Nineteen Weeks of World War Bee

Almost to 20 weeks and I haven’t given up on this weekly post yet.  We’ll see who lasts longer, me or Ban Syrin at INN. (Not that my posts are as detailed as theirs, but I do mark up a lot more maps.)

A bit of news hit late in the week when a disgruntled director in Requiem Eternal decided to defect to the Imperium.  They brought with them a reported a trillion ISK in assets, including a Moreau faction Fortizar and all the ISK the alliance had in its wallet, then disbanded the alliance as they left.

Rest in Peace for sure

That destroyed all their ihubs, dropped their sovereignty, and left almost two thousand pilots without an alliance.

Top of the charts

TEST had to get into its backfield yet again and cover the open sovereignty in the Impass region.  It will now be 35 days before any of those systems can host an Ansiblex jump gate.  The corporations in the alliance are all still safe and there appears to be a move to create a new alliance, Eternal Requiem, but this was another disruption.

On the press coverage front, CCP sat down with Game Rant to discuss the game and the war currently in progress.

Delve Front

Delve has become a back and forth slog over ihubs in a number of constellations.  The map as I write looks like this.

Delve – Nov. 15, 2020

However, if you compare it with my map from last week, you will see various systems in the highlighted constellations have changed hands since then.  In fact, the ihubs in those contested constellations change hands daily, so by the time this post goes live the ihub map of Delve will no doubt have changed yet again.

That has made fights sporadic as both sides seem okay with letting individual systems get flipped, knowing they can just come back tomorrow and flip them back.

That is the way it has been going and likely will continue going until one side gets tired and either gives up or decides on a different tactic.

Meanwhile, the gate camp in E3OI-U continues.  That system, and the systems behind it, have all had cyno jammers turned on in order to protect them.

Other Theaters

There was the potential for a big fight in Querious as the final timers hit for the Imperium Keepstar that was left behind in 49-U6U.  There were plans to defend the armor timer and pings went out to that effect, but the defense operations never came to pass.

The defense was based on a plan Asher Elias had formulated and, when yet another storm came ashore near his home a tree fell and knocked out his power just before the op.  Or so the story goes.

Since it was his plan, nobody else was ready to take up the reigns.  In the end, the Keepstar was destroyed, with the gunner taking out a couple of attacking capital ships, giving the invaders their seventh Keepstar kill of the war.

Otherwise Querious remained a low intensity war zone as both sides set about reinforcing and destroying each other’s ihubs, with many systems left without ihubs.

Querious – Nov. 15, 2020

The Imperium did manage to take back “fake” Querious, the set of systems assigned to the region but which are an enclave within Delve.

Then there is Esoteria, where The Bastion and Ferrata Victrix have been waging a guerilla war against TEST to distract them from their main effort in Delve.  After weeks of holding on to their foothold and Fortizar, they have started making more progress against TEST, adding four more ihubs to the list that they have taken.

Essoteria – Nov. 15, 2020

Adding to TEST’s problems on that front, The Initiative announced that they are deploying to Esoteria to join the campaign.  I may have to start using the whole map of Esoteria rather than just the northwest corner when the force there really gets to work.  I may have to give Esoteria its own section soon.

My Participation

I stood by on a couple of strategic ops, but the enemy declined to show up and we either saved the structure or took the ihub and were done without firing a shot.  As such, my loss tally remained unchanged.

• Ares interceptor – 11
• Crusader interceptor – 5
• Rokh battleship – 5
• Atron entosis frigate – 5
• Ferox battle cruiser – 3
• Drake entosis battle cruiser – 3
• Purifier stealth bomber – 2
• Guardian logi – 2
• Malediction interceptor – 2
• Scalpel logi frigate – 2
• Raven battleship – 1
• Crucifier ECM frigate – 1
• Gnosis ratting battlecruiser – 1
• Scimitar logi – 1
• Bifrost entosis command destroyer – 1
• Cormorant destroyer – 1
• Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
• Sigil entosis industrial – 1
• Mobile Small Warp Disruptor I – 1

Other Items

The past week saw some distractions in New Eden.

