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On a per minute basis, is Eve the most boring game you've ever played?
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Infinity Ziona
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#61 - 2015-03-17 19:39:57 UTC
Jenn aSide wrote:
Infinity Ziona wrote:
Little Kicks wrote:
I was reading the post about subscriber numbers, and one thing that kept jumping out at me was the speculation on the number of alts people use. Even the phrase "alt online". It got me thinking, why does this game have so many dual subscribers? (or triple and beyond?)

If I play a racing game, a strategy game, shooter, sports... anything, I don't try to play the game from two angles to maximize my winning. There is too much/enough for me to manage as one player.

Not Eve. "Align to", "Orbit", cap stable infinite reps or boosts or lazers. You can run one account doing a boring function that another player would never want do (hang outside the station and run this booster), while trying to get some action on another account.

So back to my question. When you play Eve, are the individual tasks you need accomplished so boring that you add a second account to play simultaneously? Or do you maybe add a second account because corpmates are unreliable?

As someone who has been here from the very beginning I can give you a good idea of what went wrong and why EvE turned from a really exciting and fun game to what it is generally today.

When the game released it was pretty simple in terms of gameplay. Simple is not bad, it was a lot of fun actually. The different classes worked normally, as you would expect they would. Frigates were fast but cruisers destroyed them one on one, cruisers were fast and powerful, battleships could blap a frigate as one would expect they would and could blap a cruiser in two shots.

Things were good, we had infamous and feared pirate groups hanging around HED-GP, we had a lot of solo pirates in low sec, anti-pirate hunters groups and industrialists and miners. Subscriptions and server records were going up.

Unfortunately CCP got it into their heads that MMO meant people had to be forced to play cooperatively in large groups rather than its original definition of players playing together (cooperatively and against each other) on a single server or cluster of servers. So they decided rather than give players functional ships, they would break the ships abilities up and put them onto multiple hulls (extreme examples being Arazu and its fellow recons), ships could tackle but they couldn't kill, ships could tank but they couldn't dps. To have a functional attack unit you needed multiple people now.

Of course the one problem with that is the popularity of soloing (convenience, dont' have to split income, time to put together and coordinate a gang) so of course people started to use alts. CCP continued to push their idea of MMO meaning cooperative, implementing bonuses, implants, skills that only worked in gangs, so when people didn't or couldn't get a gang they used alts for those things.

Other factors exist too, like the blind jumping into systems requiring scouts, mining vessel cargo capacity requiring haulers etc etc.

So we have alts online now.


Translaiton : CCP turned EVE into an MMO. Those changes happened for a reason, being able to blap a cruiser in 2 shots meant "why fly a cruiser, just get a BS". That's an unhealthy gaming environment, now is actually much better, get friends or (less efficiently) use alts. A side effect is it mean more revenue for CCP as there are plenty of us who are not of the 'solo' mentality and would not care for a game where the solution to everything was "just get a battleship".

An MMO is a central game that's populated by players in the same world. That's the definition.

Not really. Given the cost of a battleship compared to a cruiser, it made total sense then, as it does now that a cruiser could be blapped by a few shots from a battleship. If you wanted to kill a battleship with cruisers in the early game you used a gang of cruisers. Likewise, killing a cruiser required a number of frigates.

A healthy game environment translates into consistent growth. EvE numbers are stagnant.

Its not better for CCP, CCP like any games company would want to see GROWTH. The requirement to have multiple accounts doesn't help CCP, it harms them. It translates to a cost for users of 2 subscriptions (roughly double the cost of the average MMO) minimum which turns off customers not encourages them.

CCP Fozzie “We can see how much money people are making in nullsec and it is, a gigantic amount, a shit-ton… in null sec anomalies. “*

Kaalrus pwned..... :)
Jenn aSide
Worthless Carebears
The Initiative.
#62 - 2015-03-17 19:40:36 UTC
Jenshae Chiroptera wrote:
In large part I think alts are a result of play denial tactics.


