So I’ve received some marketing emails concerning Eve’s new update.
I love this game, a lot, really and most of the time its community as well.
I’m just sending a message in a bottle here, but if the company want a real come back, a real new age of glory, that wont cut it.
I personally stopped several times, and everyone, every, one, I know, stopped the game because of the skill system, like me, and I suppose like tens of thousands.
So here’s the message (with much love): look around and see what’s really working in the mmo business… Start a new New Eden, and change the skill system from real time to in-game activity exp. Boom.
I’ll come back that’s for sure.
Please guys spare me the “you can play either way” “you need to learn the game before being able to pilot a capital ship” etc. Well you’ll learn more by actually piloting/doing the activity itself than doing something else altogether imo.
Re-think the way you get a skill in the game, launch a brand new new Eden and voilá.
I’m sorry but I wont come back and complete the standard loop where I want to pilot a specific ship and have to wait a month and uninstall the game once more. Let us grind for it.
Anyway, I know people will disagree and tell me I have to think differently, but well, I’m reminding them they can also do that. Like the World of Warcraft managers once told the players they did not want a wow classic, or a wow hardcore. Big mistake.
See you in new new Eden or nevermore !
And have fun !
Cheers
What works for other games doesn’t mean it will work for EVE. EVE’s skill system is working great. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it.
I don’t know a single player who has quit this game because of the skill system. And I’ve been part of a once-10k-member alliance. Not a single complaint against skilling. You’re part of an extremely small minority of players, and you’re pulling numbers out of your ass. 10k who don’t like the skill system – that’s nothing more than a conjecture. Players have had lots of problems with this game, and many of them have even quit because of some changes, but problems with the skill system is not the bane for the overwhelming majority. Stop pretending like it is. It’s just the you who for whatever reason can’t come to terms with it. Play other games then.
Unfair to put them as the root of all evil, but they are some evil. Even when not messing with others their presence “forces” FC to tune the game for them.
About the another “change the game I know better than you”, no comments really, it’s just sad how low we came. People don’t complain about the daily garbage delivered by Unity Engine, they complain the rest is not the same garbage.
I don’t like EVE, but mostly because the design does not appeal to me, I don’t see myself asking for another “default” MMO.
I can only conclude when you spent too much time eating crap, you start to enjoy it, one experiment I certainly not going to emulate.
I have lots of complains, but at some point I realized the company with all the data probably knows better than me… So I avoided the shame of rage posting, but some people think passive rage posting will escape the scrutinity.
I basically stopped reading right there… My answer is no, just no…
I’ve invested way too much time and money into my character to start over again… Also if I wanted to learn all brand new game mechanics, I’d go play another game…
@Maye_Yehen Good news for you as you aren’t exactly following news and apart from skillinjectors and the whole skillpoint trading mechanics, you haven’t heard of EVE Frontier yet, it seems?
You can jump right in and test for yourself if an action based skill system would be the right thing for you:
“The game includes a progression system introduced in the “Vestiges” update (Cycle 7) that spans your character and shell. Unlike traditional EVE Online passive time-based training, this system allows you to gain experience through active play to improve action effectiveness over time across travel, projection, and interaction.”
Yeah the skill system of Eve Online is kind of bad, where you either have to wait several weeks and months to train your skills, or buy skill injectors like Daily Alpha Injector, which are very expensive, 50 mil, unless you live in low and null in a big corp and alliance and can do high income activities with no danger or risk of dying.
I’ve heard people quit for various reasons. PvP everywhere (too exciting!) and boredom (not exciting enough!) are much more common factors, as well a others. Rarely the skill system.
In fact, the skill system in EVE is one of my favourite aspects!
I don’t like grind-based progress. I’ve played games like that for years in the past and eventually I realized I didn’t like being told exactly how to play for optimal progress and the min-max grind-centric gameplay really soured my gameplay experience until I got to know EVE and saw how skill progression didn’t have to be that way.
warning: pretty long post ahead
Grind-based progress has a bunch of side-effects:
Players get told what to grind
By telling players they need to mine 1000 asteroids A before they can mine asteroid B, or by giving 10 xp for asteroid A I and 20 xp for asteroid A II the game devs are micro-managing how players are meant to be playing the game.
