It seems like a lot of people are overjoyed with the changes to warp speed increase. Its great right? Smaller ships are faster than ever. I was hopping they would at least leave freighters and capitals as bench marks and ships would move faster as they got smaller. Instead cruisers are the bench mark and save for a slight long distance speed increase to freighters(check graph) they have an increased time for warping(on the low end 1 AU to 50 AU). I do quite a bit of flying in my freighter, shipping things around, so what to do about it is the real question?
I think freighter services will go up in price because it is going to take a whole lot more time for these guys to fly around. So between flying even smarter shipping trips and using shipping services until the eventual price increase is the direction I will take to keep my time flying down.
As far as flying smarter your going to want to use all of the new rebalanced indy ships to your advantage now more than ever. It might be a fun experiment to see how much in terms of volume I could haul in comparision to the slower freighter. Even more things to plan and think about if your hauling.
And on the one hand maybe this will stop afk shipping because its going to take hours to fly across space if you afk a freighter.
I stumbled across this video comparing Eve to Star Citizen. It got me thinking. A lot of people are turning heads checking out the potential of what Star Citizen could be. Any Eve player would be dumb not to consider what Star Citizen might mean for Eve. Although that being said anyone who takes a few minutes to read up on Star Citizen will find you don't need to worry about Star Citizen killing Eve. Not even close. The video below gives a few quick comparisons check it out.
Two points I want to leave you with,
Star Citizen has a really long way to go still. The game is slated to be released in the first part of 2015. A lot will change about Eve in that time and the shell of what Star Citizen is today will most likely be very different come release day as well.
My second point I thought of was the fact that Eve Valkyrie could very well be a response to Star Citizen I don't know its just a theory.
If you play Eve or enjoy sci fiction you need to take notice of Ender's Game releasing in theaters this weekend. I reread the book this past summer and the application to Eve is paramount despite the fact that it is just a good entertaining book. While I remain skeptical if the movie will live up to the book I will be in line this weekend to go see this movie.
Some of the interesting themes that apply well to Eve is the idea of zero g combat. Fighting in an environment where you can go up, down, side to side, and forward or backwards, will ring true to any Eve Online player.
I have been reading about amazons little PLEX mishap they had. According to CCP only a thousand or so PLEXs were sold during the deal. The article on TMC says the market price did drop 10 to 20 million but has since leveled.
I would like to look at two things considering PLEX prices. First, I suspect this injection of PLEXs on the market will have similar affects as the CCP PLEX Intervention that happened last year. In that it will cause PLEX prices to level off in the short term. Now I wouldn't consider it out of the question for CCP to start buying up small quantities of PLEX or to with hold any future buy back interventions they could have been planning. Just remember PLEX is a moderated item and CCP can and will intervene.
The second thing is to watch the affect this will have on PLEX prices on the eve of the Rubicon expansion. Did you see what I did there? Anyway break it down to simple supply and demand. This episode, incident whatever you want to call it, will it curb the potential price peak of PLEX for this expansion?
Eve Online is a space based sandbox style MMO produced by CCP. Before
you blast off to the stars you need to understand a couple of things.
Playing Eve at first can be hard and is unlike any MMO you have played before. You play as an immortal space pilot who flies massive spaceships through the cold darkness of space. You train
skills in real time and interact in a space scape that is controlled by
other players. From the ships you buy to the space stations you live on
someone has built them, shipped them, and manages them.
You
need to first decide what race you will play as. The good news here is
your decision will not impact your choice of ships later on (Note: Free to Play Alpha clones are only able to fly ships of their race. If you subscribe you can play any ship). You can
train later on to fly any races ships regardless of your starting race.
If your not already in game check out this quick walk through of the character creation process.
Once
in game get comfortable navigating the interface. Your first thing you
want to do is get your character training up skills. As mentioned
previous skills train in real time and you need to keep skills queued
up. They will continue to train even when you aren't logged in. Later on in the
game you will be training skills that take days or even weeks to train.
Click on your character portrait on your neocom bar. Then click on
skills and get to the skill que window. You start out with only a few
skills you can train. You can buy more from the market where npc sellers
will provide them at a constant price in various station locations
around the game.
With your character window still open
lets check out your characters attributes. These attributes could better
be referred to as skill attributes as they affect how fast your skills
train. Each skill has two attributes that affect its training time. The
more points in an attribute the faster a skill will train.
Each
attribute has an unchangeable base value of 17. When you first start you
can
remap or move the points around twice after that you can only change
them once a year because of this it is strongly cautioned that you wait
to remap until you have a good grasp of the game and what skills you
want to train towards. You
have 14 re-mappable points. You can only add up to 10 additional points
to any one attribute.
