Wrapping Up the Steam Summer Sale 2021

By the time this post goes live the Steam Summer sale should be about 15 minutes in the past.  Another one for the books.

There we go again!

My enthusiasm for the sale was at pretty low ebb, as it has been for a few years now.  Steam puts things on my wishlist on sale as often as Safeway discounts canned corn, and both generate about the same level of excitement these days.

So it is probably a bit of a surprise that I actually bought a few games during the sale.  Though, to be fair to Steam and its sale, I did not purchase anything that was on my wishlist or anything that they were pushing at me during the sale.  These came from outside recommendations.

Anyway, what did I buy?

• MMORPG Tycoon 2

I mentioned this in the June month in review post already, but Lum was playing this and posting about it on Twitter.  It is in early access and wasn’t even on sale, but seemed meta enough to take a shot at.  My initial game, Attractive Nuisance, would tend to suggest that the title of the game perhaps ought to be WoW Clone Tycoon, but I haven’t dived into hard mode yet, which is launching a free to play game with monetization fun to deal with.

• Art of Rally

This came up as part of a post on Ars Technica about the best titles in the Steam summer sale for under $25.  It also happened to coincide with me starting up on the whole immersion topic when I was making a mental list of games I missed and Need for Speed: World popped into my head.  I was able to achieve some serious “in the zone” time with it and the TRON: Legacy sound track.  This is a cool little game set in the golden age of rally racing in the 60s and 70s.  However, it really needs a controller to play it, so I am going to try and dig out the one I have for my PC before I pass judgement on it beyond the fact that you shouldn’t bother with just keyboard and mouse.

That said, it is a very nice, stylized racing game.  Could be a winner.  We shall see.  It will also be available on consoles soon, including the Switch, so it might be a better choice there… controllers being part of the bargain.

The Fermi Paradox

One of my favorite episodes of This American Life involves David Kestenbaum talking about why the Fermi Paradox, summed up as “where is everybody?” in the universe, makes him sad.  It makes me sad too, though so does the immense size of the universe and the relatively slow speed at which light travels.  We can barely get to the moon and Mars seems like a distant dream still, so how do we even consider other stars?

Anyway, The Fermi Paradox lets you play God over the rise and fall of sentient life in a corner of our galaxy where you make choices that guide civilizations along the path up the technology tree and get to see who fails or goes extinct and who, if anyone, makes it to the stars.  This is also in early access and is currently pretty raw, but there could be the germ of a good game here.

• Flashing Lights

This is more of a special mention, because I purchased it on sale during a previous sale, but only started playing it during this past summer sale.  This went on my list because I was interested in the Grand Theft Auto V mod that let you play as the police, but I wasn’t up to getting into GTA V that deep.  This sat on my wishlist for quite a while before I eventually bought it.  It lets you play as fire, medical, or police responders, but the fun is running around in a police cruiser.  This is also in early access.

Play Time

I did follow my current Steam rule, which is not to buy a game unless I plan to play it that day.  I have between 30 minutes and 3 hours on each of these titles.  Not enough to write a review yet, but close enough to an initial impression blog post I suppose.  I am sure I will get to those.

Planning the Return to XZ-SKZ

There was a ping for Megathrons and, having one still in my hangar, I cleaned it off and rolled out with that fleet, proudly wearing my Quafe SKIN.

Megathrons on the move

There are probably better, and certainly more vibrant SKINs for the Megathron, but the Quafe SKIN is old and rare and special.  It was one of the first good looking SKINs from a time when CCP was making some really bland ones.  So I wear that.

We were headed down to Period Basis, where we set up shop around the brand new TEST ihub in XZ-SKZ, the one that replaced ours earlier, and did our own entosis time.

Now we’re the attackers

We were unopposed, to the extent that the other fleet with us slipped off into TEST space to reinforce a Fortizar.  The later USTZ seems to be our time.

