NPC support can come in and finish them off. Instant-undocks can make getting away from the fire of the ship much easier (maybe an earlier mission walks the player through making one for a 'scouting/lookout' mission). Get tackle and let the NPCs mop up. All NPCs involved would be impossible for others to shoot without being CONCORDed, to prevent mission griefing.

In-mission variation: The mission is in a non-gated deadspace pocket, and the pilot is encouraged to warp in at range to land on top of the offending ship. Those that don't do that get a quick lesson in how to spiral approach. :)

In fact, seeing the way in which the UI can be affected by the new scanner overlay coming out soon, I have NO DOUBT that a 'how to spiral approach' tutorial missions could be built, with blinky box overlays on the HUD to show where to manually pilot in order to keep from getting splatted by a distant sniper.

Catch that guy before he gets out of range! Basically, get scram/web tackle before the NPC leaves. The best idea here is if you have a mission where the enemy have set up a Stargate (See: "Halt the Invasion") and the enemy ships appear through the stargate and land in your trap. If you get both scram/web, the target dies. If you get only one, he might make it out. If you get neither, he's gone, and you fail.

EWAR/Support: Sometimes damage isn't the point. In this situation, you're asked to come in as support for an NPC gang or even a solo pilot. Specific types of EWAR will probably be called for, and the reasons for the need given:

• "We need target painters to get a bead on those little bastards."


• "We need tracking disruptors so we can get under the guns of those big bastards."


• "We need energy neutralizers to break the enemy's self-repair capability."


• "We need ECM so the enemy rages in local and leaves."

Support modules (repairs, etc) are called for in something like one training mission to sort of 'resurrect' a damaged ship. It's terrible. Missions for logi/support pilots should exist, and thanks to the new support frigates and tech1 cruisers, can start right away. The job is simple: wait for the NPC to shout for help, get in there and keep him standing. Alternately, warp into an ongoing battle and try to turn the tide of the fight with your amazing rep skills.

Medic!

Scouting/Bait

Setting up the conditions of the fight to be favorable to your side -- a great player skill to train. This is an excellent opportunity to build missions around flying around a system “Looking like bait.”  Try to get the NPC enemies to engage you by looking helpless and alone, then tackle them when they show up and your backup jumps in. Level 1 versions of this mission might lead you by the nose, so you get an idea of what's needed (“Warp to Planet 1 at 100. Now Align to the Sun. Warp to the Sun at 0. Now warp to the Asteroid belt on Planet 1 at 50. Now the Acceleration gate and jump through. Hold there. Here they come!”), while higher level missions merely tell you “Get their attention and lure them into the complex before you call us in.”

"Clearly, I am a harmless loon. Come fight me!"


Non-bait scouting might be more of a tutorial, and teach the player to use d-scan on 360 max range, narrow beam long range. 360 short, and so on.

"Does anyone have a cyno ship handy?”

Combine any of the tackle/bait ideas with a "prototype (nee: civilian) cynosural field generator" and have the player call in their backup with a full-blown cyno. (No beacon in local, and 'works' in high-sec -- hence "prototype".)  This is a mission -- one of the few -- that should send the player to nearby space held by the enemy faction. Some missions might be a "bait, get them to attack, then light the fire and hope you live" situation, while others would be more of a 'sneak our forces in behind enemy lines" scenario which, if done correctly, would result in no combat all. "Tiptoe in, tiptoe out. Like a cat, one might say." Obviously, as with the rest of the game, any size ship might be appropriate for a cyno job, depending on the type of mission.

There is, not for nothing, an excellent opportunity here to tie this kind of mission into the lore of everything that's happening in New Eden right now. Tensions between the empires are rising, and these sorts of behind the scenes sneak attacks would be great to get into the game.

Would it be cool to be able to call Hot Drop O'clock on an enemy force you tricked into engaging? Sure.

You know what else would be cool?

What if you take a mission from the Minmatar, and they want you to sneaky-cyno a fleet of their ships into Gallente space? No combat, of course -- it's all just 'training maneuvers' -- completely legitimate. Still, probably better not to ask any questions, though you might be able to guess their reasons.

So...

All classes of ships used, in all levels of missions.

