Month in Review Reader Survey

As regular readers will know, on the last day of each month there is a Month in Review posts.  This came about pretty much by accident when I was looking for a post back at the end of September 2006 and it has carried on ever since.

The state of the blog – Sep 2006

(The Internet Archive has a version of the blog from November 2006 if you want to see the old format.)

That very first review post had entries about the site, the games I was playing (EVE Online, World of Warcraft, and Saga of Ryzom of all things), and what was coming.  From that humble post a series currently 175 long has sprung.

The categories have expanded and changed over the years.  Some things have gone… I no longer call out blogs that put me on their blog roll because nobody makes new blogs these days… and others have arrived, with game time tracking being the most recent.

The posts have also grown in size.  That first review was just 500 words.  These days the often go on for five times that length and link out to old posts in a manner that one might characterize as excessive.

In the end these posts have become something of an exercise in nostalgia for me.  The joy of having nearly 15 years of work to look back upon.  But I do wonder at times what others think of this monthly post, so today I have a poll.

The question is, which sections of the month in review you read or find interesting, if any.  If you skip it, just click the “none” option.  Otherwise, it is a multiple choice poll, so you can click all the boxes… though don’t do that, because one of the boxes is “none.”

As usual, ad blockers or other security measures might keep the poll from appearing, but there should be a poll above this sentence.

Of course, this is also an opportune time to bring up something I ought to have in the monthly post, or ought to do away with.  I make no guarantees… these posts have evolved somewhat organically to reflect what I want them to be… but sometimes fresh insight can be instructive.

Blapril and Figuring Out What to Write

We are deep into the second week of Blapril.  If you’re note sure what Blapril is… welcome I guess… go here and read all about it.  I would argue that even today it is not too late to join in.

The Blapril commeth

It is not too late because because there are six weeks worth of Blapril planned, having started in March and not finishing until May and, as I noted, we’re not even done with week two.

• March 29th – April 4th – Blapril Prep Week
• April 5th – April 11th – Topic Brainstorming Week
• April 12th – April 18th – Getting to Know You Week
• April 19th – April 25th – Developer/Creator Appreciation Week
• April 26th – May 2nd – Staying Motivated Week
• May 3rd – May 9th – Lessons Learned Week

This week is Topic Brainstorming Week and I am going to declare myself both good and bad at that.

On the “good” side of that statement I offer as evidence this blog.  More than 13 years and 5,400 posts down the road I think it is safe to say that I can come up with things to write about.  My basic goal is have a post for every week day, which would be about 250 posts in a year.  Looking at my stats, I have not fallen below 350 posts for any full year.

Arguing against that is the fact that I rarely, if ever, do anything that one would consider brainstorming.  Part of my systems studies minor involved trying to be able to find different ideas and points of view, which left me with all sorts of techniques for approaching problem solving and idea generation.  The books from that are some of the few I have hung on to for all the years that have passed since college.

But I don’t really do any of that.  Not usually.  In fact, I do what one might argue is the opposite of creativity, which is structure.  This blog has a system as to what gets posted and even when it gets posted.  For example, Blapril posts are something that mostly happen on Thursdays here.  today’s post got bumped by something time sensitive.  The instance group posts are a Wednesday thing.  Patch notes for EVE Online releases tend to be on a Tuesday, the month in review is on the last day of the month, SuperData is on the Thursday before that, and so on.

This is all because my blog is not so much to inform or review as it is to remember and create a timeline.  I went over this last Blaugust if you are interested in more detail.

So now that I have argued that I cannot really help you with topic ideas, let me turn around and try to help you with topic ideas… at least in a general way.

• You don’t need a big finish

Early on in my blogging I felt that every post had to come to some sort of epiphany as its conclusion.  This was no doubt left over from school essays and such.  But not everything has to be a teachable moment or change somebody’s mind.

• You don’t even need a big topic

I have at various times questioned whether or not a given topic is important enough to be worth posting about.  It is fun and fulfilling and feels good to take on big topics of the day.  But, in doing so, you may feel that your lesser achievements, your personal tales, your odd observations, might not stack up.  Don’t worry, they do.  I have found that a year or five years down the line it is often the little things I wrote about that end up being the most fun to rediscover.

