Welcome to Blog Banter 37, the mass-community bloggery your mother probably didn't warn you about. Don't worry, it is legal and it won't hurt a bit (more info here). The question being kicked around the blogosphere this month is possibly a sensitive one, but it's certainly topical.
"EVE Online sits on the frontier of social gaming, providing an entertainment environment like no other. The vibrant society of interacting and conflicting communities, both within the EVE client and without, is the driving force behind EVE's success. However, the anonymity of internet culture combined with a competitive gaming environment encourages in-game behaviour to spread beyond the confines of the sandbox. Where is the line?"
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Our little sandbox is a pretty dangerous place. Our playmates' behavior can get a little bit out of hand sometimes, but we like it that way. It keeps it interesting. Where do we draw the line though? What becomes too much for the average player to handle?
Simply put, the line is where it becomes too personal for a player in terms of out-of-game experience. Across the board, other bloggers are pretty unanimous on this point. My biggest problem with this definition is that its vague. What is too personal for you might not be for others. We're playing in an international and incredibly diverse game here. The casual smack talk seen in local might be more than enough to turn some away, but I think most would agree that type of stuff is still solidly in the "not-so-bad" category. Griefing goes the same way. Is it a behavior that everyone finds acceptable? Absolutely not. Too far? The general consensus is no on that one as well, despite some vocal opposition from the minority.
For me, it goes a little deeper than some of the examples above. Griefing and smack talk can be considered "soft" lines in the sand, if you will. My "hard" line is where people start interfering with actual home computers, other assets, or real people. If you read Emergent Patroller's Blog Banter Entry, those incidents were well over the line. In fact, it was enough to make me consider shutting down the blog and just get back to solely playing the game. Stalking someone is far, far over the line. "Lesser" offenses like DDOS attacks break the boundary for me too. Say someone had a bill to pay online that night after their dedicated Eve time. You just cost them real money, and I'm not talking about Plex. Even if they just felt like watching Netflix, its still a real disruption to their lives outside the game, and that's unacceptable.
The most interesting part about all of this though, is that deep down, we secretly like that its a part of our game. I'm not saying everyone is out there hoping and praying that the opposing alliance gets DDOS'd into submission. No one roots for the internet stalker gathering others' private information. But it is intriguing. We like that people are willing to go to these measures. Its part of our culture at this point. It is very much a part of our "Eve is Real" notion. Its an extension of the old saying, "if you aren't cheating, you aren't trying," and in this game, everyone is trying.
Simply put, Eve is a double edged sword. On one side, no one really wants others property destroyed. On the other, it wouldn't be the game that we know and love without that base level of slightly malicious intentions. That's the Eve we know. Don't expect any drastic changes to these lines in the sand any time soon. Eve's dark side is here to stay.
Showing posts with label Blog Banter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blog Banter. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Sunday, May 27, 2012
BB36: The Expanding Universe
Welcome to the thirty-sixth edition of the EVE Blog Banter,
the community discussion that brings the collective minds of the EVE
blogosphere together to chew the cud, exchange opinions or troll the
world.
"With the Inferno expansion upon us, new seeds have been planted in the ongoing evolution of EVE Online. With every expansion comes new trials and challenges, game-changing mechanics and fresh ideas. After nine years and seventeen expansions, EVE has grown far more than most other MMOGs can hope for. Which expansions have brought the highs and lows, which have been the best and the worst for EVE Online?"
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Closing in on the beginning of my fourth year of Eve, I've had a few expansions under my belt at this point. My first character was started on June 20, 2009, as I was spurred on by a few very excited coworkers at an internship. This was just after Apocrypha came out, with the introduction of all of the wormholes and T3 Cruisers. Read that again. Three years ago, CCP introduced 2500 new systems, an entirely new mechanic for transportation between systems, and some of the most versatile ships in the game. I'd say that's some pretty solid expansion right there.
For me, it comes down to a case of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let's break it down. I've been through Apocrypha, Dominion, Tyrranis, Incursions, Incarna, Crucible, and now Inferno. That's 7 expansions, and its been quite a mix in quality.
The Good
Apocrypha: As alluded to above, Apocrypha was a fantastic expansion, and I didn't know how good it was until subsequent ones came out. In fact, I'd argue that its the best one to date that I've been around for. The magnitude of what CCP did with this one is absolutely unreal. Wormholes & T3's. Enough said.
Incursion: I've never actually participated in an Incursion, but the expansion itself was pretty solid. It brought a much needed new NPC challenge, the character creator and the removal of learning skills. None of these are "incredible! WOW!" features, but they have all made the game better.
Crucible: Crucible introduced almost zero new content outside of the Tier 3 Battlecruisers, but it was one of the most successful expansions to date. It fixed a ridiculous amount of things the players wanted done, and it did it well. Eve can't live on expansions like this long term, but this was a much needed one.
