EVE General Discussion

The first sandbox I ever played, and the game that got me hooked on MMORPGs was Ultima Online. Before the Trammel/Felucca split, this game had the absolute best PvP and player-run community I've ever experienced in a game.

Fast forward to 3 months ago when I read about Eve and decided to give it a try. There are so many things I absolutely love about this game. But, there are also quite a few things I could really do without.

The first of those things is Hi/Low sec. These 2 areas kinda feel similar to the Trammel/Felucca split to me. I understand the need for protected trade hubs, capital cities and newbro areas. What I don't see a reason for, however, is unabridged connectivity between the hisec sysems.

The second is a subculture mentality, I seem to have been experiencing, that you should rip anyone and everyone off, including your friends, if the right opportunity presents itself. I'm game for pulling one over on some scrub you just met or some idiot who deserves it. It seems to me that because ripping off EVERYONE is encouraged, it becomes Eve's societal norm, which increases levels of complacency, participation and etc. These people who value iskies over friendships almost seem to be celebrated. In past MMORPG experiences, UO for example, people like this were always ostracized, and the completeness of societal rejection seemed to deter people from behaving such. This 'friend scamming' I just mentioned bothers me for a lot of reasons, but I won't go into anymore specifics.

I'm not trying to wreck or hate anyone else's sandbox here, just wanting to share some thoughts. Nostalgia has a funny way of always making the past seem better than the present. And after all, I'm sure many more people than just myself have found ways to enjoy the exact game characteristics I just described as unappealing.

The differences in those two games' communities is simply staggering. I agree OP, the community is one of the biggest drawbacks to EVE.

I disagree, this system is actually better for making friends. Because if they haven't ripped you off with little outside consequence you can be damn sure your friends aren't fair weather.

In EVE trust is earned and a valuable commodity. It builds Alliances and Empires.

EDIT:


Wow coincidence...

I've mentioned this before, but it's relevant here as well.

EvE is not really about "Trusting No One".

EvE is all about determining whom you CAN trust, and just how far in a given situation.

You are correct, EvE is a much darker and sinister place than most games. Criminal behavior is common, and accepted.

But this very fact makes real trust just that much more valuable when you can find it. The person that goes out of his way to help you in EvE (and doesn't end up betraying you in the end) is doing so because he chooses to be a genuinely good person... not because that's the way he is "expected" to act. The person that covers your back, protects your interests from scams and infiltrators, and points out where you are vulnerable instead of exploiting those vulnerabilities is a true find... a much rarer and more valuable thing than in other games.

That's one reason why friendships and partnerships forged in and last in this game tend to go deep, and often transcend both in game and real life politics.

Or to put it another way, to have a hero you must first have a villian for him to measure himself against... and there is no shortage of outstanding examples of villiany in EvE. This tends to make the few hero's you do find quite exceptional.

There are also advantages to this kind of gameplay then just knowing you are altruistic. Ripping people off can get you more zero's in your bank account but when you need help the guy you don't rip off is much more likely to stick with you.

A Merc is a good thing to have backing you but they don't have a vested interest or concrete loyalty in your well being outside of those extra zero's. When you're in bad they are not there to help pick up the pieces they are sucking someone else's wallet dry in return for service.

By being loyal you are in turn more likely to get loyalty back if you are a good judge of character. It is a gamble but when it pays off it pays big.

With Eve the way it is, imagine a Jita-Amarr run with intervening low! Niarja (0.5) is bad enough! JFs ftw.

the problem with removing the security of hsec is actually lowsec. lowsec didn't work. the idea of lowsec was that players could "do" stuff with higher rewards but knowing that anyone whos willing to take the sec standing hit could kill them, or take their stuff. the original idea was that people who would want to "do stuff" in lowsec would not want to kill others who would also be "doing stuff" because it would actually make it harder for them to do their own stuff.

now many players suggest that removing highsec would force people to do just "that" meaning they would NOT kill each other because it would be in detriment of their own goals.... which is not realistic given the current state of lowsec and the history of highsec. concord used to do some crap damage in highsec, the idea was that in highsec besides the sec rating hit, there would be a police response who would add damage against the attacker in an effort to tip the balance of the battle in favor of the agressed.

needles to say, that never worked. soon after the player base grew a little and the idiots realized that strength came in numbers, they began to blockade systems killing people as soon as they jumped in. the game came to a halt and became broken. the concordoken was the response from CCP.

nothing else changed in highsec, people can still kill you.



this is simply not true, the vast majority of eve players are not scammers. they do accept them as part of the ecosystem. no other game can offer you actual people whose game is to find ways to ruin yours.

think about what is a game. a game is a set of rules that define what you can do, cant do, what you have to do, and what you will be up against.

imagine if in the original Space Invaders all the space invaders went "**** this we are not flying in a predictable pattern anymore, lets all just rush down and kill that sucker." or imagine if in wow an endless onslaught of murlocs would lay siege to stormwind. players would be completely baffled... the only foes a wow player knows are ones that have a leash and are spawn always on the same spot.

as gaming progressed those things stopped being sprites, and now we call them NPCs. now, just because they aren't pixelart anymore we might be fooled to think they are better than what they were before, but in reality they haven't changed at all. they went from mindlessly moving from side to side on a screen to... mindlessly using a preset range of skills, on timers. and having a invisible leash that makes them return to their spawn location of the player runs too far off. difficulty is a measure of how much damage the skills the NPC uses do, or how much life he has, or any other arbitrary rules players need to follow to defeat the encounter. (encounter mechanics)

eve has real foes, people who are committed enough to devote months of their time to lie and cheat, or will lay siege to a station with bubbles and cases of beer just like murlocs would.

i salute them, not because i approve of their actions, but because they are the best damn NPCs in the history of gaming. and because you play eve you are one of those of NPCs yourself.

and this is why many people get so frustrated when they see people who could be doing so much more, spend their time watching the lasers cycle on an asteroid. the message people want to convey by killing them, stealing from them, or just generally ruining their game is not really "i hate you thats why i stole from you" or "stop mining", or "come press F1 on a fleet op because i told you so", the message is " please, for the love of god, stop moving midlessly from side to side of the screen! cant you see i can follow the pattern and shoot all of you with ease?! why aren't you moving?"



if there's one thing eve does is not repeating history, must be the only mmo that doesn't seem to follow a pattern or "curve" like all the others do.

You so funny.

This "mentality" isn't is normal as some would have you believe. A lot of people use it as an excuse to never take the risk or make the effort of joining a corp, but the fact is, in PvP corps anyway, we routinely trust each other with quite high stakes. I have to trust the directors of my corp not to lock me out of V-3, I have to trust the members of the fleets I fight in, I have to place a huge amount of trust in the commander of the fleet I'm in, I have to trust my alliance members not to awox me and so on.

Additionally there are people in the game to whom I am happy to lend deadspace fit faction BS or billions of ISK. I have never yet been disappointed.

There is trust in EVE. It's the most valuable commodity in the game. The people who say that there isn't any are just like the fox who said he didn't care for those sour grapes after all.

I think you are hanging out with the wrong crowd. I've played off an on for 4 years, been in a number of corporations, with hundreds of people. Only one time have I been ripped off. 99.9% of the people I meet in game are genuinely honest people just wanting to work together to build a corp/alliance/whatever.

Sure, there are people that find it fun to rip people off, scan them, generally be a douche. But I think they are less common than you may think.