EVE General Discussion

Part 2

PARALLELS

The first game I ever played with full world open PVP was Ultima Online. This was in the 90's, back when my parents had AOL dialup on a 28.8 modem. I was 14 maybe. It was the first MMO that had a true sandbox style of play. You could guild up with like-minded individuals and accumulate wealth through trades like blacksmithy and bowcraft and mining (industry?), you could hunt those who had fallen to evil ways (bounty hunting?), or you could be the most feared group of murderers and thieves imaginable (piracy?). Territory was held by economic supremacy and brute force (buy a castle, kill anyone who comes into your territory). Hell even miners were picked on constantly. There was a town called Minoc with a big mine just outside the town line. Murderers would roll through it and kill all the carebears, leaving their piles of ore on the ground and slaying their pack animals.

The years went by. Every new patch moved the game in a specific direction, almost imperceptibly, until the day they introduced Trammel. It was then I knew that the game I had loved for years was well and truly dead. Basically, they split the game into two worlds, Trammel and Felucca. Trammel was a carebear paradise themepark. No PVP, no looting player corpses, no rewards from monsters unless you hit them first. They removed 90% of the risk, removed 90% of the penalties for death, and added a ton of carebear focused features. The population became selfish and entitled, risk-averse, entirely focused on a carebear grind so they could buy a house and display their shiny 2D pixels on the front porch.

Felucca was the old world, open PVP and no rules. It was a wasteland. The pecking order was gone, the rewards for being in Felucca were minimal. Origin Systems, under the heel of EA Games, had catered to the carebears with gusto. In short, there was no reason to play anymore unless you enjoyed a slow grind for very little reason. It was the first step for the industry toward WoW themepark-style MMOs. The very game that in closed beta allowed creator Richard Garriot's character to be cooked alive in a wall of flames during a speech (http://ultima.wikia.com/wiki/Killing_Lord_British), had descended into a carebear hell of endless grind with no risk or final goal.

It was a loss for the fledgling world of persistent-world online games, and Blizzard watched it happen from the shadows. It's fair to say that WoW rose from the ashes of the sandbox MMO and an endless line of clones followed...

...Until a company called CCP created Eve Online.

(Part 3 follows)

Part 4

THE PROCESS OF DEGRADATION

So now that we are aware that there is an existing case study in how an open sandbox game can degenerate into a WoW-like carebear themepark, we can come up with a set of prerequisites and observable steps from one extreme to the other.

In both cases, the game started as a harsh and dangerous world where stepping out of the safety of established territory (towns, .8 - 1.0 systems) carried big risks for those that didn't understand the mechanics of the game. Those who did had the freedom to be very creative in how they played the game.

In both cases, it was the more risk-averse and self-entitled gamers that became the loudest and most vocal. In both cases this subset of the population believed that the game was stacked against them, that they were victims of the system. It did not enter their minds that they might just be playing the wrong game. This segment of the population believes whole heartedly that it is the game that is flawed. In Ultima Online, this came from the miners outside Minoc who were preyed on by "reds" and the dungeon carebears that thought it was unfair when 5 guys sweeped through "their" dungeon murdering as they went. In Eve it is the miners in the belts who have complained for years that they are victims of depraved lunatics who are abusing the rules of the game to cause them harm. It is the mission runners that complain when they don't background check people who then go on safari and blow up their billion-isk carebear boats. "The game isn't fair!" they cry to the developers. "It should be against the rules to make me change my behavior!"

So they file petitions, they file GM tickets, they cry on the forums. They respond to any outside influence that disturbs their gameplay with vulgarity, fallacious logic and/or an astonishing degree of hostility.

Watch the number of TL;DR posts, posts that insinuate I have a mental disorder and need medication, posts accusing me of being James' alt, and posts full of outright hostility that this thread will gather.

Little by little the endless stream of this feedback influences development decisions. Each new iteration of the game, each new patch, takes away a little of the initial freedom and adds a little consequence. This is not the fault of the developers. They're listening to the loudest voices. Players like myself don't file a petition when the developers take away some of my freedom; that sounds absurd. But should it? I miss the danger that used to be present in HighSec. I miss seeing badgers named "Grand Theft Ore" flying around asteroid belts yoinking ore from jetcans. I miss watching people who couldn't be bothered to understand aggression mechanics get canflipped and shot. Those are parts of the game I love that will never come back.

Ask yourself this: How much does Eve really punish players now who can't be bothered to think and understand the game? How smart and on your toes do you actually have to be now to survive in the game and make progress? Trammel was the result of people who believe that if a game's rules did not cater to what they want to do, the game is flawed and it is the responsibility of the developers to fix it.

And Eve HighSec is quite a bit more than halfway to Trammel.

(Part 5 follows)

Wall-o-text taken to a whole new level.
Did not read.

This will be a productive thread.

whatevah...

Dude.

Meine augen!

This thread is probably part of the griefing process.

Confirming that threads about James315 are started by loonies these days.

"I am simply a humble pilot. James 315 is awesome. Repent!"

Or something like that...

I have to say, what James does doesnt affect my game, and I dont really take notice of his actions or forum posts about it.

However I agree with what you are saying and if Eve ever did really lose the risk element in EVERY PART OF NEW EDEN, I would quit. I know many other would to. Not because I am a pirate, ganker or anything, I dont harvest 'tears' I simply pvp. Everywhere.

If the day came that I can not pvp anywhere I want to (by honourable or nefarious means, whichever I fancy at the time) I will quit Eve.