• You don’t need to be first

The truth of the matter is that no matter what you write about, somebody else has covered that topic before.   But it is also very likely that somebody will hear about that topic first from you… news doesn’t travel in a straight line… and even if you don’t have a radically different perspective on a given topic of the day

• You don’t need a fresh new topic every day

After some time you may, like Alexander, weep when looking back at the breadth of your work, thinking that you have no new topics to conquer.  You may worry about repetition or covering old ground again.  Trust me, as you get older you’ll get over it.  And it isn’t necessarily repetitive to go back to a topic if something has changed, some experience has altered your perspective, or if enough time has passed that you want to explore a topic once more.  And by “enough time” I could me a day, a month, a year.  Whatever.

• Every post doesn’t need to be a victory

It is always nice to celebrate wins, and some people can be reluctant to talk about failure, but after years of this I often find that disaster makes for a more interesting story.

• This is all just my opinion

If you’re blogging goal is to tackle big fresh new topics first, drawing grand conclusions out at the end of each, who am I to tell you no?  But some people will worry about the above, worry if it is alright to cover a topic that might have already gotten a lot of play or express an opinion that aligns with somebody’s earlier post.  It is fine.  Nobody will mind.

In the end, the only advice I have that I will stand behind is the bit I trot out every year, which is to make the blog you want to read.  If you’re not happy reading it, or re-reading it as time goes by, I think you might have missed your core demographic.

Anyway, how about a few others with some better ideas or insights about actual topics this week:

• Contains Moderate Peril
• GamingSF
• Tales of the Aggronaut
• Time to Loot
• Inventory Full
• WoW Alt Addiction

Visiting the Katia Sae Monument

As mentioned in yesterday’s EVE Online patch notes, there is a new tourist attraction in New Eden, the monument put up to celebrate the journeys of Katia Sae.  Of course I had to go visit, though I was hardly the first.

Server has been up for less than 5 minutes and there's already a fireworks party at @Katia_Sae's monument in Saisio. #tweetfleet #eveonline pic.twitter.com/2Cb2RbqUg4

— CCP Fozzie (@CCP_Fozzie) April 9, 2019

While the monument’s location in the system Saisio puts it inconveniently distant from home in Delve, I have my share of high sec alts.  Logging an alt on in Jita put me just five jumps from there, so I hopped in a Kestrel and warped off to see this new thing in space.
I arrived in Saisio, warped over to the Abagawa gate, and saw the monument looming in space.

Arriving on grid with Katia

If you go there and miss it, it will only be because you were not looking for it.

The jump gate visible behind Katia

Being the tourist, I went into orbit and took some screen shots of Katia, poised in space in all her bronzed glory.

Well, she looks bronze to me

The planetary system above her upraised hand is pretty nifty, though I read that the cloaked Astero that orbits in it is, like Katia, larger than life… though not as much so.

She holds the system in her palm

That is one way to get a sense of scale though, knowing that the frigate above her is even larger than it should be and is yet dwarfed by her.  Still, space has a way of both distorting and enforcing scale via perspective.

My Kestrel looks big, but then there is that gas giant

The only hitch on seeing it is that, for overview purposes, the monument is a large collidable object… and it is literally so I suppose… which is something I have hidden in most over my overview settings.

Do not bump the monument please

There is, of course, an inscription describing the achievement celebrated by the structure and who erected it.

The words in space

My only quibble with any of this, and it is a very minor one indeed, is the use of the word “memorial.”  I realize the dictionary definition says it isn’t necessarily so, but where I come from a memorial is usually something put up to remember the dead, and the last I checked Katia Sai was still flying about very much alive.  In fact, one of the stand out aspects of her achievement is that she did not die while visiting every system in New Eden.  Though, when you’re a clone capsuleer rocketing through the hazards of space with your consciousness backed up an essentially immortal, pinning down what death even means is a bit of a chore on its own.
Anyway, it is a fitting monument… that is the word I prefer… to an exceptional achievement.
If you’re interested in reading more about her journey, I wrote a post about it which includes links out to much of the coverage the even received.

Shroud of the Avatar – Retroist Hobbyism or Something

Steam says I have spent about eight hours playing around with Shroud of the Avatar at this point, which both feels like a lot and no time at all.