How exactly? Alts in my experience are play enablers.

Back before I had an alt, I lived in Null (the south, Omist and Detorid and such). I found that I had to make the choice between staying with where my alliance (Atlas) as or jump cloning down south to rat (or to empire to run missions if there were no war decs). It was in the same months before that when I was in faciton warfare, I could either lead a fleet against the 'Squids' (Caldari milita) or i could retreat into high sec to run mission to get ships to throw at the Squids.

My very 1st alt was made and trained to use a Transport so I could take my loot down the jump bridge network, which allowed my to jump my pvp character back to the staging system. I actually made it into fights because of that. My alt enabled that.
Jenn aSide
Worthless Carebears
The Initiative.
#63 - 2015-03-17 19:48:11 UTC  |  Edited by: Jenn aSide
Infinity Ziona wrote:

An MMO is a central game that's populated by players in the same world. That's the definition.

Not really. Given the cost of a battleship compared to a cruiser, it made total sense then, as it does now that a cruiser could be blapped by a few shots from a battleship. If you wanted to kill a battleship with cruisers in the early game you used a gang of cruisers. Likewise, killing a cruiser required a number of frigates.


Which is the point. At some point, people (most gamers min/max) just end up in the best ship. The 'solopwnmobile' BS had to be stopped before everyone ended up in one (which they would have because peopel are also really good at learning how to make isk and CCP aided that by adding ever more isk faucets).

CCP short circited that by making BSs unable to insta blap smaller ships. This was good because it gave peopel reason to cooperate and reasons to fly other ships. It's too bad for you that this goes counter to your solo preference, but it was better for the game over all.
Quote:

A healthy game environment translates into consistent growth. EvE numbers are stagnant.


CCP changed battleships a decade ago. EVE didn't stop viably growing till a year or 2 ago. There is no reasonable correlation, unless you think it takes 8 years for the change to affect subs. The most likely truth her is the CCP making EVE more cooperative in this case accelerated growth. i know that I wouldn't have played a game were you could do nothing but die till you had enough SP to fly a BS.

The real situation here is that you like solo and think that should be the way. Like I said, it's probably bad for you but it's good for the rest of us and the game in general that CCP doesn't cater to solo types.

Quote:

Its not better for CCP, CCP like any games company would want to see GROWTH. The requirement to have multiple accounts doesn't help CCP, it harms them. It translates to a cost for users of 2 subscriptions (roughly double the cost of the average MMO) minimum which turns off customers not encourages them.


And yet here you and I still are.
Infinity Ziona
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#64 - 2015-03-17 19:49:49 UTC
Jenn aSide wrote:
Jenshae Chiroptera wrote:
In large part I think alts are a result of play denial tactics.


How exactly? Alts in my experience are play enablers.

Back before I had an alt, I lived in Null (the south, Omist and Detorid and such). I found that I had to make the choice between staying with where my alliance (Atlas) as or jump cloning down south to rat (or to empire to run missions if there were no war decs). It was in the same months before that when I was in faciton warfare, I could either lead a fleet against the 'Squids' (Caldari milita) or i could retreat into high sec to run mission to get ships to throw at the Squids.

My very 1st alt was made and trained to use a Transport so I could take my loot down the jump bridge network, which allowed my to jump my pvp character back to the staging system. I actually made it into fights because of that. My alt enabled that.

That's funny. You just gave me a lecture about how its great players are forced to cooperate and then you outline how you trained up a hauler alt so you could solo haul your loot without having to cooperate with your corp industrialists to get your stuff moved....

CCP Fozzie “We can see how much money people are making in nullsec and it is, a gigantic amount, a shit-ton… in null sec anomalies. “*

Kaalrus pwned..... :)
Jenn aSide
Worthless Carebears
The Initiative.
#65 - 2015-03-17 19:52:22 UTC
Infinity Ziona wrote:
Jenn aSide wrote:
Jenshae Chiroptera wrote:
In large part I think alts are a result of play denial tactics.


