Tuesday 31 August 2010

Epic Mission Arc Part 1

I had already completed a few of the missions provided by Sister Alitura and decided it might be a good idea to search for a walkthrough guide on the internet. After all I was a long way from home in a strange part of the galaxy and if you screw up in EVE it isn’t very forgiving. I didn’t want to have to replace my Destroyer if I could avoid it. I did have other ships and resources, but these were all back near my starting system (past the 0.5 system security space which I had come to dislike).

The guide I followed was the one by Keith Neilson and you can find it here. One word of warning though, for some unknown reason Part 1 of his guide managed to make my Firefox crash several times, but there was no problem with the rest of the guide. If you encounter the same problem, try Internet Explorer instead as the page displayed fine using that.

The Epic Arc is made up of 49 missions. No, that isn’t a typo, 49 missions…

For the most part the hardest thing about the missions was staying awake when it kept sending me on long trips involving over 10 jumps – this happened frequently. The missions themselves were reasonably easy and my noob ship setup skills didn’t seem to cause too many problems. That is until in one mission, when I tried to warp out to repair only to find that I was warp scrambled and ended up in my pod contemplating what just happened. To be honest at the time I had no idea why I had failed to warp and died. It was only after seeing someone else moan in the rookie help chat channel about the same thing happening to them, that I realised what must have happened to me.

I bought a new Destroyer and outfitted it again. It didn’t cost that much, the Epic Arc provides plenty of cash so I was still about 6 million ISK up overall. I continued working through the missions, albeit a bit more cautiously now. After a few days I was up to mission 47 only a few hours from the conclusion, or so I thought…

Monday 30 August 2010

I'm not looking for trouble

I discovered that the map window can highlight the locations of agents willing to offer you missions and soon I was undertaking missions for agents near my starting area. During some down time, I began to research the Epic Mission Arc that I would attempt at some point. One post in particular that caught my eye, of a player reporting that because they started the Epic Arc so late they had built up faction values which caused them problems.

I didn’t really understand if the missions I was running at the moment would or would not put me in a bad position for the Epic Arc later. I decided it was better to be safe than sorry and set off on the long journey to the Arnon system. The route took me through some sections of space with system security level 0.5, but everything I had read up to that point said that only below 0.5 did things get dangerous.

During my journey, every single time I came out of warp to use the star gates in 0.5 space someone locked on to me... I didn’t get fired on, but this was probably just because I managed to jump to the next system in time. This happened using autopilot and I now only use manual jumping and haven’t had the same problem since. Still, it has given me a bit of a phobia about 0.5 space and my heart skips a beat every time I have to travel through it, which unfortunately is quite often as it is hard to avoid 0.5 space completely no matter where you are headed.

I arrived at Arnon in one piece and started straight away on the Epic Arc missions.

Friday 27 August 2010

Early days continued

Mining seemed a safe activity and so I set my goals on becoming a good miner so I could collect some more cash whilst I worked out what I was going to do next. I mined randomly in the local systems, then realised that the asteroids (roids for short) were not making me much money. Where could I get those Kernite asteroids that I had briefly encountered during the trade tutorial?

After a quick search on the internet I found two useful sites that helped with where to find certain asteroid types and how far away those locations were. I chose a system only two jumps away from my starting system and setup a mining operation there. I found a nice quiet (less stip miners) belt that was close to a station. I trained up some relevant skills and refitted my Coercer for mining. I enjoyed the challenge of refitting the ship for mining and after buying several pieces of equipment managed to shoehorn in four mining lasers, whilst retaining four laser turrets at the same time. The lasers were needed to defend against the pirates that would periodically turn up in the asteroid fields.

Things went well for a while, but I couldn't help thinking that the hours I was spending mining in my bastardised Destroyer could be mere minutes if I had a bigger more dedicated miner ship. I checked the skills needed and realised it would take at least a few days to train up to either get a mining barge or a Cruiser. I started along the Cruiser route, then changed my mind switching to barges and then shortly after back again to the cruiser route (I couldn’t decide).

After just a couple of days I abandoned mining all together, left the skills running and decided I would try mission running until my skills caught up with my ambitions. I refitted my Coercer for combat and went looking for mission agents that would give me combat missions.

Early days

I was playing pretty much every opportunity I could, plus when I couldn’t. I was meant to be working on an assignment for my Business course, but that was put on the back burner so I could play more EVE. I realised quickly that the skill training queue has aspects in common with those very addictive Facebook games such as CafeWorld and FarmVille. I had to keep checking on my skill training queue, were my crops ready to harvest yet? … err I mean were the skills completed? Finally the day came for my assignment to be handed in, now I can play more EVE without feeling so guilty.