The Bad
Dominion: On my first patch day misery, Dominion was released. Honestly, as a carebear in highsec, I was hardly concerned about Sov mechanics, but its still something that many people complain about. Having just reread the patch notes, the only thing I found of interest was the introduction of Navy Battleships (Tier 1). It had lots of little fixes as well, but not nearly on the level of significance as Crucible.
Tyrannis: Farmville in space and Spacebook. I looked into doing Planetary Interaction once, but it didn't seem worth the trouble. I am one of the few that actually does use Eve Gate, but it is still flawed, and this has been almost two years now. Outside of PI, I find nothing really memorable about this expansion.
The Ugly
(We all know which one was saved for this category.)
Incarna: This was a shit storm. Walking in stations turned into walking in one and a half rooms by yourself, graphics cards were fried and Jita rioted. This can be termed as the expansion where CCP totally lost focus. Subscriber numbers dropped and CCP knew it. Trying to pass off WiS as an expansion was a joke, and the players knew it. Worst expansion to date.
To lay out my career in term of Eve expansions, it started off with a bang, sunk for about a year, recovered, tanked and recovered. Where does this leave us? Well that's the thing that people don't realize. It has almost always left us at least marginally better, still playing the same ridiculously awesome internet spaceship game. I mean look at the Dominion Patch Notes. The very same patch notes that I earlier described as "a lot of nothing" have a ton of little fixes that made this game better. With the exception of Incarna frying GPU cards, CCP has worked hard and made the game better. Even if you don't like the new content introduced, you can usually ignore it if its not for you (although that's clearly not the goal with these expansions). We have a great core game, and the expansions are icing on the cake, giving us new features to play with.
Inferno brings the return of Faction Warfare amongst new modules, ship rebalancing, and war mechanics changes. It has all the makings of a pretty solid expansion, though not a ton of it affects me (outside of the new modules). FW has a few thousand players, and to be honest I don't think that war declarations are that important. They only really apply to a subset of highsec warfare. Again, I'm not saying the changes are bad, I'm just not sure it was the most necessary thing possible.
What should Eve expansions be then? My proposal is that each expansion should be some cross between Apocrypha and Crucible. Things should be changed and rebalanced as necessary (per Crucible standards), but significant new content should be introduced like Apocrypha. And when I say "significant new content," I mean content related to spaceships and combat. I have no interest in harvesting planets or walking in stations. Its perfectly fine to add these things to the game, but not as the focus of an expansion. Inferno has come close to doing this, but I'm not sure it quite made it. Regardless, it is a step in the right direction. I'm much happier with CCP's current path as opposed to recent years, and like I said, we still have the fantastic core game without expansions. At the end of the day, its all about MOAR COMBAT and MOAR SHIPS. If CCP can keep that going, it'll be smooth sailing for years to come. Cheers to Inferno!
"With the Inferno expansion upon us, new seeds have been planted in the ongoing evolution of EVE Online. With every expansion comes new trials and challenges, game-changing mechanics and fresh ideas. After nine years and seventeen expansions, EVE has grown far more than most other MMOGs can hope for. Which expansions have brought the highs and lows, which have been the best and the worst for EVE Online?"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Closing in on the beginning of my fourth year of Eve, I've had a few expansions under my belt at this point. My first character was started on June 20, 2009, as I was spurred on by a few very excited coworkers at an internship. This was just after Apocrypha came out, with the introduction of all of the wormholes and T3 Cruisers. Read that again. Three years ago, CCP introduced 2500 new systems, an entirely new mechanic for transportation between systems, and some of the most versatile ships in the game. I'd say that's some pretty solid expansion right there.
For me, it comes down to a case of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let's break it down. I've been through Apocrypha, Dominion, Tyrranis, Incursions, Incarna, Crucible, and now Inferno. That's 7 expansions, and its been quite a mix in quality.
The Good
Apocrypha: As alluded to above, Apocrypha was a fantastic expansion, and I didn't know how good it was until subsequent ones came out. In fact, I'd argue that its the best one to date that I've been around for. The magnitude of what CCP did with this one is absolutely unreal. Wormholes & T3's. Enough said.
Incursion: I've never actually participated in an Incursion, but the expansion itself was pretty solid. It brought a much needed new NPC challenge, the character creator and the removal of learning skills. None of these are "incredible! WOW!" features, but they have all made the game better.
Crucible: Crucible introduced almost zero new content outside of the Tier 3 Battlecruisers, but it was one of the most successful expansions to date. It fixed a ridiculous amount of things the players wanted done, and it did it well. Eve can't live on expansions like this long term, but this was a much needed one.
The Bad
Dominion: On my first patch day misery, Dominion was released. Honestly, as a carebear in highsec, I was hardly concerned about Sov mechanics, but its still something that many people complain about. Having just reread the patch notes, the only thing I found of interest was the introduction of Navy Battleships (Tier 1). It had lots of little fixes as well, but not nearly on the level of significance as Crucible.