How exactly? Alts in my experience are play enablers.

Back before I had an alt, I lived in Null (the south, Omist and Detorid and such). I found that I had to make the choice between staying with where my alliance (Atlas) as or jump cloning down south to rat (or to empire to run missions if there were no war decs). It was in the same months before that when I was in faciton warfare, I could either lead a fleet against the 'Squids' (Caldari milita) or i could retreat into high sec to run mission to get ships to throw at the Squids.

My very 1st alt was made and trained to use a Transport so I could take my loot down the jump bridge network, which allowed my to jump my pvp character back to the staging system. I actually made it into fights because of that. My alt enabled that.

That's funny. You just gave me a lecture about how its great players are forced to cooperate and then you outline how you trained up a hauler alt so you could solo haul your loot without having to cooperate with your corp industrialists to get your stuff moved....


My corp didn't have industrialists until after that. At which point that alt became the PVE alt so i didn't have to jump clone my pvp toon at all. You are aware that it's easier to train a hauling alt than it is one capable of running null anoms , so i trained hauling 1st. Eventually that same alt was trained to use a jump frieghter (after it could fly a Domi in anoms) and ....did corp logistics for people.
Thorn en Distel
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#66 - 2015-03-17 20:05:22 UTC  |  Edited by: Thorn en Distel
I have seen quite a few different reasons over the years. All in subscription based games, mind, so quite costly in some cases:

- The game does not let you mail items (let alone contract them), so you need an alt to sit in a fixed place to trade guild stuff to guild mates (POTBS)
- The game does not allow you to have more than 1 character per account per server, and has strict limitations on how many skills a character can have at one time. To explore multiple skills, and for things like buffing your own main for PVP, multiple accounts are needed (SWG)
- Some professions in the game (e.g. stone tanker in COH) are unable to solo. Since you cannot always depend on guildmates to help you out with levelling, having a second character to boost the primary, is helpful.
- You run out of character slots and you haven't tried all possible skill combinations / costume options yet (COH/COV)
- In most faction based PVP games, playing multiple factions on the same account is either impossible or a bannable offense. People circumvent that by getting a spy account
- You run out of storage space on your main account
- You need multiple accounts to maximize your economy (resource harvesting, production, etc.)
- You bought a game for your niece but your sister is horrified and won't let her play it, and it's such a waste not to use the account...

There's probably a zillion more reasons.

And oh, in EVE specifically: it takes too long to train up to do all the things you want to try... so multiple accounts is the way to go unless you want to wait a few years.
Infinity Ziona
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#67 - 2015-03-17 20:06:09 UTC  |  Edited by: Infinity Ziona
Jenn aSide wrote:
Infinity Ziona wrote:

An MMO is a central game that's populated by players in the same world. That's the definition.

Not really. Given the cost of a battleship compared to a cruiser, it made total sense then, as it does now that a cruiser could be blapped by a few shots from a battleship. If you wanted to kill a battleship with cruisers in the early game you used a gang of cruisers. Likewise, killing a cruiser required a number of frigates.


Which is the point. At some point, people (most gamers min/max) just end up in the best ship. The 'solopwnmobile' BS had to be stopped before everyone ended up in one (which they would have because peopel are also really good at learning how to make isk and CCP aided that by adding ever more isk faucets).

CCP short circited that by making BSs unable to insta blap smaller ships. This was good because it gave peopel reason to cooperate and reasons to fly other ships. It's too bad for you that this goes counter to your solo preference, but it was better for the game over all.
Quote:

A healthy game environment translates into consistent growth. EvE numbers are stagnant.


CCP changed battleships a decade ago. EVE didn't stop viably growing till a year or 2 ago. There is no reasonable correlation, unless you think it takes 8 years for the change to affect subs. The most likely truth her is the CCP making EVE more cooperative in this case accelerated growth. i know that I wouldn't have played a game were you could do nothing but die till you had enough SP to fly a BS.

