EVE Online - MMO Space Sim Talks Budget, Space Stations

An anonymous reader writes "MMORPGDot's new game status report details the latest advances in the space-based MMOG EVE Online, discussing the highs and the lows of being the reigning champion of MMO space sims with Hellmar, EVE's lead programmer." The interview shows that the game's 30,000 subscribers, although tiny compared to other MMOGs, is "...more than enough to keep the game running, [as] we are a small company with considerably less overhead than many other MMO operations." It's also revealed that the equivalent of a housing expansion for space is planned: "We have also been working on player owned structures in space for quite some time now and will release them into the game early next year. The structures allow players to build small towns in space, comprised of control towers, sentry guns, power generators, mobile refineries, field assembly arrays, ship hangars, and more." HomeLanFed also has a recent interview with the EVE Online developers.

Comments

Hardwar

[rhs98]

I really wish they would make a game like this based on hardwar

Re:Hardwar

[Anonymous Coward]

You want a game based on a city in asia?

Re:Hardwar

[illuvata]

i guess he meant this game

you can (legaly) get it here

MMOGs

[Deflagro]

I find it hard to get excited about these games. It just seems like they keep trying and trying. They are timesinks and alot of the gaming generation is getting older. I wish I had time to play all these great games out there, but I gotta eat. Also, all the people on those things are just irritating, i play games to get away from it all. I went through highschool once already :)

I hated Eve

[linuxkrn]

I tried Eve last month. Put a good 25 hours worth of time into playing it. And after that I canceled my subscription. The game had tons of problems but the biggest was the experience system.

THERE IS NO MOTOVATION TO PLAY. You get XP just by having a subscription. You don't have to be online or even playing. Basically they just want you to pay your $$$ and they give you XP for it. You can't get XP any other way and the times needed to upgraded skills can take days or WEEKS.

The entire game economy is based on mining. Yep, you PAY real money to work. Go out and find asteroids to haul back and sell for money. Of course you can do anything with your money you get until the XP system gives you enough points to BUY a skill.

Then to top it all off, they have one devel guy working for new content. Half the "planned" things are "coming soon (tm)" as of six months ago...

Sorry, but real life is boring and slow enough for me. I'm sure not going to pay someone to put rocks into cans for fun.

Re:I hated Eve

[Winterblink]

Yes, EVE is a pretty timesinky game but I have to ask: were you going it solo? I found solo play in EVE to be a little like watching paint dry or grass grow. It's DEFINITELY a group game, no matter how much they insist you can play it however you like. With a corporation you can do more together faster than you can soloing, which helps everyone advance faster to the more interesting aspects of the game. Eventually I myself cancelled my subscription to EVE as well, but I gave it a decent number of months.

In the end it was the fact that the people I played with only logged in to start a new skill to train and I found myself playing solo. I suppose I could have gone and found myself another corp in the game to play with but I'd hoped to keep things together with people I knew in real life. That's not to say that EVE isn't a fantastic game, there's certainly lots to do; the question is indeed as you put it, what motivation is there to do it?

Re:I hated Eve

[Danse]

Ugh. Even when I was part of a corp during the beta, it was just like 12 of us out there putting rocks into cans, and one guy in a freighter picking the stuff up occaisionally. Eventually we had to have people sit there in combat ships to guard us as well... talk about boring... EVE is a beautiful game to look at, and the economy is a pretty significant achievement as well. I really wanted to like the game. I was hoping that it would bring back the old TradeWars days. The problem is that it's just too damn realistic. Nobody actually wants a realistic economy. Realistic economies mean realistic jobs like mining and security guard. Those jobs are boring. They don't belong in a game that's supposed to be fun. That is the downfall of EVE.

Re:I hated Eve

[swright]

Sorry but this is completely not true! I've been playing now since August and I haven't even touched a mining laser for at least 2 months.

My play revolves purely around....

