EVE Blog Banter Special Edition: Why I love EVE

Below is my answer to the question raised in the special installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to CrazyKinux.

 

The gaunt Sebiestor with the spiky hear in his blue armor lets his grey-blue eyes linger upon the hull of the Myrmidon levitating by its maneuvering jets alone in front of him in his home station. If one would look at his face, the smile lingering on it at that breathtaking sight would betray how proud he is of this - his newest creation. The Sebiestor turns away from the balcony overlooking the hangar and hurries off to the lift that will take him down to the hangar.

A few minutes later, while the station facilities together with his crew undock the battlecruiser from the station, he already is happily chatting with his friends via tight-band NeoCom hookup about what to do next - together with them.

I guess the above sums up quite a lot what it is that I like most about EVE: It is a game where one can communicate with lots of other people and do something together with them. This would be true to any mmorpgs and I guess that is why I like playing them so much. EVE is special as its genre is special: Sci-fi where most other mmorpgs are fantasy games. That is also why EVE can live together so peacefully with them (they are a different genre that speak to a different player base).

The second part is that EVE allows the actions of players to have consequences. You can build your own things (actually if you don’t do it someone else _has_ to do it for you). Not only that, but the things you build are there to stay (if not destroyed by others) and all others can see/interact with them. You can even build structures (like POS’ - or even stations) that would endure even if you yourself would stop to play. There are no “rounds” after which everything gets reset, but everything is persistent everything is there to endure. I don’t play in 0.0, but the possibility is there to try to build your own “empire” out there in the stars. I guess that is what I like most about EVE: that it is persistent and allows the players not only to interact with the game-universe but to change it themselves!

I guess this will get even better when planetary interaction comes and would be even better if there were other things to build which would change the environment (like all the ideas about smaller player-owned structures).

EVE Blog Banter #14: Dreams and Hopes

Welcome to the fourteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The first banter of 2010 comes to us from the EVE Blog Father, CrazyKinux himself, who asks the following: As we begin another year in New Eden, ask yourselves “What Now?” What will I attempt next? What haven’t I done so far in EVE? Was it out fear, funds, or knowledge? Have I always wanted to start my own corporation, but have never dared doing so? Is there a fledging mercenary waiting to come out of its shell? Or maybe an Industrialist? What steps and objectives will I set myself to accomplish in order to reach my ultimate goal for this year? EVE is what you make of it. So, what is it going to be for you?

For me the last year was incredible, so many things have happened: the youngest generation of Minmatar slaves was freed by Empress Jamyl Sarum, wormholes opened up in quite an epic (if catastrophic if one remembers the lost Thukker caravan and the destruction of Seyllin) emergence. It was also the year where I emerged from the shadows and went into the light that is my current corp.
I am optimistic that this year (my second year in Black Thorne) will be as nice and interesting as the first in which I started with a Scythe and Rupture being able to fly just the first level of missions to piloting a Hulk and Maelstrom able to help the local government agents in much more difficult missions (just to name one line of progression).
What hasn’t changed and what probably will not change is that I am still wandering through New Eden and looking at all its wonders and sights, that I am still excited when I learn something new, see something new. Our universe may be dark, but it still does hold light in the form of good deeds you can see and nice people you can meet.
So my hopes are up for lots of interesting stuff to happen. I am hoping for lots new stories to read from all of you, I am hoping for those “Burning Life” stories, I am hoping to be able to complete my mission to help the Angel pirate faction against the anarchist pirates that are the Guristas, I am hoping to have a nice time with my corp mates and hope to be able to help them in lots of ops. This year will also be the one where I will try to make my first tentative steps into the regions where we Capsuleers reign free.
Lots of hopes, hm? Well, I guess as the past is our memory, the future is our dreams and hopes. Bearing that in mind I do hope for a nice and exciting year for all of us hoping together and dreaming together and together looking forward to the additions that will come to this universe of New Eden.

Below a list of other participants who weren't as late as I am with the banter.

List of Participants:

1. CrazyKinux's Musing - A beginning is a very delicate time...
2. The Wandering Druid of Tranquility - Words, words, words…
3. My God It's Full of Stars - What Now?
4. The Elitist - Plans for 112yc
5. Into the unknown with gun and camera - Show me the money
6. Ecliptic Rift - Enabling the future
7. Inanity and Doom - New Year's Resolutions, New Eden Style
8. Break Vol - Blog Banter #14
9. Guns Ablaze - What Now?
10. Adventures in Mission Running - The Way Forward
11. Diary of a Pod Pilot - Things I want to do
12. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah - The Year That Will Be
13. Roc's Ramblings - WordPress ate my blog
14. Vive Virtual - Frontier Living
15. A Mule in EVE - Next on the chopping block
16. Prano's Journey - I Peer Into My Crystal Pod...
17. Life in Low Sec - Expanding the Franchise
18. The Light of Stars - Testing the claims of CCP
19. A Memoir From Space - A New Direction
20. The Chronofile - Blog Banter 2010
21. FlashFresh - What now for Flash?
22. EVE Opportunist - Fyreite in 112
23. Mike Azariah - Jiorj
24. Yarrbear Tales - Year in Review
25. The Independant Analyst - The Year Ahead
26. The Travels of Black Claw - Where ma I going?
27. Warp Scrammed - What to do this year
28. Sered's Lives - Searching for directions in 2010
29. Finders & Keepers - New Tears, Same Great Taste
30. The Captain's Log - To Dream of the Future
31. The Lathspell of Mithrandir - Resolutions
32. The Midnight Sun - EVE Blog Banter #14
33. EVE What? - New Heights to be Reached
34. The EVE Chronicles - New Year – New Blog – What a way to start the Year!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Merry christmas to all of you form my corp and my humble self. The pic below was done for the corp homepage:

The middle part with the ice is there to fit the season. The other smaller pics are telling a bit of our corp-story. We do cater to beginners mining Ospreys (upper right-hand corner) in fleet with the other miners (lower left-hand corner). We happily run missions in fleet as well (poor Golem get’s “eaten” by a Maelstrom (upper left-hand corner) and do build capital ships (lower right-hand corner).

As Maeve posted quite a lot nice camera drone pictures, I would like to follow suit and show you some of mine from my recent travel through New Eden.

Sarum Prime, my desktop background atm. I really like the design of those Amarr stations (and that as a Minmatar – shame on me, but I guess I can’t help it).

Followed by the nicest station of all (well as far as dark scenery goes):

(Sadly it got a bottom undock so it’s “just” looks).

Scooting by one of those incredible plasma planets:

Be that as it may: I wish you all relaxing holidays!

Dominion and its incredible planets

I have to admit it: I just had to look at the new planets for Dominion myself and they indeed look great!

A friend from corp though got even better pictures made as he went much closer than I. It was nice to see the UI improvements as well. Especially the fleet finder and the mail system look great! As I don’t use the in-game browser anyway, I am not too frilled by it, but it was high-time for an update of both (mail and browser).
 

The new Asset window is nice as well! Finally we get a bit more help to search through all the stuff strewn all over New Eden (I especially like the tabs that let you e.g. show only modules or ore).

So I am quite looking forward to Dominion. Only sad thing is the Mothership affair which sent those behemoths back onto the drawing board. The affair - in addition to quite an outcry among the players that actually hope to use those ships - probably only got so big because it was a bit badly handled by the responsible developers. Just found an article about it on a German MMO news site called Buffed titled: “EVE Online: Full speed back captain.” (Which sound's a bit too drastic though).

Scholarly pursuits

Since first hearing about our history in New Eden during a presentation at University (it was actually the first presentation I saw there) I was interested in our origin and the mythology surrounding the EVE gate. It took me quite a while but after quite a bit of preparation I was finally able to fulfill my wish to see the fabled system of New Eden that not only gives this part of the galaxy its name, but also is the fabled point of origin for all of our people.

In my trusty Z1 Ranger the trip was quite uneventful and I only encountered one gate camp in Antem. The camping force had a Broadsword with them no less, but as they were aggressing a Hyperion class battleship, I slipped by unmolested. I did feel sorry for the crew and pilot of the Hyperion though.

When I finally reached the system of New Eden I was taken aback by the beauty of the spectrum stemming from the EVE Gate!

What kind of collapsed wormhole creates a phenomena like that? One that can be seen throughout a whole star system no less? The energies involved are astonishing and probably more than those released by a sun! There has to be some leakage still from the connecting point of the wormhole as the energy released into the visible spectrum has to come from somewhere! So even though it is collapsed it still looks very much .. felt very much alive.

And then there is the emergence of wormholes into Sleeper space .. are those two events connected somehow?

What do you - my esteemed readers - think about that?

EVE Blog Banter #13: Exploration mission

Welcome to the thirteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The first banter of this 2nd year of EVE Blog Banters comes to us from Zargyl from A Sebiestor Scholar, who asked the following: On the EVE Fanfest 2009 page are pictures of prizes for the Silent Auction that was held during the event. One of these photos was entitled “Design your own EVE mission”. My question now would be what kind of mission would you write if you got that prize? What would the mission be about? Would it be one using the new system of epic mission arks? What would be the story told by it? Feel free to expand upon his questions and put together your very own mission!

