Removing server boundaries

Twice recently, for City of Heroes and World of Warcraft, I find getting together with a friend in an MMORPG thwarted by being on different servers, even on a different continent. Even if there were a way to transfer a character to another server my friends list or guild would not follow and either situation would only result in a continued separation of players. I am hoping the time will come when disparate server populations and continent separations will no longer be necessary and anyone can play with anyone else in the same game, and perhaps this can be made possible with some clever and innovative use of instancing and phasing.

I have to admit that I know little about the hardware that runs MMORPGs, so I shall state some assumptions I use. Each server holds its own population, with separate servers used for instanced areas, where characters can be passed between world and instance servers. I assume EVE Online is able to maintain a single population by its use of stargates that provide a convenient method of breaking up the virtual galaxy in to manageable server-sized chunks, essentially making each constellation instanced, with exceptions for highly populated single systems like Jita and where large-scale combats are occurring.

Along with the standard instance model, where a separate instance of the environment is loaded for each group to offer an individual experience, World of Warcraft has now shown some excellent use of ‘phasing’. With phasing, the same PCs, NPCs and mobs can inhabit the same virtual area with only characters in the same phase being able to interact. Phasing allows different realities to be presented to different players depending on their relative experiences in the game world and makes for a much richer environment. As it also allows many characters to exist in the same virtual area whilst only displaying a subset of the total number of characters I wonder if phasing could be used to remove server boundaries.

The game could still use multiple game servers, to cope with large populations, but present itself to the client as a single server. Logging on, the player is shown his character and a selection of the population that is ‘in-phase’ with him. Any other character is ‘out-of-phase’ and so cannot be seen or interacted with directly. Friends can be made either through external or internal channels and a friends list maintained, as well as guilds forming. When this inevitably occurs the server starts to select characters to show in-phase that are connected to your own character, either from the guild or friends list, such that the people who you are most likely to interact with are always available, phasing out distant and unconnected characters to maintain optimal populations.

When a mature character—that is, a character in a guild and a populated friends list—logs in an initial network of phasing can be established by the server. A new character can be distinguised as being either from a new account or an established account. The character from the new account can be assigned an initial arbitrary phasing, the one from an established account can use guild and friends list information to determine a likely pattern of required phasing for the session.

My first thought is that as characters get phased-in other characters with no connection can be phased-out to maintain the overall ’server’ population, but that is perhaps not being ambitious enough. Instead of attempting to maintain an overall server population of phased-in characters, each zone or region in the game can have an ‘ideal’ population figure. Rather than deciding that, for example, the Northrend server has a maximum connection count, instead work it out per region or city. Determine that Dalaran can hold a population of a certain number, before causing latency issues or being too crowded, and then spread the total number of players currently in Dalaran between the relevant number of phased instances to meet that ideal population in each instance, respecting guild and friend connections.

We are likely to see on any given server most of the population crowded in the current levelling environment, with sparsely populated areas in the areas holding older content. Plenty of players have already lamented the lonely process that is levelling in a mature game, but imagine if the entire game population, across all servers, could be taken in to account with phasing. The designers set a population cap on a low-level region like Westfall and rather than each server only containing one or two lonely alts the entire game population is split amongst a few phased instances, creating lively and vibrant zones to quest in. Preference, but not exclusive access, can even be given to phase together characters within a level range margin for the region to help prevent problems with balance, for example, should a guild take advantage of a scenic area for a meeting.

Fewer instances of Westfall and similar regions of low population would need to be run, along with more instances of heavily populated areas like Dalaran and Icecrown, whilst maintaining similar visible population levels for each player. And settlements and quest areas can have different ideal populations, so that cities can still bustle without quest locations being over-camped.

There are some obvious problems. Selectively showing characters from guilds and friends lists could become difficult when friends of friends of guild members all come together, but I imagine it can be reduced to a solved mathematical network or graphs problem, and friends lists are already limited. A network also could be simplified by examining frequency of communications to determine stale relationships. The problem of character namespace across the entire game should be a simple matter of allowing extended names. The main issue may be how to handle chat servers, as a hugely popular game could have an unmanageable number of players in the same zone. One idea would be to restrict the locality of the general chat channels, maybe even to have a chat channel character limit, and rely on custom channels and better designed group configuration and selection tools.

As for phasing characters in and out, which would likely have to be handled by passing them across instance servers, this could be done intelligently. A population could have dual minimum, optimum and maximum settings, where there is a server limit and a phase limit. The server limit is the number of characters the server is capable of managing, the phase limit the ideal number of characters to inhabit each zone, with the server limit being much larger than the phase limit. This should make feasible phasing characters in and out as required by changes in player networks, with server limits handled by re-evaluating optimal player network phasings during occasional instance changes.

It would no doubt take some nifty code to implement a single phased reality across a server cluster, but being able to remove any boundaries to friends playing together as well as addressing issues with relative population densities must be a tempting reason to overcome any technological hurdles. Not only that, but there is surely a huge incentive in allowing everyone to play on a single server, removing all boundaries currently restricting friends in the ever-shrinking internet-enabled and blog-connected gaming world from playing together, as a game to get this right would have a distinct advantage over the old model of multiple geographical regions and servers.

