EVE - Day 2

Everything I said about EVE still stands. But today I am going to say that, in addition to being stunning, EVE sucks. Last night I didn't play EVE for over 30 minutes. EVE was being played however. My computer was quite occupied displaying in gorgeous detail the various other ships stations, planets and suns my in game persona was supposed to be passing through on some Journey.

Not always past however. All this watching the game play itself got me to thinking. And thats a dangerous thing for any game to allow. The moment you are thinking about playing, rather than playing, youve lost the whole immersion aspect, and that in theory is what keeps you playing.

So, while the game was activly ignoring me I realized some basic things in EVE that are the crucial immersion breakers:

1. There is nothing solid in the game. Upon activating Autopilot your ship will turn to face its destination, and fly towards it nomatter what might be in the way. Other ships. Space Stations. Asteroids - planets - your ship will try to fly through them all if they get in your way - AND SUCCEED. I have a hard time beliving in planets that I can fly through.

2. The "straight line no matter what" philosophy is preserved when interacting with beacons, other ships, asteroids, stargates or stations. Your EVE ship does not deign to actually dock with stations. No. Ships approach a station and at a preset distance - dissapear. Likewise, when using a stargate to travel to another system, your ship approaches the thing from whichever direction, and the stargate does its very pretty blast-a-ball-of-energy-into-space animation. Once again the ship being gated simply dissapears from space.

Given the total lack of ability to grab a joystick and fly the ship, and the total straight line nature of the autopilots movement, it gets very hard to think about the ship as "my ship". It feels a lot more like a very complicated looking "you are here" pin on some kind of abstract 3d map. It feels like an RTS - you the player, on the outside looking in.

There are apparently up to 10,000 other players concurrently online at any one time, but EVE so far is the most single player MMORPG ive ever played. The other ships that make appearances are total non entities - devoid of any personality or that there might be another player behind the ship. Without conversation an MMORPG is just a single player game with a lot of oddly named NPCs trying to kill you. And EVE makes it so damned hard to talk to other ships. Theres a chat window with channels, and one of those channels is called "local" which presumably refers to people in the local vicinity. However, the odds that anyone in the vicinity is actually watching their "local" chat traffic, just in case someone hails them on the way past seems pretty damn low. Plus, the only time during a trip that is spent in the vicinity of other ships is while closing on a stargate in order to jump to a new system. The rest of the time is spent entering, leaving, or just cruising in warp, and at warp speed - when travelling at au's per second, very little is in range of the 50 kilometer radius radar. So, any other ships encountered are likley just about to use the gate, or warp away. At any rate it makes attempting communication with other ships entirely pointless, which makes 10,000 other online subscribers feel like a giant $10 per month single player experience.

EVE-Online

I think I better cancel that Everquest order. EvE is stunning. Well, that is four hours later. The first hour was spent in total confusion, wondering how this game has any subscribers whatsoever. The learning curve is huge, and the windowed interface - well - lots of draggable windows is a bad idea. I with they all automatically docked to something, anything, because mostly, windows all over the place means you get less not more access to the data you need. I spent a good 15 minutes with the tutorial window stuck under some other control bar, wondering how to get it out again. The chat interface especially seems to be the most inefficient use of space possible, with huge icons representing the players faces causing all the text to become quite seperated vertically. Frankly, Jumpgate with its 5 lines of text overlayed on the top of the screen had a more usable chat interface.

But then, I got with some UMEC buddies from Jumpgate, they gave me some tips - like how to get my character training some skills - and some equipment - lasers, and I started marching through the training missions.

Skills deserve a bigger mention. The skill system in EVE works in a devious way. Each skill you have can be trained up to 5 times. To get new skills you buy them. The clincher is, skills take time to train. Real time. The skill says "Train this skill to level 2 in 5 hours 31 minutes". If you start that skill training, well, it starts doing its thing. You can now sit in station, go missioning, or even log right out. In 5 hours 31 the skill completes training. This means that, while playing, you want to be training is skills that train up quickly, so you can train up several skills over the session. When you log out, you want to choose a skill thats going to take a long time to complete - ideally exactly the right number of hours before you will get a chance to log in again and choose a new skill - because you CANNOT queue training! You *must* log in to choose the next skill.

