London #Minimeet the First

"'Friends, Romans, and countrymen, lend me your ears!'
(They were all of them fond of quotations:
So they drank to his health, and they gave him three cheers,
While he served out additional rations)."
- Lewis Carroll

So, #MiniMeet happened on Saturday, fun was had, and photos were requested. Yes, that's me on the right. Before you ask, it's my "taking a group selfie for CCP Guard" face.

Fozziesov: a defence

At last, the redesign of nullsec Sovereignty is on the table - and it's a doozie. I really like the proposals - really, I do, ok? This is a tear-free zone. But I wouldn't be me if I didn't have suggestions.

Eyes Like Chrome: the full interview

all artwork by Eyes Like Chrome

I've been a bit quiet here for the last week, mainly because of this. Suddenly I work in EVE media! The bar doesn't appear to be stratospherically high... Still, I'm quite happy with the interview; Eyes Like Chrome is a fascinating individual, bags of fun to talk to, and gave me any number of gems to pick out for the write-up.

From a 45-minute conversation, I had to cut quite a lot to get it down to a reasonable length. As a first pass, I typed up large chunks of what I thought was interesting from the conversation, and both Proto and Eyes Like Chrome have given me permission to publish the whole thing here. Read on for stories about twitch marathons, a stream stalker, furry porn, sibling rivalry, grand ambitions, streaming the newbie experience, and more...

Time for a Remap pt.II: A Child, Awakened

Verwandelt ist Zarathustra, zum Kind ward Zarathustra, ein Erwachter ist Zarathustra: was willst du nun bei den Schlafenden? - Friedrich Nietzsche

The newly cloned capsuleer faces a universe of opportunity. They have been transformed, remade, reborn by the cloning process, and enjoy new capabilities as yet untested and unknown. As time goes by, they will come to know and play to their natural strengths, and of course augment their talents by learning and honing new capsuleer skills.

However, the human mind is ill-adapted to the Jovian technology of the hydrostatic capsule, and cloning also takes its toll. Capsuleer skill training is unnatural and ultimately damaging to the mind itself; as they acquire skills no natural human can learn, the capsuleer's native talents are gradually blunted. Over time, they will increasingly rely on implants to sustain their abilities, while offsetting any loss of mental acuity with their increasingly perfect skills.

This post is the second in a series; in part one I argued against attributes (and implants) affecting learning speed, and highlighted the appeal of attributes as a way of making a character feel distinctive in actual gameplay. In this follow up, I propose a redesign of attributes in EVE.

Edit: corrected the examples, where I confused Navigation with Evasive Maneuvering. I don't always derp, but when I do...