- manufacturing and selling ammunition and missiles to support players who are fighting and having wars.

- trading ore and minerals for profit. Ok so people mine this stuff, but I just cart it about, refine it and sell it.

- pirating is fun too.

Oh, and yes you gain *skill points* even while not online - but you have to buy the *skills themselves* first, and they cost up to 10,000,000isk each (a lot!).

The motivation to play, for me at least, is cash - buying and selling stuff, trying to get the most profit, selling it where its needed (e.g. buying ore in places where people mine a lot, refining it, shipping it to where my refinery and labs are, manufacturing guns and ammunition, shipping that out in the wildlands where people are fighting and selling for huge profit).

Great fun!

Re:I hated Eve

[CableModemSniper]

Wait, XP for having a subscription, that almost sounds appealing. Sure it shafts the hardcore gamer, but for the casual player its a godsend. Suddenly they can compete with everyone else. Hmm, almost makes me want to check it out.

Re:I hated Eve

[Enfors]

If you ask me, Eve's realistic economy is by far its strongest point. There is just so many ways you can do business in it. The market works a bit like a stock market, where you can create buy orders for a certain quantity at a certain price. If somebody places a sell order that matches your buy order, the transaction is made. There's much more to it than that, though, but that's the basics of it.

One method of doing business in Eve is trading. Buying where it's cheap, and selling where it's expensive. What I do is I put a region-wide buy order at a cheap price for a certain mineral. Region-wide buy orders allow you to buy stuff "remotely" - I can place a region-wide buy order for a mineral in one system, and that buy order will apply to all systems in that region. When I check back a few hours later, a bunch of people have usually sold me various amounts of mineral in various places in the region. So then I go pick the mineral up, and go somewhere else and put a sell order (at a higher price) for it. A few hours later, people (or NPCs) will usually have bought it.

However, my favourite method of trading was trading without moving around. Instead of flying around picking up the mineral that I bought, I create missions for other people to deliver my recently bought minerals to my home system (the game supports creating delivery missions like this). I pay whoever does the delivery perhaps 30% of the profit I'll get for selling the minerals after they've been delivered to me.

It's also possible to buy stock in player created corporations.

And that's just scratching the surface. I can think of at least 4 or 5 other ways to do business, none of which would be possible with a more simplistic economy. I realise that this is not everybody's cup of tea though, but for those of us who likes this particular brand of tea, this cup is the only one around.

Re:I hated Eve

[Danse]

At the time I was playing, the market was very broken, and even if you did find a decent trade route, it would generally take the better part of an hour to get from one system to the other. Assigning missions to other players wasn't an option at the time, but even if it had been, the profits would have been too low for anyone to even consider accepting the missions, considering how long it takes to run the route. Watching my ship flying through system after system all night isn't my idea of fun.

Re:I hated Eve

[Anonymous Coward]

You will hate it like you hate watching reality television, or stupid sports commentator.

Re:I hated Eve

[nacturation]

Wait, XP for having a subscription, that almost sounds appealing. Sure it shafts the hardcore gamer, but for the casual player its a godsend. Suddenly they can compete with everyone else. Hmm, almost makes me want to check it out.

It does provide a boost to the casual gamer. Essentially, when you pick up a new skill it takes about 15 minutes to learn it to Level 1. Level 2 takes about an hour or so. Level 3 takes around 5 to 7 hours. Level 4 usually 1 to 2 days. And Level 5, the maximum, takes a week.

The times given are real-time as well, so if you actually have a life (heh) you can login, start learning a skill, play for a while, and then logout and your character continues to learn the skill. This isn't really a penalty for the hardcore gamer, either. In addition to the learning time, you need to make money too. Now there's various ways to do this, but one way is by mining, and that does take time. You can also create missions, buy low/sell high, etc. which doesn't require as much continuous time. So the hardcore gamer can still get ahead by playing a lot and making the credits (ISK) that are required to purchase the non-default skills as well as ships, equipment, augmentations, etc.