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Tags: mmorpg

One-way to known space

I find myself alone at the corporation’s POS in w-space with information that a new wormhole to known space has opened up and that we should start shipping out, preparing to move to a new system. The wormhole leads to low-sec Caldari space, but only a couple of hops to high-sec, making it quite suitable for me. As it is a couple of hours before the daily galactic shut-down I consider it a good time to get myself out and to try to haul some ore with me.

Scouting ahead seems like a good idea, as I don’t relish finding out how safe the low-sec systems are between the wormhole and high-sec space in a cargo ship filled with valuable ore that belongs to the coporation. I am not convinced that my Drake is the best ship to be navigating low-sec either, but at least it is my ship and if I get caught and destroyed I won’t have too much paperwork to fill out. Besides, with a solid tank and plenty of warp core stabilisers I should be relatively safe. I warp to the wormhole and jump through to low-sec, which turns out to be surprisingly busy.

My first task is to get my ship in to a safe-spot, preferably one where I can monitor the relevant stargate to the next system in my route. The wormhole exit itself is fairly safe, being an arbitrary point that needs to be scanned to be found, but it is possible that other capsuleers already know its location so it is best that I move. I have my EVE Online Strategic Maps handy, offering an overview of the systems and linking stargates at a glance. The constellation I have jumped in to through the wormhole couldn’t be much better situated for getting out in one piece. There are plenty of stargates connecting the low-sec systems together and two potential exits to high-sec. Indeed, one of the low-sec systems even has a gate to each of the high-sec systems, so I am confident that there will be an exit route for me.

It is fairly straightforwards to create some arbitrary safe-spots sitting within scanning distance from the stargates, although I find I have to get relatively close to provide some separation between the gates and nearby asteroid fields. When positioned, I get an accurate reading on what ships are on the gate and which are just in the general chunk of space I’m scanning. All gates appear quite clear and it is not long before I am back in high-sec space with a handful of safe-spots in the low-sec systems bookmarked for safe travel on subsequent trips. It is only now that I realise my first task should have been to bookmark this side of the wormhole when I jumped.

I have only just been rewarded a decoration by the corporation for my services to wormhole operations, and as it is my first decoration I am really proud. Then, like a muppet, I forget one of the fundamentals. My plan to start hauling materials out of w-space falters when I make the newbie mistake of failing to have a bookmark on both sides of a wormhole, a mistake I have successfully avoided making so far. At least I am ’stuck’ in high-sec known space rather than deep in w-space, I suppose, and as the wormhole is known to others in the corporation I just need to wait until more people turn up before continuing the operation. For now, I may as well head back to my base of industrial operations and take care of business, putting modules on the market and creating new manufacturing jobs to replenish stocks.

As luck would have it, later on in the day, when everyone is around, a wormhole leading directly to high-sec space is found. My earlier error is forgiven by the vagaries of wormholes. Ships are mobilised, the POS is dismantled and the task of moving everything back to high-sec is in full swing. I grab a Badger and make the trip to help with what I can, ending up taking a ship maintenance hangar and packaged ship back through to known space with me. I believe the plan is to find a new system in w-space to start exploiting. Although I don’t know how soon the second operation is expected to begin I am certainly going to volunteer for further adventures.

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Tags: eve online, low-sec, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, w-space, wormhole

On considering a second build for my warrior

In the midst of the Azerothian midsummer celebrations a guild friend invites me in to a group that is heading to the Slave Pens, where Ahune the Frost Lord awaits. As we get coordinated and ready to fight it is interesting to find myself at odds again because of my preferred rôle, like when I felt I had to steal tanking duties from a shieldless warrior. I travel to the Slave Pens to be the tank, maintaining high threat and soaking up damage as others deal the damage, so am a little nonplussed when the strategy is announced that the warlock’s Felguard will tank Ahune.

It is my own expectations to blame for my confusion. Despite being an experienced protection-build tanking warrior I am far from renowned as one. I am also joining a rather tight-knit group and they clearly have a certain way of achieving their goals, one that no doubt works quite well for them. It must be difficult to shift in to a different way of approaching familiar situations, in the same way that I find myself almost lost when asked to do anything but tank. But after some clarification and volunteering we get an effective dynamic working, and Ahune is as efficiently defeated as a 70th level world event boss should be by five 80th level characters.

The low difficulty of the encounter means that however I approach the fight we will be in little danger of failing, but my concern is more that the specific mechanic of my chosen rôle is to generate threat and that mechanic simply does not transfer well to a more general situation. I have even trained myself in the single rôle to the point where I don’t know any high-damage attacks that also do not generate large amounts of threat. I find I cannot modify my combat so that I am not automatically causing singificant threat without simultaneously being close to useless. This is when I realise I finally have a good reason to consider training in dual-builds for my warrior.

When the option of dual-builds for characters was released I thought it might be a good idea to have both a tanking build and a DPS build for both of my characters, warrior and death knight. But the more I thought about it the less it seemed necessary, as I would call on my warrior if I wanted to tank, my death knight to DPS. Whilst I could no doubt crank out some higher damage with a specific DPS build for my warrior I have no problem fighting in defensive stance when outside of a group, enjoying the disruptive options available to me fighting with a one-handed weapon and shield.