Tyrannis: Farmville in space and Spacebook. I looked into doing Planetary Interaction once, but it didn't seem worth the trouble. I am one of the few that actually does use Eve Gate, but it is still flawed, and this has been almost two years now. Outside of PI, I find nothing really memorable about this expansion.
The Ugly
(We all know which one was saved for this category.)
Incarna: This was a shit storm. Walking in stations turned into walking in one and a half rooms by yourself, graphics cards were fried and Jita rioted. This can be termed as the expansion where CCP totally lost focus. Subscriber numbers dropped and CCP knew it. Trying to pass off WiS as an expansion was a joke, and the players knew it. Worst expansion to date.
To lay out my career in term of Eve expansions, it started off with a bang, sunk for about a year, recovered, tanked and recovered. Where does this leave us? Well that's the thing that people don't realize. It has almost always left us at least marginally better, still playing the same ridiculously awesome internet spaceship game. I mean look at the Dominion Patch Notes. The very same patch notes that I earlier described as "a lot of nothing" have a ton of little fixes that made this game better. With the exception of Incarna frying GPU cards, CCP has worked hard and made the game better. Even if you don't like the new content introduced, you can usually ignore it if its not for you (although that's clearly not the goal with these expansions). We have a great core game, and the expansions are icing on the cake, giving us new features to play with.
Inferno brings the return of Faction Warfare amongst new modules, ship rebalancing, and war mechanics changes. It has all the makings of a pretty solid expansion, though not a ton of it affects me (outside of the new modules). FW has a few thousand players, and to be honest I don't think that war declarations are that important. They only really apply to a subset of highsec warfare. Again, I'm not saying the changes are bad, I'm just not sure it was the most necessary thing possible.
What should Eve expansions be then? My proposal is that each expansion should be some cross between Apocrypha and Crucible. Things should be changed and rebalanced as necessary (per Crucible standards), but significant new content should be introduced like Apocrypha. And when I say "significant new content," I mean content related to spaceships and combat. I have no interest in harvesting planets or walking in stations. Its perfectly fine to add these things to the game, but not as the focus of an expansion. Inferno has come close to doing this, but I'm not sure it quite made it. Regardless, it is a step in the right direction. I'm much happier with CCP's current path as opposed to recent years, and like I said, we still have the fantastic core game without expansions. At the end of the day, its all about MOAR COMBAT and MOAR SHIPS. If CCP can keep that going, it'll be smooth sailing for years to come. Cheers to Inferno!
Sunday, April 22, 2012
BB 35: Being the Villain
Now approaching its tenth year, the EVE Online player community has matured into an intricate and multi-faceted society viewed with envy by other game developers, but is frequently regarded with suspicion by the wider gaming community.
Is this perception deserved? Should "The Nation of EVE" be concerned by its public identity and if so how might that be improved? What influence will the integration of the DUST 514 community have on this culture in the future?
There's an old saying that perception is reality. And I was going to open with some long rambling philosophical discourse about that, but one of the first google searches on the subject is Jester's post by that title. That man is literally a machine. To return to my perception of this reality though, I think this month's blog banter is a pretty interesting question and one of the toughest ones we've seen in a while.
I'm not really one for political correctness at all. I think its more than silly. Someone will always be offended no matter what you said. Either you took a statement too far or it didn't go far enough. As I wrote about when Mittani-gate was ongoing, I think that those comments were out of line, but the 1 month ban and removal from the CSM was too strong and clearly indicative of a knee-jerk reaction by CCP. Mittani-gate spurred the conversation this month though. CCP has a clear need to protect its product's image in order to thrive. My simple response is that I think the image that has been cultivated over the last decade is exactly the one that we want -- Eve is a cold hard place where someone will scam you, kill you, pod you and enjoy your tears throughout the whole damn thing.
Enter Dust 514. To be honest, I felt that this year's Fanfest focused more around Dust than Eve in many respects, and that's fine (although not the way I'd prefer it). I read a review on initial game play via a tweet recently that can be summarized by saying, "The play isn't as good as something like Mass Effect 3, but there is potential." There sure is potential, but at this point, that's all we've got. It all depends how CCP integrates the Dusties into our world (and yes, I am saying our world for now, at least). It needs to be meaningful on both ends. Regardless, you can believe Sony put some pressure on CCP to clean up their little mess with the Mittani. Sony is the big time, and they don't want CCP's "missteps" flowing over into their business.