I backed the game as part of the Kickstarter five years back and, aside from a quick peek in when it first became available in a very raw form for backers to check out, I have avoided touching it since.  I felt I should wait until it was “done,” for whatever definition of the word I happened to think might fit.  As is often noted in our circles, when is an MMORPG ever done?

Of course, it might be the time to ask whether or not this really is an MMORPG.  There is certainly an online shared world version of the game where you regularly bump into other players.

Play online… or offline

But there is also an offline version.  The world can be yours alone.  The implication is certainly that you don’t need other players.  I think.  Maybe.  We shall see I suppose.

With the game having gone live I jumped into the online version because… MMORPGS!!!1!  Shared world!  Playing alone together!  And whatever else you find in other players in the genre.

Of course, you still start alone.  The character creation process is… interactive?  You start as something of a ghost and go down the line of the intro zone to develop your character.

Landing in the game

You follow the path to the point where you give physical appearance to your character… or avatar I suppose.  Everybody calls you the avatar.

Steam punk avatar?

The options for characters… seem a bit rough.  Still, you’re only going to be looking at the back of your own head most of the time, so I guess you might as well create a visage to scare the wee ones.

After that you make your way to the steam powered Oracle who asks you some questions to determine your path in the world.

Ask me your questions Oracle, I am not afraid!

There is a heavy emphasis on there being no wrong answers.  And it is true.  After you answer the questions the Oracle will suggest to you one of three paths; melee fighter, ranged fighter, or magic user.  The Oracle picked the first for me, but then hedged and said I could choose either of the other ones as well.  Whatever.  I chose to stick with the melee side of things.  I tend to favor that in any case.

After that you go jump into a portal and arrive in the world.  And you get stuck right into things almost immediately.  I landed in Highvale, got a couple of hints about how to go forward and a quest from a dying guy and was soon killing elves.  Elves are bad it seems.  Syp should like this aspect of the game.

Die elf scum!

Here is where I started having to get used to the way the game plays.  By default my movement was set to steer via the mouse, but only when holding down the right mouse button.  I guess I can imagine a scenario where somebody thought that was a good idea… FPS or Minecraft like movement, but you want to keep the cursor live by default because the user needs to click on things… but I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have agreed had I been sitting in the room with whoever was pushing that mode.

Fortunately it is possible to map all your movement keys so that they work like WoW.

Movement controls I can use

Then there is combat.  You must unsheathe your weapon in order to go into your combat stance and be able to attack things.  Your weapon comes out, your combat skills, which might have wandered off somewhere, and you are able to click on things to start attacking them.  Auto-attack keeps your weapon swinging while you add in your special attacks to spice things up.

When you’re done fighting you need to sheath your weapon again to go do other things, like interact with NPCs.  Fortunately the game doesn’t let you attack vendors and such in town if you forget.  I remember the high comedy of accidentally hitting the A for auto-attack back in early EverQuest and getting the vendor and the local guards chasing me to the zone line in Qeynos.

Basically, if you’re coming from World of Warcraft or some other modern MMORPG (like Rift Prime maybe) this, and just about everything else about the game, is going to feel awkward.

If you are coming to Shroud of the Avatar thinking that this will be a patina of Ultima over World of Warcraft, you are in for a rude surprise.  I get the feeling that was part of what drove Syp away almost immediately.  This game is a rough, homespun version of an MMO, a seeming wilful turning away from the current design trends… or maybe just the design trends of the 21st century… and the attendant smoothness we have come to expect.

Even the world design hearken back to an earlier time.  This is no seamless world.  Rather, it is a series of zones connected via an overworld, Novia, where you appear as something of a giant compared to the possible destination.

I will crush your town!

This is something that was a thing back when I was playing the early games in the Ultima series, but I wasn’t expecting them to go back to it.  Then again, it does make adding and removing zones and player towns easy.  There is no need to make them fit into the overall world, you just have to put up an spot for them in Novia and you’re set.

As noted, I wasn’t expecting this, so the first time I ran out of the starting zone I ended up in a strange place with illegible script and wasn’t able to find my way back for a while.  The map wasn’t a lot of help, but eventually I found the spot.

