Go Forth And Conquer!

Today marks the start of the Eve planets coming to life and being used and abused as resource rich celestial objects begging to be exploited for isk gain. I'm talking about Planetary Interaction, a key part of the Tyrannis expansion, which is being launched today.

Planetary Interaction allows players to harvest the many planets of Eve and create vast industrial networks to produce some of the key items used by players ingame. It is a further step along the way to create a fully autonomous, player generated market.

Personally I really like Planetary Interaction as an addition to Eve and I'm really excited to see how it will be developed further. One small thing I should mention though.

I will not be taking part.

You won't find me rushing out to buy command centers or scanning planets to find a fantastic vein of precious minerals. That might sound a strange thing to say, given my support for Planetary Interaction, but it mirrors my viewpoint on a lot of the more industrial features of Eve as a whole.

Here's my take on it. I love the industrial side of the Eve universe. I love the fact that it has an almost entirely player-driven market. I love it that market hubs like Jita, Amarr and Rens are creations of the players rather than the choices of the developers. I love the concept of ships I fly having been created by someone, somewhere and having a history that I know nothing about. I love seeing Freighters moving vast quantities of goods around the universe. I love the sight of market orders continually under-cutting each other. I love the idea of huge spreadsheets tracking profit and squeezing every last isk possible out of consumers like me. And that's the key thing! Maybe you missed it, so I'll say it again in bold:

I am a consumer.

I'm the person that uses. I fly the ships that you took days to make. I shoot that ammo that you transported all across the galaxy. I accept your market-order that undercut your competition. I give you the isk that justifies the effort that you industrialists put in. Because of this, I'm afraid I will never be one of you.

I just prefer to fly space-ships. So while I am very proud of Eve market, while I love the concept, the idea, the vision behind it, I won't be the one doing it. It is the same for Planetary Interaction. I applaud the idea of tapping into those celestial isk-mines, but I won't be doing the dirty work myself. I suspect I'm not alone in my attitude to all things industrial in Eve.

So, industrialists of Eve, go forth and conquer! Spreadsheet like you've never spreadsheeted before! I don't wish that the development time had been spent elsewhere, neither do I envy you for your new feature that I will never use. Just be warned, that if I do happen to have a Planetary Command Center in my cargohold, it will most likely be the one I just looted from your wreck.

Just Call me the Drone Commander

Just a short one.

Yesterday I experienced my first armour tanked wormhole PvE fleet. Previous to this point I've always flown in shield tanked fleets, which are a slightly rarer breed. I really enjoyed the experience, especially since the fleet was huge, so we raced through a good number of sites.

I was piloting a Loki which is great for taking out the Sleeper frigates. Fit it with two webs and some autocannons and those frigates just go pop! Although I have to admit, maybe that was because I had about 40 drones assigned to me! The number of drones we had on the field was crazy, and controlling them was great fun - all the Sleepers just melted against them. When I have a bit more experience of armour tanked fleets I will be writing a comparison between shield and armour tanking. I'll be able to discuss the different setups and give you a good idea of fleet composition for each.

In other news, the new patch Tyrannis has arrived. I'm enjoying it so far, but that's not really because of any new content, I'm just enjoying the game at the moment. In fact my favourite thing so far is that I don't have to listen to that horrible Dominion load screen music ever again! Hopefully I'll be able to play with some of the new features in a little more depth soon.

But I'm afraid that next week I'm off on holiday. So I've taken the opportunity to put some nice long skills on train. I'll be back and posting again on June 5th.

One last thing. If you have anything you'd like me to blog about when I return, just pop it in a comment, or send me an evemail to Banear. It could be a question about wormholes or ship fitting or anything really, I'm just curious about what you would enjoy reading.

Quick Update

Just a quick update for everybody.

I've been pretty busy recently so I've not managed to post a great deal. But Tyrannis is just around the corner and several interesting things have been happening so expect some good posts next week!

Just a reminder: last chance to vote!

I'm also going to stop being impartial and say, if you haven't voted yet, please vote for TeaDaze! Because he has just started making the most amazing CSM data website and it would be a crime if he didn't get on the CSM and continue the great work!

Please check the website out!

Do We Need More Sand?

Eve prides itself on being a game that allows the players to create content and story themselves rather than being led by the developers along a pre-conceived narrative.

This is the famous 'sandbox' idea. The player is given an non-linear game environment and they are left to interact with it. There is no definite end to the game and there is no progression other than the goals which players set for themselves. Eve players are free to do what they like.

The only limitations of Eve are the environments and tools that we are given by the developers to play with. Or, sticking to the analogy, how much 'sand' we have. The 'sand' we have been given is geography, such as Empire space, Lowsec, Nullsec and wormholes. We also have infrastructure like open markets, stations, planets and stargates. Finally we have the ships, the modules, the enemies and so on. All this 'sand' is of course hugely important to the game. The players can only develop emergent behaviour and innovative gameplay if they have the materials to work with. The big question I want to ask is, do we need more sand?

The most obvious way to give players more 'sand' is to create new environments. New environments spawn the most distinctive differences in gameplay. For example, life as a player in Empire is totally different from Lowsec, which in turn is also nothing like Nullsec and living in wormholes is different from them all! These are the four very distinct environments that Eve players adapt to fit into. CCP has created these environments and the laws that govern them. The players and corporations have created play-styles and professions that function well in those environments.

Getting to grips with new environments is also something that Eve players find very enjoyable. The most sucessful Eve expansion so far has been Apocrypha, which tempted people to play by the lure of both a whole new environment, wormholes, and a new way to exploit them, T3 ships. Apocrypha attracted many new players to the game, and also rekindled the interest of players who had become slightly bored.

So back to my big question. Do we need more sand? Does Eve need to continue to create new and unique environments? Or do we already have enough? Will the current environments be able to satisfy you for a long time to come? Or will you need a constant stream of new material to keep you interested? Maybe you are more concerned with balancing and tweaking the environments we already have?

What do you think?