This way you lose the freedom to play how you want.
For contrast: in EVE I could float in space taking screenshots of planets and asteroids while my mining skills train.
EVE’s skill training supports sandbox-like freedom to play how you want while you progress.
I prefer freedom to play how I like in this sandbox.
The economy gets saturated by non-economic production
By telling players they need to craft 1000 Gallente frigates before they are allowed to start crafting Gallente destroyers, which is a common progression pattern in grind-based progress games, this results in players ‘spending currency to improve skills’.
Or in other words, they dump Gallente frigates built at a loss for low values on the market.
And as a result new players entering industry do not have opportunities to make money, but first need to invest a lot of money to get to high skills before they can earn.
In grind-based games the market always has a huge non-economic drive for players to do industry at a loss so only the higher skill levels are profitable, if they even are profitable at all.
It wouldn’t be a player-ran economy based on supply and demand, it would be an economy largely driven by the micromanagement by devs deciding an Atron is worth 100 xp while a Maulus is 150 xp yet not 150% of the cost to produce an Atron leading to Mauluses flooding the market at prices severely below production costs.
Not that I’m saying people never produce at a loss now either, they often do because it’s easier to sell minerals in the form of ships or because they take pride in building stuff from scratch.
But the lack of grind-based industry progress keeps a huge factor of devs interfering with the market away. Grind-based crafting totally destroys the illusion of a realistic market to me.
I prefer a more realistic market, with opportunities for new players to make ISK too.
Players have to spend time grinding skills
In grind-based progression games the grind is usually the main gameplay loop.
Instead of the freedom of having fun however you like in a sandbox game, you would be encouraged to be grinding, otherwise you cannot eventually fly the ships you want.
People with more time to play also progress much faster.
Everyone has 24 hours in a day, but where one player can grind for 6 of them daily another player may only have 30 minutes.
Grind-based progression therefore has much larger differences in progress as well as differences in demand from playeda unlike passive progression which is normalized for all players regardless of how much play time they have.
Personally I much prefer EVE’s progression, I don’t need to grind while I play but can simply play the game instead.
That was great when I had a lot of time to play, and equally great now that I have kids and very little time to play which I can spend doing fun stuff instead of grinding for skills.
I prefer freedom to play without grinding.
Skills only progress while you play
Grind-based game skills only progress while you play. If you get bored with grinding and take a break from the game and get back later you’re still where you were …if the game didn’t reset the grind in the mean time with a new season or expansiom to ‘keep the grind fresh’ for people who no-life the game.
For contrast in EVE you will unlock a few new ships to look forward to to try out next time you return to the game, and you didn’t have to do anything for it!
‘Catching up’ is ironically much harder
Someone training skills passibely for years may sound hard to catch up to, but have you considered how ‘catching up’ looks like in games with grind-based progression games that have had people kept busy grinding for decades?
If you start something like that now you’ll either spend literal years doing nothing but grinding, or the game is not as continuous as EVE is and instead reset the progress regularly with ‘expansions’ or similar.
I much prefer a continuous game where I can catch up without spending years of grinding.
Catching up? But what if you do wish to grind to speed up progress?
You can do that in EVE too!
EVE has a different grind than the grind for progress, which is the economic grind.
EVE is built all around it’s economy, much stronger than most grind-based progress games. You can buy or sell pretty much anything, even including your skill progress.
So if you do wish to spend time grinding to ‘catch up’ you can do anything from killing pirates for bounties, mining ore, hauling corier contracts, ganking players or camping gatea for loot, making bookmark sets to sell to players or infiltrating enemy corps to steal their assets to earn ISK in order to buy skill injectors to turn your playtime into progress.
And the best part is that these injectors only work well at low SP due to diminishing returns so even if they are expensive they’re much more affordable for new players catching up than for higher SP characters getting further ahead of new players.
So EVE does allow you to speed up skill progression with play time!
A big difference with grind-based progression games is that EVE does so without all the negative factors I mentioned above.
But if you do wish to be told what to do to progress your skills there luckily are many other games on the market!
