Ridlaw

Hey Sansha! Stitch This!

As anyone that’s read my previous posts will realise I’ve tried to get involved with Incursions on a number of occasions and not had a huge amount of luck.

A corp mate of mine is heavily into them though and has recently got involved in a new channel that intends to try harder to get anyone who Xs up a fleet. So I decided to say “screw it” and have one last bash at it!

I’ve recently trained all my Minmatar T3 skills up to 4 so I thought I’d go the whole hog and splash some of my indy alts hard earned cash on a new Loki:

My Loki Fit

[Loki, Incursion]
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Centii A-Type Adaptive Nano Plating
Centii A-Type Adaptive Nano Plating
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II

Stasis Webifier II
Stasis Webifier II
Stasis Webifier II
Tracking Computer II

425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M

Medium Anti-Explosive Pump I
Medium Projectile Ambit Extension I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I

Loki Defensive - Adaptive Augmenter
Loki Engineering - Power Core Multiplier
Loki Electronics - Immobility Drivers
Loki Offensive - Projectile Scoping Array
Loki Propulsion - Chassis Optimization

Hobgoblin II x5

I’ll be looking at upgrading this when I start making some more money but for now it covers all the bases. It has decent resists, decent DPS and a nice EHP buffer.

So have I had any luck actually flying it? The short answer is “Yes \o/”

I’ve been in several fleets so far for several hours at a time and unlike the last time I got a random fleet these have been much more efficient clearing site after site with very little downtime. My previous experience I think we managed 3 or 4 sites in over an hour which was a little deflating.

My Loki Joining The Fight

I’m getting the hang of the sites quickly enough, there are only a few different Vanguards and the fleets I have been in so far are very organised tagging the ships to destroy in order. At least one site has trigger ships which are to be avoided as well which get tagged with an “X”. This is helping enormously though with learning what to prioritise so that when I do get into a fleet that’s not quite so new pilot friendly I won’t embarrass myself by shooting the wrong thing!

All in all I’ve been having some fun getting stuck in and learning the ropes. Oh and earning several hundred million ISK in the few hours I’ve done so far. The Loki will certainly have paid for itself with a couple more trips out and it can all go into the pot for upgrading the Loki itself and building up the war chest for an awesome winter of PVP!

Is It Safe To Come Out Yet?

Well that was an exciting week wasn’t it?

I started the week cautiously optimistic that the first baby steps of Incarna with the Captain’s Quarters were going to lead on to bigger and better things. After the expected longer than announced deployment (CCP getting a patch out in the time frame they give is not something I expect anymore!) I logged in and found things pretty much as I expected having tested the Captain’s Quarters on Duality and Singularity.

I had hoped that code optimization would have improved the performance in comparison with the test servers though. I’m finding that my mouse clicks aren’t as responsive in station compared to previously. Hopefully with time they can improve this but it’s not the end of the world for me at the moment.

With regards to the Noble Exchange (NeX) micro-transaction store I share everyone’s surprise at the high cost of the initial items there. I was expecting even the most expensive items to be no higher than around $5 and I would have contemplated buying items at that level of pricing, although I would probably wait until other players could see my snazzy new threads! So I think CCP have made a mistake with the price levels but I can only assume they have their reasons and I won’t lose any sleep over my lack of a monocle.

The real excitement this week started with the leak of the May issue of CCPs internal newsletter “fearless”. This particular issue was titled “Greed is Good?” (note the question mark) and is almost totally dedicated to the topic of micro-transactions and their place within not just Eve Online but also Dust 514 and World of Darkness.

Greed Is Good?

The main section of the newsletter which has caused all the fuss is a debate piece titled “Are virtual goods sales in EVE a good thing?” with two CCP employees giving the “yes” and “no” answers to that question. As you’d imagine it’s the justifications for “yes” that people are up in arms about – CCP Soundwave states that “In fact, I’d like to sell a lot more than vanity items” in the second sentence of his article. Ouch.

A leaked internal email from Hilmar the CEO of CCP followed shortly after which described the outrage over the high NeX prices as “very predictable feedback” then caused even more outrage.

Followed by an awful devblog by CCP Zulu on Friday which didn’t particularly help either which started by praising the Incarna deployment as “one of our more smooth and successful expansions” (as I said above I’ve had little trouble but many have) and went on to justify the price of the ingame clothing by comparing them to clothes from “some exclusive Japanese boutique shop”. Unfortunately the one thing it didn’t answer was the question of whether micro-transactions for non-vanity items were coming to the NeX store. The main thing that was causing the forums to explode at this point!

By Sunday night half of Eve was threatening to cancel when we got the final devblog for the week, again from CCP Zulu, and starting with an apology for “the tone and demeanor of my blog on Friday”. It goes one to detail that the CSM will be joining CCP for an emergency meeting towards the end of this week to decide on a “mutual agreement of how virtual goods and services will evolve in EVE”.

Most importantly he also went on to say “there are no and never have been plans to sell ‘gold ammo’ for Aurum”. Now that pretty much implies that non-vanity goods on the NeX store aren’t going to be happening in the near future. It definitely doesn’t say that there will never be anything like that and that’s fair enough in my book; who knows what the MMO business will look like in 1 year, 3 years or even 10 years. If in 3 years time every MMO on the market is free to play and is maintained by advertising of some sort and micro-transactions CCP will almost certainly have to shift their model to the same as new players will be more likely to risk signing up to a new game for free to try it.

So where does this leave us?

There’s still an awful lot of mistrust out there aimed at CCP. I can’t really say I blame people; we were told before that non-vanity items wouldn’t be happening and yet they’re discussing exactly that internally months later. There is a definite air of “the sky is falling” and there are some serious trolls doing the rounds and stirring up the pot.

All of this does remind me a little of the famed New Game Experience (NGE) from Star Wars Galaxies which I was unfortunate enough to be directly involved with and did cause me to quit that game after several years play (and demand a refund for the recently released expansion too!) but the difference here is that the thing that people are most upset about, micro-transactions for non-vanity items, hasn’t even happened! It’s all been a “but they look like they’re going to do this!!!” and to be honest I’ll wait until they actually do it before I start waving pitch forks…

I Can Has Incursion Fleet?

I’m beginning to believe my previous post about me being jinxed with Incursions…

I’ve tried several times this week to get into a vanguard fleet but nobody wants to invite me apparently. I’ve been X’ing up with the Hurricane below:

My Hurricane, Harry Brown

[Hurricane, Harry Brown]
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Reactive Membrane II
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

Stasis Webifier II
Tracking Computer II, Tracking Speed
Tracking Computer II, Tracking Speed
10MN MicroWarpdrive II

220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
‘Arbalest’ Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I
‘Arbalest’ Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I

Medium Anti-Kinetic Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I

Hobgoblin II x5

I think this ticks all the boxes that are required – decent dps, high tracking, webber to help others hit and a passive armour tank that any logi should be able to keep alive (530 dps and 55k EHP with all resists above 60% according to EFT with my skills and cheap ammo) I’ve even squeezed a MWD on there for the couple of sites that require something fast to nip off and do something at a distance.

So what’s not to like?

I’ve asked in the “armour” channel several times what ship fits people recommend but I either get ignored or people say something ridiculously expensive for somebody starting out. Sure when I’ve got a few under my belt and know what’s going on a bit better I can splash out on a faction fit Machariel or a Loki with all the trimmings but I’m not going to drop over half a billion when I don’t even know if it will get much use.

So if anybody reading this has Incursion experience flying Minmatar ships please give me a clue?

Until then I’ll be the one repeating “X, Hurricane, Harry Brown? Please?” in the armour channel…