Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Ship Fittings, Diablo III remix

I had a fun revelation playing Clarkson the Barbarian last weekend. I had been trying to play him like I play my Monk or Crusader, where they either dodge or block most everything so they can wade into the demonic melee and stay there putting out area DPS. Turns out it's much more effective with the Barbie, and far more interesting, to use Revenge with the knockback rune, coupled with Bash/Reverb and the dash attack with the recharge rune, to keep the enemy divided so you can defeat them in detail. 

Clarkson, yes. As in Jeremy Clarkson. From Top Gear. It was down to that or Percy. 

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

How the ammo resale is going

You may remember how I loaded up an Iteron V with half a billion ISK worth of faction ammo and brought it to my Low-sec faction war base to sell. So let's just jinx it all and say that it's selling. Slowly. 

I brought Faction Antimatter S and Faction Lead S. The lead is selling very slowly indeed, but I'm getting the price I asked. In the case of the antimatter, it's moving right quickly now, but the competition came in and underbid me after I listed it. I'll do a little better than break even on that, it looks like. 

In other news, I briefly considered joining Stay Frosty and starting an alt to trade in Dodixie and ferry supplies out every now and then. Then I realized they are too much fun to fight, as they blob markedly less than other pirate corps in the Gallente-Caldari war zone. And they would want to move in couple months. Screw that. 

I saw a wacky thing this morning. Trigger99, a Caldari militiaman who likes to camp Villore's FDU station in a Legion picking off noobs who don't have instant undocks set up yet, was camping the Dodixie trade hub in a Thrasher. He dutifully attempted to lock me as I was leaving. Way to branch out, Trigger!

Monday, April 28, 2014

Dodixie Pricewatch 28 April 2014

Welcome to Dodixie Pricewatch, the continuing story of a freestyle faction warrior's attempts to get his navy frigates as cheap as reasonably possible.

Fleet Firetail: 16 million (nearby Gallente space) to 11.6 million (Villore) ISK. 
Somehow no Dodixie info made it onto Eve-Central just now. The mid-May price increase may already be starting.

Navy Comet: 13.7 to 12 million ISK. 
The market for Navy Comets appears to have stopped its freefall. I'm stocking up when it gets down to 10 million. I am curious to see whether it ever will, as it is considered the best navy frigate by many. 

Hookbill: 17.7 to 17.1 million ISK (Jita). 
Okay, looks like we may have lost some visibility on Dodixie in EVE-central overall. I cannot imagine no standing orders in these. It's probably a lack of pilots in the market that are running the cache scraper application. I'll need to look into whether there is a Mac-compatible version.

Navy Slicer: 14 to 11 million ISK.
Unexpected price rise. Minmatar warzone control rise is the likely culprit, looking at dotlan. Nice.

I list the lowest sell first, followed by the highest buy. The names I use here for the navy frigates are the minimum you need to type when searching in EVE-Central to go directly to each of their pages. 

Thursday, April 24, 2014

PvPermutations

I played the Diablo III story with the Crusader all the way through the new Act V, which opens adventure mode up. It's good stuff. I wish you could do Nephalem Rifts all the time. But the change of pace from Bounties and back and forth is a good thing, too. I was able to notch the difficulty up to Expert now.

Diablo is great for me because I get to fine-tune character builds while mowing down dozens of hapless NPC villains to get better loot to slaughter tougher NPCs by the dozens. It makes me feel like a bad-ass.

EVE is great for me because I get to fine-tune a character build while stalking my prey to get better loot eventually to face down more experienced players in single combat. It makes me feel like a bad-ass. Less frequently, but more intensely than Diablo for sure.

Reminds me of the saying at WotC about their main 3 game franchises back in the day:*
In Pokemon you and your friends summon cool monsters to kick each other's asses.
In Magic you summon cool monsters to kick your friend's ass.
In Dungeons and Dragons you and your friends find cool monsters and kick their asses together. 

It's always cool monsters, you and your friends, and ass-kicking.

* back in the day is usually a Thursday. Statistics don't lie.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

The Jester effect

Well, well, well! I said it would happen, but I can't call it a prediction, because it was so bloody obvious. The industrial changes in a recent Devblog have inspired some fevered commentary: Mabrick on Eve24 and Jester are the posts that got most dramatic about it that I've found. 

