I have played EVE for a little over two years, and I think I might have mined once for less than an hour the first day. I'm not sure why you felt trapped into playing EVE as a mining simulator. I never felt even the slightest urge to do that.
In the early days, I made my isk ratting (killing the NPC pirates that infest the asteroid belts). That admittedly became a bit of a grind, but not anywhere near as bad as the mining experience you describe. That being said, I hate grinds, so when I discovered that you could make isk on the market, I went to that. My point is that there are lots of ways to make isk in EVE, and mining is probably the least attractive of them all.
As to character development, I have to completely disagree with you. I find EVE's system to be the one reason that I'm still playing the game, as it takes the grind (that thing I hate) out of developing your character. You decide what you want to train for, set the skill to training, and then go off and make isk or pvp. That's fabulous.
I think you are also too fixated on "awesome ships". Even a T1-fitted frigate is useful as a tackler in pvp situations. Even a T1-fitted industrial is great for hauling minerals during group mining operations. You don't need battleships and T2 ships to be effect in EVE. In fact, in the early days you probably won't have enough ISK to support flying such expensive ships anyway (only fly what you can afford to lose).
EVE is a great game, and if CCP doesn't screw it up, I'll be playing it for years to come.
It's interesting for people who left WoW and were wondering whether they should come back. I got to 60 fairly quickly and then got really, really bored with the game. So I left. Spending hours on raids to get slightly better gear than I already had just wasn't fun, and while I found the PVP element entertaining for a while, it eventually started to feel like a grind for honor.
I was wondering whether it would be worth coming back for this expansion. While it sounds interesting, I can see myself coming back, getting to 70 in a month or so, and then being bored again. I think I'll pass and stick with Vanguard, which despite its numerous faults (still a beta game IMHO) is reasonably fun. Oh, sure, I'll hit the level cap and get bored with Vanguard as well, but I think it might take me longer than with BC.
And all the while I can continue to play EVE, which two years on still entertains me. I like the fact that there is no level cap. I think CCP is going to be getting my money for many more years to come.
But how do you figure out what sides are involved? Typical combats these days can involve several corporations on each side, and often several alliances as well. And sometimes there are more than two sides.
The lock time scaling would seem to favor the defender over the attacker. You blob the system so that any battle to conquer it would take too long to be practical, even if you had the weaker force.
User limits per system would make it trivial to defend a system: just dump enough people in the system to reach the limit and no one else can come in. Or leave a little bit of space so that you can gank the 10 or so who do make it in. This is a really tricky issue and I don't know how they are going to fix it, or even if it can be fixed.
More convenient than a car? Maybe in some cities, but certainly not all. There are a lot of areas in my city that would require several transfers and a lot of time to get to by public transport. So assuming the car was in a resonable location relative to my starting point/home, this could be ideal.
> a) Take a look at the selection of tracks available, Napster clearly beats them
Wouldn't that just mean that I would ONLY shop at Napster when PureTracks didn't have what I wanted? Still doesn't seem like a great strategy for Napster.
Your point about the download subscription being so cheap is well taken. Do you think its enough to make this venture work for them in Canada, though? Do they get a lot of subscriptions?
Why would you start a new music service with higher prices than the existing competition? A lot of PureTracks' songs (though admittedly not all) are CDN$0.99. They must really be relying on name-brand recognition, though I doubt they are going to get much beyond "but, but, songs were free on Napster!" Still, nice to see competition, even if only of the inept kind. Now if they would just let me have my songs on both my home and work computers at the same time...
The problem is that the credit card fees make $0.99 just about the minimum you could charge for a single song and not lose money. Their lunch card idea is pretty good (pay one flat fee and get free songs), and does bring the cost per song down, but you end up having to commit to a certain number of songs. I'm thinking that might be a bit of a tough sell. They might have been better off going with only lunch cards and really pushing the fact that, though you have to pay $10 up front, you are getting songs for $0.50 each (or whatever it works out to).
I don't think you will have to mail anything. It sounds like you will be able to enter the code directly into their site. They might get a few takers. I'd do it.
"Can you imagine the nightmare our roads would be if everybody had one?"
Couldn't the opposite be true? Maybe the light would stay green longer for whichever side had more traffic? Ideally it could create "democratic" intersections and reduce the amount of time you spend stopped with no traffic going the other way. I'm sure it wouldn't actually work, but wouldn't it be cool if it did?
I don't know about "anyone else on Earth", but here is a link that seems to indicate that they do "work harder" than Europeans:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ibd/030904/issues_2.html
And that didn't take more than a few seconds to find.
I suppose it all comes down to how you measure "works harder", though. Per capita GDP? Hours per day? Number of vacation days? I suspect Americans do quite well, but better than everyone else on Earth? Probabably not.
