I thought I’d offer up some feedback on my thoughts as a returning pilot to the EVE universe.
I’ll start with the positives:
Game play support. Wow what a change. I’ve submitted 3 tickets and all were answered within 24 hours.
Ship/item balance and design. There were so many exploits that made some ships nearly untouchable unless the pilot was terrible. I know there are some fits with the right skill level and implants that can do the same for some of the ships now, but they are very, expensive as they should be. Adding the ship skins is also a great feature but there are too many other market / cost related issues which I’ll expand on when I list the negatives
Saved fittings / integration with the market to buy items. This is pretty self-explanatory. Great work on this.
Now, for negatives
I got to say I’m not quite sure where to begin. I guess I’ll start with some of the biggest core issues and go from there
Y Axis Invisible Wall. Still not able to rotate the camera 360 degrees. Not being able to freely rotate your camera around the ship and hitting that Y axis limit. This is a minor issue but annoying because it does break the immersion of the game and it’s not been redesigned after this many years.
Drones. For standard ship drone operation (Not speaking on carriers here as I have no experience with them), you have 2 options for how the drone’s AI works. 1. Passive / Aggressive. 2. Focus fire, don’t focus fire. Options that are just so obviously missing are: 1 Attack nearest target, auto-return on damage received, always attack separate targets…etc… In other words, drones have no AI in this game when there are so many ships that do their damage via drones. Salvage drones always go after the closest target / wreck near from your ship. They completely ignore the Focus fire box and all, always go to the same wreck. Combat drones seem to always attack the target that is at their maximum range and rarely do I see them attack separate targets after unchecking the focus fire box. Furthermore, you’ve updated the NPC AI to aggro on drones which is just hilarious. I honestly think you guys were trolling on this one, sorry.
Collisions. Nothing breaks the immersion more than this imo. A perfect example is the Drone Infestation mission II believe it’s called. There is an acceleration gate in the middle of a large collidable drone base / ruins etc. Approaching from one side of the runs will result in your ship bobbing and stuck while it appears NOTHING is within 20k of you. Same goes with the acceleration gates, and docking / undocking. You can shoot and warp through any structure, but if you fly within 30 k of some things, you get stuck. Definitely a game killer. This was excusable 10 years ago but now, after all of the new things that were added to the game, there simply is no excuse to have not done something with the physics on collidable objects and ships.
Alliance / Corporations. Recently Co2 members had a hefty amount of their content ripped from under them due to a single player. After hearing so many such stories, I’m not sure I’d really want to commit to life in 0.0 again if I were to keep playing. CEO’s or flipped directors have done this so many times, the idea of spending 2+ weeks dealing with assets / getting ships items out, losing a large chunk of money and most importantly, time. One day you are out fighting for your controlled space, ratting, mining, etc. and then you basically you have to stop playing the game switch to account management mode for 2 weeks with no warning and just for a laugh for 1 other single player? No thanks on that one. Putting the roles in game that allow a single alliance/corp CEO or director etc to give away, basically systems, with a few mouse clicks is laughable considering how serious CCP and the players take the Alliance and Corporation structure.