Jobs to perform that mirror the roles you play in PvP, and the play priorities.

Sometimes, the need to run after you win. Sometimes that means having missions where you kill a specific target and get out, and sometimes it means MANY missions should have stupidly overwhelming backup arrive on the field about a few minutes after the last NPC dies. Angry backup.

No real changes to the current missions. (Except making sure players understand that non-capsuleers are NOT in the same classes as the pilots "like you"... and making low-sec mission rewards actually provide rewards comparable to the risk/cost of living in lowsec, so they're worth it.)

Fitting priorities and expectations more in line with every other part of the game. Basically, short and brutal fights where mobility, buffer, and burst tanks far outweigh the importance of cap stability, and tackle modules actually AFFECT THE NPCS. (I'm looking at you, Faction Warfare destroyers that fly 5500 meters/second while scrammed. So stupid.)

What do you guys think?

Eve Forever

I have trouble explaining to my non-Eve-playing gamer friends what it is about the game that I find so compelling. It's everything. It's one little thing. It's that other little thing that I love, except when I hate it. It's the people, because they're awesome. It's the people, because they're horrible.

It's... complicated.

I've been playing for two and a half years, and I still find myself sort of chuckling every few days as I mutter "I am so bad at this game." I just try to enjoy the time I have and do better than the day before. There are worse things to take away from a game, I guess.

However.

If I am asked to explain it - to sum up the backstory, or to convey the adrenaline dump from a good fight, or the goosebumps I get when I catch a glimpse of the sheer scope of a game created as much by the players as the company - from here on out, I'm just going to show people the Origins video.

Life in Eve: You Play How You Practice (3/4): Stages of a Mission

So let's continue this conversation about how to create new PvE missions in Eve that are more engaging, interesting, and just generally "better" by applying the fundamental rules of PvP as explained by Ripard Teg over here. This is the last the of "mapping" posts; the final post will give examples of the kinds of missions we could get out of this method.

Stages of a Mission

From Ripard:

All PvP in EVE comes down to five basic stages:

• Preparation


• Travel


• Engagement


• Combat


• Disengagement

Make no mistake: all PvP in EVE operates within these five stages in one way or another. If you're not the one following these steps, your enemy is.

Preparation

This is where you decide what ship you're going to bring for the job at hand, and a place where Eve Missions truly fail to reflect every other area of the game. Missions as they stand right now are simple: bring the biggest fucking thing you can squeeze through the acceleration gate. I if doing level 4 missions, just make sure you ship can put out some combination of sustained tanking + sustained damage that equals about 1000 dps. The end.

This teaches terrible lessons to a new player to the game in terms of making good ship selection for the task at hand.

"There are war-dec pilots camping our station in snipe battlecruisers."
"I'll get my battleship."

"We have hostiles on our static wormhole in cloaky tech 3 cruisers."
"I'll get my battleship."

"The FC is doing a frigate roam."
"I'll get my battleship."

"There's an enemy destroyer in the Medium Complex in system."
"I'll get my battleship."

"Does anyone have a cyno ship handy?"
"I'll get my battleship."

"I need someone to scout ahead of the fleet."
"I'll get my battleship."

It also leads to frustration on the part of anyone dealing with such a pilot, because they say things like:

"Man, I feel so cheap and ghetto in this frigate."

Consider: the guys you're flying with might spend 90% of their time in those ghetto frigates you're talking about, successfully killing idiots in Battleships that think they can beat every other sub-capital ship in the game. You are not endearing yourself. Some of the best solo and small-gang groups in the game fly frigates ninety percent of the time, not despite the fact that frigates are twitchy, hyper-responsive, relatively fragile, and the ship class most unforgiving of mistakes, but because of that.

We can address this issue in new missions in a number of ways, but the main one is this: Disconnect the size of the ship from the level of the mission.

Instead, the level of the mission should determine how much personal research the player needs to do to figure out what sort of ship they need to bring to the mission.

• Level 1 and any Training missions: "Okay, this is the situation, in Detail. Because of those Details, that means you need a ship that can do X, Y, and Z. So: get a ship of [this class] and [this role], which includes ships like the [names here], and make sure that it has [this module], [this module], and [this module]. If you don't have that stuff, you're going to have a rough time."