First, there was the November update aimed at further nerfing null sec, with the Dynamic Bounty system, aimed at making null sec empires spread out (again), and the mandatory Encounter Surveillance System changes, which encourage null sec empires to consolidate, all in the name of making us fight more in the middle of a war that has already set two Guinness World Records.

That got people out robbing banks as part of the new ESS system.  I saw more action doing that than I did in the actual war last week.

Hello ESS Bank!

And then there was the EVE-NT Alliance Open.  CCP is still unable to run the alliance tournament themselves, so have let EVE-NT run one again this year.  That kicked off on Saturday and pitted 32 teams in a double elimination tournament. Both Goonswarm and The Initiative lost their first round matches, making it unlikely that the two alliances will come to blows, something the invaders have been having wet dreams about since the fighting in Fountain started, even in the tournament.

Two losses

Goonswarm actually lost their second match as well, so are out of the tournament, while The Initiative carries on into next week.

While I’m not a huge fan of the tournament, I did watch a bit of it.  Probably the oddest thing I saw was the Rote Kapelle vs Dock Workers match where both teams fielded identical fleet compositions, consisting of 3 Barghests, 2 Caracals, 2 Scalpels, a Stormbringer, a Hyena, and a Stork.  I know the point system and the meta tend to push teams in similar directions at times, but I cannot recall seeing a mirror image fight when it came to hulls.  That Rote Kapelle won handily indicates that fittings, tactics, and pilot skill were the more important factors.

All of that seemed to add up to a weekly PCU that was fair to middling for these times, and this week fell on Saturday rather than Sunday:

• Day 1 – 38,838
• Week 1 – 37,034
• Week 2 – 34,799
• Week 3 – 34,692
• Week 4 – 35,583
• Week 5 – 35,479
• Week 6 – 34,974
• Week 7 – 38,299
• Week 8 – 35,650
• Week 9 – 35,075
• Week 10 – 35,812
• Week 11 – 35,165
• Week 12 – 36,671
• Week 13 – 35,618
• Week 14 – 39,681
• Week 15 – 40,359
• Week 16 – 36,642
• Week 17 – 37,695
• Week 18 – 36,632
• Week 19 – 35,816 (Saturday)

Related

• INN – World War Bee: Week 19
• INN – Requiem for Requiem
• INN – The Soviet Strategy (bad historical analogy alert)
• INN – Beginning of the End
• INN – The Meta Show episode covering Requiem disband
• Twitch – Requiem Eternal CEO address about the disband

EVE Online Gets Daily Login Rewards Starting with Free Skill Points

Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face?

-Gen. Jack Ripper, Dr. Stangelove

Daily login rewards are pretty much a staple of free to play MMOs these days, a little incentive to get you into the game in order to make their active user statistics look better, with a possible chance of maybe getting you to play.  From the Hobbit presents in Lord of the Rings Online (including on the Legendary server) to boosters in War Thunder, free games that don’t play that card are few and far between.  It is certainly an aspect of Black Desert Online, if you want to continue to stoke that concern.

And now CCP seems to be getting on board with that idea…  again.

You may remember two and a half years back, in May of 2016, CCP tried putting a daily into the game.  Those were called “recurring opportunities” and awarded players with 10K skill points if they would just undock and shoot an NPC.  This “thrill of the hunt” plan turned out to be not all that thrilling, because CCP pulled it a month later, citing little change in logins.

The mistake made, it seems, was requiring a player to undock and do something.  That was the old CCP, which really wanted players to get out and blow stuff up.  But real MMOs just hand stuff out for merely logging in, so the new Pearl Abyss owned CCP is going to try it that way now.

Sure, it seems like a simple event, a one-off to celebrate the Onslaught expansion released earlier this week.  It is only a weekend of double skill points.

How can double be bad?

I am going to get side tracked for a bit on how muddled the message of this campaign is.

That graphic, which they are using everywhere for this campaign, including in an email blast to players, which surprisingly went out in a timely manner, makes it sound like your skill training speed will be going 2x.  So if you are training at 2,700 SP per hour, it should be going 5,400 per hour from today until November 19th hits, right?

Wrong.

Nothing is being doubled here, any more than your ISK is getting doubled in Jita.