At the end of the day, I'm happy with our community. We are who we are, take it or leave it. So what if the perception is dark? Check out #tweetfleet or the blogging community and you'll see in a second that we're not all (completely) cold, dark bastards. Many of us, sure. But I wouldn't want Eve another way. I love the game where you have a month of destroying industrial ships kicked off by burning down the primary market hub. And I may shoot a Hulk this May just for good measure, but I'm not generally an active participant in Hulkageddon. But this type of sinister reality is a huge part of what makes Eve so great, and if Sony or the larger gaming community can't handle it, that's fine. We can always use some fresh blood in New Eden, but outside of that, take a hike. I think we're just fine with being the villains of the MMO community, and why not? Perception is reality, I suppose.
Is this perception deserved? Should "The Nation of EVE" be concerned by its public identity and if so how might that be improved? What influence will the integration of the DUST 514 community have on this culture in the future?
There's an old saying that perception is reality. And I was going to open with some long rambling philosophical discourse about that, but one of the first google searches on the subject is Jester's post by that title. That man is literally a machine. To return to my perception of this reality though, I think this month's blog banter is a pretty interesting question and one of the toughest ones we've seen in a while.
I'm not really one for political correctness at all. I think its more than silly. Someone will always be offended no matter what you said. Either you took a statement too far or it didn't go far enough. As I wrote about when Mittani-gate was ongoing, I think that those comments were out of line, but the 1 month ban and removal from the CSM was too strong and clearly indicative of a knee-jerk reaction by CCP. Mittani-gate spurred the conversation this month though. CCP has a clear need to protect its product's image in order to thrive. My simple response is that I think the image that has been cultivated over the last decade is exactly the one that we want -- Eve is a cold hard place where someone will scam you, kill you, pod you and enjoy your tears throughout the whole damn thing.
Enter Dust 514. To be honest, I felt that this year's Fanfest focused more around Dust than Eve in many respects, and that's fine (although not the way I'd prefer it). I read a review on initial game play via a tweet recently that can be summarized by saying, "The play isn't as good as something like Mass Effect 3, but there is potential." There sure is potential, but at this point, that's all we've got. It all depends how CCP integrates the Dusties into our world (and yes, I am saying our world for now, at least). It needs to be meaningful on both ends. Regardless, you can believe Sony put some pressure on CCP to clean up their little mess with the Mittani. Sony is the big time, and they don't want CCP's "missteps" flowing over into their business.
At the end of the day, I'm happy with our community. We are who we are, take it or leave it. So what if the perception is dark? Check out #tweetfleet or the blogging community and you'll see in a second that we're not all (completely) cold, dark bastards. Many of us, sure. But I wouldn't want Eve another way. I love the game where you have a month of destroying industrial ships kicked off by burning down the primary market hub. And I may shoot a Hulk this May just for good measure, but I'm not generally an active participant in Hulkageddon. But this type of sinister reality is a huge part of what makes Eve so great, and if Sony or the larger gaming community can't handle it, that's fine. We can always use some fresh blood in New Eden, but outside of that, take a hike. I think we're just fine with being the villains of the MMO community, and why not? Perception is reality, I suppose.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
BB 34: CSM Growth
The polls have just opened for the election of candidates to occupy the 14 seats on the 7th Council of Stellar Management. To kick-start a topical CSM-themed banter, CCP Xhagen - fierce champion of freedom of speech and in his words, "the guy that gets yelled at when the CSM dudes do booboos" - has offered this question:
"How would you like to see the CSM grow, both in terms of player interaction and CCP interaction?"
__________________________________
This one seems like a softball to me. I'm going to go ahead and spoil the rest of this entry by saying the CSM should be more involved in pretty much everything Eve. Let's kick it off with the CCP point of view.
CCP is far from a perfect organization. I love Eve, but I'm not really sure what gets in the developers' heads sometimes. I would honestly like to meet the team of guys who sat across the table from each other and said, "You know what, I think we've got something really great with this Incarna expansion." I think Seismic Stan pretty much hit the nail on the head with Incarna: The Text Adventure when it comes to how awesome walking in stations is. At the end of the day though, that's not even close to the end of bone-headed things that CCP has done. Do the words "18 months" mean anything to anyone? Even as recently as the past month with the skill rebalancing dev blog that set out to turn Battlecruiser and Destroyer skills into 4 racial variants, we're seeing a lack of vision from CCP sometimes, even if its only in communication as opposed to actual ideas.
This is the importance of the CSM to CCP. As an independent corporation, CCP has no obligation to the CSM in any way. That's all well and good, but evidence shows they need to make the CSM part of the regular process in terms of new ideas. I understand that it is logistically impossible to involve the CSM in every little detail of development. Eve is an enormously complex game, and that's why most of us are still here. But the CSM doesn't need to be a part of every minute detail. They need to be an efficient sounding board for significant changes. Before CCP devotes resources to extensively developing an area of the game, somebody should make an effort to figure out if the players want or need it. The team of 7+ veteran players, chosen by their peers to be representative of the community might be a decent place to start.
