EVE General Discussion

That's an awful lot of words and they're all wrong. Guess my "dumb and bad" thing was dead on. Not gonna bother quoting that mess of words.

You're doing that stupid conflation of casual vs difficulty again. Yes, WoW hand-holds new players better because the game itself is stupidly simple. Fantastic. It's easy. It also takes a far larger investment of actual time to level, gear up, etc. Eve has a very steep initial cliff (and that part does need to be helped out), but once you're over the metaphorical hump, you put in as much time as you like and you won't really be at any serious disadvantage compared to any other player. Eve's constant rebalance of lower ships (like the recent t1 frig and cruiser revamp) enchances this even further. I'm pretty much the definition of a casual MMO player, and I can do well for myself in Eve whereas if this was WoW I'd probably have unsubbed before I hit whatever the current level cap actually is these days.

If you truly can't tell the difference between "you've lost 10% durability" and "your ship and modules and implants are gone, go buy new ones", you're dense. There's a huge difference in mentality between "damaged" and "gone", even though the mechanic of "spend more currency and fix the problem" remains essentially the same. Check out any of the tears threads when Hulkageddon was running to see the very direct impact of that. It wasn't just loss of potential income, it was loss of A Thing They Had that made them lose their minds.

Lastly, Eve is not competing with WoW at all. They're both MMO's but cater to an entirely different subset of people. CCP knows this, and it's because of this they've never strayed very far from the core "idea" of their game - the mostly-unrestricted player-driven universe. Sure, they could drop all of that and go for the WoW dollar, but then they'd be directly competing with an established brand while simultaneously alienating their current subscriber base. You want to talk bad business? THAT'S bad business.

Casuals should gtfo.

I READ THE HEADLINE, I KNOW WHAT THIS IS ABOUT!

Also, I have my opinion set in stone. No need to read confusing articles.

Well, the demographiocs of game addiction are changing. Most gamers are much healthier, psychologically speaking, than in the days of Evercrack. There are far more casuals now and fewer and fewer addicts to depend upon for a revenue stream.

Amatuer astronomy is a great non addiction example. "Casuals" buy far more telescopes that professionals.

So what is the business model? Fewer high end customers? Or far, far more casual users ?

I personally think it is best for game designers to always integrate casual content into the game.

Define easy and simple? My first death in EVE occurred months after I started playing, and was due to PvP. My first death in WoW occurred within minutes. And while we're at it, if this happened to you in EVE (you lost your noob ship), it would be immediately replaced free of charge! In WoW, you'd be stuck with broken gear if you died often enough. Which game is simple again?



Yeeees and no. Take a character that's new, with 500k SP. Have him duel a character who has 50,000,000 SP. Who will win? Realistically? And that's in identical ships, with identical fittings (best the 500k SP char can manage). In layman's terms, the older char will have shields that are 20% stronger, armor that's 20% stronger, ship that turns and moves 20% faster, weapons that do 30% more damage, drones (if any), capacitor 20% stronger, with 20% higher recharge, etc., etc., etc. Realistically, you can't win. Now, lift the restriction on the ship, that is 500k SP char uses any ship he wants, and 50 mil SP char uses any ship (and fittings) he wants (and can afford). Does 500k SP character stand any chance at all? I rest my case. Which is, incidentally, exactly what happens in most other MMOs when a level 1 character engages a level X (max) level character.

And let's not forget the Pay2Win element of EVE - alts and off-grid boosting. Tom has 1 account, with 50 mil SP. Harry has 2 accounts, with 50 mil SP. One of Harry's accounts is flying the same ship as Tom, but it is being boosted by Harry's other account's T3 ship. Tom and Harry duel, who wins? Harry. Why? Because Harry is paying twice as much as Tom. See the problem? This is almost nonexistent in other MMOs, as most of them do not allow multiple clients to run simultaneously on the same PC. Multiboxing still happens, but it is actual mutli-boxing, not multi-client on the same PC.

