CSM 11 has been elected

Two members of CSM 10 have retained their seats with the rest placed by new faces. Except the faces may be new but the names, and who they represent, will be mostly familiar to long time players.

Interestingly this CSM election has had the 3rd lowest voter turnout, not really surprised at that as either:

• You don't know who to vote for and end up not voting
• Don't know what the CSM is about and don't really care
• Don't bother to vote because it's a waste of time
• People are encouraged with offer of free PLEX or something to vote

There was a fifth reason but I can't remember but again, people don't bother voting. Just look at the groups who have gotten in, the majority seem to be part of the larger blocs or the "bully" alliances.

In my case it was #3, the CSM in my opinion is just bunch of egotistical and self-serving individuals who want to forward THEIR cause over the COLLECTIVE. Sure there are some who did or do work for the CSM to make the game better but they are very much the minority.

TheMittani.com has a decent puff piece on the CSM 11 election results. 

I should say I don't personally know any of the elected but based on reputation (and some have very poor reputations) the only one I'd vote for myself would be Steve Rounken. He has done a lot of good for the game (and not just recipes in CSM Minutes), not just his own interests but his fuzzwork.co.uk website and all the tools and advice he provides on the forms.

As Mr Slant says in Night Watch:

Avé! Bossa Nova! Similis Bossa Seneca!

First patch for EVE:Citadel

Has been released and I'm updating as I type. The patch notes however have me scratching my head and wondering if the CCP Staff still have lingering hangovers from FanFest.

The very first defect fix listed under Game play has me wondering if anyone in CCP's QA department either plays the game or is maintaining a Test Plan of things they need to test in every release.

• Force Auxiliary ships will now appear on directional-scan and probe-scan results as intended.

Really. You'd think this would be up there high on, at least, regression testing to make sure that things that used to work still work and that new things added (such as ships) work as they should be expected.

Reading thought the rest of the Patch Notes I can see the expected fixes for things missing, incorrect or weren't quite right when released. However four of the five items listed under Game play defect fixes has me shaking my head in amazement that this wasn't picked up, either on Sisi OR in internal testing.

And who wants to create contracts from a Corporation Hanger... pffft only newbies or carebears do that, not like people use Corporation Hangers much now do they.

I mean seriously, not being able to jump clone into/from seems like a major thing people would want to do, granted to/from Thera is a special case but then again Thera is SPECIAL because it's the only wormhole location you CAN jump to/from.

Want To Buy

I really need to find somewhere I can buy a backbone. Really I do.

 

I activated plex on my accounts last night for another 30 days of playing other games. Really I know I shouldn't have but I could not leave them at a mid-point with cargo that needs to be in a trade hub plus I need to maintain towers and well all kinds of other shit that I really, really should be able to ignore.

 

Still no response to my petition but I'm not bothered, really not at all...

 

So, anyone know where I can buy a backbone, ideally one made of steel or something that won't break.

 

In Between

My jump freighter pilots are currently, stuck, in a mid-point system as one has had their account expire and the other I can't be bothered to login as he can't do anything anyway.

 

Sound bitter do I. Not really, I'm fine. It's not like you have to login to play EVE Online anyway is it.

 

Wanted: One working socket for my Kingdom!

 

I signed up to Discord last week at the urging of my CEO and, as he said, they've been able to speak to me more in a week of that than the past 6 months in-game. Whilst I appreciate Discord and actually am liking it I'm still unable to do much of anything within EVE Online.

 

I tried to jump out two JF's of material on Sunday and managed to get to my first mid-point before my second mid-point cyno character kept closing as he was logging in. The only way I was able to get him to the character selection screen was to close all other clients..

 

Yay I was able to login. Well no, I need the others logged in too in order to do things except as soon as you login another character the "dice of fate are rolled" and you either lose one at a time or all your characters that are logged in.

 

Back to the start I go, do not collect 200 ISK.

 

I gave up in the end and just quit EVE whilst swearing loudly enough my youngest son came and told me to stop saying naughty words. At which point I loaded World of Warships, an online game that I have no issues with connecting to or playing, and spending an enjoyable 40 minutes pummeling enemy ships in my North Carolina.

 

Got my first Citadel on the notoriously-hard-to-citadel Tirpitz at 17km. At the end of my 40 minutes I found I had enough XP (thanks to a 3x XP bonus for first win of the day per ship) to unlock the Tier 9 Iowa class battleship which made me very, very happy.

 

Reaching Out

 

I got frustrated on Thursday or Friday (I can't remember) enough that I decided to do something that I normally would stop myself doing but I needed to do something seeing as CCP Support weren't exactly talkative to me.

 

So I sent CCP Falcon a message on Reddit enquiring how to escalate a support ticket as I hadn't had a response in 7 days and I really needed some help.

 

Kudos to the Gentleman, he responded and whilst he didn't commit to help or promise anything his quick response was enough that I'm not longer stressing about this. I'm annoyed and want it fixed, yes. But I'm no longer stressing about it or letting it bother me.