The CSM has taken on the role it needs to. I think all of the members of CSM6 did a great job fielding the Summer of Rage and ushering us into Crucible. Mynxee and the CSM5 crew even foreshadowed the lack of vision and cooperation from CCP heading into Incarna. The CSM has accepted its role in the process and is waiting for CCP to acknowledge them consistently. The key word there is consistently. When CCP Ytterbium says that he forgot to consider running ideas by the CSM, that shows me that the CSM is not a focus within CCP. That's fine if that is the route they want to go down, but I'm pretty sure that history has shown its not.
On the other side of the coin, the CSM has to be a bit more vocal and forward with the player base. CSM 6 was a bit mixed bag on this one. I didn't catch either of them, but I heard the Mittani's Fireside Chats were very well attended and received. These disappeared after the first two though, never to be heard from again. The blogging from CSM members can be a bit scarce too. I understand they're probably gagged pretty badly by NDA, but interaction with other players is still allowed from what I understand. I'd much rather hear "Sorry, NDA" than nothing. It would be nice to hear that some things are being addressed and concerns are taken into account. Maybe that type of information is covered under NDA, but if its not, it would be great to hear. Roc Wieler brought this notion up on the Lost in Eve debate he was on, and even though I'm not the biggest Roc proponent, I've got to agree with him on that one.
The CSM is a great institution, and I think at this point, CCP cannot shelf it. It seemed over the course of the winter expansion process that some of the higher-ups didn't like a few aspects of the CSM, but at this point, I think its too integrated to lower their responsibilities and privileges. Honestly, there is no reason to draw back the reigns on the CSM. The current group did make a few power plays by using the player base to make points, but this was done for a reason. I know CCP doesn't want to feel hijacked by their own creation, but the simple point is the CSM has put forth a lot of good points and responses. The TLDR is that the CSM is integral in showing CCP what needs to get done and the player base appreciates and looks to the CSM for a lot of feedback. The more fluid the exchange between CCP, the CSM and the players, the better. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the voting has shaken out, and I hope that CSM7 will continue to be an effective force for positive change within CCP.
"How would you like to see the CSM grow, both in terms of player interaction and CCP interaction?"
__________________________________
This one seems like a softball to me. I'm going to go ahead and spoil the rest of this entry by saying the CSM should be more involved in pretty much everything Eve. Let's kick it off with the CCP point of view.
CCP is far from a perfect organization. I love Eve, but I'm not really sure what gets in the developers' heads sometimes. I would honestly like to meet the team of guys who sat across the table from each other and said, "You know what, I think we've got something really great with this Incarna expansion." I think Seismic Stan pretty much hit the nail on the head with Incarna: The Text Adventure when it comes to how awesome walking in stations is. At the end of the day though, that's not even close to the end of bone-headed things that CCP has done. Do the words "18 months" mean anything to anyone? Even as recently as the past month with the skill rebalancing dev blog that set out to turn Battlecruiser and Destroyer skills into 4 racial variants, we're seeing a lack of vision from CCP sometimes, even if its only in communication as opposed to actual ideas.
This is the importance of the CSM to CCP. As an independent corporation, CCP has no obligation to the CSM in any way. That's all well and good, but evidence shows they need to make the CSM part of the regular process in terms of new ideas. I understand that it is logistically impossible to involve the CSM in every little detail of development. Eve is an enormously complex game, and that's why most of us are still here. But the CSM doesn't need to be a part of every minute detail. They need to be an efficient sounding board for significant changes. Before CCP devotes resources to extensively developing an area of the game, somebody should make an effort to figure out if the players want or need it. The team of 7+ veteran players, chosen by their peers to be representative of the community might be a decent place to start.
The CSM has taken on the role it needs to. I think all of the members of CSM6 did a great job fielding the Summer of Rage and ushering us into Crucible. Mynxee and the CSM5 crew even foreshadowed the lack of vision and cooperation from CCP heading into Incarna. The CSM has accepted its role in the process and is waiting for CCP to acknowledge them consistently. The key word there is consistently. When CCP Ytterbium says that he forgot to consider running ideas by the CSM, that shows me that the CSM is not a focus within CCP. That's fine if that is the route they want to go down, but I'm pretty sure that history has shown its not.
On the other side of the coin, the CSM has to be a bit more vocal and forward with the player base. CSM 6 was a bit mixed bag on this one. I didn't catch either of them, but I heard the Mittani's Fireside Chats were very well attended and received. These disappeared after the first two though, never to be heard from again. The blogging from CSM members can be a bit scarce too. I understand they're probably gagged pretty badly by NDA, but interaction with other players is still allowed from what I understand. I'd much rather hear "Sorry, NDA" than nothing. It would be nice to hear that some things are being addressed and concerns are taken into account. Maybe that type of information is covered under NDA, but if its not, it would be great to hear. Roc Wieler brought this notion up on the Lost in Eve debate he was on, and even though I'm not the biggest Roc proponent, I've got to agree with him on that one.
