I said people “don’t always know” what’s best for them, not that they never do.
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I remember my first play though Baldur’s Gate. At one point, I got a tome, and not sure what it did, clicked on it. The game informed that the character in question had just received one point of Intelligence or whatnot. I was like, “oh, that would have been so much more useful on a different character.” And then went to go check my saves, and noticed the last one was like an hour back. So, I said, “damn it, I don’t want to have to go back an hour,” and my friend who was watching me play said, “why don’t you just use the developer console to give the attribute point to the character that you want?”
say wut now?
So, I looked up the developer console, and did just that. But, I didn’t stop there, and instead went buck wild. I maxed out all my character’s stats, their levels, and gave them all the best gear for their class. I then went into combat and giggled with delight as the monsters exploded into chunky bits…
And then I went to go loot the field, and found that the fun and excitement of looting was gone, because I would never find anything better than what I already had. What’s more, I realized that I would never gain another level. So, even the XP that I was getting was worthless.
I kept going a little bit further, and found that even making monsters explode into chunky bits got boring after a while. It was just a boring, repetitive task without the challenge. And without intrinsic nor extrinsic reward, I completely lost interest in the game, and stopped playing. I did eventually beat it, but it was on a fresh play through, and without cheating.
I haven’t done much cheating since then. I will sometimes do things like up my carry weight in games where resource management isn’t a concern, because it means less inventory management without robbing the game of any of the good stuff, but I am extremely hesitant to do anything that might suck the challenge out of the game. In fact, I don’t even like turning down the difficulty slider in games that have it. Removing the challenge not only removes that feeling of satisfaction that you get from overcoming it, but it also removes depth and theory crafting fun because you can just use FOO strats (First Order Optimal strats).
Payers do sometimes know what they want, and I’m certain that there are at least some players out there that would be happy with all the challenge sucked out of Eve. But, I also know that there are players that will most certainly be disappointed if you give them what they’re asking for, because it’s happened to me.
And since we’re here, where does everyone think Eve Online currently lies on the difficulty curve chart?
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PvP Wise it used to be max’ed but with rapid light’s and the drone buff’s its made signature and piloting mean less over the year’s, I remember loosing a phantasm to a taranis and remembering at the time that, that ■■■■■■ was so hard to hit, now its ez mode to wipe frigs off the edge of the earth with med/heavy drones and rapid lights.
If you tackle an afk ratting ishtar with a frig the drones will sometimes one shot you and when the player gets back to his pc he sends a message loling at your wreck 5 minutes after the fight.
Eve difficulty now is about a 7.5 if your playing with a cruiser and up and 11 if your in a frig or desi.
I’d say so much of EVE has been “solved”, and there’s so much N+1, that the game is either boring or frustrating to the point of not even worth logging in to make the attempt. EVE is the worst of both worlds.
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It depends a lot on which area of the game you’re looking at and what level of results you’re trying to achieve. There’s a fair bit of truth to Xuixien’s statement:
(As an aside: I notice that people often post about what “the player base” wants, as though they were some monolithic group of “give me everything now” carebears or gankers. However the couple hundred players who dabble in the forums aren’t “the player base”. The actual player base is the tens of thousands of players who log in every day and push the parameters of the game so hard that CCP has to keep finding ways to nerf what they do to slow them down.)
If you’re a new player, getting into EVE, and not too worried about “achieving greatness” any time soon, then EVE is still pretty interesting and not that hard. At least, it’s not that hard if you’re the kind of player that reads everything very carefully, alt-tabs and googles a lot, asks intelligent questions in help, and doesn’t rush off half-cocked into low sec because someone said “the pay is better”. So the 6% of the total gaming market who games that way won’t find it too hard.
From having gotten half a dozen or so ‘potential players’ to try EVE, I can say that most new players appear to run into some source of boredom or frustration or confusion or progress-blocker within the first 8-10 hours of gameplay. This generally leads to a “thanks, it’s not for me” decision and they leave. No hard feelings, no raging. It’s not generally about “too challenging” but more like “I can’t get this to work and it doesn’t seem to be fun”.