• Level 2 missions: "This is the situation, in Detail. You will need to do [These Things], which probably means [this general ship class] with appropriate modules to do [X, Y, Z]. I leave it up to you to make sure you can perform as needed.


• Level 3 missions: "This is the situation, pretty much. This is what you have to be able to do. Handle it."


• Level 4 missions: "This is what little intel we have. Further instructions once you arrive and can give use eyes on the site. Good luck. We trust you."

To quote:

Your first job is to understand what kinds of ships the FC wants and to comply with that. If the FC is asking for cruisers and below, respect that. Do not bring your battleship.

Some of the requirements of the missions may hinge on:

• Flying style -- "Hit approach and F1" should not be the only tactic people need to know.


• Range of the engagement (brawling, point range, skirmish range, sniper range).


• The job you're supposed to actually perform.

Travel

Holy crap do some high-sec people bitch about having to travel a couple jumps. They're like the New Englanders of Eve. Sometimes trouble will come right to you and you'll fight in your home system. But sometimes you need to travel.

Why the HELL are the missions always defensive? If, in Gallente missions, I'm fighting Amarr anyway, why the hell am I not being sent on away missions to Amarr space sometimes? Genesis is, like, five jumps away! Take the fight to them once in awhile. Sheesh.

The way missions work right now sets up bad expectations in pilots encountering PvP for the first time.

"Where are we going?"
"Roam's forming in Rens. We'll check out twenty or thirty systems in Great Wildlands, then up into Curse and maybe Scalding Pass, then we'll see how it's looking by then."
"I... think I'll sit this one out."

I'm not saying every mission should be 15 jumps away, but cut the fucking apron strings sometimes: take some cues from the Gurista and Sisters of Eve epic story arcs. Travel is a part of (say it with me) every other part of the game.

If you really want to do something unspeakably cool: set up a mission where the pilot gets to take a Titan bridge. That would be excellent. Bonus points if the mission agent chews you out for bumping the titan out of position.

And how about gate-to-gate-to-gate escort missions, designed on the lines of basic fleet scouting? Yes, some mission griefing is possible in that situation, but it could be mitigated by making sure Players shooting the escort NPC was a Concord-able offense.

Engagement

Setting up the conditions of the fight to be favorable to your side.

This is an excellent opportunity to build a mission around flying around a system "Looking like bait."  Try to get the NPC enemies to engage you by looking helpless and alone, then tackle them when they show up and your backup jumps in. Level 1 versions of this mission might lead you by the nose ("Warp to Planet 1 at 100. Now Align to the Sun. Warp to the Sun at 0. Now warp to the Acceleration gate and jump through. Hold there. Here they come!"), while higher level missions merely tell you "Get their attention and lure them into the complex before you call us in."

Try to look helpless.

Combat

We already have LOTS of fights where you have to kill everybody and their pet dog. Far more interesting and useful are situations where you're getting messages from your Mission Agent about different targets. Level 1 missions start out with one guy you need to kill and can then leave, while Level 4s might get to the point where you need to tackle two different guys and put damage on a third to keep him interested until your NPC backup arrives, followed by methodically working through a randomized list of named targets.

EXPLAIN, IN THE MISSIONS, WHAT THE HELL "Yellow boxed" and "Red boxed" are, and what they indicate. Have Aura do a damned tutorial, with proper animations.

(Unrelated: for your colorblind players, the UI really needs to be updated so players can change the colors for "yellow" and "red" boxes... and damn near anything else.)

For Bonus Points:

Have fights where your job is logistics, with NPCs calling for reps. Start with Logi frigates and one guy you need to protect, to level 4 missions with Logi Cruisers, 30 friendlies on the field, and randomized broadcasts for repair (this would need some kind of UI additions, probably, but it would still be extremely valuable and pretty damn fun).

For MORE bonus points:

Have missions where you don't get support from NPC repair ships without using your fleet "Broadcast" buttons and/or hotkeys.

Disengagement

Sometimes, winning means knowing when to get out. That means (a) having missions where you kill a specific target and GTFO, but it also means that many, MANY missions should have stupidly overwhelming backup arrive on the field about [rand(7-15)] minutes after the last NPC dies. Angry backup.

