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Another perspective
thatcat
Member Posts: 18
I have played EVE for nearly three years and only recently terminated my account. Thus I feel I have an experienced perspective on the game. The perspective I put foward is that EVE is a game in which the "gaming comminity" is the game. The nuts and bolts of EVE itself(the ships , market, manufacturing, etc) are simply tools which allows the community to interact with each other.
People who join EVE expecting to play a game based on flying ships in space soon lose interest and leave the game. 99% of what occurs in EVE is decided by its players. People who join EVE and become involved in the community of players soon find themselves addicted because what is going on in game is in many ways as real as real life. (Being FORCED out of a region of space that you have been playing in for two years is an example).
EVE is more like a board game called Diplomacy, which is similar to the board game Risk except that the players make "agreements" with others rather than using dice. EVE is a constant battle of DIPLOMACY and that is the most skilled craft in the game, If you are good are getting people to do your bidding you can rule the EVE universe. And that is what a lot of people don't understand, EVE is not about the ships or guns, EVE is about the diplomacy and the ships, guns, markets are simply the tools used to carry out the diplomatic arrangements.
Its a great game, totally self paced fairly well balanced in that all players can find a role. There is no one winner and there never can be, but a group can, if they have the wit, control their destiny and the destiny of those around them simply by dictating what is going on in the game.
CCP is terriffic to their players and are devoted to trying to make their gaming experience the finest in the industry. The biggest drawback IMO is that EVE can be excessively addictive and can and does impact on RL because of the time spent in game.
Comments
I believe this was the main reason for why my brother stopped playing after 4 months because he never got involved with other people, just his few mates that he new in RL before joining EVE. And as they weren't always on at the same time as him he'd find himself doing missions or solo mining.
Don't get me wrong, he would interact with other players that he didn't know but not very often, just mainly the corp members. But due to our corp being in an inactive state with only 11 members, there were hardly many online at the same time so the interactive aspect of the game plummeted for him.
Once he lost his second Thorax in the same day to missioning he just called it a day. And i mean he didn't intend to quit, but he just never felt inclined to play again.
So i can fully agree with what you're saying.
Good post.
i feel for your bro, i know the feeling. ive encountered that soo many times on most games.
seems to be written better then another person on another thread, and this is what i was talking about all games are played as one platform.
U feel for me?? sorry but I have no idea what your talking about. My experience with EVE was very positive and its only do to the lack of time that forced me to let it go. After browsing these forum and seeing so much misinformation I hopefully have giving some meaningful information for someone contemplating taking on the challange that comes with playing a game with so much depth.
Thatcat, he was replying to me, when i said how/why my brother left EVE. So his reply was "i feel for your bro" not "you bro."
Honest mistake.
EVE-ONLINE 4TW! Down with all other MMOs but let WoW keep its lammers!
I find EVE to be very addictive and thus does at times consume much of my free time
Personally I wish I'd bought EVE after the beta finished. I seriously considered it but was playing SWG Beta at the time and didn't want to pay for EVE at the time. I don't know why but it took me a really long time to get hooked on EVE.... I am now but it took me ALL of closed/open beta and several free tries and even a couple failed retail attempts before I finally got hooked.
After the EVE Beta finished up I continued playing SWG Beta and played from Release of SWG up till the NGE. I periodically played EVE trials but I'm typically one of those folks who onlly ever keeps 1 active subscription. I had the SOE All Access Pass for a bit once SWG was added to it but that's still just 1 subscription. And honestly I barely even played any other SOE titles, though I did boink around in PlanetSide quite a bit. I didn't really seriously look at EVE again till the CU hit and I bought the game shortly thereafter but that was in the "OMFG LAG IS HORRIBLE" timeframe where you couldn't even undock half the time so I wound up not sticking to it and continued playing SWG-CU until NGE hit. When the NGE hit I doinked around with several other games and even re-activated EVE just before/during the RMR update (which was kind of painful). Still not sure why I didn't wind up addicted then, but I didn't... and again let my account lapse. It wasn't till this past august that I tried the game again and have been playing steadily since.
