Evicted by Inner Hell

Once you get into your routine, it's hard to appreciate certain things. I've been around long enough to know you should never take things for granted in this game. You have to be prepared that certain things like your favorite ship, play style, or even your corp will change or disappear. Despite living in wormholes for most of my time, this week I have experienced something new. My corp got evicted by Inner Hell. While the risk of eviction was always known to me, the corps I have joined were always small-medium size focused on small gang PVP. Corps I've been apart of were always neutral, minded their business, and provided content when the opportunity arose. I took my home systems for granted as I always felt that to evict my corp would be more pain than it's worth. Well, Inner Hell was of another opinion. It felt that Epicentre Syndicate has accumulated enough wealth, got too comfortable and it was time to shake things up, by cleansing the system of any traces of player activity.

I take breaks in EVE. Sometimes, the breaks are quite long. Once you stop logging in, it becomes very difficult to force yourself to even open the client. Due to this, I often miss out on a lot of things happening such as big updates or drama and politics. My isolationist hunting playstyle did not help as it made it very easy to stay ignorant, ignore what was not impacting me directly, and just mind my own business. Therefore, the main reason I joined the corp was to be more engaged in EVE universe, relearn things I've forgotten and build friendships. After some discussions with corpmates I've learned that drama in wormholes was quite a big topic recently and a lot of evictions were going on. Of course, I refer to TDSIN and HK squabble. While Epicentre Syndicate was neutral, we did discuss the topic of eviction on numerous occasions, and mentally, at least some of us were always prepared to face the music.

On a personal level, all these eviction stories felt crazy and unreal. Being in wormholes, it always felt like being a part of a community. And while some corps hated each other, we still "got" one another. At the risk of sounding like a bittervet, one unwritten rule in wormholes was always respected. You don't evict active PVP corps. Not at least without a very good reason. The content was always hard to come by in w-space and make it emptier would do no good to anyone. It seemed like "old fashioned" approach went out of style and big cleansing was underway. So what does this have to do with us being evicted by Inner Hell? Probably not much, but I thought it would be interesting to mention. There is also a chance that due to other evictions ongoing, the list of whom to evict for Inner Hell became much shorter.

Inner Hell is famous for its playstyle which specializes in evictions. It's what they do and what they are good at. And we got to experience that first hand. While I dislike this playstyle, I do have to respect the commitment they put in. While we caught initial scanner checking out timers of our structures, the first iteration of hole control fleet caught us completely off guard. It all started with a miner gank. We thought it was a random encounter but quickly realized there was an eviction force present in our system.

The last stand

Epicentre Syndicate leadership was working around the clock to deal with a sudden crisis. It was clear that our corp alone won't have a chance to stand against the hostiles in the system and we would need help. But if you have been involved in wormhole warfare, you probably realize that it is extremely difficult to get help inside the system if you have no hole control. Even if there are volunteers to help the cause, it's useless without a way to get inside. We joke around that the only way we stand a chance is a frigate hole to our system since they can't be rolled and it's extremely hard to control the incoming traffic.

The very next day, Bob answers our prayers and blesses us with 2 frigate holes. The biggest evidence of Bob watching us if I ever saw one. Batphone goes out and soon we have over 100 pilots docked in our main Fortizar. Evening comes and I see the biggest fleet I have participated in wormhole space so far. We are ready to make a claim for the right to stay in this c4 system.

We start off well. We pick off some of t3s and force the enemy fleet to warp off and successfully defend the timer. As Inner Hell can't win the direct confrontation on a station, they warp around and we play a game of cat and mouse for a short while. 

While we could defend the timers of some of the stations, it was clear that this would be the battle of attrition if we kept it up. We could defend today, but what about tomorrow? Next week? Enemy fleet has fully committed to this invasion while people that came to our help took time from their schedules, burned to our system, and spent most of the day in it. It was unreasonable to expect and even ask them to stay longer than that. Therefore a decision was taken for the "final" battle. We would warp directly on the enemy fleet and brawl it out. We either incur big losses to the enemy that forces a regroup or go out in style. It's a win-win. We undock everything we can, align, and warp on the enemy. The big battle starts.

It all starts out great. We pop some good amount of t3s, Drakevacs, Ikitursas. However, as the battle drags on and we lose the majority of the fighters, it becomes noticeably harder to get kills. The fact that the fleet is fitted for long-range did not help shooting high-resist speed tanking ships. Especially after the enemy fleet picked off our webifiers, the damage output started to stagnate. It became clear that the fight was lost and we were just feeding kills, it was time to salvage what we could and bail.

Aftermath

Despite everything, the mood in the corp was on the upside. Everyone was feeling good for having a chance to organize a good fight and even inflict some moderate losses on our evictors. The zkillboard report shows 43 billion worth of ISK damage done and 93 billion lost.

