The community of EVE

[Koninbeor]

@Arma: Personally I don't find leveling all that easy (cuz I find the story and quests in this game a grindy slogfest) but I am certainly with you on your last point. Mini -games accessible to all levels would be a nice start. 

 

Honestly, they will probably get there eventually. SE pays a lot more attention to their game than most devs do, and 4 major patches a year is pretty ambitious and impressive. But outside of rp,  have not found the most cordial community though I'm not referring to anyone on this site.

 

Hey, I played EVE online for like 9 months.  I was also into Battlefield 2 for a while.  Believe me, FFXIV's community is like walking into a Mormon church compared to a really toxic community.

 

I don't find EVE to be a toxic community at all. With EVE, you know EXACTLY what you're walking into. EVE is all about competition, and the competitive spirit shines more brightly in that game than in any other I've ever played. Yes, you get some people who are just overly mouthy. Yes, you get some people who complain too much. That said, I've never once played a game that didn't have those types of players, and even RP is not immune to these types of players.

 

You have to have an understanding in EVE that when you undock, you ARE going to lose your ship. You might not lose it right away but on a long enough timeline, even the mightiest of Titans gets blown up. The people who thrive on PVP in that game are the ones who fully understand that their ship will explode in a fiery blaze of glory and just want to blow up as many things as possible before it happens. Never once have I participated in a toxic fleet. Those players are immediately muted and if they disrupt fleet ops, they're just flat out kicked. Playing EVE does require thicker skin than with most games simply because of the nature of the game. It's kill AND be killed, not kill OR be killed. I absolutely love it.

 

Also, my character is advancing while I type this message on my lunch break at work even though I'm not logged in. Gotta love that.

[Ignacius]

@Arma: Personally I don't find leveling all that easy (cuz I find the story and quests in this game a grindy slogfest) but I am certainly with you on your last point. Mini -games accessible to all levels would be a nice start. 

 

Honestly, they will probably get there eventually. SE pays a lot more attention to their game than most devs do, and 4 major patches a year is pretty ambitious and impressive. But outside of rp,  have not found the most cordial community though I'm not referring to anyone on this site.

 

Hey, I played EVE online for like 9 months.  I was also into Battlefield 2 for a while.  Believe me, FFXIV's community is like walking into a Mormon church compared to a really toxic community.

 

I don't find EVE to be a toxic community at all. With EVE, you know EXACTLY what you're walking into. EVE is all about competition, and the competitive spirit shines more brightly in that game than in any other I've ever played. Yes, you get some people who are just overly mouthy. Yes, you get some people who complain too much. That said, I've never once played a game that didn't have those types of players, and even RP is not immune to these types of players.

 

You have to have an understanding in EVE that when you undock, you ARE going to lose your ship. You might not lose it right away but on a long enough timeline, even the mightiest of Titans gets blown up. The people who thrive on PVP in that game are the ones who fully understand that their ship will explode in a fiery blaze of glory and just want to blow up as many things as possible before it happens. Never once have I participated in a toxic fleet. Those players are immediately muted and if they disrupt fleet ops, they're just flat out kicked. Playing EVE does require thicker skin than with most games simply because of the nature of the game. It's kill AND be killed, not kill OR be killed. I absolutely love it.

 

Also, my character is advancing while I type this message on my lunch break at work even though I'm not logged in. Gotta love that.

 

Oh, I've been in Amarr space for local chat.  Trust me, you might be able to get a clique together you won't hate, but the community as a whole?  FFXIV is a giant leaping step up over that.  I've played more hardcore PVP games in my time; I thought EVE would be different because it was in space and very distant (as in the entire game feels like it's played at arms-length).  It's not.  It's essentially Quake in slow motion with extra grindy bits.

 

As far as I'm concerned, EVE Online proved once and for all what the strengths of the MMORPG genre by simply not having them.  It's fun enough on your own; I can't complain that the game wasn't fun when no one was around to bother me.  I suddenly realized, after about nine months, that I hated seeing everyone in EVE.  People in my corporation needed things, but we didn't have anywhere "new" to go or anything "new" to see; solar systems are solar systems.  So my only interaction with them was to gain materials or data cores in order to expand our base of power so we could get more materials or data cores.  Sort of the grind without the reward.  Everyone else was, best case scenario, going to simply leave and ignore me.  Even in high security space, people would aggravate you for no reason other than space is empty and they're bored.

