Author: Ethic

I run this little MMO gaming blog but I hardly ever write on it anymore. I'm more of a bloglord or something. Thankfully I have several minions to keep things rolling along.
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Glitch

[EVE Online] I have a new laptop for work/travel and I decided to install EVE in case I get bored on my next business trip (soon!). I fired it up and noticed something strange with my character. I was bald!

Ethic BaldEthic Hair

Hmm. Well they did just release a patch, perhaps they made some changes. I asked in our corp channel and everyone said I still have hair (although the comb-over comments were not needed, damn). So, I promptly logged into my main PC and sure enough I have hair.

Must be a driver issue I guess. But the odd thing is, everyone else still had hair. I’m the only one that went bald on my laptop.

– Ethic

Ch Ch Ch Ch Changes

Patch Day! It seems nothing brings more excitement and fear to the MMO gamer than patch day. I’d also be willing to bet nothing causes more people to quit than patch day.

In a perfect world, patch day is the day when the bug that has been driving you crazy finally gets fixed. It is when new content is added. It is when the “too powerful” get nerfed. It is when the “too weak” gets buffed. It is when you get that new game feeling again if only for a moment. All in a perfect world.

The reality of it is that patch day breaks things. It breaks the UI. It makes more lag. The class/item you have come to love does not work as well as it used to. It makes you revise previous successful strategies. It makes previously worthless items priceless and previously priceless items worthless. It adds content you finish in 3 hours. This is not to mention the headache of getting the patch downloaded in the first place.

In general, people don’t like change. You create a game and rules for play. The players learn the rules and play according to them (not talking about cheaters here). On patch day, the rules often get changed. This upsets players who had been playing by the rules. They get tired of the game having the rules changed each patch day and they quit.

Patch day often will have small changes that would originally appear to be minor. Changes like the voice of a character or the revision of a custom logo background. People get used to things and when you change even the little stuff it becomes a big deal to them. They liked the old logo background. The old voice was fine, why did you change it?

A new player would not even notice these items. In fact, they will get used to the way it is currently and would likely get upset if you changed it back.

I’ll cite a recent example from EVE Online. They just had a patch come out. In this patch, the power of missles was changed in various ways. Now you need to buy some skills to make them work as well as before, and they deal damage in a different way. Big missles are not as deadly to small ships.

Now, I already read the patch notes and recognized the missle changes so I just avoided missles for the most part. It is how I prefer to deal with change. After the patch came out, I started training missle skills and I do not notice any issues with them. People that had jumped all over missles because they were so powerful are currently upset. Even though the patch notes were available and a test server was in place for people to see how it would impact them.

Another thing they changed was the voice of the ship computer. I rarely played with sound up so I do not recall much of the old voice. I like the new voice, even though she sounds a bit apethetic about everything. I half expect her to say, “Oh bother, I suppose I will request yet another permission to dock for you.” But still, the player complaints abound.

To be expected, people will quit. It happens at every patch when you change something people like. The truth is, almost everything in the game is liked by someone for some reason. No matter what you change, you will piss someone off.

I’m glad I’m not a dev.

– Ethic

Supporting Those Who Support You

[Planetside] The PS devs have done something wonderful for players like me that often find themselves in a supporting role. I spent many an evening doing ANT runs or repairing damaged vehicles and turrets. While getting a warm sense of being a part of the victory, there has not been any real rewards given for such activity. Rewards are normally handed out to players for “kills”. No longer. Enter the era of support XP.

Perhaps the short supply of healer-types in most MMOs can be solved with a solution like this.

I’ve included the post made in the PS forums for posterity, below:

In the struggle to dominate and control Auraxis, there are countless jobs and roles to perform. Many of these involve the support of your fellow soldiers and these actions have, up until now, been largely thankless. The tireless support personnel who repair damaged wall turret systems, provide support positioning Advanced Mobile Stations, or operating Galaxy and Lodestar vehicles have done so out of the desire for the greater good for their Empire.