With some random picks before and after, it's safe to assume we have done over 50 billion ISK damage. While it may not sound much in the grand scheme of things, we can say with confidence that Epicentre Syndicate members and allies gave their best to stand our ground with no regrets. It was time to go with our contingency plan - deny as many resources as possible, by self-destructing ships and logging off valuable assets on inactive characters.

We self-destructed, trashed, and evacuated assets that we could. Finally, it was time to say goodbye to our home. Even with victory at hand, Inner Hell diligently was watching the wormhole connections. To deny even a chance of catching our pods and shiny ships such as my scanning Proteus, most of the corp Yeeted out with Needlejack Filaments to null-sec and made our way to high-sec. In a way, it feels refreshing. We are no longer tied to our assets and are free to choose the next path. What does the future hold for Epicentre Syndicate and myself? Who knows, but we will make sure to use this opportunity and make the best of it.

Additional notes

1) Thanks to everyone who came to help to defend our home! Epicentre Syndicate members are very grateful and will not forget if some of you will be in a need.

2) The video of the fight.

What is driving your EVE?

I'm back from my trip to Japan. It was an amazing 2 weeks experience. There was nothing I did not enjoy about the trip. The food, the culture, the environment. The biggest challenge was language barrier though. To find an English speaking Japanese is like finding treasure. Nevertheless, by learning few phrases and pointing to the pictures everything went fine. If anyone is considering visiting Japan for the first time, I highly recommend checking out tips here. It's what I used as a general guideline when planned my trip.

While traveling, I've been keeping up to date with EVE. I had a lot of free time when taking trains, so I couldn't help myself not to check news and blogs. It just again reminded me that EVE is a quite big hobby of mine or that I have a problem. Probably both.

I would like to highlight one post by Talvorian Dex at Target Caller, where he raised the question - "what is your goal with pvp?" It got me thinking. Not just about pvp, but in general, what are my goals in EVE. I have similar thoughts appear in my head time to time, so I decided to put them on paper this time.

My goal in EVE

To be honest, I don't have one. If I had to name one thing as a goal it would be to a healthy balance between RL and EVE. In my early days I tried to run a corp, be a pvper, a fc, do drug manufacturing, be hardcore explorer by seeding DED site farming ships in every constellation, be hardcore trader by rolling multiple accounts and grinding standings. One thing I learned, is that if you try to be the best at something or at least very good, you need to dedicate a lot of time and effort to it. After multiple burnouts I seriously rethought my way of playing EVE. It often became a second job and it was too much for me. I was on the path to quitting and perhaps playing Elder Scrolls Online with my old corpmates.

Scaling down was best decision I've made. No longer I care about showing hours to the game to become very rich in trading, or be a super active member in a corp and be a jack of all trades - logi, links, tackle, dps. Instead, I started focusing on gameplay I like and cutting out activities that kills enjoyment of the game.

For example, I pay yearly subs of my 4 accounts. 3 traders accounts are supporting themselves via plex and is enough for me to adjust orders once every 1-2 months to earn it. If I plexed all my accounts, I would feel the pressure of doing active trading more often to support it. I minimize my pve activity by not flying anything shiny. Faction scram and webifier are most expensive modules I fit. Despite having over 300 billion of wealth, I have never owned a Vindicator or a Marauder.

I highly encourage everyone to sit back, relax and give a thought about your EVE. Think about your goals. What really drives you and makes you enjoy the game? Talvorian Dex wants to nurture his pvp skills and excel at balanced fights. I enjoy hunting and killing those who don't expect to be killed. What about you?

Blog Banter 67 - This shit's gotta go

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 67th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are please visit the Blog Banter page.

I am CCP X
There has been a catastophic accident in the CCP Offices in the style of the Robbie Coltrane movie "The Pope Must Die". A leftover open bottle of Brennivin hidden behind a filing cabinet from the last Christmas party has mutated and released fumes affecting several senior CCP staff. CCP Chair is now the CEO and CCP Cub is Executive Producer assisted by CCP Kitteh. In a freak accident your player account has just been upgraded to a senior CCP staffer leading a development team! With CCP now led by an inanimate object supported by a very young child and a fluffy cat, there is nothing to stop this from happening!

You are now CCP -Insert Your CCP Name Here- and have a team of developers eagerly awaiting your commands. So CCP X, what are you going to have your team work on?

One can dream, so why not.

I Am CCP Terminator. Today our order of business will be taking out the trash and balancing the items.

#1 Increase supply of purple loot

The situation is very sad. There are so many items that has 1pc movement a month a week or few days. I know some items should be rare, but there are no items so overpowered for such low movement. Ye ye, I know you all say officers loot would be way overpowered and I say good. If supply got increased and we had 20 people flying with purple mods instead of some random one carebear in his pimped high-sec ship I say it's a good thing. Current price makes then not applicable for pvp. Sure they give an advantage, but it's so easy to lose your ship that it's hard to justify the cost.

Now imagine you have several guys flying in the area that you know may carry nice loot. You start preparing baits, traps and putting extra effort to kill them. That's content right there. My dream is to see such mods used in action and not just read on a news site article once a year.