Having followed His Jestership for some time, almost as long as I've played EVE, which isn't that long, but it's kind of long. I'd say solidly, medium long. I'll start again. Jester tends to get into a certain kind of trouble as a CSM member who blogs. I see something similar happen with Malcanis on Failheap. 

The Jester effect: when someone is more articulate than average about why things happen like they do, (s)his listeners tend to hallucinate that (s)he has control over what is happening. 

A textbook example is when someone comments: "I agree with you, Jester, that there is a problem. So why didn't you push for a solution harder?" As if all he had to do was buy CCP Fozzie another drink and it would have turned out totally different. 

Ancillary sub-effects of the Jester effect include people blaming Jester when things don't happen the way they like, and people attaching their own tangential issues to whatever Jester happens to be posting on. His latest about the upcoming industrial rejiggering has attracted a lot of discussion on force projection in null-sec, for example. Quite frequently they take a confrontational tone with Jester while accidentally reiterating Jester's original thoughts, somehow forgotten between reply and publish

As far as the actual Devblog at issue goes, people always want contradictory things. I'm a totally amateur game designer and I know that. CCP has to know that. It's always better to shake things up. If they really want to shake things up, maybe they can stop letting people multibox and have alts out the ass. 

See? I kinda just did it there.

Further, it has become the habit in these debates to indirectly threaten to rage-quit if one's preferred solution is not implemented.* This is usually phrased as a concern over CCP losing subscriptions. It is simply a threat. Do not be fooled by the concern-for-CCP's business wrapping it comes in. And as we have learned from shysters the world over, threats are meant to make you choose things that are against your interest.

* or the inverse, being if one's not-preferred solution is implemented.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Dodixie Pricewatch 21 April 2014

I fly and trade navy frigates a lot. And Dodixie rules.

Fleet Firetail: 13.7 to 11.5 million ISK. 
Firetails are still channeling between 9 and 15 million. It seems to take about two months for supplies to run out and the price to spike when warzone control is in the doldrums, so I think it'll happen by mid-May. To buy would be a speculative play. Patient money would want the price lower first, which I don't expect to happen this time around.

Navy Comet: 13.4 to 11.3 million ISK. 
Gyuh! 2 million down in one week. The market for Navy Comets continues to be absolutely flooded. I'm stocking up when it gets down to 10.
This, by the way, is why I only trade things that I use. That way I'm not totally holding the bag when this kind of freefall happens. I have about 50 comets right now. When I got them through the LP store the price was about 18 million and I had been getting 20. I sold a few but it all turned around so freaking fast, what with the Police frigate spike giving out and the Gallente warzone control tier shooting up.

Hookbill: 20 to 17 million ISK. 
Hookbills are about 2 million ISK more expensive than last week--again. Expect them to remain elevated until the Caldari militia gets another infusion of ex-null funsters like when TEST came to their aid. I'd be kind of curious to research whether faction frigates ever sell for more than analogous Tech 2 frigates.

Navy Slicer: 13 to 9 million ISK.
Daily volatility increased over last week at this time. Looks like they had a minor spike over the trend line I've been drawing. Perhaps it has something to do with how bloody far Amarr space is away from Dodixie. The fundamentals of warzone control don't bode well for the price going higher. That said, the Navy Slicers continue their slow decline in price. I'm not sure the volume is high enough to day-trade this. I wouldn't, because I'm not in Dodixie quite often enough.

I list the lowest sell first, followed by the highest buy. The names I use here for the navy frigates are the minimum you need to type when searching in EVE-Central to go directly to each of their pages. 

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Bittervet

I just noticed something. I've been playing the Diablo III for a couple weeks, since they patched the game to make it compatible with the Reaper o' Souls expansion. I bought the RoS over the weekend, and if playing the new Crusader class is wrong, I don't want to be right. Shield Bash might be my favorite skill ever. It's like the Monk's Dashing Strike but decidedly more bashy. So it definitely delivers on expectations. 

What I noticed, though, was that I basically log into EVE every couple of days to check my market orders, plex a little, and make sure my skill queue is updated. 

