EVE General Discussion

First I have to say, I am a fan of eve online. I simply want a space simulation mmo on the market. However, with the miniscule fanbase that eve online has compared to other MMO's I have always wondered ... what's wrong?

Just to be clear, I have been playing games since I was 5 years old, and am 38 now. I have played Every MMO that has been made starting with EQ, and am a HUGE fan of the genre. Thats 33 years of gaming, and 10+ years of MMOs.

I have even wondered if the model they are working under is capitalism or capitalistic at all. If it was they would be attempting to grow their product and their subscription base. From what I have read the subscription base is around 300k. So, the money CCP must make off the game is good, but from what I have read, they have even attempted to find ways to bring in micro transactions and such to make even more money, and from what I read, this failed dramatically. So it sounds like they are trying to make money to me but they are doing it wrong. Microtransactions are a ploy to milk more money out of existing subscribers rather than growing your client base. So if, you have the entire space sim MMO market basically to yourself and the subscription base is still that small, then there is something wrong with EVE.

So I picked up eve and started playing. Honestly, I am not impressed by what I have found even after playing for only a few days.

1) First the game has almost no variety in station styles. Going from one sector to the next I see the exact same station style everywhere. It is great that there are alot of standard functions within these stations but the graphics themselves are boring because of it, and very repetative.

2) Everything... takes too long. While design decisions have dictated alot of the decisions in this and other games, this game started under a model that was ok in the beginning of MMO's like EQ, but honestly has become obsolete. We still have fortran programs out there, but no one wants to program in fortran anymore, and classic cars are great to look at, but the average person does not want to own one to drive everyday.

This seems like stuborness and lazyness on the designers part. So let me give some specifics that a new player experiences when they come to EVE. They have to level some very early level skills just to do the basic quests, some of which require skills that take a long time to learn. Before you just say, "That's how EVE works" listen in, you kill your customers right here. When I am in the process of doing something specific like a questline, and since I cannot tell the future and go to the next section of a quest and there is a requirement that must be met to have skill X. The quest is good enough to include the skill book for skill X but some of the skills can take a half hour to train. So, while I am in the mood to do the quest, I cannot. I can do something else, but that is not my desire. I want to finish this questline. WAIT! then for a half hour or an hour for the skill to finish then and you can finish the questline! Why?

Aoin is free to play, so why don't I play that for a half hour while I wait for EVE to finish that skill advance. Or you know what, I will just play this other game instead. Done, you have killed a customer.

Oh but we are not finished.

So I got past this first hurdle of inconsideration for my time and kept playing by looking up the questlines and researching more of the game watching videos and such. But mostly I got past this hurdle of poor game design because I have tried to play EVE before and knew these hurdles of illogical nonsense were here and had made me quit before.

So now I have finished the intro missions, and am looking for something to do. So jumping on the chat I ask, "Do sisters of EVE story ARC its awesome."

21 Jump points away. I could spend the next 40 minutes to an hour jumping 21 jump points since the developers have chosen not to include the ability to jump to the location I want to go over even anywhere remotely close to it, or I can just play some other game. But, I want to play a space based MMO. I am trying to be stubborn enough to like a game that doesn't want me to like it by attempting to be so boring and tedious for no reason that I have to endure the game instead of play it. And you know what... I'm 38. I have money. I have patience. But now, I also have perspective. It's just not worth it. So I stopped playing again after jumping around for 20 minutes and still only being partially to my goal system.

I had really hoped to play this game. I have over 500 hours into X3TC and literally would probably play this game for years, but instead of valuing my time and giving me something interactive to work with, this game does everything it can to waste people's time and become nothing other than an endurance test of your patience. I am a programmer by trade, and I know that every single thing in a virutal world can be changed and I have accepted the most ridiculous game decisions over the years in different MMO's but EVE takes the cake.

If you honestly want more money, you have to actually value your customers, and their time. I will not wait 30 minutes for food in a restaurant. I will not wait 5 days for delivery of a purchased CAR. Yet here, in a game, I am supposed to wait for a virtual item to be created that in reality takes a nanosecond to create in game. No, sorry.

"But that creates value because it makes it rarer!" I could not give a crap. I have too much self confidence and self respect for that.

If you want more money, make your game more interesting and value your customers time. Your subscription base will only grow with that respect. The fundamental game play does not need to change as well. Scanning, markets, pvp, missioning, etc. But nothing kills a game faster than being just dull and boring. But once you get into PVP.... Sorry not going to wait that long.

You know, stuff like this holds more water if you post with a character that isn't just five days old. Why? Because in five days you *cannot* hope to have a grasp on the game, and you are even less qualified to start asking for changes in long standing game mechanics than you are justified in voicing your dislike for them this early on.

Play the game for yourself for a few weeks. No, don't just sit holed up in station training skills you think you need. You're new, go explore already, and get to grips with the universe before you develop shut-in *Can't afford to lose x because of y* syndrome.

Whats with the long winded posts lately...I'm tired

tldr Can we have a summary pwease?

You sound like the standard gamer who wants everything quickly, I actually prefer things to take a little longer in so many MMO's today you can hit max level in well under a week if you have the caffeine and time. While long travel time can be annoying I am not a fan of the blink your eyes and you are there, not to mention travel is one of the risks in eve, taking out travel would put all but put an end to any pirates.

Moral of the story is, if you want your instant gratification look elsewhere, go play one of the plethora of MMO's that caters to what you want and leave the good thing that is Eve alone.

PS
When buying a new car if you want any customization you will be waiting a week or more for delivery and in a good restaurant it can easily take 30 minutes to get your food so those points are rather moot.

Posting in a "I want everything now and I don't want to wait thread"

Maybe just maybe its not for you.. plenty of players like the game for what it is (bar some mechanics).

Maybe the 21 jumps is so you can explore and have a look around.
Not all stations are the same (although I'll give you one of the Caldari stations is very prevalent).
30 min for a skill book, wait till your doing Black Ops 5 then you can cry me a river.

For a game thats doing it wrong, 9 years and going on when many others have fallen by the wayside or into obscurity isn't to bad IMHO.

etc. etc.


Tal

Wwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh impatient wwwwaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh do it better myself wwwwwaaaaaaahhhh 30 min to train a skill WTF wwwwwwaaaaahhhhhhhhhh

That's about it



Tal

The only thing that takes long is training skills, and that's because they went with a model that promotes playing the actual game rather than engaging in a dolled-up version of ProgressQuest. This is one of the best design decisions in the game.

The rest is just a matter of having a large game world, and it has the exact same causes and effects as in any other MMO.

The reason EVE has “only” 450k subscribers is because it's a full-PvP sandbox game where you have to entertain yourself, rather than have the game entertain you and protect you from the vagaries of other people's behaviour. Some people like this game style; some don't. Trying to change your audience pretty much universally has one result: you end up with no audience at all.

If you get tired waiting for a skill to finish in 30 minutes I wonder what would happen when you finally encounter the 30 day + skills

hell i had like 2500 skill points when I started out...


if he can't wait 30 minutes now, better to cut his losses, because he likely won't want to wait for anything else either, and eve involves some waiting...

tl;dr blah blah blah I quit because stuff takes to long.