All in all, it's a very good balance. One thing you'll find with EVE is that there's not a lot you can't do. You could, theoretically, become quite advanced in the game without ever leaving a space station. Keep upgrading your skills, and make your money through the market. You can then make additional money and gain power through the use of a corporation. Build up your corporation, manage it well, and institute a 1% tax rate. With 100 members in your corporation, a 1% tax rate gives you the spending power as the average player -- though you wouldn't be able to use it all yourself.

With the news of having player-controlled structures, that brings an entirely new element to the game! I can't wait to see that introduced. TradeWars 2002 on the old BBSes I frequented in my younger days was a lot of fun to play, though I'm sure I would find it limited now. Hopefully EVE will progress to this level of excitement.

Re:I hated Eve

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like to point out that the above time frame is for "rank 1" skills, which most you deal with at the start are. The fancy stuff can be "rank 2" up to (at present) "rank 5," and each rank of a skill makes training each *level* of the skill bloody harder.

I view this as a Good Thing as you're not going to muppet-max in a week. The Rank 5 skills let you play with the REALLY big and shiny toys >:).

As far as group play, yes. I have never before been a part of any online clan for any game (and i play a LOT OF GAMES), but for EvE i am in one. There are solo dedicated loons who do reasonably well on their own, then either join an existing corp, cooperate with other Solos briefly for the hard stuff, or even start their own corporation. For every 100+ corp i've seen there's one with like 5 people.

I would recommend, since this is near the end o' the month, checking it out right at the start of December. You'll get a good idea of where it's at, where it's going in the short term (since the New Patch is going to be Soon, we're guessing a weekish from now or so), and if it's for you.

Re:I hated Eve

[Jaeph]

I played eve for a couple of months. There is a very, very in-depth economy that you're glossing over. It may not be your cup of tea (or mine), but that doesn't make it insignificant.

Also, you are wrong about the mining: you can always go out and pound mobs (pirates) in lieu of mining. Unlink some recent games (e.g. SWG), the drops from mobs can be worthwhile (and some are better than you can buy).

-Jeff

Puzzle Pirates

[Apreche]

Puzzle Pirates is the only MMO I play. All the other MMOs have leveling treadmills. Puzzle Pirates has puzzle games. MMO + Puzzles games + Pirates. It can't be beat. No leveling treadmill, no boredom, none of the pitfalls other mmos have. And it's all java webstart, so any os will work.

Uncrowned King? What crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Mankind is a space MMORPG and has WAY more users than Eve Online.

What is it with net journalists and their willingness to smooch the bungholes of MMORPG developers?

Re:Uncrowned King? What crap

[Anonymous Coward]

ok i'd just like to point out that i played Mankind for many years. It's been around for bloody ages, had a decent free trial that let you see what was up, and cost (at the time) $50 for a year!

Yes, you read that right.

However it all started going to heck very fast. Eventually a decision was made to utterly wipe the universe and start over (and it wasn't the first time, apparently). The important resources were impossible to find, finding them was BORING, and by the time you did some huge-ass clan was already sitting on it or, seeing you build 5 mines there, would come crowd you out with 500.

The last straw was the hackfest ocurring shortly before i left. The devs decided for some ungodly reason to make themselves their own ship called the Eye of God. It wasn't invlunerable - instead, when destroyed, it exploded with sorce force that it would wipe out just about everything else in the system.

Players found a way to get themselves these EoG ships.

They'd go into crowded, well defended systems, with this EoG and one cheap throwaway fighter, shoot the EoG, and wipe the place out. You log in and all your ^&$@?!!'s GONE.

A new company is running Mankind now after a terrible and ugly legal fight. But i check back now and then and there are still vast imbalances and design issues that don't make sense, and it doesn't seem like they'll ever be addressed. :(.

