Jet Can Booby Traps

I think CCP should introduce a new item called Jet Can Booby Trap. The idea is, you place this item in your jet can, arm it, and there it sits waiting for a victim. When an unsuspecting can flipper comes along (perhaps anyone not in your fleet?) and opens your can, BLAM! It goes off, dealing lots of damage to the can flipper.

Of course this may flag you attackable to the can flipper.

So much to do, so little time...

I am nearing the 2,000,000 SP mark and there is so much I want to accomplish! It's hard to pick an area to skill up when there lots of areas I would like to get into.

I've got 7 skill plans currently:
1) Trade (to make buying and selling easier)
2) Industry (for manufacturing things)
3) Learning (to learn skills faster)
4) Retriever (for better mining capability)
5) Science (get into T2 research)
6) Drones (for better defense and offense)
7) Engineering (for better defense)

My plan of attack is to train whatever will net me more ISK first. Problem is this isn't necessarily the funnest route to follow. So I find myself drifting from plan to plan saying "oh, that would be cool lets train that!"

Trivia

There was a fellow by the name of Star (his last name escapes me at the moment) in NPC Corp chat last night doing trivia for ISK (the in game currency). Wow... good times. He was giving away anywhere from 1 million to 5 million for each correct answer. And to a bunch of noobs, this is big bucks!

A lot of his questions were NES and SNES RPG related. He brought back a lot of memories. Memories of Dragon Warrior, Crystalis, Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy III. Fond times those were.

I remember one time in particular in Dragon Warrior. There was a boss battle that you were supposed to loose to. Being a bit of a perfectionist, I would reboot the console anytime I was loosing. So this went on for a week or so until one day I must have forgot... I died... and low and behold the game continued! LOL!

Rating Fun

Saw this today over at CrazyKinux's and it got me thinking:

Does every game need to be a grade-A blockbuster title? Would you be willing to play more average games or should every game shoot for the 10.0 rating?

For me, the answer is no. I believe its more about fun for me. Is the game in question fun to play? If it is fun, I will invest my time and money whether or not the game is considered a blockbuster. Take the game Peggle as an example... this is a fun game to play (the wife loves it). Certainly not a blockbuster... nor a very long lasting game... but it is cheap ($10 on Steam) and definitely fun to play.

The second question, should every game shoot for a 10.0 rating, is a bit more complicated. I think every game should shoot to be the best it can be. But I don't believe a game needs to be a perfect 10.0. However, there is a line in their somewhere between what's acceptable and what's not. Let us say this line of acceptance is a X rating.

If your game is below X rating, it will simply not keep an audience for very long (despite how much hype you put into it). MMO's that fail to deliver content are a prime example of this. Single player games that repeat the same boring crap over and over are also in this group. If your game is at or above the X rating, you are doing okay.

Where is this line though? That is the real question. This line varies from person to person and genre to genre. In my opinion, systems like Metacritic do a pretty decent job in figuring this all out. Super Mario Galaxy is 97 (of 100), it is probably fun for a lot of people. Team Fortess 2 is rates 92, its probably fun too. Beijing 2008 is 60, probably not as fun.

I'd like to get back to the first question again though. I think there is a more interesting discussion here. CrazyKinux in his post mentions money as a factor.

Does more money equate to more fun? Is it possible to create a fun/dollar measurement?

In the above, I gave my $10 game of Peggle as an example. Let try and create a fun factor measurement for this game. This game is fun for 10-20 hours... so 15 hours of fun over $10 is 1.5.

I also play EVE, which is $15 a month. I play for a few hours each night most nights a week... lets say 60 hours a month. Now half of this time is grinding to get money or whatnot (not fun) so 30 hours over $15 is 2. This sounds logical... I'd rather play EVE over Peggle, and its higher rated.

Blackjack is a fun game to play. Using basic strategy (if you don't you should!) the house odds are approx. 0.5%... which is $0.05 per $10.00 bet. Lets say a good dealer performs 3 deals a minute... that's 180 deals an hour... or $9.00 an hour. So the fun rating here is only 0.11. But I'd much rather play blackjack over any computer game.

Since blackjack costs more money does it make it more fun? Is it more fun to own a home that is twice as big and expensive? What about a car?

You read all the time about people grinding to get epic weapons or armor in various MMO's. Or bigger and better fitted ships in EVE. These are very expensive in game items that take a lot of time/money to earn! It is more fun to own these items?

I'm not so sure I have an answer to these questions. I'm also not so sure one can put a price tag on fun.

It sure is fun thinking about these things... and that doesn't cost a whole lot. Hmm...

Manufacturing

I've been doing a bit of reading and have decided I would eventually like to get into manufacturing. I'm still a while away from doing this... I want to get my refining skills and manufacturing skills up to par before I begin.

BPO's (blueprints) need to be researched for a while to make them profitable. Apparently there are two types of research to perform on a BPO: ME (material efficiency) and PE (production efficiency). ME will make it so you spend less resources when you build and PE will reduce the time it takes to build.

To do ME research you need to create a job on your BPO. I read that the ME queues for NPC stations are horrendous... apparently they are averaging 30 days! That's crazy! When I got in game I decided to check it out for myself, and it was true.

But this could work to my advantage somewhat, as I am not quite ready to manufacture. So I invested about 8 million ISK on 5 BPO's and researching them to ME 10. They will be ready in about 40-50 days.

I have 40-50 days to get my manufacturing/mining skills up to snuff. I was kind of disappointed in having to spend the ISK now, but hopefully it will pay off in the long run. I was saving up for my last 3 advanced learning books. They will just have to wait a little while longer.

Why I won't go near Low Sec

As I wrote earlier, I am a complete newb to EVE. But I've read enough pirate blogs and visited the forums often enough to realize low sec is a place to avoid at all costs!

So when I saw Letrange's post today right here, I couldn't believe it. He explains the reasons so well!

I was not aware CCP had balance/population issues here. But it makes sense.

My life as an Industrialist

So I started playing EVE a few weeks ago... really fun game. There is so much depth and complexity its amazing (almost daunting even). The skill system is nice too, makes me feel like I am accomplishing something even while I am not logged in (I only have a few hours each night to play). I've found the EVEMon and EFT utilities already and use them. How anybody could anyone play EVE without them?

After getting through the tutorial I took up life as a miner in Lonetrek. I've worked myself up to an Osprey and Badger II already, so I'm generating a fairly nice income, at least for a newbie. A RL buddie of mine also started playing.

We were doing some jetcan mining a week ago when a griefer (Nathaniel Hull) warped into our belt. I quickly warped out to grab my hauler in hopes I could make it back before the pirate could flip our can. Unfortunately I didn't make it back in time and the can was flipped. It was actually quite funny... we were both watching him and he was watching us. He trying to get us to react by sending us messages by changing the name of his jetcan. My friend had a cheap ship so he attacked while I grabbed the ore and warped back to the station. My friend lost his ship, but the ore was enough to recoup his loss. It was actually a lot of fun, in spite of losing a ship.

I looked up on battleclinic this Nathaniel Hull guy... hes got history in this game going all the way back to April of 2006. It seems really pathetic to me to be still flipping cans after 2.5 years... wonder why he hasn't moved on.