The enemy now knows exactly where you are, exactly what your composition is, exactly how many of your ships they have destroyed, and they are probably watching you. You are extraordinarily vulnerable at this moment.

Mission Agents will direct you to recall drones, "scoop loot", and will be advised to be ready to leave at a moment's notice. If an allied NPC fleet of ships is on the field, they may advise you to stay fairly close to them until they're "ready to leave."

These new missions, the way they are structured, will not substantively add to the overall "NPC Loot" intake in the overall game: we have missions for that, so these missions are about ISK, Loyalty Points, and a few nice drops off a few key ships. These are not missions where it's a good idea to reship into a Noctis.

Almost Done!

Did any of this give you cool ideas for new missions? Share them in comments, and I'll add them to the fourth-and-final post.

Life in Eve: You Play How You Practice (2.5/4) -- Answering Questions and Comments

The last couple posts have attracted some good questions and feedback, and raise some points I want to address before I move forward.

The questions came in from all over, however, so apologies if I don't attribute the questions to the right speaker in all cases.

Narol Decyg:

I would personally LOVE for missions to get harder.

That's... fine, but it's really not what I'm talking about. When I said the mission NPCs should get about 10 times harder, I also said there should be about one-tenth as many of them. That isn't about difficulty, but about teaching players in missions that five ships can be a credible and dangerous threat, so that when they see five players coming at them, they don't think "oh, I can tank 50 NPCs -- I've got this in the bag."

More about his further into the post, actually.

Druur Monakh

One core aspect of PvP is evaluating and taking a risk against ultimately unknown odds – namely your human, unpredictable opponent. No AI will ever be able to emulate that, no matter how PvP-like the mechanics are. PvE would have to simulate the inventiveness of real players to clear this hurdle, and I don’t see it happening in any game.

Absolutely. There's really no way the AI is going to get as good or as hard as playing against another good player (it can easily simulate fighting a bad player, though) -- you can rebalance the NPCs to be generally harder to defeat, however, and use fewer OF them, to teach players better threat recognition.

Also, far more of what I'm talking about for these missions is about what the player's are called on to do, not what they're going to fight. Missions right now are stupidly, stupidly simple: go in, kill everything, and (sometimes) grab A Thing and bring it back or (rarely) deliver a thing to a box. It's fucking terrible.

More on that further down.

Niamh Aideron

... or move more missions to low sec but increase the rewards to reflect the increased risk from PvP ambush.

Two thoughts on this:

1.

I don’t personally believe that moving currently-highsec missions to lowsec will do any good — ultimately, I think it will harm the game, to be honest, because there are people playing the game who, if forced to travel to Low or Null sec to continue doing what they enjoy doing (missions), will simply quit playing. Most of us know we don’t want that, and the people that say they do are idiots. Multiplayer games only work with multiple players.

With that said, I do think missions in low-sec should have higher payouts than they do currently. Missions given in highsec but going to lowsec should pay better than highsec going to highsec, and lowsec-located agents sending you to lowsec should pay very well indeed — in Loyalty Points, especially.

I don’t believe in forcing players a certain direction, but I do believe in luring them. :)

2.

What I’m advocating in this series of posts are mission changes that call for techniques and ship fitting philosophies that have use and merit valuable in areas of the game OTHER than PvE.

I don’t care where people live. At all. I definitely don’t see the ‘natural flow’ of the game to be High -> Low -> Null. That's just group-think from a (very) organized minority in the game.

What I do care about is whether or not players feel as though they are suitably equipped to take a weekend roam into low-sec, or spend a month ‘deployed’ to the constellation controlled by Mordu’s Legion. Missions don’t do that right now, they could, and really they should.

MBP

I don’t agree that you can improve EVE PVE content by making it more like PVP. PVE players and PVP players want different things and trying to turn one into the other will just annoy both.

There is already one type of mission in the game which meets most of your criteria: the universally reviled low sec courier mission.

Forcing some hi-sec distribution-mission-running hauler to go into low-sec for a mission isn’t “making the missions more like PvP” — that’s just taking someone and throwing them into an environment where they don’t know what to do. That’s not what I’m after at all.