The timer set, we rolled on back home.  We will have to wait until Friday night USTZ to see if we can replace it with an ihub of our own again.

everything takes time

We will have been through the fight over the TCAG-3 ihub by that point.  Still lots to do.

In other Imperium News, it appears that a few names from the past have come back to play.  Word was that on Asher’s fleet they had Grath Telkin and Lazarus Telraven on board.  Their profiles seem to indicate this is so.

Famous Names

You can add them to Elo Knight, who is also out running fleets with us.

It is heating up like a real war.

The Imperium Loses the XZ-SKZ Infrastructure Hub

I was just on about entosis warfare and now one of the first big fights over sovereignty took place earlier today when the Imperium formed up to defend the the infrastructure hub in the system XZ-SKZ in Period Basis.  That is one of those systems on the invasion routes I pointed at in my Tuesday post.

Where the ihub was

There was a fair size battle spread out over the constellation where the system is located in order to contest the nodes.  The battle report shows some fighting took place, though the losses were small… a combined 65 billion… relative to the number of capsuleers listed on the battle report.

Battle Report Header

I managed to jump in a reinforcement fleet that was late to the party (lunch time while I was working from home) and saw no action, so there were more people floating around the constellation that the battle report indicates.

While the Imperium won the ISK war by a small margin, that is cold comfort now that TEST controls the ihub in the system.  That will allow TEST to more easily anchor Upwell structures in the system which will allow them to use it as a bridgehead into Imperium territory.

Jin’taan has a bit of footage from the fight, with a video that sums up with “1 down, 239 to go.”

The next timer down in Period Basis will be around the TCAG-3, on the route from Paragon Soul, which will happen early in the day (for me at least) on Friday.

Period Basis DOTLAN Map

TEST tried to deploy an old fashioned POS in TCAG-3 last night, with an eye to safing up a bridging titan in the system… to the point that the titan was through the gate and in the system… but they were pushed back and the POS tower was destroyed.

They will have to wait for the timer fight I guess.  We had best win that one.  Losing XZ-SKZ we can route around, but losing TCAG-3 would cut off a large chunk of Period Basis from easy access… sort of, the DOTLAN map makes it look further away than it is, so bridging and Ansiblex jump gates are still viable… and perhaps put the battle line at the south end of Delve.

Meanwhile, over in Querious, we did win the contest over the AO-N1P ihub.  That is in the constellation that includes 49-U6U, which is the route in from Catch.

Entosis Drake on the job

The war carries on.

Entosis Warfare

I don’t think anybody who has to use the Fozzie Sov… or Aegis Sov… mechanics with entosis modules and such is going to argue about it being something of a drag at times.  Some of my most tedious moments in New Eden have been centered around sov wands.

The humble Drake as enotosis ship

The fun thing is that Fozzie Sov is really annoying only when you are determined to take or defend space.  When you feel you have to do it, it can be a serious grind.  But if you just want to troll the sov owners it can be a bit of a low investment lark.  That was certainly what we were up to in the opening hours of the war when we hit Paragon Soul.

Systems with an orange boarder have been reinforced

We had no intention of taking those systems then.  Certainly not with the odds arrayed against us.  But everybody in TEST got notifications about the ihubs being under attack and then reinforced and then again when then nodes decloaked.  It was a bit of a finger in the eye.

Naturally enough they have, as I previously mentioned, returned the favor.  They haven’t been able to manage a sweeping result like the one pictured above, but they do persist.  It is a low effort operation to send out small ships with entosis links to hit ihubs, and we have to respond.  I spent a few hours in quick reaction fleets moving from one location to the next to blap hackers and chase off any cover fleets that might be trying to protect them.  You have to work to catch the cover fleets as they always spook and run when we show up.  Giving us a fight would be satisfying and would undermine the effort to frustrate us.

Because that is surely part of the exercise here, to drive us a bit crazy and get us down as we run after each of these notifications.  But we cannot ignore them, because the ihubs are critical to ADMs.  Lose them and the systems because much easier to take.