 

More importantly, that competitiveness isn't balanced by anything else.  In essence, EVE reminds me a lot more of a game like Battlefield than a game like World of Warcraft.  After you're past the PVP learning curve, there's just not much to it.  The game is nothing but a PVP sandbox with a couple extra essentially levequest-style things thrown in.  Minimal epic arcs.  Having played games that wrench you a lot harder than EVE does in a PVP sense and enjoying a few of them, you'd figure this wouldn't be that big of a deal.  But everyone who isn't you or yours, they're out to essentially disrupt you, no matter what it is you're doing or why you're doing it.  Even if you've just hacked a relic site and they have no way to tractor your goods, they'll ram you just for the sheer dickishness of it.  So after nine months, the second I saw a ship on my overview that wasn't part of my carefully maintained circle of "trusted" corpmates, the only thing that ran through my mind was that these people needed to just leave me alone.  I wanted nothing to do with anyone randomly walking by.

 

Which, I thought, was where MMOs were going, but FFXIV goes a complete 180 away from that.  You want to see people.  It's not just chat that's better in FFXIV (I really haven't talked to anyone who's gotten on my case), but it encourages cooperation and makes you happy to see people.  Your nodes are your nodes for gathering, so you can do it with friends and all get the benefits.  During FATEs, you want there to be more people so you're hoping they'll dismount and help out.  You get EXP for helping people kill things even if they're not in your party, so saving people isn't a complete waste of time.  You can both get credit for a kill and loot even if you didn't start it.  Very often, in the case of FATEs, there are things happening in the open world you can't handle solo.  You gain something by having other people running around in your area.

 

As an MMORPG, I just think FFXIV is stronger for that very reason.  The MMO open world cooperation means it's different than just playing a game of slow spaceship Unreal Tournament that doesn't end.  FFA PVP is a little overrated, considering I could get my teeth kicked in through just about a thousand game titles, most of which don't hassle me to check market volatility to earn game currency.  There aren't that many where you're hoping, and in my case happy, to see complete strangers.  Even in WoW on a PVE server, you figure they're there to steal your kills.

 

In FFXIV, everyone, even outside the community, has been really helpful.  Hell, even the guys near the Armourer trainer were giving me mats without expecting anything in return (I did have some things they needed when I asked).  Not to mention the people here, who are flat out the nicest people I've ever played a game with.  EVE's RP community is hospitable, but you'd be amazed how thin their skin can be OOC (I essentially was tripping over people all running around taking offense to everything I said the last months I was there).  Unfortunately, you can't pick an RP server, either, every troll, sadfaced teen, and internet scum you didn't want to ever see get to play on the same server as you.  No avoiding the toxic people if you want to avoid them.  They can even look you up and declare war on your corp for no reason other than it's cheap to do it and the RP community made you blacklist them so that you didn't argue on the forums.

 

In the end, I don't think there's anyone happier to be playing FFXIV than I am.  Or would be if my mobo wasn't shot.

[Koninbeor]

Oh, I've been in Amarr space for local chat.  Trust me, you might be able to get a clique together you won't hate, but the community as a whole?  FFXIV is a giant leaping step up over that.  I've played more hardcore PVP games in my time; I thought EVE would be different because it was in space and very distant (as in the entire game feels like it's played at arms-length).  It's not.  It's essentially Quake in slow motion with extra grindy bits.

 

As far as I'm concerned, EVE Online proved once and for all what the strengths of the MMORPG genre by simply not having them.  It's fun enough on your own; I can't complain that the game wasn't fun when no one was around to bother me.  I suddenly realized, after about nine months, that I hated seeing everyone in EVE.  People in my corporation needed things, but we didn't have anywhere "new" to go or anything "new" to see; solar systems are solar systems.  So my only interaction with them was to gain materials or data cores in order to expand our base of power so we could get more materials or data cores.  Sort of the grind without the reward.  Everyone else was, best case scenario, going to simply leave and ignore me.  Even in high security space, people would aggravate you for no reason other than space is empty and they're bored.

 

More importantly, that competitiveness isn't balanced by anything else.  In essence, EVE reminds me a lot more of a game like Battlefield than a game like World of Warcraft.  After you're past the PVP learning curve, there's just not much to it.  The game is nothing but a PVP sandbox with a couple extra essentially levequest-style things thrown in.  Minimal epic arcs.  Having played games that wrench you a lot harder than EVE does in a PVP sense and enjoying a few of them, you'd figure this wouldn't be that big of a deal.  But everyone who isn't you or yours, they're out to essentially disrupt you, no matter what it is you're doing or why you're doing it.  Even if you've just hacked a relic site and they have no way to tractor your goods, they'll ram you just for the sheer dickishness of it.  So after nine months, the second I saw a ship on my overview that wasn't part of my carefully maintained circle of "trusted" corpmates, the only thing that ran through my mind was that these people needed to just leave me alone.  I wanted nothing to do with anyone randomly walking by.