With PlanetSide version 3.7 we will introduce rewards for such activities. These rewards will still be tied to when opposing forces are overcome, rather than handing them out at the time when the support activities are performed. Support activity will be recorded and, when the supported unit overcomes an enemy in the future, they will pass back a share of experience and possibly a merit worthy kill (depending on the factors of the kill). The unit scoring the kills will continue to pass back this bonus experience and merit kills for a period of time starting with their first kill after being supported. The length of time is determined by how much support they received. If the supported unit dies and respawns (is not revived) then they will no longer pass back support exp and support merit kills.

One exception to this delayed start of when support experience and kills are passed back and recorded is after a hot drop. The timer starts immediately after bailing from a Galaxy.

Each person that you support will track that activity in what you could consider a “support bucket”. The more you support them (for instance, the more times you repair their armor that was damaged by enemy fire) the more you fill in this bucket. How much this bucket is filled in will determine the size of the % of exp from kills that is passed back to you and for how long exp will kick back. The timer is dormant, waiting after the support is rendered (repairing someone’s armor, for example) until the supported soldier scores their first kill. This allows you to support someone and much later, when they start scoring some kills (and haven’t died in the mean time) they will still reward you for that support. Or, for example, if you repair base turrets and the fight eventually comes back to that base. When someone gets in that turret you repaired a while ago and scores a kill, they will kick off the dormant timer and now kills they score with that turret will give the person who repaired it a slice of the kill exp and possibly kill records toward Merit Commendations. Of course, if you were the repairer of said turrets and you logged off or left the zone, you would no longer receive support exp or merit kills.

There are 6 different categories of activities that can lead to your acquisition of Support EXP and assist kills counting toward support Merit Commendations:

1. Healing another soldier.
2. Reviving another soldier.
3. Repairing another soldier or vehicle either with a BANK, NanoDispenser or Lodestar.
4. Hacking a terminal or locker, or providing an AMS or Lodestar terminal for others to obtain equipment or ammunition.
5. Having soldiers bail from your Galaxy.
6. Providing an AMS for soldiers to spawn from.

The % share of BEP that comes back from through this system is completely outside any other exp distribution (squad exp split, etc.). The timer is currently a minimum of 5 minutes and a maximum of 10 minutes where kills by that soldier will have an extra % share of EXP go back to the person(s) who supported them.

To illustrate different scenarios, a few examples of each are listed below:

* Healing or Repairing: You heal a friendly soldier just outside the door to a hotly contested tower. You heal him for 25 damage and he now has a record on him that will start to feed you exp and assist kills toward merits. However, as the fight rages, the soldier you healed doesn’t die, but he does take more damage from plasma fired by the enemy out the door. You die trying to get in the door. Just because you died doesn’t affect the support you had done on the other soldier. That will only be erased if he dies and is not revived.

So, you respawn at the nearby AMS and come back. You see the soldier you had healed before and heal up the damage he took from the plasma, further filling in the “support bucket” and building a greater percentage of exp you would get from his kills (if and when he scores some). You then join the rush in through the door and your Empire captures the tower. The soldier you helped landed some hits, but never got a kill, so your “support bucket” on him has not triggered and is still dormant, waiting for him to score a kill.

Now, you head down toward the base and the soldier you helped gets a kill of an enemy on the wall. The EXP share from that kill is reported and saved up. If you had supported him more, you would have obtained a bigger % of exp share. The enemy that the solder you supported was a unique kill so it will count back as an “assist kill” to you, the person who supported him, and toward support Merit Commendations.

* Hacking: You are an infiltrator, sneaking through a lightly contested enemy base. You make your way to one of the nearby equipment terminals, hack it and switch out your armor to a MAX suit and head to the spawn tubes to tear some enemy forces up! Behind you another friendly has hot dropped on the roof, and comes down into the base and sees in passing that the equipment terminal is available. He swaps out of his Agile armor for his Rexo heavy grunt load out. By using a terminal that you hacked, you are now flagged as having supported him. When he scores his next kill (without dying) he will start off the time period where he will give back exp and assist kills back to you.