An ihub out in space

So sometimes we just stay out, patrolling, chasing down notifications, and doing a bit of ADM work when nothing else is going on just to pass the time.

Jackdaw QRF doing a haven

If nothing else, that pays back the Ansiblex fees that come from traveling back and forth.  (GSOL must be doing a lot of work though, as I have yet to run into one down for lack of fuel.)

Keeping people out constantly on patrol with not much in the way of action is a good way to burn people out, so it isn’t really a viable long term plan.  So the coalition came up with an incentive plan to help combat the entosis hacker menace.

Under the banner of some fresh Cyro Huren propaganda

If you are out and managed to get the final blow on a hacker in our space, you can post the kill mail in the forums and receive a 50 million ISK bounty.  If the entosis module drops you can contract it to the alliance for an additional 10 million ISK if it is tech I and 150 million ISK if it is tech II.

As an incentive program, this started out pretty well.  There were a few people racing to chase down hackers, with one guy in a Tengu knocking out quite a few.

I wasn’t sure what would be a suitable hunter, but I went out to return the favor of annoyance with a bit of my own when I had some spare time.  I parked an Ares interceptor with an ECM burst jammer and a 2 second align time in the middle of Querioius and waited around for some notifications.

When a notification came up I would just zip out to the system and warp to the ihub.  Once there I align out to the nearest structure, click warp, then set off the ECM burst, an area effect target lock breaker, and then away I go before anybody can lock me up.

Aligned out for warp

If I land right and the ECM burst hits, I land on the structure I warped out to and look back to see that the attackers are no longer making progress.  CONDI making progress means op success.

Hit on that one

That means the entosis link lost its lock and the hacker is sitting there waiting for it to finish its five minute cycle so they can start it up again.  And if I missed, then I just warp back in again until I get a hit.  Since I am too fast to lock up I just land, burst, and warp off.  I had a dozen Caracals sitting on one hacker unable to stop me.  At another they had a Sabre with them and kept putting up warp disruption bubbles, but the Ares is interdiction nullified, so it passes through bubbles without a care.

And, if I keep them hanging around until a response fleet shows up I get on the kill mail, having applied electronic warfare damage to them.

Of course, even with all of that, some hackers slip though.  It looks like they hostiles managed hit six ihubs successfully yesterday, though five of those were on the far fringes of the region.  We will see if they come back to contest the capture event when the time comes. (Edit: A check this morning shows that most of the timers were allowed to lapse without contest.)

The conflict is heating up on the border between Catch and Querious, and the gate in 49-U6U is now watched a lot more closely.  A few ihubs on the far end of the region might not matter compared to trying to push us back from the boarder so they can establish a foothold in the region.

CCP Cancelling EVE San Diego and all Physical Events in 2021

CCP announced this morning that it will be cancelling the EVE Online event that was slated to take place down in San Diego in September.  That event was slated to replace EVE Vegas, a disappointment to some, but the situation is such that the event was unlikely to happen in either location this year.

CCP went further and said that all physical, in person events that they may have had planned for 2021 will also be cancelled.  Instead, the company plans to step up online events in the coming year.

We would also like to share that we will not be hosting any physical CCP events in 2021. Instead, we intend to focus more on delivering you amazing digital experiences that everyone can enjoy from the comfort of their home. We have already increased the amount of unique content on our CCP Twitch channel, and are looking forward to bringing all of our crazy ideas to fruition!

So it goes in the age of pandemic.  This was likely a very sensible move.  Certainly staying the hell away from the US is a good idea, as our president has made ignoring the pandemic and not taking physical precautions a tenet of his re-election campaign, and the number of infections and deaths due to this malfeasance should serve as a warning to all.

CCP Should SKIN All The Things

I suppose it is a bit odd to being doing a post about monetizing EVE Online in the shadow of all the various controversies going on, but I haven’t got anything else queued up for today, so why not?