On the other hand, if you’re an EVE player with some degree of experience with the game, there’s not much that’s “too challenging”. There might be parts that are boring, or that aren’t really rewarding enough to be worth putting time into. Most of the complaints we see on forums or in help chat from unhappy players are either new players that had something unexpected happen (like the guy who just flew his new cruiser into low-sec on a security mission and didn’t realize the pop-up warning was an actual “Danger Will Robinson!” alert), or existing players who got bored or insufficiently rewarded with their regular activities, pushed out into a new area, and got smacked.
There’s also the folks who jump into industry and lose money because they didn’t do research and didn’t realize the playing field isn’t really even or logical. Or the guys who drop 2 bill on a Gila because they watched an Abyssal video and fired off to “earn 300 mill per hour” without realizing there are spawns that will eat them alive.
So at a basic level, EVE isn’t overly challenging, but can be nitpicky, boring or frustrating. At levels where actual “challenge” exists, it can still be boring and frustrating, but additional risk might be enough to keep it semi-interesting.
If you’re asking “Compared to the average MMORPG, space or fantasy, how difficult is EVE 1-10?” I’d say it ranges from 7-10 depending on what you’re doing. This is less because EVE is “complex, deep and rich” and more because EVE simply has a lot of awkward, cumbersome mechanics that are unnecessarily abstruse.
This has been said before and could be the true death of the game. When EVE becomes so predictable as a single player game vs a program? It was more fun and more of a challenge before I “solved” the game.
I think this is where we lose new players. There’s nothing important to achieve anymore?
I actually disagree with this. I was going to wait, because I need to go through the CSM candidates, but I suppose I can take a break…
First, players have different preference when it comes to:
- Risk
- Isk Efficiency
- Effort
- Attentiveness (Active Gameplay versus Semi-AFK/AFK)
- Solo versus Cooperative
- Optimizing Toward Boredom versus Seeking Emergent Game Play Opportunities (i.e. some guys will actually run sites with PvP fits, while others will try like hell to avoid anything that might slow down number going up)
Second, players differ according to:
- Player Skill
- Character Skill
- Ship/Item Availability
Third, the world state can vary due to:
- Competition (i.e. general competitors, depleting resources, those that actively contest)
- Predation (i.e. PvP, seagulling, and ninja looters)
- Patches/Stealth Changes
So, even if someone finds the optimal solution for them, that doesn’t mean that it’s the optimal solution for everyone, or that it will continue being the optimal solution forever. Hell, even when nothing changes, hardcore guys will keep looking for anything that can offer a fraction of a percentage more efficiency, or a sliver less risk. For example, when I was an LC for WTM Incursions, people were constantly proposing new strats and fits, and they would periodically get adopted. Incursions was like 8 years old (or something like that) at the time, and it still wasn’t “solved.”
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I agree with @Shipwreck_Jones . I would even dare to state that EvE has no “solution” hence cannot be solved. The reason for that is that the “challenge” is not anything hard-coded into its virtual world. The “challenge” is the other people you play the game with, competitors and compagnons and total strangers.
Of course limited challenges have (temporary) solutions, if one has the time and budget to adjust a character to the current optimal solutions for e.g., incursions, burners, concord response times, FOBs, or particular fleet doctrines. But those are mere details.
Long term goals and ambitions are still very possible, even necessary, for any new player (omega that is). They don’t even need to know all the history and stories of EvE. The ultimate game goal is of course to carve out a piece of space, call it your own, and be able to hold on to it by defending it and playing the political and diplomatic part of the game. With that I do not mean to say that you, as an individual, should have that personal ambition, but rather contribute to the collective mindset and ambition of a group (after all, any ruler only has the power while it is entrusted to him/her).
Some players and forum readers may reel from this statement, pushing getting rich as the ultimate goal, or getting the best k/d ratio, or simply being left in peace while doing your own thing. From simple observation, each of those "sub"goals achieve their best result when you own your own part of space. It’s where you are mostly in control and call the shots.
The players constitute the changing challenges that truly matter in EvE, namely the ones you can have an influence on as another player. What the game designers throw at the players, those elements do have temporary and ideal solutions. What the game’s players throw at you, those are the ever-changing and highly challenging elements, at least if you take a step back and look at the overall situation.
I, for one, do not see any reason why any long term goal or ambition would now be impossible to pursue. Achieving those goals has always been a question of
- sufficient knowledge of the hard-coded elements of the game (of which there are many)
- knowledge of current, partial solutions to player created game situations (of which there are even more) including any tools, guides, databases, etc.
