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EVE Online General Article: Wait and See
MMORPG.com EVE Online guru Andrew Wallace writes this update on the game focusing in on the new Council of Stellar Management, tech three cruisers and more.
By Andrew Wallace on June 22, 2009
Although it's not recent news, the third term of the Council of Stellar Management, or CSM, is now well under way. The Council CSM is a group of EVE Online players that are elected, by the players, to talk directly with CCP and discuss any issues they have with the game, as well as having input on possible solutions.
;)
Formed as part of the response to the T20 incident (where a CCP staff member was found to be providing items and other help to one of the big alliances) in an effort to create a greater degree of transparency between CCP and the players, as well as providing another, more direct, channel of communication (as opposed to the sea of wailing and gnashing of teeth that is the official forums).
There was always going to be problems; the CSM delegates have had differing opinions on how to deal with certain parts of the game, as well as clashes of personality, and these have frequently spilled out onto the forums. Some would also say that it's just a glorified PR stunt, and they wouldn't be entirely wrong. The players of an MMORPG electing a body that gets to discuss issues with the developers face to face is yet another unique facet of EVE that CCP can wave in the faces of other games; one that got a fair amount of press, including an article in The New York Times.
;)
All of the arguments and drama aside, we have seen some significant improvements to EVE based on their input. They've highlighted a fair number of issues, from Black Ops battleships to 0.0 space, but the one that clearly stands out is the skill queue. The glorious, glorious skill queue. Now, we all know that it would have happened eventually. A skill queue is something that players have been begging for even before I started playing EVE, and it wouldn't surprise me if they were even petitioning for it back in the beta stages. CCP, however, have always leaned against AFK gaming in EVE, so it's not surprising that giving players the ability to change skills without having to log in wasn't their top priority, and it's thanks to the CSM that not only do we have the skill queue, but that we got it as soon as we did.
The CSM is a good thing for EVE; it's a spotlight; a way of getting CCP to consider new ideas or revisit current features, ships, modules, etc, through face to face discussion. Hopefully the latest batch of CSM delegates can bring us something as wonderful as the skill queue, but with their first official meeting with CCP not scheduled until late August, we'll have to wait and see.
;)
Moving swiftly on, I'd like to talk about tech three cruisers. I mean, I really, really, want to talk about tech three cruisers, but I can't. Why? I'm a poor capsuleer and the damn things are still ridiculously expensive; chances are you're in the same boat as me, and have yet to even see one on Tranquility, let alone fly one. Even without fittings you are still looking at anywhere from two to four billion isk if you want one off the market. It's been three months seen since they were released, with the Apocrypha expansion, and to say that they are still uncommon is an understatement. Luckily, it looks like the price may be dropping in the near future.
The heart of the problem isn't the lack of raw materials, but the data cores, and the blueprints they produce, that are used to reverse engineer them into T3 components. There's been a flood of sleeper salvage coming out of the wormholes, but the scarcity of these key items is creating a bottleneck that makes the production of the T3 ship parts more difficult and is responsible for the insane prices lasting for as long as they have.
;)
Anyway, the solution laid out in a recent dev blog is that, amongst other things, data cores are going to drop more often, and survive the journey out of the wormhole so the industrialists can do sexy things with them, sleeper salvage, and some fullerites. Speaking of fullerites, the volume of fullerite gas is also being decreased, so ships can carry bigger quantities, hooray. I'm not even going to pretend that I know anything about the industrial side of EVE, or the process of reverse engineering, but it basically means that T3 ship components are, hopefully, going to become easier to manufacture, more of the fancy "strategic" cruisers will make it onto the market, and prices will drop, in theory.
The other good news is that these changes should have already gone live by the time you are reading this, or, I suspect, will do before the end of June. I'd like to think that this is the beginning of the end of mad prices for T3 ships, but, and I seem to be thinking this a lot about EVE at the moment, we'll have to wait and see.
The cost of building a T3 cruiser has kept me (and I imagine others) away from building them. I mean I can do it, but do I really want to waste that much money on a ship that may be popped shortly after it's maiden voyage? Now that components are not gonna be as scarce anymore, maybe this will change (drastically I hope) this dilemma. We'll probably being seeing strategic cruisers more often from here on out.
I am playing eve now, but the constant ganking has taken a lot of fun out of it for me and my small corp.
I won't explore because that's just a death sentence - I'm just sitting in the space station learning stuff so maybe I can venture out one day. Right now it's not worth the monthly cost.
