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I am an old school gamer in the deepest meaning of the word, I am also a true fan of EVE Online. This blog will be where I will expound on my thoughts about EVE.

Author: Mopar63

You know with Fanfest coming up, an economic upgrade in the works as well as refinements to Faction War I am kind of suprised to see that this is the most talked about issue:

A long overdue and much needed change will be put in place with the Wednesday, 15 October 2008 patch. Ghost Training, the continuous skill gain on accounts in an inactive or expired state - will no longer function after Wednesday, 15 October 2008. This practice upsets the balance of the game, and capsuleers who actively put their time and energy into working on their characters will no longer be unfairly affected by those few who have not.
 

The jest of this is fairly simple. Until now a player could set a really long skill, say one that would take 90 days to run. stop payment on their account and then come back in time to run the game with the new skill fully trained.

Now before I even begin with the company side of this issue, how is this kind of setup fair by ANY stretch of the imagination to people that are actively paying and playing the game? We pay our monthly fees and play along and yet someone that decides they want to enjoy the ebenfits of play later can stop paying and still reap the benefit.

Or how about from the company point of view. Players are not paying because they do not like the long skill training but want to play when the skill is done so they drop the account until they get what they want and then start paying again. The game maker recieves no income or support for the account but is expected to let the account benefit from this in game?

I can honestly say I see less "whine" when I take the "wine" trail on the weekend with my wife. This is the most CHILDISH and STUPID, yes I said STUPID, out cry from a gaming community I have ever seen. Wait let me back that up a second, the majority of the community really does not care it is just a vocal child care group that is demanding on this.

The outcry for free gaming actually started a bit back when the gamers complained about game card prices from ingame purchases. Basically what a player could do is earn in game money and then use it to buy game cards to pay for accounts. This allowed people, the card sellers, to get ISK by pyaing real money, for the cards and was sanctioned by CCP.  CCP went a step further and let the game card sales use the same free market model that is used in the game, in other words the players through supply and demand and pure greed set the prices. CCP made only one change, it converted from various lengths of time on time cards to a single 60 day card.  This change caused the market to flucuate and the outcry was instantaneous, fix this CCP! Wait this is a free economy, yet we want regulation from the company and our freedom as well. Sorry folks cannot have both.

The truly sad part of this was all the gamers that threatened to quit playing if they could not get easier access to free gaming. Now think about that statement and the pure level of stupid that is needed to have that mentality. If you want free gaming there are tons of them but EVE has NEVER been a free game and yet now you want them to make it easier to be free for you?

Well now Ghost Training is the new cry for how dare CCP make us pay money. The truth of this entire argument however comes done to power gaming. Here is the issue, people want to have three or four accounts so they can power game and yet cannot afford this. So they use loop holes and the time card market to get the extra accounts without hurting their budget. Now the simple solution would seem to be cut back on your active accounts. I can understand two accounts but even that costs less than taking a date to dinner each month. If you cannot afford that then you do not need to be gaming.

How about even looking at this from another angle, these power gamers must have some fairly powerful systems if they two or three box or run multiple PC as once to run all these accounts at once, if you can afford all the hardware the game cost itself is MINOR at best.

Oh but wait other will say I do not run these all at the same time. Rather I want to train more than one character at a time to have different ones for different situations. Thats cool I understand that and the game does allow for up to three alts per account. Oh sure it does they cry but you can only have active training on one account ata time.

Wait a second is the same not true in the other major MMOs. I mean in WoW you cannot run the experience of two ALTS on the same account up at the same time can you? How about LOTRO can you have a Guardian getting experience while your ALT Minstrel does as well. of course not, so WHY should you get this in EVE?

In the end I feel this points to a much simplier problem. We are playing ROLE PLAYING GAMES and yet so many people want to find a way to WIN. They do not truly understand than an RP game is not able to be WON, it is to be experienced. They gloss over content and blast through missions with overkill firepower to rush to the magical end game win. In doing so they miss out on some great material and the feeling of accomplishment when they finish that TOUGH mission by the skin of their teeth. They do know the excitement of the first name module they can add to their ship or the thrill of really enjoying their first cruiser.  Stop looking for the win, RPGs are not about the end game but the journey, take your time and enjoy it.

As for those demanding change from CCP or they will quite, my advice is PLEASE DO! Get out of my RPG and my forum! Let me enjoy the game they way it was intended that within your narrow vision of free power gaming. Also BTW I do NOT want your stuff, I will eanr my own and have a balst getting their without your need to rush forward. I will happily pay my $15 a month to play EVE and if I need a second account I will pay for it with my cash as well. 

CCP has done more than any of the other pay games to give FREE service to it's players. It has never charged for an expansion and shows no signs of it in the near future. The game keeps growing and yet my bill does not, that sounds like a WIN in my book.

Go now Ghost trainers, walk into the light and forsake this mortal coil, go the way of the dead and let the living, and paying players live in peace.  

