EVE Online Editorial - The Temptations of a Unique MMOG
For many MMOG players, the idea of jumping into a new game is often a daunting one, even with the similarities that exist between many modern MMOGs. However, EVE Online is even further away from the MMOG norm than most genre bending games. In his editorial, Cody "Micajah" Bye explores the many different elements that draw players to this game, but also cause gamers to hesitate at the doorstep to this massive world.
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While most of these actions would be considered “griefing” in other games, the EVE Online developers actually accept this type of action. Every player in the EVE universe knows (or at least should know) that the world is a dogfight; only the strongest survive. The more I read about this sort of behavior, the more intrigued I became. I wanted to learn more.
After playing EVE Online for about 4 months, I can honestly say that I really enjoyed their approach to the concept of an "open world".
Too many MMO's these days are suffering from this insane desire to limit and restrict their games. I can understand and appreciate the perks of instancing and controlled pvp, however you have to know when to draw the line.
My only qualm with EVE Online in the time that I played it was probably from the fact that I am a larger fan of fantasy than I am of Sci-Fi. My number 1 issue was that the game simply did not play well with me in terms of immersion.
I loved all of the options and choices I had within the game as per my actions and development, however the game never felt very "intense" or "engaging" to me.
Even when doing Low Sec PvP, it was a matter of clicking on my electronics and then opening fire. All of which have very unimpressive, tame, animations. More importantly all combat takes place at what I would call "Idle speed". Even with an afterburner humming away you move about as fast as a crippled man on a bicycle with no wheels.
None of this really inspired much excitement in me.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not sold on game graphics and sprinting rogues, I'm chiefly a strategy gamer aside from MMO's but EVE's Combat was not overly complex nor exciting. In a given fight - PvE or PvP the outcome could be seen from a mile off by some simple deduction. It becomes a matter of watching the slow combat in between.
I truly hope more companies will follow EVE's example however and look into opening up their games more. I still miss the days of Ultima Online where theft, murder and distrust were commonplace and widely accepted.
Actually, as you will see once you actually start playing the game, EVE is a great (possibly even one of the best available) MMOs for the casual player.
Of course, one's play style, goals, etc., play important parts in how playing EVE develops for the gamer, but EVE, most certainly, is also a great MMO for the casual gamer.
My EVE character is a little over a year old now, and I think I can honestly say that I haven't even seen half of what this game has to offer. And I still learn new things about it on a regular basis. The depth the game has is what keeps players coming back and playing. Also, two free expansions every year keep adding new things to do and learn, so the game evolves around you as you play and discover things.
I'm pretty much what the average EVE player would describe as a Carebear, mostly sticking to high-sec (except when needed) and running missions, as well as limited industry and small scale trading.
The corp I'm in has a low-sec POS (player owned station) that I visit now and then and rat a bit, and ofcourse contributing to the maintenance of the station and our offices through the taxes I pay to the corp. (automatic on every bounty and mission reward I receive.)
EVE's completely open skill system means that my character can fly any of the Amarr and Gallente tech 1 starships in the game, as well as a number of advanced tech 2 ships from the same races, aswell as use the weapons most suited to all those ships. Despite being of a Gallente Bloodline, which in any more traditional MMO would have restricted me to that racial line of ships.
dude my character is barely over one month old she's allready died once and i love it there's so many different ways to kill people but i really want something that tells you who killed you cause sometimes your to dead to see you pwnd you
dude my character is barely over one month old she's allready died once and i love it there's so many different ways to kill people but i really want something that tells you who killed you cause sometimes your to dead to see you pwnd you
That's easy, go to your character screen and click the combat log tab and then Losses, shows all vessels you lost along with their loss-mails if you double click them.
Once i get my new PSU and my lil monster back up and running i'll re-activate my current EVE account.
The biggest issue EVE brings is the mentality change, the (over-)achievers and min-maxers will find this a hard pill to swallow at first(i'm speaking out of personal experience here), later on it gets easier as you find out while the skill system gives the advantage to the older player you as a newer player can with the right setup take down a much higher player or be beter in other skills with a few exceptions.....
...Industrialists a.k.a 'crafters' older players specialized in certain styles will wipe the floor with you and will make you feel insignificant for ages and due to the way it all works i would even dare to say it's rather discouraging at first, the crafter inside me finds that it sucks but later on understanding all these limitations i must say it's a good thing.
however not all bad news on that front, in comparison to other mmo's a succesfull industrialist will rarely learn out of things to do and learn, especially when being in an active corp.
The turning point comes after month two many leave the game then, for several reasons, some find that the magic wore off(i left then due to lack of time and being busy testing a mmo)
anyway knowing all that EVE is a very active game while it might not have 11mill subs which other game has 20 to 40k people on one server where they can all meet, trade, fight with each other? correct no other.
