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Have you done your Eve Vegas Survey?

I did attend Eve Vegas to the shock of many. I'd already paid for it and allotted the time. It seemed that I should go. I went to the Grand Canyon and Hoover as well. This is not the space to discuss those amazing places or my new Camera. Eve Vegas was a bit harder for me to go to then I expected. I've detached from Eve for the most part these past months. It is very easy to be angry, frustrated, and bitter about the past that I lived on. The game, its development, and the players move on while I find myself emotionally stuck. That emotional stickiness does not need to be given to everyone else. Part of experiencing it was shielding people from it. But, as I accepted my items and stared down the poor gentleman that tried to put a wristband around my wrist, I realized that I wasn't in as good of a place as I had hoped to be. That is where the Survey comes in. There are a few things that I could say and did say. A few of the questions made me want to say a bit more.

Blog Banter 77 - It is a sad thing, but one day the universe too will end

In this month's blog banter the question is basically, "Do all of these signs point to Eve dying?" The simple answer is, "Yes." But simple answers rarely do anything but make for quick reading. Over the last four or so years, I've been very invested in Eve. I've pondered it personally and socially. I've flipped through the public's responses to it. There have been ups and downs but I was always positive that Eve would continue on forever. That was the fan girl speaking. The rational is that it will not last forever. I don't think it will be some dramatic ending as someone bashed the server racks with a bat and CCP places the company logo on a boat and shoots and flaming arrow at it while it floats into the sunset. I think that it will be a gradual thing and as long as it continues to bring in money it will stay alive. CCP may stop developing it but there are many games that continue on with productive lives years after their developme

Silence

It is quite unfortunate that I came out of the CSM a bit of a mess. That was never the goal. I had planned, way back, to brush my shoulders off and step back into my game life. The entire missing game life thing didn't really factor in. I still find that I'm at a loss with things having changes so much. It is all rather dull. Life goes on. The world continues to spin about. Wars and ISK and words fly about in all directions. I'm stuck on the invisible edge of a collidable structure. Bouncing around, trying to free myself and go about with my day. There are habits to unlearn. I have to stop answering questions on twitter. I get dragged into arguments and fights I don't want to fight anymore. It always starts with such innocence. "Oh, I know that answer. Let me be helpful." Then twenty tweets later I'm sighing as arguments rage around me. It is quite tiring. I do not thrive off of argument. I realize I don't care about being right and having the lo

Five second rule

When did my skill queue turn yellow and get filled with yellow stuff? I'm pretty sure I looked at my alts skill queue a week ago. I'd have noticed this yellowness... wouldn't I? The yellowness is confusing. Maybe it is my unallocated skill points?  Update: It is. I am so fancy.  I only noticed because my skill queue ran out. I went almost thirty seconds with an empty queue! Oh well! And there I am finishing off T3 skills. I hate T3s and they are on my list of things I won't ever fly again. 89,921,079 skill points so far. Almost at ninety. A bit closer to 100,000. Why? I dunno. But it seems to be a thing.

Red and Yellow

"Sugar! Sugar! What are you going to do?" "I don't know!" That is my standard answer to things these days. I don't know. I don't have any goals. I'm floating along for now and seeing what happens. I am enjoying not keeping up with things. It is lovely. I am still fighting the good fight for all my haulers out there to get contracts increased to the max load for a Charon. No more wasted space! And I undocked an alt and wandered off to get money. I just don't feel like doing anything with Sugar. She should be doing something productive and the thought of accessing and moving my stuff is just such a weight right now. The more mature approach is to just blow it all off and do something else. And that is how I wound up doing the tutorial missions for money. The sucky thing is that skills have changed. My alt is old. She wasn't getting the starter skill books anymore which is why I wandered off to do the tutorial. It sucks because her s

To Cherish the Past

With my future in game swirling around in circles, I've let most of my accounts lapse until I know what I want to do again. I have plenty of skill points and skills. I can do the things that interest me as well as the stuff that does not but I have been told to learn. I've been pretty comfortable that way. My stuff is safe in its stations. I'm saving cash every month. Things are good. And then, six hours before down time and the Citadel launch I clicked on a link for carrier pilots. It may have been because I was logged in. Whatever it was, I realized that Chella is a carrier pilot. I have a carrier. I have two carriers. Or maybe three? But at least two. And one has a triage module. I have given zero thought to the fact that my carrier would become a force auxiliary. In six hours. Did I want that? I didn't know. Did I care? Why yes, yes I did. With caring came my answer. Snowflake was purchased when I was six months old. I was ambitious. I would learn