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I have played EVE for a little over two years, and I think I might have mined once for less than an hour the first day. I'm not sure why you felt trapped into playing EVE as a mining simulator. I never felt even the slightest urge to do that.
In the early days, I made my isk ratting (killing the NPC pirates that infest the asteroid belts). That admittedly became a bit of a grind, but not anywhere near as bad as the mining experience you describe. That being said, I hate grinds, so when I discovered that you could make isk on the market, I went to that. My point is that there are lots of ways to make isk in EVE, and mining is probably the least attractive of them all.
As to character development, I have to completely disagree with you. I find EVE's system to be the one reason that I'm still playing the game, as it takes the grind (that thing I hate) out of developing your character. You decide what you want to train for, set the skill to training, and then go off and make isk or pvp. That's fabulous.
I think you are also too fixated on "awesome ships". Even a T1-fitted frigate is useful as a tackler in pvp situations. Even a T1-fitted industrial is great for hauling minerals during group mining operations. You don't need battleships and T2 ships to be effect in EVE. In fact, in the early days you probably won't have enough ISK to support flying such expensive ships anyway (only fly what you can afford to lose).
EVE is a great game, and if CCP doesn't screw it up, I'll be playing it for years to come.
It's interesting for people who left WoW and were wondering whether they should come back. I got to 60 fairly quickly and then got really, really bored with the game. So I left. Spending hours on raids to get slightly better gear than I already had just wasn't fun, and while I found the PVP element entertaining for a while, it eventually started to feel like a grind for honor.
I was wondering whether it would be worth coming back for this expansion. While it sounds interesting, I can see myself coming back, getting to 70 in a month or so, and then being bored again. I think I'll pass and stick with Vanguard, which despite its numerous faults (still a beta game IMHO) is reasonably fun. Oh, sure, I'll hit the level cap and get bored with Vanguard as well, but I think it might take me longer than with BC.
And all the while I can continue to play EVE, which two years on still entertains me. I like the fact that there is no level cap. I think CCP is going to be getting my money for many more years to come.
But how do you figure out what sides are involved? Typical combats these days can involve several corporations on each side, and often several alliances as well. And sometimes there are more than two sides.
The lock time scaling would seem to favor the defender over the attacker. You blob the system so that any battle to conquer it would take too long to be practical, even if you had the weaker force.
User limits per system would make it trivial to defend a system: just dump enough people in the system to reach the limit and no one else can come in. Or leave a little bit of space so that you can gank the 10 or so who do make it in. This is a really tricky issue and I don't know how they are going to fix it, or even if it can be fixed.
Do you think POS warfare is fun? If not, do you have any plans on changing it so that it is fun?
More convenient than a car? Maybe in some cities, but certainly not all. There are a lot of areas in my city that would require several transfers and a lot of time to get to by public transport. So assuming the car was in a resonable location relative to my starting point/home, this could be ideal.
> a) Take a look at the selection of tracks available, Napster clearly beats them
Wouldn't that just mean that I would ONLY shop at Napster when PureTracks didn't have what I wanted? Still doesn't seem like a great strategy for Napster.
Your point about the download subscription being so cheap is well taken. Do you think its enough to make this venture work for them in Canada, though? Do they get a lot of subscriptions?
Why would you start a new music service with higher prices than the existing competition? A lot of PureTracks' songs (though admittedly not all) are CDN$0.99. They must really be relying on name-brand recognition, though I doubt they are going to get much beyond "but, but, songs were free on Napster!" Still, nice to see competition, even if only of the inept kind. Now if they would just let me have my songs on both my home and work computers at the same time...
The problem is that the credit card fees make $0.99 just about the minimum you could charge for a single song and not lose money. Their lunch card idea is pretty good (pay one flat fee and get free songs), and does bring the cost per song down, but you end up having to commit to a certain number of songs. I'm thinking that might be a bit of a tough sell. They might have been better off going with only lunch cards and really pushing the fact that, though you have to pay $10 up front, you are getting songs for $0.50 each (or whatever it works out to).
I don't think you will have to mail anything. It sounds like you will be able to enter the code directly into their site. They might get a few takers. I'd do it.
"Can you imagine the nightmare our roads would be if everybody had one?"
Couldn't the opposite be true? Maybe the light would stay green longer for whichever side had more traffic? Ideally it could create "democratic" intersections and reduce the amount of time you spend stopped with no traffic going the other way. I'm sure it wouldn't actually work, but wouldn't it be cool if it did?
I don't know about "anyone else on Earth", but here is a link that seems to indicate that they do "work harder" than Europeans:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ibd/030904/issues_2.html
And that didn't take more than a few seconds to find.
I suppose it all comes down to how you measure "works harder", though. Per capita GDP? Hours per day? Number of vacation days? I suspect Americans do quite well, but better than everyone else on Earth? Probabably not.