Instead, if you log in two of the next three days (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday), you will get some skill points applied to one of the characters on a given account.  You get 25K SP if you have an Alpha account and 50K SP if you have an Omega.

What you see when you log in… with obligatory push to go Omega

That is nice.  I never turn my nose up at free skill points.  But that is “double” for very specific definitions of the word.

For example, your default Alpha character trains skills at 900 SP per hour, which only gives them 21.6K SP per day.  So the 25K SP they get is actually more than double for a day, but with only two gifts over the three days, actually less than double over the course of the event.

And don’t get me started on what double would actually mean to an Omega with implants, attributes optimized, and a cerebral accelerator running.

But double sounds good, and I guess “double speed” sounded even better in a conference room somewhere.  It isn’t something to get mad about, but it is an eye rolling opportunity.

And using that terminology managed to get at least one gaming site to declare that your training speed would be doubled AND you would get free SP for logging in as well, which led to a grumpy comment from me as I had provided the tip, taking pains to describe what the event actually entailed.

Anyway, you have to click the claim button when you log in, after which you get one or two 25K SP items in the redemption UI.

This little bit at the bottom of the screen

You just drag those on to whichever character you want and the skill points go to them.

Be warned, you don’t get a skill injector or such in game.  These skill points go directly into the “unused skill points” pool for the character you select.

Just do that on two of the next three days and you’ve got your free skill points.  Enjoy!

Which may leave you asking why I am suddenly on about daily login rewards becoming a thing.  This is just one event, right?  CCP has done this before, right?  I mean, we had to log in every day for how many days to collect gifts from the Yule Lads for Yoiul that one year, remember?

While CCP has in fact handed out gifts like this on multiple occasions, even making us log into the game daily at times, up until now they haven’t bothered to add an element to the UI in order to support this sort of thing.  And so I would like to present Exhibit A:

Exhibit A

There it is, stuck to the Neocom bar, annoyingly close to where I like to keep the notifications button, a specific UI element for “Daily Login Campaigns.”  It is the box with little boxes at the corners and an X though it, with another little box in the center… which I am pretty sure is the Illuminati symbol for “trap them within presents” or “boxes of depth” or “I can’t find the circle tool in my drawing program.” Fnord.

It is also on the lower left of the character select screen as well!

So this is your Friday conspiracy theory.  CCP is now serious about jumping on the login rewards bandwagon.  You don’t add a UI element and name it “Daily Login Campaigns” if you aren’t serious about running daily login campaigns.

Now, maybe it won’t be an every single day thing, like Hobbit presents or whatever.  But they will be a regular, recurring thing from now on.  You can bet on it.

Others on about this campaign or the idea in general:

• The Nosy Gamer

 

MER – The Peace Dividend in September

CCP has apparently caught up with all the extra work from doing both EVE Vegas and the Onslaught expansion in about a month’s time, so the team has returned to some of the smaller items on its usual list, like the Monthly Economic Report.

Actually, we got two.  I had been bitching about how they skipped September.  But when I saw the October report appear in my feed I went to the dev blog site and found the September one there as well, dated “October 3, 2018.”

That agitated me a bit, because I had been checking for the September report for ages.  How could I have possibly missed it?  But an update from CCP Falcon announcing that both reports had been released on the same day.

Somebody fiddled the dates on the Dev Blog site.  I wonder how much they were paid for that?  Damn those corrupt developers!

I was going to simply skip over the September MER because I am sure nobody is exactly pining for me to put up two MER posts in a single month.  But it turns out the October MER is currently messed up.  The charts are missing two regions, Fade and Cache, and there is at least one chart from August posted.

I’m still leafing through the Onslaught patch notes, in case I missed something about CCP removing two regions from the game, since I am not certain anybody would notice if either went missing.  But the chart from August is a key one I use each time, so I am going to postpone writing about October until that gets fixed, which might mean skipping October altogether.  We shall see.

Back to September, we’ll just jump right in where we usually do, which is with the mining numbers.

September 2018 – Mining Value by Region

In a turn likely to surprise nobody who has been paying attention, Delve both led the pack in September and was up by almost 5 trillion ISK in mining value.  Since peace broke out in null sec in the back half of the month, pilots returned to Delve and resumed their strip mining of space.

