The State of Sci-Fi MMOs 194
Massively is running a story that looks into the status of the sci-fi MMO genre, and why such games have had a tendency to struggle over the years. Quoting:
"Fantasy alone carries with it assumptions based in our own history, a romanticized version of the middle ages where knights were good guys and smart people with beards could cast spells. Preconceived notions in sci-fi are far less cast in our collective memory. While stories that predict the future are surely as ancient as the myths describing the past, sci-fi itself didn't really ingrain itself into our culture until the 1800s, with H.G. Wells' stories and other writers at the cusp of the Industrial Revolution. ... Compounding the lack of specificity in setting is the tendency of sci-fi games to overwhelm players with skills and rule sets they initially don't understand and eventually don't need."
Re:One answer to Sci-Fi MMOs (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, that's almost exactly EVE. Try it.
Re:I love Eve Online (Score:5, Informative)
You are absolutely wrong about 0.0 first off. First off, there is no "endgame" in Eve. This isn't WoW or WAR. Secondly 0.0 is open to new pilots even with low skills. A newbie in a properly fitted (and by that I mean the right setup not necessarily T2 gear) frigate can work as a low cost interceptor quite easily, for example. That barely takes any time at all to train for. Believe it or not, creative T1 fits can be quite effective and not break the bank.
Combat is far from that simplistic, with some ship builds requiring a good deal of hands on management in order to keep yourself from capping out and proper module activation timing. On the broader spectrum, fleet commanding is pretty intense stuff and great fun to learn to do.
Go get into an interceptor duel with someone who knows what they're doing and try saying combat is boring again.
Getting podkilled is a bitch, true, but jump clones exist for a reason. Clone insurance is also very cheap so really if you get popped without it that's your own damn fault.
NPC Missions are kinda wank depth wise, but CCP is constantly adding new ones with better laid out mission briefings and do eventually plan on actually adding NPC AI beyond just the recently added sleepers (which for anyone who's been out there knows that they're no slouches and will rape the first logistics ship to show up and say hi).
You are right on one thing though, Eve is not a tourist's game. It takes a fair amount of time at the beginning to get through the initial learning curve and general entry barrier, and this puts off a lot of people who don't have friends in game to help them out. It's entirely up to the player motivating him or herself to get out there and make something of the game. It doesn't hold your hand and gently point you at a few wolf cubs to go kill for cheap xp, which really, is what most gamers want in a game. It instead says "here's your rookie ship, have fun!" and leaves it up to you. Definitely a niche game, but a successful one.
You may want to check out Jumpgate: Evolution which features hands on ship control with classic space sim combat.
http://www.jumpgateevolution.com
On a non-mmo but still space shooty shooty level there's also Naumachia which is shaping up to be all sorts of awesome.
http://naumachia.aureasection.com/ [aureasection.com]
Anyway, sorry for the fanboy rant, but posts such as yours drag that out of me. I don't like seeing people drag Eve through the mud and potentially put off people who may actually enjoy the game by posting pretty innacurate statements.
Re:I love Eve Online (Score:4, Informative)
This is not entirely true.
While the leveling system of EvE, with no level cap meaning that playing longer == having more skill, certainly rewards players that have been playing since the beginning, starting later does not necessarily mean that you will not be able to compete sensibly.
Skills are leveled at a diminishing returns system. To explain to those that don't play, every skill comes in five "levels", each level offering you the same benefit (e.g. 5% more speed, so 25% at level 5), but leveling times increase with each level. I.e. to level from 4 to 5 you need more time than the previous four levels combined.
Most skills that require other skills to be learned first (but the most advanced) require the prerequisits at level 3-4, usually. Unless it can be assumed to be a given that someone "hardcore" enough to want the specialized skill has the underlying skill at 5 anyway. If you're a hardcore miner, you have mining at 5. So it's understandable to make Mining 5 a prerequisite to fly the more advanced mining ships.
Freighters are a bit of a special case, needing some skills you might not have seen as important as an industrial hauler. Yet still, they're not really out of reach. Besides, I doubt that you cannot make money trading anymore just because there are freighters. Freighters are big, but slow. Trading, especially margin trading, is often a matter of being there first, unless the amounts asked are so ridiculously high that you can't fulfill the conctract alone anyway. And then, the frighter pilot would first of all have to have the amount at hand.
Especially in empire, and especially in ore trade, you'd have to visit a LOT of places before you can use a freighter sensibly. Before you can fill the balloon, the trade's long done and over.
What I'd suggest for a industrial trader is to build a network with miners. Miners (e.g. me) love to sit in belts, gobble rocks, maybe split them open for ore and then... well, then we're sitting on a few million trit and other ore that we have to get off the planet somehow. And we (ok, I) don't really like the idea of having to carry the crap for 20ish systems just to get a good price for it.
In other words, I think we should talk. ;)
Re:I love Eve Online (Score:5, Informative)
I agree with just about everything you said. One other thing that bears mentioning though is that Eve is really NOT a single-player game. If you decide to go it "lone-wolf" style then yes, you're probably going to get bored unless you have the patience of a saint.
The point of Eve is community. Join corps, leverage them as a jump-off point for your own corp if you want, or work your way up the ranks. Just like real life. I've played on and off and been in a few corps. In most cases, I've left on really good terms and come out with loads of equipment, ISK and training (not to mention, friends that I made through Eve Online). Sure there have been times I've been raiding my ex corps thanks to a mission in my new corp... but that's half the fun.
For some, Eve is a bit TOO much like real life I think. I only stopped playing frequently about 8 months ago because I just didn't have time for it. But I still plan to return... my character is still sitting on a database somewhere and will one day be reactivated. Maybe I'll join another corp (currently independent), or maybe I'll use the equipment and money I have now to build myself a new corp... enlist some of my old friends if they're still around.
That's what Eve is all about.
Re:Different types of Sci-Fi work. (Score:3, Informative)
So what happens? A different type of Sci-Fi.
"Retro Futuristic" sci-fi can work, such as things along the lines of Flash Gordon, or possibly post-apocalyptic sci-fi can work, think slightly more futuristic Mad Max. I could see an MMORPG based on Mad Max working out great, and if you move up event that causes society to collapse a couple of hundred years you've got yourself one heck of a game.
They tried it, but sadly it didn't work:
Auto Assault [wikipedia.org]