The real situation here is that you like solo and think that should be the way. Like I said, it's probably bad for you but it's good for the rest of us and the game in general that CCP doesn't cater to solo types.

Quote:

Its not better for CCP, CCP like any games company would want to see GROWTH. The requirement to have multiple accounts doesn't help CCP, it harms them. It translates to a cost for users of 2 subscriptions (roughly double the cost of the average MMO) minimum which turns off customers not encourages them.


And yet here you and I still are.


Not really. Given the cost of a battleship compared to a cruiser, it made total sense then, as it does now that a cruiser could be blapped by a few shots from a battleship. If you wanted to kill a battleship with cruisers in the early game you used a gang of cruisers. Likewise, killing a cruiser required a number of frigates.

Except they weren't the "best ships". Cruisers were faster and cheaper. Frigates were even faster and much much cheaper. Solopwnmobiles didn't exist simply because they could still be completely destroyed by a gang of smaller ships at half the cost. 5 cruisers could kill a battleship, you'd lose 2 or 3 but the end result was the so-called solopwnmobile died, and cost the pilot twice as much as the losses to the cruiser gang. That's balance.


Subscriptions continued to grow but its a dubious assumption to say it accelerated growth. It may well have slowed growth. When EvE released it was looking and people expected it to be a huge success. Its been successful but not in the way it may have been. If they'd done it correctly they may have hit the 1 to 2 million mark, which is modest in terms of the success of other games that catered to both group and solo players.


I'm still here but that's only because I'm stubborn. I found a way to solo successfully but it requires a lot of patience and understanding of game mechanics. The average player not as gifted and talented as myself would likely not take the time to do what I do.

CCP Fozzie “We can see how much money people are making in nullsec and it is, a gigantic amount, a shit-ton… in null sec anomalies. “*

Kaalrus pwned..... :)
Harry Saq
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#68 - 2015-03-17 20:54:44 UTC  |  Edited by: Harry Saq
Jenn aSide wrote:
Harry Saq wrote:
It is functional bad mechanics and design, but still bad mechanics and design. I have three accounts, and completely understand why I have them, but I am not going to delude myself into giving credit where it is not due.

If this game were a real time strategy game, then the alts we all use would simply be units, but they are designed and meant to be avatars of us (or rather our will) in the Eve universe. Therefore, the usage of alts is indicative of bad overall design, plain and simple, notice I didn't say unfun, or oh my gosh horrible, just a statement of design execution to the type of game. Right now eve is more of a hybrid MMO between single avatar and real time strategy.

Like I said, it is what it is, and trying to pretend otherwise is wasteful delusion, and leads to piling on additional bad mechanics on top of already bad mechanics, until you identify what it is you are designing towards.

...this is essentially how you get more and more modules that you simply turn on and wait out a cycle, that's just poor design, and massively missed opportunity. A great deal of core eve functions are basically emulating washing your laundry, except you are forced to literally stand by the washing machine for it to work. In all cases where this is true...go ahead and insert an alt and call it real time strategy and pretend it isn't bad design and some greater genius (which it isn't).

It is really that simple when you boil it down. Like I said, it is what it is, and as long as it is recognized as such, there is potential to make it better, otherwise just enjoy watching your laundry out of your peripheral vision while paying to set up another load elsewhere ;)


I'm sorry but that's just personal preference talking. EVE isn't really a real time Strategy game and when we play with alts we are actually more closely portraying the Demi-Gods EVE Capsuleers are supposed to be. A Demi-God wouldn't be sitting there saying "I really want to Conquer Tribute tonight, but I have to haul these modules to Jita to get some Isk to keep my pilots license active" lol. A Demi-God would clone himself and use himself to do his own bidding. Thus alts (CCP can thank me for the Lore help later).

I don't see where EVe has bad general game design with the one exception of mining.


