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EVE Online Beta Reviews
LevJohnson writes "KCGeek gives a gushing review of EVE Online, the new MMORPG space opera for PC by CCP Games, with screenshots from the beta. From the review: 'It's like Trade Wars 2002, had it been designed in 2002.'" Now the NDA is lifted ahead of its release next month (press release), there are some great guides and handy previews to this intriguing title.
I've been on the "beta test" for a month and a half, and i've yet to actually play the game. Why? Because the patching system is buggy. And it's not just me - there are hundreds of long, tired threads on the beta boards with people having the same types of patching problems.
And absolutely no developer commentary or feedback.
Good luck.
Admittedly, I've only been beta testing for about 6 weeks, but my play experience definitely fell into the "What the heck do I do now?" category. Maybe playing too many other MMOGs has left me unimaginative and in need of heavy-handed guidance, or maybe the gameplay is a little too undirected. I spent a lot of hours when I started just searching for ideas on what to do next. The responses I got on the beta board (ignoring the ever-present and highly helpful "YOu r DuMB! EVE r0x!" posts) generally boiled down to "Whatever you want!" Okay... but give me some idea of a goal or a point to my existence.
Anyway... the graphics are really as impressive as everyone says. And the character generation feature is a lot of fun to play with. (I just wish your carefully constructed face is used in more detail or in 3D elsewhere in the game... if it is, I've never seen anything beyond the approx. 200x200 snapshot used in chat.)
I keep hearing about how innovating EVE is... could someone list some specific points of originality for me? I seem to have missed them. The preview/review(?) above doesn't seem to introduce any except the sheer expanse of the universe. Yes, it is large, but how is that enhancing my gaming experience?
A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.
One thing that has been sorely missing from space multi-player games has been the option for several players to be the crew of a ship. In all the one's I've seen, once you leave the planet/station/whatever, it's everyone in their one-person space ship.
Now, I'm not in the beta for Eve, but from the previews it looks like Eve follows this trend and only has one-person ships. Can a beta tester confirm/correct this?
Now, don't get me wrong, it can be fun to fly around in formation and all. But the usual SF template for this sort of thing is a small group that's the crew of a ship (the Falcon, the Enterprise, Moya, etc).
Now, I guess that the reason for this is technical. Having one-man ships makes the coding similar to wandering around the landscape in a fantasy game, but with one more dimension. While multi-person ships would add a whole new level of interaction to be coded.
But I wish some company would break out and make multi-player ships. I've got four friends would would love to be sitting around the mess table while the ship cruises to Alpha Something III, when the proximity alert goes off and we all run to our battle stations and man the helm, the guns, the engines, the sensors.
I wanted to write about my experiences in EVE beta, but I found a review that pretty much sums up my feelings. Here that review is: FourBelowZero
Having seen all the ranting about how bad the game is, I thought I should tell how I've found it :P
It's amazing... sure during the beta there have been some bugs... *that's what a beta is for*! But despite the fact it throws up errors at me all the time, and parts of the game randomly die, it's still one of my favourite games, because it's what everyone has been waiting for since Elite.
Multiplay Elite.
In a huge universe (try turning on the full universe option in your map. Everyone of those dots is another system.) which feels like space... empty! But not in a way that you get bored.
Jon
I've been with Eve a fairly long time. I signed up for the beta in the middle of 2000, and received access in early 2001. I've seen it go from a very dull and drab interface with few working game features to a very nicely rounded game.
Admittedly, it does have plenty of bugs still. There should be many more fixed now than there are. However, it is a good system.
As some others have said, though, there is little to do in the game, as it stands. Currently, about the ONLY way to make money is to mine ore for like three weeks to be able to afford new equipment and ships. However, when the game goes live, an entire basic NPC economy will exist which will allow you to fufill more or less every role in the game by working with the NPCs. Of course, if you stick to working with just the NPCs, you'll have limited income since they're designed to help you get started. The real money comes from the players and their custom jobs they create for other players.
It's hard to see and grasp what that will be like now, since there's nothing there like it already. Personally, I hope it works out great. I left the community because of several bad interactions with CCP on a personal level. I attempted to get involved on a higher level, and was absolutely tossed out in the cold for it.
One thing to consider, however, is that this game benefits the hardcore gamer MUCH more than other MMO games ever will. That's not to say that new or slower players will be left out, because it's impossible. However, advanced players will wield considerably much more power than others, on the order of something like a fleet vs a single freighter.
Again, that doesn't mean that lower players will be left out. More advanced players will be able to do so many more things, but if you break down the economy, it's still the little guy at the bottom who can do all of the actual work for the big guy. That's what makes this game so unbelievably advanced for it's economy. It mirrors a real life economic system fantastically. The diversity will hopefully keep Eve going a long time.