- creativity and imagination
- learning how to perform a correct risk assessment and manage it accordingly
- determination and boldness in your approach
- keeping track of your long term goal with the help of milestones
- never take your eyes off the goal
That too is part of the learning curve, and most likely also the toughest and less obvious part, on par with finding the correct group to join.
My renewed interest in nullsec life, after having dwelled in highsec for the last couple of years (of which only the trig invasion episode was the truly rewarding and enjoyable one for me) made me look at the current political map again, and not only in the sense of “who controls what part of space” but also in the sense of “who controls how”. I’ll focus on that in the remainder of my lengthy reply.
Of course there are the powerhouses that rely on fierce and proud loyalty of huge numbers of players. Then there are others who primarily rely on massive fleet power, able to rent out space to weaker groups, who basically pay protection money. And then there are groups who try to get a foothold, like one large group tried in Feythabolis recently (they got kicked out again by one of the landlords under the guise of “this is a major war zone in our struggle with our age old enemies”). Although the approach of “renter space” is a particularly challenging one to tackle in the game, it is not without potential solutions, in my opinion. For instance, one can only be a reliable landlord if one also fulfills the accompanying obligations. I will leave the rest to your imagination. Of course I’m not writing here about limited, individual goals, but ones that involve large groups of players and good portions of the map - the ones that give an overall shape to New Eden and the coloring of nullsec (or even losec and w-space).
That e.g., the Feythabolis adventure of that group recently ended in failure has nothing to do with the current state of the game and its so-called solutions and the presence of older, wiser and more knowledgeable groups. Who was around back in 2013-14 knows about the group called Brave Newbies, whose name was aptly chosen. Their leadership had a particular approach to getting a foothold in nullsec sov space, and their long term plan had distinct milestones, while they kept testing the waters and undoubtedly identified and seized opportunities to help achieve their goal - becoming a new powerhouse. I am convinced that something similar is still possible today, especially with the numbers of players present in that unfortunate Feyth group… What matters is choosing the correct approach (planting a flag and hoping to be ignored is rather naive). The forces active in the game have never changed in the lifespan of the game: you can only have what you can defend. And no, I do not believe or even accept that hisec space should be privileged in “safety”, because hisec space is given to players, without the need to defend it.
In conclusion, the details of any solution are always subject to change. And entirely new solutions require (combined) brain power.
The real question is if EvE’s current (renewing) population is willing and able to set long term goals, do the heavy lifting and immerse itself into all its aspects, or just give in to negative stimuli (which are always easier to find or at least to respond to as @Xuixien documented eloquently) and yell for more comfort food and safety blankets. Many people need only a single reason not to do something, and at least ten reasons to try something new. Do new players even know how marvelously deep the rabbit hole EvE is ? This game takes effort to play to satisfaction.
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Shiver-my-timbers is right in that in that there needs to be a core of loyalist players to thread the transition from quadrants to arcs. My worry is that NODDI is insufficiently developed to meet popular expectations.
With a psych in the room I’m surprised no-one has highlighted the role of story in learning and memory retention. Useful if inaccurate analytics aside the answer to what EVE Online is; changing.
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Well that was certainly preached with the fervor of the recently (re)converted.
And of course by “carve out your space and make it your own” you mean “become a cog in somebody else’s Null machine”.
I note that you dabbled in null quite some time ago, then bailed on it for almost 8 years, and now 9 days back and suddenly it’s “the one true EVE”. Well at least you’re not in a primarily farming-focused alliance.
Xuixien wasn’t talking about “lack of goals” in EVE. I believe they were referring to the fact that the “ways and means” of EVE, the way you actually get anything done, is basically old news. There literally isn’t a single activity in EVE that you can’t watch Youtube videos or find guides showing the best approach for. You know, all the activity in the game that you dismiss as ‘mere details’ in your “Move to Null and Join a Bloc for Greatness!” sermon.
Yes, people can niggle with the details of their Incursion logi setup or decide they really need N+4 instead of N+1, but the gameplay has gotten pretty stale overall. Which might help explain why you sat in highsec for almost a decade.
Personal goals you set aren’t the ‘challenges’ of the game. Long term goals that might take you years to achieve aren’t helping hold new or existing players in the game. Particularly when many players are increasingly doubting whether EVE can hold up for ‘years’. If they aren’t engaged by the day to day gameplay then they’re not likely to wait years to achieve something.