* AMS or Lodestar: You position a Lodestar where friendly vehicles are rearming their vehicles. Just like #2 above, just the fact that they use the equipment portion of the Lodestar functionality will flag them as you, the Lodestar owner, as having supported them. This is the same for the AMS, if someone uses your AMS to equip themselves. The Lodestar will also flag vehicles as having been repaired by you, much like scenario #1 above.

* AMS spawning: The AMS also will tag soldiers spawning at it as having been supported by the soldier who owns the AMS. So, when those soldiers go on to score enemy kills, they will pass back a share of exp and possibly assist kills to count toward support Merit Commendations. Even if the AMS is destroyed, friendly solders who had spawned at it would continue to give back these rewards until either their timer runs out, they die and respawn, you log out or you leave the zone.

* Reviving: Reviving fallen friendly solders will not only flag the person who revives them as having assisted them, but it will also keep their death from canceling all support related shares they are currently tracking from being cleared.

We will give you more information on this as the development continues.

~The PlanetSide Development Team~

I’m curious, does any other MMO out there reward support players in some way? If so, please share because I have not seen anything like this before.

– Ethic

Ships = Classes

[EVE Online] You know, honestly, I don’t like blathering on about an MMO that I am actually enjoying because I have been here before. Sooner or later (and recently it is always sooner) I grow tired and bored and start to lose interest in playing. The magic fades away and the mechanics are all that is left. Going through the motions is not fun and “The Cancel” soon follows.

But here I go again.

EVE is scratching me in all the right places. The latest itch is classes. EVE does not technically have classes, but you can fill the role of most traditional classes. You can fight, craft, tradeskill, work the market, support, etc. You can be any or all of those. To change class, most of the time all you need to do is switch to a different ship.

Let’s say you are out mining ore because you want to make some money when out of the blue your friend says he needs help with a mission. You fly back to the station and switch into a ship set for support. This ship has devices on it capable of remotely boosting shields and power on your friends ship. After the mission’s battle ends, you return to the station and check the market. Seeing that your ore is more valuable 4 systems away, you get onboard of your transport ship and load all the ore. Off you go to make some extra cash just for making a little trip.

Upon returning, another friend is out mining and there are pirates bothering him. Hop into your sleek fast fighter and go get them off his back. Loot their goods and collect the bounty and you are making money again. I could go on but I think you get the point.

Now you’ll have to excuse me, there are some “rats” out there with my name on them.

– Ethic

Don’t Blame The Game

From Corpnews I found this evidence that people are broken:

A thoughtless couple in their 20s who left their four-month old daughter at home while they played Internet computer games at a nearby PC café have been booked by police after the child died.

According to Incheon Police Station on Tuesday, a 29-year-old man husband identified by his family name of Yu and his wife put their four-month daughter in the bedroom of their home and went to a neighborhood PC café at around 4:00 p.m. on May 24 to play the online game “World of Warcraft”.

Time flew by as the couple lost themselves in the game, and when they returned home at 9:00 p.m., their daughter was lying on her stomach, dead of suffication.

Read the rest here.

If it wasn’t an MMORPG, it would be a quick drink at the bar or just running to the store for a “second”. Something is wrong with these people. Something is very, very wrong with these people.

Wake up, real life is happening all around you and you aren’t even living it. Focus on what is important. A game is just a game, it is entertainment. Don’t make it out to be something more than that. Nobody cares if you have a level 60 Rogue, it just does not matter. If you are looking for respect, love, accomplishments, or fame, try life out – there is a lot of room for more good people doing good things. It may seem like you get those from a game, but the reality is that you don’t.

Whatever your obsession is and for whatever reason you turn to it, try to remember what is really important and not let your obsessions run your life.

– Ethic

Two Million And Counting…

The news is out, Blizzard has surpassed two million paying subscribers worldwide, all playing World of Warcraft. That’s just insane. That’s a lot of money rolling in. Can they handle it? Will they stay on top? Is there nothing left for them but a big crash?

The crash has already started, at least in my little world. Most everyone I know that has played it – including casual and hard core players – has quit playing already.

But still, 2 MILLION PAID SUBSCRIBERS. As Abalieno wrote: “You say that some parts of the game are broken? HA! Two million subscribers. Rimshot.” That is the fact, Jack.

