EVE

Keeping You All In Game #MMORPG

stargrace November 12, 2010 2Comments

Krystalle made an interesting point to me a few days ago about EVE Online – the PI (planetary interaction) that I had been doing on a daily basis is the games way of keeping me logging in every day. I hadn’t even made the connection until she said something, but she’s absolutely right. I set my extractors once a day so that they’re mining on 24 hour rotations. It’s easier then checking every few hours (another option) or every three days (the longest option). Sure, I also have to log in to update my training queue but that could be anywhere from a one day update to a 25+ day update. It doesn’t require you to log in every single day. If I want to take advantage of PI (which I do, the money is just too good to pass up) I need to make sure I’m constantly working on it.

Typically I am not a fan of daily events. I dislike being ‘forced’ to play a game every day when I am perhaps not in the mood for it. WoW has these quests in spades with a limit of 25 ‘daily’ quests that you can complete (per day). EQ2 also has daily quests for mission zones (which require a group) as well as weekly and daily crafting quests. LotRO has daily faction quests (specifically crafting factions). These little things that pull players into the games on a regular basis can some times be so small that we barely even notice ourselves doing it, but they’re there.

What I’d like to see is more inventive ways of (for lack of a better term) coercing your players to log in every day. Sure, daily quests are great but they’re starting to get very old. Being obligated to log in is not how you want your players to view your game. You want them to be excited. On the flip side I do think that these daily quests work because I feel bad if I miss a day and I try to make sure I get my ’rounds’ done and if they didn’t work I doubt we’d see so many of them. Festivals are another method of grabbing the attention of players and enticing them to log in, as well as live events. If you add too many of these they become meaningless and players will just ignore the festivals.

Does anyone else have other suggestions or ideas of how games can entice players to log in on a daily basis without it feeling like an obligation?

Everything But The Kitchen Sink

stargrace August 24, 2010 1Comment

Lately, in EVE Online I have a little bit of everything going on. First of all I closed down my 2nd account. I just couldn’t justify the cost of keeping the second account open when all I was doing was hauling for my main account and the odd mission here and there. Not a big deal – well. In one regard it was sort of a big deal. See, that account was also what I considered my “PvE” account, had trained to fly a Dominix and had a pretty good set of skills towards using drones. My main account has trained industry for the most part. Now I’m trying to catch her up to the 2nd account. I absolutely loved my Dominix, so I’m training to fly one of those again. I’m 2 days away. I’ve also got myself a new imicus fit for probing, so I can begin my wurmhole exploration once more. Soon as I get a cloaking device. Eventually I want to upgrade that to a Helios, but that’s further down the road.

Once I have my Dominix I can go back to a combination of combat and mining missions. I’m far behind in those currently, spending most of my brief time in game working with my R&D agents and crafting. Oh, and PI of course (which I suppose technically is a form of crafting).

I’ve got a fairly constant round of invention going at a little base I’ve set up. At that same base I’m doing manufacturing, and my R&D agents happen to also be in that system. Then there’s PI, which I check in on once a day. I really wish there were some sort of mass extract button, Because right now I have 84 set up and scanning them all one at a time to set their resources is a huge waste of time. The money makes it worth it, but still – annoying!

I’ve really got a little bit of everything going on. With the manufacturing bits finished I make a weekly run to Jita to sell my goods and see if there are any deals that I want to take advantage of (which is where I got the imicus, and the dominix). There are still a lot of skills I need to train up, but I’m trying to make sure I have a good combination of everything. Of course corp is still diligently working away on getting that POS one day too. It feels like a dream just out of reach, we’ll see how it goes.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Lets All Eat PI

stargrace June 9, 2010 3Comments

Yesterday PI (planetary interaction) went live in full with command centers being added to the market. I posted over on NomadicGamer about it, but thought I’d go into a bit more detail here on MmoQuests. I’ve been getting a lot of questions about it and wanted to clarify a few things.

• There is no limit to the number of people who can harvest (extract) from a planet. The only limit is the resources found upon it. There are thousands of planets in EVE and you will have no problems trying to find one to extract from. Even if there are multiple people on a planet chances are you’re on one side and they’re on another, or that you’re extracting different resources. There’s no ‘mad rush’ to grab land so to speak. No one claims an entire planet (at least in highsec which is where I am).
• You (and anyone else) can only have at max – 6 – planets that you are extracting from at any one time. You can place one command center per training level, and everyone starts with 1 already allowed. So if your skill for command centers is V that’s 6.
• There are tutorials for PI, and it is incredibly cheap to get started. Don’t be afraid of trying it out because you don’t have the cash. Lower ranked command stations are only a few thousand ISK, and unless you’re putting a launch pad (one of the ways to ship items back to space) on your colony, the costs are fairly low, and very reasonable.
• The point to PI is to create things that NPCs sold previously. There are lists and charts of all of this over on the EVE wiki, and I highly suggest people check them out and decide what they want to make before doing it. The market is of course not exactly stable right now, but give it some time and things will calm.

I’ve been having a lot of fun setting up my stations. So far I’ve got three planets set up, each with 1 command center, 2 extractors, 3 processing plants (two basic and one advanced) and one storage facility. You can chose which site you want to extract from, each has a different timer. Mine are currently set to three days while I figure out the basics and make sure I’m doing it all correctly. The command center you use will decide how much CPU you have to spend on other buildings. I’ve currently got mine trained to III (all my PI skills are at III on both accounts actually) which seems to be just enough for what I want to do. I haven’t extracted enough resources and processed them to need to shuttle them into space yet, but I’m sure I will by the time my three days are up.