Anyway my advice to you cody and other new players, learning skills max em incase of having a wealthy friend ask for some basic imps and the advanced learning skills, believe me you'll want your core ones maxed.( once my main pc is fixed i got some nice bookmarks of what is the fastest way to max em however it still will take a month or two to do so)
But the most important one is find the right corp for you as the game is all community made and player run it's very important that you find one that suits you.
anyway have fun and don't get podded too often ;p
Too the rest try it out it's not too complex if you take your time to pay attention in the rather long tutorial, you might like the game.
I have been playing Eve-Online for a little over 2 years now, and can say this much about it:
It is the most casual friendly, AND powergamer friendly MMO out there.
When I first entered New Eden with my pod pilot license, the tutorial was bleh, however, I did some research on it before I started playing, so I did know what to expect.
I won't go into all of the details, however, the most common mistakes people have that join the game, is the fact that they do not grasp the concept of "the only safe place in eve is docked inside of a station". No where is safe.
On the outside looking in, this seems like it is a "griefer's" paradise, however, with some basic understanding of the mechanics of Eve, it is very new player friendly.
Five basic rules to live by in Eve:
1) Don't fly what you can't afford to lose.
2) Autopilot = death.
3) By undocking you agree to non-consensual PVP.
4) Refer to number 1.
5) Refer to number 1.
Welcome to Eve-online, where the world is a cold, dark, harsh place, where only the most hardened gamer will survive.
PS: Don't whine and complain about getting killed, this is a natural process, and is the whole reason why Eve "works". Mining, hauling, "Ratting / Missioning", the entire market, ISK, everything works because people get killed, frequently. Deal with it.
Auto-pilot =/= death, atleast not in high-sec with less than 200 million in assets in the hold of whatever you're flying.
You're to low in value to suicide gank then, unless you're at war ofcourse.
I've come to the conclusion over the last few months that EVE Online is a bad game. It has stunning and excellent graphics but is so focused on PVP and pandering to the hardcore players that every other element of the game is lacking. It is expensive to play and does not provide any real entertainment for your money.
EVE garners much positive press and several awards as well, but reading between the lines one seems to find that the ‘journalists’ who write these reviews are themselves either long term players, special guests, or have only spent a minimal amount of time in the user friendly tutorial section.
At the core of the problem is the skill system - due to its design there is no way that a new player can catch up with an older player. In other MMOs players can dedicate themselves to catching up with the top level players and, with enough perseverance, can, within a month or three, make it to a point where they are on even ground.
In EVE getting to a mythical even ground is simply not possible. Any player who plays averagely and doesn't make basic mistakes will never be able to catch up with a similar player who started the year before; and that doesn't figure in the terrible steep learning curve. For myself it took me 4 months before I realised that the Weapon Upgrades skill was an absolute must have!
Without the support tools for EVE planning your own career is tantamount to throwing yourself off a cliff. EVEMon is de rigueur for character planning and EFT or Shipfit are a must have to work out what you’ll be able to fly in six months time.
Deriving from that issue is the PVP problem - no amount of skill or perseverance will make a difference in one on one ship combat - it is simply impossible to defeat a better ship that is played safely. There is no even ground and thus most 'combat' actually consists of ganking, and that invariably of players who started earlier ganking players who started later.
There are many experienced EVE players who claim, on forums and in comments, that it is not the ship or the skills but the pilot that matters, and frankly, they are talking complete and utter bull****. They are so far removed from the lower end of the scale that they simply cannot see how it works out for anyone who has played for less than a year and isn’t using all the specialized setup optimization tools that are available. They, of course, want to believe that it is not the massive advantage of millions of skill points that makes the difference, and that it is their own skills that make it, but they are sadly mistaken.
However PVP in gangs is possible for the newer player provided they are the sort of player who enjoys the ‘wolf pack’ mentality and can get along with other similarly minded players. For many, myself included, putting up with the sort of people who enjoy wolf pack gaming is simply not an option. We lone wolves cannot tolerate the pack mentality in any way.
So if, like me, you can see that PVP is not going to be an option for your EVE entertainment what other game elements can be used to provide entertainment? This is going to be difficult because the overwhelming focus on PVP has left the rest of the game quite shallow. Let’s look at mining first.
Mining is one of the ways to make ISK in EVE, it’s fairly slow and very, very dull. Find an asteroid, move close, switch in mining lasers, and wait, and wait, and wait, when you cargo hold is full fly back to the station, empty your haul and start again. If you’re very lucky you might get attacked by some NPC pirates and can watch your drones blow them to kingdom come. If you’re unlucky you’ll be ganked with extreme prejudice by some desperate pirate player lacking the social skills to join a ‘real’ PVP outfit.
It’s no wonder that there are so many mining macros and programs out there, mining in EVE is singularly the most dull and predictable experience in any MMO ever, it barely qualifies as grinding, it’s more like holding down a dead man switch to get ISK.
So if mining isn’t any fun what about running PVE missions? Well yes, there are lots of agents who can supply you with missions so you can earn goods, bounties, and reputation. However there is one problem with that: there’s only one mission, and you get to play it over and over again with different dressing each time. Once you’ve done that mission enough times that you’ve built up your standing to a good enough point your agents will be able to give you the same mission, only much harder.