– Ethic

The Wonderful World Of Bugs

I was bored at lunchtime and found this thread on the World of Warcraft forums. Notice the parts I highlighted. It was good for a chuckle anyway.

How can I avoid losing my items in the first place

One current workaround to this problem is to only store Soul Shards in your main backpack, not your other bags. The bug will not manifest itself if you follow this rule. Another suggestion would be to ensure that you are always playing with a lot of empty inventory space.

If any more workarounds to the problem are discovered, I will update this post.

I hope this clears up some of the confusion. Thank you for your patience while we get this issue resolved.

Edit: A better workaround to this problem is to actually not store any Soul Shards in your main backpack at all. Instead, store all of your Soul Shards in your other bags, and this problem will not occur.

– Ethic

Perfect Fit Or New Shiny?

eve[EVE Online] I’m still quite suprised at how well EVE is working for me as a casual player. You start the game with a few skills, but you’ll need new skills soon enough. Normally you would get new skills by grinding on mobs or questing for XP until you levelled. But in EVE, you don’t get new skills by killing mobs or doing quests. You get new skills by purchasing them and then training them. I don’t even see how you could gimp yourself. Don’t like a skill? Don’t buy it. If you already have it, it’s not hurting you in any way.

Skills have various levels, 1 through #. To train each level takes time and the time varies based on different aspects like your attributes and other skills. Lets just say a typical skill takes 30 minutes to train to level 1, 4 hours for level 2, 1 day for level 3, etc. Each level means that you are better at the skill. A combat skill level may mean more accuracy, damage, rate of fire, things like that. Some ships may require you to have level 3 in a navigation skill (for example) so you must train that skill to 3 before you can use the ship. Refining skill levels means you get a better return on your ore refining. I could go on and on but there are way too many skills. Important to note, you can only train one skill at a time.

So why does this work well for a casual player? Simple; the skills train in real time no matter where you are or what you are doing. Log in, start training a skill, and then log off. It will keep training.

This allows me to feel like I am progressing whether I am playing or not. Sometimes I just log in to start training a new skill because I don’t have time to play. In fact, since it saves your training progress, sometimes I stop training a longer skill when I am playing in order to train a shorter one that will finish while I’m still online. Then before I log off I restart training the longer skill and it begins right where it left off.

Granted, to buy skills you need money – sometimes a lot of it depending on the skill. Getting money requires you do something in game. Mine, kill pirates, run missions. All generates income. Therefore, you cannot just play the game by training skills and logging off (unless someone gives you a lot of money). Also, getting the skill to fly a battleship does not mean you really know how to fly a battleship properly. To do that you need to play the game and use the ship.

I really like it because when friends of mine play a lot more than I do, they do not really get any further ahead of me as far as skills are concerned. They may make more money and know more about the game, but heck they can just share that with me hehe.

This game is not for everyone. I’m sure many will get bored with it and that is fine. It is not a fast paced game. It is more of a thinking game. It is what you make of it. When I log in, I decide what I feel like doing. Get in my destroyer and go mine while defending myself from the occasional pirate? Get in my frigate and go pirate hunting to collect bounties and loot? Get in my industrial ship and do some trade routes? The options are only as limited as you make them.

Last night I took my frigate out and scoured asteroid fields for pirates. If I found any, I would launch a few missles at them to take out their shields and as they got closer I would open up with my railguns. After taking them out, I could loot their cargo holds for equipment. In fact, I have a cargo hold scanner so I can see what they are carrying before I even attack.

I haven’t even got into all the other options. There are all sorts of electronic warfare available, things that shut down your ship, or keep you from targeting the enemy. You could train up cloaking devices and stealth your way across the galaxy. You could join up with a corporation and manaufacture ships or equipment. You could claim a spot in 0.0 space and defend it from all others. You could even hunt down other players with bounties on their head.

Only time will tell if this game really is what I’ve been seeking or if it is just another new shiny, blinding me from seeing the truth. But I know this; I talk to many people in game and a lot of them have been playing it like I do and still are playing (and enjoying) it after 2 years.