Market / Isk / Plex. For the market, well “Jita” and not really much else needs to be said. You have different markets across all of the regions, yet the only real market in this game is the Jita - Caldari Navy Assembly Plant market. Why bother with the others and force everyone into an overpopulated system? Does is help with predicting server load? The Market is also far too susceptible to massive amounts of player manipulation within too short of a time frame. There are still many illegal sites where it’s cheaper to buy isk / plex than in game if you are willing to take that risk which a lot of people still do. The surprising part is that CCP doesn’t seem to care or do anything about it for certain regions that are so obviously completely controlled by the people selling isk/plex out of game…which leads me to the next point…
The Bots. Every single MMORPG that’s existed, has had bots. I get that. The one thing that’s so different about EVE, is they seem to have you guys in a situation where there isn’t much you can do. Entire regions of the game untouchable by other players and highly guarded, are dedicated to botters and people paid to farm isk so it can be sold out of game. My only conclusion that you guys are stuck and can’t do anything about it as you’d just lose too much income if they were banned or pulled their accounts themselves. I’m not going to even pretend to know the full extent of this but I know the isk/plex/market in this game is so shady that I don’t really want to. On another note, the bots being used for automated local alerts (these get bragged about on Reddit all the time…) make removing local a valid argument now
The PVP/PVE/Implant trap. So I’ve spent about 90 percent of my time since I started, doing PVE stuff. I’ve developed a deep, deep hatred for l4 missions and how blatantly obvious they have been made to be nothing but a time sink.(to make sure the real isk making is done in 0.0) I’d so much rather have spent that time out pew-pewing. Unfortunately, the skill training for even some of the basic things takes weeks to train. Using implants cuts that time down drastically but…you can’t just go out and PVP with those expensive implants in…The only option is to jump out of them, and go back to the normal training speed so you can pvp. Then you are stuck in the clone for the next day even though you may have wanted to do something other than PVP…As a new player you don’t have anywhere near the isk to be able to afford replacement implants without investing real money or a massive amount of time in the game. Which leads to the next 2 points.
Game is too expensive and there is not any real “casual” play. There is nothing in this game of any real interest to me that can be done in 30-60 minutes so I can’t really play anytime I want. It becomes an “event” I need to schedule more or less. Some of the dreadfully lackluster l4 missions maybe, but not much. The game engine is 13 years old and looks it tbh. Space looks flat, performance in over-crowded systems is pretty awful at times as well, like Jita. Commands are often delayed by the latency from US to London where your servers are located and sometimes they just get lost it seems and you have to power click. The players provide the content so what are you charging this much for exactly? This game should be completely free to play since you charge so much for Isk and other items like skill injectors / skins etc.
Games that I’ve played I typically stay pretty loyal to. Because of that, I have an interest in the health of the game. At this point, with EVE being as old as it is and some basic things that absolutely deter new players from staying (and causing some longer term players to bail) I’m not really sure I’d want to get vested in it. I get the whole griefing thing and CCP’s historical policy on it. The problem is, it has and will continue to steer players away to other games. It strips content from the game for everyone else, and again, you are in a position where 1 can affect far, far too many for the effort or ability required.
Sorry for the long-winded post but I really am disappointed at how little the game has changed after all of this time, and how some basic flaws have not been addressed. I put my best foot forward and have invested 70-80 bucks in injectors / isk to get access to most of the limited content there is outside of nullsec. With a good number of alternative games out there, some even based on space like Elite Dangerous, this game just feels a lot like ultima online now where new players are so far behind and the game itself feels so dated that the player base will depressingly just continue to fall resulting in a slow and painful death of the game. From what I can tell the game has been in a steady decline since about 2012.
Let’s be honest here, as cool as it would be to observe a ship upside down, nobody would really care. Most of the time its either zoomed out or looking at the Overview, and suddenly flipping your camera the wrong way would cause confusion to pilots that are spazticly clicking to maneuver their ship
Same case goes to the people wanting to be able to flip the ships upside down.
You ever seen this?
Whether you like it or not, there will always be someone that wants the bigger picture, either out of greed, revenge, or just to watch the flow of the game suddenly change, and these people are more than glad to wait years to have that happen.
The rest I agree, the drones are wonky and don’t attack if you pull them out too late, which makes it troublesome if you are jammed and can’t target,
collisions with acceleration gates are quite weird,
as for the markets they are just coincidence, players saw potential in trading on big mission hubs so they all flocked there,
bots are quite obnoxious and I suspect I spotted a few ones mining ice in huge skiff fleets,
I honestly do not dislike missions, so this ones a matter of personal taste since there are people grinding these like crazy,
price to sub could be toned down, but hey, at least they give us free expansions unlike some MMOs.
Not saying you are completely right, but you are definitely far more right on target than off with your observations. The bots are so pervasive there are times I wonder if the bots (and their owners) are the real power in EVE.