 

Which, I thought, was where MMOs were going, but FFXIV goes a complete 180 away from that.  You want to see people.  It's not just chat that's better in FFXIV (I really haven't talked to anyone who's gotten on my case), but it encourages cooperation and makes you happy to see people.  Your nodes are your nodes for gathering, so you can do it with friends and all get the benefits.  During FATEs, you want there to be more people so you're hoping they'll dismount and help out.  You get EXP for helping people kill things even if they're not in your party, so saving people isn't a complete waste of time.  You can both get credit for a kill and loot even if you didn't start it.  Very often, in the case of FATEs, there are things happening in the open world you can't handle solo.  You gain something by having other people running around in your area.

 

Amarr. The second largest trade hub in EVE. Amarr. If any game in existence is judged by its trade chat, which is essentially Jita, Amarr, Dodixie, and Hek local chat, then there is simply no hope for humanity. Trade chat is, without a doubt, a culmination of the worst that society has to offer. There are channels in FFXIV that I have turned off and will never ever turn on and I use my block list regularly. We clearly have different views on this, which is fine. I've been involved in several wars and even then have never had a problem with any of the corporations who have tried so hard (and often succeeded) in blowing us to smithereens. I absolutely love sandbox games (I miss you, Star Wars Galaxies!) and while I agree that EVE has little to offer as far as quest excitement goes, the key to the game is that the players make it great. EVE has been running strong since 2003 and has the largest persistent world in the history of gaming, so clearly they're doing something right. Of course, EVE is definitely not for everyone. But hey, at least they give you a free trial to find out whether or not you think it's rubbish.

[Ignacius]

Oh, I've been in Amarr space for local chat.  Trust me, you might be able to get a clique together you won't hate, but the community as a whole?  FFXIV is a giant leaping step up over that.  I've played more hardcore PVP games in my time; I thought EVE would be different because it was in space and very distant (as in the entire game feels like it's played at arms-length).  It's not.  It's essentially Quake in slow motion with extra grindy bits.

 

As far as I'm concerned, EVE Online proved once and for all what the strengths of the MMORPG genre by simply not having them.  It's fun enough on your own; I can't complain that the game wasn't fun when no one was around to bother me.  I suddenly realized, after about nine months, that I hated seeing everyone in EVE.  People in my corporation needed things, but we didn't have anywhere "new" to go or anything "new" to see; solar systems are solar systems.  So my only interaction with them was to gain materials or data cores in order to expand our base of power so we could get more materials or data cores.  Sort of the grind without the reward.  Everyone else was, best case scenario, going to simply leave and ignore me.  Even in high security space, people would aggravate you for no reason other than space is empty and they're bored.

 

More importantly, that competitiveness isn't balanced by anything else.  In essence, EVE reminds me a lot more of a game like Battlefield than a game like World of Warcraft.  After you're past the PVP learning curve, there's just not much to it.  The game is nothing but a PVP sandbox with a couple extra essentially levequest-style things thrown in.  Minimal epic arcs.  Having played games that wrench you a lot harder than EVE does in a PVP sense and enjoying a few of them, you'd figure this wouldn't be that big of a deal.  But everyone who isn't you or yours, they're out to essentially disrupt you, no matter what it is you're doing or why you're doing it.  Even if you've just hacked a relic site and they have no way to tractor your goods, they'll ram you just for the sheer dickishness of it.  So after nine months, the second I saw a ship on my overview that wasn't part of my carefully maintained circle of "trusted" corpmates, the only thing that ran through my mind was that these people needed to just leave me alone.  I wanted nothing to do with anyone randomly walking by.

 

Which, I thought, was where MMOs were going, but FFXIV goes a complete 180 away from that.  You want to see people.  It's not just chat that's better in FFXIV (I really haven't talked to anyone who's gotten on my case), but it encourages cooperation and makes you happy to see people.  Your nodes are your nodes for gathering, so you can do it with friends and all get the benefits.  During FATEs, you want there to be more people so you're hoping they'll dismount and help out.  You get EXP for helping people kill things even if they're not in your party, so saving people isn't a complete waste of time.  You can both get credit for a kill and loot even if you didn't start it.  Very often, in the case of FATEs, there are things happening in the open world you can't handle solo.  You gain something by having other people running around in your area.

