Tag: walking in stations

Easter Egg change in Retribution 1.1

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , ,

CCP has changed an existing easter egg in Retribution 1.1. It was seeded as a gift for capsuleers during the holiday season:

Key Pass to Open The Door
Name: Key Pass to Open the Door
Description:
A very special and valuable key pass that uses some of the rarest elements known to humankind in order to create the most secure access card possible.

These passes are so rare and valuable, they are only ever used by capsuleers, to protect their quarters on board stations where they are docked. Without one of these keys one would likely not have a chance of getting in, or out, of a capsuleer’s private quarters.

The description now reads:

Key Pass to Open The Door
Name: Deactivated Station Key Pass
Description:
At the end of YC114, station managers across New Eden were surprised and shocked by the accidental delivery of station key passes to large numbers of pilots due to an inventory error in the InterBus central database. With recall next to impossible, the recommendation of veteran station manager Scotty, now consulting with the SCC, was to simply send out a general deactivation order and replace the master key passes used by station staff. The mistakenly delivered passes are now nothing more than souvenirs of an odd but ultimately harmless incident.

So, all my rambling in this post about possible opening of the door was… Well… Pure, baseless, unfounded speculation. By the way, it seems that our Docking Manager friend Scotty has got himself a new job.

Speculation post! What if…?

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , ,

When Retribution was still in beta, I’ve noticed that there are new easter eggs in the game: items that exist in the db, but are not necessarily existing on Tranquility.

Later in one of the dev-blogs, CCP has admitted that we will be getting these items as a Christmas Gift on 20th of December:

So what are we giving you above and beyond Snowballs? Well honestly, some completely random stuff. I am not going to say what we are giving you here as there are those of you who look forward to the surprise; if you wanted to know though I am pretty sure with a little looking around you could figure it out… well part of the gift anyways. 😉

“Part of the gift”? So the Easter Egg items are not the whole gift?

While talking to my corp mates we’ve came to a conclusion, that CCP might have added more features to Retribution, than the patch notes say, kind of a hidden surprise feature. I’m pretty sure you will guess it yourself, once you read the description of one of the easter egg items:

Key Pass to Open The Door

Name: Key Pass to Open the Door
Description:
A very special and valuable key pass that uses some of the rarest elements known to humankind in order to create the most secure access card possible.

These passes are so rare and valuable, they are only ever used by capsuleers, to protect their quarters on board stations where they are docked. Without one of these keys one would likely not have a chance of getting in, or out, of a capsuleer’s private quarters.

I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow the big red button will not be stopping you anymore from having a walk on the station promenade. It wouldn’t use much coding to create a bigger in-station environments, really: the “building blocks” for station environments have been created for Incarna and then subsequently for Crucible, when three more CQs have been added to the game. It’s just matter of making bigger maps from the existing building blocks.

Of course all the above is just pure speculation; I’ve been using ship spinning hangar view for years and only visit the CQ once in a while. But since Retribution is CCPs third expansion to make up for the Incarna blunder, I wouldn’t be surprised if CCP finally gave players some meaningful “walking in stations” which they have promised us so long ago.

To know if the above is true (or not), we will have to wait until tomorrow gifts have been seeded!

What players (really) want

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , ,

Pattern Clarc has written an excellent post on EVE Online forums regarding how players would like to see the solution for the current issues in EVE. It is a “fake” dev-blog, which adresses all of the below issues players see in EVE:

  • Players know that CCP is currently developing two other games: Dust 514 and World of Darkness,
  • Thus, the amount of manpower available to develop EVE has been reduced,
  • Players also see lots of known issues, which are not being addressed (hybrids, dreadnoughts, COSMOS, etc.),
  • Instead, players see new, mostly unwanted content (100+ pieces of clothing, aka space-barbie),
  • CCP not being transparent to the playerbase – resulted in the ‘monoclegate’

Post is really insightful, and the general feedback in the forum thread is rather positive. My opinion is no different – Dear CCP, listen to this guy; or even better: hire him to write dev blogs for you. By the way, the Tick-Tock approach mentioned in Clarc’s post has really worked well for Intel.

The Door.
The Door.

Personally I think we should listen to Zulu’s statement for now, and see if CCP keeps their word. CQ/WiS is not bad in itself, it just lacks the usability of the ship spinning interface (takes time to load, no context menu on ships, no way to open Ore bay/Fuel bay/Corp Hangar/Ship Hangar without opening “Ships” window first; no drag and drop from hangar to ship; no doubleclick on the ship to open cargohold). Another thing is lack of environment: instead of Walking in Stations we’ve got Walking in One Rusty Room. I’ve got a paddle, and a bucket but there is no sandbox to play in – there is only a big mysterious door instead.

Seismic Stan's hat by Rixx Javix
Seismic Stan's hat by Rixx Javix

PS. Dear CCP, we want a new ship for christmas; snowballs and launchers will work, too. AUR and clothing is a no-no, unless it’s a classy, black pirate hat:

Hidden content in Incarna 1.1.1

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , ,

A new patch has been deployed to Tranquility today between 9:00 and 12:30 UTC in order to address the issues introduced with Incarna 1.1.

Patch notes have been released and are available here.

I don’t know why the said patch notes say nothing about a hundred or so of new clothes introduced in this quite big (102 MB) package. The code fixes mentioned in the patch notes should not take more than 15-20MB.

New women clothing in Incarna 1.1.1 White 'Sterling' Dress Shirt Men's 'Form' Camo Shirt

I do understand that this content will not be available right away, because CCP decided to make clothing available in staged releases. Still, the patch notes should reflect it, at least as “new Incarna content prepared for staged release”.