 

It's out of my control and, after CCP Falcon said so, that Support are dealing with some major issues at the moment that are taking up their time I'm content to sit back and let things take their course. I'm still updating the ticket every couple of days with research I've done and on Friday I spent some time getting to see how Logging worked in the EVE client.

 

Was that a mistake that was. I eventually got to bed around 3am after staring at so many log entries that I swear I was dreaming about get-resource calls in my sleep :)

 

That said, I was able to replicate the disconnections whilst running in Logging mode and I uploaded 6MB of log data to my ticket for someone (hopefully) to check out.

 

Ending with a Laugh

 

NosyGamer posted a funny this morning. He's off to Iceland for Fanfest but before he left he visited r/eve on Reddit. Oh boy what a mistake, as he so well puts it:

The EVE Online sub-reddit is capable of sucking the enjoyment of EVE out of a person faster than an officer-fit Bhaalgorn can drain the capacitor from an Atron.

 

It does occasionally provide entertainment or decent information but it is a horrible place full of trolls, idiots and even more trolls. Since they started the Propaganda tagging with the World War Bee stuff I've avoided the place and I think my IQ went up by at least a few points :)

So Long and Thanks For All The Goblin's

I was not a fan but I did appreciate his ability to drive conflict, write clearly and on point and to generate content. Unfortunately he's decided to liquidate his in-game assets and quit EVE Online.

One thing I tried never to do was read the comments on his posts, much like YouTube, the comments could be hate filled and full of trolls. But kudos to the man he dealt with the hate and trolls as if it was water off a ducks back.

He will be missed, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but he will be.

7 Days

My support petition for help with "the socket was closed" has been open for 7 days and has not been acknowledged or answered by CCP.

 

24 hours left before I have to choose to renew or cancel my subscriptions.

 

Really I don't think I'll have any impact if I do close them but I'm really disappointed in the lack of communication.

 

My day job is working as a Help Desk Officer and it's a point of pride that I will triage or acknowledge any tickets I get within 24 hours at the latest. , yet here I am 7 days later and still in limbo. It's enough to make one sad.

Progress

Socket Issues

 

Seems my socket closure issue is still a mystery but I have made some progress. My ISP completed and investigation, and even "refreshed" my connection at the exchange (whatever that means) and as a result I managed to get some good play time over the weekend.

 

CCP haven't even acknowledged my support ticket and I don't expect that for a few more days :\

 

I did late Sunday night get issues but I noticed these occurred when I was doing other internet stuff (web browsing, YouTube video watching) and it may be that this points to a possible packet loss issue.

 

Logistics

 

I moved 26 billion in products from null sec to high sec over the weekend via a combination of Jump Freighters and Deep Space Transports. A convenient WH made the trip a little safer but I was still on high alert around Niarja/Uedama areas. I was lucky there wasn't much on but still, I did see a few suspicious ships that could have been scanning me.

 

I was in the middle of moving input materials back to null sec when I received a late request to take a 210,000m3 courier. Fortunately he asked nicely so I back tracked and was able to accommodate the request. It was a good thing too as he reminded me that I'd missed a stack of skill books I needed to bring in.

 

Undock, Get Free Skill Points

 

Fellow blogger EVE Hermit posted a couple of days ago something I found interesting. CCP have announced, after the release of Citadels, that Daily Bonus will be introduced. The bonus will be 10,000 free SP for the first NPC kill a character (NOT account, but character) makes every 22 hours.

 

EVE Hermit comments well on this and I find myself agreeing with him, it's a good idea. Get people out of stations and ship spinning and give them a reason to undock. At least undocked "something else might happen" to entertain you.

 

I'm not sure of the SP reward though, with Skill Injectors only just released and having a big impact on characters free SP for doing very little (potentially 300,000 SP per month) per character) seems more trouble than it could be worth.

 

Time will tell but it's a good idea. I know a few of my characters who will be undocking every day for this, one hasn't undocked in three years, four months and 17 days (as of right now) :)

Nearing the End of the Tether

I still can't play EVE Online for more than a couple of minutes and it's not by choice. Whenever I login, even a single character, I get disconnected at random with "Socket was Closed". It's a little better than it was but I can't do anything aside the basics such as checking hangers, jump cloning or just spinning ships at the moment.

 

I have been able to keep towers up to date and functioning but its been more luck than anything. I had to update towers Sunday but I disconnected mid-warp to my first tower and then again after landing at the second tower.

 

There is no pattern I can discern but I've now escalated the issue to my ISP to see if there is something they can see/fix. Unfortunately where I used to proclaim how good their support was I now find myself on hold for an hour at a time to just speak to someone...

 

Still, speak to ISP then raise ticket with CCP.

 

If I can't get any traction on this by next Friday I'm going to terminate my accounts. I can't keep paying for a game I can't play.