Your number 7 is no issue anymore, you can switch back and forth clones in citadels without cooldown. Store you learning clone, do some PvP and switch back later for the night.
Also the game is more casual friendly than years ago. Casual PvP with public fleets like Spectre, the wormhole autobahn through Thera getting you into easy wh/lowsec/nullsec daytripping, nullified interceptors, many semi-ask activities like trading, or industry with an all renewed interface, etc…
Thanks and yeah the Y axis issue is my personal preference and is just a minor issue while admittedly a non-issue for most.
I’ve never seen that video. It’s well made and I like the intensity in the guys voice. Lets just bring it down to earth though and sum it up in one realistic sentence.
My ship was destroyed by a another alliance and to get my revenge for losing that ship, I’m going to invest years of my time to infiltrate the alliance and then shrek the content for 100’s (if not 1000’s) of other players.
The video also leaves out the fact that you need to be able to dedicated huge amounts of your real life time to accomplish this, and in the process, there is likely another spy/traitor pilot in the alliance that’s gonna beat you to it (and rip YOUR content away) before you can complete the goal.
I’ve read about 30 old threads where this has happened, starting with the big one when the Goons disbanded Bob and I think one of them was done in the spirit of that video. All of the others were simply someone who had no real reason for revenge and let greed or lack of morals with regards to the trust that was giving to them from their members, result in the removal of content.
Most of the time, it was because a couple people in charge were fighting over something seriously stupid and acting like children.
I’m expected to dive into nullsec knowing a few select people who start having temper tantrums and lack any sense of dignity, can shrek my limited game time and investment? I hope you can see that as a new player, this has no appeal.
You don’t just make friends with the boss of a big alliance in a matter of days, they did not need to point it out because it’s just common sense, I don’t expect to start working on any job irl and ask for a promotion right off the bat…
Nice, I didnt know that Tipa thanks for the info and I’m going to read up on it. Though all citadel’s are player owned correct? Can they take it offline in a short time or is there any risk of me losing that clone?
If that’s the case, why not offer that same thing in a NPC station?
I think I just worded it wrong but the video doesn’t even touch on what it really takes to accomplish it. Also with API checks now and some other requirements corps / alliance’s have, it’s much more likely that a CEO or director will flip and accomplish your goal well before you do. (and then you get double screwed!)
The video does indeed demo what is possible, it’s just so far out of reach and unlikely for all but the 10-12 hour hardcore metagamers out there it seems.
Player owned, and there is risk. If the owner is evil he can scam you (remove docking rights, destroy your clone by ripping off the clone service), so chose wisely (or setup your own and swallow the fuel costs).
Regarding NPC, the motto of the second/third decade of EvE is “everything player owned, everything destructible”, so the new stuff gets benefits over NPC or NPC gets nerfed (like 5x broker fees).
No risk no fun … but seriously to put this into relation, there are plenty of citadels offering clone services which may well be trusted for a couple of hours. You can always convo or mail the owner and talk about the conditions.
EDIT: I’m doing that almost every play session multiple times since citadels are a thing beginnng of 2016.
Expensive? What does it cost to go to a movie these days and how many hours of entertainment does that give? If you look at the cost/hr of entertainment, the cost of an EVE sub is rock bottom in price.
On top of that, even omega can be free to play. Last time I looked PLEX is available on the market for ISK, which means that you can most certainly play the entire game for free if you use ISK. You can buy all the SKINS, clothes, etc also for ISK on the market or with PLEX as well.
If you can’t or don’t want to pay the subscription fee, there are even plenty of ways to make enough ISK to buy the PLEX to sub in a single day (or little by little over a month, with minimal effort).
I have to agree, at one point or another you play it for free, at the cost of others that want ISK.
I doubt I’ll get to that point, to make so much Isk that I won’t have to worry about a monthly fee because I play it very chill, but so far it’s giving me fun with the little things I do and I am not afraid of buying a skin or two, as a sign of appreciation to CCP that I am enjoying the game.
If missioning takes too much time for too little return, you should find other forms of income. There are ample in eve and not all are tied to nul sec.
