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Ripples Returning

There I was. I was debating my future PvE attempts. I've come up with a few ideas. I have a mission boat for trying to grind Sister's of Eve. I'm late to the party by two or three years but I'm okay with that. I've never been the ground breaking type. I also want to try shattered wormholes, maybe? I figure at the most I lose a ship and POD.

I've been looking at ships and making some choices as to what to fly. I realize that I can do whatever I want. It is pretty great. I can fit it how I want. I can fly what I want. I can screw up and no one is there to yell at me, ridicule me, or complain about the loss on the board. It is freeing and I'm starting to realize that I only have to answer to me which means that I can fall back into my normal gaming habits and stop worrying.

That is how I found myself looking at the cargo hold capacity of various potential smaller ships and pondering the purpose of the MTU in today's age.

Long time ago, in an Eve far far away, there was a time before Odyssey was released. I was a young pilot then. Just two years old. That was a time when I still undocked my Noctis occasionally to collect the salvage from level five missions. That Noctis is now twilighting in Klingt because it has almost no value now.

The Mobile Tractor Unit was introduced with new structures in Odyssey. It killed the Noctis. Add in salvage drones, something CCP had promised since the earliest days of the game and that beloved, awkward shape fell into the shadows with the Primea.

There was a time that people told me I lied when I told them I used a Noctis in low sec. Such a dangerous thing was not something a newbie did. If I had not had it I might have spent those hours  beside Lue in a combat ship instead. I don't know. It would have been a different relationship. Now, we have a Mobile Tractor Unit. It allows us not to work with others. No more salvage channel and newbies seeking level four's to clean up after. Just drop it and forget about it and salvage is had.

I don't think it is for the better. It is convent, sure. But, Eve, a game that already suffers from a terrible habit of discouraging social interactions in things like mission rewards, doesn't need more ways to discourage people from being together.

I may just be floating the dusty memories of my start but they were good memories. They are deep memories. They are memories that I wax poetic about still and none of them start, "I put a MTU down and enjoyed spending time with it so much as it sucked space clean. I learned so much from it. Wow."

I think Odyssey may be my least favorite expansion, looking back. It did a lot of interesting things but it also went about introducing things. Some, such as the scatter containers have been rolled back. Thinking about other parts of Odyssey, such as the discovery scanner that in one motion wiped away the simplest concept of exploration I realize there were a lot of convenience features in Odyssey. Nice, convent things that may not have been the best for the games future when looked at with hindsight.

The death of the salvager may seem a small thing but I think we are seeing repercussions for it. It removed one of the earliest, viable new player careers. One that they grew out of in time for them to spread more experienced wings. And sure, later, older, bitterer, it may not seem like a big thing. It was never that much money anyway compared to other things.

But when we cannot do other things? There is an area in the game that is lacking for new players. That 3 week to three month phase is so critical and hard to get through. In our game of poor multi-player PvE with its punishment for rewards and encouraging of selfishness, was removing such a useful social tool for the best?

I'm looking at my cargo hold and wondering. I have four characters that can fly Noctis.

But why fly one?

I can just put this tractor unit in my cargo hold.



Comments

  1. I still use my noctis as well as several newer players who came into my Corp still uses them to salvage sites that everyone doesn't want to salvage themselves. This is both null and wormhole. They are still viable to use and as a career path that is just as boring as mining

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    1. And if I may... while I do not like mining, I do for some weird reason I cannot fathom... love to run a Noctii... I have enjoyed it greatly since I first crossed the skill line and bought one years ago.

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  2. The Noctis remains a staple of my fleet. Thanks to the MTU I have most of my high slots set up with salvagers, and this allows to squeeze every bit of ISK from every sleeper wreck there. The MTU simply made collecting the loot faster and more securely, but to me Noctis remains the king of salvaging.

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    1. My ship of choice in the post-salvage drone world was the Exequeror. Plenty of cargo hold, permanent mwd with some ability to repair after action damage to ships and drones. Pre salvage drones I think what I had was a salvage hurricane in my hangar.

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  3. Every once in awhile I pass by a can advertising Pro Synergy, so there are at least a few Noctis flying around (as well as the newbie catalyst/algos guys). Pre-Noctis, just about everyone used destroyers for the job, and people missed those too.

    At least the MTU wasn't released side by side with an automatic salvager unit (in structure form) so someone has to be there for that. (Even if Salvager drones are pretty much the same thing) Would still like to see Salvager Drone II's someday, even though they'd probably be the final nail in the salvaging profession's coffin....

    In order to bring back the Noctis, a new type of module would probably have to be invented that could only be fit on a Noctis, something that just automatically dragged in all the wrecks on a grid and autolooted/salvaged them. Alternatively, could just reduce the MTU's tractor range or speed... But those that use them exclusively would probably be a bit touchy about that.... *sighs*

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    1. "The Mobile Tractor Unit was introduced with new structures in Odyssey. It killed the Noctis. Add in salvage drones, something CCP had promised since the earliest days of the game and that beloved, awkward shape fell into the shadows with the Primea."

      May I disagree? In the strongest terms? And, of course... my disagreement is based on the space I live and die in...

      In Anoikis the Noctis and the salvage Dessie are very very much alive and well. Oh we use the MTU's also... but as W-space is a 'special place' where you have no bounties or NPC payouts as such, the ONLY ISk we make is from Lewtz & Slavage... so salvaging is very much a thing in holes... and the x8 Salvager II fi Noctis or salvage Dessie of your choice is still used often if not daily by some.

