A double topic today. Firstly....
Nobody Expects the Armour Kestrel!
I generally fly with armour and gun implants in my head. That makes my implants pretty useless when flying a normal fit Kestrel. But I am a fan of mixing it a bit to surprise the enemy. I've previously shown armour Thrasher fits, but taking that a step further we have the armour Kestrel.
Now this can be either light missile kite or close range rocket. The trick is to squeeze a 400mm armour plate in there. Generally you can do this with a 400mm Rolled Tungsten Plate and a Micro Auxillary Power Core in your two lows. Mids I go for long point, MWD, target painter and sebo for the light missile fit. For rockets I go scram and web. Now any normal person who see's a Kestrel will assume its shield tanked. In fact if you come across me in one, it probably is. I love the medium shield extender+rocket fit Kestrel. However sometimes I will undock the 400mm plate version. Any normal player who see's a Kessy in low shield and immediately assume its going down. Then they get sloppy. Suddenly they find they have a extra 1050hp++ to crew through. Oh and most players will have loaded EMP ammo to fight a Kessy, right?
Mixing up your fits is a great way of killing. I don't know if this Firetail pilot looked at my killboard like I do. When I find a lone war target in a system and he's in a plex I'll look up his loss history whilst in warp to the plex. I'll compare his last few losses of that ship type and load the appropriate ammo. If its near to home I might even reship/refit. Some players use the same fit with the same ammo all the time. I'll just bring the ship/fit to counter what they are probably using. If the guy did that to me he'd have seen my last few Kessy losses were MSE and probably assumed that the ship I was in was the same fit. Bad mistake to assume in this game!
So whilst an armour tanked Kestrel might make people go WTF? Don't be too quick to judge. If its taken you by surprise, it may take your opponent by surprise!
-o0o-
Incarna, Missing the Point
This has been a draft post for over two weeks but not had oppertunity to post it, as we're a month past Fanfest and it refers to that I need to post it. Also since we appear to be in the pre-expansion lul and the Caldari Militia is over-run by farmers who get REALLY annoyed if you chase them from system to system, might as well use it whilst its quiet..............
I do feel the summer of rage post Incarna has had it's message diluted. A post-Fanfest post on the Eve-O LinkedIn group, referencing comments made at Fanfest, again suggests that CCP feel that we need 'meaningful avatar gameplay'. People are forgetting what we were mad at, and tend to think the rage was directed at the idea of Incarna. It wasn't.
Generally most people wanted Incarna. Remember the 2009 ambulation video? It got us all worked up in a good way. Then Incarna was released. The problems were not the idea of 'walking in stations' but:-
1. Forcing us to use the CQ with its slow loading times and poor and cumbersome UI. This was especially bad for quick re-shipping. In short, loss of the hanger view (and ship spinning ofc!).
2. Just the Matari quarters. One small box room with bad lighting and rust does not an expansion make!
3. Melted graphics cards. I canny doooo eeeet Captain. I don't have the poooower!
4. Neglecting FiS for 18 months for THAT!
5. AUR being potentially used for pay-to-win.
6. The leaked 'Greed is Good' internal newsletter. Who can CCP be greedy with? Us!
7. Hilmar's leaked HTFU email.
All these combined to cause the riots and unsubbing. Then, as is human nature, the masses started saying "Well I never wanted Incarna in the first place!".
The majority of players wanted Incarna before the expansion itself. It is just after the mess that was the "expansion" has tainted the original idea.
So CCP, let's not neglect FiS but lets get a decent Incarna deployed!
It does not need to be 'meaningful'. Where have you got that idea from? Did we want anything meaningful before Incarna?
Have you already forgot the issues with Incarna? Take ship spinning. Did you reinstate 'meaningful' ship spinning?
Like ship spinning, something does not have to be meaningful for us to enjoy it.
Nobody Expects the Armour Kestrel!
I generally fly with armour and gun implants in my head. That makes my implants pretty useless when flying a normal fit Kestrel. But I am a fan of mixing it a bit to surprise the enemy. I've previously shown armour Thrasher fits, but taking that a step further we have the armour Kestrel.
Mixing up your fits is a great way of killing. I don't know if this Firetail pilot looked at my killboard like I do. When I find a lone war target in a system and he's in a plex I'll look up his loss history whilst in warp to the plex. I'll compare his last few losses of that ship type and load the appropriate ammo. If its near to home I might even reship/refit. Some players use the same fit with the same ammo all the time. I'll just bring the ship/fit to counter what they are probably using. If the guy did that to me he'd have seen my last few Kessy losses were MSE and probably assumed that the ship I was in was the same fit. Bad mistake to assume in this game!