The CSM is a great institution, and I think at this point, CCP cannot shelf it. It seemed over the course of the winter expansion process that some of the higher-ups didn't like a few aspects of the CSM, but at this point, I think its too integrated to lower their responsibilities and privileges. Honestly, there is no reason to draw back the reigns on the CSM. The current group did make a few power plays by using the player base to make points, but this was done for a reason. I know CCP doesn't want to feel hijacked by their own creation, but the simple point is the CSM has put forth a lot of good points and responses. The TLDR is that the CSM is integral in showing CCP what needs to get done and the player base appreciates and looks to the CSM for a lot of feedback. The more fluid the exchange between CCP, the CSM and the players, the better. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the voting has shaken out, and I hope that CSM7 will continue to be an effective force for positive change within CCP.
Friday, February 24, 2012
BB33 -- Eve Online: Top Gun
Blog Banter 33: The Capsuleer Experience
"...we want to make the first days, weeks and months in EVE enjoyable and not just something ‘you have to plough through in order to get to the good stuff’" and the newly formed Player Experience team will focus on "...where and why people lose interest in EVE...".
"We invite you to pour your heart (or guts) out and tell us what you think is good or bad with the current new player experience and what you think could be done about the problems."
--------------------------------------
Being a rookie in Eve ain't easy. In fact, its down right hard. I still remember on my first day, I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to get to the next system over. I didn't know what a stargate was, let alone how to get to it or even use it. Its been a while since I've rolled a new character, but the experience is distinctly different for a brand new player versus one who is just making a new character. Legitimately learning the ropes can be tough. I personally had a great time. I was so impressed by the scale of the universe, all of the ships available, and how much you could do in space. I must admit though, I had some friends who were already playing the game, and that softened the learning curve quite a bit. The tutorials are good, but they still aren't where they need to be. From my perspective, they're missing the heart of the game: player versus player combat.
When a new pilot goes through the tutorials, he sees all kinds of things. PVE content is a big focus. There are a ton of missions to run, and they introduce you to the various professions of Eve. This is all well and good, but what about the personality analysis on the homepage? Where's the pirate tutorial? How about fleet commander? I've been thinking for a while about how to correctly implement this, and I still haven't reached a perfect conclusion. This is what I came up with though. First, Aura can take players through a little crash course on how fighting capsuleers is different. Call this course Advanced Tactics, or even Top Gun. If that doesn't sound appealing to a rookie, I don't know what would. Top Gun works like this:
This is all technology CCP has right now, except for perhaps the responsive feedback part (Neuts really killed you, here's why). This could be so much more immersive. One would actually feel ties to the Federal Navy Academy or Republic Military School. They would also feel like they really got something out of it, as opposed to a bunch of random mods, some isk, and a couple T1 ships. Lastly, the new pilots would also be much more prepared, more interested and less frustrated. Sounds like subscriber retention to me, CCP.
Now here's where people may want to burn me at the stake. I'm kind of partial to a little 1v1 arena setup within each of the respective training academy schools. Restrict it to pilots with SP below an Alpha clone (900k SP) to keep it relatively fair. This gives pilots the ability to test out skills in a fairly innocuous environment, but they get kicked out and have to get their combat fix elsewhere pretty darn quick. Again, getting the boot from the training league would bring up the references to the various professions, and the pilot would have to find their own way. This would require a significantly larger investment from CCP developers, but what better way to learn PvP than to actually take part (in a semi-controlled environment)? It lets the rookies duke it out without being blobbed to death by a Tengu fleet when they can barely avoid the Rifter they have. There will surely be the sharks that have 899,999 skill points, all as maxed out as a rookie pilot can be and looking for easy prey. Oh well. Let's be honest, everyone sucks when they have little enough SP to keep an Alpha clone, and the new pilots have to learn how to lose ships some time anyway.
I know the latter part will almost certainly never happen, but I like the idea. In the military, everyone does training exercises to gear up for the real event. Hell, even the Harry Potter kids had duels with real spells (If Jester can make HP references, I can too). It's the perfect level of training before the newest class of capsuleers hits new Eden.
Regardless, I think a PvP crash course is essential for the New Player Experience. The current experience is largely very good. It teaches the player about many aspects of the game and even begins to provide them with ships, modules and skillbooks necessary to get on their way. They're redesigning the Rookie Ships too! That's also a huge step up. At the end of the day though, it comes down to getting people involved in the part of Eve that keeps people around, and that is player versus player combat. That is what will take the new player experience to the next level. Its time to start sending New Eden's newest pilots to Top Gun.
"...we want to make the first days, weeks and months in EVE enjoyable and not just something ‘you have to plough through in order to get to the good stuff’" and the newly formed Player Experience team will focus on "...where and why people lose interest in EVE...".
