New Look

Rettic of Chronofile fame has updated my banner and background for me. What do you think? I also want to send a thank you to Zargyl who offered up this image which ran a close second... I mean, TWO chimeras! Makes me double happy.


 

In other news, I've been following the new Live Events on the server with great interest and I think this is an awesome new development for immersion in Eve. Good work CCP. I wish I could get online and participate.

Also, the news that Tyrannis is being delayed for a week and that they are staging the release so that people can scan planets before the land rush begins and that the NPC producers will be phased out later is a good idea. Still, if your corp/alliance runs a lot of towers you might want to stockpile on Robotics, Coolant, etc before the NPC producers shut down. I expect prices to rise a lot when it becomes player driven.

I want to get into a small part of Planetary Interaction but with my time constraints we'll have to see what I can manage. I might aim to produce something small like robotics or coolant that is always in demand. Still, I really like where this expansion is going.

Tyrannis: Lacking Content?

 Eve players are spoiled.

First off, we don't have to buy the game off the shelf (real or virtual) in order to play it, we just subscribe. Our expansions are free and twice yearly, and often have several new content changes/additions. All in all, its a good deal.

So when Tyraninis' feature page was launched there was some disappointment from several parts of the player base over the lack of announced new features. Instead there was only two: Planetary Interaction and Eve Gate (the website allowing access to in game emails, calendars, pilot and corp information, etc).

(Sarcasm On) Wow, only two new features for free? How dare they!? (Sarcasm Off)

Eve Gate is neat and handy from an organizational point of view, but its small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. But the fact of the matter is that Planetary Interaction is huge both in implementation and impact on the game.

In terms of implementation, they need to add the items for the various facilities that can be placed on the planet, the logic to mine materials and hook up to factories, schematics to produce new items that were simply NPC sold before, an interface to manage it all, skills to control access to it, logic to determine scarcity on popular planets, etc etc etc. And in terms of impact, the economy is going to be in flux for weeks if not months after this releases as major starbase operators look to power their facilities without visiting major hubs for supplies in high sec. The secondary effect could be the establishment of new smaller hubs in low sec and null sec as more items can be produced locally.

Follow that up with the hooks it will have for open warfare in the future, including the connection to DUST 514, and you have a major content delivery in the works there, on scale with (if not surpassing) the implementation of wormholes.

Being the fanboy that I am, I'm willing to cut CCP some slack on the major features of Tyrannis for now, assuming that the list of small improvements closer to release is similar to the quality of life improvements we saw in Dominion.

Why Planetary Interaction Is Important

I've seen a lot of disinterest and disparagement about the core of the Tyrannis expansion being Planetary Interaction (aka PI). I'm very excited about it so I thought I would write a post why I think PI is important and will have lots of positive impact for many pilots in the game. Counter opinions are welcome in the comments.

1) Superior immersion. Planets simply need to be more than warp beacons in space. They are the single most important thing in a solar system for role playing purposes as they are where the bulk of the billions of inhabitants in the universe live, most of the manufacturing base, research, politics... everything. In nearly every sci-fi setting planets are the backdrops to much of the action. Currently in Eve they are decorations.

2) Increase potential player density per system. What I mean is that the maximum number of players that can live permanently in a system or a constellation is limited by the amount of ISK the players can pull out of the system through their activities. PI gives an easily accessible ISK faucet that will allow more players to make a living in the same amount of space. Higher pilot density means greater opportunity for interaction (either cooperative or combative) which is good for everyone.

3) Increase player investment in territory. By allowing players to invest effort and ISK into a particular system or constellation, it gives players more feeling of ownership and something more to fight for should competition arrive. This is vitally important for players without the wherewithal to run and protect a POS (even a small tower is mammoth work for a small group) but still want to build something tangible.

4) Decrease NPC involvement in the markets. Its been indicated that the production facilities of PI will be separate from current production lines (Tech I, Tech II, Tech III, Drugs) and be used to build things currently provided by NPC orders on the market. This is a good thing as it allows the players to provide services in more areas, opening up more opportunities for players to participate in the complex market.

5) More incentive for Low Sec. The competition for resources in high sec will be fierce and decrease production for a lot of players. Low sec with its lower population density will be more lucrative, thus attracting the more adventurous pilots, thus providing more opportunities for interaction with pilots already there. I.e. more targets for low sec denizens.

6) More structure for Wormhole space. One of the problems with wormhole space is that a system can get drained of sites to exploit and there is no moon mining or respawning static belts to provide income. Since the planets will continue to provide income it will allow some wormhole groups to make more permanent homes.

7) Stepping stone to further development. PI had to start somewhere, and I really think this is a stepping stone to deeper interaction in the future. While combat on planet surfaces is not in the cards yet, its not hard to see how attacking other players installations is a logical next step. This opens up the possibilities of planetary bombardments and landings from our spaceships. Its also where DUST 514 will hook in.

To summarize: Planetary Interaction will deepen the experience and open more opportunities for pilot interaction, both cooperative and combative. This is a good thing in my opinion and will affect everyone in some form or another.

Date For Tyrannis

In the Tyrannis teaser video from CCP we see at the end that the due date for Tyrannis is May 18th. Sooner then expected.

I Didn't Know Spectre Worked At CCP

When I saw this image in the latest Dev Blog on planetary interaction, I immediately thought of Spectre:

I'm really liking everything I'm hearing about planets, sounds like a lot of fun for a OCD empire builder player like me. I'm looking forward to building up a production network without the hassle of a POS or empire waiting lines.