Next, this game DOES have a high coffee factor. That is, the universe is huge - when travelling you pretty much select your destination, lay in a course, and activate the autopilot. The autoppilot then warps you through each sector to the jumpgate that takes you to the next sector along the route. Unless you are flying through hostile space... this is a great time to go grab some coffee, have a bath, or use the ingame browser to download some pr0n.

A huge universe, a lot to learn, a confusing user interface. But a set of tutorial and training missions that get you into the game, each one expanding your knowledge without overloading you with new ideas.

BTW: To navigate somewhere in a system, DON't pan around looking at the radar contents. Right click on an empty area and just choose your destination from the drop down list!

The beginning of the End.

Ok, I think ive done myself in. Ive placed an order for Everquest from Amazon.com. I have no idea if they will deliver the thing to South Africa - most things they seem happy to ship over. Like region 1 encoded DVDs for example. I dont think theres a DVD player in the country that hasnt been free'd from region restrictions. For crying out loud - being a bit of a Closet Trekkie - Star Trek: The Original Series is only available in region 1 encoding. And here I live in a region 2 country. Fat chance my DVD player plays only region 2 content.

But, Ive ordered Everquest from Amazon. Its $26, not counting shipping that will probably easilly double the price. And then I find out today that Gamespy can be tricked into making trial CD-Keys for EVE-Online. Download the client from www.eve-online.com and make yourself a trial CD Key here (GameSpy ID required).

Of course, the only reason I'm stuffing around with EVE is the fact that I'm looking for something to replace the lack of Jumpgate in my life. Jumpgate has to be one of the most unregarded MORPGs. I say MORPG rather than MMORPG because it never really got past a couple hundred online players. The graphics is shite, but that matters not at all, because Jumpgate - first and foremost - is a first person view space flight simulator in which all flight, be it combat or hauling cargo, is based on the players "twitch" skill with the mouse - preferably Joystick. Its a fucking brilliant game IF you can get past the fact that it really only has long lasting appeal to the PVP or PK crowd. Do not even think of playing it long term as a trader as the economy is totally exploitable and you cannot go anywhere without pirates stealing your stuff, or blowing you up because they dont like you, and with an onlien population of 50 odd players they are GOING to know who you are and bear a grudge.

Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance II revisited.

Well, I BGDA2 last night. The ending I found quite anti climactic. I was presented with an array of "boss" creatures, all of which died with very little effort on my part. Sure, my character was the necromancer, and the game was on easy, but I did expect to use a few of the many extra health potions I had collected. Instead my summoned pet occupied 100% of the monsters time, while I stood at a distance holding circle down.

Now, Ive finished the game, so I have access to the "Extreme Difficulty", my choices are a level 27 Necromancer, or, Ive also unlocked Drizzt, who is level 16. Now, the Necromancer is level 27, and Ive maxed out the usefull skills, which means that... well.. unlike a melee character that sees improvement with each levelup, my Necro is stuck. Either Extreme mode is going to be a walkover the whole way, or its going to be incrediably easy, until chapter III or IV, at which point it will switch over to too hard. With no option for me to improve my characters offense.

And Chapter III and IV really form the core of my gripe against BG:DA II. Theyre short. Out of the 20 odd gameplay hours it took me (not counting reloads) to finish the game... I spent about 3 hours in the final 2 chapters combined.

Car Stuff

The Buggati Veyron is quite the machine. There is an impressive Buggati Veyron writeup at http://www.howstuffworks.com (a site which is definatly worth a visit or two).