A dual-build is even less attractive to my death knight, even with a frost talent build. The switch between presences is much more flexible than a warrior’s stances and Gnomesblight can become an effective tank, with more armour and threat generation, simply by changing to frost presence, whilst attacking in blood presence produces excellent DPS without excess threat. Whilst my death knight can happily fulfil the dual rôles of tank and DPS with a single talent selection and simple change of presence, my warrior doesn’t have the benefit of being a class as polished as one introduced with the second expansion. A second talent build is required for my warrior to have the extra proficiency endowed by talent-specific abilities for both tanking and DPS, which will give me the versatility for convenient grouping outside of my small circle of friends.

It is time to revisit the arms or fury talent trees and devise a suitable build that would complement my tanking abilities. It won’t be straightforwards, though. Just as switching rôles with a frosty death knight is a simple matter of changing presences the spell rotation also only needs minor adjustments, but a DPS warrior and protection warrior will be quite different in nearly every aspect. The process of creating a second build will be educational and involve some training time. Looking on the positive side, at least it is not an urgent requirement, so I can take my time learning the ropes, and I have the gold to spare to pay for the dual-build training, now that I have my swift flying mount and cold-weather flying paid for.

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Tags: gnomesblight, mmorpg, sapphire, world of warcraft

A passive tank must still be quite active

Stopping only to pick up and fit a new configuration for my Drake, as well as some warp stabilisers on the sensible suggestion from a colleague, I find myself on the border of low-sec space, heading back to w-space. My cloaked escort helps me get through the couple of low-sec systems without any threat and I am soon jumping through the wormhole to ‘our’ w-space system. It is good to be back and I am quite looking forwards to seeing how my new Drake set-up will work. I hope there are plenty of sleepers ready to be woken in to an agitated state. Indeed, it seems that a suitable site has been scanned and found already. My escort changes ships in to a Ferox battlecruiser, I change my fitting to replace the warp core stabilisers and install a remote shield repairer in a high slot for my Caldari companion, and we head off for adventure and profit.

Warping in to the scanned area we encounter a fairly standard perimeter site, with sleeper frigates and cruisers patrolling to repel intruders. The first wave poses little bother but when a battleship turns up with some more cruisers we warp out to take a little time to let our shields replenish. Warping back in creates a problem when a large and quite ugly rock gets in the way. Luckily, my on-board collision avoidance systems are working. I get pushed away violently from the rock and begin to re-engage the sleepers. My colleague isn’t quite so lucky, however, as her Ferox snags on an outcropping. It seems more of an embarrassing annoyance than a hindrance until we want to warp out again owing to heavy incoming fire.

My Drake gets away cleanly and the shields get a chance to recharge nice and quickly with nothing draining them, but the Ferox is still stuck. Hearing this, I turn the Drake around to get back in to the sleeper site and provide covering fire, but the Drake is not particularly agile and I return to see a Ferox wreck and my colleague’s pod floating alongside. The ugly rock is a harsh mistress. The pod warps back to the POS and with only my battlecruiser left to engage a sleeper battleship and two cruisers I turn tail and warp back out to a planet, at least to let my shields recharge further.

I am asked if I can at least get to the wreck of the Ferox to recover the cargo. I am happy to do this but mention that my hold is mostly full of missiles and will be unlikely to be able to carry much. I give it a go anyway and warp back in, a dozen kilometres away from the wreck. As I push through the profound emptiness of space that my battlecruiser manages to make feel like treacle, a smaller ship warps in and uses a tractor beam to pull the wreck towards it, my colleague wisely having commandeered a salvaging destroyer to recover what she can. However, the sleepers don’t much like this and start shooting on the destroyer, so I lock-on and light up all my launchers to provide a more threatening target for them to focus on.

My diversionary tactics work and I am soon under fire from all three ships. Despite the battleship being the largest source of damage it will also take much longer to destroy compared to the cruisers. My experience tells me to reduce the number of sources of damage as quickly as possible, so I concentrate all my damage on one of the cruisers. The wrecked Ferox is salvaged and the destroyer safely warps away but as my shield is holding and the cruiser is almost destroyed my bravado, and curiosity about my capabilities, holds me to the battle. I bombard the second cruiser with missiles as my shield continues to deplete, not so quickly to present a significant threat but enough so that I align my ship to a planet in case I need to warp away in haste.

The second cruiser is destroyed, leaving only the battleship. I feel confident now and reload my launchers for a full onslaught on the remaining sleeper ship. I am bolstered by my shields not only holding but now steadily recharging under quite heavy fire from the battleship, my new fitting clearly working well. I change my ship’s alignment from the planet and towards the battleship, closing the distance between us in the hopes of being able to use my drones to increase my DPS a little. But drones are not needed, as once the armour of the sleeper battleship is depleted its hull is rapidly ripped apart and the sleeper perimeter site is cleared.

