EVE General Discussion

Once upon a time, many years ago, I was watching a friend play a Generic Fantasy MMO. He was doing PvP and I noticed that every time he took any damage, he'd cast a healing spell and the little blue bar (representing "mana") would drop a little... and then he'd push another button and it would instantly refill itself. I asked him to explain what was going on and he said it worked like this:

You had mana (magic) that you used to heal yourself on the fly, in case there weren't any dedicated healers covering you. But mana was limited, and you needed it to both heal and cast attack spells. So when you ran out of mana, you were basically screwed. Seemed fair enough, I figured, but how come that never happened to his character, I asked? He answered: Mana potion spam.

Apparently, in order to properly PvP in Generic Fantasy MMO, one could not simply go forth with what you had. You had to stock up a huge pile of mana potions to keep the healing & attacks unending. After watching this for a bit we both agreed that PvP victory in Generic Fantasy MMO ultimately came down to who brought the biggest stack of mana potions and could thus outlast their opponent. Nice gold sink, I guess.

Years later I was surfing YouTube and enjoying various EvE PvP videos and I noticed a pattern. The phrases "ASB" "Dual/Triple Armor Rep" and "Dual Cap Boost" showed up at an average rate of approximately 100% of the time. I'd watch shield and armor bars collapse, then magically heal themselves as they traded places with the ship's capacitor... and then capacitors would magically replenish themselves as well.

It all seemed... very familiar to me. Connecting the dots I realized that I had, in fact, seen all this before. The names had changed, but the core mechanic was completely identical:

Shield/Armor Repair = Healing Spells
Capacitor = Mana
Cap Boost = Mana Potions

And just like before, there was this remarkable habit of fights going to whoever could bring the biggest stack of mana po... er "cap boosters" to the party.

Thus primed, I began to look for other similarities... and they were everywhere. Dedicated "repair" ships took the roll of healers. Booster ships were the buff mages while Ewar took the place of debuff mages. Kite ships were archers, hybrid blaster ships were the brawler/tanks. Covert ops were the thieves & assassins. "Cyno jump" was just sci-fi way of saying "teleport party" and drone boats were the "pet" class.

"Well" they said "at least you're not having to deal with goofy elves..."

*looks at my Amarrian ship*

"Or silly dwarves..."

*looks at my Caldari ship*

"Or orcs..."

*looks at my Minmatar ship*

"At least EvE isn't filled with crap that looks like it's from a stupid Japanese cartoon!" they shouted in desperation.

Yes, yes I will concede that point. We still have that uniqueness to cheer about. Oh and hey, have you tried the Corax yet?

Yes. And you can compare EWAR to spell interruption and cc. Where's the problem?

Still mechanics are way more complex in EVE compared to most other MMOs out there. And there's a vast amount of different ships to offer variety.

Add to that the complex skill system. Other games tend to dumb complexity of game mechanics down. Just to think of a comparison: Spell resistances removed in WoW because no one but the hardcore pvpers or raiders were willing to cope with it. And ofc the system had its flaws and Blizzard didn't want to "waste" time on it anymore.

I think CCP is doing a pretty good job overall.

...fondly remembers the days of pen, paper, dice and the first copies of "Chainmail".... weren't no "mana" or Logi's involved.

Oh My God... my car... it needs fuel... how could this be happening?!

It's a conspiracy!!!

There aren't unlimited possibilities of mechanics to put into a game ...

i like warlock space ships adequate dmg,low tank and some magic to boot...tempest.

Gary Gygax ruled eve.

LMFAO!

that's one very impressive jetcan.


27 km^3 = 27 000 000 000 m^3

Depends if he only had room for 12 mana potions in his stupid small Amarr cargo hold.. stupid Zealot you would have been amazing with like 50m3 more