I am an OLD school role playing gamer. I can trace my first experience back to the beginning days of D&D that was before the A was added. I was recalling the other day with my best friend Doug, our experiences in High School when I decided to take my first stab at Game Mastering. We had a small but tight knit group and our adventures went on to shape us into the RP monsters we are today.

Fast forward to today and the rising of the MMOs. Oh sure we have a blast playing the stand alone RPGs such as Neverwinter Nights or The Witcher. However those stand alone games miss the critical component that makes an RPG what it truly can be, interaction with others. So in this sense the rise of the MMO was to us the true holy grail, a chance to game without the need for 500 books and setting aside an entire weekend, finding gamers without having to advertise in the local paper, ahh life is going to be great.

That is until you get into an MMO. Now in fairness most MMO players are not old school pen and paper RPers so they do not know the difference. For an MMO player RP is about going to a forum and speaking with weird spelling or over the top lines. Sometimes it even involves doing this in the in game chat. That however seems to be the limit of their RP and this is where things fall short.

A true RP is not about what you say but rather what you DO. I will delve into this first from the perspective of LOTRO and then come back at it from EVE.

In LOTRO a lot of players try to RP but my experiences there show few truly know how. Oh you can find all the right words, I mean Dwarves talking about getting drunk and how Elves cause cancer. You can find a Hobbit that will talk about being hungry all the time. But to find a player that actually uses deeds to show their RP is extremely rare, even in just RPing a class. Case in point let’s look at a Guardian.

The Guardian class exists with the mentality that they are the defenders of the weak. They stand between the darkness and those that cannot fight it. In the case of a group a guardian, particularly a Dwarven Guardian is there to keep his friends safe because he trusts no one else to do it. Now if this is role played they way I described above then a battle scene might go something like this.

The party encounters a huge group of Goblins. As the Goblins begin an attack charge, with a yell of Baruk Kazah the Dwarven Guardian charges ahead and grabs as much of the Goblins attention as he can. His companions join the fray but soon they realize the party will be overwhelmed. The party leaders calls for a withdraw; the problem is that if they all withdraw at once the Goblins will pick off the weaker members.
With this in mind the Guardian goes into berserker mode and grabs the aggro of all the Goblins. He stands in the middle of the fray wrecking havoc as the rest of the party withdraws. Once the part is safely away then he attempts to withdraw as well. If he dies in the attempt then his death was noble and to him the best way he could go.

This to me is a GREAT bit of Guardian RP; he has captured the feel and essence of the Guardian. Sadly the reality is very different. Most of the Guardians I saw played would forsake the shield for a two handed weapon so they could dish out all the damage they could, after all it was much cooler hacking orcs than slowing them down for everyone else. Once the fight begins they ignore the rest of the fight and focus on what they can kill. Eventually the party begins to disintegrate because the weaker characters are dying since they are getting aggro the Guardian is missing and so the group leader prepares to call for withdrawal. However at this point the Guardian, seeing others dying has decided it is time to flee and is already half way down the road. The rest of the group dies the Dwarven Guardian thinks it is good RP to brag how wimpy those Elves and Humans are, they need to get tough like the Dwarf so they can live through a fight to.

Sadly this theme however carries over to all MMOs. In EVE the two best races for RP are the Amarr and the Minmatar. Both sides have some great RP groups, well let me rephrase that active RP groups. The reason I say that is they have some really excellent forum wars taking place but the real battles are rare, the reason why, no one will fight unless they have overwhelming odds. The Mighty Amarr, the Chosen of God, undefeatable because God is with them will run whenever faced with equal or worse odds for them. Minmatar ships can be ravaging within the Amarr home system and they will sit in station or hide until an overwhelming fleet can be assembled. Oh they can spout the great words in channel but their actions speak a different story.

Do not think the Minmatar get off any easier. The might saviors of their brethren, the freers of slaves will be happy to do so when they have no chance of losing. A small Amarr patrol rampages through Minmatar space buying up slaves at local stations and using this as an RP hook, claiming they are gather slaves. Do the Minmatar in the system move out to disrupt or stop this abomination? Sure they do, once they can get odds of 3 to 1 or better on their side. Oh sure they will cry with outrage over the chat channel but their ships will remain in station or hidden until the odds are amazing against their foe.

Now I point out these two races because quite frankly the RP in the other two races borders on none existent. I was part for a while of both races RP groups, The Caldari in a Naval Unit and the Gallente as an Intaki separatist. Both groups as mentioned before spent a lot of time paying lip service to their RP but where never willing to put their ships on the line to LIVE the RP.

Now reading this you might I think I consider RP in an MMO and EVE in particular a waste of time, this is not the case. There are exceptions to the above norms. This entire blog entry was prompted by the actions of a Minmatar RPer the other night.

In this go around of EVE I have found my fun in playing a Minmatar freedom fighter. This pilot has great navigation skills and since I love stealth combat, an old submariner here, I decided to train the pilot into Covert ops with his ultimate goal being to get into a Black Ops ship. Since I believe RP should be based on actions as much if not more so than words I set out and found the Minmatar Corporation that would most likely make use of my skills from an RP angle, the Republic Security Services. I have therefore dedicated my mission running to this corporation. During this time I have been frequenting the Minmatar public RP chat channels.