All that remains is to clean up after ourselves, for which I jump in to salvaging destroyer to retrieve all the cargo from and salvage the sleeper wrecks. I am quite happy with the new tank on the Drake, as it took an awful lot of damage without failing and with much less management needed because of its entirely passive nature. The three-and-a-half million ISK or so that the shield amplifiers cost is ISK well spent. My only problem now is working out what to do with the spare capacitor charge the Drake has, all 99% of it. It seems like such a waste.

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Tags: drake, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, sleepers, w-space

Refitting my Drake battlecruiser

My last undertaking before departing for w-space was completing a storyline mission for Core Complexion, Inc. The promise of significant standings increase was enough not only to hold me back briefly in order to complete the mission but also to almost cause me to falter, as it gave me that moment I didn’t want where I could think about my actions. Luckily, I was bold and ventured to the system with the wormhole and jumped through, having some exciting adventures for my efforts, either by battling sleepers or being hunted by PvP capsuleers.

Now I am back in high-sec Caldari space, at my Core Complexion, Inc. mission base. I remember the standings gain from the storyline mission was impressive, enough for me to jot down the increase—4.37 to 5.21 according to my notes—if only because I also made a mental note some time back that I could move to a much improved quality level three agent once my standings reached around the 4.80 mark. Having surpassed that target and again ready to run missions I check what agents are available to me now. Sadly, the level four R&D agents that offer research relevant to my future proposed invention needs still won’t work with me, but a level three agent with a quality level of 18 is only one system away from my current base, which will surely offer better gains for mission successes. It’s time to move!

Moving a single system in high-sec is hardly a chore, even with several ships to transfer. Packing my shuttle, I take it inside my Badger II for the first trip, then realise that I will only be wasting time if I keep assembling and repackaging it at each end, and instead throw my naked pod one way to bring the rest of my ships back the other. My Cormorant salvager comes across, then Fido, my Retriever mining barge, before I pull the Drake battlecruiser, Lightness of Being, last. I leave my Osprey mining cruiser behind, what with it having been somewhat superceded by the mining barge. Maybe I should sell it.

Whilst I am making the move with my handful of ships I ponder on my Drake’s performance in combat, both against the sleepers and in general, wondering if I could improve its fitting. The shields hold up to a considerable amount of damage but the active shield hardeners require foreknowledge of damage types or use of multiple invulnerability fields for broad-spectrum resistances to be effective. Unless I am lucky enough both to be facing a single damage type and to have the correct specific hardener installed the ship’s capacitor is drained by running three or more hardeners within a few minutes, which can leave me vulnerable. I have neither luxury out in w-space. A quick look at some suggested fittings and a browse of the market makes me want to experiment, so I order some new modules and make a rare trip to Jita to pick them up.

I keep my large shield extenders and shield power relays, but instead of the active shield hardeners, despite most suggested configurations relying on them, I decide to try out shield amplifiers. Looking at the prices on the market and noting my healthy wallet I splash out to buy the Tech II versions of the modules, fitting four amplifiers in total, one for resistance to each type of damage. Fitting my first Tech II modules makes me tingle a little, as does knowing that my capacitor’s stability is ensured now that my tank is entirely passive. The only question I have is how well it will absorb damage, which is rather crucial.

It is as I am in Jita that news reaches me of the appearance of a new wormhole leading to the POS and is not too deep in low-sec. I have manufacturing jobs either ready to be delivered or outstanding and a new agent to introduce myself to, but the lure of w-space hits me again and I request an escort through low-sec, abandoning my new mission base before I have even settled in. At least I’ll soon get a chance to see how the new fitting for my Drake works, which isn’t guaranteed when working with a manufacturing agent, even if I feel like Egon Spengler as I rush off to fight sleepers without giving my new configuration any kind of test. But convenient wormholes to specific w-space systems cannot be relied upon to appear regularly, which is why I am heading back in whilst I can.

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Tags: drake, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic

Failing at the Basic Chemistry quest

Grouping up with a guild mate to defeat Chillmaw as part of a daily Argent Tournament quest I ask if we could continue as a group to clear out some of the lingering quests in my log that require help to complete. As she agrees to come along to heal my reckless self we head to the southern ramparts of Icecrown to kill some giants, after which an NPC tells me to continue my good work by mixing some formula in to a cauldron, for a quest he calls Basic Chemistry. This quest, he says, will probably require five characters to be in with a chance of succeeding. Pshaw, I think to myself, that’s five ordinary characters. We are heroes, two should be enough. At least, we can have a jolly good go with only the two of us. A plate armour-wearing death knight DPS monster and a tree-hugging druid healer has often proven to be quite an effective combination in PvE.

I get a flask of the formula to throw in to a cauldron and we fly off to attempt the quest, wondering how challenging the five-man quest will be for the two of us, but quietly confident of completing it easily. I find the cauldron, chuck in the fluid and out jumps a nasty ghoul bent on eating my flesh. I start beating the ghoul away with my two-handed mace as my druid friend heals any wounds I take, but then I get a warning to apply a further application of the agent. First, I wonder ‘what agent?’, then repeated warnings appear. I don’t think it can be the fluid I used to start the quest, partly because it is never referred to as an ‘agent’ anywhere in the quest text or on the item itself, but mostly because the item is still on its cool-down from being used initially. The timer runs down and the quest fails.

