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The Evolution of MMOGs - Eve Online
Gamasutra is running an article about the Massively Multiplayer Game Eve Online. Information from senior producer Nathan Richardsson gives a look into the development of the largest concurrent MMO on the market. From the article: "Power to the players. Nothing compares to a player that is enabled to affect the universe. We create tools for players to create content. For example, a massive alliance of corporations - our versions of guilds - with real, legendary players, leading them, controlling large areas of space and building up infrastructure is truly awesome content. We can never create that, but we can create the environment and tools enabling to happen. We're also very iterative in our work and keep continuous feedback cycles on the features we do, then regularly improve them based on that feedback. The community is an incredible source for how to improve the game and what they do within the game gives us constant inspiration for what we should implement next. Being so open-ended means the players do what they want and we try to keep up and add support and tools to take emerging behavior further. Embrace and evolve are the keywords here."
I have been playing EVE Online for 6 months and it's not all it's cracked up to be. There are some players that absolutely love it. However, the ability to create content and the great graphics in the game does not make up for some fundamental flaws in game play. The problem is that the game boils down to spending hours just traveling or just mining, both tedious activities in the game. Combat can also be tedious in most cases, since it usually becomes showing up at some location and slugging it out. I could deal with those aspects if your skill was in some way tied to your activities, but they are not. Skills are trained simply by turning the training on. Even the skill training system is flawed. There are approximately 200 or so different skills. To be come an expert in combat related skills, for example, it takes about 100 separate skills, training one at a time. I calculated how long it would take me to be fully trained on captaining a battleship, with all the necessary skills for both weapons use, piloting, and maneuvering. With the current system, it would take more than 3 years in real time to finish the training. I'll be surprised if the game lasts another three years. Experienced players (i.e. players who have been playing EVE for a long while) basically can attack inexperienced players with impunity. I have been killed four times so far just for the fun of it by an experienced player in what is supposed to be safe space. Yes, the experienced player is immediately killed by the NPC cops but that's the only penalty. They can make up the loss in an hour, it takes me a week to regain the equipment I lose. Sad to say, I am disappointed in EVE enough to stop playing. I hope some EVE admins read Slashdot, because the way the game works, I would bet you are losing more new players than you would imagine.
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If you're a fan of Trade Wars style games or Elite style games, or if you miss the days of old Ultima Online where you could PvP to your hearts content without being screamed at by the playerbase, this is the game you have been waiting for.
That said, it's not for everyone, and it has a steep learning curve. However, that hasn't detered away their playerbase, and while it doesn't grow at exponential rates, it's stable and growning enough for them to afford the resouces to provide a new free expansion every six months. EVE is CCP's only game. They have no other priorities than EVE, and it's their job to make sure it's a great game...not necissarily one that appeals to the masses, but a great game nontheless.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
EVE suffers from the *wrong* kind of expansion: It expands at the bleeding edge, at the point where its most experienced players will benefit from the expansions. But the problem is that EVE is in desperate need of expansion at its earliest levels.
... as in weeks... on something).
Simply put: EVE is boring. Its a slog. It requires an enormous amount of time to mine resources and travel between points. There is nothing approaching the immediacy of an instanced dungeon. (Yes, they try. No, it doesn't work.)
Some of the problems are fundamental. Like: "Space is boring". Ultimately space is just a big vacuum. To the developer's credit, they've made it look stunningly beautiful, but after drooling on your keyboard for the first couple hours you'll realize you're in a matter-poor environment. There aren't trees or rocks to hide behind, mountains to get a better view from, stairs to escape up, etc. The occasional floating asteroid doesn't offer much respite from the monotony of, well... nothingness.
EVE's other problems are more game oriented: The game is mind-numbingly impersonal at first. Despite a few training missions, which teach the player about the interface more than the gameplay there is little in the way of indoctrinating new players into the EVE universe. You feel like a punk. You are a punk. Don't like it? Play for another year. Don't know what to do? Consult another player. (They'll tell you to spend more time
The game cries out for a starter-universe. But more than that, the game cries out for more interaction. In a nutshell, "telling" your ship to dock, is not nearly as much fun as "docking" manually. "Telling" your ship to fire on another ship, isn't nearly as much fun as "Trying to hit" another ship. Granted, the game is not a videogame requiring hand-eye coordination. But in the absence of physical matter and with only scant human beings sighted here and there, an element of competitive gameplay or two might be nice for early players.
EVE has focused far too much on player retention and not enough on player acquisition.
If anything, EVE has paved the way for someone to write the next great space-based MMORPG. Its what Everquest or Dark Age of Camelot are to World of Warcraft: the predecessor that vividly paints examples of "what not to do".
And primarily "what not to do" is annoy early players.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
A friendly advice: Train Navigation 1 if you haven't got it already, then afterburners 1.
And, train your learning skills if you continue with the game! They are essential. Best pattern is: First Instant Recall to lvl 4, then Analytical Mind to lvl 4. After that, Learning to lvl 4. When you're done with those, go for lvl 5 Instant Recall, then Eidetic Memory up to lvl 5. After that, Analytical Mind, finishing it all off with Lvl 5 Learning. Meanwhile, during that training period, just save up for the advanced learning skills. If you've joined a player corp by then, you might even get help to earn that money(If you're allowed to tag along on lvl 4 missions, you can easily make a couple of millions in one night).
When you have trained Eidetic Memory to lvl 4, go to Logic lvl 4. Now you can train the other learning skills such as Spatial Awareness/Focus etc. It's a bit boring, but you'll notice that it pays off even one month later, by cutting training times for later skills down by a lot.
Eve is not a pve game and there are no training wheels. Please don't complain about how there aren't any massive dungeons etc. because that's not the focus of the it. If you want to do massive raids go play WoW or EQ(2).
First of all eve does not require massive time investment to become competitive. You don't need 20+million skill points to have a chance only 2million. Player skill is much more important than character skill. Furthermore 2 1million characters > 1 20 million if the 1mils know what they're doing.
If you want to be truly good at eve you have to think, you can't grind to "max level" and expect to pwn people because skill bonuses are relatively small (2-5% increase in dmg, speed etc. per level) and there's so many nasty things someone can trip you up with if you aren't expecting it or don't know what you're doing. It has a very flexible "class" system which encourages creativity. Because of this a you need to know what you're doing and the limitations of your "class" if you don't want to get rolled.
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