1) There is no "book" or "manual" for EVE Online. Usually, if you are nice and sociable, you can ask questions in local or on the EVE-O forums, and you will get a proper answer.
2) EVE is not for the "average", "WOWesque", "GWesque", type of a player. It requiers some time and dedication to discover its potntial.
3) Average EVE player is over 25 years of age or older.
4) EVE is not for young people, at least not most young ADD moppets out there. If you want to go "frag" or "zerg" something, then EVE is not for you.
EVE is extremly complex and involved game.
EVE is for adults, ..snip
Yeh, and if you want to "excel" at EVE-O just gate camp in your Battleship and "pwn" every n00b that comes through without a bookmark.
Thats what alot of these "adults" call hardcore PvP
<insert eve fanboi flames here>
<insert comments from people who think i lost my ship in this manner>
amended;
and yes EVE has the most elitist community in the history of MMO's. As demonstrated in this thread, some people think that because they play eve they are smart, tactical and the epitome of maturity.
Somebody please remind them that they are playing a COMPUTER GAME not out manouvering Rommel in north Africa.
4) EVE is not for young people, at least not most young ADD moppets out there. If you want to go "frag" or "zerg" something, then EVE is not for you.
Word.
I'd like to add that for some quick fragging, MMORPGs in general are the wrong genre. Something like Battlefield, Day Of Defeat or Call Of Duty multiplayer will give a lot more fun if all you want is to shoot things up.
I've read on this forum website that there exists an elitist gamer-mentality within the game of Eve. Can anybody corroborate this? I'm no stranger to playing within a MMO community such as this, but it certainly makes for a bad show all around when folk are referred to as simpletons or noobish nincompoops simply for not understanding a basic aspect of the game straight away.
Trellot
The attitude within the game itself is pretty much the complete opposite of elitist. I've been playing the game for less than a week but the community is easily the best i've ever seen. Everyone i've met and talked to has been more than helpful in answering my questions about the game.
The people on the forums have an attitude that comes off as elitist but to be honest the amount of people that come on and talk about how EVE is bad for reasons like "it takes too long to skill up" and "we need new servers so we can get a fresh start" and "this game is bad because it's too complicated and there's nothing to do" is insane.
I played WoW for two years, and this attitude that the EVE bashers have is the exact same attitude as 99% of the people i played WoW with. These people come to the game expecting it to be easy like their old game (*cough* WoW *cough*) and when they find that the game takes planning and work and *ghasp* social interaction they get mad and bash EVE. I'd say "go back to WoW" is a justifiable thing to say in 90% of the cases on the forums here. I think the truth is in between:
People are very helpful unless it is obvious that you did not even bother to learn the most basic things.
Spend a few hours with the tutorial, and you can ask intelligent enough questions to get help.
But if you ask stuff that Aura would tell you within the first two hours, the answer may be "do the fucking tutorial".
Yes EVE is more difficult to pick up than other games. I've had several friends come and try EVE only to see them leave because "they didn't get it". They all went to WOW eventually and are having a blast.
The reason they didn't get EVE was because they were looking "to be" entertained. Thats not EVE. EVE gives you the tools to "entertain yourself.
My constant recommendation for new people is to JOIN A CORPORATION ASAP. The interaction you will have with real corpmates is the best introduction you can have and uncomplicates the game significantly. If you "get it" the chances of you liking it are much higher.
EvE is definitely NOT a big IQ test, that's the mentality I was talking about earlier. It is as easy or as difficult as any other quantity-complex system. It's complex because its much, it's not complex because you need to be smart to get the mechanism. At least it doesn't require more intellect than the next-best mainstream MMOG. It just requires more dedication...
Meridion
PS: Oh and yea: One other problem that bothered me was total lack of reaction based gameplay. I'm not an action junkie, but playing a game where there is only "starship enterprise"-like combat kind of bothered me.