#2 Make storyline items not useless and make them to be easy obtainable by appearing in storyline missions and not COSMOS

They should be balanced in line with current modules, try to find a niche such as lower fitting requirements or different bonuses. Make materials to build them obtainable the normal way and not by farming poorly designed missions.

#3 Remove duplicates of deadspace and faction modules

Question: why there is multiple same modules with different names? Answer: no good reason at all. Make each module to be unique. Here's a crazy thought: reduce fitting requirements for faction items if fitted on same faction ship. Align their statistics to be on par and let the traders make sure each region is supplied with that faction items.

#4 Rebalance useless combat sites.

Those sites that noone bothers to do? Such as DED 3 rogue drone site for instance. Make them worthwhile by adding unique items. Those unrated combat sites that are insanely difficult for basically no reward? I'm looking at you Minor Blood Annex. Balance them so people actually would want to do them, by either having unique item drops or bigger escalation chance.

#5 Rebalance faction items from LP stores

Why the hell grindable items to infinity by doing missions are so good compared vs exploration drops? I'm looking at you Federation Stasis Webifier. Make them worse when compared to items obtained based chance.

#6 Remove implants from LP stores

Seriously. Why some of them can be farmed? Why not distribute them via anomalies. Make people go out of their farming systems to look for those riches. While we are at it, let's rebalance all those implants that are bought once a month. Boost bonuses so demand is on healthier level.

Diving to the world of Linux

I have fed up with windows. When I bought a new pc several years back, I got myself an SSD. It was a huge improvement switching from the hard disk drive. Everything was super fast. Windows loaded faster than I could take a piss. At the time, 80gb storage was best bang for the buck and so I bought it. I installed windows 7 and battlefield 3 and still had quite a lot of space left.

Time passed, I got myself a new SSD with more space. My C: drive started getting low on space so I moved battlefield 3, which was about 40gb, half of the drive basically. And for the time it was good. I did not pay much attention since I never used C: for anything. Even my program files I have always installed to another drive, a habit I kept since the old days. System C: drive was kept purely for.. err.. system files, together with some pain in the ass software like EVE online, that can't fucking use settings folder where the game is installed. Nope, it must be in $user/AppData, unless you are willing to do some workarounds. Anyway, EVE online was only a small part of that 80gb drive.

One day I play EVE and it starts lagging like shit. "What the fuck is that?", - I thought. At first I did not pay much attention, as I written it off to a "computer fart" if such thing exists. But time to time it happened again and again. I started doing some research and found out that my SSD has less than 1GB free space. Recommended free space is 15% and I was operating under 5% which apparently makes your SSD shit and shortens it's lifespan.

Now here's the BIG question: where the fuck did all that space go? I have moved out all my games, made sure no big software are installed and no unnecessary big caches are present. I even went as far as disabling hibernation to remove system file and free up additional 5gb, but somehow free space would disappear into the void. Little by little, but eventually it would all be gone.

I desperately went through all the system files, hoping to find a cancer, that used up all this space. Maybe some shitty program or some temp files that did not get removed. But checking folder after folder I could not find an obvious culprit. Windows and all system file folders seemed oversized. I couldn't exactly tell what, but I know for a fact that I had a battlefield 3 installed in this bloody drive a few years ago and everything fit. I have not installed much else since I moved it. It was kept purely as a system drive, but it didn't help much.

Fed up and realized I'm fighting a losing battle, I ordered yet another SSD. Only throwing more gigabytes was not the ultimate solution though. I decided that enough is enough and downloaded Ubuntu. I would use my old 80gb drive for linux and I'd put windows 10 in a new one. It's been a long time I wanted to do the switch, and being angry at Microsoft might be as good reason as any.

I did not do full switch, because windows is still a monopoly and as sad truth may be, a lot of games are simply not possible to play on linux or at least are note very optimized. Besides, I always wanted to put more effort in learning the Python to develop market analysis tools. I tried to use it in windows, but every time I needed to make some shit work, I had to cross a hell by doing various workarounds which made me stay way from it. Meanwhile, in linux I wrote one command line and got same stuff what took me three hours in windows.

I also installed windows 10. First order of business was to set all privacy settings to "NO". I have spent half an hour doing that. Seriously. What the fuck. Why don't they just go straight to the point and ask if I like pussy or dick, rice or potatoes. Anyway, I turned all that shit off ,but also read on them internets that Cortana still collects and sends various data, unless I physically delete some files. All more reason to use Linux.

I like Linux so far. Having to put my sudo password every time I need to write important stuffz makes feel like important h4xorz. In my triple screen setup I have terminal open in full on my right. Too bad I don't know the fuck is going on when I just copy command from the internet to do shit. I hope I will learn, but for the time being my linux experience consists of following steps:

1. Google problem
2. Copy command line
3. ????
4. Profit.

There are few things that pulls down my quality of life. Like being unable to write to NTFS format because Microsoft hates open source like I hate raisins. So now in linux I am utilizing 80gb of total 4TB available. My hax level is not high enough to configure my plex.tv server to detect ntfs drives which means I can't watch my downloaded shows on TV. EVE online takes a loooooong time to start. I thought something was wrong with me, but turns out it's normal for EULA to take it's fucking time to load. But at least I got ipython notebook installed in a few steps, so i got that going for me, which is nice.

