EVE General Discussion

This is really not true for the most part.

In WoW, for example, if you die in PvE you suffer durability loss. Back in 2005 when I was raiding Molten Core with 40 other people, a raid wipe was painful financially. I remember disastrous raids where I came out with a full set of broken plate armor that cost 20-30 gold coins to repair. This was a HUGE amount of money. Days and days and days of farming to make that back. It's no different from losing a ship in EVE.

It's just in WoW the loss is handled more gracefully. Instead of dealing with shopping and refitting, which let's face it is just busy work, you simply press one button, X gold gets subtracted from your bank and you're off to fight another war.

Now, in PvP you sort of have a point, there was no durability loss there. Which ENCOURAGED world PvP! Many times people engaged against impossible odds because they had nothing to lose by dying, and everything to gain (honor points, if they succeeded). Compare that to EVE, where 99% of people will run from anything perceived as unfavourable to them.

See, there's two sides of the coin. You can encourage something, by making losing meaningless, but by rewarding a victory. You can also discourage something, by making losing painful, and giving little reward for victory. This is EVE's approach.

And in competitive PvP (arenas, rated battlegrounds), the loss was not measured in gold, but in standing. If you lost, you lost standing, which in turn limited your rank, things you could buy, etc., as certain armors and weapons were rank-locked and could not be traded.

In other words, the game had VERY tangible and sometimes very painful consequences for losing. You can lose months of hard work in EVE. You can just as easily lose months of hard work in WoW. I've seen teams claw their way up to the top over a period of weeks, only to crash back down to 1600 rating in a few hours. It happens there like anywhere.

Same goes for many other MMOs. It's just the penalty for the loss is different. In EVE it usually simply translates into X ISK, where you often determine what X is (see "don't fly what you can't afford to lose"). In other games, it translates into repair bills, standings losses, rank losses (where both determine gear you can wear, weapons and abilities you can use, etc.), Repair bills translate into gold. In the games that have territory control, a loss can also lead to a loss of territory. Not to mention EVE is not the only game where player looting is a feature.

For instance, in Darkfall no items were ever destroyed. See above, where I mentioned rewarding victory? Or punishing loss? Darkfall had 100% of both. If you killed someone wearing a full set of plate, you got that full set of plate in the loot. Unlike EVE where rigs are always destroyed, and the bulk of modules as well. That is, the % of total value that you get as loot is small relative to the price of the whole package. Compare that to Darkfall's 100% of the total value is looted upon death, transferred from the loser. Made killing far more important and way more profitable. Though the game was so badly flawed in so many other areas it's been on life support since launch. But to be fair, it has had a lot more competition in the fantasy MMO genre than EVE had in Sci-Fi space MMO genre (which is none).

There's also Mortal Online, where besides looting there were nifty features such as being able to break into a person's house and rob it. Or pickpocketing. Yep, you could sneak up on them and steal stuff they were carrying. And guards did not automatically attack if you did something wrong, they had to be called for, unlike Concord. Etc., etc.

So, all in all, EVE is actually halfway down the spectrum, between hardcore and Helly Kitty Island Adventure. Which is why I find it funny when people say EVE is harsh and unforgiving. Please, the game is very kind in many ways. There's high sec, which is very safe unless you're doing something very stupid, and 60% of the population lives there. There's ways to dodge wars. There's insurance and payouts, even if you suicide gank (something that no other MMO I know of has). Dock in station and you are 100% safe. Where even in "carebear" WoW on PvP server you could easily be killed in your own faction's capital city, in front of 200 other people. And if you were good, you could even escape after killing someone like that. Guards weren't see-everything godmode like CONCORD. Though I understand a few expansions later they introduced sanctuaries which are safe PvP-free zones same as EVE's stations.

So, honestly, EVE isn't all that hard, and it doesn't punish losing all that much. And it's no more dangerous than most other MMOs out there. The only thing it REALLY does differently is that it allows scamming, cheating and stealing. Something most "civilized" MMOs do not. In this respect, I absolutely have to take my hat off to EVE. Though I strongly suspect this was done not so much by design but just to avoid dealing with all the petitions. EVE has enough technical issues to occupy petition queue besides scamming, cheating and stealing petitions inflating it even further. So like many other things, it may have been a byproduct of a simple business decision.