Greedy Goblin

Monday, April 29, 2013

Why EVE is the best MMO?

You probably seen that I just whine on features of EVE Online. The economy is a mess, the players are dumb even to WoW standards, I can have 100x more kills than the most "elite" alliances via ganking, I can afford 3 titans now, it's too easy, blah, blah, blah. But still, here I am, playing EVE Online, "the terrible game". Why? I couldn't even answer it myself. Then one of the developers, CCP Soundwave answered for me:

"Players are not entitled to success, the pinnacle is coveted by many players, but many more will fail on the way.

CCP is perfectly fine with the fact that 99% of their players will never own a Supercapital, the fact that most aspiring sky marshals will never lead entire alliances into battle, and the fact that most spies will never infiltrate to the highest orders of their targets to deliver a coup de grace. That’s fine. Not everyone is a winner, famous players are famous because they are exceptional in some way. What is important is that players are able to form a goal and dream. They should also know they are not entitled to success though, and must be willing to work harder or smarter than their peers if they want to achieve it. EVE will not hand consolation prizes to the losers, but if they did something right, there will be natural rewards waiting for them."

Other MMOs want to make every drooling moron and slacker wear the top items, kill the last dragon, have every achievement. EVE Online is the only MMO out there where winning and losing exist and players meant to do something for winning, not just logging in and waste time. Mechanics can be fixed, features can be added if the core is solid. WoW has much better graphics, much faster fixes, much better balance, but the core is rotten: ilvl 9999 for /follow.

If you want to experience a game where "being a winner" isn't automatic and given out to everyone, come, play EVE Online!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love how you can use the term 'drooling moron' about other people without even the slightest hint of irony

Anonymous said...

It's true. I got three pieces of tier gear in my first lfr. Not knowing any of the fights. Somehow, the mobs you need to solo in the new daily quests present more of a challenge than the final boss of a raid. You can actually die if you stand in the lightning. Topsy turvy indeed!

Anonymous said...

Gevlon please share with us what your goal is now in Eve. You've obviously reached your goal of becoming super space rich. What's next? What drives you to continue?

Nielas said...

Interestingly, I ended up quitting EVE multiple times because while I like the game mechanics, I always found it's core to be defective. By basing itself so fully on non-consensual PvP, it is unable to develop its potential in areas that had the most appeal to me.

I always considered the protest that WoW is designed for an "everyone is a winner" mindset to be very M&S in nature. It really depends on what you consider "winning". I always try to set goals for myself that surpass those of the basic game. It surprises me that the same person who came up with the concept of blue raiding is now jealous because so many players can finish raids on basic difficulty.

Unknown said...

There are two approaches.

One is that a game is an obstacle course in a boot camp. It is fixed itself and requires fixed skills. If you succeed, you get a measure of respect. If you fail, you get schooled by the sergeant and possibly become "demoted" to barracks gopher.

Within that approach, players are not entitled to victory and need to work for it.

Another is that a game is a toy. The intent is not to boot-camp you through fixed skills, but rather to have you play with the toy and discover whatever meaning there is in it.

This approach assumes that a person keeps playing with a toy as long as this toy is interesting to him and supplies him with meaning.

If a person played with the toy a long time, he derived a lot of meaning and therefore the toy succeeded. If a person played with the toy a short time, he didn't get that much out of it and therefore the toy failed. Notice how the success or failure is shifted from the person to the toy.

Within that approach, everyone is entitled to play with the toy for the full extent, and it is up to the toy to make itself playable to a lot of different people.

A great toy is the one that is playable by a lot of people, but also affords mastery, should a specific person choose to really work towards it.

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Long story short, you seem to think games should be boot camps and not toys, whereas the whole industry is actually moving away from bootcamp paradigm towards the toy one.

My opinion is that any game is fundamentally a toy. But if some people want their toys to function as boot camps, then there should be games like that.

Anonymous said...

WoW is a themepark. When was the last time you saw a themepark that only allowed 1% of the visitors on the best rides? The goal of a themepark is to make sure everybody - everybody - gets on the rides. I am suprised you would call WoW rotten when you know perfectly well what their business model is.