Changing gears

A lot of time passed since I left to unknown space to play on my own . After my wormhole corp has disbanded, I was trying to rediscover myself. Being fond of my pirate life in early days, I was trying different low-sec corps, but neither of them really clicked for me. I somehow always get attracted to w-space. I just can't help it. The unknown, random, with no local is a sandbox I really enjoy playing in. I was not ready to join another w-space corp just yet, so I went off on my own. I went on, as what I like to call it, "The Pilgrimage".

Thing with my soul searching travel, it has to have some purpose. In the past it was me taking a break from a corp play without really leaving the corp. I used to fly around and look for THE target (something shiny) or go back via pod express. While I got some nice kills and really enjoy the stalking part, I decided to change the gears to make things a bit more lively.

It's been a good run so far. Around 70 kills and 0 losses (if we don't count recent suicide ganking losses, more on that soon). It shows that picking targets and doing research can go a long way. Of course I've been quite risk averse, avoiding big time corps. However, I'm in a ganking and not in a good fight business.

To make stalking a bit more interesting, I decided I will try to start targeting bigger corps. Perhaps not the most elite pvp corps during their prime time, but will certainly try to be more opportunistic. One reason is that those corps can have good targets. For example they can farm surrounding systems and have more activity in general that I could take on. Second, I decided that I will be ending my Pilgrimage in a pod. I've had a good enough success that it's time to sacrifice myself to Bob. He gave me so much, it's only natural I give something back in return. That doesn't mean I will go YOLO on the first chance I get. It will still be me taking calculated risks, but focusing on bigger profile corps. There are a couple of people/corps that I will give a priority to be my targets, but won't disclose details just yet.

Future plans

I haven't decided what I will do next. I think a clean slate is necessary. I will do that by getting back to the empire in a pod and not just parking my Domi fleet at the next high-sec exit. I gave a lot of thought where to go next. I had ideas to look for like minded people, by finding "wormhole stalking partner/s". I even have a half finished post in my drafts to recruit people, but never really committed to posting it. Idea was/is to run a wormhole stalking corp for people with little time to play EVE. Perhaps I will work on this little dream of mine and make it a reality. Perhaps I will join a wormhole corp myself or venture to do other things. All I know, it starts with a fresh clone and that is the current target.

Addicted to tech

Since exploration changes, now that you can do all k-space and low level wormhole Data/Relic sites in a scanning frigate, there has been a huge influx of explorers. And why not, the entry barrier is basically nonexistent. As one would expect, exploration prices crashed to oblivion. I remember that day well. Zero disappeared from prices of exploration items such as Decryptors. Literally. What used to be 9.000.000 in two days became 900.000. It was the day when exploration, my main activity I did since the start, became dead to me. I don't like the direction it has taken. Some people might feel different, but I think that initial design, when you had to fight to take the loot from the cans was more rewarding. Want to get those juicy sites in low and null? Better bring god damn ship that can shoot. Instead, now we have every noob in "dangerous" places, risking almost nothing.

Yes, I'm looking at you, Heron pilot that did not rename his ship in w-space. Time to go home. In the end, I love new players going out from high-sec, but I also think, that there should be something to look forward, like using battlecruiser in the sites. To this day, I feel nostalgic about times, when I explored low-sec with mwd+cloak fitted battlecruiser, being chased by pirates, trying to take away all that loot I worked so hard for. This was my EVE childhood.

But who cares about a bitter vet speaking fondly of old days. Certainly not my computer. As luck would have it, my motherboard gave out. All of a sudden everything froze, including sound. Monitor started showing gibberish. That can't be good. I did not panic, because I had few similar issues when started playing battlefield 4 again. I had pc freeze on me and had to hard reboot a couple of times. I thought it was fixed after reinstalling sound drivers. This time, however, was different. It froze during EVE. Thank god I had only my probes out at the time. If this happened during the fight, that would have been the worst.

Anyway, I do a reset and go take a drink. Only when I get back I see my monitors still black. That's strange, with SSD it usually boots in no time. Then I hear pc in this endless loop, trying to start the booting sequence. Shit. After several failed restarts, I realize something is very wrong. I'm not sure what is wrong, but I suspect video card or motherboard. I start debugging process.

I started taking pc apart, but it didn't take long to determine that PCIe slot went dead. Which is not that surprising, because a month ago I had my primary PCIe slot die on me. I did not pay much attention, because I just reallocated my gpu to a secondary slot and have been using just fine for more than a month. I've read somewhere that it was only a matter of time for the second slot to go rogue on me. I hoped it wasn't true, but it happened anyway.