      We drop MTUs in each site as we run them, them 3 to 4 sites down, we take a break, 1 to 2 of use swap over to; Noctii if in Home or in a (relatively) safe raid hole... or to Dessies if Home has visitors or we are in a raid hole we are unsure of... The guy who dropped the MTUS grabs the Lewts and the salvagers make quick work of the wreckball left behind...

      So no... the Noctis is not dead... no, my dearest of ships, my most beloved Big Fugly Bug swan diving through space and nom-nomming wrecks like no-body's business is alive and well in the cold deadly Black on the other side of the sky... =]

      Life is DIFFERENT in holes!!!!

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    2. Turamarth: yes, holes are different. That's why the rest of the game outnumbers wormholers by 39 to 1.

      I guess that means that Sugar's point is true in that same 39 to 1 ratio.

      I recall my early days as mission runner, when I would bring that Amarr destroyer (what was the name?) and shoot frigates and scoop loot/salvage for a grizzled Level 4 veteran as his Golem tanked everything tankable. Was fun until he burned out. He was a nullsec veteran too, was invited to join a war and he realized he didn't wanted to got through that shit again. So one day he logged in and told me he was out, he would be learning Portuguese in the time he had allocated to EVE.

      I've seen so many people quit...

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    3. God you’re an ass Onions. Until your arrival we had a wonderfully wistful Sugar post followed by a bunch of enthusiastic responses exploring in detail the oddly endearing joys so many find in Eve’s evolving loot/salvage game and then you arrive, pick one comment out of that batch from Tur who’s perhaps the most enthusiastic wormholer on the entire web and try to contort that into a ’39 to 1’ shitting on everybody else.

      Give it up Onions. All you bring to this blog’s comments section is the anachronistic ravings of a former player’s distant past. Eve isn’t the game it used to be, hasn’t been for years, and there’s no plan to return it to that once upon a time game you mourn for. Eve’s player base isn’t what it used to be and hasn’t been for years either. Why the very blog you haunt is written by Sugar Kyle, twice member of the vaunted Council of Stellar Management and Post Incarna Child while you and yours departed long ago. You’re but an echo of a ghost long since exorcised.

      It’s not that I don’t feel for you. I do. Losing all that you cared for must be terribly painful and coming to terms with the knowledge that months and months of post lost nannering have produced absolutely nothing must only add to that pain but we all must face our losses eventually. The longer you delay, the more pain you will endure.

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    4. Maybe it got lost in translation, but I was backuping Sugar's point. Wormhole usage is a small usage of anything ingame. Maybe someone should look at price/amount sold for Noctis... I recall being one of those "looter noobs" and how it was important to me. I was running Level 2s at the moment and God knows they're terrible bang per buck (or buck per bang), so meeting that guy online and moving my ass to his missioning areas was very nice.

      One of my (many) woes is how the lack of new content is a double edged sword: it deprives outlier veterans of content to chew on, but also deprives new players from a "fresh ground" where the impact of being a veteran and being 1,000 guys and bieng very organized (being "cool") is diminished.

      I really wonder who moved into wormholes with Apochrypha. Veterans? New players? A mix of both? Someone had to "write the book" for wormholes, leaving behind what used to work in other areas of space, learning the new challenges of that new space. Now CCP is working in that direction, but I'd bet my ass that the new space will be so massively biased in favor of being old, veteran, large and extremely well organized that noobs will stand no chance. Neither veterans who "are not in the wave" of coolness.

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  4. Because I don't want to need to fit rigs, I trained for tech2 salvagers for the occasional faction rat. The salv-drones will just endlessly attempt these failing.

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  5. MTU's do create opportunities for people who don't mind going suspect in highsec though.

    Not that I would know such people of course...

    /looks around shiftily

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  6. Noctium (the cool sounding plural of Noctis) are amazingly fast salvagers compared to relatively AFK Mobile Tractor Units and Salvage Drones. Being one who likes to hoover up everything when I mish I’ve tried various combinations:

    Combat followed up by immediately dropping MTU & Salvage Drones (troublesome as combat boats lack appropriately spacious cargo holds)

    Combat followed up by switch to spacious cargo hold boat with MTU & Drones (works but is agonizingly slow)

    Combat followed up by a switch to Noctis (not too shabby)

    Marauder based single boat combat/looting/salvaging (my preference since in total it’s the least troublesome and if you really want to juice things up you can combat and loot/salvage simultaneously)

    While I understand the wistful days of yore feeling you’re experiencing Sugar, salvage specialization is far from extinct. Bringing forth the specialist (whether a separate pilot or appropriate boat if you yourself are cross trained) is still by far the most streamlined way to do things.

    It’s been quite a while since I last waltzed through the Sister’s of Eve arc but, being an obscenely rich bitter vet these days I’d approach the entire project via ‘Sugar Treat’ transport Orca packing my adorable ‘Lil-Sis’ PvE Wolf and ‘Hungry Nephew’ Noctis. Leisurely me being leisurely. Yup.

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  7. I still use my Noctis Sugar, nothing beats it for picking up what a MTU sucks in, and if you're running missions fast enough your MTU won't keep up anyway. Are they *less* useful now? Yes, a total waste? By no means. Heck every once in a while I still use Pro Synergy when I don't want to mess with salvaging, so it's still a viable career choice.

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  8. I still use my noctis, too, only now, it's an 8 salvager configuration. My corp still uses noctii in our wormhole. Yes, it is less fun to drive a noctis now, but they're still useful.

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  9. I haven't been blown away by the MTU. It's really slow, and for multi-room missions you practically need an industrial to deploy the necessary number (or you can wait forever for the one).

    The Noctis is so fast that using it optimally is its own minigame.

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