A Keepstar Dies in Catch

The war is over and most groups are back in their homes… old or new… and working on building up for the next struggle.  Out in Delve we have Ansiblex jump gates again and an industrial infrastructure in progress and ADMs on the rise.

But there are still some details to take care of.  While most of the PAPI structures have been cleared out, a Keepstar was still hanging on in Catch, in U-QVWD.  That might have been the most reinforced structure of the war.  The Initiative went after it many times, but it was a key waypoint on the capital highway to the east, so PAPI forces kept showing up to defend it even when they were not doing much in Delve proper.

They even gave it a name to taunt Dark Shines of INIT

But Monday night late USTZ the final timer was coming up for it.  The question was whether or not TEST or PAPI would put any effort into defending it one more time.  It was far from Outer Passage, but not impossible to get to.

The Imperium was not going to take any chances.  Capitals moved out the day before and as tht timer counted down subcap fleets were formed up and sent to Catch.  After all, who doesn’t want to get on a Keepstar kill?

Titans waiting their turn

There was even some chatter about Pandemic Horde doing a flash form and maybe coming our way.  But nothing came of it.  The joke went around that they accidentally jumped to the bait beacon in UQ-PWD like so many of their comrades before.

I had a jump clone and a couple of ships over in Curse in an NPC station just a couple of jumps away, so I grabbed an Ishtar I had sitting around and joined in to watch the fun.

Ishtar watching the Keepstar

I have been a bit under the weather and wasn’t feeling up to being in main fleet, so I did this on my own.  I waited until the Keepstar was down to about 15% then warped in range and took a few distant pot shots at it.  I scored no hits, but you get credit for trying.

The Keep exploded soon there after.

Another one bites the dust

I made it on the kill mail with about 800 of my fellow Imperium pilots.

GSOL, well practiced at this now, swooped in and grabbed the core then salvaged the wreck.

GSOL doing its thing

There is another TEST Keepstar in 0SHT-A, one gate over in Curse.  I am sure that will be next on the list.

 

The EVE Online Rolling Thunder Update Attempts to Breath Life into EDENCOM Ships

Last week CCP announced that we would be getting a “balance pass” for EDENCOM ships with an update they are calling Rolling Thunder.  That is an impressive name, even if it got some bad press back in the 60s. But can CCP live up to it?

That is actually lightning, you cannot hear thunder in space

The problem is that EDENCOM ships, introduced with the update back in June, with the splashy vorton projector “hit multiple targets” weapon systems, have failed to catch on in New Eden.

We got a frigate, a cruiser, and a battleship variation, each with its own skill, and the accompanying small, medium, and large weapon system, each again with its own training requirement, along with some subsidiary skills to improve their effect generally, all of which started a mild bit of hype about how cool these new ships were going to be.

And then not much happened.

I mentioned that I trained up all the skills to level IV or V… and some of those skills were freaking expensive, being available only from event drops… because there was some thought about using them for a Reavers doctrine.  But that got dropped because the ships suck and they are difficult to source.

I assume that they do suck because people who know ship fitting better than I, even when being generous about the EDENCOM ships, say that they fill a very niche roll at best.

As for being difficult to source… in short supply and expensive when you can find them… there is an obvious bottle neck there in that you can only buy them with EDENCOM Loyalty Points earned by fighting for the EDECOM side in the current set of Triglavian invasion events.  When you can buy a fully fit Ferox for about the same price as the just the hull of the EDECOM Stormbringer cruiser, why would you bother with that hull unless it is very OP?

So CCP is going to try and fix this.

On the cost/availability front, the fix is pretty straightforward:

• DED LP Offers for all EDENCOM items have had LP cost reduced by 90%

Make things cheaper to buy and they will be cheaper on the market as more people try to sell them.  We hope.

As for making the ships better, they are getting a couple of tweaks:

• Optimal Range increased for all Small Vorton Projectors by 30% [hit further]
• Damage reduction factor down for all weapon sizes (this means mitigation from target speed plays a smaller role) [hit harder]:
  • Frig → 0.6 to 0.4
  • Cruiser → 0.65 to 0.5
  • Battleship → 0.82 to 0.7
• Damage increase to all Small and Medium Condenser Packs for Vorton Projectors. (Tech 1 and Tech 2) [do… something?]
  • Small Condenser Pack damages have been increased by 20%
  • Medium Condenser Pack damages have been increased by 20%

These actually seem like fairly modest changes on the performance side.  We will see if these, combined with the radical price reduction, get more of these ships on the field.  I have yet to see one in the wild myself.

In addition, a new three day login event will coincide with the update, starting after downtime on September 25th, that will hand out SKINs for these ships, boosters that improve their performance, and, of course, skill points.

If they really wanted us to use the ships, maybe they should just give us all one of the hulls.  It would tank prices on the market, but it would get some in space.

In addition to the EDENCOM focus, some other ships are getting a bit of a buff.  The two lesser force auxiliaries, the Lif and Niazu, are getting a bit of a boost.

• Lif
  • 7.5% bonus to shield booster amount becomes 7.5% bonus to shield booster amount and cap booster amount
• Ninazu
  • 7.5% bonus to armor repair amount becomes 7.5% bonus to armor repair amount and cap booster amount

And then there are a couple of buffs for black ops battleships.  The first is an easy one.

All Black Ops have had their Fuel Bay capacity increased from 1250 to 2150

Now the blops pilot won’t have to shovel so much fuel from the fuel truck mid-bridge with larger fleets.  This is a happy, quality of life improvement aim at what the ships are mostly used for these days.

In addition, all of the blops are getting a bit of a boost to some of their default shield and armor resist values.  This hearkens back to the days when people would drop on targets in a blops solo.  These days they are mostly used for throwing covert ops capable ships around space, but I am sure there is some freebooter out there still trying for solo blops kills who will be happy to hear about this.