 

Amarr. The second largest trade hub in EVE. Amarr. If any game in existence is judged by its trade chat, which is essentially Jita, Amarr, Dodixie, and Hek local chat, then there is simply no hope for humanity. Trade chat is, without a doubt, a culmination of the worst that society has to offer. There are channels in FFXIV that I have turned off and will never ever turn on and I use my block list regularly. We clearly have different views on this, which is fine. I've been involved in several wars and even then have never had a problem with any of the corporations who have tried so hard (and often succeeded) in blowing us to smithereens. I absolutely love sandbox games (I miss you, Star Wars Galaxies!) and while I agree that EVE has little to offer as far as quest excitement goes, the key to the game is that the players make it great. EVE has been running strong since 2003 and has the largest persistent world in the history of gaming, so clearly they're doing something right. Of course, EVE is definitely not for everyone. But hey, at least they give you a free trial to find out whether or not you think it's rubbish.

 

The sad part?  I'd say it's a great game if it wasn't for all the people, which is why I played for so long before stopping.  I actually did like flying around, scanning things down, PVP for short stretches.  But my IRL job is hard; I'm dealing with everything from design to logistics on a daily basis, often in ten- to twelve-hour stretches.  I want to come home to relax with friends and play a challenging game, not come home to constant FFA PVP.  If I wanted to do that, I'd be playing Titanfall with my brother.  When I PVP, I don't pansy around with the pretty stuff.  I jump straight into the deep end where thirteen year olds in Austria can immediately begin embarrassing me.

 

But really, I feel like PVP kind of cheapens the game experience; we are our own content.  There was a time when games were so damn difficult that completion was its own reward and, if the people you played with weren't on top of their game with you, you all couldn't move.  I've come to see PVP as sort of outsourcing the job of making interesting games to the players.  EVE's an example of that.  FFXIV will release a gigantic leap of new content in their next patch, whereas EVE's last expansion released a few new ships, a random cosmic anomaly site, and a few bits and pieces.  CCP's dev team doesn't really make the game more interesting or challenging.  They count on the players to do that for them.

 

I've had the same reaction to FPS games lately.  I'm sick of developers using the PVE end of their games as an advertisement for the PVP end because so many people wouldn't buy a truly difficult game.  I don't think PVP makes a game difficult, though.  That's one of the reasons I tend to roll my eyes when someone calls a game like EVE "difficult".  It's not; EVE's a pretty simple game in the grand scheme of things.  PVP is only difficult for the bottom half of the player base.  That's kind of why I'm glad FFXIV's PVP is so terrible.  At least I know Square is focusing on the game first.

 

I wouldn't say EVE is terrible, it's just a terrible waste of an MMO.  Essentially, it encourages cliquishness by making sure anyone who doesn't have a vested interest in you being alive wants you dead.  There are a lot of games out there like that, but not all of them were decent space sims that had an MMO community.  I just think the strengths of an MMORPG are all built up in wanting to meet and play with strangers, so you're always making friends.  As it stands, EVE's only real danger is other players; CCP made space a relatively benign place.  It probably would have been more entertaining if they hadn't outsourced the job of trying to kill us to only us.  Your MMORPG's players should never be more dangerous than your game's environment; it's a sign of lazy development when the masters of the game code can't make you more afraid of them than some jagoff with exactly the same resources you have.

 

I really hate being babied by modern developers.  I pay good money for a game to try to kill me, not to kill other people for them.  So I'm sure as Hell not paying a subscription to work as an unpaid developer of variable difficulty on some company's behalf.  My reaction seeing another player in an MMO should be, "Oh, thank God!  I hope this guy's feeling helpful, because I can't do this on my own."

[FreelanceWizard]

Moderation note: This thread was split off from this discussion thread.

[Ignacius]

Moderation note: This thread was split off from this discussion thread.

 

Thanks, Freelance.

[C'kayah Polaali]

As someone who's played Eve off and on (mostly on) since it released, I've got to chime in with some support for the game.

 

Like Koninbeor wrote, you really can't judge the game by local chat in Amarr. You also have to keep in mind what you're getting into with Eve - it's not a traditional MMO. Most MMOs have a safe PVE world with, perhaps, a tiny little area where you can do some sort of PVP. In Eve, you have a tiny little area (which is still vast, mind you) where you can safely do PVE, surrounded by areas of high risk.

 

While it is possible to simply log in and safely relax with friends - there's a nice level 4 Lai Dai Protection Services agent in Nourvokaiken which never, ever sends you into any dangerous space at all, for instance - the game literally is focused on PVP. Everything is PVP. Even the market. Especially the market. Everything you buy on it is being sold by a player. Some player built it from blueprints that players researched, using materials that players made, using ores that players mined.

