The Evolution of MMOGs - Eve Online

Gamasutra is running an article about the Massively Multiplayer Game Eve Online. Information from senior producer Nathan Richardsson gives a look into the development of the largest concurrent MMO on the market. From the article: "Power to the players. Nothing compares to a player that is enabled to affect the universe. We create tools for players to create content. For example, a massive alliance of corporations - our versions of guilds - with real, legendary players, leading them, controlling large areas of space and building up infrastructure is truly awesome content. We can never create that, but we can create the environment and tools enabling to happen. We're also very iterative in our work and keep continuous feedback cycles on the features we do, then regularly improve them based on that feedback. The community is an incredible source for how to improve the game and what they do within the game gives us constant inspiration for what we should implement next. Being so open-ended means the players do what they want and we try to keep up and add support and tools to take emerging behavior further. Embrace and evolve are the keywords here."

Not as good as they would have you believe

[It doesn't come easy]

I have been playing EVE Online for 6 months and it's not all it's cracked up to be. There are some players that absolutely love it. However, the ability to create content and the great graphics in the game does not make up for some fundamental flaws in game play. The problem is that the game boils down to spending hours just traveling or just mining, both tedious activities in the game. Combat can also be tedious in most cases, since it usually becomes showing up at some location and slugging it out. I could deal with those aspects if your skill was in some way tied to your activities, but they are not. Skills are trained simply by turning the training on. Even the skill training system is flawed. There are approximately 200 or so different skills. To be come an expert in combat related skills, for example, it takes about 100 separate skills, training one at a time. I calculated how long it would take me to be fully trained on captaining a battleship, with all the necessary skills for both weapons use, piloting, and maneuvering. With the current system, it would take more than 3 years in real time to finish the training. I'll be surprised if the game lasts another three years. Experienced players (i.e. players who have been playing EVE for a long while) basically can attack inexperienced players with impunity. I have been killed four times so far just for the fun of it by an experienced player in what is supposed to be safe space. Yes, the experienced player is immediately killed by the NPC cops but that's the only penalty. They can make up the loss in an hour, it takes me a week to regain the equipment I lose. Sad to say, I am disappointed in EVE enough to stop playing. I hope some EVE admins read Slashdot, because the way the game works, I would bet you are losing more new players than you would imagine.

Re:Not as good as they would have you believe

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Shortly into the first portion of the article is the revelation that many of the developers were old-school UO PvPers, and that there was an emphasis on PvP for that reason.

That's enough to ensure I'll never even look at the game, or finish the FA for that matter.

I don't play games to be someone else's victim. I'm not interested in being part of their sociological experement. I want to be entertained, not greifed.

Re:Not as good as they would have you believe

[Shadarr]

Funny you should mention griefing, since the only thing I really know about Eve is that it provided the backdrop for the greatest scam ever [circa1984.com] in a MMOG. ALso, I think something you implied but should be spelled out is that the game doesn't just emphasise PvP, but unbalanced PvP. The reason the game is unfun isn't that there's a lot of PvP, it's that the outcome of most PvP battles are predetermined based on the skills of the character and the ship they own. It may be realistic, but it's not fun.

Re:Not as good as they would have you believe

[Shinobi]

3 years is bullshit. A focused character can pilot battleships decently in PvP in less than 3 months(Besides, you need that time just to figure out the finer details of the game mechanics. You'd be surprised at how many idiots there are that just want an "I Win" button, and who don't want to think for themselves)

And, your player skills do count. But, they are more mental skills than the CounterStrike/Quake Twitch. Which fights can you expect to win? Which fights can you expect to survive? Do you utilize transversal properly? Are you fitted so you can deal with the enemy tackler? How good are you at keeping yourself aware of your surroundings so you see if the enemy gets backup? Do you know where you are in relation to stellar bodies, do you know how long it will take you to align and warp out? Will your cap hold an extended engagement after a long warp-in? Are you able to communicate with teammates, or do you expect to be able to lone-wolf it(Usually a bad idea for anyone lacking even one of the factors I mentioned)

Yes, EVE has flaws, but the parts you mentioned are not flaws. It creates a more tactical game. If you want twitch-type, you could always play Freelancer

Re:Not as good as they would have you believe

[nerdup]

I think what you are describing is maxing a character out, which is VERY hard to do in Eve. I have been playing for about 3 months and I'm flying a battleship. I'm flying level 3 missions solo (the current generation supports missions up to level 4), and with one other corp mate I've been flying level 4 missions. There is a lot to do in Eve, as TFA says, and not all of it is missions.

If you won't be satisfied unless your character is 100% proficient in _everything_, then Eve probably isn't the game for you. But the breadth of the skill system is a big part of what makes Eve really interesting. Do you want a character who is a high-end expert in cloaking and covert ops? Well, it takes time to get there but it's do-able. Same for anything else. My character isn't competitive with someone who has been playing for 2 years, but that's only fair.

People don't get it

[pbaer]

Eve is not a pve game and there are no training wheels. Please don't complain about how there aren't any massive dungeons etc. because that's not the focus of the it. If you want to do massive raids go play WoW or EQ(2).

First of all eve does not require massive time investment to become competitive. You don't need 20+million skill points to have a chance only 2million. Player skill is much more important than character skill. Furthermore 2 1million characters > 1 20 million if the 1mils know what they're doing.

If you want to be truly good at eve you have to think, you can't grind to "max level" and expect to pwn people because skill bonuses are relatively small (2-5% increase in dmg, speed etc. per level) and there's so many nasty things someone can trip you up with if you aren't expecting it or don't know what you're doing. It has a very flexible "class" system which encourages creativity. Because of this a you need to know what you're doing and the limitations of your "class" if you don't want to get rolled.