I went on a quest to look for a new motherboard, only to find out that cpu is two generations old and it's either hard to find a motherboard with the right socket, or it cost similar to a new one. Fuck it, I'm getting new cpu too.

Of course browsing pc hardware store is a dangerous game. I was talking to my friend and he casually mentions how there's this nice gpu called GTX 980 Ti for quite "affordable" price. Affordable as in it doesn't cost 1k euro like Titanium, but still gives similar performance. Then I am spammed with bunch of benchmark and performance graphs. God damn it. Then I see that a once top end gpu that I bought 3 years ago, is slower than gpu in latest laptops. I also "conveniently" remember that my gpu can't actually process 3 screens and 4 eve clients that well and is loud as fuck with it's single midget size cooler. I take a look.

I read nothing but good things and already see where this is going. I bought a new motherboard, new cpu so might as well buy a new gpu, right? I mean, it's only 3 parts. It's not like I'm replacing whole pc. Well... besides power supply unit, case and hard drives, there's really not much else. I put all the stuff in the basket and look at the price. It's big.

Before checking out, I ask my girlfriend for advice. She suggests that  I can just buy new motherboard and cpu and could upgrade to a new video card later on, should I still feel a need. Fuck that, that perfectly reasonable and logical advice. I'm not listening to it. I do the checkout.

I bought stuff on Wednesday and it arrived Friday afternoon. I couldn't have asked for a better timing. Since I had to disassemble my pc, I used the opportunity and did some cleaning. I actually got quite excited. Last time assembling my pc for the first time, I was cursing at so much time spent and at my failed attempt at cable management. I have sworn to never do it again. But that was then and now I'm actually looking forward to it.

Saturday morning I have spent assembling the pc and I loved every minute of it. I'm glad I took upon the challenge and did it. It was a second time and it went much more smoothly than the first try. What about purchase? Couldn't be more happy (not what my wallet would say). One thing I really like is that fans don't turn until gpu is at least 60°C hot, which makes it really quiet when in windows. I can barely hear it. Compared to my previous card, which was so loud under the same load that it was distracting when watching TV. Not to mention that fps doesn't drop. It runs 4 accounts as smooth as if it was single client in full screen. I probably will not be able to resist and get some of the new high-end games to play. Wormhole people can catch a break. Or can they? Turns out, EVE can run in the background with no problems.

When bugs become features

If you read reddit or EVE news, you probably noticed announcement related to Jump clones. In short, on the release of Aegis Sovereignty it was no longer necessary to have high standings (8+) with the corporation in order to create a jump clone at it's owned station. As stated by CCP Falcon:

"This was an unintended change that was a side effect of the release, however, after watching the reaction this change received from the community, we have decided that it will remain in place. This means that pilots will be able to continue to benefit from having no standings restriction on jump clone creation."

This makes me quite happy. I think this is a great idea and I have my own personal experience to back it up.

When I started EVE, I knew missions were not for me. I got tired of them and I believe I barely got to lvl 3 before I got fed up with them and turned to exploration instead. I was full time exploring high-sec and soon - low-sec. I was never a big missions guy. All my alliance grinded lvl4's. My friends had much higher and much more stable income than me. Besides ISK, there are also other advantages you get, like standings.

Standings were a pain in the ass. Only way I could get them was through missions. Without standings, meant I couldn't setup my jump clone. Unless corp had necessary standings (which it didn't) I couldn't do anything about it. That means I was always stuck in the same clone. I could not swap to a new empty clone to do some risky pvp. Flying with full slave set really made you second guess if that fight in wormhole was a guarantee win. Anything below that, was not worth it. Null ops were out of the question.

While there were public corps providing Jump Clone services, that meant I had to leave my corp. Which also was annoying, because I was a director, which meant 24 hours notice. I just didn't find it so appealing to go through all that hassle so I just did low-sec pvp exclusively and avoided taking big risks. That was until corp finally had necessary standings and I could swap to a cheap clone again.

It took time to grind the standings and should we moved to another area, story would be the same. I would be stuck with the same clone until I got new standings up with another corp. Not tragic, but you get where I'm going with this. So removing standing requirements I think is a great step. I'm just surprised it took an actual bug to make them realize that Jump Clones should be accessible for people that don't do missions too.

Now that this has been settled, how about reverting back the bug with SKINS? Community had a lot of fun being creative with applying ship skins. Have all skins available for all ships and make them cheap with limited supply and destructible.

Blog Banter #65: Useless attributes

A new blog banter is up and it's a perfect topic for my first entry.

BB65 - Attributes and Skills
Does Eve need attributes? It's been discussed a lot recently. Unlike other MMO's your characters attributes don't make a difference in day-to-day gameplay. They simply set how fast you train a skill. Is it time to remove attributes from the game or totally revamp their purpose? Do they add a level of complexity to the game that is not needed? If you really need to use a 3rd party application to get the most from it should it be in the game? Should they be repurposed with each attribute adding a modifier to your ship? Are attributes a relic from the past or are they an important part of Eve - You make your decision and deal with the consequences?