And it’s not surprising that someone with more than 10 years in the game who’s recently moved back to Null is finding “the politics of Null” his greatest current source of interest. After all, politics has been entertaining folks since we were whacking each other with axes.
It remains to be seen if it’s still possible to become “a new powerhouse” in Null today. Despite your fervor, articles like this one https://imperium.news/tikle-merge-into-the-initiative/ highlighting the problems of being in anything but a major bloc have been the standard for quite a while now. “Entirely new solutions” have been vanishingly slim.
“The game takes effort” is the standard response of the committed EVE addict. And apparently this makes them feel good as they then view themselves as the “committed, dedicated, hardened EVE veteran”.
But you know who’s been abandoning the game in droves lately? Exactly the knowledgeable, experienced veterans. I don’t know about you but Hilmar’s proud “57% of EVE players are new in the last 4 years”, with the population trends we’ve been seeing, didn’t exactly fill me with comfort.
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Sounds like RL politicians and news agencies.
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The complex alliances of Eve are such that its not always easy to know just what the politics actually are above the corp level.
“Pew PewPew Pew”
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while the endgame of EVE is the meta game , according with my genius explanation above , there is no need to be a cog in any power block
EVE “short” vertical progression assure to any player mastery in one specific area , and for veterans the extensive lateral progression give space to acquire expertise in several others
wen a player have lots of skills and money there is not much to aim for besides meta gaming
the most reputed end game /meta game a player could seek is a politician like @Brisc_Rubal , or princess like @Aiko_Danuja
however any enterprise out of strict game mechanics could be considered end game , corporation leader , rolepayer , pirate , 3rd party developer , mercenary etc … even just having fun™ can be endgame in EVE
one leave a personal mark in the game by just being
that said , dedicating yourself exclusively to mining or mission running could technically by my own definition of “just being” be considered end game is usually a path of low resistance viewed by most as a minor endeavor and IMO should be enjoyed more fully if the player spend some time trying to understand and participate in other game activities first
to be clear i will give 2 more examples , @Iceacid_Frostpacker could be mistaken for a simple miner but this is far from true ,he is meta gaming , he is in the endgame , a notable entrepreneur , corporation owner and his mastery as a professional simp is solicited by EVEs most beautiful waifus
@tutucox_Khamsi , moi , could be easily be viewed as just a FW guy , but my inestimable contribution to the holy amarr empire , zeal in roleplay and in insulting the galente and minmatar , and l33t recruiting abilities , converting more people to a dubious ideology than a American public school are indeed end game
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Did the same in many games. Most recently the alchemt/enchant exploit in Skyrim.
I made myself weapons that would one-hit everything.
And then the game was boring.
Eve definitely isn’t the monstrously wonderful challenge it once was.
But the players themselves are what add a lot of challenge to the game, and the current batch are definitely a lot less bloodthirsty and adventurous.
I think, or hope, the FW changes should add some brutality back into the game.
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Dear @Kezrai_Charzai, thank you for trying to engage me, albeit somewhat awkwardly, in conversation.
First allow me to respond by writing that I am a bit surprised by the vehemence with which you try to characterize not only my former and current choices in the game - which aren’t any different if you do your research properly, only the circumstances changed - but also the content of the post itself. Whatever triggered your discomfort, are you sure it’s something I wrote and not something you thought you read ? Be that as it may, l would suggest you reread the post with a neutral, i.e., open mind, take it for an opinion that may differ from yours, from a perspective you may not ever have shared, written by a player who is not relevant for your game’s and forum’s experience, addressing a subtopic in this thread, namely goals and by extension long term goals. A simple offering of opinions, perhaps written in a style that may not suit you, in a language that is not even my own.
Here’s some free, take-it-or-leave-it information. I promise I won’t use words like acidic, acrimonious, toxic, burnt-out or fling some ad hominems along the way. I won’t even look into your game’s history. It does not matter to have normal respect for another person’s opinion. No, I will only try to guide you to a better understanding of the meaning of the post you reacted to. Other forum dwellers are free to have a wager on the probabilites of success.