Wow. I'm turning into a bittervet and I've only been playing 18 months. I learn quick!

I don't know of a recorded, official definition of bittervet, but I've gathered from context that it involves EVE turning from a game into a hobby. It's not played for hours at a time for entertainment, but rather as a series of tasks you check on every so often but run by themselves, much like a glue join on a wooden model drying in a vise clamp down in the shop. Eventually you feel like you accomplished something. 

There's also the bit where the bittervet feels like EVE was great when they first started but has been going downhill since. Kind of like Saturday Night Live or MAD magazine or The New Yorker. I do not feel that way in regards to EVE. I am bullish on the development direction it is taking right now, for what that's worth. 

So back to D3. The Crusader actually agrees with the Templar in their little conversational snippets. That's nice for a change. Templar is my favorite companion. I love how he's simply gung-ho about killing demons for the most part. That, and his rare queries regarding the Enchantress, coupled with unsolicited explanation that his interest in her is totally platonic. Lush/Lout/Letch, I mean Scoundrel, just gets old really quick in my book. My Barbarian travels with him, because knowing that he could totally break him in half makes the babble tolerable. My Wizard travels with the Enchantress because sisterhood. Everyone else rolls with the Templar. 

Monday, April 14, 2014

BB #55: Fa-aaaame (fame!)

Blog Banter time! 

----------
Last Blog Banter we talked about heroes in EVE Online. The followup to that topic has been provided by Wilhelm aka The Ancient Gaming Noob:

Write about somebody who is "space famous" and why you hate/admire them, somebody who isn't space famous but you think should be or will be, or discuss space fame in general, what it means, and how people end up so famous.

Is there a cost of being famous in EVE and if so, is it worth the price?
----------

Like: Ripard Teg, Rixx Javixx, Malcanis, Sugar Kyle, I'm probably misspelling Javixx, The gang on Failheap, X Gallentius, Garviel.

Not so much: Gevlon Goblin, the peanut gallery on EVE-24.

Grudging respect: Anyone in Goons, Dinnsdale Pirhanna.

Fame and infamy are kind of random. The state of human knowledge about it is that you can best model it by the science of networks. That's beyond my ken (let alone my barbie). The upshot is that we can see how fame happens in retrospect but it is only marginally easier to predict once you learn all that science. Hard work usually matters toward becoming recognized for it. Usually. Some are born famous, others become famous, and some have fame thrust upon them like a Kardashian's* big ol' butt. 

I am not famous. I have more name recognition in EVE from my wise-ass commentary in militia chat than I do from the blog. Also, people who are hitting the "Next blog" link almost certainly account for at least half my readership. Turns out my EVE handle is also the name of an oil tanker. I can't tell whether that hurts or helps. :)

The usual bang of idiots on Failheap Challenge are better-known PVPers than me, that's for sure. Those who are willing to share PVP knowledge are those I like the best, especially those who will part with their ship fits. It takes some 'nads to do that. It can be used against you later. Unless you can create faster than others can steal, you're asking for trouble.

* I totally had them confused with the alien race in DS9 at first.

Dodixie Pricewatch 14 April 2014

I fly navy frigates a lot. I like to see how they're doing at my favorite trade hub. 

Fleet Firetail: 13.7 to 12.3 million ISK. 
I am thinking we should expect the price to channel between 9 and 15 million for a while. It seems to take about two months for supplies to run out and the price to spike when warzone control is in the doldrums, so I think it'll happen by mid-May. I don't think it will go totally wild from there. 

Navy Comet: 15.3 to 13 million ISK. 
The market for Navy Comets continues to be absolutely flooded. Tier3 for Gallente Militia just happened. I will probably not be putting my sell orders back when they expire. I got like infinity of these at scout camp, so I'll just fly them when my Firetails run out. 

Hookbill: 18.3 to 16 million ISK. 
Houston, the bird has squirted. Hookbills are about 2 million ISK more expensive than last week. Expect them to remain elevated until the Caldari militia gets another infusion of ex-null funsters like when TEST came to their aid. 