To continue the analogy. Tom only pays $15/mo. Harry pays $1500 a month, by buying PLEX, selling it on the market for ISK, and fitting his ships with the best faction/officer modules. Tom and Harry duel. Harry very likely wins again (T2s vs T3 boosted faction/officer mods?)

Even though in both cases players play the same amount of time, and have the same individual skills, Harry pays CCP more money each month than Tom, and thus has a considerable advantage. Is that not the very definition of Pay2Win? This HAS to be mentioned if you're going to talk about one player being at a disadvantage over another. Most MMOs do not allow this.



Arguably constant rebalance isn't needed, if the original balancing was done right. And as for casualness of it, games like WoW have bracketed PvP. That is, characters levels 10-19 fight only characters leveled 10-19. Just that bracket. Unlike SWTOR for example, where a level 31 and a level 49 would be in the same bracket and got steamrolled. WoW had more meaningful PvP, where the combatants were more or less on even footing, with more or less even numbers, and player skill, cooperation and communication won the day in objective-based combat. Most combat, ironically, wasn't "deathmatch" format like in EVE, but objective-based (capture the flag, hold the points, etc.)



Again, tone down the insults, and then attempt to explain what the difference is. What's the difference between me paying 20g (equivalent of billions of ISK in EVE) for gear repair and paying a few billion ISK (equivalent of 20g in WoW) to replace my ship? If 20g/ISK equivalent takes PRECISELY the same amount of time to farm, what is the difference to the player making the payment? None whatsofreakingever and you know it. The "meaning" of the loss was always X hrs of farming that had to be done to recover from it.

Now, you could make an argument that EVE's economy is more advanced, and ships are crafted by players and so on. And you're absolutely correct. But that's another facet of gameplay (economy and trade and crafting). WoW's system was different. Note - not superior or inferior - just different. And some MMOs had systems precisely like EVE's (again, Pirates of the Burning Sea, ships were made and sold by players, as was ammo, consummables, etc.)



None, actually. At least for many folks, myself included.

A) It's all pixels. It's virtual. It can't be "gone" because it never truly existed.
B) 10% durability loss is "10% gone". Repeat 10x, it is "gone" (heck, in some games armor visually disappears when broken, like Guild Wars 2 or Vindictus).
C) In both cases, it takes X hrs to earn enough currency to replace the "loss".

Again, absolutely no difference, except how it's treated economically.

Actually the OP misquoted.

Actual quote from the article
“Of the $50 billion that was spent worldwide last year on games, less than 10 percent was spent on casual content. "

In fact the article has nothing to do with MMO's.
Here is an actual graph from the article.

Graph

WOW is hardcore guys, it's harsher and colder than EVE Online: No longer as harsh and cold as before.

We're blobbers and skillless noobs, it's to be expected people would try and tackle a thing. There was also one that tried to point a light drone that was ripping up his rifter.

Casual gamers are too expensive to maintain. They tend to flock to different mechanics than 'core gamers', so you tend to have to create a treadmill of content for them. That content must be very easy (and very expensive!) and allowing them to fail to 'win' is absolutely not an option. This tends to break game balance with the more 'core' content.

Furthermore, casual gamers have a terrible retention rate and are swayed by every whim of the winds. This means that you're constantly on the UA treadmill trying to replace lost casual users and you're burning through hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in advertising costs per month. Combining this with the Big Guys throwing around $8-10/user bids drives the industry CPI for even casual gamers sky high - we're expecting to see $5 CPI this summer. That's one of the things driving the present shift towards casino games.

What, you guys wanted to talk about the article right?

-Liang

This can take the form of a time-reengagement mechanic, and can also provide extra emotional/attachment value to the thing you're "grinding" to obtain. There's a balance to be struck, for sure, but having everything be free in an "ongoing" (read: non-arcade) game is probably not the best plan for retention.

-Liang