My first blog banter!! That does make me a proud Scholar I guess. And then I am probably the last one to post on it .. not so proud anymore but I can blame my missing game-time to that. Anyway here it goes:

The reason for my idea as well as a few quite general ideas for missions as well can be seen in my previous blog post but there are quite a few others as well. As the actual question does aim for a more specific mission below is a short possible plot for an exploration mission I would try to create if I’d get that cool price mentioned:

The investigation

Dear friend. I hope I can already speak to you thus? After all the other missions you did for me and my company? I would ask one more of you which I wouldn’t trust to anyone else. Please just don’t tell the media, but we have lost all communications with a research starbase in a deadspace pocket in . We don’t know what happened, but we do fear the worst. We would ask you to investigate the research center and find out what happened.

I have one further piece of information for you, which is to be kept between you and me. I am only divulging it in case it might be vital for your investigation: The research team there was investigating the eruption of wormholes and a possible connection between them and the EVE gate.

Fly safe!

The mission site itself would show a ruined research POS in a glittering cloud of debris within a ring of telescopes - some wrecked and in pieces and one intact. Around the site there are a few clues strewn about that get drawn from a pool of clues by chance (so that even if a pilot should get this mission twice or thrice, the actual subject studies by the company and the actual dilemma that happened is different).
This is the vital part as I am not a fan of repeating missions. One of the first missions I got myself was Rancorous Researcher, which was great the first time I went through it! (As it wasn’t just about blowing some npc ships up). But it felt a bit strained after I got it the fourth time from the same agent.

Ideas for clues for the missioner to find (and how to get them) are (not a complete list, just 3 ideas to see what type of clues I would like to put into the list of possible hints that are chosen randomly):

The intact telescope houses a container that can be hacked open revealing a document that gives the hint in its description:
Datalog day 38: Finally our long-range telescopes scanning the Genesis region found something worth mentioning: There does seem to be a correlation between the energy spectrum of the anomaly called the EVE gate and the anomalies called wormholes. We will investigate further.
Datalog day 42: Our investigation into the spectra is going well; we hope to be able to send our data soon.
Datalog day 43: Our scanners are showing the same energy lines emitting quite near us. Could this be a wormhole opening in this very system?
Datalog day 43 part 2: It is confirmed, we are getting a spectra that has an incredible correlation with the ones we are investigating!
Datalog day 43 part 3: We have located the source of the newest emergence: Its growing stronger as well. It seems we have found a way to find wormholes before they open up! But this one it’s opening … oh no it is opening right here … *transmission lost*

Aside from the wrecked POS there are also industrial shipwrecks and among those a small wreck that can get salvaged (like in a salvaging site). Only this time you don’t get normal salvage but a piece of “mysterious salvage” that gives a hint to its origin and the fate of the station in its description (and that has an icon similar or even identical to a piece of sleeper salvage):
Unknown damaged drone processor block: This piece of hardware shows it has to come from a drone, but it looks like it has been modified by some unknown source.

A third hint / or option for a random hint would be a lone surviving scientist in a cargo/escape-pod that hopes to get rescued. His pod is hidden between two other wrecks and when flying near the passenger send’s a tight-beam message to the player’s ship (which gets displayed in local): Mayday, mayday I am in an escape pod near you, please help!
A few seconds after that the local chat says: But please be careful THEY are still near ..
When rescued (when the can is opened and the scientist transferred to the player’s ship) the scientist says via local chat: Thank you very very much . I owe you my life! But please let’s go away fast before THEY find out that we are here.
Gathering the hints the randomly chosen hints completes the mission (getting the data core with the log, getting the mysterious salvage or getting the scientist – at least those three would be my first ideas for a list of hints). But the mission doesn’t end there. When aligning to warp away, rogue drones de-cloak/warp-in/spawn (mostly frigs that do have warp scramblers and immediately try to use them) blabbering in binary in local: No information shall escape.

When the player returns after the fight to the agent he would be highly interesting in the findings and perhaps mumbling to himself about them (in the text message when ending the mission). The text itself would be dependent on what clue was gathered and would hint (perhaps at a still further mission).
Examples for that might be:
- Who would have thought that? Sleeper tech modified drones? Was it the Sleepers themselves …
- So something form the EVE gate is messing with space continuum and creates the wormholes? But why just now? Has the EVE gate been modified? If so, who was it? Perhaps Jovians?
- Interesting report from that scientist, rogue drones overwhelmed the facility, rogue drones being directed by a Sleeper drone?

So much to that mission of mine. Which could hint at quite a bit storyline stuff, or even provide a hint to contact some other agent (like the certificate missions do) who might start the PC on an epic arc or that does reveal a bit of the EVE backstory through missioning (which would be a nice way to involve players with it). It also might be the first of a new type (encounter, courier) of mission: the exploration type.