 

Another thing to learn in a hurry: Unclaimed space is dangerous. It feels like a random danger, but it's not, really. People will kill you in wormholes because wormholes are extremely lucrative. People will kill you in nullsec chokepoints because nullsec is extremely lucrative. People will kill you in lowsec (space where CONCORD won't show up, and the only things that will defend you are weak sentry guns) because it can be pretty lucrative (four pirates in decent battleships camping a lowsec gate into a mission hub can easy make four times the cost of their ships and fittings with a single kill of a Machariel-equipped mission runner). Sure, they're also doing it because they want the kills, but there's an economic rationale that can't be ignored.

 

My advice to anyone who wants to play Eve is always the same: Train up to be able to fly a fast frigate - something like an Atron with a microwarp drive, which doesn't take that long to learn - and fly around. You'll lose your ship, and probably your clone, but you'll get to experience the place. A fast-flying fast-aligning ship gives you your best chance to get out of tight squeezes, while also being cheap enough to not bother you if you lose it. See what sort of places you like. Meet people you like (you will!). Join a corporation you like. Enjoyment of the game increases radically when you're playing with people you like.

 

And learn to enjoy the PVP. Back when I was playing seriously, I was considered one of the best interceptor pilots in the game. I loved frigate combat, and did a ton of it. I participated in the Great Northern War and ended up fighting a lot of the same people over and over again. Sometimes we'd talk about fights afterwards, and sometimes we ended up becoming friends. I made some extremely rewarding connections with people over the shared love of making each others ships explode (at one point I was considering learning Swedish simply so that I could join NSN, who were some of my most ferocious enemies during that war, because I liked them so much).

 

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). 

[Ignacius]

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). 

 

I think I'm not articulating my point very well.  I'm not saying it's bad, but I'm not saying it's original.  It's actually much more akin to FPS games in that the world isn't trying to kill you, other players are.  I'm saying that's very unfortunate, considering I think PVP these days is meant to shore up developer deficiencies in game design.  CCP isn't really noted for their rigorous development cycle and hands on approach to the game.  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.  The forums lit them up for that.

 

The point being, there are a lot more MMOs these days that focus on PVP (especially RVR).  I know it's why I'm not even going to bother with Star Citizen.  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.  It's faster and easier to develop, so PVP games were better developed on modern shortened development schedules.  So the best games of the past were quick-developed PVP-fests like FPS games.  So they engineered taste changes.  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.  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.  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.  Then they can spend their time making the flashing lights prettier or twiddling their thumbs.  Making hard, responsive games is actually really difficult, so why try?  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.  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.  Unfortunately, I don't know that we have a real antithesis to that.  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."  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.  Before that, you have to go back to Ikaruga?  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.  Players should be the least of my problems; surely the people who make games can make things harder than PVP.  They definitely used to.  EVE just felt, after I figured out PVP, like a very empty place.  There just isn't anything to it without other people making your life difficult.  Which is disappointing, because that just means I do my best to avoid communicating with people altogether as opposed to meeting them.

[C'kayah Polaali]

Ultimately I think it comes down to game preferences. You don't want to play in a persistent PVP universe, so you don't care for the game. I'm not saying that's bad, it's simply that you prefer not to play that sort of game.

 

There are a lot of games that have some PVP component in them. The unique thing about Eve is that it focuses on PVP and it makes that PVP matter. The vast majority of the map in Eve is unclaimed by NPC entities, and available for players to create their own political entities. Even when you get into wormholes, you're still running into player-made entities struggling over who will control them - the scale is smaller, but the struggle is there.

 

That, in my mind, is what makes Eve different. It's not a standard MMO because standard MMOs focus on PVE. It's not a FPS-style game because those don't have any real persistence. It's PVP focused, but that PVP drives a persistent political landscape that changes as the player struggle evolves.

[Kage]

I have no idea what EVE is seeing as I had no real ability to play anything and as such didn't have the interest in seeing the grass that was greener..

 

But is EVE the game where a few gaming sites commented about having a gigantic space battle? Like in recent months? ^^;

[Ignacius]

I have no idea what EVE is seeing as I had no real ability to play anything and as such didn't have the interest in seeing the grass that was greener..