There are not a few Mankind refugees in EvE now, actually. I noticed CoRM announce themselves on the forums when they arrived, they're a good buncha guys. Solid skilled players and trustworthy allies or enemies ,-).

Oh. My. God!

[Mawbid]

Sigurdur Olafsson - We had expected that people would be dedicated with the time they spent in the game but we have numerous examples of players that have gone much further than we expected. We have gotten reports of players that never sleep more than 80 min at a time as that is the time it takes to fill their industrial ship with ore

Not an MMORPG

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about MMORPG's, the article is talking. Mankind is a MMORTS. There's a difference, you know.

There is something better than EVE

[Kervokian]

EVE is just point&click and requires no skill to play, on top of being extremely boring. There is a small game out there called Jumpgate. It doesn't have the eyecandy that EVE has, but its flight and physics engine is superbly done and the game requires decent hand-eye coordination to be able to fly around. Community is small but very friendly. The emphasis is on PvP, but there are players of every type. Most of the RP is player driven, and money can be made in various ways. Communication between players and devs is constant and open. The download of the game itself is not very large (121MB w/music 53MB without) and 10 day free trials are available. Sorry if this sounds like an advertisement, but the game is really great, and the people who play are very passionate about it.

Re:There is something better than EVE

[Anonymous Coward]

Jumpgate is much better than eve, I've played both and jumpgate is much more approachable.

Re:There is something better than EVE

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea this is true, I played Jumpgate for about two years... then my Squad left to try out Eve, I went with them to Eve and after playing for a month or two, I was so bored that I left. Great graphics, horrible game play. I long to return to Jumpgate, a flight game that you actually need skill to play... It even lets you use a joystick *gasp*. Yea, you have to level a little bit, but its no tread mill. Even during leveling you get ships that you can use in real battle, startig at level 9.

Kyller

Re:There is something better than EVE

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Jumpgate is actually very fun. Massive space battles Wing Commander style against other players in a massively multiplayer space fighter sim. The economy is solid also. You can be a hauler, miner, deal in rare artifacts, mercenary, bounty hunter, etc. fun fun fun. Not the best graphics but fun gameplay is always better then graphics in my opinion.

-Tritian

Re:There is something better than EVE

[Anonymous Coward]

eve is just eye candy. I have played both jumpgate and eve, jumpgate is way more immersive.

Re:There is something better than EVE

[EX-S Belgdor]

I've played Jumpgate for over two years; I quit EVE before the 30 day trial ended. After getting used to flying my own ship, docking manually, and trying to hold my own in battles with fleets of other players, EVE just seemed like a glorified mining simulator. There may have been 3,000 players online, but it felt cold and lifeless. EVE makes me feel like a spectator, while Jumpgate forces me to actively participate in everything I do. Personally, I'd rather pay $10 a month to play a game than watch it.

Eve is adolecent twaddle.

[Gutterbo]

The game has nothing to it...no soul. I've been playing JG now for 3 years and I'm still not bored. It is far more intimit, becuase you are right in the cockpit of your ship In Eve you can buy education in skill points. IN Jumpgate you all you have is your own mind and dexterity. Your personal social skills, intellegence and ability to use your flight stick are the difference between success and failure. In Jumpgate being in a room, by yourself playing with your stick ain't obscene...it's necessary.

Eve online

[Anonymous Coward]

Ive been playing Eve-Online since release. Eve is a complex game and the learning curve is steep in the beginning. It took me few weeks to get the hang of it. In the beginning the best ppl can do, to get a kickstart into the game is joining a good corp. There you will get the support you need to advance fast in Eve, both in money, assets and experiance. Playing for a few days isnt enough to get a feel for everything that Eve offers, but after that steep learning curve... there is no turning back.. you are hooked

wow. its not that bad guys

[ninjakitten]

Having seen a few negative comments (like all of them so far!) i thought id chip in.