Content without purpose

I feel very strongly about this subject, so my opinion will be very biased. I'm not saying it's the right one, however this is how I see it.

I believe Attributes are a relic of the past. I consider them on the same level as, now obsolete, learning skills. Perhaps it made sense for them to exist in early days, but EVE has developed a lot during a decade. Some things just do not fit in anymore and attributes are one of them.

Main problem I have with attributes (boosting implants and neural remapping) is that they don't really add anything worthwhile. The only thing they give you is a headache. Especially if you are a new player. EVE has a tendency to attract certain crowd. Majority of this crowd are min-maxers. They will try to get maximum result with minimum effort. It's the nature of the game and I'm no exception. When I started out, I've optimized my training plans in EVEMon. And by optimizing I mean setting neural mapping for core skills that required memory/intelligence. Patiently waiting out before training weaponry and ship skills that required perception/willpower.

Of course you always train some skills out of the plan, otherwise you wouldn't be able to play the game. But that was a huge downside to me, because when I did simulations in EVEMon I could see that in a year of training, I am losing more than 1 month's worth of training time taking on some detours like training desired ship together with core skills. For a new player that was huge time loss. I have to be inefficient in my training if I wanted to play this game. In theory, the only way you can be perfectly optimized in your training time, is if you created account for 1-2 years before even starting playing. Train all memory/intelligence skills, remap and train willpower/perception skills.

That is bad design in my opinion. If neural remapping was not enough, we also have attribute implants that speed up your training time. Combined with neural remapping we can have very big gap between best and worst training time. That was huge null pvp deterrent for me and here is why:

I sort of wanted to try null-sec. But one downside was - bubbles. Playing in nullsec almost always meant that you will lose your pod, thus most people are flying empty pods or minimizing cost by going only with cheap implants. As a young player, I did some simulations and I didn't like what I saw. My carried +4 implants made enough of a difference to make me stay in low-sec. I did not want to sacrifice my training time because there were so many things I wanted, like Black Ops or large T2 guns and drones. So I stayed in low-sec, which was still a great thing, but I never ventured to null, even if I wanted. Solely because I was not in the mood of losing my learning implants for a few good fights (or swap to an empty clone and have 24 hour timer for a few hours of pvp).

I was so into maximizing my learning time that I neglected all other fun implants. I would have considered buying that low grade slave or snake implant set (high grade was too expensive). But attribute bonus was still too low. Attributes did not add any fun and only limited me in every step as soon as I felt doing something adventurous. With so many skills present and so many opportunities to train for, I really hope I will see an announcement from CCP in some near future that will state the end of attributes. Let us just train what we want without second guessing if I should remap for this upcoming long training queue. Let us enjoy the game.

How much time do you need for EVE?

Just before my vacation, I came across an interesting question on Reddit: "reasons you quit EVE". It's been a long time I wanted to write a post about time investment and EVE. Time to time similar posts pop up. Checking comments, I have noticed that time is always mentioned as one of the biggest obstacles to play this game. To understand why it is such an issue, lets take a look at  EVE's distribution of players age. Graph shows us that majority of players are from 26 to 36 years old (50%).  The absolute majority 85% is from early twenties to mid forties. You can check out reddit post from CCP Quant.

Most players that are early-mid twenties are probably finishing universities and starting their careers. Having full-time job already starts putting quite big limitations. Besides average 8 hour work week, you may spend 1-2 hours getting ready and commuting. That is already 10 hours of 24. Deducting 8 hours of sleep and we are left with only 6 hours free to use as we please. 6 hours is not a lot. It can melt very fast when doing various activities, such as socializing, going out, cooking, cleaning, reading news, watching tv, playing other games.

If we go up the ladder from late twenties to early thirties, it is time when a lot of people start families. They get first or second newborns, get married or just simply starts life with their SO. This alone will take a big cut out of 6 hours pie. A good example is a recent blog post from Scaurus at justforcrits. He wrote how he just had a daughter (congratulations!) and how family responsibilities combined with work leaves almost no room for gaming, let alone writing about it. A lot of people are going through this struggle. In my own early corp I lost a good friend to inactivity due to family reasons. He really loved EVE, but sometimes it takes too much energy to keep pressure on this little time box and sooner or later it just pops out.

Going from mid thirties to mid forties for some it may be easier, when kids are old enough that doesn't need babysitting and parenting is not an new thing, however family responsibilities doesn't go anywhere this category will struggle with time just as much as other categories.

Being engaged in EVE

I've been playing EVE for 5 years. While I started in my early twenties and being very active, I am now struggling more and more when at my very late twenties. EVE is not a game like Counter-Strike or Battlefield, that you just log in, shoot someone for a few rounds and be done with it. It's not a Dota or Starcraft that has quite fixed time for a match. It is an MMO. By it's concept you normally have to invest time to have a rewarding experience. Sure you can do some activities that can fit in a short time frame, though those activities in most cases are PVE and may not be very engaging. PVP side of things usually takes much more time. If you want to be a part of a corp or 'something' it can really become a time sink. There are no insta-pvp arenas and you always have to work to get a fight or a kill. Not to mention all extra steps you need to do such as fitting ship, buying modules, transporting, warping. The very everyday things eat your time little by little and suddenly you realize your evening vanished just like that.