We also got the bar chart back for September, so you can see how the various regions ranked.

September 2018 – Mining Value by Region Bar Chart

The highest region in the north appears to be Branch, with the east of null sec more closely trailing Delve, though Querious, owned and mined by the Imperium, is in third place overall.

A 5 trillion ISK jump in mining in Delve doesn’t seem like a huge uptick given the coming of peace.  And, while peace came late in the month, so maybe October will show a greater increase, the September jump is also fighting a drop in mineral prices.

September 2018 – Economic Indices

Mineral prices dropped to a three year low in September, and since mining is measured by the value of the ore mined, if the price goes down then the ore value goes down even if exactly the same amount of ore is mined.

Mineral prices are not yet at an all time low, as the next chart shows.

September 2018 – Economic Indices over All Time

There was a long stretch between 2007 and 2012 when mineral prices were lower.  But since the rework or NPC drops in the Drone Regions the price has been consistently higher.

Moving on to NPC bounties… well, what did you expect?

September 2018 – NPC Bounties by Region

Delve led the pack yet again, though was “only” up by about 1.4 trillion ISK over August.  Again we have the bar graph back so we can see how the regions shook out.

September 2018 – NPC Bounties by Region – Bar Graph

Branch, where GotG retreated, saw a significant amount of bounty payouts as well.

Overall null sec bounties were a slightly smaller percentage of the overall pic.

September 2018 – NPC Bounties by Sec Status

Yes, null sec still totally dominates, but the percentage was 93.2%, down from 93.4%, with high sec seeming to pick up most of that.  It is a tiny change, but when you consider that the war was ending you might figure that number would go up for null sec.  And doubly so as we see NPC bounties reaching for an all time high again, as the next chart shows.

September 2018 – Top Sinks and Faucets

Bounties haven’t topped past records, but my guess is that the October version of this chart won’t show a downturn.

Then there is the trade front.

September 2018 – Trade Value by Region

As usual, the region containing the central trade hub of New Eden dominates the numbers.  Jita stands so tall that everybody else appears to be… I was going to say a dwarf, but maybe a dwarf embryo might better describe the ratio.

September 2018 – Trade Value by Region – Bar Graph

Removing The Forge from the graph better shows how the rest of the game universe compares.

September 2018 – Trade Value by Region – Bar Graph, Forge Excluded

With that we see Domain, home of Amarr, standing out with its second place numbers, followed by Delve, home of the Imperium, the economic empire of null sec.

Overall trade is down a lot, with The Forge seeing a drop of nearly 90 trillion ISK compared to August.  While there is still a lot of trade going on, the war boom seems to be over.  Additionally, looking at prices, the market also appears to have back filled demand for Abyssal Deadspace relates items, like Gilas, causing prices to ease up some on that front.

Cloud Ring, where the Imperium was based for the war, saw a full trillion knocked off of its trade value compared to August, bringing the number down below 1.6 trillion.  Expect that to fall off further come the October report.

The same goes for contracts, where Cloud Ring fell off in September for the same reason.

September 2018 – Contracts Trade Value by Region – Bar Chart

Again, The Forge led the way with contracts, but Delve isn’t all that far behind.

And then there is Production.  The war saw some destruction, though not as much as one might have wished.  Still, there were ships to be replaced and everybody needs to build up for the next war.

September 2018 – Production Values by Region

While production for the main market in The Forge was down almost 2.5 trillion ISK in value, in Delve it was up by over 5 trillion ISK in value, pushing it past The Forge for total production.  The Mittani wants us all to own two titans now, so that has to be adding to the mix.  (I still own zero titans, a number unlikely to increase ever.)

September 2018 – Production Values by Region – Bar Graph

Still, what I would call the “Jita production cluster,” which includes The Forge, The Citadel, and Lonetrek, still add up to more than Delve.

And, as I usually do, I will wrap up with the regions overview chart.