Scratching my head as to what happened I suggest restarting, just in case something bugged the first time. But, sure enough, the same events occur as before, with warnings to add more of the agent and my quest item remaining on cool-down until after the quest is failed. My guild friend cannot help, because she isn’t on the quest and so doesn’t have the quest item herself, yet I cannot use the quest item more than once before the quest fails because its cool-down is longer than the quest timer. This strikes me as flawed, so I create a ticket to talk to a GM about it, hoping that it is an oversight that can be fixed.

A GM opens a conversation with me a little later and after acknowledging my question suggests that perhaps I should bring along some friends who also have some of the agent. It’s an obvious solution to the problem, but one that frankly I find unacceptable. I am in but a tiny guild and pick-up groups are difficult enough to create, and cope with, for instances, I certainly don’t want to spend hours looking and waiting for other people casually wanting to complete this arbitrary and otherwise unexciting quest.

I fully appreciate the desire to create more challenging content that requires collaboration to complete, but having to synchronise quests, particularly quests that are part of chains, before being able even to attempt these more difficult quests goes beyond the expectations of a friendly and social game. If there were a particularly good reward or interesting conclusion to the quest, such as opening the quests to be able to fly a Netherwing Drake by defeating Zuluhed the Whacked in Burning Crusade, for example, then there is sufficient motivation to work together as a group and ensure everyone remains at the same point in the quest chain. But as far as I can see this is just another quest, and all I can think to do is abandon it for being a waste of effort.

The main problem with this type of quest is what happens when others complete it. As with Zuluhed the Whacked, when a character completes the chain to move on to the next step they cannot return to a previous stage of the quest, so the quest item is no longer available to them, which of course means that they can no longer help anyone else. So by encouraging players to complete the quest in groups the designers are potentially locking out other players from being able to complete the quest, as the number of characters available to help naturally dwindles. If you can’t get the quest, you can’t get the quest item and you cannot contribute towards the quest completion. It becomes logistically improbable that enough players can be found to complete the quest together, particularly one that offers no real incentive to complete in the first place.

The GM notes my frustration and, if I would agree to a disclaimer, is happy to forward any suggestions I have to the designers. Hmm, I haven’t actually thought of any ways for the quest to be improved, but I really ought to at least try to be constructive. It’s not too difficult to quickly come up with the suggestion that not all players need to be on the quest for it to be attempted. If the quest item were allowed to be shared amongst party members, as long as one player is on the quest, then it would allow for the increased complexity of multiple applications of the agent by different people at different times for the quest to succeed, thereby making the quest able to be completed without simplifying it or requiring logistic complications of quest chain synchronisation. I may not have been quite as eloquent at the time, but I got the basic idea across and I’m sure the designers are smart enough to work out the details.

MMORPGs are social games at heart, by the very nature of them being massively multiplayer. Whilst player skill certainly should be a factor in contributing towards success, and equipment options appear to be a necessary evil in creating a more level experience, denying access to content because of contrived complexities that make finding groups more difficult seems to be antithetical to the design philosophy of the genre. Forced grouping generally makes players grumble, it should come as no surprise that adding further requirements to a forced grouping leaves a player with a bitter experience.

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Tags: gnomesblight, mmorpg, world of warcraft

A return to known space

The main problem with living out in w-space, away from the known regions of New Eden, is that there can be little to do by oneself. There is no regional market or stations, which means no buying and selling or manufacture of goods, and no agents to talk to for missions. The cosmic sites of interest are generally too difficult to clear of sleepers without help, and once the encounter and mining sites are cleared there is little to do but wait until new ones surface, which can be found through scanning. So when I find myself alone at the POS I find the most productive way to spend my time is by scanning for new anomalies.

Occasionally I find a new wormhole, either back to known space or to further w-space, or sites of interest to be explored at a later time with company. It is quite a relaxing way to pass some time, watching the probes gently scan for signals. The added logical puzzle of refining the search volumes to fix a single strong signal makes it a better form of fishing for me. I am probably not doing myself any favours by probing in my Drake battlecruiser, but heading out to the middle of nowhere with no expectation of results only strengthens the analogy to fishing.

It is not me who finds the wormhole that exits back to a low-sec system one jump away from high-sec space, but it is an excellent opportunity for us all. We can haul a load of our loot, salvage and ore out to sell for profit, without having slow, lumbering ships spend too long in low-sec space. For me, I take the opportunity to take care of business. The wormhole heads back to Caldari space, so it is not long before I am back at one of my bases and checking on my sales and production queue.

I make the trip to my manufacturing plant and deliver my waiting jobs, and as I spend time shipping them to the market I check and adjust the prices of modules I still have listed for sale. Although my stocks aren’t particularly depleted, as I have only been away in w-space for a few days, I had put the modules in to production to fill gaps. The good news is that the gaps in the market are still present, which rather baffles me, but I am only too happy to oversell my goods in woefully understocked markets.