"We invite you to pour your heart (or guts) out and tell us what you think is good or bad with the current new player experience and what you think could be done about the problems."
--------------------------------------
Being a rookie in Eve ain't easy. In fact, its down right hard. I still remember on my first day, I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to get to the next system over. I didn't know what a stargate was, let alone how to get to it or even use it. Its been a while since I've rolled a new character, but the experience is distinctly different for a brand new player versus one who is just making a new character. Legitimately learning the ropes can be tough. I personally had a great time. I was so impressed by the scale of the universe, all of the ships available, and how much you could do in space. I must admit though, I had some friends who were already playing the game, and that softened the learning curve quite a bit. The tutorials are good, but they still aren't where they need to be. From my perspective, they're missing the heart of the game: player versus player combat.
When a new pilot goes through the tutorials, he sees all kinds of things. PVE content is a big focus. There are a ton of missions to run, and they introduce you to the various professions of Eve. This is all well and good, but what about the personality analysis on the homepage? Where's the pirate tutorial? How about fleet commander? I've been thinking for a while about how to correctly implement this, and I still haven't reached a perfect conclusion. This is what I came up with though. First, Aura can take players through a little crash course on how fighting capsuleers is different. Call this course Advanced Tactics, or even Top Gun. If that doesn't sound appealing to a rookie, I don't know what would. Top Gun works like this:
- A quick fitting primer
- Armor or Shield, not both. Buffer or active, not both. These aren't absolutes, but general rules of thumb. Show a couple example fittings, link to other races.
- Fit the same size & type of weapons. No one wants to see a killmail of some noob running around with a blaster and two different sized railguns on his first Incursus.
- Propulsion - Break down both Afterburners and MWD's.
- Warp Scramblers/Disruptors - Necessity for solo or small gang. Webs don't hurt either.
- Trials against more advanced AI computers -- Lesson Oriented
- If the noob doesn't fit a scram, have the NPC warp off if it is about to explode. Explain both how and why it happened.
- Gradually introduce electronic warfare into computer based AI. If a rookie gets fried by the NPC's energy neutralizer, explain it to them and how to combat it by either Nosferatu's, capacitor boosters, or other capacitor mods. Same goes for jamming, tracking disrupting, all of it.
This is all technology CCP has right now, except for perhaps the responsive feedback part (Neuts really killed you, here's why). This could be so much more immersive. One would actually feel ties to the Federal Navy Academy or Republic Military School. They would also feel like they really got something out of it, as opposed to a bunch of random mods, some isk, and a couple T1 ships. Lastly, the new pilots would also be much more prepared, more interested and less frustrated. Sounds like subscriber retention to me, CCP.
Now here's where people may want to burn me at the stake. I'm kind of partial to a little 1v1 arena setup within each of the respective training academy schools. Restrict it to pilots with SP below an Alpha clone (900k SP) to keep it relatively fair. This gives pilots the ability to test out skills in a fairly innocuous environment, but they get kicked out and have to get their combat fix elsewhere pretty darn quick. Again, getting the boot from the training league would bring up the references to the various professions, and the pilot would have to find their own way. This would require a significantly larger investment from CCP developers, but what better way to learn PvP than to actually take part (in a semi-controlled environment)? It lets the rookies duke it out without being blobbed to death by a Tengu fleet when they can barely avoid the Rifter they have. There will surely be the sharks that have 899,999 skill points, all as maxed out as a rookie pilot can be and looking for easy prey. Oh well. Let's be honest, everyone sucks when they have little enough SP to keep an Alpha clone, and the new pilots have to learn how to lose ships some time anyway.
I know the latter part will almost certainly never happen, but I like the idea. In the military, everyone does training exercises to gear up for the real event. Hell, even the Harry Potter kids had duels with real spells (If Jester can make HP references, I can too). It's the perfect level of training before the newest class of capsuleers hits new Eden.
Regardless, I think a PvP crash course is essential for the New Player Experience. The current experience is largely very good. It teaches the player about many aspects of the game and even begins to provide them with ships, modules and skillbooks necessary to get on their way. They're redesigning the Rookie Ships too! That's also a huge step up. At the end of the day though, it comes down to getting people involved in the part of Eve that keeps people around, and that is player versus player combat. That is what will take the new player experience to the next level. Its time to start sending New Eden's newest pilots to Top Gun.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
BB 31: The Game Outside Eve Online
The 31st Blog Banter is out and the topic is an Eve Community Review. This also happens to be my first crack at a BB \o/ Its fun to be an active part of the action as opposed to just the regular reader.
"As any games journalist would probably tell you, a true and complete review of a Massively Multiplayer Online game is impossible. MMOs are vast, forever evolving entities with too much content for a single reviewer to produce a fair and accurate review. However, a collection of dedicated bloggers and EVE players (past and present) with a wide range of experience in various aspects of the game might be able to pull it off.