You are rationalizing.

Never said Eve was a real time strategy game, I said "If this game were a real time strategy game..." which I then used to provide broader definition to mechanics design.

In terms of Lore, we are God-like in reference to our SINGULAR toon that can endlessly regenerate through cloning and our SINGULAR instance conscience transferal, NOT that we are Demi-Gods controlling multiple entirely different personae all at once (i.e. alts). The lore is simply what justifies our perpetual life, clone jumping, and podding survival. Your example is not part of actual lore, or even actual game mechanics, as you can only be IN ONE clone at a time. Everything else was your imagined rationale.

Ninja Edit: Jenn aSide, didn't mean to sound so harsh/contentious, should have left out "imagined rational" or phrased with something along the lines that your arguments were rationalizing a viewpoint that isn't supported by the lore. I fully support an active imagination otherwise ;)
Scira Crimson
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#69 - 2015-03-17 23:54:36 UTC  |  Edited by: Scira Crimson
When I played my first online games over 10 years ago having more than 1 account was forbidden(even if they were not on at the same time, so maybe I am biased here, but I think I can bring up reasonable arguments why this makes sense.

-We play an MMO! This means people interaction with each other and not have an environment which encourages player to seperate from each other. Multiaccounts reduce player interactions meaningfulness.

-it makes skill specialisation trivial. Why interact in a corp, if you can have 3 alts which can do the same things all at once? Why trade your scrapmodules to a scrap specialized corp member, if you can just create an alt for it?

-its unfair, because player interaction has a so called "interaction loss" which is the result of slower information transfer. So basically (if a certain activity does not exceeds a certain rate of complexetivity) 5 alts are better than 5 real player, because those 5 alts can be synchronized.
The game should have the "player interaction loss" in mind and encourage and reward it. (it probably does, but I am just saying it)

-as somebody else said: it translates into a bigger effective subscirption fee. If everybody had 2 accounts, having one account would be some kind of "super trial version" which is ofc inferior to having 2 accounts. Personally Id prefer to pay more, but then dont be gimped for just having 1 account. (cynofields, I am looking at you!)

-I even think that encouraging multisubscriptions is not economical reasonable in the long term. Probably it works well now, but the point is that growth is generated through mouth to mouth propaganda and player advertising. Having few player with many subscription might lead to a snowballing decline one day.
Personally I dont know a single person who playes Eve Online or even spoke of it, so if I wasnt interested in the game by myself I would have never been introduced to it. And having people attracting other people to a game is surely a massive growth component.

-it makes character identification inconsistant. I am not talking about creating alts to spy, but it takes away from immersion and sense of "avatar". For me this is not a big point, but I know there are a lot of people who want to identify with their character (all people do this, but some to more and some to less extend).
Having a game which encourages multiaccounts takes away from this. Your character becomes exchangeable and is not more than a cargo container with SP in it.

-it undermines game mechanics. I think the game has already adapted around this situation (which is bad, because actually the situation should be adapted around the game!)
Meaning: Its almost mandatory to have more than 1 account to play the game "properly".
Hell, when it has become a common thing to advise the use of alts in YT guides there surely is something wrong!


My conclusion:

Multiaccounting hurts the integrety of the game a lot but its probably economical reasonable for CCP to allow it, but as I said it can easily backfire in a few years (and then everybody will be surprised how it happend!)
Allowing Multiaccounts has definitly nothing to do with good game design, its selling out quality for money.
Even if CCP decided to disallow multiaccounts completly they would still be in the game. But this is no excuse.
Personally I wouldnt mind it too much if somebody illegaly has multiaccounts, the point is that is should be officially disallowed. Also you cannot say that botting is ok, because there will always be somebody who bypasses botchecks. This is no valid argument. (I want to stress this, because in many forums people use this type of argument which is so silly! Its just wrong logic)

The only point why Multiaccounting might be acceptable is, that though there are a lot of seemingly afk and offline actitivties, economcal progress is strongly tied to activity. (This is a good thing!) Yes, you can make 20 PI Alts, but then you will have to do a lot of work.