September 2018 – Regional Stats

So that is September.  There was still a war going on, and Keepstars being destroyed, so it doesn’t show what peace really does to the economy, but it does show the start of the transition.  Once CCP fixes the October reports I’ll look into that… though, honestly, I suspect they won’t bother.  We’ll see if I’m in the mood to do another of these this month.

Anyway, you can find the whole September MER here, with more charts and all the data used to create it. (And the October is here if you want a peek.  It might be fixed by the time this goes live.)

Dropping in on the North

For me things have been pretty quiet down in Delve for the last month or so.

Which isn’t to say a lot hasn’t been going on.  Just look at last week’s post about the Monthly Economic Report.  And then there has been the changes to moon mining that came at the end of October.  Lots of people have been very busy.

Just not me.

I haven’t mined in ages and rat so sporadically that all of my own bounty payouts from Delve, lumped into one figure, wouldn’t influence any region’s monthly total for any recent month, high, low, or null sec.

I live for strat ops and deployments.  “Join The Imperium and See New Eden!” was the recruiting poster aimed at me.  And not much of that has been going on.  We have a structure and sovereignty treaty with TEST, our neighbors to the east. North, in Fountain, the collapse of The-Culture created more of a buffer between us and people we would shoot regularly, with The Initiative moving in next to Pandemic Horde.  And while there is some sort of war going on involving Triumvirate and Solar Fleet, that is a distant place where we don’t have much in the way of friends.

And, of course, I’ve been playing a bunch of World of Warcraft over the last few weeks, which I do full screen so I can’t even see pings if I remember to launch Jabber, which I haven’t done for a bit.  So there might have been a few strat ops, but I could have missed them.

What I did miss, but quickly caught up on this week, were some deployments.  A few groups have been heading into the north end of null sec to make mischief and shoot the locals.  I went from shipping some stuff to Jita in case I got kicked for not doing anything during November… I needed to clean out my hangar anyway… to racing north in a stealth bomber to join in on the fun.

I went from not knowing about any deployments to being deployed in under an hour, though I was in such a hurry to get going that I ran off without any torpedoes or bombs in my Purifier’s cargo bay.  I had to check the market as I flew, picking up a few torps here and there as I went.

Up in the north with just a bomber, I was in it for the hot drops until I could fly/ship something else. (Flying seems more likely as today’s jump fuel related news made isotope market prices exploding, which mean shipping prices will be up as well.)  But hot dropping has it own charm, along with the element of surprise.

First you get in the fleet, get on the black ops battleship.

Bombers clustered on a Redeemer

Of course, it doesn’t look like that most of the time.  Usually the battleship is cloaked to start with and you cloak up your bomber and warp to it, so you have essentially what looks to any casual observer like just more empty space.  (Ignore local, there is really nobody here!)  The black ops battleship only uncloaks when it is time to bridge us to a target.

So everybody groups up, all cloaked, and waits.  Out in the field scouts with covert cynos are searching for a target worth dropping, but the hammer sits in its tool box until it is time.  Which means you can sit on coms and listen while doing something else… like running world quests in WoW for the flying achievement.

But when Asher calls out, “Everybody wake up!” it is time to go.  Sometimes you’ll end up on a small mining op to bomb and finish off, other times you end up on a bigger prize.

Bombers hitting a ratting Nidhoggur

That is the fun time, getting to rip into a capital ship with a fleet of glass-cannon-esque bombers.  It is torpedoes on the way and hoping to be able to hold the target down until it is too late.  Then seeing the hull begin to erupt.

The Nidhoggur about to go down

And then boom!

Flying out of the explosion in a Haven

It all goes by so fast at times that I forget to take a screen shot or three along the way.

Then it is time to loot what we can, destroy whatever is left, and get back on station to wait for the next target of opportunity.

Probably one of the more historically ironic things I have seen so far been Goons dropping on and killing a Mordus Angels ratting carriers.  How times have changed.

Anyway, I am suddenly active again, so maybe I won’t get kicked this month.

Quote of the Day – Sisyphean Task

Devs promise to change Battlefront II until players are happy

-Ars Technica article title

It is the rare headline that gets me to laugh out loud, but this one managed it.

EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront II woes around lockboxes and pay to win and the game in general continue unabated.  I’m not keen on EA when they’re having a good day… since a “good day” at EA usually means buying a studio they’ll close down sooner or later…

Fun created here… on an Orca graveyard!

Starting with what seemed to be like a “land war in Asia” grade mistake where players could unlock things either by playing or paying using the same currency, allowing players to immediately calculate an hours/money comparison, made more grievous by having it in a PvP shooter.  So the rage online was epic and the EA response on Reddit became the most down-voted item ever.  Call Guinness, we have another video game record for the books!

EA stuck to their guns… for a bit, then suddenly dropped the price of unlocks by a whopping 75% while trying to put all of this in back in the bottle by promising… well… you can see the quote above.  My immediate reaction on Twitter was:

Headline: "Devs promise to change Battlefront II until players are happy"

Me: Say "Hi" to Sisyphus for me when you see him in Hell!

— Wilhelm Arcturus (@wilhelm2451) November 16, 2017

At this point EA can only hope to fix enough so that the review scores from the big sites… which are all on hold right now, so the current Meta Critic score of 79 is based on four sites, three of which I would call “minor” and a fourth I haven’t heard of… won’t tank.  But good luck making any of the vocal members of their audience happy at this point.  On that front the pooch has already been well and truly screwed.  Anything short of removing lockboxes completely… and EA won’t ever do that… will fail to meet their stated goal.

Anyway, we shall see if anything is learned here.

Kunark Ascending Goes Live in Norrath

Norrath remains in danger from Lanys T’Vyl and her pursuit of power! It is up to you to keep Lanys T’Vyl from acquiring the third and final Chaos Stone. Return to Kunark to stop Lanys from ushering in a new age of power. Will you stand against the Tenets of Hate? Adventures await you in Kunark Ascending, EverQuest II’s 13th expansion!

-Kunark Ascending promo text

Next on this week’s list of new arrivals (and the second to derive a title from the root word “ascend”) is Kunark Ascending, the 13th expansion for EverQuest II (plus 4 adventure packs along the way as well), which landed yesterday, close to the game’s 12th birthday.

Launched November 15, 2016

As the name indicates, the expansion returns to one of the “classic” locations in Norrath, the island of Kunark, which was the setting for the first EverQuest expansion, Ruins of Kunark, more than 16 years ago.

The expansion gets you the following:

• 1 New Overland Zone
• 12 New Heroic zones
• 1 Challenge Heroic Zone
• 8 New Solo Zones
• 4 New Advanced Solo Zones
• 6 New Raid Zones
• More than 50 New Solo and Heroic Quests
• More than 65 New Collection Quests
• 4 New Archetypal Epic 2.0 Quest Lines
• 4 New Ascension Classes
• New Wardrobe Function
• New Mercenary Gear Feature
• Level 100 Character Boost
• Access to All Previous Expansions

I borrowed most of that list from the top of the EQ2 Wire Kunark Ascending FAQ which goes into the features of the expansion in great detail. (Feldon also has the expansion deployment patch notes available as well.)  You should at least browse that if the expansion interests you.

I was actually considering purchasing the expansion due to the level 100 character boost and my current disinterest in the WoW Legion expansion.  The character boost would vault me into the current content at least, though there is no doubt some complexity in that.  Plus I would have to figure out which character to boost, since I used the free level 95 character boost they were handing out a while ago on what I would consider my “main” character already.  Would be a bit silly to use the new boost to jump him just five levels.  And then there is the question as to whether my disinterest in WoW at the moment is just WoW or would it apply to any fantasy MMORPG.  Some days you just don’t want to don your tabard and go swing a sword in any fantasy world.

Still, it is there and waiting, level 100 boost included, should I want to join in.  The expansion comes in the usual three levels of excess, with a 10% discount if you are an all access subscriber… and if you’re serious enough about the game to buy the expansion I have to figure you’re down for all access as well.

Premium packages available for premium prices

The standard edition will be enough for me when the time comes.

There is also a launch trailer, if you need that to tempt you.

Meanwhile, a couple of bloggers have already dipped their toes into Kunark Ascending.

• Inventory Full – First Impressions
• ECTmmo – Blunt First Impression