This special 'End of Year' Blog Banter edition aims to be a crowd-sourced game review. Using your gaming knowledge and experience, join the community in writing a fair and qualified review of EVE Online: Crucible. This can be presented in any manner of your choosing, but will ideally include some kind of scoring system.
With each Blog Banter participant reviewing the areas of EVE Online in which they specialise, the result should be a Metacritic-esque and accurate review by the people who know best."
Eve Online. Where to start? I know where I started. I began playing Eve at an internship almost three years ago, just after Apocrypha was released. Its been my first and only MMO, and I still remember asking, "So, how do you win at Eve?" I was of course greeted with a bit of a laugh, and in hind sight, I definitely deserved it. "Winning at Eve" is really more of a meme than an actual objective at this point. But as I talked to the guys at work, I could see their eyes light up about how excited they were about this game. They talked about all of the possibilities and all of the roles you could play. They showed me a couple diagrams online to give me the idea. First was all the ships of New Eden:
So at this point I was interested to say the least. We spent the rest of the afternoon talking about it, and I knew I had to at least give it shot. Just before I headed home that day, they showed me this graphic too, which I'm sure we've all seen by now. Okay, a little intimidated, but nothing I couldn't overcome.
"As any games journalist would probably tell you, a true and complete review of a Massively Multiplayer Online game is impossible. MMOs are vast, forever evolving entities with too much content for a single reviewer to produce a fair and accurate review. However, a collection of dedicated bloggers and EVE players (past and present) with a wide range of experience in various aspects of the game might be able to pull it off.
This special 'End of Year' Blog Banter edition aims to be a crowd-sourced game review. Using your gaming knowledge and experience, join the community in writing a fair and qualified review of EVE Online: Crucible. This can be presented in any manner of your choosing, but will ideally include some kind of scoring system.
With each Blog Banter participant reviewing the areas of EVE Online in which they specialise, the result should be a Metacritic-esque and accurate review by the people who know best."
Eve Online. Where to start? I know where I started. I began playing Eve at an internship almost three years ago, just after Apocrypha was released. Its been my first and only MMO, and I still remember asking, "So, how do you win at Eve?" I was of course greeted with a bit of a laugh, and in hind sight, I definitely deserved it. "Winning at Eve" is really more of a meme than an actual objective at this point. But as I talked to the guys at work, I could see their eyes light up about how excited they were about this game. They talked about all of the possibilities and all of the roles you could play. They showed me a couple diagrams online to give me the idea. First was all the ships of New Eden:
 |
| I didn't realize I'd be flying the barely visible ones.. |
So at this point I was interested to say the least. We spent the rest of the afternoon talking about it, and I knew I had to at least give it shot. Just before I headed home that day, they showed me this graphic too, which I'm sure we've all seen by now. Okay, a little intimidated, but nothing I couldn't overcome.
 |
| Not too far from the truth |
I spent hours that first weekend flying around in a freaking Velator. I couldn't wait til I had the funds for that 26,000 isk Atron. I was hooked though. So I kept playing, and after a while, my friends from the internship slowly faded out of Eve. I spent a while (way too long) running missions aimlessly. Its only really been recently that I've been getting into pvp legitimately, and I guess I'm still a bit of a noob in that respect, despite that fact that I'm about to cross 50M SP.
Its been a long ride, and its mostly been a blast. I think there were a few things that CCP and my friends didn't initially tell me about though. First of all, no one ever told me how much time I'd spend doing things other than flying internet spaceships. I've spent countless hours managing POS's, parsing through market windows for trade and jumping from system to system for any other reason. Eve can often be more of a job than a game.
The second thing that no one told me about Eve was that I'd spend so much time out of game talking, thinking and strategizing about Eve. I've spent an absolutely stupid amount of time in applications like EFT and Evemon. Why do I do it? Because its so damn interesting. Why did I listen to hours of Eve podcasts on the way home to my Dad's house this Christmas? Same reason. Theory-crafting about Eve is a beautiful thing. How can I beat this fleet composition? Where will they move next? How can implants/boosters/etc give me the edge I need? All of this doesn't even scratch the surface of inter-alliance politics and null sec in general. Its everything. I've probably spent even more time out of game thinking and planning about Eve than I've played.
What all of this comes down to is simple. CCP got it right when they said Eve is real. I wasn't too thrilled with their promotional campaign at the time due to the state of Incarna, but they were right. Eve is a great game, but its so much more. Look at media like the Clarion Call or Clear Skies series. Eve is virtual blood, sweat, and tears. Eve is real.
So my review of Eve? Its a pretty solid game. Its certainly still a work in progress, and Crucible has been a fantastic step in that direction. At the end of the day, its so much more though. Its a full immersive simulation in an alternate universe, and it can be so addictive it should come with a warning label. That's the Eve that I know.
-- Rollins
-- Rollins
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