As I said, I have no interest in trying to force all high level missions into more dangerous space. That is often the solution that people talking about this come up with, especially if they just happen to be from nullsec. I think, personally, it’s a bad solution.

What I’m talking about is changing the design of PvE missions so that they can be completed following the same basic approach and fitting philosophy as PvP. For instance:

• Mission runners should know the difference between a Warp Disruptor and Warp Scrambler, why you’d want one over the other in different situations, and how it interacts and/or complements a Stasis Web... or a tracking disruptor... or whatever. More, there should be missions that call on players to use one or the other (or, for a real challenge, both at the same time on two different targets).


• One of the primary design differences between PvP and PvE fittings is Cap Stability, or how long you can run everything on the ship before you run out of juice. Standard Mission Fits go for 100% cap stability forever, because slow and steady wins the day. In the process, however, you sacrifice so much on your ship fitting that your ship is laughably easy to destroy in PvP. PvP ships, conversely, aim for about 2 minutes of functionality in a solo or small-gang situation, and if they get more that’s either a specialty-fit ship or a happy accident. Active Capacitor Booster modules are a mystery to Mission Runners, because why would you use something that only keeps you Cap Stable until the charges ran out... and fill up your hold with the Charges in the meantime? THAT'S WHERE MISSION LOOT GOES.  Conversely, passive Cap Rechargers are horrible, horrible things to see on a ship that’s intended to be used against other players, and I see them on people’s ships ALL THE TIME. I think Sleeper-killing PvE ships are quite close to a happy medium between the two — closer to the sweet spot for PvP-teaching PvE content than anything else out there right now: my alt’s Drake can run everything on the ship for about eight minutes, which is just about enough to clear a Class Two sleeper site, solo. If I’m not solo, it’s even easier, because I can flip off some of my tank in between, and more to the point, I'm fit in such a way as to be a semi-credible threat if I happen to get attacked while running sites.

Those are a couple examples. I’ll have more in part four of the series.

The point of all that is this: when a pilot decides to join some friends for pvp roam, and the FC says "Just bring something fast with short range guns, MWD, scram/web, and a buffer armor tank", the pilot in question can say something besides "Whut?"

Gor

Your posts got me thinking about one of the things I've always disliked about Eve.

5 low investment, low cost ships can and will demolish far more massive and expensive ships.

To this day I think that the cost of ships is out of balance in Eve. If a ships material cost is going to be 10x more than another ship, it needs to bring the firepower, armor and abilities at 10x the magnitude. Eve doesn't do this, except in PvE.

I don't know if you agree or disagree, but I'd love to hear you address the ship size/cost imbalance in PvP.

Man, there is so much to talk about here that it could easily be its own post, but I'm going to stick to my guns and get all these comments addressed.

So let me just break this into tiny parts and talk about each one.

5 low investment, low cost ships can and will demolish far more massive and expensive ships.

First, I will challenge the term "low investment." If you're talking about skill points, Frigates use EXACTLY the same gunnery, missile, and tanking support skills as battleships. Especially when it comes to tanking skills, a well-skilled Frigate pilot and well-skilled Battleship pilot are IDENTICAL.

Further, with the skill tree changes, there is very little training time 'distance' between a well-skilled frigate pilot and a well-skilled battleship pilot in terms of just flying the ships around. The Navigation skills for a good pilot of either are identical, and training distance from level 4 Racial Frigate to Level 4 Racial battleship is ~12 days.

So the only truly significant difference in training time is the guns, because right now, if you want to shoot tech 2 large guns, you need to train both tech 2 small guns and tech 2 medium guns. I think it's important to mention that because once the new expansion drops, guns will be only thing in the game that works that way. Missile systems and Drones have never worked that way, and all the Ship skill trees that work that way today (you need tech2 Assault Frigates to fly tech 2 Heavy Assault Cruisers) are being changed in a month or so. I think it won't be long before the Gunnery skill tree changes as well -- it sure as hell should change, because it's stupid to have it work differently than everything else in the game.