I will not deny I’m passionate about EvE. I knew quite a few people back then. My “recent (re)conversion” as you coin it was, in fact, a long time in the making if you (re)construct the timeline. Upon my return to EvE in 2019 (I left in 2015 because my closest friends left because of hard to swallow changes to the game), I was invited to join the current alliance. I felt I wasn’t ready to rejoin nullsec yet, especially not with any corporate roles and accompanying pressure. When I was ready, however, the conflict with PAPI had started, recruitments were not obvious, hence postponed.
To that I would have to respond that one is only a cog if one feels like being a cog. Often you will see that people who feel like that either shy away from any responsibility, have personal ambitions that surpass their abilities (yes, eve can be confrontational by shoving a mirror in one’s face), or simply lack a good fit in the Multiplayer aspect of an MMO game (a good troupe, enough freedom, perhaps social skills, etc).
I started in July 2011, moved to nullsec in Feb 2012 (earlier even, but I was still closing down all lowsec/highsec stuff of the alliance I started with), and stayed there until I cancelled my sub in early 2016. I returned to EvE in June ‘19, on a single alpha account, and when a few of my friends rejoined me in the game, fired up my omega account again, looking for opportunities to get out of hisec space asap by joining the correct group for my and my buddies’ playstyle.
Suddenly ? No, it is fairly obvious even to a newcomer where the big boys live, and play with the big toys. My real point of attraction was anything but hisec space life. The game really opens up when you get out of hisec and learn to live in a far more dangerous environment. Risk goes up, so does the reward, so do the friendships, even in more modest forms of nullsec life like Provi NRDS space (I was there for the entire five years).
Nope, I bailed from EvE Online in the first half of 2016, after my corp bled dry due to other people bailing out. War got in the way, so 2022 was the first and best opportunity to go back to the game proper (meaning no handholds, no comfort food, no safety blankets, just bring your own skills and brain, so that includes null, w-space, pochven perhaps, and lowsec), and enjoy working towards common goals with other people).
Neither did I refer to her post in that way. I mentioned the negative stimuli (on which she wrote an excellent, well-structured post), one of which is repetitions of “how can we ever compete with veterans with all those skill points” and “what is there left to achieve in this game, it’s all been done before”. The first is patently untrue. The second makes as much sense as “I won’t study medicine, coz I would have to compete with other MD’s that are more experienced and have established practices”. Learning to recognize opportunities is a step in the right direction.
Hmm, not even. As you say, politics are interesting ever since we started using clubs to clobber someone with. There are however, even after many years of actively playing EvE still untouched aspects to discover, and learn to use. What I may already know is not my motivator, but what I do not know yet.
Opportunity windows open and close all the time. There was one right after the last big conflict ended. It was not seized. On the other hand, the group that tried in Feythabolis, clearly underestimated the value of a good and solid diplomatic and strategic effort. They jumped on the wrong opportunity window for now, but if they prepare themselves a lot better for the next one (there’s always a next one, groups collapse), their chances are real. I’m not referring to small groups, although those can establish themselves in npc null, or lowsec or w-space. Holding sov is another level of playing EvE, requiring methods and means suited to that aspect.
I agree that that is the usual approach that people take. I remember one of the conflicts in Provi with PL. The then meta for most engagements was Eagles. They seemed formidable. Until you find a novel solution, in casu find a way to completely shut down their tanks - we tried it, it worked like a charm. But again, that is not always possible. In those cases, where it really chokes up the confrontations between fleets, then it is the responsibility of the game designers to make alterations. It’s not the players’ fault, it never is in the long run.
Well, at least it’s the standard response of players who have invested a lot in learning the aspects of the game, who have experienced a lot of the hurdles. If that makes them feel better about themselves, I really don’t know. I do know how much knowledge I lack, and can assure you that it doesn’t make me feel better at all (unless that there is still so much left to discover for my enjoyment of the game).
I agree with you on that point, and add to that the similar numbers of EvE devs. That is, if anything, a bunch of red flags, not something to be proud of. The better news is that at least the devs have been allowed back into the game itself. At least they can build up knowledge of the game from the inside, as players.
Toodles.
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you make the forums a better place tut.
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For strategic goals, it would be advisable to keep those close to the chest, for obvious reasons. The only traces of those goals are shifts in focus of the daily operations, in preparation of those undisclosed goals. That may be uncomfortable for some. On the other hand, being part of “the privy council” can hardly be called comfortable when pinged in the middle of the night 
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EvE, to me, is a game for having fun with chill people.
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durr i still hit da thing to make da items come out hurrrrr