Back to Highvale Outskirts

Once back in I found I was outside the main area and the gates were locked and I couldn’t get back inside, so I ran back out to Novia and went back in again because it gives you the option to go to the default starting spot for the zone.  I was able to find my way back from there.

And, beyond mere confusion, there are problems.   I have a couple of quests that I know I finished up, yet can’t seem to rid myself of.  Loading times for zone long.  Movement still feels stilted and awkward even when you have your movement keys set up.  Collision is hella annoying, as when you brush too close to another person or NPC you are slowed down in your pace dramatically, even when that person looks to be an arms length away.  And the game itself responds at its leisure, like it hasn’t quite woken up to the fact that it is no longer in sleepy early access.

Also it appears that you can only have one character in the online version of the game.  I went looking for a way to make another one, even if I had to buy my way in, but was out of luck.  I went there because I wanted to try the ranged attack start.  To do that I ended up going to the offline mode to play in my own little world.

This might be the way to play.  Or at least the way to learn.  Being in a shared world I feel, if illogically, a pressure to get a move on.  In my own little version of the world I was decidedly more relaxed.  I was able to dig into things a bit more.

Quests are something of a hybrid between the old and new.  You have to interact with NPCs to get them, and it runs through a dialog system akin to what you may remember from early EverQuest.  But it does keep track of quests for you, in its way, so you don’t have to keep a notepad to hand and remember which NPC told you what and when.

The NPC interactions are neat in their own way too.  You can ask for gossip, which every NPCs eschews before beginning to dish on what has been happening.  This often points you to where there is a quest.  You can also ask an NPC their name.  Before you do that, they might just appear as “Guard” or “Blacksmith,” but afterwards their name is displayed above them as well.

I wonder what happens to dead NPCs…

Skills are as they were back in the old days.  In order to get better you have to use them.  There is an experience system that keeps you from just hacking away at a practice dummy all day and night to max out skills.  For your special attacks you have to be there to click on them and they draw from a resource pool that slowly replenishes so you cannot click on them endlessly to skill up.

There are also trade skills and such.

Fishing! Of course there is fishing!

The trade skills have some depth of a sort.  You need worms to fish, for example, and you can’t just fish in the same spot over and over.  There are diminishing returns in that.

As an archer arrows are required.  You can’t just fire forever, you need ammo.  You can buy arrows from the vendor, but I decided to see about making them.  You have to chop wood for shafts, find feathers for flights, and iron to make arrow heads, each of which has its own gather and refining process before you can actually assemble arrows.

Things like darkness matter.  Zombies come out at night and it is tough to see anything without a light source.  You get a magical light spell you can cast, or you can go old school and hold a torch.

In the woods at night

However I can’t hold a torch and wield a bow, so magic it is.  And the world itself looks nice.

Sunset through the trees

All of which leaves me wondering who this game might be for… and what to even call such a game.  “MMO” is over-used to the point of meaningless, while “MMORPG” carries with it the weight of WoW and its clones as a baseline measurement.  But if it really isn’t one of those, or is a niche sub-category of them, what would it really be?

What is this game that is by turns awkward, finicky, intricate, deep, slow, and clearly a work in progress?  Where does it fit into the gaming world?  If somebody said I needed to pay $15 a month for it I would pass.  But the buy once, play forever model isn’t going to sustain it for very long, and the cash shop is always a dubious venture in my mind.  But then we know that games that live by the cash shop become about the cash shop in the end, and SotA has started building an extensive cash shop which, for some reason, is referenced as selling “Add Ons,” something that might again confuse those from WoW.  At least it isn’t in the game I suppose.

In a way this feels like the sort of game where you might rent a server ala Minecraft for you and some friends and play in your own world together.  Maybe some day.

Anyway, this is all an early first impression.  There are aspects of the game I like.  It is an interesting place to wander around and intricate in its way.  I seem to feel more compelled to explore it that Bhagpuss did.  I want to give it a chance because it feels like there is something here.  But I am not sure I will find myself feeling invested enough to pursue it in the long term.  It feels like a game that demands time and devotion… and patience… patience with it and its development team.  We shall see.

Null Sec Outpost Conversions and the Great Asset Recovery

One of the presentations at EVE Fanfest this past weekend that attracted my attention was the structures talk. (INN has a summary of the presentation, or you can watch the recording which is at about the 5 hour  27 minute mark on the Fanfest Day 2 video on Twitch.)