 

But is EVE the game where a few gaming sites commented about having a gigantic space battle? Like in recent months? ^^;

 

Yes, actually.  Here's kind of how it works:

 

There are areas outside imperial space that are kind of "open dibs".  Corps like to show up and try to hold them.  Many form giant alliances.  Alliances get set in their ways and kind of eye each other warily.  Then, someone, somewhere, makes a mistake and touches off a giant space battle with all the resources these alliances have been generating.

 

Being part of one isn't as fun.  It was more fun to report ship movements since you get to see the whole thing unfold, and being a fleet commander must be brilliant, but being a grunt in those is literally selecting the target that your commander tells you to shoot and hitting F1.

 

There's a currency exchange where you can buy a months' subscription for real money and sell it on the open market.  Given how much a PLEX is worth, you can kind-of work out how much ISK (in-game-money) you get for each dollar.  Given that, some of these fights cost thousands of equivalent dollars.

 

Personally, the most fun I had was running around wormhole space on a recon frigate, though.  The game's entertaining, it just makes almost all the rest of the actual players, at best, an annoyance.  I'd probably like it better if no one else was there.  That's sort of why I don't like it.  What's the point of an MMO if you're having more fun without the other players?

[Koninbeor]

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.

[Koninbeor]

I have no idea what EVE is seeing as I had no real ability to play anything and as such didn't have the interest in seeing the grass that was greener..

 

But is EVE the game where a few gaming sites commented about having a gigantic space battle? Like in recent months? ^^;

 

The one in which over $500,000 was lost according to the cost of ISK per Dollar? Yes, that is EVE. The devs put a permanent landmark into the game at the spot of the battle to commemorate the event. Pieces of destroyed Titan hulls now litter space in that area. So... freaking... epic... 80+ Titans went to die in what is being referred to by many as "The Ninth Circle of Nullsec."

 

The grass isn't greener in EVE. The grass is red with the blood of your enemies instead of green. It's completely different from FFXIV and requires a completely different mentality. If you ever want to try it out, I can send you a friend invite. You'll get a 21 day trial instead of 14 and if you subscribe then I'll get a PLEX. I can sell the PLEX in game for around 600 million ISK and split the profits with you 50/50 to help you get a jump start in the game. That goes for anyone here.

[Ignacius]

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?  I promise, my poor feelings aren't going to be hurt if you don't agree with me.  I wanted to have a discussion about it and its implications, otherwise I'd have just ignored it.  I'm not sure what it is that makes people think their opinions aren't valid topics of debate or don't have value.  Take the hours to defend it, I'd like to hear the specifics.  I'm not personally attacking anyone except, maybe, CCP.  I don't figure anyone is attacking me (hopefully I'm right).

 

Here's the issue I have with those numbers.  I don't think FFXIV, for example, is more cliquish than EVE because, specifically, anyone who isn't in your corp is your enemy.  Period.  Whether they're red or not, everyone wants you dead and wants your stuff.  Contrast that with FFXIV, where you're sometimes praying someone comes along to help you with a FATE.  EVE simply doesn't have any analogue to that.  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.  I wanted to see precisely as many as were in my corp in my space.  Even on Gilgamesh, I'm happy to see pretty much anyone dismount in my general area during a quest.  The worst they could do is ignore me instead of help, which is generally the best thing I could expect in EVE.  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.  For anyone reading this that feels intimidated, don't be.  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.  Gearing is essentially about making sure you have the skills to use what you want and checking the numbers.  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.  The ship flies itself, so all you do is try to control range and transverse speed.  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.  If you've ever dealt with a PVP learning curve before, that's the element of difficulty.  Especially once you're flying, you only need to know how to do a handful of things actively.  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.  After hearing how complex it was, it's fairly simple once you boil it down and everything's about common sense.  If something was expensive on the market for a month, suddenly it's cheap, don't sell it.  If frigates are flying too fast for your guns, use drones.  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.  Within about a month of flat-out learning from my corp-mates, I knew pretty much everything I needed to know about the game.  I just needed to wait for my skills to train up.

 

My problem with it is maybe that it's too easy.  Players are, literally, the only problem, and they have little else to do than mess with each other.  The cluster can be a very empty place and you'll essentially know what you're jumping into before you ever get there.  The environment isn't dangerous.  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.  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.  That's fine if it's free to play.  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.  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:  Just so everyone knows, I've played World of Warcraft nearly since launch.  I love almost everything about it through every expansion.  Trust me, I may take game love seriously, but I don't take it personally.  Feel free to critique away.  We're consumers of video games.  We should have a say in how they are developed and what we'd like out of them.