Noting what modules continue to sell well I set up some new production runs, buying enough extra minerals to cover the manufacturing needs. There is no great rush for the new module runs to get off the production line and to the market, but as I may not be able to get all my housekeeping done and get back to w-space through the same wormhole that got me here, and no one is sure when the next viable wormhole to the POS will materialise, I think it’s a good idea to start the runs as soon as possible. It is much better that I didn’t have to wait for manufacturing jobs to complete this time before being able to restock my sell orders, after all.

With business taken care of it is now time to spend some ISK on skill training books. Whilst I generally only pick up skill books when I have a particular need for them the complete lack of availability of them in w-space makes me realise more the importance of being prepared. As such, I rifle through the market looking both for some books that should benefit operations directly—for example, remote armour repair systems, to support better my non-Caldari colleagues in battle—as well as some more skills that look like they will expand my horizons and opportunities a little more.

Now it is just a matter of taking care of business whilst waiting for the chance to return to w-space. I may as well plan my activities as normal, and be prepared to drop them with little warning, so I head back to my mission base with Core Complexion, Inc. with the intention to continue increasing my standing with the company for Tech II manufacture datacore acquisition.

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Tags: drake, eve online, industry, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, w-space, wormhole

Drumming in Rock Band 2 versus Guitar Hero: World Tour

The playing of fake plastic instruments has quite captured my attention, at least in the form of fake plastic drums, because I find drumming to be a whole lot of fun. The drum kit that comes with Guitar Hero: World Tour is not far removed from an electronic drum kit, albeit only in strict association with the gaming software. Without the Guitar Hero game the drum kit is nothing more than a set of pads. I suppose that isn’t entirely true, for the main reason I bought the game for the Xbox 360 console is because the kit is also compatible with similar fake plastic instrument game Rock Band 2. It would be the height of folly then not to purchase the other game, for additional faux-rocking entertainment, particularly as I wouldn’t need to buy another set of instruments.

I chose Guitar Hero: World Tour as my initial set-up partly because I was familiar with the game, thanks to rock machine Zoso, and partly because the layout of the Guitar Hero drum kit seems to be more authentic to a real kit. A claim to authenticity is perhaps a little audacious for fake plastic instruments but the Guitar Hero drum kit has three drum pads, two cymbals and a kick pedal, which I thought surely must compare favourably to Rock Band 2’s four drum pads, kick pedal and rather obvious lack of cymbals. Even so, the featured songs of Rock Band 2 look to appeal to me more and surely one fake plastic instrument game is little different from another, so I pick up the Rock Band game to try it out.

I have to say, it’s quite surprising what a lack of cymbal pads, or their presence, can do for a drumming game. Ignoring the common kick pedal from here on, with only four drum pads to represent all the sounds of drum kits of rock, metal and pop bands plenty of context-sensitivity is required. The yellow, blue and green pads in Rock Band 2 can represent a hi-hat, crash, or ride cymbal, and any of the toms, with the red pad being the snare. Whilst this still promotes a certain degree of coordination and rhythm, in order to hit the right pad at the right time, knowing the song well doesn’t guarantee that playing the song in the game will be easier.

It isn’t possible to aim for one cymbal or other in Rock Band 2 when knowledge of the song indicates a cymbal is to be played, because that cymbal note could be played on any one of the yellow, blue or green pads. That the cymbal beats can be played anywhere might not be such an issue if they weren’t by necessity intermingled with the drums, so that any particular score might be forced to play the same cymbal sound on different pads if only so that you don’t strike the same pad several times in a row only to produce entirely different sounds. So knowing the songs themselves doesn’t help with playing the drum track in Rock Band 2, only memorising the pattern of colours scrolling down the screen will improve performance, excepting attaining excellent drumming and sight-reading skills.

Even after memorising the scrolling patterns and gaining advanced rhythm techniques Rock Band 2 feels much less like drumming than Guitar Hero: World Tour and more like Dance Dance Revolution played with sticks, precisely because there is less emphasis on learning drum and cymbal beats and more on hitting the right pad at the right time. With the pads being so reliant on context there cannot be as much awareness of stick-crossing or maintaining a continuous beat after striking a cymbal in Rock Band 2 because there is no difference between hitting a drum and hitting a cymbal. It even feels the same.

In comparison, the drum kit with Guitar Hero: World Tour is far superior in set-up. The same issue of context-sensitive pads arises but in a much more limited form. The red pad is the snare, the blue and green the toms, and the yellow and orange the cymbals, where the high, medium and low toms, hi-hat, crash and ride cymbals can be played on a variety of the pads. However, the yellow and orange pads are always cymbals, and the red, blue and green always the drums.

Not only is the context-sensitivity much more clearly defined but the physical structure of the Guitar Hero: World Tour pads also makes a significant difference. The drum pads are, I assume, similar in both games, but the specific cymbal pads are a solid chunk of rubber that presents a more rigid surface to be struck. In effect, hitting a cymbal is a different experience than hitting a drum pad in Guitar Hero: World Tour, one that helps provide the more authentic drumming feel sadly lacking in Rock Band 2. Having the cymbal pads raised above the drum pads, requiring more relative movement and spatial awareness.

