State of the genre

[Dog Pants]

Well I'll give you that I did feel a certain identity with Soncho, but apart from CoH no other MMO has given me any connection at all with my character. Not that I care particularly.

[friznit]

It's funny how often Eve is mentioned in relation to the 'ideal' for MMOs. You'd think it has all the makings of the greatest MMO ever - single shard sandbox, exploration, player driven content, developed economy, classless character progression, no questing, limited grinding, pvp that even the little guy can get into without feeling woefully outclassed - and not least that Eve dramas are unquestionably best dramas. And yet it's still very niche and relatively few people play it (350k active accounts or so, similar to LOTRO - interesting chart btw, spot the hyped releases*). And yet despite all that, many fear that it's already run its course, that CCP have lost their way as they try to compete with the big boys by selling out to microtransactions and the carebear crowd. What is it about Eve that stop people (re)subbing that are all listing the qualities of their ideal MMO, only to realise they have just described Eve?

*WoW is on another chart with the >1mill crowd. Charts are up to date as of 26 June 2011

[buzzmong]

The problem with Eve being a minority is due to a number of specific things though:

1) Complexity.

Not in terms of what happens and how things happen, but understanding that complexity in order to actually do things. Eve is notorious for it's difficulty curve after all, and narf, that's partially a fault of CCP's design but it's inherent in the style and genre they've chosen. Even so, it all amounts to lots of people trying it but not being able to get into it sadly.

Doesn't help with the High-sec -> Low/Null divide though either. If you've never done it or experienced a pure PvP game, it's big shock that you can lose assets you've worked for in a matter of seconds (saying that, no other game offers the same rush in PvP for that precise reason though).

2) Sci-Fi.

There's a reason why Sci-Fi films hardly do well at the big awards ceremonies. Check the results. Not many get nominated and those that do often don't win. Sci-fi is really only loved by a niche crowd. Real world or fantasy is a lot easier to get behind and more "mainstream" as it were. Hence WoW doing rather well, it's a more appealing style and genre to a wider audience.

3) It's EVE.

CCP have problems iterating and fixing content. Quite a lot of stuff does need to be looked at. I think Incursions is perhaps the most complete content in the last couple of years. Wormholes are nice but what they've got is quite limited. This does lead to some player rentention issues though.


Personally, I think number 2 is one of the biggest issues with it not being massive with number 1 coming in second.

[FatherJack]

Come on, there's no roleplaying in an MMONG. Unless you're on an RP server, but then it's more like weird Second Shite stuff.

I wasn't meaning Role Playing in that sense, merely that your actions (other than your speech - which is the primary vehicle for say pen-and-paper Roleplay) are restricted to that which is applicable to your character's role. Your character plays the role, you control them.

[Roman Totale]

350k active accounts or so, similar to LOTRO - interesting chart btw, spot the hyped releases

The Warhammer line is impressive - a bigger swandive than AIDS of Conan.

[FatherJack]

2) Sci-Fi.

There's a reason why Sci-Fi films hardly do well at the big awards ceremonies. Check the results. Not many get nominated and those that do often don't win. Sci-fi is really only loved by a niche crowd. Real world or fantasy is a lot easier to get behind and more "mainstream" as it were. Hence WoW doing rather well, it's a more appealing style and genre to a wider audience.

I don't think fantasy is particularly mainstream either - aside from Lord of the Rings (in which case, shouldn't their game be massively successful?) I can't think of many blockbusting titles. WoW's cartoony graphics alienated many on its release, I think it's done well despite it being fantasy, rather than because of it.


As far as EVE goes, there are some good ideas - but the single shard and lack of classes would be the only ones I'd particularly mark out as being something to be duplicated. The dramas, constantly-changing complexity and dev bloody-mindedness are a massive turn-off for me, even from the outside. It also brutally PVP and there's only so long you can play avoiding that. I always felt like the tiniest speck of dust on the cog of some massive machine, and pretty much eked out an existence mining, ratting, doing the cookie-cutter missions (aka grinding) and counting every penny - there was no way in hell I was willing to risk the few ships I had scrimped and saved for in combat.

[Dog Pants]

I always felt like the tiniest speck of dust on the cog of some massive machine, and pretty much eked out an existence mining, ratting, doing the cookie-cutter missions (aka grinding) and counting every penny - there was no way in hell I was willing to risk the few ships I had scrimped and saved for in combat.

This, in part. I don't mind being a tiny speck in a great machine necessarily - for example I always loved the idea of being a Tackler - but in order to afford that you need to put in huge amounts of time. And that's what ultimately made me stop playing and never come back. You can't play Eve casually if you want to do anything more than mine in Empire (or carebear, if you prefer). You can't even go for a piss without docking for fear of being ganked while AFK. This is probably because of the huge losses you take when dying, which again compounds the difficulty of casual play. True, this lethality also makes the game what it is, and some of the best moments in my gaming career came from Eve, but any time I think of it in any capacity over nostalgia I think of elitism, shitiness, and commitment.

[Roman Totale]

I enjoyed Eve, but ultimately it was like having a second job.


A second job where your co-workers occasionally beat you to death and steal all your belongings.

[friznit]

Interesting, and I guess something I'd forgotten since (trying not to sound like an elitist cupcake), I crossed the line to pure pvp a while back, helped of course by a very lucrative and semi-afk income stream on the back of the ISS demise (4 of us bought out the ISSO invention business for 50bill isk and turned it into a trillion isk enterprise that paid for 4 titans, 3 motherships and still pays for 4 Timecards each today, 6 months after we stopped doing it seriously). But therein lies the problem - with lots of isk, buying toys became easy, and the thrill of pvp dwindled as it was too easy just to buy more stuff. Mind you, Eve has an amazing retention mechanism - for all the people who are massively bitter about the current state of the game, they can't bear to part with the character into which they have invested so much time and effort.

[FatherJack]

Mind you, Eve has an amazing retention mechanism - for all the people who are massively bitter about the current state of the game, they can't bear to part with the character into which they have invested so much time and effort.

That's certainly the case, every now and then I think I'd like to play again, remembering the bits I did like which as I'm perhaps easily satisfied mostly just included looking at my ship flying through space. Thankfully, since when I left I gave away all my stuff, that itch can be scratched by simply playing the free trial every now and then. I miss the characters a bit, but practically they wouldn't do much for me if I reactivated them as they wouldn't have any money to rebuy the toys they're trained for. Can't remember what happened to their shares, though.