This goes on for a very, very long time, as it takes hundreds of repetitions of the same mission to improve your standing, and improving your standing just means you get access to the same mission but with better rewards and heavily increased risk.
The mission itself is very simple – build a really good tank that can withstand dozens of NPCs and then slowly work your way through them with whatever guns you manage to squeeze in. If you don’t have the skills or money for a really good tank then go back to mining until you do. And whatever you do, don’t fail a mission! Failing a mission puts you back such a huge step that you will have to do dozens more missions just to get back where you were. And heaven help you if you fail an important/storyline mission, you’ll pretty much have to forget about working for that whole sector of space. Not fun.
Or you could do the courier ‘mission’ a task that requires you to ship a crate of cargo from one place to another for a tiny reward. Do a few thousand of those and you’ll be slightly wealthy and very bored.
So if PVP, mining, and PVE aren’t any fun what is left? Well according to all the pundits and publicity EVE is a sandbox game in which you can do anything you like and go in any direction you like. Except of course that there’s only three or so things to do, and anywhere on the edges of the map is inhabited by slavering loons intent on defending their territory at all costs… So the sandbox seems to be rather more of a sand bucket, not exactly fulfilling promises of fun on that regard.
This lack of genuine scope seems to be a deliberate design decision to encourage you to PVP, the missions are so bad, and the mining is so dull, that being ganked in PVP should be a pleasure in comparison. It’s similar to the misconception that having an abusive partner is better than no partner at all.
The PVP focus of EVE gives rise to the most awful set of players I have experienced in an MMO. The forums are full of 'leet' hardcore players deriding anything raised by 'carebears' or 'newbs' in the most tedious manner. That attitude is carried over to every aspect of player interaction, including the joy of scams.
In EVE scamming other folks out of ISK is seen as a ‘feature’ of the game and is allowed by the rules. Meaning that if, like most people who play MMOs, you are an inexperienced teenage boy then you will be rapidly parted with your ISK with no comeback. This is not good entertainment and does not enhance player retention. After all, if you’d just spent a month mining in order to build a ship you’d be very upset if someone scammed you out of your hard earned money with a trick, and you’d be quite likely to quit the game in frustration.
The majority of EVE players seem to relish the unpleasant aspects of the game, ganking, scamming, using tricks to kill newbies, theft, etc. I can’t help but wonder what sort of a lesson this teaches those young impressionable players, it must surely be educating them into a ‘f** you’ approach to life. That unpleasantness is not conducive to a fulfilling game experience.
They are however very loyal to their game and any suggestion that some feature of EVE could perhaps do with some minor improvement is met with a vicious outburst of hate.
Furthermore EVE is an expensive game; thanks to the well acknowledged steep learning curve, it takes several months to gain a foothold of any sort and about a year to make any decent progress. If you’re a new player you’ll be making some terrible mistakes those first few months that will cost you dearly in regards to wasted time. Spending a lot of frustrating time and money on learning to play a game is not fun.
On a minor bright note, with all the right tools and a knowledgeable approach you could probably play the game for free with about a three month setup period. Provided you were willing to mine eight hours a day five days a week that is, or employ an illegal bot/macro to mine for you.
It seems that many of the player base operate several accounts at once, thanks to the simple mouse driven, fire and forget nature of the game. It is very easy; provided you have a powerful enough machine, to run 2 to 4 EVE games at once, switching between them as required. This does raise the challenge level quite considerably. It is also very easy, as mentioned elsewhere, to run a mining bot to play the game for you, in which case the more accounts you have the more ISK you get.
The reputed number of accounts, according to the EVE website is approximately 220,000 the last time I checked. The number of people playing at any one time varies between 25-35,000. It’s quite possible that those 200,000 accounts represent as few as 70,000 actual players but the nature of EVE and MMOs makes it very difficult to determine genuine figures.
Gaining ISK in the early stages is very difficult, so you may be tempted to buy it, there are of course websites where a simple transaction can get you many millions of ISK (and the potential for a ban) but there is also a legal system for buying ISK on the EVE game forums. The EVE owners do have the gall to tell you that buying ISK from gold sellers harms the game though, even when they effectively sell it themselves…
The amount of trade on the ISK selling forum would suggest that a lot of players are exchanging real world money for in game money. Interestingly enough, despite the fact that EVE employs an economics expert, they haven’t seen fit to spend time or effort looking into this aspect of the game, maybe because the results would be quite shocking.
So it seems to me that overall EVE is a bad game because it increases bad feeling between people, does not entertain, and is not value for money.
So you have to wonder, like I do, what the management at EVE and the shareholders think of all this. The game, by its design, seems to be set up to pander to only the most dedicated players, admittedly those dedicated players are spending a lot of money each to play the game; but surely, as has been shown by several other games, the big money is in attracting a large and satisfied player base.
If I was a shareholder I’d want to know what the designers are doing to attract, and retain, new players, but everything in the game seems to be designed to repel new players.
EVE Online Editorial - The Temptations of a Unique MMOG
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