EvE is definitely NOT a big IQ test, that's the mentality I was talking about earlier. It is as easy or as difficult as any other quantity-complex system. It's complex because its much, it's not complex because you need to be smart to get the mechanism. At least it doesn't require more intellect than the next-best mainstream MMOG. It just requires more dedication...
Meridion
PS: Oh and yea: One other problem that bothered me was total lack of reaction based gameplay. I'm not an action junkie, but playing a game where there is only "starship enterprise"-like combat kind of bothered me.
Yes, generally people who make money by trading in a fully functional player-driven marketplace are no more or less smart then people who GET PH4T L3WTZ from killing 800 Evil Squirrels.
But keep crying about how the game wasn't hard, you just inexplicably sucked at it through no fault of your own.
You could as well choose not to deny that EvEs Playerbase is Elitist *g*...
Being successful in a totally open market doesn't require intelligence, it requires ruthlessness, coldness and greed, its THAT simple, but well, that's kind of a sidenote.
The real point is, you deliberately chose to reply in a form that puts me in the convenient position to let your words ring and speak for themselves, about intelligence, about manners, you know, all that crap that other people suck at when they whine so much about your favorite game
Meridion
PS: *i love PS* this reminds me of some fundamentalist of the religion of your choice: (lunatic voice) "You dont LOVE it???? You just dont understand it then. Nobody who TRULY understands can deny the LOVE for it"
You could as well choose not to deny that EvEs Playerbase is Elitist *g*...
Being successful in a totally open market doesn't require intelligence, it requires ruthlessness, coldness and greed, its THAT simple, but well, that's kind of a sidenote.
The real point is, you deliberately chose to reply in a form that puts me in the convenient position to let your words ring and speak for themselves, about intelligence, about manners, you know, all that crap that other people suck at when they whine so much about your favorite game
Meridion
PS: *i love PS* this reminds me of some fundamentalist of the religion of your choice: (lunatic voice) "You dont LOVE it???? You just dont understand it then. Nobody who TRULY understands can deny the LOVE for it"
Originally posted by Meridion
- I love to PvP, but EvE, being a total PvP game, actually held me back from pvping. Why was that? Simple, I was afraid to lose stuff, so I never equipped a ship to truly go PvP. I didnt want to get blasted to pieces so I carefully stayed in HighSec Space;
Well, lets see... you spent your limited time in the game hiding in highsec, making no money and not getting involved in any PvP. I'm not sure if there's a more clear definition of people who suck at EVE.
You're right in one respect - you can play EVE without any intelligence whatsoever - play it as you did. That really only says something about people who play a tenth of the game and complain about how PvP is too hard because you lose stuff, it doesn't say much about the game (other then you do need some intelligence to play it well).
A word of advice too - next time you want to pull out the P.S. STRAWMAN ARGUMENT, just stick with the Chewbacca Defense. It's a proven winner.
The AI tutorial is just a warm up, the real tutorial is with n00bs corps.
There are many corps that acts like a advance tutorial to the new EvE players, they guide, help and support those n00bs until they can stand on their on.
Ah, I get your point, not wanting to lose something and being forced to repeat the work to get it again is unintelligent, like staying away from mass brawling at soccer matches because you dont want the four week hospital all inclusive program is stupid. Hell, why didn't I get that earlier, its so simple pal: Aggressive, ruthless, arrogant maggots are intelligent, people that are out for some fun are not, plus the latter suck at competetive darwinesque challenges... I love religious-cult-logic
Well, i dont think thats carebears life is stupid, but your assumptions EVEs complexity is just based on mass is wrong, too.
Sure, EVE has a lot game mechanics to offer, and all of those can be used with a basic understanding of whats going on,
but to used them refined and so getting more out of them, you need to understand them fully.
Market, as your example, is easy in his conception, sure, but if you want to make profit out of it, you have to understand
how everything behind the buy and sell order works, even sometimes know how other marketeers think and will react on your actions.
Every aspect in EVE is like this, even ship to ship combat.