But still I think overall allowing multiaccounts is a bad game design philosophy. You dont even have to disallow it, but the game encourages it. This is the problem!
Dont design the game in a way that you NEED multiaccounts to be effective!

PS.:

Just imagine you play chess 1vs1 and suddently your opponent takes figures from another chess board and exchanges one peasant with a 2nd queen. How ridiculous!
But this is actually a 1:1 analogy to eve onlines multiaccounting!
JackknifedII
The Congregation
RAPID HEAVY ROPERS
#70 - 2015-03-17 23:59:30 UTC
I only play because of the people I play with.

It's been the case since early 2006.

It's the people that make the game.

Minmatar....we are generally unpleasant to be around....

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC81MDW6dFa41VdNTt-pTl1Q

Always recruiting
Mark Jahir
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#71 - 2015-03-18 00:01:43 UTC
Not gonna lie

lost interest in this game within 14 days
Commentus Nolen
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#72 - 2015-03-18 00:26:02 UTC
Jenn aSide wrote:
Little Kicks wrote:
I was reading the post about subscriber numbers, and one thing that kept jumping out at me was the speculation on the number of alts people use. Even the phrase "alt online". It got me thinking, why does this game have so many dual subscribers? (or triple and beyond?)

If I play a racing game, a strategy game, shooter, sports... anything, I don't try to play the game from two angles to maximize my winning. There is too much/enough for me to manage as one player.

Not Eve. "Align to", "Orbit", cap stable infinite reps or boosts or lazers. You can run one account doing a boring function that another player would never want do (hang outside the station and run this booster), while trying to get some action on another account.

So back to my question. When you play Eve, are the individual tasks you need accomplished so boring that you add a second account to play simultaneously? Or do you maybe add a second account because corpmates are unreliable?



The problem with posts like these is that you've already come to a (rather ignorant) conclusion and are just looking for confirmation rather than a discussion.

My 2nd (and 3rd and 4th) accounts are there to give me more options. When null is too hot for ratting, I log in my low sec lvl 5 mission runner or my incursion alt or my fw mission alt.. Or when Im flying a carrier in fleet, I might have an alt in a bomber flying support for that same fleet etc,

[quote]If you think eve is boring, it means you are one of those video gaming adrenaline junkies who made a poor choice in playing EVE in the 1st place.
[/quote]

No "computer" game has ever given me the adrenaline rush this game has given me. Traveling through null while being hunted by a group of players, wondering what is on the other side of this gate or a group of gankers enter the system I am mining in.. Sometimes it gets so bad I get adrenaline fatigue and have to go do something else to calm down. I am not sure why, maybe because of what I could lose. Maybe over time I will grow accustomed to it or maybe not. So in my view this game is an adrenaline junkies game through and through just not all the time.
Jenshae Chiroptera
#73 - 2015-03-18 00:55:11 UTC
Jenn aSide wrote:
Jenshae Chiroptera wrote:
In large part I think alts are a result of play denial tactics.
How exactly? Alts in my experience are play enablers.t.
Station camped - play alt.
AFK cloaker camped - play alt
War dec you can't fight - play alt

That sort of thing.

CCP - Building ant hills and magnifying glasses for fat kids

Not even once

EVE is becoming shallow and puerile; it will satisfy neither the veteran nor the "WoW" type crowd in the transition.
Little Kicks
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#74 - 2015-03-18 01:51:36 UTC  |  Edited by: Little Kicks
Guys, even better discussion today. Thank you for these ideas and honesty. This is the conversation I was hoping to have day 1, instead of apologizing to boring people being boring about boring. Honestly this topic has the wrong title, pointing to only one touchstone of discussion.