I am about to advance into level 2 missions and so I wanted advice on a cruiser I am looking at, the Bellicose. From an RP perspective I posed my question and had a number of responses, all of them basically saying I should instead get into a Rupture. I commented that while I understand their thoughts I was limited in my budget as my meager income from working for the RSS was being used to fund the advancement of my education. I explained that I was moving into covert operations and the use of the cruiser was only a stop gap so I hated to invest the extra cost if I could avoid it.

At this point I received a mail from one of the players in the channel. In perfect RP language he explained that he and the organization he worked with wanted to help a new pilot that was seeking to work in support of the Minmatar Nation. To this end he was giving 3 million of his own ISK to help me over the hump of moving into a cruiser. He explained that all he wanted in return was my promise to help the Minmatar people.

Now I understand that 3 million ISK to an establish character in EVE is chump change but here is this pilot who does not know me at all, for all he knows I could be an Amarr plant. Yet he puts out his own ISK and takes a chance at helping a new player that wants to save the Minmatar people. He let actions and not words show his RP.

Now this might seem minor to most and in some ways it is but the move showed me a player that is willing to do more than talk his RP. Now if he does this with his ship or not I do not know but it is nice to see the players that do not limit their RP to forum shouting matches.
 

A recent article here at MMORPG took a look at the character creation system and tried to discuss the effects the attributes in game have on the skills. The article leaves a lot of things hanging so i thought I would try to clear it up.

EVE has five attributes: Intelligence, Perception, Charisma, Willpower and Memory. When creating your character you can make decisions that will effect the starting attributes. If you are going to try to maximize your attributes it is important you know what kind of play you are shooting for and then pick the attributes that are important to your skills:

Intelligence is the primary attribute in Electronics, Engineering, Mechanic and Navigation skill groups.

Perception is primary for Missiles, Gunnery and Starship Command

Charisma is the primary attribute of Social skills.

Willpower is the primary for Trade and Leadership skills.

Memory is the main attribute for Corporate Management, Drones and Learning.

Now you have to understand in direct game play the attributes mean NOTHING! Your ability to fire a gun or use afterburners are not based at all on attributes but on skills alone. However the time it takes to train those skills is effected by attributes.

Learning skills are very important then as these skills raise the attributes and thus reduces the learning time for other skills. This means that a beginning character will benefit a lot from putting learning skills at the top of their priority list

I suggest the following training schedule be the first one a player undertakes:

Instant recall (raises Memory)
Analytical Mind (raises Intelligence)
Learning (decreases overall learning time)

This order is to be repeated until all three skills have reached level 3. With these skills at level three now train up Iron Will (Willpower) and Spacial Awareness (Perception). If you are taking your character in a direction that will need Social skills quickly then add in Empathy for Charisma, otherwise this can wait.

Now with the attribute skills to level 3 at least you can now start training other skills you need to be effective. However keep them at lower levels for now. When you log for the night put on one of the learning skills to take it to level 4. In the morning switch back to skills with shorter times when you can manage the skills directly.

This is an important key to the skill based system. You can pause a training where it is, go to another and come back later. Get in the habit of when you are playing, setting short skills that you can change right as they come do. When you are going to be down for an extended period start a longer skill and pause it when you come back.

This method allows you to get a good solid skill set while still moving skills to higher levels. Using this method over the course of about a week you should be able to get Learning, Instant recall and Analytical mind up to level 4. Once these skills hit level 4 you can now begin the tier two of these respective skills and get another 3 levels pretty quick. Going to level 5 with the tier one is nice but it is still only a 1 point raise and not as big a return for the time investment.

There is one set of skills I suggest ALL new players put into the que as fast as they can after getting learning skills to level 3. Once I have hit this point I next train my Science skill to level 3 and then train Cybernetics to level 1. Implants are a great piece of gear that can raise stats as well as enhance the usage of a lot of equipment. The early game mission give you a few implants if you run the missions. These mean a nice boost and are essentially for free. Level 1 Cybernetics lets you use these.

The rest of the skills have not pattern as it is based on the way you plan to play. Personally I try as quickly as I can to raise the base skills for good frigate piloting. That means Navigation, Engineering, Mechanic, Electronics and whatever skills I need for my base weapon systems.

As I mentioned in my previous blog many people RUSH forward to get as big a ship as they can and so try to raise Starship command skills. I personally leave these alone and concentrate on the support skill areas I mentioned. The reason is those skills will enhance EVERY ship command down the road. By putting them first I get to be very effective with my frigate and when I am finally ready to move to cruisers I have great support skills and the ISK to make the move with little effort and the best possible return.

Unlike level based systems the skill system needs a player to take an active role in SHAPING his character. Make a plan and start working for it right out of the gate. If you find out down the road that you want to change your play style, no worries, the basics I gave you here to start will enhance EVERY play style down the road and get you rolling to making your mark on the universe.