Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Settling Back In

Hello again blogosphere! Its been a little while. I've been keeping up with things from a distance, but haven't had the time to write in a couple weeks due to settling back in at school for my last semester of undergrad! \o/  Anyway, let's catch up.

The Crucible patch dropped yesterday, and it seems like more good things. Personally, the new UI is taking a little getting used to, but its not bad at all. I think the biggest thing from this patch is the AF "rebalancing." I've heard a decent amount of clamoring that the Assault Ships weren't properly rebalanced. I'd agree to some extent. Does the patch make them better? Certainly. Its just that it wasn't really a well thought out type of better. Some ships needed an extra slot (Here's looking at you, Retribution), but many didn't. I'm not sure why extra low/mid slots were given out across the board. It seems like CCP heard babbling about "this ship needs an extra slot," or "this ship needs grid/CPU" or "Assault ships need a 4th bonus," etc and just decided, Hell, we've give them all of those things plus a totally random MWD signature bonus. That'll do the trick. Well, maybe it did, but it definitely wasn't what most of us were expecting.

On a totally unrelated side note, it seems that the prices of tons of modules have been trending upwards since the release of Crucible. I've been wondering for a while now how long this will hold. I'm not an economics wiz by any means, but my assumption is that the flood of returning players with Crucible drove the prices up on most commodities; however, there should be natural price levels based on the relation of ships/mods and their component minerals. So without doing the math, I think we have a pretty inflated market right now. Makes a trader a bit nervous.

That's my take on the state of things right now. Should be able to log in and actually get some action  by Friday. I'm looking forward to posting and actually playing more over the next couple weeks.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Some Days You've Got it...

...and some days you don't. Today was the latter. I felt like I was always a step behind tonight, although it was good to log on and get some real combat outside of just ganking a Hulk (although I'm not complaining about that). I felt like I was always a step behind tonight. Entering local to see various people typing out the "gf's" indicative of the end of a battle seemed to be common.

On one such occasion, I managed to pop a Velator on its way out of Autaris \o/. Nothing like an unfitted noobship kill to boost your spirits, right? Anyway, the Reds finally engaged on Blue Headquarters. I was in a Taranis trying to bait this Vexor to engage. Finally he did, and sadly popped me and then docked before enough support was mustered to take him down.

The Reds came back in force though. 2 corpmates and myself decided to engage them and hero our Vexor and Rupture, sadly to no avail. I went down under the fire of mostly cruisers, including a sniping Thorax and a sniping Brutix. It was really just that type of night. Anyway, good to get back in the swing of things, and I should be able to log on a lot this week. I feel very rusty, not that I ever had any epic skills to begin with. It can only get better from here, right?

As a side note, I've been debating switching to a shield Rupture. I've been using an armor fit that has a pretty well bolstered tank, but I think I could pull off a nano shield Rupture using Barrage. It never hurts to have the extra speed. I'll see what I can come up with. Also in the notes of odds and ends, I have a few Tornados coming towards BHQ. This will be my first time flying them, and I'm pretty excited. They're a bit expensive for my liking given the current price of T2 large guns, but I'm not complaining too much. Hoping Red Frog comes through quickly on that contract! Anyway, that's all for now, goodnight New Eden

Monday, January 9, 2012

A Bit of a Milestone

So I put on Caldari Cruiser V for the Christmas/Holiday Season, and as it finished I realized that I crossed 50M SP. It didn't really strike me as odd at first, but then I realized the small milestone passing. Having this much SP is always a nice thing. I wish I'd delayed the Capital skills training, as I've never flown the Thanatos that I have. I'm getting to the point where I can fit and fly almost any ship very well though, and its certainly a very nice thing. Now, after 2.5 years of playing, its time to legitimately develop my physical PVP skills to correspond to my excellent skill training. Cheers to 2012 and improvment!