In the mean time I’m back to training my ‘regular’ skills. The Orca is on hold while I save up for wurmhole mining /extracting, and I’m still working on my industrial skills on the main account. I’m inching my way towards research project management so that I can work with multiple R&D agents, and all in all, things are going well. Even though EVE is clearly a PVP game, I’ve done very little (ie: none) of it and have had an incredible time just playing my way. I like the fact that the game really does offer something to everyone, as long as you don’t mind trying to figure out what it is you want to do, without having your hand held.

Fly safe!

It Doesn’t Get any more Exciting Than This

stargrace June 6, 2010 4Comments

What an incredibly exciting night. You know how you get a thrill from taking down a particularly hard encounter, or that chill when you know you’re on the brink of something dangerous? That proud feeling when you barely make it out alive and you want to jump up and down in your chair and pump your fist in the air. That was my night. To start it off that contract that I put out in Jita the night before actually sold, my first ever contract. I was incredibly proud and happy and excited. Fluke? Maybe, but it was still fantastic. I put another contract out in the 2nd trade hub that I know of, a little cheaper then the first, to see if it would also sell. Started an invention of another hammerhead II which succeeded, and put in another blueprint to be sold off while I manufactured the hammerhead drone. As I mentioned yesterday Kasul and I are actually using these drones, so they’re not being sold for any profit. It’s nice to finally have a nice ‘method’ down to my crafting.

There are quite a few ‘branches’ to EVE that I like to explore. One that I’ve barely spent any time with is probing. It’s a smaller branch, but the rewards can be fantastic if you’re patient. I have an imicus fit for probing, since it gains a small bonus. I’ve got rigs that increase this bonus, and I’ve got a cloaking device fit to it so I can sneak into sites I find and scope them out before risking my ships. I’m still learning what ship names mean and how to tell whether a location is dangerous or not.

I set out to see what I could find, and hone my skills at narrowing down a signature. Getting one to show up at all is always nice. Then moving it to 25% so that you can see what type it is, then 75% so you can see the name of it, is always exciting.

The first site I found was actually one of those 100% signature sites where rats hang out. Normally when I scan those someone else has either already been there or is performing clean up duty on the location. This time around I was incredibly lucky, and I happened to be first. Kasul came out in his Ishtar and fought the four waves of rats while I took a few jumps to grab my dominix and help with the final wave as well as help with the clean up afterward. Another player showed up just as we were finishing, and for once it felt good to be the ones who got there first.

I switched back to the imicus and continued trying to hone my probing skills (har har) and managed to lock onto two wurmhole signatures. I’ve heard nothing but “DANGER DANGER” when it comes to these sites from pretty much everyone, but I was feeling bold. I know the basics of wurmholes, I know they can collapse behind you, you can get lost in them forever, they are nullsec space, and they are infested with rats called Sleepers that are very mean. Not to mention other players who (I imagine) have far more experience than me. Despite the warning signs I decided it was time to pop into one and see what would happen.

One reason I felt ‘safe’ doing this is because I haven’t spent a lot of ISK (or LP or anything else for that matter) obtaining implants. If I lose mine I’ll lose a few +2 and maybe one or two +3 that I’ve gotten from mission running. My clone is up to date, and if I have to self destruct I’ll lose my ship and really nothing of any true value. Before jumping into the wurmhole I told myself that it was highly probable that I would die inside, or be lost forever, or that some other great evil would befall me. If you go in with this attitude (and truly believe it) things are a lot less scary.

I traded out my probing imicus for a second imicus that is fit with a cloaking device and a probe launcher and nothing else. The ship is a back up and meant to be “ok” to lose forever. Took a deep breath, and launched myself into the wurmhole. Wow. It was amazing. There were planets everywhere, it was huge. I spent some time roaming around just looking. I’d never seen something that appeared so empty before. Since I was there in a covert ops ship I decided what the heck, I may as well practice my probing skills a little more. I ignored the sleeper sites that I found and first traveled to a Ladar site which is a gas cloud. In wurmholes there is a plethora of nullsec materials to be harvested. Of course it’s not safe at all. That’s the exciting part. I am currently unable to harvest gas clouds but I added it to my list of things to do. I moved on and eventually tracked down a gravimetric (I probably spelled that wrong) site. Warped to it, and was unable to breathe. Ores by names I had never seen before presented themselves to me. Of course I was in an imicus and couldn’t harvest them so I took about 10 seconds to decide that I would get my second account, fit it with a ‘disposable’ retriever, and attempt to harvest nullsec ore in a wurmhole.

My heart was beating in my chest, it was that exciting. I fit the retriever with ‘disposable’ items, joined up in a fleet with myself and off I went. I looked at the info to the wurmhole which will give you a brief description of it. While the entrance was not going to last too much longer (less then 12 hours) it had not been disrupted by ships entering, so I shrugged my shoulders and warped the retriever in.

Headed to the ore site, and began mining, my eyes scanning my overlay to watch out for any rats. Two pulls of nullsec ore later, there they were – sleepers. I (by some incredible stroke of luck) managed to warp myself out while the retriever was almost dead, and made it back to the wurmhole entrance (or exit, depending on how you see it) where I had entered from. Hold laden with ore, I snuck out, caught my breath, and made it back to headquarters where I just stared at the ore. I can’t refine it yet, but I will. Looking at an ore chart (thank you Kasul) I saw that I had managed to find the 2nd most valuable ore in the game.

I’ve got no idea if this is something I’m going to make a habit of but it was an incredibly exciting night none the less. It’s been a long time since I felt that rush from an MMO, and I’m looking forward to my next experience.

Fly safe!