Navy Slicer: 12.5 to 9 million ISK. Most volatile this week.
No change here over last week, except for some daily volatility. Navy Slicers continue their slow decline in price. On aggregate, at least in Dodixie, they are losing about a million ISK in price every two months.

I list the lowest sell first, followed by the highest buy. The names I use here for the navy frigates are the minimum you need to type when searching in EVE-Central to go directly to each of their pages. 

Sunday, April 13, 2014

In Killmail Res

My second best kill. *

I totally didn't notice I had killed a 900 million ISK Tristan at first. I thought I must be reading the estimated value in my cargo hold wrong. Then I counted the number of digits a couple times. My friend looked up from her book as I said "[Brother,] WHAT?" at the screen.

It all started while I was a-plexing. The pirate Tristan showed up on overview suddenly. I hope there was a good reason I wasn't D-scanning. Knowing I probably wouldn't align in time to warp, I turned to engage. It was a pretty close fight. We were down to an overheated ancillary armor rep race. Probably an overheated afterburner race, too. GFs were exchanged. I pondered whether I should return to base to repair the ship and deposit my cargo. I warped out and only then did I look at my cargo hold to see how much I would be taking home. 

I heard Stay Frosty is moving their HQ. Maybe our man just decided he'd take out a farmer for fun on the way. I like those guys. They have a very cool attitude. I strive to emulate that. 

Oh, while getting the preceding URL for your reading pleasure, I noticed that Ishomilken is their new HQ. Which was where we were. Funny that!

* First best kill if you don't count the time I hadn't unscrewed my overview yet and accidentally Awoxed an alliance mate with a full set of Snakes. Everyone was very cool about it, considering. 

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

How I describe my habit--I mean, hobby

On the surface, some simple facts. My favorite game is EVE Online. I followed it since before it was released in 2003 by a small group of Icelandic sadists. Initial reviews scared me away, and it wasn't until late 2012 that I started a trial account. Basically it's a game of internet spaceships a la Elite or Escape Velocity. Except it's massively multiplayer, full of people playing immortal, cybernetic beings with no reason to be nice to each other. How long can they stay sane? It's a king-of-the-hill deathmatch where the last man standing is the only one to have a shred of dignity or empathy left. 

Pretentious, preachy version follows.


Life is pain, and we have eternal life. We are all immortal, so there can be no harm. Let's play.

We are capsuleers, strange homonculoids of flesh and machine. We were once human, and we fight to preserve what is left of ourselves in the face of gargantuan temptations. The temptation to destroy. The temptation to steal. The temptation to shame and humiliate. The temptation to abuse and torture. 

Death takes away everything you love so that you needn't worry about it anymore. We capsuleers are denied that final insult. It makes us restless and hungry. The memory of all these ultimately painless injuries embitters us and alienates us. We want to know death again. So we keep trying to inflict it on each other, to know what we're missing. To stay human. It is a race, a race to be the last to lose touch entirely.

Monday, April 7, 2014

Dodixie Pricewatch 7 April 2014

Since I fly navy frigates a lot, I like to see how they're doing at my favorite trade hub. Note that I list the lowest sell first, followed by the highest buy. 

Fleet Firetail: 13.6 to 10.8 million ISK. Most volatile this week.
Firetails regressed to the mean at just under 15 million around March 15, between the high of 18 in December and the low of 9 in January. I am thinking we should expect the price to channel between 9 and 15 million for a while. Minmatar Militia isn't doing so hot in warzone control. That's cause for optimism in the future for speculators. It seems to take about two months for supplies to run out and the price to spike when warzone control is in the doldrums, so I think it'll happen by mid-May. I don't think it will go totally wild from there. 

Navy Comet: 15 to 13.5 million ISK. 
The market for Navy Comets is absolutely flooded. They were over 20 million ISK when the point release came out and now they have fallen to 15 or under. I no longer predict them to go back up to 18 in a couple months when the disillusionment kicks in and supplies run out. Tier2 for Gallente Militia is going to resist anything higher as long as it holds and for a couple months afterwards. I will probably not be putting my sell orders back when they expire. I'll just fly these as I am well-skilled for them. 