There are additional cymbal packs that can be bought to augment the Rock Band drum kit and although these will definitely help with the feel of drumming in the game I imagine they rely quite heavily with learning the songs, as the cymbal pads share the same pad-space as the existing pads. A green note to be struck in a song could still be a tom or a cymbal, and both the green cymbal pad and green drum pad will register a correct hit for the note, thus the cymbals can only be played definitively when the song is known fairly intimately coupled with good skills to switch between the pads.

Hitting a quick fill that ends with a cymbal crash is a far superior experience in Guitar Hero, bouncing fluidly off a few drum pads before reaching up to finish on a thick cymbal hit, against the comparatively bland and homogenous Rock Band equivalent played entirely on similar-feeling drum pads. As a means to practice coordination and limb separation both games provide roughly similar tools, but Guitar Hero: World Tour goes much further in making you feel like a drumming legend in your own living room.

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Tags: console, drumming, guitar hero, rock band, xbox360

The most dangerous game

The sleepers don’t seem so tough. They may be more diligent in determining active threats and keen to pop drones but our simple two-man fleet recently managed to defeat a few waves of frigates, cruisers and battleships, and when we were bolstered with another fleet member we sailed through the complexes. Having some more time available I wake myself up in w-space again ready for some action. It isn’t long before a few of us are heading through a wormhole leading to another w-space system full of sleeper sites to explore.

There have been some hints of activity in this new w-space system, the possibility of probes from other capsuleers being seen. We need to keep on our toes to make sure we aren’t ambushed when in the middle of a heated battle, particularly as the local channel is ineffective at providing intelligence in w-space. In normal systems the local channel provides at least basic intelligence in the form of showing the number of capsuleers piloting a ship in the current system, so when local is empty you can be confident of safe travel. However, w-space interferes with some systems and capsuleers appear in local only after they first send a communication through that channel. If pilots keep communications silent it simply isn’t possible to know who else is in the w-space system easily, needing instead to scan ships down manually.

Knowing that there may be others present in the system means a careful watch is kept on the ship scanner for incoming probes, which could inform aggressors as to our location. It is half-way through an encounter with sleepers that the alert is raised, combat probes appearing close on the scanners. The order is given to warp out and head back through the wormhole to the POS. We are collectively in w-space for profit and a strictly PvE corporation so we all immediately disengage the sleepers and fire up our warp engines, ships aligning to the distant wormhole.

But then something curious happens. Instead of dropping out of warp at the wormhole I find myself caught on the edge of two spheres of static some 68 km from the wormhole. This is clearly too far to pass through the wormhole and quite unexpected. As unfamiliar as the situation is, I think I know what is going on. Rather than continue my course through the energised sphere to the still-distant wormhole in my sluggish Drake battlecruiser I throw my field-of-view around until I am looking in a direction orthogonal to the intersection of the wormhole and the spheres. I find I am in luck as I spy a planet whose direction will take me towards the closest edge of the sphere, and I align myself immediately. Within a few seconds even my slow Drake has crossed the boundary of the sphere and I engage my warp drive to the planet, managing to escape from the warp bubble.

The direction of the planet I was quickly able to visually scan down has two benefits. The first is being able to escape the warp bubble, a tiny and localised ship-created ball of space in which warp engines cannot function. The second in that it should now offer me a clear path back to the wormhole, as warp bubbles need to be placed with considerable precision to catch ships travelling through warp and any unexpected path should be able to avoid them. As soon as I drop out of warp I twist the ship around and warp back to my bookmark for the wormhole, soon finding myself only a couple of kilometres from its horizon, where I expected to be the first time. I look back to where I had been a minute before and see two hostile ships, a Sabre and Arazu, attacking my colleagues who are thoroughly snared. I start to lock on to the two targets but caution gets the better of me. I head back through the wormhole and to the relative safety of the POS.

I have to admit that I am really quite proud with myself for recognising the threat so quickly, particularly one previously not encountered before, and being able to negate it calmly, getting myself out of serious trouble unscathed. It is only because I read journals of other capsuleers remember a recent tale of a capsuleer encountering a warp bubble near a jump gate, causing him to nearly lose a ship. Even though the technical details were light the description was clear enough to help me recognise the same situation and recover from it, for which I am most grateful.

I am not so proud at not being able to communicate this quickly or clearly enough to my colleagues to save them from harm, nor for effectively abandoning them. I made my decision knowing that my Drake would be quite ineffective in PvP combat, particularly against hardened capsuleers out for blood in superior and more appropriate PvP ships, and I don’t think anyone would appreciate my losing an expensive battlecruiser just so I don’t appear to be left out. I hope I made the right decision, as it cuts me to sit safely at the corporation’s POS as the pilot of a Tech II ship, a colleague, is podded.

The communication channel fills with panicked information about who is safe and who is still under attack. Thankfully, the other pilots manage to get back to the POS safely. Although one more ship is lost the capsuleer is able to warp out in his pod. It is at this time the aggressor notices an earlier faux-pas in his accidental broadcast in the w-space local channel, announcing his presence mid-way through the combat. Having been unmasked, and mostly successful in his attack, he thanks us for the good hunt. This could easily come across as abrasive, considering our losses, but as the alternative is some confrontational and abusive victory cries I find it somewhat honourable.