Anyway, ignoring guns (which I am), you're talking about less than two weeks of training time between a well-skilled frigate-only pilot and well-skilled battleship pilot, so I'm dismissing the idea of "low investment" in terms of skills, because in the "five frigates versus one battleship" example you give, the amount of training represented by either side is -- all other things being equal -- vastly in favor of the five frigate pilots.

What about cost?

There's a tendency, when comparing ships, to just look at hull costs, and that's terribly misleading, because ships have fittings, and those fittings narrow the cost gap between ships immensely, even if you fight on a budget.

For example, almost every one of the frigates I fly -- all of whose naked hulls cost about half a million isk, give or take -- will be worth about 12 to 13 million isk once they are fully fitted and supplied with appropriate amounts of ammunition for PvP (read: enough for two reloads, most of which will never be used before the ship explodes). If I'm flying a Fed Navy Comet (which I can acquire for rougly 1.5 million isk via Faction Warfare, but which retails on the open market for roughly 13 to 14 million for just the hull), the value of the ship goes up to about 22 million, all told -- roughly the same value as the Destroyers I fly.

(Yes, you can fly them cheaper. You can also fit them more expensively. I'm using my fitting standards as the baseline, because it's what I know.)

By comparison to my average Comet, this Vexor we killed is actually the cheap ship -- the hull plus fittings were only 15 million. I'm pretty sure I've lost Tormentors  more expensive than that, and I don't really even like Tormentors.

"But," you protest, "that's a bargain basement fit for a cruiser. That's hardly a fair comparison to your frigate, which is fit with mostly tech 2 modules."

Sure. This Thorax is closer to 40 million -- about the cost of three of my frigates or two of my destroyers, and as a general rule I would think it fair to expect it to BEAT or drive away three of my frigates or two of my destroyers in an otherwise-even fight.

But if three frigates brought exactly what they need to fight a thorax (read: a lot of tracking disruptors and enough webs to keep me from jumping a gate), I might die without killing any of them. That's just preparation on their part and poor target-selection on mine: that particular thorax is a terrible choice for fighting frigates, and in any case that's not what I built it for. (I didn't build it to fight two battlecruisers and two tech 3 cruisers either, unfortunately, even though that's what I ended up facing.)

On the flipside, I might take a Vexor (which is now entirely comparable to and a better brawler than the thorax) against worse odds -- three destroyers, for example -- and hope to kill one and escape the other two. These things happen.

Let's get to bigger ships, though. How about this Myrmidon? Aside from some changes I'd made to the tackle modules, there's really nothing wrong with that fit as far as PvP goes -- it's a fairly traditional triple-rep Myrm, and comes in at right around 105 to 110 million isk. (I'm adding a bit, because of the drones he was attacking with that don't show up on the kill.) Based on the value of the ship, that should be the match of 8 to 10 of my 12-13 million isk frigates, right?

Maybe. Or maybe it really isn't that hard to find a single frigate that's worth just as much. Are those two ships comparable? Could one kill the other?

Is the Isk value any kind of indicator of the correct answer?

Of course not.  That's no more relevant than the fact that Guardians in LotRO have really expensive gear and Loremaster's armor is relatively inexpensive by comparison. Remember one of the Principles from yesterday: You are not your ship.

To this day I think that the cost of ships is out of balance in Eve.

Bottom line: don't try to tell me that the Isk value of the ship's naked hull is any relevant indicator of its threat level. If you point me at a Battleship, I'll point you at a frigate that cost more, and I won't even have to look that hard -- that fight was last night, and frankly I'd rather try to solo the Armageddon than the Hawk.

If a ship's material cost is going to be 10x more than another ship, it needs to bring the firepower, armor and abilities at 10x the magnitude.

The fittings on the ships level out actual difference in ship values in many cases, and even if they didn't, ISK value is no indication of actual worth, any more than Plate Mail should mean that you always beat the guy wearing the robe. It helps, but it doesn't determine the winner.

Second, when it comes to little ships killing bigger ships, I have two words for you: Star Wars. Here's another two: Battlestar Galactica. How about...

Actually, no: it's easier to say that the idea of smaller ships being able to hurt larger ships if they can get in close enough to get "under" their larger, slower guns is one well-established in the genre, and leave it at that. Big ships expecting to fight smaller ships either need support from smaller ships, or need to fit themselves in such a way as to be able to deal with little ships.