Slashdot doesn't seem to like my login. This is Keiran Halcyon posting.
I got into Beta 7, and despite the eye candy, there was nothing much to do in the game besides mine rocks. The skill system was strange as well, basically you "activate" a skill you want to learn in your character sheet, and it counts down the time until you sucessfully "learn" it. The thing is, you don't have to be actively playing the character to learn a skill, you can "activate" a skill that will take 4 days (real time) to learn, go on a vacation, come back and you are a master miner (or whatever).
While I've been waiting eagerly for a space-centric MMORPG, I'll continue to wait.
I've been beta testing for about a month now, and I just wanted to add my two cents. When I first started, I had the same reaction as many of the others: "What the heck do I do now?". They teach you extremelly basic mining, refining, and combat, and that's it. At that point you are expected to figure out how everything works and what the next step is. That said, once my head stopped spinning I actually just decided to dive into mining and started to piece things together from there. Once you learn a few systems, the rest work in a similar fashion, so it's just a matter of experimenting and building on past experience. I will also say that I am a member of a corporation, which helps tremendously. If one person experiments with something, they can share their knowledge with the rest of the group (our beta testers forum is quite large, containing many hints and tips on what to do and not to do). You will probably read in many places that this game is a mining sim. I would have to agree to some extent. You will spend much of your time mining, but if you join a corporation you can specialize. I actual am playing the role of a scientist, so I will mine for much of the time, but there was also a period of about 2 days where I didn't leave the station I was in, I just kept changing what I was researching. As far as the buggy patching system, yes I too have had that problem several times in the past. All you have to do is keep your installation software handy, and if that happens start over from scratch. Your characters are all kept on the server, so you won't have to spend much time backtracking. I do agree that the problem shouldn't even exist, but I haven't had that problem for several weeks now, so I'm satisfied. All in all, I would say I am tremendously pleased with their progress. I have my copy pre-ordered. I do think they should delay for a couple of weeks, but they seem to be able to do some great things in a short amount of time, so they may get the game set to go in that time.
I've been in the beta for about two weeks now. I was hoping for an experience along the lines of the early days of EverQuest, when it was more about exploring and experience than the acquisition of phat plat. What I got was a very pretty game with very little to actually do.
The UI for character creation is fun enough, though I suppose one could dismiss it as a virtual version of that old Barbie head my cousin used to abuse. After picking your race and bloodline, you alter the look of your character by tilting the head to and fro, changing the eyes, applying a beard, placing a scar and so on. It's a neat use of the 3d engine, but really all you're doing is making a static avatar for in-game chat and to appear stamp-like in the upper-right corner of your HUD.
The game itself is admittedly gorgeous. At times, it is like playing in one of those Astronomy Pictures-of-the-Day. But you know, that can get quite tedious, feeling more like a Photoshop image with too much lens flare. The ships are unique, not drawing too much from existing and standard sources like Star Wars or Star Trek and so on. The stations and jumpgates all are built to the standards set by the creating race, from rusty i-beam industrial for one to shining gold and glass for another. Out from the stations are the asteroid belts, huge hanging semi-circles of boulderous rock, around which lurk the occasional pirate.
And that's about it. You have two choices of action. You fight pirates or you mine asteroids. Fighting pirates is far too risky at first, so you spend a lot of time mining asteroids. So much time that many on the boards of the beta suggest having a book handy to occupy your mining time.
The comradery in the beta has been good and I've had a couple of good nights out in the higher yield mines with fine folks from Toronto and Europe, still awake at 4am their time when I'm just getting started at 10pm EST. But really, it all comes down to the acquisition of more cash to get a better ship to use to then get more cash.
And I won't go into the massive bugs that still exist this late into the beta, many that result in a sudden crash to the desktop and others that have managed to lay waste to a few users' harddrives (but not mine.)
All in all, I think I prefer old Norrath to the new coldness of space.
"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad."
-- Aldous Huxley
This is more a testament to the way we have been TRAINED to play games than to the game itself. What do you do if I sit you in a sandbox? what do you do if I hand you a blank sheet of paper and some crayons? Do you wonder where the picture and lines are?
I have found EVE to be the most liberating game I have ever played. I can do WHATEVER I WANT. I can change my stats, there are no CLASSES. I can go shoot bad guys, I can shoot good guys, I can rob people, I can hunt don those who rob others. This is the tip of the iceberg. OK another thing to remember is we are all in beta. supposedly alot of content is not in there.
My Disclaimer: I may sound like a fanboy, if anything I am a (45 year old) fanboy of gaming in general. I went into the beta dead set on disliking eve from reading posts that dissed it everywhere.