The pilot points out that he had been watching us for quite a while, seeing us at the POS, heading off through the wormhole and then entering the sleeper site, before setting up his trap. I’m sure it is of no comfort to our podded colleague at this time but I find it technically interesting, at least to learn from. One important lesson that I will take away from this encounter is not to warp directly to an exit point if threatened. If we are in danger from other capsuleers and need to escape in haste, it may just save a clone to warp to an intermediate point first.

The sleepers may not be particularly tough, but we are able to encounter them on our own terms. Today was an important reminder that we are in frontier space, a lawless area where anyone can be hunted. Even though we were aware of the risks and vigilant we weren’t entirely prepared. We were engaged on someone else’s terms and became the sleepers ourselves, dangerous but ultimately unthreatening.

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Tags: drake, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, pvp, sleepers, w-space, wormhole

Engaging sleepers in w-space

Waking up in w-space puts me rather an unfamiliar position, and not just relative to the rest of the galaxy. Being away from normal space, and the market, agents and stargates that I have taken for granted so far, I find that I am entirely reliant on my corporation not only to offer some activity but also to keep me alive and safe. I can’t remember another point in my time in New Eden—or Paragon City or Azeroth either—where I haven’t been able to keep myself amused one way or another. The sensation is a little unsettling but I chose to jump through a wormhole to unknown space for adventure and to help where I could so I will keep a positive attitude.

No one is around when I finally gain awareness of the POS and my surroundings, which leaves me floating in space with nothing normal to do. However, whereas I thought I didn’t have scanning capabilities in my Drake battlecruiser that is not entirely true. The probe launcher is merely a different type of launcher module and by modifying my ship’s fitting, which is possible at the POS, I can sacrifice one heavy missile launcher to enable me to scan the system for anomalies and, more importantly, wormholes. It’s not that I want to leave so soon, particularly without having accomplished anything, but more that if I can find a way in and out of the w-space system myself I can keep myself busy whilst remaining available to help the corporation.

Just as I set-up the new fitting and get a probe launcher installed a corporation colleague arrives. He points out that he has been busy scanning himself and that there are bookmarks kept in the hangar to all the wormholes and anomalies he has scanned down, including an exit. The exit leads to a low-sec system four jumps away from high-sec, which is quite a risky path to take in a sluggish battlecruiser but, like I mention, getting out isn’t my priority. Instead, it is suggested that we go through another wormhole, this one leading to a w-space system that is rich in sleeper sites. A two-man fleet is formed, my battlecruiser and his battleship, a bit of refitting follows to allow for mutual remote shield repairing, and we head out to find some sleepers.

I have to admit that I am quite nervous. I am in effectively lawless space with no easy route home and the tales of the sleepers being fiercer and more ruthless combatants than the known races and factions is a concern. But I am also excited to be here, venturing outside of known space with a small group of capsuleers relying on each other. We warp to the wormhole, get sucked through it to another unknown system and head out to the first of the bookmarked sites known to have sleeper activity. Warping in to the complex finds some sleeper sentry guns and a handful of unrecognisable frigates and cruisers, all packing quite a punch.

The combined firepower of our drones is enough to take care of the frigates whilst we focus fire on the sentry guns and cruisers. Although the heavier drones get popped occasionally, the rumour appearing true that sleepers are more aware of multiple and mutable threats, my own light drones stay unscathed, perhaps because of the much lower damage they are capable of dealing. Meanwhile, the sleeper ships are steadily destroyed by our guns and missiles as the sleepers’ incoming fire shifts between my Drake and the Dominix, keeping us on our toes as we need to manage what is effectively our combined tank. We are able to withstand the worst, even when sleeper battleships warp in, and the first site is cleared!

As our shields recharge I take time to loot my first sleeper wreckage, if only for the experience and to see what sleepers carry. It looks like some exotic data interface, which I store in my cargo hold to drop off at the POS hangar later. Our shields recharged we warp to hit a second sleeper site. The second site is much the same as the first, but the incoming fire appears to be much more destructive and causes us to warp out for a breather on a couple of occasions. My fleet mate has to leave behind his drones the second time we warp out for respite, which is a small sacrifice, but when we warp back in we are just in time to see them finish off a battleship that was proving quite resilient.

We don’t take the time to recover the drones, instead moving to another sleeper site. A third corporation member turns up and joins the fleet for some sleeper hijinks. His additional firepower makes clearing the sleeper sites more efficient, particularly when his long-range gunnery skills destroys distant sentry guns. It is not long before another corporation colleague arrives, this time taking to a salvaging ship to recover all the profit we have so far left behind. She was tickled to see some friendly drones abandoned in the second site and was able to pick them up, which is a fitting conclusion for the sturdy drones that helped us defeat a sleeper battleship.

After the fifth site my time has run short again and I head back to the wormhole to take me back to the POS. Despite the bleak-looking start I have ended up having a fabulous time. Forming a fleet to venture further in to w-space—if meaning can be found in relative positions of w-space—to engage sleepers and loot their arcing wrecks has been quite exciting!

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Tags: drake, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, sleepers, w-space, wormhole