For me as still 2 year old PvP noob its still not much more then pressing a button doing pew-pew to the enemys ship.
for refined PvPer its deciding how they fit (Gank, Fleet and so on) and how they engage you as well (seeing a frig outmanouvring two
even faster cruiser).
and btw. doing solo PvP is the hardest way to enter such.
Get into a 0.0 Corp, you will earn more money than you can imagine, you will be shown the ropes of PvP and you wont
get biased about some losses.
Well that's perfectly what I wanted to say, the complexity comes from the mass, not from the mechanic itself. To master any easy process people need to be clever. If I give you - in generic MMOG X - a character with 3 skills, a dot, a heal and a direct damage and let you go PvP combat with this; Assuming everyone got the same possibilities; Its darn easy to DO somthing with it, but it will be VERY difficult to make a real difference against human opponents.
That wasn't even my point concerning EvE, I just said that the system "the guy that uses his tools smarter is the winner"-aplies to any competetive game/situation in life. It's not "intelligent people" only and its not "Eve only"...
I agree with a lot of what has been said here and at the same time disagree with a lot that has been said.
Eve's players are not Elitest no matter what people think or say. They are just tired of people pretending that they know what they are talking about and flaming the game when it is obvious they do not know what they are talking about. Blatent lies, untruths and negative comments are what is more often than not thrown at them. I myself became rude to a few people because I don't see the point of flaming a game. For which I am sorry about.
If you do not like Eve then say you don't and why but with constructive comments. Also do not rip the game apart if you have not invested the time and effort into understanding what you are doing. Because you are ignorant in the game mechanics does not make it a bad game or you ignorant. But it does mean that you should not come here and flame (call fanbois) the people who have played. do enjoy the game and understand the game mechanics.
Does the game take intelligence to play? Yes it does. So do many other games. Eve is VERY unforgiving if you make a stupid mistake, just like real life.
The skill system suits those people who have busy RL's as they can go AFK for a long while even a month and not lose much or be "behind" other players.
The people in game are very friendly IF (big if) you have done the tutorial and you are polite. IF you are rude or have not done the tutorial they are not as friendly and even downright rude back to you. Why is this? Because the Tutorial is there and if you cannot be bothered to use the tools provided to you by the game then why should they spend their time helping you? I happen to agree with this point. If you have tried and forgotten something they are very very helpful and friendly.
I guess another interesting point is - what I probably already headed towards earlier but didn't say - in games generally, aren't you supposed to be "off duty" from responisbility or in other words; off from avoiding stupid mistakes. I jump off cliffs, attack people that are 10 level above me, buy totally overpriced stuff just because... well, just because its not real...
Which brings me back to earlier conclusions: EvE requires "work-play" mentality, dedication and I'd add, seriousness. I guess you guys get your fun out of creating a paralell, working social environment, like in second life. Where you create and sustain something in interaction with other players.
While I still think it does not require more intelligence (I'm not talking about being clever, like "intuitive intelligence") than any other game, it is a place where one can not - which has positive and negative sides - just head out to space and have some fun.
The person who you are is who you are in a game, Online, Offline, at work, etc. Eve requires you to be yourself and use your brain. If you don't want to think then TV is a good option. Other than that you are always thinking.
Why would I want to attack someone who should be able to kill me? Why jump off a cliff? Why would you want to play a game that is completely removed from all reality? Waht do you learn from that? How does that take away stress? Is it not the perceived challenge or the perceived danger that gives us the rush and thereby enables us to get over RL stress?
The essential error is to confuse "easy" with "simple". Lets take a look at a very good example of an simple, NOT easy but very entertaining game: Counterstrike. It takes five minutes to learn but ten hours/day training sessions to master. I can blow myself up, shout at people, go totally crazy with a machine gun, do stuff I would definitely NOT do in real life. The only punishment there is is the following 2 minutes till next round and my failure.
