(03-19-2014, 11:05 AM)C Wrote: I guess what I'm saying is that Eve is different, and you can't really go into it with the same expectations as you would other MMOs. Go into it with a fresh mind, explore the place on your own, and make your own decisions.
And stay the hell away from Amarr (and Jita, and Dodixie, and Hek, and anywhere else that has more than 100 pilots in space).Â
I think I'm not articulating my point very well. Â I'm not saying it's bad, but I'm not saying it's original. Â It's actually much more akin to FPS games in that the world isn't trying to kill you, other players are. Â I'm saying that's very unfortunate, considering I think PVP these days is meant to shore up developer deficiencies in game design. Â CCP isn't really noted for their rigorous development cycle and hands on approach to the game. Â The last "event" they ran, they essentially led a few thousand people in 90% time dilation straight into an ambush out of their own sheer ignorance to how their own game works. Â The forums lit them up for that.
The point being, there are a lot more MMOs these days that focus on PVP (especially RVR). Â I know it's why I'm not even going to bother with Star Citizen. Â Mostly, I think it's because no one knows how to make a world dangerous anymore without relying on PVP like a crutch.
One theory I've heard on that subject came from my brother, who said that PVP just sells better. Â It's faster and easier to develop, so PVP games were better developed on modern shortened development schedules. Â So the best games of the past were quick-developed PVP-fests like FPS games. Â So they engineered taste changes. Â A friend of mine also pointed out that hard games may be critical darlings and may be popular long after they're gone, but they don't tend to sell well. Â It's probably harder to get people to subscribe to a game that's too hard to worry about constant PVP than it is to get people to sub to a game where that's all they have to worry about.
Personally, though, I think game developers simply gave up. Â Aside from a few notable exceptions these days, developers don't want to put the time into a game's difficulty curve when they can get players to do that for them. Â Then they can spend their time making the flashing lights prettier or twiddling their thumbs. Â Making hard, responsive games is actually really difficult, so why try? Â It's almost developed a generation of gamers who seem to think we can't program a game to be difficult, and the only real difficulty left is in PVP. Â Sort of a post-programming world.
What you get is something like EVE, where the game itself isn't constantly trying to murder you because CCP doesn't think they can make the game hard to play. Â Unfortunately, I don't know that we have a real antithesis to that. Â FFXIV tries in concept, but nobody is really setting that game out there as a mountain to climb and saying, "We don't think you're going to be able to beat parts of this." Â At least not in the MMO world; the Dark Souls series tries its best to swat you so hard you cry back to your mother. Â Before that, you have to go back to Ikaruga? Â I suppose you can count Monster Hunter in that list of games trying their hardest to murder you.
It just feels so cheap to me, in the end. Â Players should be the least of my problems; surely the people who make games can make things harder than PVP. Â They definitely used to. Â EVE just felt, after I figured out PVP, like a very empty place. Â There just isn't anything to it without other people making your life difficult. Â Which is disappointing, because that just means I do my best to avoid communicating with people altogether as opposed to meeting them.
