Tuesday 19 March 2013

Low-Hanging Fruit - A Better Character Market

The Character Bazaar on the official Eve forums is a terribly inefficient marketplace. One has to read multiple threads and follow multiple Eveboard links to look at and compare characters.

It would be much more convenient to have a market where characters can be filtered by skills. And since they are easily accessible through the API, I think it is just a matter of applying some programming and interface-building skills.

Unfortunately, I do not possess such skills but maybe someone will come up with a solution? It could even be fee-based, to recoup time invested, I think.

Not very informative, is it?

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Why Did CONCORD agent Christer Fuglesang Get Promoted?



Those who read the March 5 patchnotes might gave notices this line:

  • The CONCORD agent Christer Fuglesang has been promoted from level 2 to level 3.
 
 There was even a thread on the official forums asking about the reasons for his promotion but CCP Fozzie's answer - "CONCORD rewards dedicated and loyal service to the cause of Justice" - was as vague as possible.

So what did Christer Fuglesang (who is a Swedish astronaut in real life) do to earn this promotion?

According to Russian Eve forums he was very generous, perhaps too generous, with rookie pilots.

A new character with minimal training (Afterburner I, Weapon Upgrades I, Social II, Diplomacy III, the Russian guide says) and a cheap combat frigate fir for maximum DPS could get  the standings to access Christer by attacking a station in hisec - thanks to the way Diplomacy works.

Then, they would turn down mission offers until Christer offered them a good +5% implant and blitz the mission by killing a single structure.

The cycle could be repeated indefinitely by biomassing characters and starting new ones. People could even do that on trial accounts, apparently, and some made billions off the agent.

Christer's promotion means pilots need higher Concord standings now and trial accounts cannot access him at all. If you have the necessary standings, pay him a visit in Autaris.

Interestingly, another Concord agent, Jeremy Tacs, got suspended indefinitely some time ago for doing the same thing and allowing people to farm Machariel blueprints and deadspace modules. Concord really need to make sure their human resources policies are applied consistently.