Baby update: Everything went well on Monday, baby #3 is doing fine, big and strong. Mrs Kodachi is also well. I'm home last night and today with the twins for a break.

Call Me Lord William

More information about Tyrannis' planetary interaction can be found from this Ten Ton Hammer interview with a senior producer from CCP. Some points of interest...

So the general idea is that everybody can play EVE, every player can do stuff on any planet, and the more people that use a particular planet, the less valuable it is for that particular player. And of course there are over 65,000 planets in the game. And you can interact with each and every one of them. Including those that are in wormhole space, which can actually be quite challenging.

 Emphasis mine.
And:

TTH: Right, right. Will there be a new set of skills that players will need to master?
Torfi: Yes. Absolutely. Your ability to master a planet, to manufacture, build up, and manage it, will be bound by skills. But again, the barrier of entry is really low. We want people to get in on and get a feel for this feature early. And also, I should mention that the planetary interaction should not be thought about as a feature to replace any action that is already going on in EVE, today. It's more augmenting and re-experiencing EVE. It doesn't require you to sit and grind. You go and you build up infrastructure, but then you set up some manufacturing cycles and infrastructure, and that interacts while you are playing the game. Then you can go back to it and make sure that everything is going well. Lube the machines, so to speak. And collect stuff from them to sell to someone else, or pick it up. But in general you can actually be playing and profiting from planetary interaction while doing all of the other interesting things that you can do in EVE.

More:

We're not saying that your installation in high-sec is going to get blown to smithereens the day DUST hits the market, but for low-sec and zero-sec, DUST 514 will definitely play a part of allowing you to mess up other peoples' infrastructure and have interesting gameplay connecting the planets and mercenaries down on the planets in a very meaningful way. A way that is yet to be revealed, of course.

Not done yet:

TTH: Will the planets have some manufacturing and research possibilities that are currently done on stations?
Torfi: They won't have the same, no. We are not going to be competing with the industry, research and manufacturing on the stations. And they're not going to be competing with mining. We are not replacing any of these game systems. They will be a separate ecosystem, so to speak.

And finally:

TTH: Any timeline on this? I know you said it was a summer expansion.
Torfi: The goal is to have it out on the test server in little more than a week. It's going to be very embryonic. It's funny, because it's a recurring debate: we choose to put our stuff out really early, onto a test server, even if the UI isn't finished, the core experience isn't finished, and the pipeline isn't finished. Both to get player feedback, and also just to get people hammering on it to see what it can take. Some of us would prefer not to release anything until launch day, but we feel that it's better to get as many eyes on the feature as possible, and as many fingers clicking the buttons as possible, as soon as possible. But often it's confused or mistaken for a beta or for the real thing. What they're watching is just active software development.

Very exciting! I can't wait to see it in details on the test server.

Four Things

Thing the First:

I went out PvPing last night, but our gang just couldn't get it together fast enough to catch a hostile recon gang made up of two Falcons, a Rapier, and a Pilgrim and in the process we lost a Rook to them. Fail. I was really hoping to get my 10th killmail of February but alas, it was not meant to be.

Thing the Second:

I've seen a good amount of disappointment about the core of Tyrannis expansion being planetary interaction. I've seen people saying that fixing the game / low sec boost / improving Assault Frigates / etc etc etc should be higher priority.

My opinion is twofold:
First, planetary interaction is overdue by about five years, and its a shame that in a space sci fi game the only interaction I have with planets is to warp to them and look at them (as pretty as they are now). By making planets mean something, all those planets in low sec will draw more people into the area. Thus, its a boost to industrialists and low sec.

Secondly, Agile development is such that they don't know all of the features (aka Stories) that are going to make it in by the deadline; everything gets prioritized and the final list of features becomes apparent based on what they get done by the deadline (extremely simplified description). In order to not over-promise, they only commit to the highest priority items. Expect to see more features announced as the date approaches in the coming months.

Thing the Third:

I forget.

Dammit... I still forget....

Ok, I remember: Derranna finally finished the long training haul of Large Projectiles V and has started into Minmatar Battleship this morning. Another long haul to get to level V. Sigh.

Thing the Fourth:

CrazyKinux is looking for input on the new Eve Blog Pack. I was going to submit a list of my favourite blogs but got paranoid I might miss some and offend someone. In the end I opted to not provide input as it all feels very reminiscent of high school popularity games to me (and that was a game I failed at hard). I understand the value of the blog pack to focus people to the quality content, but I wish there was a more objective measure.

Regardless, thanks to all those who put forth this humble blog, it means a lot to me.

Introducing Tyrannis Expansion

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!: Introducing Tyrannis:

It‘s that time of year again. CCP‘s developers have finished planning and preparing and have started work on the next expansion for EVE Online. The exact release date will be announced later, but let‘s say that it will happen before the summer solstice.

What‘s in the package?

For a long time we have had people asking us for more options to build up their own infrastructure. It‘s something that comes up frequently at Fanfest, in past CSMs and during casual conversations with players. There seems to be some deep Freudian desire to erect something monumental. To make stuff. To create something new. At last Fanfest we announced our plans to allow you, the pod-pilots of New Eden, to shift your foci away from the heavens for a moment, onto the planets. In Dominion, we gave the planets a facelift, updating the graphics with beautiful landscapes, awe inspiring deserts, peaceful Ewok-friendly green worlds and violent burning lava fields. But that was just eye candy, right? Well, not quite. In our upcoming expansion, Tyrannis, ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS.

I'm so in favour of this! Sounds something like what I envisioned. Time for a new post label.