EVE General Discussion

Before I get into my post proper, I wanted to frame this conversation with the prelude that I personally adore the way that eve currently is. While the things that are put forth in this may seem like a watering down of eve, I feel to encourage the growth of its population and to help muster more people into the core of what Eve really is, some changes of eve's presentation needs to be made.

To quote Sion Kumitomo, "Eve is about people." You can create more attractive belts, but still "Eve is about people." You can create better tutorials, but still "Eve is about people." You can increase rewards and re-balance ships, but still "Eve is about people." At the core of Eve is people. People make their own goals. People set their own training paths. People choose what ships they fly, and even who they fly them with. The people that play eve do so because it is their choice. Therefore, to determine why people play eve, one must examine what they see, and what they "get out of it" when they play the game.

To understand what I mean, one must also understand the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. If you are familiar with EvE, you already have a good grasp of Intrinsic rewards. In Eve, success is measured by whatever standard you as a player determines, be it running a large corporation, destroying titans, or even hauling 10 exotic dancers to HED-GP....in a jump freighter.....while afk. Whatever your measure of success, be it short term or long term, the player is the one that decides what that measure is. "Eve is about people."

But if you look at what players try eve, you notice a disturbing trend.

In many other MMO's, the game is NOT about people. There are definable goals, and few choices. Take the game "World of Warcraft" for example. In WoW, there is a well known saying, many of you are sure to have heard it before in some form or another, even if you don't play WoW. "The game doesn't start until you are max level." That is to say, the game doesn't become about people until you are max level. Until you are max level, there truly aren't going to be that many differences between you, and a player completely different from you. You are going to do the same dungeons. You are going to complete the same quests. In fact, you are even going to kill the exact same "generic bad guy threatening to destroy everything....again." So why is it that people can grind through however many levels it is to get to max level in WoW? Simply put, its because of the extrinsic rewards for doing so.

In Eve, you complete a mission, get however many isk, gain your standing, bank your LP, and the mission is over. There is nothing else to measure that in fact, you the player, has achieved something of note. This leads to the complaint that many new players have always voiced, "It's boring." I would argue that the failing is not on the game's side, but on the diction that these players used. They say the words "It's boring," when they mean to convey "I wasn't stimulated enough." In fact, if you add in another saying about eve, that "Eve is a job," then you start to see parallels, namely that eve is devoid of the stimuli that constitute a game, at least in the eye of these beholders, and, mentally, these people move Eve into the category of work, and not pleasure. If you move your attention back to WoW, as already stated, you find many of the same tasks. You still have fetch missions. You still have go there and kill that missions. In fact, at the very core of the missions/quests, you find that there isn't much difference between the nature of Eve's missions, and the nature of WoW's quests. But if you look at WoW, why is it that people can do the same missions, day after day, getting the exact same rewards, and never claim "It's boring?" I would argue its because WoW makes ample use of extrinsic rewards. Take a simple quest where you have to go kill 5 of whatevers, the same as many level 1 missions in EvE. Instead of cash just being transferred to your account, the reward is immediately visible, not buried beneath a wall of text. The reward is instantly apparent. Also, there is one thing at the end of every quest in WoW that eve is sorely lacking in, Stimulation. At the completion of all quests in it, WoW plays a fanfare. While this may be easily overlooked or dismissed, and in fact for many it consciously is, sub-consciously it adds a reward to the player, a stimulation, something to note the completion which keeps the player coming back. We are all people, and we can all be conditioned.

The issue stands that for many video game players, they have come to demand, or even need, a reward of that nature. Akin to a drug addict, they cannot process things normally without it, and some find its lack so dominant that they can no longer process the pleasure of completing something with the majority of the reward being intrinsic. I feel as long as CCP doesn't address this, then eventually, eve will exist solely as a small core of players, and will not be able to grow into the dominant force that it should be.

Now, to solve this, I only really see two options.
A) CCP starts to emulate games such as WoW, and begins to reward players much more extrinsically. To me, this is a poor choice, because the players that are in Eve are not here because they like wow. They play eve because they love eve. To emulate WoW would be what I view as a slap in the face, and an execution of the game that we have come to love.

Remember, Eve is about people. So to me, the only option would be:

B) Early in the game, and I mean barely after tutorials, eve needs a way to encourage, or even force, people to be confronted with the fact that eve is about people, and therefore they need to fly with people, to get the most out of eve. Basically what I am recommending is that early on in the game, eve needs something to force players to work together, meet other players, and start forming relations. °(^(☥)^)°

Man, is it great wall of text week or something?

About motivation: ISK is enough. Maybe some achievements could be added, but that wouldn't end so well for the ... hmm... peace loving .... community in EVE if it's viewable by "wrong" groups of players.

About forcing players: Forcing players to do anything, especially early in the game, would not end well for the game. Diversity is what keeps EVE alive and interesting. Killing the "solo" aspect of the game from the beginning would kill the game.

OP.
Doing it wrong.

Hell, who reads this?
No proper formatting,
reading it is boring,
Paragraphs are a luxury.

something about how wow players come to eve run missions, get bored and leave cause they think eve is another 'run around kill crap with sticks lvl up' game.

With an idea on how to force players to realize eve is about people

Really, that very last part about forcing people together stands on its own.

The entire post preceding it is an unrelated stream of conciousness in which OP goes from "WoW has something EVE doesn't and needs it to get new players" to "all WoW has is skinner-box-like mechanics that take a virtual job and trick people feeling good for doing it, so EVE really shouldn't be like that".

Which I completely agree with.

In before griefers call Ralph a monster for "shooting for recruiting",
a tradition I can confirm to be as old as the game itself.

IIRC right after the end of the noob tutorials (possibly Combat II Advanced Combat) you get a "hey join FW today!" token.

But yes, I agree that "shove new players into working with people" is a good thing. However, newbros need protection from

1. idiot vets who've spent the last 10 years in noob corps, and give the newbros the impression that they can "Just level their raven"

2. themselves. They don't know any better, and "newbro corp of newbros #384763428905473" gets created, dec'd by "2 man corp of 3 year vets" and dissolves because they can't mission / mine / whatever anymore.

I miss the old *DING*! from Everquest levelup - can have that as my extrinsic reward every time I get another like in the forums?