The best way to map out your skill training and best possible attribute configuration is to use the program EveMon.
EveMon is a free third party program that uses a API key from Eve that you can use to plan your skills out and
attributes. Some corporations even use this program to verify what and how many skills you
have trained.
Now lets check out another feature that will
affect your characters attributes called implants. Implants are items
that can be bought on the market and increase your attributes. Attribute
Implants range from plus 1 to plus 7 attribute points. They require the
skill cybernetics to use and cannot be used again or resold after being
plugged in. As a new player it shouldn't be to hard for you to get your
hands on some plus 2 implants for each attribute.
What
is a clone? A clone is you. All your skill training is kept in your
clone. You need to upgrade your clone level as you gain skill points.
Because if you are killed meaning your pod is destroyed without an
upgraded clone you lose
those trained skills. The space station your clone is saved at is where
your going to start if your pod is destroyed. Keep that in mind when
venturing far off into space. Your clone also has all of your implants
in it. So if your pod is destroyed whatever implants you had plunged
in are destroyed as well. You update and save your clone at the medical
bay in the station menu. Note some stations don't have medical
facilities.
What is Eve Online? Eve Online is a Sci-fi spaced based MMO. Based on one continuous server, everyone plays in the same game server. The game is a sandbox style, you can do what you want. Check out the Eve Online Wikipedia article or the official Eve WikiAbout Eve Online article for more information.
When did Eve Online come out? Eve Online launched in 2003. The game has changed a lot through its many expansions.
How are the graphics? Have they been updated? Yes, the graphics have been updated several times over the years and still look sweet. Ship models are constantly being updated. Here is a link to the latest System Requirements.
Is Eve Online Fun? The game is incredibly fun noting that I am biased. Maybe fun isn't the right word more like addicting.
Is Eve Online Hard? The
game mechanics can be complicated. It is hard to just jump in but like
all games the only way to learn is to just jump in and play.
How much does the game cost? Eve
Online costs $19.95 that lets you buy the game and gives you your first
month of time to play. Sometimes you can get the game through steam for
as little as $5 dollars during one of their weekend deals. Also if you
have an old account they sometimes have special offers for resubscribing.
What is the monthly subscription fee? The monthly subscription fee is $14.95 dollars a month. Are the expansions free? Yes, to date all the expansions have been free.
Is it worth the subscription fee to play? For
me I started playing the 14 day trial and loved it. I wasn't doing
anything exciting or fancy I was just playing with simple ships and
mining asteroids I subscribed after a week of playing.
What is a PLEX? Pilot Licenses Extensions or PLEX is an actual in game item you can redeem for 1 month of Eve Online game time or trade on the in-game market. Can you buy in-game money with real money? In a way you can buy whats called a PLEX through your account management for 19.95 for 1.A PLEX is an actual in game item. You can a) redeem this item for 1 month of game time or b) trade it in-game for in-game money(ISK). Current In-game PLEX prices can be found at Eve Central.
Can you make enough in-game money in your first month to buy a PLEX? With
no help, no in-game friends, no corporations, I tried mining I played
about an hour a day average. All I did was mine and trade some. I made
240 million ISK. A PLEX at the time(July 2012) ran about
500 million ISK. You will have loads more fun in game if you don't worry
about the money and just pay for the subscription but everyone has to learn for themselves. If you work hard after 3 to 6 months in, you could be paying for your game with PLEX.
How many characters can you haveon an account? You can create up to three characters on a single account, only one character at a time can train skills though.
Can you have more than one account? You can have more than one account. Lots of players use more than one account and I have heard of some big corporate hot shots having as many as 22 accounts. What is Dust 514? Eve: Dust 514 is a free to play FPSMMO for Sony's PS3.The game is played out on planets within the Eve Online Universe. Check out theDust 514 Wikipedia article for more information.
Is Dust 514 free to play? Yes.
What is Eve: Valkyrie?
Eve: Valkyrie is a quick action fighter plane type shooter themed after the Eve Online Universe. Most notably it will launch using the Oculus Rift.
Getting In Game
Take a quick look at the Eve Simplified:Character Creation Walk-Through if you want to get an idea of some of the choices you will need to make as soon as you create a new character.
If your already in-game or would like to take look at the starting tutorial you can find a quick walk-through here of the first couple tutorial missions. Also you can find lots of screen shots of what the game acutally looks like in this walk through guide.