With my pile of ‘twink’ cash I was tempted to splurge on the many larger combat ships available on the Market, but I managed to resist and only used the money I earned. My self control was mostly generated by a fear that I might spend it on things I later found useless. It turns out I was correct as by the time a new player has gone through all the introductory tutorials you end up with quite a few ships, including a Destroyer from the advanced military tutorial.

I finished the tutorial, what now? The game suggests visiting an agent called Sister Alitura, this is the beginning of what is called the ‘Epic Mission Arc’. The only problem is that the I would have to travel about 18 star systems to get to where that starts. Travelling so far when I barely had a grasp of the game didn’t seem a good idea to me. So instead I decided to see what I could do locally until I understood the game better.

What you see is not what you get

I setup my new 21-day trial account, created a new character and entered the game. I immediately noticed that my character’s eyes were pointing in a way which made him look weird. It didn’t look that way during the creation process…

I guessed there wouldn’t be, but went searching for a way to alter the character portrait nevertheless. I was correct, there was no way to change the character portrait once created, but discovered that the developers would allow you to portrait swap if you pay (real-life money) for the privilege. Charging for changing character names is common in MMOGs, but charging 10 Euros to allow you to change a 200x190 pixel image seems a bit excessive.

One good thing came from my search as I discovered a nice internet guide for creating your EVE character’s avatar picture. The guide mentions how this is the only picture other players are going to see of you in the game, so you should try to get it right. It would have been nice if a similar warning was given in the game when I was crating my character.

Anyway, since I hadn’t really done anything with my first character I thought I would just delete it and start again. Ten hour wait for deletion? Well, I couldn’t put up with the picture, so I had to live with the ten hour wait.

I messed around on my 14-day trial for a bit and practiced creating my avatar picture so it would be perfect once I could finally get to delete and recreate it again. When the time came, I must have spent an hour on that portrait tweaking it so it was just right. Satisfied with how my character looked, I entered the game only to find a strange pixel mark on his mouth….

Again this was not visible in the portrait creation process and I realised that what you see is not what you get in this game. I decided to just put up with the imperfection rather than wait another ten hours to change it again.

I let my 21-day trial buddy know my character name and promptly received my pile of cash (ISK). I was now ready for EVE, or that is what I thought...

Thursday 26 August 2010

First impressions

My hopes were high, well not that high, in fact I was expecting to hate EVE…

The reviews were accurate and you don’t need a joystick, everything was just point and click. I spent two or three days working my way through the introductory tutorials (as was recommended in several reviews). The more I learnt about the game, the more I realised how massively complex the game truly was.

This did not put me off however; in fact it made me even more motivated to keep learning. After three or four days I was hooked and ran up against some of the trial account restrictions: I was given a large ship as a mission reward only to find that it was impossible to fly it on a trial account. I started investigating the subscription charges…

EVE was more expensive than I was expecting for a game that is seven years old, it actually costs more per month than WOW

Despite the costs causing me to think twice about subscription, I just couldn’t bear looking at the Sigil sitting in my landing bay and not being able to fly it because of the trial account restrictions.

Whilst I was trying to decide when I would subscribe, I stumbled upon an article talking about 21-day trials. Too late now I thought, but intrigued I decided to read on. I discovered that the 21-day trials were only available when given as an invite from existing players to people they know. What was really significant was that it mentioned players would often give a lot of in-game money (ISK) to new players that sign-up off of their invite. Curious, until you realise that players get one month of game subscription free if someone signs up off of their invite. This system is known as the 'buddy program'.

Ships and equipment in EVE cost a lot of money and for a new player many things are just way out of reach. The prospect of a nice pile of cash to start me off was irresistible, so I abandoned my 14-day trial account and went searching the internet for an existing player to invite me…

In the beginning

I should have been studying for my Business course, but I wanted some recreation. I spotted a web advert for EVE Online on a webpage I was looking at (I can’t remember where the advert was, maybe a games review site). I always knew EVE Online existed, but it drifted out of my mind soon after its release. It was only after I started buying PC Gamer magazine in the last year or so that I got curious, as the editorial staff would often mention how they enjoy playing EVE.

I had never given EVE a try mainly because of my previous love/hate relationship with games like Elite, X-Wing, (insert all space exploration/trading games from the early Naughties), X2, X3 etc. I really enjoy space exploration games, but looking at stars rush past my screen whilst I repeatedly make loops trying to get my crosshair on the tail of the ship I’m chasing isn’t my idea of fun. I even bought a nice Saitek Cyborg joystick for X3 and gave it a real try, but the ‘twitchy’ combat aspect of these games is what always ends up putting me off in the end. I realise that same aspect is what attracts a lot of people, but I get more pleasure from winning because of brains rather than brawn.

My interest was peaked and I started reading some reviews. When I read that combat was a point and click affair, I was very pleasantly surprised. I realised this could be the space exploration/trading game I had been searching for all these years. I downloaded the 14-Day trial of EVE Online from the internet and gave it a try…