EVE General Discussion

As to the OP, it's quality vs quantity. I'll take the Quality of the average EVE player over most other gamers any day of the week.

I'm an old Battletech Universe fan, started playing when I was 12 (i'm 38 now), and of course Battletech spawned the "Mechwarrior" video games (like the upcoming Mechwarrior Online).

Back when playing Mechwarrior 4, people would ask all the time "what can we do to get more people to play mechwarrior". Some of us would explain that MW4 would never ever get the same numbers of people like other games of the day (like Quake or Unreal Tournament ect) because while MW is a "shooter" game, it's not as much a twitch game, it's a niche game about huge walking tanks set in a rather wonky and unrealistic universe kind of like Star Wars (some mechs in Battletech have actual axes and swords, even though that wasn't a part of Mechwarrior, that's the kind of universe it is).

Still some people didn't get it, or didn't like it, and rather than screw off away from Mechwarrior (which would have probably made them and everyone else happy as hell), they complained about stuff, suggested changes totally against the nature of Mechwarrior and Battletech itself and generally made arses of themselves rather than accept that the excellent niche game we loved not only wouldn't go "main stream", but SHOULDN'T even try.

It's like that with EVE (eve and mechwarrior share so many traits, but that's another story lol) and it will be like that with Mechwarrior Online. Some people just can't be happy with what they have, it's in their nature.

Because, Eve isn't for everyone. Simply put. They aren't really trying to be, either (though they do look like they might be sliding that way slowly). They have made an interesting mutli-layered game that can, due to the extreme freedom of choice involved, scare off quite a lot of people...and the griefing, scamming, and other douchebaggery scares off the inattentive, overly trusting, or hardcore carebears. Thus, there's less of the market involved, vs the other MMO's who are trying to please everyone and ultimately turning their games into crap.

Very true. I can kind of see it, some people want to come home from work and just "autopilot" through a game without too much thought, or they want to escape from their mundane life as some epic here/god/king, themepark games let you do that.

EVE tells you you're a worthless scrub in an easily killable ship where all your stuff dies when your ship does. It right and proper that this game has a female name, If EVE were a real woman she'd be dressed in dominatrix attire, with a whip on one and and all your money ( that you just willingly gave her) in the other.

Yep, us EVE players is special lol.

Imo, the big reasons for causing a small playerbase.

• It's a harsh game. PvP is not forgiving, you can't be an idiot if you wanna have fun, players will take advantage of you.
• PvE gets boring fast.

EVE Online is a harsh game, there aren't many games around so cruel.
This is what EVE Online is built on, it's about PvP, drama, it makes great stories, it makes people care.
While all that makes the game unique, the other side of the coin is that is also repels a lot of people.

Simply we don't accept any old riff raff or other undesirables that happen to come along.

PvE is always boring. It is not dynamic, and it is repetitive.

Lots of people like that though; just look at WoW. Think of how many people work on Assembly lines; in dead-end jobs with no payscale changes, consideration for inflation, and opportunity for advancement besides putting in more hours, and more hours, and more hours... Doing the same thing every 5 minutes, all day, every day. f'n boring.

It will be nigh impossible for EVE to break through as an E-sport like LOL or SC. The game is too complex so most people that watch a video about EVE don't understand what's going on. When they see a high level LOL or SC match they understand what's going on.

The only way i could see it work would be in a more controlled environment, for instance, both teams get 5 rifters or ruptures and a batch of modules so they can each fit them according to their preference (tank, dmg, ecm etc) and then duke it out. Not very sandboxy i know, but a general audiance might be able to grasp what's going on because there would be far fewer variables compared to the current tournament, let alone PVP in 0.0.

EVE is great for storytelling though, unfortunatly compared to a LOL or SC commentary the amount of work it takes to do those right means you can't churn out the content at a steady pace.

Better question:

Fun derived from causing other players' tears: EVE vs other mmos

Because maybe not everyone has an orgasm when he s ruining someone else 's day ?

Zero risk theme park is definitely one of the things people like.

Had a guy that played WoW like crazy try Eve after I told him about it. After 2 months or so, he quit Eve. His reason: He didnt like the real loss associated with pvp even though he had never lost anything in the game. He also didnt like how there wasnt enough to do npc wise.

To understand that second part you would need to play WoW. WoW gives the player the story, tells them where to go, what they have to do. Once that part of the story is finished, the player gets sent to aother area of the world with new monsters and visuals ( oh look snow! ) and the game hand feeds them more story. The main goal the story leads you to is the Boss fight. Our missions with no point or end leave people wondering why they are doing them.

Eves story is made mostly by the players. To increase subs and retain people who want a story, there would need to be a story that takes you a decent amount of time, a few months perhaps, before you get to a final Boss fight. Something dramatic like, your employer dies in the end but you vanquish the boss. Afterwards, the story would then leave you on your own in the real harsh world of Eve where you make your own story and your own decisions.

Before I understood Eve, I was expecting the same hand holding story as well, thought I did something wrong when no more story was forthcoming, and was disappointed. ( this was back in 2005, I've no idea how the noob experience is now )

Note: I'm not saying that is the direction Eve should take, just pointing out where the game fails against other MMO's and why people dont stay.