This is going to be a short post but I promised you my plan and here it is. I'm going for 8+ standings with all the major factions. To be honest I would like 9.0 but we'll take baby steps first. 8. I don't know if anyone has done this before or wanted to but this is the problem with warped minds like mine, we find crazy things to do. If it isn't clear I am going for faction standings with Gallente, Caldari, Minmatar, & Amarr of 8.0 or higher. If you don't know what that means, ask.
There are reasons that this goal is challenging. There are reasons that I want it anyway. This blog will be an ongoing look at completing this mission and sharing with you the journey and things that I learn along the way. Can I do it? Maybe. Will I want to do it once I figure out what is really involved? Maybe not. I can say that I've been playing Eve for a few years now and this has always been something calling out to me in the back of my mind. Like those voices screaming, eat more cake, eat more cake...er...right. Anyway, I said this would be a short post so we're ending now. That is the goal. Laugh in my face or cry at the sadness that is my compulsion.
It's going to be a trip.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Encouraging words on Cactuar Island
Just a quick post to illustrate that there is certainly nothing better than having friends. This is just a sampling of the reactions I received when telling people I made an Eve/Gaming blog.
Wow, hardcore fanboy.
oh god, you nerd
You are a dork
Oh...great...
Well, instead of waiting for more reactions to come through, I'm forging ahead. I can't be stopped folks, your negative vibes mean nothing to me! Anyway, before I tell you about my latest Eve goal let me mention a goal of gaming past that still haunts me today.
Full disclosure here, I love the Final Fantasy series. I don't wait for the release day like it was Christmas anymore but as a series that grew up alongside the video game medium it is hard to ignore its quality and progression. I promise to take some time on a different day to delve into my thoughts on the evil underbelly of the Chocobo and what I feel about side games and side games within side games. Square and I have disagreed from time to time but I've given them hours of my life so they can suck it up and take a little of my ribbing. Later though.
This short story comes out of Final Fantasy VIII, 2 years after the excellent reemmergence of the series with VII. After VII, which brought an already great game into the modern world of more pixels, VIII had all the steam it needed to be a success from day one. There were certainly mini games that they wanted you to play but we're here to talk about the mini game that I created in my head. My problem begins on Cactuar Island. On that island lived the sexiest Cactaur of all time, the JUMBO CACTAUR. Why they put a mustache on him is still a question I want answered, but it worked for him. Burt Reynolds himself was jealous of that stache. Moving on.
Unlike the cast of Lost, you didn't start your journey on Cactus Island, you could actually only get to this island with the airship which you obtained later in the game. I didn't get stuck fending off a smoke monster due to some twist of fate or dream sequence, or death rattle, damn you Lost, I chose to go there. So you obtained the airship, you flew to Cactuar Island, you ran around, and then whammo, there he was, the King of the Desert himself. He had a stupid number of hit points which was a challenge in itself. Additionally, as he got near the end of his lifespan he started to get nervous, and if you didn't unleash the mother of all attacks with a coordination that Patton himself would be proud of, that damn cactus would just run off the screen. Stupid cactus. Buuuuut, if you did manage to wear him down and cut him into 1000 regular sized cacti he might just drop a rare item called the Cactus Thorn. Ok great, but what can I do with that? Nothing immediately is the answer but if you collected 100 of those bad boys THEN you could make an item called Hundred Needles. That you could use! With that Hundred Needles your character could eat it, put it in its belt, or whatever it is they did with it but regardless, the character gained a +1 speed boost. Can I get a woot? For those that have not played Final Fantasy VIII, a character could hypothetically max out their attributes at 99 though that number was as unattainable to a FF8 character as ten million dollars might be to you and me. It didn't matter though because all I wanted out of FFVIII was for all my characters to have a 99 speed so I could walk through the final sequence and spit in the face of the boss. Not only would I spit in his face but I would do it so quickly he wouldn't even have the chance to see who it was that did the spitting. What a plan!
The plan was stupid. The math alone is just foolish. Even if all my characters started at a speed of 49 (which they didn't) and I won every fight I fought (which I didn't) and every time I won the Jumbo Cactuar dropped a thorn (they didn't), I would need to fight 5000 battles per character. Let me take it a little further. If each battle took only 30 seconds, then I would spend 2500 minutes or 41 hours, 40 minutes per character fighting for perfect speed! Of course these figures are all amazingly generous and it would have taken much much longer than a full work week per character. I fought the good fight for a while though and after getting faster and faster I just stopped playing. Sitting on the doorstep to the end of an enjoyable game I simply put it down because I couldn't play anymore. I was the fastest gunslinger on that island but I was face down in the sand looking for a reason to go on.