So, while I too played from Beta phase 1 til now it was sporadic, spotty, and I didn't always love it.
For those wanting to try EVE keep this post in mind. You may hate it your first time out. You may not get it. Give it a couple weeks/months then give it another try... you may find, like me, that your perspective (to play on the title of the thread) has changed after a bit. I did.
I love EVE. Even when I didn't I still considered it one of the best MMO's on the market. And with the death of SWG as a sandbox and the bankruptcy of Ryzom it's the only remaining Sandbox MMORPG that is actually a game rather than life simulator (There, Second Life, etc) asside from UO. And it's the only Sci-Fi MMORPG other than Anarchy Online (another great title but vastily different) worth playing. I play both since AO is free
"A ship-of-war is the best ambassador." - Oliver Cromwell
Dark Assassin15
I have to disagree with OP, it's not JUST like a board game, Eve to me is the most versatile and flexible PC/Video game I have ever played, ever, PLUS it also adds the life simulator aspect to a certain degree as well if one chooses to go that route (being involved in a corp), and that's the great thing about Eve, you can play by any style you want to, and it's still fun.
Another thing is that, Eve recreated the ambience and atmosphere of outer space to perfection, it's very beautiful.
I had lots of fun playing EVE without getting involved in PVP. I went to 0.0 initially to fully experience all EVE had to offer and it was there that I fell into the real dynamics of the game in play( IMO ). It was there that I first saw diplomacy in action and I was able to then see how these diplomatic agreements shaped the EVE universe.
Look at the map at any given time when playing and 90% of the players are in empire at any given time so anyone who thinks PVP is the end all is missing a lot that is going on everyday in the EVE universe. EVE has a lot of depth.
I played solo for about a third of the time and I was in strong PVP corps for the rest of my three year experience. Both were rewarding experiences but in both cases, the experiences was totally different. If you are someone that needs to be entertained then you should find a corp and go with the flow. Becoming involved with what is going on is the best and easiest way to get hooked.
0.0 corps are always looking for people but the growth curve in these corps is the steepest. So if you want to take is slow find a manufacturing/mining corp in empire.
Its not about the bells and whistles, its the bells and whistles that let you interact with each other. If you understand that from the beginning any direction you choose to go in will turn into a rewarding experience.
The OP made one point that maybe a lot of people don't get. There is no winner; there is also no end game.
I also started in the beta and had preordered so I was logged on playing the second EVE went live. I had great hopes for EVE but slowly they have waned, mainly because of being disappointed by the many un-kept promises from CCP. Anyone that started the game in the last year has no idea of what those of us that started at beta were told what EVE was to become. A perfect example of this is the Kali patch (revelations), CCP is touting it as adding new content and balancing issues yet those of us that started at gold know that all Kali provides are just a few (not all) of the things that were promised to be in EVE at gold.
Do you old timers remember the Jove fiasco? For you new players that is how CCP introduced T2 into the game, they gave it to a few Pirat corps, then to try and make up for it (once it became public) they held a contest in 0.0 space in a heavily camped alliance space where everyone showing up for the contest was podded as soon as the jumped into the system. At the time CCP was trying to buy back the right to the game so they started what has become know as the Prat Welfare Program to cover the fact that 80% of the promised skills, content and profession were not in the game. Of the T2 BPOS from the contest, was handed to the new Pirate corp that a few of the GMs just happened to have alts in.
This is just one of literally hundreds of gray items that have happened over the last 3 years. The latest being the bait and switch of Reverse Engineering with Invention. Up until a few months before the official release of Kali CCP was stating on every interview that RE was finely coming, this is what actually brought me back to EVE after a six month break. I now realize that CCP has not changed, they are never going to hurt the Prat Welfare Program because RE would stabilize the T2 market, something they have finely go on record as being opposed to.