[Koninbeor]

I'm not going to spend hours defending it simply because I don't devote that much time to forums. EVE has bad apples just like anywhere else. Because of the huge focus on PVP, the competitive spirit really shines through in the local chats. This does generally translate into a lot of taunting as players try to lure the competition into making stupid mistakes. This tactic works more often than it should.

 

CCP doesn't have lazy devs, they have devs that have to focus on different aspects of the game than other devs. Most MMOs are filled with servers that duplicate a world. This is preferable for a theme park environment because it cuts down on the lines for all of the rides. Too much traffic in an area slows things down, which takes away from your gaming experience. CCP has addressed this issue in ultra-crowded areas by introducing tidi (time dilation) into the game. During tidi, the functions of ships are slowed down (guns and defensive capabilities have a longer cool down) in order to place less strain on the server, helping to ensure that the environment doesn't just crash. Tidi does suck, I won't lie. Everyone hates tidi. Still, it's better than crashing servers. EVE has crazy awesome servers that have been upgraded recently, so it's more of an issue with technology in general than their equipment.

 

Anywho, when CCP creates or updates something, they have to take into account the fact that their changes will have an impact on multiple servers simultaneously instead of just slapping it onto one server and calling the work done. In theme park games, what is good for one server is generally good for all of the other servers simply because it's the same specs on the server duplicating the same information. In EVE, different servers handle a different level of strain depending on which part of the gaming world they support. EVE actually has two worlds. The first is the actual live world and the second is the test server. CCP accepts feedback from players as they test out changes on the test server.

 

The fact that anyone who isn't in your corp is your enemy is nothing more than a myth. True, anyone who isn't in your alliance (a collection of corps) is a potential enemy, and you should likely use caution, but it isn't a hard rule. Especially in high security space. If you kill someone in highsec then CONCORD (the police) kills you back. Quickly. There is no escape. You get blown up. In Lowsec or Nullsec... yeah, then you're fair game. Just watch where you go. I'm a part of EVE University, a well-known corporation that helps new players learn the ropes. Unistas (that's what most people call us) are typically seen as very easy targets and yet we don't have many problems with people ganking our members. We have several in-game chat channels for different purposes, Mumble channels, and offer classes that anyone in EVE can participate in. It's a great community that I'm proud to be a part of, and it's certainly the largest clique I've ever participated in. Lots and lots of friendly faces. If you go solo or join a small corp then yes, things can be rough. But being part of a small group is a choice. The larger corps recruit, most aren't difficult to get into, and nearly all have a place for you.

[Ignacius]

I'm not going to spend hours defending it simply because I don't devote that much time to forums.  EVE has bad apples just like anywhere else. Because of the huge focus on PVP, the competitive spirit really shines through in the local chats. This does generally translate into a lot of taunting as players try to lure the competition into making stupid mistakes. This tactic works more often than it should.

 

CCP doesn't have lazy devs, they have devs that have to focus on different aspects of the game than other devs. Most MMOs are filled with servers that duplicate a world. This is preferable for a theme park environment because it cuts down on the lines for all of the rides. Too much traffic in an area slows things down, which takes away from your gaming experience. CCP has addressed this issue in ultra-crowded areas by introducing tidi (time dilation) into the game. During tidi, the functions of ships are slowed down (guns and defensive capabilities have a longer cool down) in order to place less strain on the server, helping to ensure that the environment doesn't just crash. Tidi does suck, I won't lie. Everyone hates tidi. Still, it's better than crashing servers. EVE has crazy awesome servers that have been upgraded recently, so it's more of an issue with technology in general than their equipment.

 

Anywho, when CCP creates or updates something, they have to take into account the fact that their changes will have an impact on multiple servers simultaneously instead of just slapping it onto one server and calling the work done. In theme park games, what is good for one server is generally good for all of the other servers simply because it's the same specs on the server duplicating the same information. In EVE, different servers handle a different level of strain depending on which part of the gaming world they support. EVE actually has two worlds. The first is the actual live world and the second is the test server. CCP accepts feedback from players as they test out changes on the test server.

 

The fact that anyone who isn't in your corp is your enemy is nothing more than a myth. True, anyone who isn't in your alliance (a collection of corps) is a potential enemy, and you should likely use caution, but it isn't a hard rule. Especially in high security space. If you kill someone in highsec then CONCORD (the police) kills you back. Quickly. There is no escape. You get blown up. In Lowsec or Nullsec... yeah, then you're fair game. Just watch where you go. I'm a part of EVE University, a well-known corporation that helps new players learn the ropes. Unistas (that's what most people call us) are typically seen as very easy targets and yet we don't have many problems with people ganking our members. We have several in-game chat channels for different purposes, Mumble channels, and offer classes that anyone in EVE can participate in. It's a great community that I'm proud to be a part of, and it's certainly the largest clique I've ever participated in. Lots and lots of friendly faces. If you go solo or join a small corp then yes, things can be rough. But being part of a small group is a choice. The larger corps recruit, most aren't difficult to get into, and nearly all have a place for you.

