EVE General Discussion

You're the one that's been playing this game for 2 years.

Nuff said.

/me shakes spray can

Hahaha, well, to be fair, UO is a much older game. You could open your bankbox by clicking on bankers. The typing was allowed for roleplayers

You don't need to spend a PLEX to get some hair.

No amount of PLEX spent will make your rants better.

I agree... shallow and pedantic

I'm not sure why people keep nagging on my length of stay in New Eden. It's not like playing this game any longer or something would give my original post a sense of authority that magically makes it more valid. The points I raised would be there whether I was a 1 day old player, or if I've been playing since 03

I'd ask for your stuff, but you probably have nothing.

While I agree that many of the very basic game play elements, the PVE side of things, could always stand improvement (and CCP has always agreed with this) you also need to understand that PVE has never been the focus or core game play of EVE.

You choose to stick with the simplest tasks available, and then complain that they are not challenging enough....

To a greater degree than any other game (online or otherwise) I can think of, EVE requires you to "make your own game".

Yes, gameplay is unpolished in a lot of areas. Missioning in particular is so flawed as to be broken in my view; I keep hoping that CCP will dedicate a release to nothing but bringing the missioning system up to par, but no luck so far. CCP is great about keeping game mechanics updated and adding new content, but iterating on old content? Not so much. (See: incursions, FW, etc. All are completely broken to some degree or other.)

Yet EVE is still the only game that really draws me in after all these years. It's the game economy more than anything that pulls me in -- almost everything in the game is created by and driven by other players. If you like to set your own goals and work towards achieving them, there's no better game out there to do that than EVE IMO. But if you like a guided, channeled, well-drawn experience...the game is not for you.

That being said, though, I do wish CCP would invest some more time and creative talent in actual storytelling in EVE (through the missioning system, FW, and Incursions, and maybe special events). The lore of New Eden is very deep and interesting, but CCP -- for some reason that escapes me completely -- chooses not to tell the story of EVE inside the game. You have to go to the website or to the books to learn that story. Otherwise, to most players, the factions and politics in the game are just fancy wallpaper. I think CCP is feeling a little burned after the "Incarna" fiasco, frankly.

EVE draws an older, more engaged player-base. Many of the players have been in the game for years -- some since it first launched nearly 10 years ago. The game is molded to cater to the vets rather than the noobs (though CCP has been trying to make the game more noob-friendly), and the gameplay reflects that. I think it's a mistake for CCP to defer to the bittervets so much, but that's water long since gone under the bridge.

tl;dr: Ultimately, EVE is what you make of it. It's not a novel; it's a pile of blank pages and a pen.

Depends on who you blow up.

Indeed.

I would also point out that making missions more challenging is one of the core elements of the next expansion... smarter NPC AI. Although I will also acknowledge that this is only a baby step in the right direction.

FW is another currently existing way for PVP to pay the bills, although that needs some serious fixes as well. Again, improvements inbound in the next expansion.

And finally, the new bounty system... which is probably the poster child for "lets help make PVP pay the bills" by introducing a viable bounty hunter class.

Yes, for many people level 4 missions pay their PVP bills currently... and this needs to change. However, keep in mind that part of the reason for this is that they are currently relatively simply to do, and very predictable income.

One thing that CCP has to keep in mind that some people WANT something relatively mindless to do on occasion to earn their daily bread... so instead of sweeping changes they seem to be focusing on small improvements to this very basic game play, and developing more challenging alternative forms of that style of game play to coexist with them.

Look at ratting, missions, Incursions, and WH's... all variations on the same theme but of varying levels of complexity (with more to come I am sure). The options for belt and comet mining that keeps resurfacing as a discussion for more challenging content for miners is another example that has not yet reached fruition.

Still, with all that being said, missions are not and were never intended to be the main draw or core game play of EVE. It is simply a means to an end, that end being the more challenging and unpredictable content created through player interaction.