EVE General Discussion

By now, yes. But back when WoW came out in 2004, it was just a decade. Warcraft: Ocrs and Humans came out in 1994. And WoW really took off in 2004, right off the bat. So much so that they had to temporarily stop selling it, because servers couldn't keep up.

And franchise had little to do with it, because the previous 3 games belonged to a different genre entirely. Warcraft I-III were RTS games. And WC1 was a relatively lackluster RTS game at that. Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty was vastly superior in complexity (sandworms, carryall/harvester mechanics, unit speed, etc.) But I digress. The point is, I know plenty of people that got sucked into WoW who have never played WCI-III, simply because they don't like the RTS genre.

I would go as far as to say that most of WoW's players had no idea about the lore before they started playing. Heck, most still don't know much about the lore even after they finished playing. Truth be told, I myself paid very little attention to it, especially before WC3.

I don't think WoW was the best thing to happen to MMO genre since sliced bread, but it also got where it is today on its own merits, not because it was a part of a long franchise (he said looking at Modern Warfare 3 and shaking his head).



You have to also consider that EVE, unlike many/most other MMOs, really had ZERO competition in its lifetime so far.

I mean, what other similar MMOs came out since 2003? Sci-fi or space sim? None? Jumpgate came out in 2001, but since then we haven't had anything even remotely decent. Black Prophecy sounded good in development, but turned out to be just a cheap shallow uninteresting thing. In a way, EVE has been very, very lucky. If a competent studio came up with a decent game that was similar to EVE, it might not have been here today.

I'm not trying to detract anything from EVE, it is special and unique in oh-so-many ways. But it also could have been much, much more by now had it been properly handled. Incarna is a good example, 2+ years of development pretty much 100% down the drain. A game with any kind of real competition would not have survived it. But by being a niche game, with a tiny following and no natural predators, EVE survived up until now. So, in a way, EVE owes its very survival to its relative obscurity.

I bolded/underlined the bits where you're going wrong in this game, I tend to do other things while the sp counter ticks by, far more interesting.

Trying telling people liek Mittani that.. some peole actually do take this game too seriously.

I can't really comment any better than other posts regarding Eve and it's success. I'll just offer my own introspection :

Preface - I've been a diehard gamer for the last 21 years (I'm 39 IRL), of which Eve has been part of my gaming for the last 9, on and off.

For me at least, compared to my years in WoW, and shorter stints in SWTOR, COH and the like, Eve is less a "necessary grind" than the other games, which keeps me coming back. In WoW for example, I'd level cap to whatever the latest level was and since I don't get into the whole e-peen of smashing every dungeon available, it's kind of game over short of crafting stuff to increase my virtual bank. It just wasn't very satisfying in the end, and most MMOs have that effect on me.

I came to Eve from a game called Mankind, itself a bit of an obscure game, with a group of friends. I remember talking to one of my employees and he mentioned Eve was coming out so we jumped into the Beta. I've liked it ever since.

I think the reason most people (MMO players) don't really stick with it, is as mentioned in multiple other threads, there's really no "perceived" endgame and therefore really no point to them in continuing to explore Eve beyond the first experience of getting blown up or POS bashing if they stick around long enough to get to that stage.

In the end, it's the mentality of the gamer that has kept Eve effective, but small. Again, strictly my view, but being a business owner and an entrepreneur (SP?) for years puts me in a self-starter mentality. For Eve, that's great since I can try one of many career paths and change them at will, which keeps Eve fresh for me. The flip side is, I'm not "obligated" to login every day if I don't want to, to run my dailies..... (I suppose fueling a POS somewhat qualifies, but you get my point). If I'm busy running my company, Eve will be there when I get back around to it, and that is why I stay subbed.

The only useful point to CCP I'd add would be that I do firmly believe they could open the game up a bit more and gain many for subs if there was a mechanic to allow folks to explore "lawless" space without the current status quo that dictates you really need to be in a Corp and in most cases and Alliance to be able to "settle down". Yeah, I know, wormholes kinda give that impression, but nothing feels like I know I felt back in 2004 when Pure Blind was lawless and being settled, and you could find yourself a ton of stuff to do in your shiny new Caracal. I'll get shouted down by those that say adapt or die, and I'd respond that I have adapted, having pretty much experienced everything Eve has to offer, career wise.