 

Oh I'm aware of EVE Uni, like I said, I played the game for a while.  Luckily, the RP community friends I had showed me the ropes.  I wasn't just talking about local, forums are the same way.  Strikingly, people are REALLY sensitive on the forums to pretty much anything.  It was a weird dichotomy, playing a game where everyone tells each other to toughen up, but it's really easy to hurt people's feelings (not talking about you here, you're alright, just a lot more of them there than here).  Maybe it's because I'm harder to write off as a troll or a moron?

 

I definitely get the feeling CCP devs are lazy, though.  It's not an issue of what they add; those solar systems are, as I intimated, pretty benign and empty places.  It's not what they add, but the rate and pace they add it, as well as their responsibilities elsewhere.  Essentially, they care if someone hacks your account or finds some really cheap exploit they don't like (there's a story there).  Other than that, they don't have to regulate anything, which is probably a healthy chunk of our MMO cost of living.  So without that, you'd think they'd make more ships, more kinds of anomalies, more everything.  They don't.  Last expansion (patch, for the information of others', you aren't charged for expansions in EVE), they worked through a few balancing issues, issued like three more ship models, and a new type of cosmic anomaly (using their hacking game and tractor beam collection sweepstakes >.<).  For the same subscription, look at what we're getting from Square for our next, likewise-free, patch.

 

And EVE doesn't really have a graphical content excuse, nebulas sometimes change but they don't have gravity fluctuations happening in three-star systems or anything.  It's all nice and stable and easy.  They just don't feel the need to further develop.  What they did I wouldn't call positive.  Time dilation is terrible; nothing made a thousand-ship starfight more boring than everything happening at 10% speed, so we all alt-tab out while we wait for weapons to cycle (unless you're in a recon frig, where you HAVE to be watching).

 

If there was one thing that soured me on CCP, it was their handling of their last live event.  The one that was supposed to gather people together to attack a pirate base.  There's nothing easier; it's dungeonmaster 101: get the people together, go somewhere, fight something, come back.  I'm kind of lucky I'm in the U.S. and all their events happen when I'm at work.  Got to see footage of CCP leading people in TiDi in a horribly organized mess straight into the teeth of player pirate alliances, trickling them in slowly into systems that are maxed and locked, and essentially giving up.  The response they gave was mesmerizing.  I'm assuming you read it, but I wasn't surprised at the negative reaction to it.  CCP dropped the ball and said, "Well, we didn't expect that, so whatever."

 

As soon as I saw that, I was done with them.  It's their event, it's their game, it's their baby.  They should have fallen on the sword for it and I'd have respected them.  Instead, they kind of shrugged and said it was the players' fault that they didn't somehow overcome the organization they were responsible for putting together.

 

And actually, EVE University was setting up pirate raids in the Bleak Lands? (I think) to show people the ropes there, too.  So, yes, since I'm not Eve Uni, I was going to be on the menu.  You guys, as nice as you might have been, weren't any different than any of the other people that were online at the time trying to kill me.  I mean, my corp wasn't as big, but the rules were exactly the same.  Don't trust anyone, barely trust the corp members because people will alt in spies.  Definitely don't trust anyone that isn't tagged, because if you assume they'll all want to kill you and take your stuff, 9/10 times you're right and the 1/10 you'll never meet.

 

Just the sort of stuff you don't need when contractors are screwing up the mechanical work and hoping you don't notice you'll fail inspection.

 

It's not a myth that everyone but the corp that profits from you wants you dead, you said it yourself, the game is entirely PVPcentric.  It's all the content that's challenging or matters.  About the only thing CCP did that I really applaud them for were the Sansha Incursions, and FFXIV FATEs are just downright more varied and entertaining.

 

I mean, if you ever get bored of PVP (and I did), EVE doesn't have anywhere near enough meat on its bones to keep you full.  I tried pretty much everything after that, but there's really nothing it does that other games aren't leaps and bounds better at unless you like FFA PVP.

 

I did when I started EVE, obviously.  I definitely don't now, not for a monthly fee.  It's just not worth it when there are more lethal games, PVE and PVP, that don't charge you.  If you aren't constantly meeting new people and making new friends, you might as well not be playing an MMO.