There is no cure. Time investment is what makes EVE appealing. Scoring that billion worth of kill mail would not be the same if such amount could be gained with just few clicks by anyone. The fact remains, that people in my mentioned categories have to cut something out. Some have EVE as only or most serious hobby, some try to dedicate as little as possible by doing non demanding activities, others deal with it by playing train your skill online and logging in only occasionally on free Saturday or lazy evening. Unfortunately (or fortunately), a lot of people decide to just let it go by letting their subscription lapse. For them, to have a rewarding EVE experience, they simply need the time they don't have.

Decaying community

If we take a look at eve-offline data for players logged, we can see a trend of numbers dropping.

Sure there will be a lot of people explaining this with unsatisfying expansions, rule changes such as banning broadcasting, lacking of innovation and etc. But the fact is we are at the lowest point since 2007. EVE's population is aging. Players that started in their teenage years or early twenties have now their lives changed drastically. It would make sense that these people will log in less and less. I am concerned that this can turn into exponential drop. Some of those players were a part of circles. Circles decrease, more people will find less incentive to log in. Less activity will make even more people abandon their hobby. Circles will break and EVE will feel more empty. Socializing and community is what made this game so successful and survive more than a decade. If these social circles will drop at faster rate than new ones are formed it may be hard times for CCP ahead. Nosy Gamer covered subscription numbers in his post on March where he concluded 18% drop.

In my opinion, at some point, CCP will need to make drastic changes. Personally, I am not too happy with how some of things are. Starting with warp changes where ships larger than Battlecruiser warp so slow that it feels like a someone spat to your face. While I do agree with logic, it really does not make fun for me to do occasional logistics or move battleships around. As someone who scans frequently, it also is very annoying when I can't get signature type for some hard to scan cases, making me waste a lot of time looking for wormhole connections. I could go on with the list for a long time, but these are few examples that show why EVE is such a huge time sink and less people have luxury to play it. While universe has to be harsh and not easy, CCP has to start thinking how to decrease time waste on non fun, but essential things. Some steps are into the right direction, like saving scanning probes formation and having opportunity to mass sell items. Some steps may not be, like upcomming fleet warp changes. Making it more of a pain in the ass is not making it more engaging.

Bullshits of EVE - Ventures.

You know what's bullshit? This:

You guessed it, that's a Venture mining gas. What's the problem? Glad you asked, let me explain. I was not sure if I should do a rant post, but what the hell...since I came across one, I might as well get it off my chest. I know this is 2 years too late.

Mining Ventures are bullshit

Before Ventures were introduced, it was not so easy to mine gas.  Most common ship was a battlecruiser, preferably with maximum high slot layout. For example - Brutix. Now it was not your standard battlecruiser. It had high slots filled with gas harvesters and lows with cargo hold expanders. Even then, you would hit the limit of 2000 m3 of cargo hold, which is enough only for like 1/5th of site. I myself used to multibox 4 Myrmidons to harvest low-sec gas. Now, battlecruiser is not that expensive, but not that cheap either. It took a while to mine out the gas clouds, so you were at constant risk of being ganked. That was life. You risk medium ship for getting that expensive gas. Then, some bright minds at CCP, decided that it would be great idea to introduce some very risk averse ships and gameplay in general (more on that later). And thus Venture and Prospect were born.

A Venture, that costs 200 thousand ISK, now can mine gas clouds in just few runs. 100% role bonus yield plus 5% per frigate skill level, gives output like Brutix with full rack of gas harvesters and 5000m3 ore cargo hold lets it store gas as 2-3 Brutixes with maximum cargo hold expanders. Currently gas mining in a 200 thousand ISK ship is much better than in one that costs 50 million. If we assume average fitted Venture is 5mil, CCP decreased risk of gas mining by 1000%. Wow.

As if 1000% decrease in risk (your potential losses if you get ganked) was not enough, they felt +2 warp core strength natural bonus should do the trick. Let's not forget the low slot, which then if fitted with extra wcs, it is immune to best faction scrambler. Don't have a double scram in your cloaky gank ship? Then you are shit out of luck. Better hope he is not watching d-scan when you bring your interdictor to kill that useless 200k ISK ship and, most likely, empty pod.

After done with t1 variant, they realized they needed a t2 version. A Prospect. Since Venture was already doing everything better than any other ship used for gas mining, it was a challenge to create something even better. But CCP made it through... by throwing a covert ops cloak on already hard to catch frigate. 5% reduction of gas harvesting duration per level is now like Brutix on steroids a.k.a warfare links. Oh, they took away +2 warp core strength bonus? Don't worry. Here's 4 low slots to fit warp core stabilizers. They will for sure make your ship unusable in a site that makes you fit modules with 1500m range and that you need to lock target only few times with a 10k m3 cargo space. A price? A whopping 15 million.