So nothing about Eve this post. I think retelling the story of FF8 made me second guess my Eve plan but don't fear, I'm doing it. It is underway. I'll let you know what that is when these tears stop pouring from my face. What is that Squall? Speak up, I can't hear you. You say you still only have a speed of 88? You want me to finish what I started? I've got to run...
Did anyone else try for perfect speed?
Wow, hardcore fanboy.
oh god, you nerd
You are a dork
Oh...great...
Well, instead of waiting for more reactions to come through, I'm forging ahead. I can't be stopped folks, your negative vibes mean nothing to me! Anyway, before I tell you about my latest Eve goal let me mention a goal of gaming past that still haunts me today.
Full disclosure here, I love the Final Fantasy series. I don't wait for the release day like it was Christmas anymore but as a series that grew up alongside the video game medium it is hard to ignore its quality and progression. I promise to take some time on a different day to delve into my thoughts on the evil underbelly of the Chocobo and what I feel about side games and side games within side games. Square and I have disagreed from time to time but I've given them hours of my life so they can suck it up and take a little of my ribbing. Later though.
This short story comes out of Final Fantasy VIII, 2 years after the excellent reemmergence of the series with VII. After VII, which brought an already great game into the modern world of more pixels, VIII had all the steam it needed to be a success from day one. There were certainly mini games that they wanted you to play but we're here to talk about the mini game that I created in my head. My problem begins on Cactuar Island. On that island lived the sexiest Cactaur of all time, the JUMBO CACTAUR. Why they put a mustache on him is still a question I want answered, but it worked for him. Burt Reynolds himself was jealous of that stache. Moving on.
Unlike the cast of Lost, you didn't start your journey on Cactus Island, you could actually only get to this island with the airship which you obtained later in the game. I didn't get stuck fending off a smoke monster due to some twist of fate or dream sequence, or death rattle, damn you Lost, I chose to go there. So you obtained the airship, you flew to Cactuar Island, you ran around, and then whammo, there he was, the King of the Desert himself. He had a stupid number of hit points which was a challenge in itself. Additionally, as he got near the end of his lifespan he started to get nervous, and if you didn't unleash the mother of all attacks with a coordination that Patton himself would be proud of, that damn cactus would just run off the screen. Stupid cactus. Buuuuut, if you did manage to wear him down and cut him into 1000 regular sized cacti he might just drop a rare item called the Cactus Thorn. Ok great, but what can I do with that? Nothing immediately is the answer but if you collected 100 of those bad boys THEN you could make an item called Hundred Needles. That you could use! With that Hundred Needles your character could eat it, put it in its belt, or whatever it is they did with it but regardless, the character gained a +1 speed boost. Can I get a woot? For those that have not played Final Fantasy VIII, a character could hypothetically max out their attributes at 99 though that number was as unattainable to a FF8 character as ten million dollars might be to you and me. It didn't matter though because all I wanted out of FFVIII was for all my characters to have a 99 speed so I could walk through the final sequence and spit in the face of the boss. Not only would I spit in his face but I would do it so quickly he wouldn't even have the chance to see who it was that did the spitting. What a plan!
The plan was stupid. The math alone is just foolish. Even if all my characters started at a speed of 49 (which they didn't) and I won every fight I fought (which I didn't) and every time I won the Jumbo Cactuar dropped a thorn (they didn't), I would need to fight 5000 battles per character. Let me take it a little further. If each battle took only 30 seconds, then I would spend 2500 minutes or 41 hours, 40 minutes per character fighting for perfect speed! Of course these figures are all amazingly generous and it would have taken much much longer than a full work week per character. I fought the good fight for a while though and after getting faster and faster I just stopped playing. Sitting on the doorstep to the end of an enjoyable game I simply put it down because I couldn't play anymore. I was the fastest gunslinger on that island but I was face down in the sand looking for a reason to go on.
So nothing about Eve this post. I think retelling the story of FF8 made me second guess my Eve plan but don't fear, I'm doing it. It is underway. I'll let you know what that is when these tears stop pouring from my face. What is that Squall? Speak up, I can't hear you. You say you still only have a speed of 88? You want me to finish what I started? I've got to run...
Did anyone else try for perfect speed?
Friday, October 22, 2010
Here we go again
It's happened again. I've invested a lot of time in a game that I love. I've got clear goals that are different than the clear goals I had three weeks ago. I want certain things that seem unattainable but I've started the process to attain them none-the-less. I'm about to crest 50 million skill points and yet I've been running level 2 missions today. What is wrong with me?!
Oh right...I'm a completionist.