Cosmetics items, especially SKINs, seem to be non-controversial as a cash shop item in EVE Online.  Yes, there are people who hate them and that wish CCP wouldn’t bother, but I don’t think anybody finds them game breaking.

CCP also seems to have some problems of its own keeping the SKIN gaming going.  We had those Ghostbird SKINs up in the shop for close to a year, giving  Caldari pilots some nice choices while the other empires were left mostly wanting.  The Ghostbird SKINs are gone now, but the holiday weekend did bring back some old SKINs that had been retired from the store.  But once the time runs out on that we may be back to a dearth of options.

So leaving aside current convulsions and CCP’s famine and feast cycle with SKINs, what else could CCP apply their SKIN talents with?

Most of these are ideas I have heard elsewhere, so I make no claim to originality even if I cannot remember where I heard them first.

Structures

Here is a big obvious one that people have been asking for, structure SKINs.  This one seems like a gimme.  Yes, we got corp and alliance logos floating around structures, but these place are just begging for giant splashes of color.   Do you think Goons would pass up something like a Hazard Control SKIN, with bright yellow bee stripes?  They most certainly would not.

Who doesn’t want to paint on that canvas?

The catch here is that, unlike ships, structures don’t have a single person controlling them the whole time they are in space.  There would have to be some mechanism for the owning organization to apply a SKIN.  Also, how do you sell and manage such SKINs?  If you buy one, do you get to apply it to all structures you own, or just one?  If so, they probably have to expensive.  If not, if they attach to only one structure, then they can be cheap and make up the difference with volume.

Corp/Alliance SKINs

There was at least an implication that we would be getting something like this back at EVE Vegas 2016 when they were showing off the new, easy to use, SKIN creation tech.  We saw them run with an Apocalypse with all sorts of SKIN options created off the cuff.  (A gallery of them here.)

Apocalypse battleship with some pattern and color variations

Some of us walked away thinking that custom SKINs for corps or alliances could be a thing, maybe via an interface like the one for corp logos.  Now, nearly three years later, CCP seems somewhat indifferent to the SKIN store.  Still, we live in hope.

As with structure SKINs, this would most likely require some code to go with it.  When you join a corp or alliance with a custom SKIN, you then get access to it for the appropriate ships.  Maybe.  The big stumbling block is making a corp/alliance SKIN that can be applied to all ships.  Still, people have asked for this before.

Fleet SKINs

And idea I have seen come up once or twice, the idea of a SKIN that the fleet boss could apply to all the ships in the fleet.  This suffers from similar issues mentioned above, like having SKINs that could be applied across a variety of dissimilar ships.  In addition, there is the possible issue of people getting annoyed at having somebody else apply a look to their ship.  This wouldn’t be a problem in a group like Reavers, where we like to play dress-up, but on main fleet I could imagine some complaints.

Gates

Going on down the list of things you could sell to null sec alliances, special decor for gates comes pretty easily to mind.  I know that gates now have flags and logos, but what if you could make them extra special?  Like so much, there would have to be an alliance interface for this no doubt, but it seems doable otherwise… at least in Delve where we have Amarr gates that look like they were made with leftover Apocalypse hulls.

Cynos

I was thinking about maybe SKIN-like kits for lasers… you could have a Pride month Abbadon rainbow laser pack… but the color of lasers actually tell you what the enemy has loaded, so that is probably a no go.

But a cyno… you just have to sit and look at that thing for minutes at a stretch after you light it up.

Normal and covert cynos burning

So why not a pack of pretty cynos SKINs of different colors, just for variety?  Again, there is the question of creating a UI for this and, of course, if this would even be worth the effort.  There would probably be a pretty limited market for this.

Explosions

Now exiting what we might consider SKINs and heading into something only slightly related, but why not?

Ships have two sorts of explosions, the orange one and the blue electric one.  What if you could buy something that would give your ship a different or more spectacular explosion.  I know, that might be somewhat defeatist, but it could still be fun.  We all get blown up once in a while, why not go out with a bang?

