The problem with Eve Online is a matter of perception

Communications Center General Discussion
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To me Eve Online PVE is like another hack & slash game. The setting is only different.

Instead of having a sword and armor, rings and amulets, you have mods and rigs.

What makes a hack & slash game successful exactly ?

  1. It’s all about the loot, In Eve you rarely get rare spawns that gives you good loot. I’ll be playing Diablo 3 for 15 min and full my inventory with legendary and set items in no time. I don’t see the downside to flooding the market with officer mods, i find it illogical that those mods are over 100 times the worth of T2 mods. They should be worth 10 times the value of T2 mods at the most.

  2. A game like Diablo 3 focus a lot on co-op, if you play with 3 other players your magic find and xp are increased by 75%. In Eve, the ultimate PVE goal is to fly a carrier or dread so that you can play alone. In my view, capital ships should be weapons of war, only used in pvp. High rating combat sites should be run in sub-cap teams just like incursions.

  3. In any hack and slash game you can have the sense of accomplishment just by playing 30-60 min. In Eve, most activities will require at the minimum 2 hours of your time to be worthwhile. Running combat sites or missions is often too long and I blame the fact that there’s mostly no co-op. Everyone runs their PVE sites alone, mostly because of greed. If 2 players run sites or missions, loot and rewards have to be divided. In Diablo 3, when players kill a “rare spawn” everyone gets his own loot and xp isn’t divided at the end of a run. By collecting full reward, that could encourage co-op and running through missions and sites would be a lot faster.

  4. In Diablo 3 you collect mats so that you can forge weapons (abyssal mods), some mats have to be collected doing a specific activity (mats to forge hellfire amulet) but you can get them by doing mostly anything you want. In Eve if you want to forge abyssal items, which are really the end game items, you can only run abyssal sites (a version of Diablo 3 greater rifts). Forcing people to grind 1 activity to get mats is a bad idea, maybe have big drops of mats in those sites but rare spawn all over the galaxy should drop some of those mats in smaller quantities. In the end, everyone will build their end game ships fitted with abyssal and officer mods, because the abundant loot will allow it.

  5. In Diablo 3, set items are the best to have, but now with specific items you can also get non set items being just as powerful as sets. That’s mostly because of synergies between items. In Eve, we could also get those synergies between items with officer mods, they could give you extra bonuses if you have the complete set. Having the abyssal version of that set would be the ultimate goal. Also I’d focus mostly on ships + mods to keep it simpler because right now in Eve there’s just too many factors to take into consideration to boost your abilities.

    • You have set implants 1-5 that can give you bonuses
    • You have implants 6-10
    • You have mindlinks
    • You have skills
    • You have rigs T1 vs T2
    • Overheating
    • Drug Pills
    • Etc…

Let’s just focus mainly on ships plus mods you can find or forge and remove those implants 1-10

  1. In Diablo 3 there’s a lot of different maps and they’ve improved a lot since 2012, they created rifts and greater rifts. It’s important to have a good diversity and constantly improve it. In Eve as far as I know, this hasn’t changed much since 2009 and they even introduced sites like TCRC or TPPH in Incursion where a group of players have to shoot an inert object (tower) for 5 min. Which is in my view the ultimate insult to any hack & slash game.

So I believe the main problem with Eve lies with PVE and the perception we have of the game. At the root it’s really just another hack & slash game in a sci-fi setting. Once we can acknowledge that, it makes it clear as to what should be improved. CCP could definitely take some hints from Diablo 3.

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And yet many still feel Diablo 2 was the best of the 3.

But back on topic, in Diablo 3 PvP sucks, the world os very small in comparison, difficulty increase by adding numbers eg: more HP and damage. You can only play with up to 4 players, you cant have a base. The game is very simplistic and boring.

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Season 17 in 2019 of Diablo 3 was the most popular. Pretty good for a game that came out in 2012. After all these years they’ve put the effort necessary to hold their players interest in their “very simplistic game”

Even if you don’t like Diablo 3, they’ve succeeded and the overly complex Eve online could definitely learn from that.

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Just because a game is popular doesnt mean other games should “learn” from them. If we are going by whats popular then Eve should drop 100 people in pods in a system with random ships hidden throughout, last one alive wins.

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Like I said, in my view, Eve PVE is hack and slash, so this failing aspect of Eve could be improved by learning from the best. Not all Diablo 3 changes were successful or popular but since the game came out in 2012, they tried a lot of stuff. They removed what wasn’t working and came out with some really creative ideas. It’s over 7 years of successful hack and slash evolution right there. Nothing wrong in adopting some of those ideas for another game that hasn’t changed much since 2009.

Eve online has the perfect setup to try creative new ideas, they have a test server. They should use it.

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No, they shouldn’t.

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Why not try to come up with some ideas and create a topic ? It’s better than promoting statu quo

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Because I like shooting down idiotic ideas far better.

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I suppose he wants module sets, get all the modules of the set and put them all on for insnae bonuses

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Nope it is not. Urban legend is what it is.

The “endgame” is what you make it to be, nothing more.

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Because that would require some intelligence which he is sadly lacking.

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This thread should have been titled “The Problem With EVE Online When Compared To Diablo III”.

They’re two entirely different games, built for different audiences, with different design principles in mind.

You get “Dank Loot” and huge rewards out of Diablo III constantly because the world effectively resets at the end of each season.

EVE is persistent, those huge rewards never go away. Flooding the market with them will force us further into savage inflation.

Two entirely different games with two completely different design philosophies.

I do have to admit though, I quite like Diablo III.