Intuition at Six Months

Inty is hitting that six month point soon. My husband and I have had disagreements. I say things like 'he is six months by weeks' and my husband tells me it doesn't work that way. I tried, "six months worth of weeks" and he still said no. Intuition's birthday was November 13th, 2015. That makes him almost five and a half months old. But, if you count the weeks he has six months worth. It makes sense to me but my husband has assured me that I am wrong and making up calculations. Whatever! He is growing up and I wanted to share. Three Months Six Months He has finally gotten lean and lanky. He will fill back out around 12-18 months. My yard is nice and patchy from heavy dog usage.I mowed and reseeded after this shot. We've finally convinced him that he can potty on walks. For those without dogs, dogs do not automatically go potty outside. They do not automatically go potty on walks. Dogs are institutional learners and not generalists. A

That was a weird little ripple

It may be an interesting week. I've cheerfully run about scrubbing the CSM stuff off of most links. I'll leave it on my forum signature. I may respond to something one day and then someone will ask me who am I  to comment. I kind of hope that I'll have someone sneer at me and tell me that I should try to run for the CSM if I am so opinionated or think I can do a better job. That is my secret dream. It seems my ending will be weighing in on this weird name change thing that happened to Goonswarm. Love them, hate them, be indifferent to them, I don't think they should lose their corporation history and a CEO from ten years ago get control of the corp name. Player names, corp names, alliance names those are all things of power in Eve. A book was just written about Eve's empires. A book that could only have been written if our history is allowed to be history. I'm one that is rather interested in Eve's history and preserving it going forward. I've felt a

All Done

Today was the last technical day of CSM10. Someone sent me a message to tell me that the election results have happened. Off and on since January I have thought about what to write here. I've pondered bitterness and snark. My bitter explosion was ruined by a typo on twitter to become a butter explosion. I've debated the polite, social face where I bow and thank people and wish everyone good luck. And for a while I wondered if I'd even say anything and just fall off the map into silence. The problem with giving into emotional responses sit hat a lot of people have the potential to be harmed by them. People who supported me and worked with me would get shat on. That is the side effect from just letting all of the pent up stuff go. Its been two years. I'm sorry that I've flopped along these last few months and slowly died on you. After February, after everything that happened and was done and the choices that were made for good and for bad, I had nothing left. In

Missing Getting There

Around sixty million skill points I stopped paying attention to my skill points. I remember my joy at forty million. Forty was a big step for me. So was thirty. I had a skill set that sculpted Sugar into a capable combat pilot. I felt fluffy and real. For a long time, I had placed a huge importance on skill points. I had used them as distant beacons. Points where I could stop and say, "I am here. This is me. I am this thing." While skill points have lost their meaning, those emotions are still persistent. We will never see announcements made to celebrate the player that has reached the most skill points again. That era of Eve is gone and not what I speak about. Skill points used to define me. Then, I stopped caring about them. It seems that happened when I was able to fly the things that I wanted to fly. My needs, it turned out, were rather light for a combat pilot. My foray into capitals has given me no love for the unwieldy monsters. My time in battleships has created

Oh Bounty System

[03:18:15] Kaliean Thorson > Sugar Kyle sets her own bounty on herself if i remember correctly That was something I had to correct. I have never set my own bounty. I have never set a bounty on anyone else. I consider the bounty system in its current form to be a waste of ISK. How my feathers ruffled as I politely responded, "I do not set my own bounty." It is a good thing we can't see clearly through these screens. Ever since the changes to the bounty system, it has been most frustrating that I can't rant about the bounty system. That is because to rant about it is to bring bounties onto oneself or to be accused of begging for bounties. It drives me bonkers. I love the idea of a bounty system and a mercenary system. Sadly, those stalled out when the bounty system was changed. I never thought I'd somewhat wish for the old one but I do. In these days of gate camps to pod everything and everything, we'd be cleaning up. Of course the entire, "Use an

Hi there

I pondered going a bit longer without writing here. I've been thinking for the last few weeks. I've hopped on, checked mail, talked to people, but mostly, Eve's puttering along towards Fanfest. In the background, I've been fleshing out my time on the CSM. My then and my now are so far apart from each other it is rather staggering. I have wistful thoughts about my pre-CSM life. Before I knew to much and flew to close to the sun. I said before that I stopped writing out of anger. I felt that if I kept a positive face to the public while I was raging inside, I was being false. I tried for a more neutral and honest tone but without wild, emotional aspects. I still, in the end felt fake. I directed that energy to solving the problem and I feel that did happen. However, along the way more problems cropped up. I realized then, around the end of February that I was to deeply disappointed in some decisions that were made to present any type of face. One thing I have stru

Projects and Stuff

What have I been doing over here? I have lost the will to blog daily. But there are other things to do. In the week that I have been home things have been busy. It was my long week at work so I have had little time off as well as having to shove a training class in there. That time has been consumed by obnoxious little life problems, the start of my garden season, and the puppy. However, I've also been plodding along doing some CSM stuff. When I asked people about their ideal road map during the summit, I received a steady flow of responses. That made me warm and fuzzy. Then they made a blog banter (#73 Roadmap to...)  and I squinted and squirmed a bit to get that much focus in the banter. However, my information loving soul did chortle a bit in pleasure. Ask and you shall receive and all that nonsense. At no time do I think that the responses I receive are the sum total of everything in the game. In fact, the other day I was discussing with Dirk how little we know of the si

