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EVE Evolved: Has the industry revamp worked?
When I was first introduced to EVE Online back in 2004, a big part of the attraction for me was the promise of a huge player-run economy in which the only real laws were those of supply and demand. With only a handful of tech 1 ships and modules available to build and everything made out of the same basic minerals, science and industry were pretty easy for new players to figure out. Over the years, more complexity has slowly been added to industry via features like Starbases, Salvaging, Capital Ships, Tech 2 Invention, Planetary Interaction and Tech 3 Reverse Engineering. Today's industrialists have to contend with hundreds of different items that are often arranged in sprawling component manufacturing chains, which can make it hard to figure out exactly how to make a profit. The recent industry revamp attempted to solve this problem with a full user interface overhaul and a revamp of material costs and manufacturing prices. All of the relevant information for using a blueprint was packed into a slick new combined Industry UI, allowing new players to find the info they're looking for in-game rather than through websites or opening dozens of item info windows. It's now been almost two months since the industry revamp went live, and while the market for many items is still going to take several months to fully stabilise, the dust has finally begun to settle. So what's the verdict? Has the industry revamp worked? In this edition of EVE Evolved, I consider whether the industry revamp has been successful, how easy it is to make a profit in the new system, and whether it's worth setting up your own industrial starbase.
Why I Play: EVE Online
Sci-fi MMO EVE Online is possibly the most polarising online game in existence. It has some of the genre's most loyal fans and spawns some of its biggest news stories, but most people just can't stand the user interface and gameplay. It's been called boring, overcomplicated, and a griefer's paradise, but even those who don't play it often still watch from the sidelines as each insane story of theft or corruption emerges from the sandbox. Most games can only keep my attention for a few months at a time, but somehow I've played EVE for over eight and a half years. I've heard it said that EVE is a long-term commitment, a statement I find hard to argue with as at only 26 years old I've been playing EVE almost continuously for a third of my life. It's not just been a game to me; at times it's been a way of life, a refuge from stress, a way to stay in touch with friends, and even a place to learn skills that can apply to the real world. Thanks to Massively, my attachment to EVE has even grown from a hobby to a career in writing and games journalism. I've had numerous periods of low activity in EVE and even quit for months at a time, but something always brings me back to the world's biggest sci-fi sandbox. In this article, I look back at what drew me to EVE initially, some of the unusual factors that have kept me playing EVE over the past eight years, and the reason I'm still motivated to subscribe to this day.
EVE Evolved: Gallente and hybrid balance
It's been another week filled with announcements and positive news for EVE Online, with CCP showing off EVE's new nebulae and revealing the Amarr and Caldari tier 3 battlecruisers. For Gallente pilots, no news was celebrated more than the rebalancing of hybrid weapons and ships that specialise in their use. Short-range blasters can technically deliver the highest damage output of any turret, but their extremely short optimal range means they deal a smaller fraction of their maximum damage in most fights than other ships. Blaster ships have to spend valuable travel time closing into weapons range, and once up close, targets are hard to track. Although railguns were designed by the Caldari, they're hybrid weapons just like blasters, and so they are the long-range weapon of choice for Gallente sniping and mission-running ships. They have good range and tracking speed but have always suffered from slightly worse damage output and alpha strike than beam lasers and artillery cannons of the same size. Countless suggestions for fixes to blasters and railguns have appeared on the forum over the years, but until now they've remained unchanged. As a Gallente pilot and avid Thorax and Dominix fan, I'm very excited by the hybrid balance changes coming this winter. In this week's EVE Evolved, I take a break from the new player experience experiment to take a look at the impact of the upcoming hybrid balance patch and why the announced changes are needed.
The Daily Grind: Which MMO has the hardest learning curve?
MMOs come in all shapes and sizes, and with new titles launching every other day, there's bound to be one out there that caters to just about every skill level imaginable. While many of these games boast similar mechanics, occasionally a dev team will stray from the norm and create a head-scratchingly complex title (or in some cases, a title that is deliberately user-unfriendly). Games like EVE Online and Second Life are renowned for their learning curve and the amount of research necessary to play at a high level, and we're curious to hear about others you may have experienced. For this edition of The Daily Grind, share your thoughts on MMO complexity, and whether the term entails mechanics, the UI, gameplay options, or some combination of all three. While you've got your thinking cap on, which MMO has the hardest learning curve? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
EVE Evolved: Emergence in the sandbox
We often hear about the amazing things players get up to in EVE Online, from full-scale political wars and massive heists to collaborative business ventures and high-profile kills. While we can all enjoy these tales of high-powered exploits from afar, they can be difficult to relate to the actual game experience. Most of us will never be the puppet master pulling the strings of alliance warfare or the mastermind of some great theft, but we don't have to be. Smaller examples of emergent and opportunistic gameplay exist all over EVE in the daily play of thousands of individuals. I've always thought of EVE less as a game and more as a giant social sandbox with spaceships -- a story about what people do when left alone in each other's company. Players naturally take on roles for which they have a strong aptitude, crafting completely new gameplay styles for themselves in the process. The entrepreneurs among us spy opportunities never imagined by the game's developers, tech-savvy individuals sell web-services, and artists craft propaganda for recruitment or a war on their enemy's morale. Countless players carve their own game out of the EVE universe, and there's no reason you can't be one of them. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the unique gameplay experiences players have engineered for themselves over the years and the community that makes EVE what it is.
EVE Evolved: The EVE Online that could be
Each of us has a different idea of the perfect game, whether it's an existing game with a few tweaks or something completely new. Game designers work tirelessly to make their own vision of the perfect game a reality, but there's no telling what players will think of a feature until it's finished. In the process of transforming a feature from a gleam in the game designer's eye to a finished product, something is unfortunately often lost in translation. Limitations in the technology being used or the manpower available can render the ideal implementation infeasible. As players, we don't really see that full development process. That doesn't stop us from painting our perfect vision of an upcoming or potential feature and how awesome it could be. In the coming years, the EVE Online developers will be going through the process of making some of their most incredible visions a reality. Ideas like walking in stations and integrating the upcoming MMOFPS Dust 514 with EVE's planetary interaction feature will be put through a potentially brutal development process. We can only hope that as little as possible of those visions we've heard from EVE's developers gets lost in translation. In this speculative opinion piece, I look at a few areas in which EVE is sure to be expanded in the coming years and discuss what I'd consider to be the ideal way they could be implemented or handled.