-o0o-
Incarna, Missing the Point
This has been a draft post for over two weeks but not had oppertunity to post it, as we're a month past Fanfest and it refers to that I need to post it. Also since we appear to be in the pre-expansion lul and the Caldari Militia is over-run by farmers who get REALLY annoyed if you chase them from system to system, might as well use it whilst its quiet..............
I do feel the summer of rage post Incarna has had it's message diluted. A post-Fanfest post on the Eve-O LinkedIn group, referencing comments made at Fanfest, again suggests that CCP feel that we need 'meaningful avatar gameplay'. People are forgetting what we were mad at, and tend to think the rage was directed at the idea of Incarna. It wasn't.
1. Forcing us to use the CQ with its slow loading times and poor and cumbersome UI. This was especially bad for quick re-shipping. In short, loss of the hanger view (and ship spinning ofc!).
2. Just the Matari quarters. One small box room with bad lighting and rust does not an expansion make!
3. Melted graphics cards. I canny doooo eeeet Captain. I don't have the poooower!
4. Neglecting FiS for 18 months for THAT!
5. AUR being potentially used for pay-to-win.
6. The leaked 'Greed is Good' internal newsletter. Who can CCP be greedy with? Us!
7. Hilmar's leaked HTFU email.
All these combined to cause the riots and unsubbing. Then, as is human nature, the masses started saying "Well I never wanted Incarna in the first place!".
The majority of players wanted Incarna before the expansion itself. It is just after the mess that was the "expansion" has tainted the original idea.
So CCP, let's not neglect FiS but lets get a decent Incarna deployed!
It does not need to be 'meaningful'. Where have you got that idea from? Did we want anything meaningful before Incarna?
Have you already forgot the issues with Incarna? Take ship spinning. Did you reinstate 'meaningful' ship spinning?
Like ship spinning, something does not have to be meaningful for us to enjoy it.
I 'tend' to agree with you,basically, but not in detail.
ReplyDeleteThere is the oft repeated anti-Incarna/Wis meme, "If you want a picture of the future of WiS, imagine a spaceship, stamping on an avatar's face, FOREVER." This comes from the more vocal anti-avatar players, those who would not partake in avatar based gameplay in EvE and have a purist & leet FiS only mindset. They saw avatars as CCP using EvE as a development testbed for WoD.
This was directly and only CCP managements fault... Imagine what the future of EvE would have been in '03 if you had had... a load of beautiful spaceships, hundreds of mods and you were not allowed to undock because "space was not ready"...
The failure of Incarna was a lack of content for WiS. The ambulation video got us excited about what we could "DO" with our shiney new Avatars... and then... nothing. I believe if CCP had only had Sleeper Stations, and NPC stations ready for us to go into and interact and explore and setup shop (and mebbe even shoot each other in!!)...
...then ALL the other shit would have been sideshow. Important, yes, talked about and posted on and discussed yes, but I sincerely believe we would not have had any Riots if Incarna had just had CONTENT...
[FYI I did a 3 part series on this specifically, if yer interested in my take on Incarna search my blog for 'contention'...]
I have to agree that the true message behind the Summer of Rage has been forgotten/diluted. I for one was really looking forward to Ambulation and had been for years.
ReplyDeleteDespite my disappointment I did not un-sub and still wish they will some day get back to WiS. However, I cannot argue that the attention to FiS had been sorely needed leading up to Incarna and love all the work they have been doing since than.
I just wish people would stop calling 40 rebalanced ships "New Content". It is not new content - its balancing that should have been happening ongoing for years and they are now paying the price for letting so many ships go to crap for so long. All of this rebalancing and fixing broken things though is starting to get old and more than a little boring. Odyssey seems even more lackluster than Retribution.
Bit more than 40 rebalanced ships. They did the crimewatch thing which is a big improvement even if I have no clue why people like putting bounties on other people, They did a lot of little UI things.
DeleteOdyssey looks like a really interesting resource shakeup plus an overhaul of exploration which I love.
Regarding the Kestrel I'm also a big fan. I like long range MSE fits but I'm a fleet fights player.
ReplyDeleteAs for WiS I remember a pre-Incarna interview where a CCP dev explained that the 10 year vision for Eve was a game where anything you could imagine in a sci fi game would be possible. Spiking an android's drink at a bar. Space exploration beyond the final frontier. All of it. It sounded utterly amazing.
I still think it's an amazing exciting vision but at the same time I want an expansion to be a real improvement to the day-to-day game play, not an element towards something that will be awesome in 20 years time.