There are too many good posts to quote; I'll do my best to mention respond to the ones that resonate with what's in my brain. First, I appreciate all the replies directly answering the title. Some see the game as boring, some see it as hours vanishing unnoticed. Others see a game requiring "patience and maturity". I think these responses could come from any other video game or activity. Like fishing. All opinions are valid. If Eve in whole or part doesn't appeal to you, there's no hate. Help a fellow/gal out and point out what you enjoy about Eve. Don't bash him/her and say "go home". Jackkinfedll hit the nail on the head: The relationships in Eve are the strongest part of the game. CCP shoud cultivate the *max out of this.

Next, I really enjoy these posts about the history of Eve (Infinity Ziona!) and gameplay mechanics (Harry). Also, Thorn en Distel, thanks for putting Eve in perspective with other games. It helps to see the alt as a solution to many MMO problems, not just Eve mechanics.

I like how we started (eventually) with all the uses for alts. Player Anonymity, Player Experience Broadening, Administrative Duties, Maximizing Benefit to Player (booster), Player Bridge. By "Player Bridge", I mean the alt is the 2nd half to your whole: Cyno lighter, cargo hauler, freighter web... whatever else you would rely on a corpmate for but choose not to for whatever reason.

I think Infinity's explanation has some truth to it. If there's a game designer in the building, please comment. I don't think specialization (in ships or roles) is a bad thing. I love the idea of a five man gang, everyone having a unique, synergetic role. I love the idea of a 50 man corp with different wings in industry, exploration, pvp... But the game designer is a small team, and the player is legion. So people work out the most optimal way to reach their goals, and maybe their goals don't include relying on a guy elsewhere to log in. [This is my personal biggest beef with Eve. I so badly want to run Incursion Logi. But at the drop of a hat I might have to walk away and change a diaper, cook dinner, take a phone call. Yes I know maybe MMO isn't for me, then.]

Anyway, I think alts is a player solution to tackle a CCP challenge (or gameplay flaw; the opinions vary). How do I experience what I want, get what I want, etc based on the consequences CCP has setup? Here I want to emphasis that the consequences so touted in Eve gameplay almost singularly apply to the character, not the player. And we have been encouraged (the power of two!) to go around these "consequences". Thus 2 account players are less restricted in this game than single accounts.

And here is the juncture point, I believe. Is this a natural, logical result of a balanced, logical gameplay design (1+1>1)? Or is the gameplay flawed when the optimal is to pay twice (or not, but use the alt slots) to accomplish your goals?

If I could be in the world and be two people instead of just me, I would have a natural advantage over everyone else. It is logical. A video game based in logical mechanics is generally a good thing, I think. (Of course the premise is flawed to begin with... right?)

But is this the healthiest player end state for Eve? Do players leave when they realize they have locked themselves out of regions of space due to all those faction missions they took on? Do players resistant to corp membership leave when some of the best parts of the game require a good buddy or second account? Are slow bits of the game (travel, mining, missioning, others?...) turning people off? Dev, please stand up.

Maybe this really is just a game for a smarter, more mature player; and CCP knows it and embraces it. PLEX allows "free" multi-accounts. A dedicated player bases is better than a FOTM crowd (Call of Duty 8?). I don't know that any other game can boast to what they've accomplished for this one.

I don't think such strong multi-account player incentives are healthy. I think manual piloting is a step in the right direction. I love it, kiting burners with the combat ring open, judging direction from the exhaust trail and checking speed and distance. Of course, I'm a twitchy adrenaline Mt DEW code red halo-er.

This is a really long post.. sorry. Thanks for this good discussion and I'm standing by for the giant quotes and firing squad:
Chewytowel Haklar
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#75 - 2015-03-18 01:54:44 UTC
Jenshae Chiroptera wrote:
Jenn aSide wrote:
Jenshae Chiroptera wrote:
In large part I think alts are a result of play denial tactics.
How exactly? Alts in my experience are play enablers.t.
Station camped - play alt.
AFK cloaker camped - play alt
War dec you can't fight - play alt

That sort of thing.