I'll liken it to coming to work for my company. If we just stuck you in the Data Center and said OK, here's a few hundred live customers, go explore stuff but don't mess anyone's server up, the average person would quit from the pressure and mistakes being taken. Conversely, as we do IRL, we have smaller data center facilities where our new guys can experience the data center and kind of make their own way. As they gain experience, they move up into the much more critical cloud facilities, etc. If there was a way to make that happen, you'd never have an "explosion' of new subs, but you would get more folks to get out in 0.0 without having to sign their souls over to whatever Alliance they need to join to just be able to survive. Not advocating care bearing (nothing wrong with that IMHO anyways, its your sub money) per se, just thinking that if there was a mechanic to expand without the new space being immediately taken over by "pick alliance name", that this would increase popularity.

TL;DR - Nothing wrong with Eve really, it's the gamer mentality that keeps the sub rate lower than "Tier 1" MMOs. Frankly, I like it largely the way it is and just wish that there was other perceived end-game options other than titan or POS bashing in the 10% of 0.0 that is actively occupied versus the wide open, empty, yet realistically inaccessible 90% of 0.0 that is vacant.

Localhost

Ooh. Missed this one.Yeah, you see, what you're doing here is equivalent to sitting in front of the washing machine and look at your clothes go 'round and around, and complain that there is nothing good to watch. The obvious answer to this is: “maybe you should go look at the TV instead of the washing machine, since the former is the entertainment device and the latter is just a gizmo that will do its job while you entertain yourself elsewhere”.

SP to train means you can play the game rather than grind for character progression. If your only point of enjoyment is character progression, then you should probably look elsewhere because it's not actually a part of the gameplay in EVE. Perhaps ProgressQuest is more to your liking?

And some people take drunken jokes too seriously.

It's highly niche and for good reason, EVE is for masochist. EVE is a microcosm of society and culture in many ways but brings the harshest aspects of it boiling to the surface. The things many seek to abhor or avoid in the real world are tantamount in EVE, aggression, competition, ruthlessness, cooperation, subterfuge, politics.

Many gamers are such because they want to avoid many of these aspects of reality. Couple that with the tangible investment of time you need to shape and mold the player you want to be and it's a huge turn off for most gamers. As much as these aspects keep EVE a niche game it's also the only true reason why it has not floundered and continues to grow.

EVE attracts dedicated people, perhaps the most fiercely dedicated community to be known for gaming to date. EVE has trudged along all these years and grown in direct spite of the fact that mechanics are sorely in need of attention, that aspects of the game are broken to a state of sheer frustration and apathy. The only reason why is because of EVE being this microcosm.

Say what you will about PVP, I waited years mistakenly to get around to it and from mine and many others perspective the difference between EVE and any other game we have played is this; never in any other game have we had a spike of adrenaline from combat or a challenge, even fighting in a tech 1 frigate the thrill of the hunt, the quickening of the pulse as you come closer to combat and the surge of adrenaline when it starts, the time dilation of battles that last minutes but seemed like an eternity.

Show me any other game where you can come out of any part of it with jitters from an adrenaline dump, wow and it's clones won't ever have it and if it means EVE won't ever have a huge consumer base so be it, we don't wan't this game to go soft and lose it's soul.

Some do, true, I think most of us just shrug it off and have a laugh, I know I do. When I lost a freighter on my other character I typed in chat to a corpie 'well that was stupid' then got on with dealing with the loss and replacing the ship. I didn't call the guys who blew the freighter up a load of sociopaths, to them I was a kill and to me I made a mistake that got me blown up. I felt annoyed, more with myself for making the mistake that led me there but they were just playing the game and hats off to that.

because games are suppose to be FUN

some people don't see the fun in doing odd job in high-sec or when someone ganks their brand new battleship or mining barge or paying $15/month for every little complex skill to train
as a person from RPS states....

There is a length of spacerope here.

>PICK UP ROPE

You cannot pick up the rope yet.
MISSING SKILLS:
-Rope Collection IV
-Opposable Thumb Operation V
-Crouching Down Specialization II

Niche game is niche. Working as intended.