First, I want to say that I agree with the underlying premise that a sandbox game should not restrict ways players want to play the game. I think EVE does a pretty good job of this–there are numerous career paths you can take, and although the threat of PvE and PvP combat is omnipresent, you’re only forced to account for it, you’re not necessarily forced to engage in it.
That being said, I think the one thing a game can and should expect from its players is ACTUALLY PLAYING THE GAME. It’s difficult for me to conceptualize how a game that wants you to play the game is somehow forcing you into a certain playstyle. If you’re logging in, hitting a couple of buttons, and then leaving while the game just automatically does stuff, I would say you’re not actually playing at all.
There are many videogames out there, and as players we have a choice as to which games to play. There are times when I can’t play EVE for days at a time because I don’t have more than a few minutes of free time, and EVE isn’t a game you can typically do anything in with only a few minutes. If this is unacceptable to you, then maybe you should focus on other games. I don’t mean this in the “if you don’t like getting ganked GTFO,” sort of way, I mean this in the serious “what game should you play given your current life situation” sense.
A single account holder who’s so uninvested in the game that they find having to pay attention to it to be an overly onerous task is basically worthless. That’s just not where most of the income is coming from anymore. You’re basically a rounding error on the income statement.
They would lose far more players - the engaged, multi-account, plex-buying whales - were they to cater to the likes of you.
They’re still not most of the income, however, and most of them aren’t making the insane demand of, “Don’t make me actually play the game to play the game.”
So, no worries.
Are you familiar with Progress Quest? It sounds like that’s exactly what you’re looking for.
I’ll let you in on a secret. Players will adapt. They’ll adapt right out of the game and they’ve been doing this for a long time. After years of endless ganking, that’s where we’re at. Pretty sure we’re already far down that road.
First it was just miners. And fair enough. Then onto freighters moving hi value goods through hi-sec. And that’s also fair enough, the profit to be had from it was substantial. Then it included valuable fit battleships. That wasn’t enough and next is where it started to go wrong. They started ganking empty freighters. Now having reached the point where just about any ship is targetted even if it doesn’t have anything valuable on it.
And that’s what happens when you let a certain group of players endlessly gank players without meaningful consequence. The numbers of gankers have grown while the numbers of targets have dwindled. As a consquence, they are so bloodthirsty for ganks now that they gank just about anything, even T1 fitted battleships which yield no profit at all.
Do you think this is a satisfying experience for the person who was so pointlessly ganked? Sorry guy, you thought this was high-security space? Too bad, because 20 nullsec gank alts just thought it would be funny to suicide your freshly purchased T1 battleships for the luls. Adapt or leave noob.
I have a feeling that the stagnation of nullsec played a part in this too. Because a lot of the gankers are alts of bored nullsec players with nothing better to do.
And now these same players who are behind all of this ganking, are here on the forum, cheering on CCP for adding npcs that do random ganks on hi-sec players. Most of them are nullsec players of course. The stupidity of it all makes me sick.
This is the same crap that happened to Ultima Online and lead to the creation of Trammel, and ultimately, the fall of that game.
CCP should have done away with the pipe system lower sec status years ago. Those systems such as niarja which see heavy levels of suicide ganking should have been given much faster concord response times.
No. I don’t think that, nor did I say that. Nice try putting words in other people’s mouths though. More reason why this is a selfish “I don’t like it” complaint.
You have seemed to miss the most important part of my statement when you quoted part, but not all of what I wrote. The final sentence is critical to the overall statement and opinion:
“Expecting afk and inattentive behavior to reward you, whether it’s in a game or RL, is crazy.”
You can do PI, invent, ,manufacture, market trade, and Project Discovery all while taking as many breaks and afks as you want. All produce money, all offer a player rewards. Yet, you want to be away from the keyboard, watching a movie, anything else than actively playing the game and want to get rewarded for it in some sort of “participation trophy” in the form of isk.
Serious question: Does your family,culture, country all think that nonparticipation and almost no effort deserves rewards? I honestly cannot understand your demand that HS needs to be risk,attendence,and participation free.
I think he forgot to add the part that that systems fields and moons become available to those players with experience and knowledge on how to fleet mine or ninja mine/hunt.
Less AFK/BOT players, more real players appear as they don’t have to compete anymore to get the sites or minerals.
Could that possibly be because most activities in EVE are as entertaining as watching paint dry?
CCP be like “Hey yo, yo! Carebear! Imma blow you up if you afk. Yeah. My game, my rules. You gonna watch the paint on this wall dry, I tell you. WATCH IT DRY! Or else.”
It is because normal people have responsibilities in life and can’t be attentive 100% of the time to some online game. It’s not an EVE specific thing, it applies to all games.
You can make the gameplay the most thrilling in the world. It doesn’t change the fact that normal people can’t be attentive all of the time.
At which point you stop playing, and tend to your responsibilities. That’s what normal people do.
They don’t complain that the game requires attention, they just stop playing when they can’t be attentive. They don’t normally carry the expectation that playing their game should be made to be compatible with tending to their responsibilities.
No, nope, nuh-uh. I don’t think that is true at all. EVE could be made into a mostly afk game if the Gods so desire. I mean, it is entirely possible, and normal people do play those kinds of games, too. I am not saying that it should be that way, but it is definitely possible to design a game to be mostly afk, with normal people playing it.
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with normal people playing it.
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Please save me from this. Inviting every nut, nerd, weirdo, aggresso, minimalist, maximalist and whatever extraordinary else to come and fly here. And all the normal ones too ofcourse. You will be turned in any of the previous mentioned entities in no- time.