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Diablo 3, being a Blizzard game, suffers from the very same problem as WoW - power creep and numbers inflation. Every season they buff abilities, tweak and add more and better items so players could “do better” and “feel progress” compared to previous season when in reality nothing has really changed. That wont work with EvE, ever.

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Diablo 3 is not a hack and slash game. it is an ARPG. the core of the game is different.

Eves game play experience is drawn out over a longer period. it takes investment and skill to reach higher levels of play. it is an opera in space (to pull a quote from a popular space movie series)

Dirablo 3 is designed to be played in short chunks with quick rewards and simplistic gameplay. your pool of skills is limited and only enhanced by gear. there is no grand scale. to paly end game you just need more Defense, Regeneration & DPS.

dont get me wrong i love playing Diablo 3, each season i will start a toon and complete all challenge milestones, then i drop the game until next season.
i have been playing EVe since 07 and am still working up to the End game. im accomplished and my actions have consequences, Im famous to some, infamous to others and irrelevant to the rest.

I was going to post a full rebutle point by point but your premise is broken.
using diablo 3 makes every point you have raid null and void.
you dont seem to have a clear understanding of what EVe is.

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Plus of course Diablo 3s game is not controlled by a small percentage of the player base.

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They are fundamentally different games (thank God to that because diablo3 was a huge disappointment). You are taking a themepark game and comparing it to a sandbox. The market, which is a core pillar of eve, simply couldn’t function with your proposal. Eve does not drop mods according to your ‘level’. They do not get progressively more powerful as you do. Isk would be worthless because everything would be easily obtainable by ratting for an hour or two.

Last thing I heard of diablo3’s market was how garbage it was and it was going to be binned. Should kinda be an alarm bell.

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Agree Diablo II was much better than Diablo III. I dont understand why Blizzard dont use the engine of Diablo III to sell Diablo II ‘Remastered’, then really can get a BUNCH of subscribers quickly.

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I don’t see how everything I said should be discarded because “I don’t get” what Eve is all about. I bet most people who wanted Diablo 3 1.0 to change were probably getting the same answers on the bliz forums. You want D3 to change ? Then you don’t get it. The game became something else anyway and is now much better.

Yesterday I decided to run an expedition, it took over 1h30 min to complete and what a freaking waste of time that was. Plus it was a Sunday night and I had 24hr to do it, working all day today I had no choice to cancel some Sunday night stuff. PVE that last that long and for little reward is great gameplay for who exactly ? I guess my point is void, I just don’t get it. Maybe I should repeat the experience until I get it…

I’m also comparing D3 co-op and Eve lack of co-op. Most people going to 0.0 will prefer to graduate from sub-cap to carrier in order to grind alone. In high sec, how many people are running Lvl 4 missions alone ? Is there a need to run missions in groups ? I guess my point there is void too.

I’m not saying Eve should become D3, I was just comparing PVE with another game I know well. I believe there are hundreds of interesting possibilities only if we see PVE as hack & slash or “arpg”.

Why CCP don’t invest more in that facet of the game ? I believe it’s a huge waste of opportunity, because with the Eve universe, engaging PVE would rock. I play Diablo 3 since 2013, I missed maybe 2 seasons and I’ll play the next season for sure. I challenge you to find people with that same level of enthusiasm for PVE.

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The rewards are low because everyone else is doing it too. And probably faster/more efficiently than you. When you ran one, maybe they ran two, or more.

That’s how markets work.

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Im not trying to shoot you down, I like Many others (a DEV included) are unsure as to why you have made the comparison between these 2 totally different but objectively great games.

My original planned response
1 - Loot: in D3 loot spam makes those gains less impact-full as i can run 20 GRifts in an hour (conservative) and get that same item 10 times. in eve i might only get 1 rare spawn in the hour but the reward for finding and killing it is more impact-full on my game experience with a reall reward for the effort i put in

2 - Group play in EVE is exponential and in edge cases can extend to 1000s of pilots. the game slows down (TIDI) to account for this. Incursions and Invasions both have the type of reward peek and fall off that you have stated is in D3. but lets not forget that this content is harder than any Grift that you can run in D3.

3 - Time investment. D3 is a game designed to be picked up and put down in an instant. so game play is fast and visually impacting to account for shorter average player investment.
EVE is all about time investment. in any escalation chain (non DED) you will, if the chain completes, run in to around 5 Faction ships all with a chance to drop faction loot and then an overseer in the final escalation that may drop DED rated Modules and a BPC (keep in mind that each faction rat encountered has the same chance to drop the same BPC as the overseer) you are rewarded for youe time investment. this philosophy permeates every level and every style of gameplay in EVE from ratting to industry, missions to PVP.

4 - Grifts and abysal PVE are not the same. please refer to point 1. resource collection in EVE is built on a specialty system. you can mine in a tristan but a venture will be better. each profession in EVE allows someone to pick a play style they like and run with it. there is only 1 Player style in D3 you just run (literally)

5 - the beauty of EVE is in the Details. all of these things you mention are what allows any player to gain a real edge. each module you use synergies with your hull, bonuses, implants, skills, drugs used, fleet bonuses, and every other module fitted.
Set items & legendary items in D3 are ultimately the same. the only choice for the player is what effects they want to see more from a visual standpoint. D3 runs on a 3 Stat principal (every stat that you can roll on an item will ultimately affect the 3 primary stats) Defense, DPA, Regeneration.

6 - Eve is about its players and ships, the possibilities are infinite for for each player that interacts with the sand box. every Play session in D3 you run along the same path to the same end goal, its predicable, just because the scenery gos from forest, to desert, to temple dose not make the outcome of that Rife any different. Every action in EVE has an short and long term impact of your game play. there is a new opportunity behind every star-gate…

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