One other thing about EVE the locale area is guaranteed to change. After living in 0.0 for over two years I came back to find that every player and corp that was there six months earlier was no longer in game. Most had quit EVE and those that had stayed had moved back into empire. Do you old timers remember it took us three months to train to fly a cruiser and those of us that were working did not get a BS for almost 8 months. I say working, because a few players had been shown an insurance bug by a GM, this cow of a Pirate corp made enough in two days to buy their Battleship BPOS as well as most of the BPOs on the market. Ok I was ninja mining for Zid and meg but at least I was working for my isk. Yes they had the rollback but they only rolled it back to when the first Non-Pirate corp, who had found out about the bug because the Prats were bragging about it, had started using it. Most of the EVE community was calling for CCP to ban these groups but the devs replied, err why would we ban ourselves.
This is all old history you might say but it shows the nature of CCP and the Devs. Sure I may be jaded from my experience in EVE but when I see that you will need scan probes to find the new complexes and there are no BPOs on the market and the only Probes you can buy are in a .3 (32 pod kills in last 24 hours) system all I see is CCP trying to pass off a new Judas goat and patting themselves on the back because the Fanboies are buying it.
That being said, EVE is by far the best BETA I have ever paid to play.
An so it begins
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.[/CENTER]
This is one of my favourite parts of the experience in the game. Just listening to the music out-of-game reminds me of all the great moments during my time in EVE and makes me desperate to get going again, and you really do feel deep in space when you listen to it.
Personally i never found it difficult to get into the game at all, but i did find that as time went on i became more inclined to play and wanted to play for longer. Perhaps it's because my skills progressed which opened me up to different areas of the game better, or that i joined a corp that really kept me involved, but i would find it hard to pin down one specific thing that kept me coming back for more.
However, you have to be quite sociable in EVE in order to get the best out of the game - if you ignore players in local, interact little with your corp/alliance and try to play solo a large percentage of the time then the game will become dull. And i reckon this is the main reason why some people can't see the magic of the game.
LeJohn, I can agree that EVE has NOT gone in all the directions "I" would have chosen to take it if I were GOD in the EVE universe, but hey both you and I played this game for over three years. Can it really be as terrible as you make it out to be? I'm pretty sure that in the three years you played there must have been things that you enjoyed that brought you back to the game day after day. Like I said earlier, it was time constraints that eventually forced me out of playing EVE.
Well I consider myself to be a very experience MMO player having played (often to their very limits):
UO, Earth and Beyond, Star Wars Galaxies, Guild Wars, Planetside, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Everquest, Anarchy Online.
I can tell you right now that I currently do not play any of the above games.
Why? Well im not a huge fan of fantasy rpgs so UO, D&D, Everquest and Guild Wars (nice PVP tho) got boring pretty quick for me. [< 2 Months]
World of Warcraft lasted a whole nine months and is a quality game but once you have raided every single dungeon 20 times over it gets tired really quick if you were in a good guild and summonted those dungeons easily then WoW will get boring quickly (I had almost full tier3).
I may resub and try the expansion but as I already know it's more of the same I doubt my fun will last long. PVP is strictly a grind after you have leveled. [9 Months]
Planetside was imo a nice game, but I felt that it was directed (in terms of management and gameplay updates) poorly by SOE. In the end there were no more massive battles that were as intense as they were in the start. I find the only people playing this now are the people with Station passes. [1 Year]
Star Wars Galaxies was in many ways a novel and intresting sandbox, I played this game for well over 1.5 years and made Jedi Master before the CU (The Village), This game had great potential but was incredibly poorly managed (Worst ever customer experience, bar none!). Not only was it buggy but SOE felt it needed to change the game every 6 months, with this game became increasing poor. The NGE killed this game for me. Highlights included the excellent player cites, crafting and of course Star Wars!. [1.5 Years]
City of Heroes was an innovative title but I considered it not to have enough depth (but lets be honest here not many superhero games, comics or films have much depth). [4 Months]
E&B Was terminated by the publisher, I loved the graphics and story when this came out but frankly it seemed like a game with a first level and nothing else. [3 Months]
Anarchy Online, Never understood this game or got into it. I still don't understand it to this day, occasionally I download it and try it again but still don't get the point. I suspect this is me because I have heard some great things about this game [< 1 Month]
EVE
So here we come to the crux, EVE Online. I have to say that EVE Online is the only game that has ever matched my criteria for a great game.