And the upside of this is that, unlike some of the other ideas, I think you could do this without any UI work.  Just sell an item in the New Eden Store that, when present in your cargo hold, triggers a special explosion when your ship goes up.  Seems doable… once the art team creates some new explosions.

Cat Ears

And, just to go completely off the reservation, let me just put in another word for hats.  Things are better since I last complained about the lack of hats.  We now have hats.  We have baseball caps and berets.  They aren’t very good, but they are better than nothing I suppose.  Still no Viking horned helms or, for Jin’taan, cat ears.

Of course, having seen how the hats we have now work, I am pretty sure Jin’taan is going to remain unfulfilled in his desire for cat ears.  CCP went the easy(-ish) route for hats where, like in many games, you can have a hat or you can have hair, but not both.  I tried this on a female avatar with long hair and, as soon as she has that Permaband hat on she has a shaved scalp.

Still, we could get better head covering hats.  Just no cat ears.

What Else?

Anyway, those are some ideas.  Not all of them are worthwhile, but there has to be some money in it for CCP for a couple of them, enough to be worth the effort.

What else should CCP SKIN that won’t break the game or be more work that it is worth?

LOTRO Headed for the Grey Havens?

Turbine is transitioning into a free-to-play, mobile development studio…

-Warner Bros. PR statement to Massively OP

Well fuck.  It has not been a good… erm… few years for Turbine.

We were so optimistic back in 2007

There was this moment of optimism a while back.  They were going to bring back Asheron’s Call 2, they were going to let you run your own Asheron’s Call server, the Lord of the Rings Online contract situation was good for a couple more years and we seemed on the way to Mordor, Dungeons & Dragons Online was chugging along, upbeat and getting new stuff, and they were going to take on the hot new MOBA market with Infinite Crisis.

And then plans started falling apart.  Infinite Crisis was cancelled, the Asheron twins were put on life support with what seemed to be a DNR notice, and the company was left with two somewhat long in the tooth free to play MMOs to carry things forward.  LOTRO has already called out raiders.  Dirty laundry was being aired.  And even LOTRO’s plans seemed subdued, with server merges and fixing long standing bugs being key part of one producer’s letter.  Even the upside bit, the upgraded servers, turned into a problem for a while.

But things seemed to be settling down.  The servers became usable, new content was being added to the game, and a new baseline routine seemed to have been reached.  And now this.

Of course, Warner is telling people to remain calm:

The Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons online games will continue to operate as they do now.

But they HAVE to say that.  Those two games are the only income generating assets Turbine has now, and to say anything else might adversely impact that income stream.  And it is likely true for the short term.  But what happens next?

Warner could let the two games run on as before, with even less support and unlikely to get much in the way of substantial updates.  Given their new focus, that does not seem like sticking to the plan.

Warner could close the games down or, in the case of LOTRO, let the contact with Tolkien Enterprises run out in 2017 and not renew.  Both LOTRO and DDO, being licensed properties, likely have monthly minimum payments required to go to the rights holders, so an immediate shut down would leave Warner with bills to pay.  But at contract renewal it might be the time to walk away.

Or Warner could sell off the MMO part of Turbine to somebody like Perfect World Entertainment, where the LOTRO and DDO might each get a longer, if somewhat different, life going forward.  That would keep things going, provided that either game is a viable, money making venture that Warner can hand off to another company.  Anything with the name “Asheron” in the title seems to be doomed no matter what route Warner takes.

Anyway, it feels very much like we are waiting for the other shoe to drop on this one, that Warner has a long term decision to make… or announce if they have already made it… that will affect the fate of those two titles.

Play the games while you have the chance, as the future is more uncertain than usual and nobody is likely to make a game like LOTRO again.

Others on the topic:

• Bio Break
• Endgame Viable
• Level Up Haffle