Hookbill: 16.4 to 14.2 million ISK. 
Hookbills could either be starting a stable channel pattern, or it may just be a prelude to the price squirting up or down. Looking over at the FW fundamentals, Caldari are having some trouble keeping a decent Tier going, so that favors the upside here. 

Navy Slicer: 10.3 to 9 million ISK. 
Navy Slicers continue their slow decline in price. On aggregate, at least in Dodixie, they are losing about a million ISK in price every two months.

The names I use here for the navy frigates are the minimum you need to type when searching in EVE-Central to go directly to each of their pages.

Friday, April 4, 2014

15 minutes of fun packed into 4 hours

I've been thinking back to pen-and-paper role playing games a bit lately, as I was running one last week and I just had to quit mid-session. I couldn't go on one more minute. I was trying to think of what was going to happen next and I just dropped my pencil, looked up at my players, and said sorry. 

I played RPGs from 1982 to 1994, took a significant hiatus, and then played them again, though more rarely, from 2002 to 2014. That is essentially two 12-year stretches. Wow. I didn't realize.

I quit because they just piss me off now. First off, I am not sure that role playing games are even games anymore; they're really just activities. 

Sid Meier once defined a game as a series of interesting decisions. And I don't think the decisions that make up the bulk of role playing are very interesting. The part where you get to plan and execute a character build is pretty interesting, but it does not take up enough of the time. Most of it is talking to characters that usually don't want anything on their own; they are just window-dressing for the expression of the player character's agenda. And we spend way too much time on it. We all know that we're going to get to the next dungeon; the GM spent too much time building it for us not to. And a decision that doesn't ultimately change the outcome is not a decision, let alone an interesting one. 

Now we could do like DnD 4th and try to give everyone a bunch of different powers to use. I resist that every time. The two times I played 4th I purpose-built characters that revolved around making their basic attack as bad-ass as possible so I wouldn't feel bad not using the other powers. By the time you get 5th level or so, it's already far too many powers to keep accurate track of without shuffling four sheets of paper every turn. I've seen people try the power cards, which is bullshit on a stick. If we need cards to make it playable, why is it not a card game? See? Solved it for ya, Wizards. Stop making Dungeons and Dragons RPG books and stick with making card games. Where's my consulting fee?

RPGs were clunky to begin with, but their competitors were things like Monopoly and Scrabble. Card and board games have moved on, video games happened, Momorpuggers do what RPGs do well enough and provide a huge social context to boot. RPGs are the Jazz of gaming; self-referential and enjoyed mostly by people who have enjoyed it for a long time. The only reason I was playing for the last few years, in retrospect, was an attempt to relive past glories. 

There are other activities marketed as games, like Bunco and LCR. In LCR there are literally no decisions. Players take turns rolling a die and doing what it says. The "Winner" is whoever gets all the tokens that have been distributed purely by chance. Cheating would involve more skill. I liked it better when a friend showed me how to play Dreidel. At least there's a traditional excuse to play, and you learn some vocabulary words. 

In an RPG we wind up doing something similar. We all supposedly enact a story of heroism against incredible odds. The Gamemaster/Referee, however, is always adjusting the odds to keep the story happening. There is no real challenge here. There's nothing wrong with this activity. It just isn't a game. 

Possibly the most compelling reason for me to quit RPGs is the realization that every other kind of game has incorporated RPG elements like shopping for superpowers in your character build and getting more power and a semblance of a storyline. So you can shop around for what part of the RPG experience you want, and it comes in a more efficient package overall. Sometimes I wonder if I ever really liked the actual act of playing role playing games. Rather, I liked creating characters and settings for the games. 

I think my favorites for all time were Champions (4th) and Shadowrun (3rd). I'll miss them and those simpler times. It's not them, it's me.

Plex Banter 3

Bumpity Bump!

Fun episode: I entered a medium plex with a militia-mate already in it. Me Vexor, he Incursus. I noticed on overview that the Incursus was sitting right on the medium wreck, and it was still full. Nothing was moving. As I zoomed in to take that sweet 2 million ISK tag, our ships quite naturally bumped into each other. I saw his engines flare up, as if he had just realized what was going on. It could have just been autopilot still set to approach the wreck. I just warped off, chuckling comfortably to myself. 