Which brings me to...

Third, when you're talking about battleships getting demolished by five frigates, your usually not talking about a PvP-fit battleship -- you're talking about a PvE fit battleships who think they are badass and are actually incredibly poorly fit for PvP.

The video's sadly been taken off Youtube because of the background music used (which is stupid: that background music encouraged me to buy three of that band's albums), but I've seen a solo Dominix pilot fight a gang consisting of a Brutix, Hurricane, three Rupture cruisers, and a Stiletto interceptor, kill all but two of the ships, and leave the field intact.

Would I do as well in such a ship? No, obviously, but that's on me, not the ship -- I'm bad at Eve. With the introduction of the Micro Jump Drive, battleships really have a new lease on life in solo and small-gang PvP, because they can force engagements into their best effective range (where things like Heavy Neuts can be applied to pesky small ships) or, if their opponent won't come in and hold them down, they simply leave the field with the MJD. And all of that really ignores the updates coming to the Battleships with the summer expansion.

Battleships are better than frigates. Frigates cannot be fit in a such a way as to deal with every eventuality, from fighting a battleship to fighting frigates. Battleships can be - making them quite literally a bristling island of threat versus whatever they might face.

Can they deal with 50 opponents at a time, like they can in PvE?  Of course not, because PvE missions are incredibly misleading.

If a ship's material cost is going to be 10x more than another ship, it needs to bring the firepower, armor and abilities at 10x the magnitude. Eve doesn't do this, except in PvE.

This is where a tremendous amount of the disconnect comes between PvE missions and PvP. Missions set a terrible expectation for new Eve pilots, and the first time a PvPer shows them the reality of the situation, it is a cold slap in the face.

The problem is, I know exactly why the missions are set up the way they are and (worse) given the reason for it, I can even understand and conceptually agree with it.

The thing you ABSOLUTELY MUST remember about current mission NPC is this:

You Are Not Fighting Capsuleers

Now, as soon as I say this, everyone who knows anything about the lore of the game will nod their heads and say "right, right..." but how often do you really think about that in the game? Almost never.

But the fact of the matter is, YOU are playing someone who, with little or no crew (depending on the size of the ship) is controlling a space craft the way you would control your own body. It is your body, for all intents and purposes, and when you face mundane ships crewed with mundane humans, who all have to do everything so incredibly slowly, you fucking destroy them, because you are quite literally a god among mortals -- an adult challenging first graders.

This is you.


Yes, you are the match for fifty or sixty or even more of these insects. Good for you.

The problem is, you kick the shit out of grade-schoolers for months on end, and you start to think this is normal -- that this is how the whole universe matches up to you -- 50:1, with the advantage to the 1.

Suddenly you run into someone else like you.

They aren't slow. They aren't weak.

And they haven't been spending their time fighting seven-year-olds at recess. They've been fighting with other grown-ups.

I call this the Amberite Issue -- a tribute to the Amber series by Roger Zelazny -- also known as "What do you mean there are other gods?" In short, you are immortal and impossibly powerful to nearly anyone you'll meet in whole universe... except for the other people like you. To them, you're just another young punk who needs to get his ass whupped a couple times to learn some respect and actually become marginally useful.

NOW this is you.


I know why CCP does this: you are a god, and you should get a chance to feel like one. I get that. Some of those ridiculous "50 vs. 1" missions need to stay, if only for flavor.

But when they come, they should REALLY be pointed out by the mission agent.

"Listen, they have an entire fleet defending this base -- support craft, battleships, missile batteries, everything -- but they don't have any capsuleers, so really this is going to be a walk in the park."

(I mean, that's why Sleepers are so nasty -- they're almost capsuleers.)

Then do a mission where the whole defense force is, say, "a small squad of five novice capsuleers" and have it be just as hard as the full fleet of normal pilots.

When that's done, make sure the mission agent mentions that while that was hard, at least they weren't actual full-fledged capusleers like yourself.

Make sure they say that, and make sure they say it a lot.

That, plus getting the pilots some experience with tactics and modules, might help with the shock of trying PvP.

That's it.

More soon!