– Ethic

An EVEning With Pirates

integrale destroyer[EVE Online] I have a new ship now, a destroyer I call “The Integrale” (picture shown). One of the advantages of this ship, besides the improved cargo space, is the fact that I can run multiple mining lasers and multiple weapons. This can come in handy for defending yourself from pirates while mining. I needed it last night.

I decided to travel to a less secure system, because you can often find more valuable ores to mine. However, the lower security also means an increased chance of aggression. I went to visit the system that Zxyrox was in as he was going to mine with me. It was a 0.7 system.

I looked for some descriptions of the different security ratings so I could explain them somewhat here. I found lots of information on EVE-I and I summarized it below:

  • 1.0 – 0.8 Security: Safe around stations and gates, no NPC pirates. Players could possibly destroy your ship and pod you before the police get there, but it should be rather rare.
  • 0.7 – 0.5 Security: Safe around stations. Most asteroid fields and gates will have NPC pirates around them. The lower the security, the tougher and more numerous they will be. You should be safe from players, but if someone is determined they can destroy you before a police arrive.
  • 0.4 – 0.1 Security: Little or no police presence, numerous NPC pirates around asteroid fields and gates. Other players can attack you with no police intervention. The sentry guns around gates and bases will fire on anyone starting an aggressive act (within range).
  • 0.0 Security: The worst NPC pirates and players are in these systems. It’s free-for-all when it comes to combat. Fire first with no intervention, no sentries, no police. Don’t enter unless you have experience.

So you can see I was still in a pretty safe system, but I had a good chance of getting attacked by pirates while mining. And by good chance, I mean that they did. Several times.

After insuring my ship to guarantee I’ll get a good chunk of the cost back should it be destroyed, and cloning myself to make sure I don’t lose any skills should I be killed, we warped out to the asteroid field. On the way, I created a “safe spot” by marking my place in space during the warp. This bookmark is a random spot created for escape should I need to. Odds would be good that it is empty of pirates and the chance of someone finding me right away are slim. All I would need to do is to warp to the bookmark and I’m safe.

Zxyrox and I started to mine, him in his mining barge and me in the destroyer. It was not long before some NPC pirates warped in. I stopped my mining temporarily and locked onto the closest pirate. I set my ship to orbit about the pirate at the optimal range for my railguns. When I got within range, I opened fire. I made short work of all three pirates this way and looted the ruins of their ships for goodies. Back to the mining.

As my cargo hold approached full, Zxyrox told me to jettison the ore. I did that and it created a canister which I named as mine so it would hopeful discourage someone from stealing my ore. This is where I learned of the first immersion breaking aspect of this game so far. The canister I jettisoned from my ship had a capacity much greater than my ship. How does that work? Anyway, what I would do is keep the mining going and transfer ore from my ship into the container as it got full. Zxyrox was doing the same.

We were attacked by NPC pirates a few more times during the mining operation, but my destroyer was making easy work getting rid of them. In fact, I didn’t take any damage at all. Once Zxyrox’s container was full, he warped back to the station to get a ship with a large cargo hold to haul our ore back for processing. While he was gone, some additional NPC pirates came in but again I dispatched of them quickly.

It took a couple of trips to get all the ore back to the station, but after processing it all and splitting up the profits, I had a cool million ISK in my wallet.

I found out I am really enjoying the slower pace of the game. It may not be good for someone that wants to interact with the game all the time. Truth is, I watched TV while I was playing. Mining is simply “press a key” for each mining laser and wait for your cargo hold to fill up. Of course adding in NPC pirates and player pirates to the picture means you need to be alert. But still, in general the pace is slower than your typical MMO and I am thankful for that. It’s just right for my playstyle at this time in my life. That’s not to say it is always slow. I imagine combat with other players could be quite fast-paced and overwhelming.

I’m subscribing when the free trial is over. Any questions about the game, feel free to ask and I’ll try to get them answered. Oh, one other thing. In EVE, they call pirates “rats” so I guess my site name still applies, heh.

– Ethic