(Does anyone have a link to Lily Tomlin doing her famous Tarzan yell? That was the closest I could find.)

((Oops. Carol Burnett did the Tarzan yell. And now that I've heard it, I'm not sure why it was so famous.))

Dodixie Pricewatch

This is something that I want to keep doing, and should be its own post. You can expect it to show up early each week, Monday or Tuesday. 

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Drone Changes, NICE.

As an intermittent, medium-skilled drone user, I dig 'em. CCP Fozzie's post has a theme of smoothing the gradients between the different drone systems. I say yes to a balancing between drones of different empires. It's obviously great to have a continuum where Amarr and Caldari drones actually exist. But that's just a start.


Though they are not moving T1 or T2 anywhere relative to each other, they are adjusting the Faction and Rogue drone-enhanced versions to make more sense somewhere in the middle. The faction drones just might be more commonly seen now, which adds variety. I like variety. I think I will probably still use T2 since I have skilled for them. 

They will be narrowing the difference in speeds and tracking between different sizes of drones just a scoach. Yes, the difference between 50% and 60% is a scoach. I looked it up. Maybe if I double-web a frigate my Valkyrie IIs will actually hit it. That's intriguing. 

On the drone skills tip, the takeaway is train Combat Drone Operations to V, like now. I've started. Don't put it off, you might forget. It feels like you're a rebel at first for passing up a free skill, but soon there is just regret, despair, and a ray of sadness.

You can arguably leave Drone Interfacing at IV now, which is where I've got it. I trained it up only last month. Somehow I had missed that it was a whole 20% damage bonus per level. The new version will be 10%, with the difference rolled into the base stats of all drones. Again, smoothing the gradients out. 

I've just now trained level I for sentries, so I can't really speak to the balance for those. Looks like it's once again overhauling the gradients between empires and tech levels.

My favorite of the stats-admittedly-unknown new modules would have to be the low slot Omnidirectional Tracking Enhancers. Full stop. And another full stop. I see shield-tank Vexors coming back. 


I dream that someday we will have better drone UI. I try to look at it as an opportunity to gain an advantage by learning the UI we have. It helps me go to sleep at night, anyway.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Plex Banter 2

Jibba Jabba!

I saw two more young players in plexes last night. I am conflicted how to deal with them when I've got a big ol' Vexor and they're just in a Venture or cloaked who-knows-what-pro'lly-a-frigate. I admire that they are getting into faction war earlier in their careers than I did, yet I want to teach them a healthy suspicion for their militia mates. Also, they were about to cap sweet, sweet medium plexes at Tier 2. That's two and a half Navy Comets. Yum. I settled for stealing their Caldari Captain tags that they hadn't picked up yet. 

Somehow I have to let go of this, though, as if I'm going to teach them one way or another to like or hate EVE. I still have some scruples about taking candy from babies. I guess that means I haven't gone insane from the power of the capsuleer yet. 

Dodixie pricewatch 

Since I fly navy frigates a lot, I like to see how they're doing at my favorite trade hub. So speaking of Navy Comets, looks as if everyone heard that they were selling well (because whoop whoop!), and the market is flooded. They were over 20 million ISK when the point release came out and now they have fallen to 15mil. I predict them to go back up to 18mil in a couple months when the disillusionment kicks in and supplies run out. Tier2 for Gallente Militia is going to resist anything higher for the forseeable. Also a faction frigate more or less has to be cheaper than an assault frigate. 

Firetails have regressed to the mean at just under 15 million, between the high of 18 in December and the low of 9 in January. A technical trader would expect the price to saunter vaguely downwards until it hits 9 million again, probably by May. Minmatar Militia is down to 5 systems. That's cause for optimism in the future for speculators. It seems to take about two months for supplies to run out and the price to spike when warzone control is in the doldrums. I don't think it will go wild from there. I'll be stocking up with some lowball orders.

Hookbills look to be the in the middle of a minor upward swing. For the last several months, the highs have been falling and the lows have been rising. It's time for that bird to squirt one way or the other. 

Navy Slicers are slowly declining in price. They have been doing so since late last year at least. I expect them to keep doing so. Stock up, I guess.