Now before I can tons of replies nickpicking details I want people to understand that this is only my opinion and is only an overview (Forest for the trees thingy) I don't have nearly enough time to cover any real detail.
It has thousands of good points which are regretably let down by some major (in my consideration) flaws.
My first major beef with this game before Kali (and I suspect this is still the case even with the SP increase) is that
this game is a nightmare to new players.
Bad Points:
1. Because of it's depth I have to say it is a complex game and frankly the tutorial is too fast and does not cover enough detail, It's going to take you a good few weeks to get a real hang on the game, before that you will not really know what you are doing or where you are going (depends on the player in many way of course)
2. Choose the wrong path and you could spend weeks or month training something that is of little or no use, or does not meet you needs,expectations or play style.
3. This game is incredibly risky, its perfectly possible to easily lose everything you have worked for (money, skills, ships, star systems). In this it's like real life there is serious risk and serious reward however a lot of players prefer to play games where there is little risk and high reward (if thats the case with you, this is not the game for you).
4. I sit on the fence with this one but both sides of the camp feel strongly. Unlike many other games playing many, many hours a week will not help you advance in terms of skills or overall. Many skills can take weeks and even months, a paricular skill path could even take years (skills are added on a regular basis). Waiting weeks for a single skill level to complete is a major downside for many players.
Well that in theory is a short list, but they are the major factor in game never becoming a bemouth like WoW.
So on to the good points:
1. Unlimited Depth, this is really the best sandbox/playground ever created by a games company, there is in my mind no doubt of this at all. This game is DEEP.
2. It's size is imsense, you don't see this at the start. It can take some weeks or indeed months to get a real feel for the size (in terms of space alone) of this game. No world is larger!.
3. Complete Freedom, There is no overriding goal. You make this story. Now this one is a real hard one to explain so I will do it the only way I can think of. Consider each corporation in eve as a real country/state in real life transpose this to a virtual world in space. Thats it is as complex as real life in many ways and there is no way to predict what will happen next.
4. Space is a black void, well not in EVE. This game is simply beautiful and still is today, ok it's maybe not quite as flashy as games such as D&D, Oblivion, Gears of War. But take a look any almost any screenshot and then consider this game is 3 years old (and getting closer to 4) and the suprise on your face will very visible.
5. Play at your lesiure, most games the advancement = time = grind, this is not the case in EVE due to it's innovative offline training system (however see point 4 in bad points above). Because of this no matter how long you play a week given you joined the game as the same time as the guy who played 40hrs a week you will have the same amount of abilities and skills. You will not be gimped.
6. Rich player interaction, due to 3 above if you find yourself the right corporation in the right alliance that no game offers the flexability for player interaction that EVE. You imagination is your only limit.
Now to the people who quit this game I feel sorry for you because unless you were patient, joined a good/corporation alliance then you never really played eve.
To fly with a fleet and battle of 100's of ships, to dedicate the time and resource to build such magnificent items such as outposts and titans, to crush entire star systems under your heal, to become a master criminal, to make alliegences that span the universe, to become incredibly wealthly.
Then I say to you that you never really played EVE Online (Well not the game that I know).
I HATE the new map !!!!!! ITs a real pain in the ass to use(and now a thousand post from eve employees saying how great it is
). I"m 8 days into my trial and the never ending training is driving me crazy ......... I can honestly say I didn't miss that. In a lot of ways, especially for PvP I had always wished EVE would level out in those skills so that matches were decided by strategy and wit instead of vastly superior weapons, skills and ships.
Other than that the game feels less laggey, the warp to zero feature is nice and I never have isk .........