More apparel for EVE Online avatars

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , ,

Many players have noticed, that CCP has recently released a second batch of items, that can be bought from the Noble Exchange (one of the items included in the second release is GDN-9 “Nightstalker” Combat Goggles). Those curious about what will be coming in future batches can check themselves. In order to do so, open the Market, go to Apparel group and uncheck “Show only available”. There is several kinds of monocles coming to the NeX near you!

EDIT: as to confirm my post, two days later CCP has released a third batch of items, more affordable this time.

About Noble Exchange and market PVP

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , , ,

Doen’t matter if one is completely new to EVE or if one is a vet, almost every player knows that EVE Online is a PVP focused game. Large majority of people will however limit this PVP to pure combat, which is not exactly true.

The Noble Exchange have gained lots of attention when it was first introduced, but now that things calmed down, people started using it. And just like in PVP combat, some players just aren’t good at market PVP.

First off, let’s do some maths, because EVE’s second nickname is ‘Excel in space’.

Typical sell price of a PLEX is today 368 million ISK (Essence region). One PLEX can be converted to 3500 AUR, so the exchange ratio would be:

1 AUR = 105 143 ISK

That means, that if for example Men’s ‘Precision’ Boots cost 1000 Aurum, they should not be sold below 105 million ISK. If the same applies to Women’s ‘Executor’ Coat, I should pay at least 368 million for it.

Luckily for me, some people decided that math sucks, and it’s better to sell some clothing below these thresholds ‘because why the hell not’. So I bought said boots for my main for 59 million and the Coat for my female alt for 30 million ISK.

Wanna proof? Look below 😉

PS. I also bought a Fenrir freighter for 680 thousand ISK in the past, so this kind of things really happen.

Emergency CSM over.

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , ,
Emergency CSM over.

CCP has published an official statement after the emergency CSM summit held in Reykjavik last week, you can read both CCPs and CSMs statements in this dev-blog.

Information most important to the EVE players, both these who left the game, and those who stayed is:

“It is CCP‘s plan that the Noble Exchange (NeX store) will be used for the sale of vanity items only.”

For some players such an information is still not enough to regain trust in CCP. One can claim, that even though Zulu said that the Noble Exchange will be for vanity items only, MT ships and ammo can still be introduced at a later date under a different name, lets say a “Noble Armory”. I will say: put such conspiracy theories aside and give Devs a chance. They surely did a mistake of not communicaiting things properly, but the fact that CCP is developing two other games does not mean that they have abandoned EVE Online, and only want to “milk the cow” now. If this was the case, there would be no Incarna at all.

For me personally these two statements are enough to trust CCP again, but I will watch the progress closely. I have been playing long enough to know, that the recent backlash neither is the first time, nor will be the last, when there was a miscomunication between the Devs and the playerbase. I just hope there will be no more such intense situations like this recent one. EVE can be broken by many things. If enough players leave the game, economy can break down and the game will be broken even more, than by the Devs themselves. We, the EVE players, are also responsible for making EVE such a great game it is: CCP might provide the spaceships, but we are the pilots who fly them and who make New Eden so beautifully alive. I have played many games, and there is no other game world so dynamic as this one.

In closing I would like to thank the CSM board very much for their commitment, and if Mittens is going to run for another term, I already know who to vote for in the CSM#7. You, sir, are simply the best.

EVE Community backlash in pictures

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , ,
EVE Community backlash in pictures

I’ve planned to write a short post about the status of the backlash, but instead, I have “stolen”* some pictures, so instead of me telling you how people react, you can see yourself. I just hope this “emergency” CSM summit brings some really good news.

Mytzso (Private Nuisance)
Mytzso (Private Nuisance)
Portmanteau (CTRL-Q)
Portmanteau (CTRL-Q)

*) all images are property of their respective owners and have been used for information purposes only

Incarna 1.0.1 to be deployed today

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , ,
Incarna 1.0.1 to be deployed today

The new expansion brought us Captains Quarters, Agent Finder and new turrets, but it has also brought quite a few bugs. This patch is supposed to fix most of them:

  • Overview brackets, and brackets in space, will no longer be missing the for battleships and capital ships.
  • The bracket around the CQ mirror will no longer be incorrectly visible when the camera is at certain angles.
  • Resolved light flickering problem on ATI CrossFire hardware.
  • Fixed shadow rendering in the New Character Creator.
  • Active boosters no longer prevent clone jumping.

Complete patchnotes are already available here.

Set a long skill! Because Incarna is almost here.

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,
Set a long skill! Because Incarna is almost here.

Because at this time tomorrow CCP will be deploying EVE Online: Incarna to Tranquility. Scheduled downtime will last 14 hours, beginning at 5:00 UTC (evetime) and should finish at 19:00. The list of new features is quite extensive, some of which have been awaited by the community for a long time:

  • Full body avatars will now walk out of the ship (just like in STO),
  • Captain’s Quarters – first room for said avatars to explore,
    • Strategic Data Feeds – sov information, incursions, pricechecks, etc.
    • News Feeds
    • Agents – Agent Finder panel installed in quarters
    • Planetary Interaction Panel – One-click access to PI Management
    • Walkway/Balcony – for those who don’t like CQ at all – just stay on the balcony
  • Animated and overhauled turrets – for pew pew pleasure,
  • Noble Exchange – micropayment based shop with avatar related items,
  • Improved New Player Experience,
  • Aura (the computer voice in EVE Online) has returned
  • Updated Maller model (affects Sacrilege, Maller and Devoter)

My question to you is: What do you plan to do during the extended downtime?

New Guns

UPDATE:

Downtime have been shortened from 7:00 UTC to 17:00 UTC. Additionally, Incarna 1.0 patch notes are already available.