List of Participants:

1. CrazyKinux's Musing - Your Mission, should you decide to accept it...
2. Zen and the Art of Internet Spaceship Maintenance - First Blood
3. The Elitist - Guristas Invasion
4. The Wandering Druid of Tranquility - ...It's another episode of Design Star: EVE Style...
5. Level Cap - Epic Battles
6. Roc's Ramblings - The Cave of Time
7. Aether - Teach a man to fish...
8. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah - Mission: Tangled Webs
9. Adventures in Mission Running - I can haz spaceship?
10. Nuke Thoughts - EVE Blog Banter 13
11. Diary of a Pod Pilot - Distressing The Damsel
12. Guns Ablaze - Dynamic Missions
13. Achernar - Confidential Report
14. Escoce - EVE Trader - Missions with player adversaries
15. Hands Off, My Loot! - Blog Banter #13, no witty title
16. Inanity and Doom - A question of impact
17. Cle Demaari: Citizen in EVE - See the Universe
18. A Starry Eyed Pod-Pusher - Wormhole Extreme!
19. Mike Azariah - Missioneer, not mouseketeer
20. Casiella - EVE Blog Banter 13: FW Epic Arcs

Epic ideas for epic missions, part 1

Apocrypha's addition of Epic mission arks using a new mission technology that provides more ways for us to interact with agents was great! For that it does merit the "epic" in its name. The possibilities with those new type of agents are endless and as of yet not fully realised. That is why I am starting a brainstorming list of my own with ideas for these kinds of missions:
These epic missions would be quite an interesting way to introduce new elements of the EVE storyline to players. Don’t get me wrong: Novels and Chronicles are all great and hugely appreciated (especially for the scholarly types like myself) but actually being involved yourself in one of the events would be even greater still!

Signature Characters

One vital element of the EVE storyline are EVE’s signature characters. So it was only fitting that my start into dreaming about possible epic arc missions began with these by posting an article about "Meeting Signature Characters in missions?" on the eve-o forum:

First of all I was quite happy to read the rediscovered scrolls dev blog and am really looking forward to see more epic mission arcs. In regard to players interacting stronger with the core storyline elements of the EVE universe I guess a highlight of some such arc might surely be the meeting of an EVE signature character (like as a mission "agent"). Examples might be:

For an Amarr character e.g. it surely would be epic to be able bring a report on sleeper activity to Jamyl Sarum herself.

For a Minmatar it might be as epic to step onto an Eldar Titan and get a nod from one of the legendary elders e.g. for helping in the survival of a forgotten Minmatar tribe.

A Caldari might be honored to get an interview with a megacorp CEO upon getting a report from Heth to deliver (with the choice of either helping the CEO or Heth).

A Gallente would surely be honored to get a letter from his President for a secretive meeting with and advisor who might propose a secretive mission.

And so on and so forth. Even if this interaction is more like PC-agent interaction (well cut-scene would also be HUGE but probably much more time-intensive to implement) I guess such an interaction with the EVE signature characters would help a lot immersing players in the interesting backstory of the universe they are playing in.

I do agree with Sep’Shoni (who replied to the post) that it would be overkill if used too often. It would just be a nice reward on its own to be able to meet an important character.

Storyline Events

The ideas for epic missions don’t end with signature characters though. Events in the storyline could also be integrated into these quite nicely to strengthen the bonds the players feel with the EVE universe and to make the story feel more lively.

This already has been realized as both the Empyrean Age novel and certain chronicles mesh quite well together with the events of the Blood Stained Stars epic arc which is great! Sadly we as of yet haven’t seen its continuation.

Further ideas would be:

Sleepers

All the vital questions about them and over ancient ones haven’t been answered yet. It would be really cool if we as players could discover a bit more info on that for ourselves (even before that said information gets released in a chronicle or novel)!
What about finding a mission item at a sleeper site that gives a clue as to what these mysterious beings are up to? It could even be the start of a mission (like the clues were a start to head to Sister Alitura)?

Jovians

Same as Sleepers I guess. We even had a bit involvement of these enigmatic evil beings already and they even got a cool mention during Torfi’s breathtaking Fanfest presentation.

Pirate Factions

We will also probably soon see these speed-boat missions for pirate factions which sound really cool. The possibilities for these are great as well - especially if it involves choices like to either try to enter a pirate fraction for real or just to try to infiltrate it. In that regard I btw liked the Caldari starter mission that does tempt you with flying with the Guristas.

So far a few first ideas. What would be your ideas for epic missions?