The difference between eve-online and other mmorpgs is that in eve there is no sharded worlds its all one server. Its not everquest thankfully and the skill training aspect of it is what makes the game. There isnt any getting to 50th level and then finding out your profession is useless.

The game itself is getting better and those people looking for something a bit different than a standard doac an everquest type game do find it enjoyable. I know i do

Haha

[Gutterbo]

Jumpgate is an MMORPGSS it is THE First, And Only I might add, Massive Multiplay Persistant World Space Simulator.

There are really only two Different Servers. One in the US and one in Europe. And that is only due to the fact that JG is published by a different company in Europe.

And in Jumpgate if you make level Fifty and your career path is obsolete...you can, Get this!!! choose a different career path, without having to "buy" skill points.

Eve claims to be a Space sim...that's garbage. Yeah I can get a real feel for space travel through point and click, yeah right..Jumpgate is THE ONLY MMORPG space sim. Stop Admiring your ship from afar and get into the cockpit already.

JG is also 1000 times as stable as Eve. You can play it on a 400mhz machine with a 16meg vid card and a 56k modem. I know becuase I have done it.

Jumpgate

[Anonymous Coward]

Man Jumpgate is great. I played eve for 3 months, followed my squad over from Jumpgate.

Well as in above mentioned part, eve you sit back and watch, while occasionally clicking. The lag is unbelievable when 2 or more ships get within visual radius of each other. Half the battles I participated in you die without realizing who is shooting at you due to the lag.

While in comparison, Jumpgate has little lag, yes if you get 50 pilots in one sector, there will be some lag. But you are there, the adrenaline is rushing, the pulse pounding, and the sweat flowing.

That is only a fraction of the game play as well. The political spectrum is entirely player driven. You have all manner of squads that cater to different tastes.

I chose Jumpgate over Eve, and I would humbly submit that even if the graphics are not as pretty as Eve, the game play is far more intriguing as well as exciting.

Gets Old Very Fast

[Anonymous Coward]

Eve is fun at first (a lot of fun) but after a while you will want to slam your head into your desk. It gets mind-numbingly boring. You can play 20 minutes a day and after 2 months have amassed wealth beyond your wildest dreams. Seen every part of the universe (looks like ever other part of the universe). Been in almost every ship and done all that there is to do. Do you hear the giant sucking sound? Space is a dark and lonely place when you need to wait 2 months (TWO MONTHS) for that next skill to finish training. I found myself logging in only a few minutes each week and then I decided paying $12 for 1 hour of play a month just wasnt worth it. Account status: cancelled:

The Devs are full of it.

[erik umenhofer]

They say they have 30K subscribers and all this stuff is coming out. They are totally full of it. On average no more than 3000 people play(obviously if only 3000 people of the 30K log on at once, that would explain it, but i have a strong feeling this isn't the case). And we've been in retail for almost 6-7 months with no real content added since beta. They threw us a bone and gave us a new mining laser (great..better mining!). Basically theories are running around now, that 2003 is a retail-beta run. and in 2004 they will actually put some work into the game nd re-release it sorta. It's boring and lifeless at the moment.

We had a clan of around 40 guys from the beta test. Since then all but 2 have quit the game entirly because the compnay hasn't done much then fixed a few bugs every month. They promised stuff every month or so, and nothing has happened for half a year. We'll see what 2004 holds, but the rrest of my group is quiting next month. Don't know if we'll come back. They've been promising player owned items (space stations etc) for months now and then a few weeks ago they basically told us "next year maybe". As it stands now, we can only own ships. We can't build anything else really (save weapons etc).

Positives: The game is beautiful. and that's about it.

hmmm

[Gutterbo]

We've had player owned stations for about 6 months in Jumpgate. You can store multiple ships...sell items in a market and set prices for said items. store your componants and what not.

The Devs are promising us a factory module for the player owned stations, but to tell you the truth it seems in Jumpgate we are leaps and bounds above Eve in those regards.