Actually the new map really isn't all that different from the old. What is it that you find difficult to use? Flatten/Unflatten still work the same. It just drills a lot further in now.
"A ship-of-war is the best ambassador." - Oliver Cromwell
its much too sensitive to what my cursor is doing which makes it a royal pain to use compared to the old one. The new feature of being able to dial in and out does nothing to add to my game but add a nusience to deal with. Worst of all there is no button to turn it off. CCP forcing their "good ideas" down our throat has always been one of my biggest pet peeves with EVE.
PS it may be my imagination but I just can't look at the map from the perspective I used to be able to. Now I have to be zoomed in much more than I want to when I have my jump lines displayed. ITs annoyances like this, ones that I have to work around everytime I play that eventually lead me to cancel my subscription.
Been playing around with the new contract systems and found the filters are not working. Once they get that straightened out it should be a pretty good system. I finally got it to look the way I like but without the filters its kinda useless unless you like looking for needles in a haystaack
.
I've done nothing but lose ships in PvP since tech one and low skills vs tech II and much higher skills rule. At least its as easy as ever to make isk so replacing everything has only been painful in the time it has taken to go chase down everything.
thatcat
yeas in a way EvE is just that and thats why I like EvE more then other mmorpgs out there
Guides & Trials for EvE Online:
As to your woes: I don't fly a single Tech 2 ship and I've taken out Tech 2 ships just fine.
"A ship-of-war is the best ambassador." - Oliver Cromwell
I have 258 bantam mining frigates in one of my hangars. My agent kept giving them to me as mission time bonuses a couple years ago, and I've hung on to them in hopes that I'd find a use for them in the future since they don't refine very well. Right now, i'm thinking of having a massive self-destruct-salvage op with my alliancemates; of course, I'll need to test first to find out whether they're even worth spending time salvaging. -grins-
Anyway, you tend to build up a stockpile of ships over time. When I first started, all I had was an ibis, which grew into an ibis and a merlin, then to an ibis, a merlin, and a moa. Following that, an ibis, a merlin, a moa, and a raven. Then I added a scorp. Then I lost a raven in PvP and had to replace it. Then the same thing happened with the scorp. Then I bought a second raven so I could have a backup for when my current one got shot up...etc., etc., repeat ad nauseum. As the man said, having backup ships available helps a lot.
Oh, and the most important thing: NEVER PVP WITH YOUR MONEY-MAKER UNLESS YOU ALREADY HAVE A REPLACEMENT. These days, I always have a spare raven sitting around collecting dust in case everything else gets shot up and I desperately need ISK and a way to acquire it.
-Wrayeth
"Look, pa! I just contributed absolutely nothing to this thread!"
how many ships can you stick into one hangar? Answer: more than enough
Well my 14 day trial is over and I found that I wasn't logging in that much at the end. That may sound bad but if you go back to the OP you'll see I left EVE due to time restaints. EVE is one of those games I find all to easy to become "involved in". So I intentionally did not get involved and thus found EVE a little boring after checking everything out. I'm happy to report that I thought all the nuts and bolts to be working very very well. Bravo CCP you did a fine job with the lastest patch.
I have to admit that in the short time I've been reading this forum I've seen a continual belief put foward as advice to new players. That is that EVE is setup for people to be solo players right out of the box. To new players I must strongly advise that you join a corp ASAP(within a week of character creation). It really doesnt' matter if its a good or bad corporation. What is important is that you are out of the "creation corp" and interacting in the game with people who are "doing something". If after a couple of months you want to go solo for a while then do it then. The best tutorial that you can get is by being a member of a corp!!! Seeing people in the noob starter corp with characters over two years old and the noob corp the only one they have ever belonged to is sickening. They really don't understand what EVE is about.
Have fun out there. The game is running better than I remember seeing it run in over a year so again good job CCP.
I cant even use the map anymore, I either use F11 for nearby system topology or I use people and places to set destination. There is nothing redeeming about the worthless replacement for a functional feature, its just purely useless.