Careless Whispers

I am very bad at using song lyrics to emphasis a point. That has never stopped me from doing it anyway. Over the past two years my understanding and frame of reference for Eve has changed. I am prone to musing about topics that have little to do with game play. They are formed from nothing more than my own opinion and understandings. Last week during the summit I said that the Producers had asked us to give them their ideal road maps. I took this outside of the summit room (with permission just saying) and brought that here to the blog. From there I got a heap of interesting responses and even a blog banter on the topic. My information sourcing mind is very happy and I expect that I will spend tomorrow and Friday starting a summerization of things. Of course, as often happens with such topics, the responses developed a life of their own. In my ideal mind everyone would give me a nice little road map. I'd bundle that up, slap a bow on it, and hand it over. For some unknown  rea

And into Tomorrow

I'm still on my tablet and trying to figure out why google's auto correct does not like my blue tooth keyboard. I am not trying overly hard. I need to finish packing but I figured that there were a few more things to finish off the day. But, little correction and many errors will probably follow this post too. "We should stop focusing on what happened and look to the future."  That is a sentiment that I hate. We, as a race, already do not learn from our own history. We're past the time when education was reserved for an elite class in most countries. Knowledge of past mistakes are at our finger tips but we still ignore them. It seems to be to be an even greater error to pin, "Fixed" on something and brush ones hands of all that came to cause the break. Acknowleging the past does not mean that we have to live in it. We have to acknowledge it. We have to break it down and understand why it happened. Then we have to learn from it. The past does not go a

So Ends the Summit

It has been my habit the previous trips to Iceland to walk through my day in this blog. I did it for the simple enjoyment of writing about my adventures and struggles in a strange land. But, I also did it for accountability. The accusation that the CSM is a popularity contest so that the winners can take free trips rankles me. It pisses me off. But, I cannot figure out how to counter it. I could sit back and say that I have the money to travel. That makes me look an arrogant braggart. I could point out that I use up huge amounts of my yearly allotted vacation, but that makes me look the whining martyr. And then, those can be countered by telling me to remote in if it is such a burden. The insult and accusation is well done. It is a slippery trap that I firmly step into and as with many such traps, there isn’t an answer that will render it inert. Even my sad little point that, I’d already been to Iceland for Fanfest before i even ran didn’t make much of a dent. Instead, I decided

Choke Points

Today's question to you from the summit, is about choke points. This is a topic that has come up several times but one we had a very good discussion about today. The Phoebe changes to jump drives is a contentious one still. I like that we had changed but now, a bit over a year out, we need to look at what the changes did. Did they do what was wanted them to do? Is there room for change? I have discussed the shape of space before. There are some part sof Eve that we want to be inaccessable. It makes terrain. However, the shape of space was not created around the idea of jumping ships. I am not the only one that felt that the shape of space needed to be addressed when the jump changes came. I also asked, "What is a choke point?" How do we define this. By there being one route? Is two a choke point still? The answer may be as simple as add another route. It may be more complex then that. So, I'm calling back in the feedback I've had about the shape of space.

Your ideal roadmap

To try to be a bit more interesting then blogging yet another daily list of summit meetings, how about a question? In the producer session, as we try to figure out how to fix and improve our communication with teams and how we figure out who should be gone to for features and changes, we discussed the road map. We discussed what 'our' ideal roadmap would be. This breaks down into the individual roadmaps for each member of the CSM. After all, we are individiuals and we have different dreams for Eve. We have different goals and features that we want to move forward or go back to. How close are we to what CCP is looking at and planning? We discussed their safety mesures to weigh the value of features. What will this feature do for Eve? It is not enough to have an ideal road map of things you want. Those things have to have value and that value needs to be enough to dedicate the time to the feature. Do you have an ideal roadmap? A path for Eve to head in the next year or tw

Guest Post: Jinrai Tremaine and the search for Strontium Clathrates

Sugar Kyle has very generously allowed me to borrow her podium in order to talk to you about a proposed change for the Citadel release that I think is going to have very serious long-term consequences for all of New Eden. Before I go into detail, a brief introduction. I imagine that most of you have no idea who I am, so: my main character in EVE is Jinrai Tremaine and my space-job is mining ice in hisec. I run one of the locust fleets you may occasionally hear solo miners complain about, as we strip ice anomalies bare before they get a chance to make much ISK. I’m actually not here to discuss my playstyle or why I do what I do, I only bring it up to establish my credentials - ice is a big deal for me and has been for several years, so I try and stay on top of upcoming changes that are likely to affect it, which in this case involves the upcoming Citadel release. A few days ago, CCP published the long-awaited Structure Fitting Devblog which included, amongst other things, the r