Now, of course, there are sleepers that spawn to "defend" the site. Unfortunately most of them are cleared with a Tengu in 1 minute and then back to gas mining. Yes, there are few most lucrative sites that make you bring big guns, but even then they are easily dispatched compared to their class level.

In the end, I think Venture is a great ship and has a place in EVE universe. But only for c1-c2 class. It is ridiculous that such cheap ship can mine such expensive gas everywhere. Best solution would be to introduce small/medium/large gas harvesting ships with same size modules. Make gas sites different that only small harvester can do c1-c2 sites, medium for c3-c4 and heavy for c5-c6. Wouldn't it make sense?

Solo pvp and multiboxing

Often people talk about solo pvp. It's like an epitome of skilled gameplay in EVE online. It's the ultimate honor. Flying solo ship in the universe, taking on one or more enemies is considered something amazing in the game where having a second comes as natural as having second arm.

I've seen some interesting videos, such as how one myrmidon pilot kills 3 faction cruisers. Then there are other types of "solo" pvp. Such types include having a falcon alt and/or gank links, and or simply extra dps ship. It is piloted by one pilot so it must be solo pvp right? Hell yes. Now before you grab a pitchfork, hear me out.

Everyone must find their own game in EVE. Some gets blood flowing by having a good fight 1v1. Some gets blood flowing by a good executed gank, theft or whatever. Multiboxers like to win. They use additional accounts for force projection so they can play and compete against larger groups and also inflict more damage. This type of style should not be looked down on. Is it unfair that suddenly on 1v1 fight a falcon decloaks and fucks you up? Most certainly yes. Is it fair that you take a 1v1 fight and suddenly enemy friends come to help? Also not. But if you have a falcon alt and run into a small gank, at least you have a chance of "solo" killing 3 other guys.

There will never be equal grounds in EVE. Unless fight is prearranged, chances are someone will have more people, some will have better ships and any other advantages you can think of.  One can't pilot effectively 10 ships. Not anymore at least, with isboxer now gone. However, you can quite comfortably pilot 2-4 or even few more ships. Depending on what are you flying and for what purpose. So since multiboxers like to win, they prefer to kill someone 9 times and explode the 10th versus exploding 9 times and killing someone on the 10th.

The other side of multiboxing

People also tend to forget to mention that multiboxer is also risking more ships. If he happened to get blobbed, he will lose much more than solo guy. Multiboxer will also not be as efficient fighting against same amount of people. 4 same ships piloted by 4 same people (or even 2) are more likely to defeat the guy managing 4 clients with same type of ships.

So why multiboxers use multiple accounts instead of just bringing friends? I will tell you biggest advantages from my perspective. Take it from the guy who uses 4 ships in a fight. 

• First big advantage I get is a sense of accomplishment.  Even if I use multiple accounts, fighting off a small gang or being able to gank targets that I otherwise couldn't is what makes my blood flow in EVE. While you can bring friends to kill same targets, feeling of accomplishment diminishes by the amount of people involved. Sure it's same kill, but in first scenario it's you and you alone who pulled it off, so you take all the credit. 
• No need to get organized. You log in and you are good to go. Anyone who tried to launch and organize a fleet activity know that it can be quite painful. Even to get a few guys on a moments notice may not always be feasible and targets may be gone.
• Do what you want to do, when you want to do. Perhaps stalking in wormhole for hours to no end might not be too appealing for others, but it is for you. Suddenly target appears and you try to get people you are back to "get organized" issue.

I also encounter plenty situations where target is too big to chew. In those cases I sure wish there were friends around. But you can't have everything. You have to choose and make compromise. I fully endorse multiboxing. It brings more content and more targets for other party.

Solo pvp in wormholes

I have done my fair share of solo pvp. I never soloed pvp in lowsec days, however I did constant trips to c1-c2 w-space and was stalking systems with my cloaky proteus. Solo. At the time, ship of choice was always a Drake. And older pilots will remember, what crazy tank they had. Nevertheless I always took an opportunity to gank one in an anomaly. Fights were usually quite close, with me ending up in 10-20% armor, but Drake in a wreck. I had a lot of fun. Biggest ballsy situation I had was to take on on 2 Drake pilots. Which one of them carried a god damn scrambler. So I managed to kill one of the Drakes and use my light ecm drones to jam another one and get out with barely any armor left. It was long time ago, but I still remember!

So you can have fun solo pvp experience. You just have to know where and when to look. Unfortunately, I also remember a lot of juicy targets that my Proteus couldn't handle. And then I thought: wouldn't it be great to have some support? Who the fuck would be willing of rolling themselves in random wormholes and stalking for days with me? So it was then when I rolled a few extra alts. 

Next, a story on a gank and how multiboxing probably saved my ass.