Details about the blops resist values and other information can be found in the updated patch notes.

WoW Classic Sunday Morning Bits and Pieces

As we approach the end of the fourth week of WoW Classic a lot of things seem to have settled down, but there are still some bits of news and changes coming out about the game.

The Classic Background

In the ongoing server load saga, Blizzard opened up free realm transfers for overcrowded realms in both the North America and the EU.  Transfers are expected to remain available through tomorrow at least, though may stay open longer if realm populations do not sort out.

In addition, Blizzard has opened up a couple of new servers.   On the North American side, a new Spanish language server, Lothab (PvP), has been added, under the new Latin America tab, in the server selection.

Also added was a Brazilian server, Sul’thraze (PvP), which appears under the new Brazil tab in the server selection.

On the EU side a Spanish server, Mandokir (PvP), has been added, under the new Spanish tab, in server selection.

Free transfers to both servers will be available through the end of the month.  This brings the realm count up to… I don’t know… a lot… more than double what they started with and that doesn’t count the fact that they also doubled the number of people allowed on a server.

In other new, a suspect has been arrested in relation to the DDoS attack on Blizzard and WoW Classic.  During the second weekend of WoW Classic the game was subject to a DDoS attack by a group calling themselves UKdrillas, who bragged about the attack on Twitter.

Asmogold always seems to be a target

The UKdrillas account was suspended by Twitter by the end of the day and Blizzard set out to work with authorities to find the culprits.  If they caught one of them they will no doubt pressure them to roll over on any co-conspirators.  We shall see how that plays out.

On in-game focus, Blizzard put up a post in the forums in an effort to help people get around Azeroth.  The retail game is heavily populated by flight points, with multiple in a single zone being common.  But back in the old days it was pretty much one flight point per zone, and you needed all the connecting flight to get between any two given points.

While the Blizzard post is a nod to the change, I think the WoWHead Classic entry on travel, which includes maps, is a better option.

Blizzard also posted a city tour of Orgrimmar, complete with map.  I’ve seen that map somewhere before recently.

Blizzard also fixed an exploit that was allowing people to respawn dungeon bosses in order to farm them for drops.  They said those who abused the exploit would be punished, though they clarified what counts as abuse.

Finally, Blizzard released another Classic with the Creators video, this time with Pat Nagle.

Pat Nagle is probably best know for his name having been borrowed and re-arranged for use as the Azerothian  fishing master and trainer, Nat Pagle.

Pokemon Gold and Silver Available on 3DS Today

Meanwhile, on the retro-nostalgia front, Nintendo is bringing more old school Pokemon games to the 3DS today in the for of Pokemon Gold & Silver.

For the GameBoy Color

Back in 2016 Nintendo re-released Pokemon Red, Blue, & Yellow for the 3DS Virtual Console as part of the Pokemon 20th Anniversary celebration.  I went in on Pokemon Blue to discover how things went way back in the day, and I was surprised by how nearly fully formed the first generation of Pokemon games really were.

Now we have the second generation available, and with that comes some rounding out of the Pokemon standard features including:

• Pokemon breeding
• Held items for Pokemon
• Dual-type Pokemon
• Steel and Dark type Pokemon
• Shiny Pokemon
• Pokemon experience tracking

In addition the games are in full on color, no longer having to support the original monochromatic GameBoy hardware.

Virtual cartridges for the Virtual Console

As with the first generation releases, Pokemon Bank will be getting an update to allow players to move their Pokemon from these titles to Pokemon Sun & Moon, or to Pokemon UltraSun & UltraMoon when the latter ship this coming November.

So I am much more likely to spend time this weekend playing retro Pokemon than anything else, and all the more so since the 2009 remakes of these titles, Pokemon HeartGold & SoulSilver rank very highly on my list of favorite Pokemon titles.

The only quest is, do I go with Gold or Silver?

Guild Wars 2 Path of Fire Launches Today!

Today is the day.  At some point around noon [or now], here on the first day of Autumn in the northern hemisphere, the Path of Fire expansion for Guild Wars 2 goes live.

Guild Wars 2 – Path of Fire

As an outsider to the game… never got much past level 40… the expansion looks to offer up some standard sounding fare for players; New story, new zones, new skills/specs, guild halls, and the seemingly now mandatory character level boost.  I think the new feature I can most related to is the addition of mounts.

Some very Telara mounts

There is, of course, a whole page dedicated to the expansion over at the GW2 site if you are interested.  More than one actually, as there is a FAQ and such.

Expansions remain a mixed bag for me.

On the plus it brings in revenue for the game.   Expect a big spike on the GW2 chart when NCsoft releases Q3 2017 results.  It also gives players more content, gets players who have lapsed a reason to return, and can invigorate the whole game.

But expansions always bring about change.  Sometimes the change is minor and the spirit of the game remains true.  That caters to the core base but won’t attract anybody new.

But sometimes expansions change the core of the game.  I am reminded of Rift; I played the hell out of the base game, but then the first expansion changed design philosophy of the game and killed it for me.  And, of course, new gear, new mechanics, new skills, and what not also have a habit of changing the old content for the worse as well.

Then there is the ever growing gap between the new stuff, where the center of gravity of the community is playing, and where any new player will start.  I become more convinced as time goes along that level boosts are mixed blessing, a flimsy bandage applied to the gushing wound of linear, level based progression.

But I am also old and cynical and in a down cycle when it comes to fantasy MMORPGs right now.

Enough grumbling.  Today is a fresh new day in Telara and a lot of people will spend the weekend and beyond exploring the new things that Path of Fire brings.  I wish them well on their journeys.  Among other things ANet rolled out some stats to celebrate the launch.