Fanfest 2017

Upwell structures, which first showed up with the Citadel expansion last April have blossomed in New Eden, with citadels and engineering complexes being deployed in large numbers.

The presentation went over some of the statistics about such structures, repeating some of what was in the keynote presentation and the going into some additional detail.  There was also some further information about the coming refineries that will, among other things, replace player owned starbases in the moon mining role.

But for me, one of the most interesting bits of the presentation was regarding the removal of outposts from null sec.  Outposts are the conquerable stations in null sec space that have, over the years, change the shape of space and have been the focal point of conflicts.

CCP removed the ability to anchor new outposts in null sec space with the last update in YC118.  The final outpost was anchored just before the deadline by Fraternity, and event covered by EN24 which includes a retrospective about outposts including links to Dev Blogs about them going back to 2005.

The final five outposts

With this presentation CCP gave us a look at their plan for removing outposts.  The plan is for them to become “faction” citadels to be put in place of the current 68 null sec outpost structures.  The current sovereignty owner will get a special Fortizar sized citadel which they can leave in place or move elsewhere.

Faction Citadels

Interestingly, these will be very much limited edition citadels that nobody will be able to build.  This will no doubt both inflate their value as unique items in New Eden and make them more desirable targets for destruction.

While packing them up and selling them might be the plan for some, there will be an incentive to leave them in place.  At the time of the transition each outpost-come-citadel will get a special rig that will approximate all of the outpost upgrades in a single rig slot (leaving room for additions), making these citadels very powerful indeed.

Faction Rigs

As with the citadel itself, these will be one-off rigs, never to be seen again in New Eden.  And just to make the choice of what to do with the citadel “interesting,” the rig will be destroyed if you fold up the citadel to move it or sell it, creating a strong incentive to leave it where it is.

The actual date for this transition was stated as “Winter” which, given that we’ve just entered Spring, means there is a while to go before we see this transition.  I suspect that this is something that will easily fall into 2018/YC120.

When it does, however, there will be one interesting side effect.  When you leave something in an outpost and you no longer have access to that outpost, your asset is pretty much stuck unless you left a jump clone behind.

Citadels are different.  They have asset recovery.  So once all of the outposts have been converted to citadels, any assets in the outposts will also be moved.

On Outpost Transition Day

And with that, all of the assets that have been locked away in lost outposts will suddenly become recoverable.  There is a price, 10% of the assessed value, but paying that will put the items in a low sec station where the capsuleer can recover it.

Suddenly everything from bits of veldspar to capital ships left behind by people after various wars will suddenly be accessible.  While I have been pretty good about not leaving stuff behind in null sec (low and high sec if a very different story), I still have items left behind in a few outposts. (Mostly in Fade)

I wonder what sort of impact that will have on the game and the economy.  I wonder how much wealth in assets has been locked away, sometimes for years, in inaccessible outposts.

SMA Leaves The Imperium

It was announced earlier today on coms that SpaceMonkey’s Alliance would be leaving The Imperium.

SpaceMonkey’s Alliance – April 10, 2016

The problems between SMA and the online gambling site I Want ISK at the end of 2015 led IWI to hire mercenaries to attack SMA’s home territory in Fade, one of the trigger events leading to the wider war going on today.

After months of fighting in Fade, SMA is down to a single system in the region, HHK-VL, along with 10 systems in Pure Blind, including two stations.  That at least puts them two stations ahead of my own alliance, TNT, which is fresh out.

SMA is the second alliance to leave The Imperium during the war.

The Imperium – April 10, 2016

Unlike CO2, which agreed to swap sides to the Moneybadger Coalition and join the war against The Imperium before the battle at M-OEE8, SMA is leaving on good terms and is not being reset.

The SMA plan currently is to retire to the NPC null sec region of Outer Ring, home of the NPC faction Outer Ring Excavations, in order to rebuild.  The region is fairly barren of stations, but has connections to the Syndicate, Cloud Ring, and Fountain regions, .  They take with them a roster of ~2,400 capsuleers, down from ~4,000 at the beginning of the year.

And the war goes on.