That one made up word is the reason that I started writing into the void today. I've been playing Eve for a while now and while friends have come and gone, alliances risen and fallen, one thing hasn't changed and that is that I am a damn completionist. Before I lose you completely, what IS a completionist? The Merriam-Webster dictionary says the word doesn't exist but I beg to differ. If the word didn't exist, than I wouldn't exist, and I since I exist, completionists themselves must exist. Flawless logic I think. The urban dictionary does define it by saying that a completionist is, "Someone who, when playing a video game, has to collect all of a certain item, or complete something in the game 100%.". All this means is that I constantly spend time trying to do all of something, or collect all of something and after hours and hours of doing/collecting/searching for that one thing I usually say to myself, what the hell have you been doing?! I often don't finish games because of this reason and it drive me crazy. When you spend hours on a goal only to realize that to complete that goal you need another 13 years of uninterrupted gameplay you tend to give up, swear you'll never do that again and then forget that and start a new goal in a new game.
I blame some of the early games though for making me and my fellow brethren this way. The life of a completionist used to be easy. Take good old Sonic The Hedgehog for example. Good music, good hair, and one thing to collect (originally) coins. There were X number of coins every level, and unlike Mario who relied on you jumping at the proper speed to squeeze the optimal number of coins from a brick, Sonic just had to get to the coins. Those were the days. Things have changed though. Game designers know we exist these days and build things in there just for us to chase our tails on. Which is fine. I fall for the trick almost every time and often fail. I can't stop though so welcome to my world, it's cold here.
This blog is about being a completionist who happens to play Eve Online with goals that nobody in their right mind should have. I'll probably take a few posts to explain what I've been up to in Eve so you understand what I've done and where I am today. I also would like to put to digital paper some of my gaming history so I can purge the demons of past games gone wrong. I'll also try to help people out when I can. If I can write a tutorial or screen shot some planetary interaction setup that I think works, I'll do it. We'll see what happens as we go along. I have no readers since this is my first posting so it isn't like I can bore anyone other than myself. I'll also try to link you to blogs I like and dislike. There are a handful of great Eve blogs out there that I enjoy reading due to excellent content and/or stellar writing style. I even will point you to a blog that I read not because I get much of anything out of it but because I think the author is an ego-maniacal chucklehead. Opinions, we all have them...
Bear with me. My grammar is decent but I'm not going to edit these for days. I'll write, I'll read, and maybe someone else will read it as well. Who knows. Also, as I write some of my past tales of completionary (fake word alert) woe, I would love to hear other people's stories of the goals and games of their past. I hope I'm not alone.
Oh right...I'm a completionist.
That one made up word is the reason that I started writing into the void today. I've been playing Eve for a while now and while friends have come and gone, alliances risen and fallen, one thing hasn't changed and that is that I am a damn completionist. Before I lose you completely, what IS a completionist? The Merriam-Webster dictionary says the word doesn't exist but I beg to differ. If the word didn't exist, than I wouldn't exist, and I since I exist, completionists themselves must exist. Flawless logic I think. The urban dictionary does define it by saying that a completionist is, "Someone who, when playing a video game, has to collect all of a certain item, or complete something in the game 100%.". All this means is that I constantly spend time trying to do all of something, or collect all of something and after hours and hours of doing/collecting/searching for that one thing I usually say to myself, what the hell have you been doing?! I often don't finish games because of this reason and it drive me crazy. When you spend hours on a goal only to realize that to complete that goal you need another 13 years of uninterrupted gameplay you tend to give up, swear you'll never do that again and then forget that and start a new goal in a new game.
I blame some of the early games though for making me and my fellow brethren this way. The life of a completionist used to be easy. Take good old Sonic The Hedgehog for example. Good music, good hair, and one thing to collect (originally) coins. There were X number of coins every level, and unlike Mario who relied on you jumping at the proper speed to squeeze the optimal number of coins from a brick, Sonic just had to get to the coins. Those were the days. Things have changed though. Game designers know we exist these days and build things in there just for us to chase our tails on. Which is fine. I fall for the trick almost every time and often fail. I can't stop though so welcome to my world, it's cold here.
This blog is about being a completionist who happens to play Eve Online with goals that nobody in their right mind should have. I'll probably take a few posts to explain what I've been up to in Eve so you understand what I've done and where I am today. I also would like to put to digital paper some of my gaming history so I can purge the demons of past games gone wrong. I'll also try to help people out when I can. If I can write a tutorial or screen shot some planetary interaction setup that I think works, I'll do it. We'll see what happens as we go along. I have no readers since this is my first posting so it isn't like I can bore anyone other than myself. I'll also try to link you to blogs I like and dislike. There are a handful of great Eve blogs out there that I enjoy reading due to excellent content and/or stellar writing style. I even will point you to a blog that I read not because I get much of anything out of it but because I think the author is an ego-maniacal chucklehead. Opinions, we all have them...
Bear with me. My grammar is decent but I'm not going to edit these for days. I'll write, I'll read, and maybe someone else will read it as well. Who knows. Also, as I write some of my past tales of completionary (fake word alert) woe, I would love to hear other people's stories of the goals and games of their past. I hope I'm not alone.
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