It Aint East Being Green

Well, if you’re in the software business at all you’ll know that it’s a busy time of year. Deadlines and end of the year stuff looms, and everything seems more jam-packed due to everyone trying to get done early so they can head out for a relaxing holiday. (Yes, the holiday rush for us begins in October.)

So, I haven’t had much time to write, and I’m sorry for that. When I get home, I crash—preferring the relaxing sensation of blowing up people’s ships to the mind numbing throb of watching a curser blink incessantly in a word processor, as I think about how best to troll people.

Instead of backtracking, and attempting to get ‘caught-up’ on about the million things that have happened in the last week or two, I will give you the highlights. Hopefully it will be like those mini highlights that you can put on your keychain, and not those massive highlights from the eighties that smell like rotten flesh when you take the cap off.

The Patch

Ah, yes. An October surprise from our dear CCP. The good news is, there are no more vulnerable systems, and the wild volatility of Tier 5 spikes has been completely turned off forever. The bad news is, that the pendulum has swung so drastically the other direction, that the Amarr/Minmatar warzone is headed for complete stability. And, a stable warzone is not a fun warzone.

It was a good move to turns off the vulnerable farming. It was also good to remove the buffers, and completely wipe out the tier spiking so that people can ‘cash-out’ any time they want.

But the changes to plexing has made plexing almost non viable as a solo activity…and extremely difficult in general. In fact, once Kourmonen was taken, our alliance’s leadership declared a general plexing holiday. Only, it wasn’t a holiday. It was a “I’m never going to bleep bleep bleeping plex any  bleep bleeping more” sort of holiday, in a gruff cranky way that only Bahamut420 can really pull off. After the patch, the ability to take one system through coordinated efforts from multiple times zones and multiple Minmatar alliances, slowed to a grinding crawl. Just inching forward a few percentage points made all of us want to shoot ourselves. I think we may have shot each other a little…

Hopefully, it is temporary until Retribution. It’s one thing to make plexing more risky. It’s quite another to make it more difficult, from a PVE perspective. FW pvpers don’t care enough about taking space to subject themselves to that sort of grinding and PVE nausea. I will be very surprised if many systems at all flip between now and Retribution.

What the hell is this a picture of?

Kourmonen

Someone asked me for my comment on the grand Winmatar victory of taking Kourmonen. My comment is do not talk to me about Kourmonen. I do not want to think about it any more.

A joke was made at one point, that we should put together a Militia team for the upcoming PVP tournaments, and our primary strategy should be to fit cheap frigates and orbit our enemies.

Dust 514 – Object Reference not set to an Instance of an Object

So, a ‘patch’ went out a while ago that was supposed to make temperate planets start affecting how many VP it’s required to make systems vulnerable/stable. We got the little planet icon…and the districts…but no VP changes.

So basically, the lights are on (at least flickering somewhat) but no one is home yet.  And it’s more like a candle, I’d say. A really small candle.

The Amarr

They will never change.

The Bugs.

So that bug that allows people to sit in plexes once they’re completed and prevent new ones from spawning? Yeah, it’s happening again. It was labeled as an exploit months ago, and I thought they had fixed it.

And the FW System UI keeps disappearing. A lot more than usual. I wish they would make a certain someone disappear while they are at it….

There are plenty of other bugs I wish they would fix. Like the bug where all your charges don’t go in your bay when you’re bulk fitting ships. Two types of ammo, two types of scripts. Sometimes you’ll get the ammo and not the scripts. Sometimes you’ll get one ammo and the scripts but not the other ammo. Sometimes the scripts will disappear into a black hole, and when you try to retrieve them it tells you they are not yours to take. What do you mean they are not mine to take? They are in MY hangar and they are MINE.

And sometimes, it decides it wants to chastise you for trying to take things that are not yours until you log off. Every time you jump through a gate, dock, or undock it will tell you “That is not yours to take.”

I get it already!

Yeah, now that I fit ships a LOT, I’ve found ALL the fitting bugs. And they are quite numerous—from ghost modules showing up in your inventory that aren’t really there, to the system not finding modules you have stacks of….etc. And then there’s some very annoying Unified Inventory stuff that I wont’ get into
.
Anyway, enough about bugs.

Susan, the Solo Killer

I’ve taken to romping around solo the last few days, and have gotten a few good fights. (Mostly dying.) I have a hangar full of dessies and frigates, and I don’t particular care if they explode, so this weekend might be fun.

I’m not completely ‘into’ the solo thing yet. I like playing WITH people, and it gets kinda boring after a while roaming by myself. I still think that 2-4 man gangs are still my favorite. Especially corp gangs.

More to Come...

Hopefully I’ll have some time to do some writing this weekend. Maybe even a blow-your-mind mathematical post because I know that people hang on my every word when I ramble about spreadsheets and formulas.

Or, some riveting propaganda, touched with some HORRENDOUS, self-serving game mechanic ideas that I will proceed to brainwash Hans J. into pushing to CCP so that PS can burst another blood vessel in his face.