Not that, if I could buy any one car in the world that I wanted, I would get a Veyron. I'm too much of a Ferrari fan for that. And, even given my choice of Ferrari's, Id feel happier with a 360 Spider than an Enzo. Car's, no matter how expensive, exist to be driven. In fact, in my mind, the more expensive the car, the greater a crime it is to not drive it. If I had a Buggati Veyron, hell, if I had a Ferrari Enzo, I would drive it everywhere. Even to Burn, and bad things are known to happen to cars there.

Of course, my ultimate car isn't a Bugatti, or even a Ferrari. Cars like the Kroeningsegg Zonda are swept aside. (And, until McLaren make an F1 engine thats capable of finishing a race I discount anything from McLaren Mercedes as a Super car contender). I want a Lamborghini. Murcielago.

Timesheets

I hate timesheets. No, I hate bad timesheet systems.

Movies: Starsky and Hutch, and The School of Rock.

These movies are both good. Watchable. They're certainly not on my top ten list of movies of all time. Starsky and Hutch, I will reveal my age by saying I recall that show being on TV as a child. Wooo. I can't remember anything at all about the original show though so I cant say if the movie is like the series in any way at all.

The School of Rock is an odd movie. Its not the sort of movie that I'd have expected to enjoy if I'd known its basic premise before watching it.

Schumacher wins San Marino.

The man is obviously great, but cracks start to show. Forced into an error chasing Buttons qualifying time, well, only for Schumacher does an error mean running wide onto the grass and loosing .5 seconds to qualify second. For anyone else that would, doubtless, have resulted in a spin putting them at the back of the grid.

What I cant understand though is why anyone would want to save the Imola race. Both Ferrari and now Bernie Ecclestone are coming out in support of a race track that, frankly, is dull dull dull. The only notable overtaking of the 2004 Imola race happened by pit strategy. If Mr. E wants to keep Imola on the calendar but turf Silverstone - a race that in 2003 was full of overtaking and incident, then I have to question his priorities. Im sorry, but an exciting race must trump improved pit facilities. Sure gold plated urinals and other creature conforts are nice, but really dont excite the interest of the fans as much as watching a race where the fast cars actually try overtake the slower cars.

Strange Wrayth

A good friend, but I suspect chemically imbalanced as evinced by this post on the Burn Forums

Game Reviews: Far Cry and Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance II

Far Cry is brilliant. The single player campaign is superb with one exception. I hate "boss" encounters with a passion. Console games seem to demand them, and every FPS since, well Wolfenstein in fact seems to have some badass guy at the end of the level with lots of health and an infinite supply of devestating ammunition - usualy of the Rocket variety. In certain classes of games it works, but the sudden switch to arcade mode totally ruined Metal Gear Solid for me, and the one boss encounter in Far Cry certainly taints the game. But theres only one boss, and once passed, the rest of the game was pleasingly free of the "locked in a small room with a seemingly immortal opponent" mechanic.

The other game on my menu at the moment is Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance II for the PS/2. Full of boss encounters, but in this game they are expected and add rather than detract from the game. My only gripe though is, compared to the original game, BG:DA II lacks breasts. I mean, theyre there, but they just dont move as much. The Dead or Alive team know it, and given BG:DA I I thought that Black Isle knew it, but gratutious breast physics is critical to a console games success.

Blogging and me. wtf?

WTF indeed. Why do I have a blog exactly? Sure I'm proud. exposing the contents of my mind to the planet, but whos interested, and why do I consider my ramblings worth other peoples time?

Amazing really. For the first time ever, playing Diablo II, I created a non passworded game on Battle.net today with my Necromancer. It takes less than 5 minutes for a PK to join my game and attempt to PK my character. The attempt fizzled so laughably I thought for a while the PK was doing it as some sort of twisted comic relief effort, but, when he rejoined later he showed me some level 60+ ears - at least 3 high level characters did succumb to the Bone Spirit + tppk hack.

What Blog is complete without a "first post" ? For sure not this one.