Unfortunately, my prediction of a June release for the new patch was a bit off and we're still waiting for the t3 component changes. :(
I can only speak about the T3 Caldari Strategic Cruisers, the Tengu, It's a solid weapons platform (missile boat.) Slightly weaker shields than the Ferox. Quite a sprite ship for it's class, and not a ship for PVP'ing and less you happen to be very rich indeed. As I always say, only lose what you can afford to replace. Right now, with it fitted out correctly. It's going to cost you about four to five billion ISK.
Why not joining a large established corp for a while? This way you can do missions, complexes and even exploration with a group of more experienced players aiding you. (You could also join a pirate or mercenary corp but those usually ask for experienced players). There are plenty of large corps looking for new members. Sure you may lose your ship from time to time, but most corps will replace your frigate and offer free T1 fitting for free. Besides, with insurance the cost of replacing any T1 ship is negligible.
T2 and T3 can wait, don't hide in a station, get out and have fun while you train your character, don't wait till you have a zillion points, you should be learning by doing, by flying and yes, by dying. In fact, with the right group of people it is often fun to die in small T1 ship fleet encounters. I still have my best times when we do roamings with a bunch of T1 destroyers, jumping to lowsec and 0.0, and trying to be the last one standing.
Trust me, join a big corp, don't be afraid of losing your ship, and get out of there.
I wanna see them release Ambulation. :)
Me too Teala.
I think the problem with any pvp game is making items like ships in Eve too expensive, is that is bascially makes such items something only seen very rarely and accessible only to those that are highly risk averse. When you base an entire expansion on such items and basically preclude them from the vast majority of your audience you risk losing them.
We are seeing that in Eve right now with the T3 ships. I have seen one T3 ship in all the time I have been playing since the release of the expansion. I sure hope that CCP corrects this problem.
Honestly I've seen this same thing happen in other MMOs. When new shiny toys come out, they're:
A) EXTREMELY rare drops to build
B) EXTREMELY difficult to logistically obtain.
C) EXTREMELY expensive.
D) EXTREMELY rare to see players use them.
The one thing that fixes this: time. Give it time, and you'll start seeing tons of them, and people won't be afraid to bring them out anymore, and will drop the prices too. And in Eve, time usually seems to drag a little slower than other MMOs. Granted, if they increase the drop rates, and improve the portability of building components, this will help a lot. But, please don't over-saturate the market to compensate. T3 should NOT be as common as T2, just as still today, T2 is NOT as common as T1, simply based on risk of loss.
"Greater risks with greater rewards"
A statement from CCP which is practically a lie, either that or the employee's of CCP have become experts of deception.
There is indeed greater risks for wormhole space, but the rewards are pretty much non-existent. Mission running in High-sec (safe) space remains the most profitable thing your average player can do.
And yes, Pvp is mostly boring blob fests, if you find yourself the victims far too often, then just join a bigger, better corp! Its simple really.
If your in a group thats failing in any MMO, you switch groups... Corps are basically Eve's groups, since you'd never "party" with a PUG.
Hopefully Ambulation will add some much needed variety, but there are already signs that it will be an even bigger disapointment than Apocrypha. They've already cut out most of the features that you see in their 'ambulation' videos's. (like seing your ship docked, or even looking out of a window into space)
I agree. I joined a larger Alliance Guild and the whole game changed. Instead of reds on the other side of those gate ganks, it was all greens and blues! =P
Not sure, but it seems to me that T3 ships are really designed for people who live in wormhole space and fight the PVE battles there. The really don't want to unleash T3 in standard PVP fights as it would imbalance things considerably.
By making them a huge risk for reward only a few will ever dare fly them.
They are intentionally expensive and rare, albeit prices have gone down significantly now. But they are still expensive.
The one thing CCP cannot do is to make T1 and T2 (or named variants) redundant. These things happen in cycles in EVE. There were a time when almost nobody used Orcas to mine at 0.0, now they are common. Or faction ships in PvP because they were too expensive. Now you see them occasionally.
I think when you are a new player you have to make same hard decisions, especially if you want to PvP. Unlike typical MMOs, in EVE, you can PvP with relatively low-cost ships and equipment and still be effective. You just have to plan your skills (ang gang) accordingly. Flying a battleship to a PvP situation is not necessarily improvement over a low-cost frigate in EVE.