HA! So afk cloakers do contribute to content creation in some way.
Sibyyl
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#76 - 2015-03-18 02:09:04 UTC

Play denial is just another word for foreplay. Foreplay always enhances a game.

Joffy Aulx-Gao for CSM. Fix links and OGB. Ban stabs from plexes. Fulfill karmic justice.
Jenshae Chiroptera
#77 - 2015-03-18 02:18:41 UTC
Sibyyl wrote:
Play denial is just another word for foreplay. Foreplay always enhances a game.
I am hitting the point, where I think I will renew my library card, read a book and taunt some people occasionally, so they can camp someone that is mostly AFK.

CCP - Building ant hills and magnifying glasses for fat kids

Not even once

EVE is becoming shallow and puerile; it will satisfy neither the veteran nor the "WoW" type crowd in the transition.
Ralph King-Griffin
New Eden Tech Support
#78 - 2015-03-18 02:35:35 UTC
Hi infinity, you coming to fanfest this year?

Murderers of Negotiable Motivations

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Liara Mason
Turtle Enterprises
#79 - 2015-03-18 03:06:35 UTC
For me there's a bit of a split between the two types of alt play.

The first is to do things you can't do on your main. Sometimes this is because training takes so long it's easier to just train up indy or whatever on an alt while your main focuses on a different area. Sometimes it's because consequences on your main lock you out of areas, such as bad sec status, corp history, wanting a spy or even just how much of a pain in the ass it can be to get to the other side of space to do an activity for the evening and back (example of this is living in null and wanting to just run incursions for a bit, you can jump clone but then you're locked out of your home for 24 hours and miss the fun if **** goes down, whereas an incursion alt gets around this, just log on the alt and when stuff goes down you can switch back to the main).

These I think are fine from a game design perspective. It makes the choices on each character actually have consequences (huge reason why I like eve) but doesn't completely lock you as a player out from trying other things or enjoying other play styles. Also it can be done on one account (especially with the new PLEX alt training thingy).

The second reason to have an alt is to do things in conjunction with your main (dualboxing). I.e. using both at the same time. I think this is what OP was thinking of when he was going on about eve being boring. This includes things like using the alt to scout jumps 30 seconds before the main goes through. Booster alts. Running multiple characters to mine/rat/mission/salvage/whatever 'better'. For this second reason I can agree a bit with OPs implied negativity for some activities.

I often use an alt to scout out a few jumps before I take something shiny through. To me this is pragmatic. Risk a cheap ship that has a much higher chance of survival in the case of a gate camp to avoid risking an expensive ship that is not good at surviving camps. Sounds like a no brainer to me. Some people have said here that this skips player interaction. That I should get another player to scout for me. Well, sure, I suppose I could. But f* that. I wouldn't want to do it so I don't want to ask someone else to do it, and even less so pay them to. Especially given that I can log in on an alt and do it myself for relatively minimal extra effort. I don't have to wait till they're ready. I don't have to rely on them going afk. I don't have to worry about false intel. etc. etc. etc.

So here I think is where the contention is. *Some* activities are not that engaging to do, so you can easily do them in an alt. Scouting, mining and boosters are the main ones that come to mind. CCP can try to change things to make these activities more engaging (mining minigame anyone trolololol), but until they do I'm going to make the most of my dualboxing. Yes it gives me an advantage, but that seems to be a pretty normal theme in eve. Do as much/little as you are willing to to give yourself an advantage.

PS. Holy wall of text batman. Whoops.
Ralph King-Griffin
New Eden Tech Support
#80 - 2015-03-18 03:43:16 UTC
I for one(lol), operate both main and alt as a single unit,
I have dual screens so I can always see both clients and get information from both toons simultaneously,

I think it's cool, I love the additional functionality of synergistic toons and I like the process of operateing both .

Murderers of Negotiable Motivations

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