Finally.
I was getting really nervous yesterday; being an Eve player on a Linux client, I was looking to get my new Quantum Rise pacth last night. I tried about 17 times to download the patch, but was confronted 17 times to a “404 – Not Found” screen. I finally got the patch downloaded around 10pm EDT.
And I am really impressed with the changes.
I read up a lot on devblog recently (not having had the time while on my honeymoon, thank you very much) and I saw a lot of the changes brought with this new Eve expansion pack. One of the major changes for me is the new Orca – totally awesome ship. This is really biased, however, since my corp is in the process of re-aligning our goals — we’re heading into major mining ops once every 2 weeks and we need a ship like that — but having read the descriptive of the ship, I’d say it really responds to a definitive need in the industrial branch of the game. The Orca will be of great service to anyone who wants to be able to change up their activities once in a while. My guess is that with this type of ship we’ll probably start seeing more variations in the types of players, even at higher skill levels, and less “pure”-anything players. That’s a big plus for the game, in my view, since this is an open-ended game, and you can spend a lot of time focusing on the same skillset. With this type of ship, it makes the game more interesting and varied, but at the same time offers a challenge as far as the planning goes. Great idea.
I also am loving the Certificates idea. I’ve recently been named recruiting officer of my corporation, and having never been in that role, it’s an interesting tool to have if you want to interview players for your corp. As well, since it,s clearly an optional add-on to the game, it makes it even more interesting and risky to show your colors. Great idea #2.
As such, closing the “ghost training” bug is a necessary thing – if CCP want to close that gap, then they should. Most of the players who have been paying for the game all this time just to train their characterwould find it unfair for anyone to just plug-in and train, then log off and come back one day and have a character all trained-up after (let’s say) 6 months.
Overall, the changes brought seem great – I haven’t had time to explore the entire palette of changes, but I truly believe that these modifications, whether brought on by players suggestions (the CSP) or CCP itself, are almost always beneficial to this truly incredible game.
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Onto my personal progress now.
I’ve finally managed to get myself some Tech II items that I had been longing for – Damage Control Unit II. This being my first Tech II item ever, I wanted to shed some light on what exactly Tech II is, and what kind of advantages you can look forward to when you get those items.
In any Ship Equipment item, one can look into the item description under the “Attributes” tab. You should normally see a line called “Meta Level” – this is the quality level of the item. For example, if you look fo Medium Hybrid Railgun, you can get the 200mm Railgun I and you’ll see its Meta Level is 1. Its counterpart, the 200mm Gauss Prototype Railgun I, is Meta Level 4. Essentially, the Meta Level is an indicator of the quality of the item. The higher the Meta Level, the higher the damages, or any attribute- and the higher the price.
Tech II is usually Meta Level 5. It brings low-cost in PowerGrid, CPU, Capacitor, etc., while providing the item user with some of the best desirable results. Most players will want to load their ships with Tech II items – but there’s one big problem: you need skills.
The skills required to have access to Tech II are usually quite high and diverse. getting to Tech II railguns (in my case) means training:
- Hybrid railguns lvl 5;
- Advanced railgun specialization;
- Small Hybrid Turret lvl 5;
- Medium Hybrid Turret lvl4.
Call me crazy, but that’s a lot of time spent training. But don’t despair – you won’t really need Tech II warfare items until you get to Level III missions (if you’re a mission runner like me), and the game is very well balanced in that sense. Just hang in there, you’ll get to it!
Here’s another thing I wanna get out there: I’m very happy to finally have a more active role in my corp. Being a mission runner is one thing, but participating in grouped missions, that’s really the best way to play this game. Once you start seeing your buddies show up on screen, it definitely kicks the fun up a notch. If I can make a suggestion to corp leaders out there: try to get newbies involved. My corp only counts about 10 players so far, but with our desire to expand, I’m thinking we’ll have training sessions, squad leaders, job assignments, etc., which are really fun to have in the game, and that I wish I could have had way before this. Don’t be afraid to take newbies under your wing – you’re only gonna make the experience more pleasurable for new players, and consequently you’ll be spreading the word about the awesomeness of Eve Online.
One last thing: I haven’t been writing all that much, but I’ll try to keep up with the pace of my blogger friends!
On that note, keep playing!
