(03-19-2014, 02:03 PM)Koninbeor Wrote: I could spend hours defending EVE, discussing how it isn't any more cliquish than any other MMO I've played (including this one), and how CCP is not lazy with their development. Instead, I'll break it down into the simplest form. EVE Online is a sandbox game. In a sandbox game, you are the story. These games are designed to be as open as possible and give players as much freedom to as they desire as possible. The vast majority of MMOs on the market are not sandbox, but theme park games. In theme park games, you play the story, quest for NPCs, grind for gear, etc. You don't develop the same way for a sandbox that you do for a theme park because you don't try to control what your players are doing or what they're creating.
As I've stated before, EVE Online is not for everyone. It is not a game that favors people who lack critical thinking. It is not a game in which you can just outfit a ship with the coolest gear and run around kicking butt. EVE requires skill, strategy, cooperation, patience, and an understanding that you're going to lose your shiny gear eventually. The developers will not entertain you in this game. You are the content and that's what makes the game great. Last night there were over 35,000 people on the game at once. Everyone in the same environment. How many people can be simultaneously logged into the same world in FFXIV?
Theme park games and sandbox games are for people with different preferences. That's all this really comes down to. The largest alliance in EVE has over 35,000 members. Here you can't even have 130 in a Free Company. Different games with different purposes. I like both. Twilight sucks. Peace.
Why not defend it? Â I promise, my poor feelings aren't going to be hurt if you don't agree with me. Â I wanted to have a discussion about it and its implications, otherwise I'd have just ignored it. Â I'm not sure what it is that makes people think their opinions aren't valid topics of debate or don't have value. Â Take the hours to defend it, I'd like to hear the specifics. Â I'm not personally attacking anyone except, maybe, CCP. Â I don't figure anyone is attacking me (hopefully I'm right).
Here's the issue I have with those numbers. Â I don't think FFXIV, for example, is more cliquish than EVE because, specifically, anyone who isn't in your corp is your enemy. Â Period. Â Whether they're red or not, everyone wants you dead and wants your stuff. Â Contrast that with FFXIV, where you're sometimes praying someone comes along to help you with a FATE. Â EVE simply doesn't have any analogue to that. Â Hell, the Minmatar forces in the Matari/Amarr warzone were literally fighting each other last time I was paying attention.
There have been, when I played, as many as 46,000 people on at any one time on their one server. Â I wanted to see precisely as many as were in my corp in my space. Â Even on Gilgamesh, I'm happy to see pretty much anyone dismount in my general area during a quest. Â The worst they could do is ignore me instead of help, which is generally the best thing I could expect in EVE. Â So the number online is sort of an empty number; I want less of those people on for me to do whatever it is I need to do in the end.
Also, on EVE skill.... I originally trialed the game because I was told it was the hardest MMORPG out there. Â For anyone reading this that feels intimidated, don't be. Â It's not hard, doesn't require any more thinking than most of what I've played, and isn't nearly as hardcore as people make it out to be. Â Gearing is essentially about making sure you have the skills to use what you want and checking the numbers. Â You gain skills over time, rather than by using them, so you don't have to start by sucking at using some certain thing; given enough time, you can come out of the gate using it at the most powerful skill levels possible. Â The ship flies itself, so all you do is try to control range and transverse speed. Â The entire idea of combat (which is good and fluid) is about having the particular set of equipment your enemy isn't set up to stop.
That's basically it. Â If you've ever dealt with a PVP learning curve before, that's the element of difficulty. Â Especially once you're flying, you only need to know how to do a handful of things actively. Â If you're in a fleet, you usually only need to know how to do one.
That's actually probably one of the things I liked about it. Â After hearing how complex it was, it's fairly simple once you boil it down and everything's about common sense. Â If something was expensive on the market for a month, suddenly it's cheap, don't sell it. Â If frigates are flying too fast for your guns, use drones. Â It's not having to learn to actively fly using a flightstick, it's probably a lot less nasty of a curve than most FPS arena games.
If you can master and react to raid bosses in any game, you're more than capable of playing EVE. Â Within about a month of flat-out learning from my corp-mates, I knew pretty much everything I needed to know about the game. Â I just needed to wait for my skills to train up.
My problem with it is maybe that it's too easy. Â Players are, literally, the only problem, and they have little else to do than mess with each other. Â The cluster can be a very empty place and you'll essentially know what you're jumping into before you ever get there. Â The environment isn't dangerous. Â Towards the end, once I'd had my fill of PVP, I flew around in a cloaked recon ship scanning down relic and data sites. Â I was careful and didn't even lose a ship.
My entire problem with it, from bottom to top, is all about that point you made about developers not being there to "entertain" us. Â That's fine if it's free to play. Â I'm not paying fifteen dollars a month for a company to tell us it's all on us to develop content, not when there are companies around like Square actively throwing new and interesting content at us for the same price. Â When it's just players providing any kind of depth to the game and I'm looking to entertain myself, I'm certainly not paying CCP for the privilege of making their game interesting on their behalf.
Especially when the 45 thousand people on at any one time are just a giant blinking obstacle to me.  EVE's PVP focus may work for some people, but it certainly made sure that I didn't want to meet any of those 45 thousand people when I was playing  Say what you want about FFXIV server limitations, my blacklist contains only gilseller names and I'm happy as Hell to meet anyone randomly in the road in Eorzea.  It seems like a much better use of the MMO community element; I get more bang for the buck for those people logged into my server.  It's a measure of potential friends rather than a measure of my sole meaningful opposition.
EDIT: Â Just so everyone knows, I've played World of Warcraft nearly since launch. Â I love almost everything about it through every expansion. Â Trust me, I may take game love seriously, but I don't take it personally. Â Feel free to critique away. Â We're consumers of video games. Â We should have a say in how they are developed and what we'd like out of them.