And still, by a crazy mechanism called loss-induced-ambition, you just want to "get the sucker next round". I dont need to have game mechanics drench me in "whoa, take care, this could be the end of your precious 50 million ISK ship"; that just doesnt motivate me. it motivates me to get bashed and be able to take revenge in a very close time frame.
Winning a battleground in WoW against a much better equipped group, capturing the flag in UT, shadowmorph-backstabbing a guy that just killed your teammate in Guild Wars. Priceless. Not because its realistic, not because its complicated, no, because its fast pace intuitive superiority. Win... and lose, in an instant, thats what drives people to game, to play soccer, football, where every second of a 90 minute game can turn the tide...
Because its NOT like life, where everything is compromise, long-ranged thought and well-planned insurance-based action.
I guess another interesting point is - what I probably already headed towards earlier but didn't say - in games generally, aren't you supposed to be "off duty" from responisbility or in other words; off from avoiding stupid mistakes. I jump off cliffs, attack people that are 10 level above me, buy totally overpriced stuff just because... well, just because its not real...
Which brings me back to earlier conclusions: EvE requires "work-play" mentality, dedication and I'd add, seriousness. I guess you guys get your fun out of creating a paralell, working social environment, like in second life. Where you create and sustain something in interaction with other players.
While I still think it does not require more intelligence (I'm not talking about being clever, like "intuitive intelligence") than any other game, it is a place where one can not - which has positive and negative sides - just head out to space and have some fun.
Meridion
Please don't use phrases like "Work-Play", its a purely subjective phrase with no solid definition that can be used pretty much anyway you want. For example Soccer or Football for the rest of the world is also "work-play." I find it to be like work when I have to do it. The phrase can be applied to pretty much anything with out it being incorrect. What individual people find to be work and what people define as play is entirely up to them. Saying that you can easily find EVE to be more work then fun, while I found towards the end of my time in CoX and WoW to be closer to work then fun both times.
Also the "Quantity-Complex" phrase is well pretty pointless. All complex systems are complex do to the amount of variables and simple systems that compose them. In the end all complex systems are in the end complex do to thier mass. Now you can always do the simple to learn difficult to master for everything. Though based on the complexity of the system will vary the time and overall skill difference between a novice and a master. Checkers is a very simple game with very few game mechanics, its quick to learn and takes a while to master. Chess is also fairly easy to learn but difficult to master, however, overall a Chess master is on a entirely differnent playing field then a checkers master due to the overall complexity in the game.
Now I say that overall EVE takes a bit more thought (or would forethought be a better word) then many MMOs. With risk you need to be able to think before leaping. Now personnally I enjoy games that require a little thinking ahead. Doesn't say I don't enjoy ones that don't require any thinking ahead but they don't hold me for long. agian nothing is wrong with games either way.
The essential error is to confuse "easy" with "simple". Lets take a look at a very good example of an simple, NOT easy but very entertaining game: Counterstrike. It takes five minutes to learn but ten hours/day training sessions to master. I can blow myself up, shout at people, go totally crazy with a machine gun, do stuff I would definitely NOT do in real life. The only punishment there is is the following 2 minutes till next round and my failure.
And still, by a crazy mechanism called loss-induced-ambition, you just want to "get the sucker next round". I dont need to have game mechanics drench me in "whoa, take care, this could be the end of your precious 50 million ISK ship"; that just doesnt motivate me. it motivates me to get bashed and be able to take revenge in a very close time frame.
Winning a battleground in WoW against a much better equipped group, capturing the flag in UT, shadowmorph-backstabbing a guy that just killed your teammate in Guild Wars. Priceless. Not because its realistic, not because its complicated, no, because its fast pace intuitive superiority. Win... and lose, in an instant, thats what drives people to game, to play soccer, football, where every second of a 90 minute game can turn the tide...
Because its NOT like life, where everything is compromise, long-ranged thought and well-planned insurance-based action.
Meridion
And again this is YOUR opinion on what is good and what is bad. Some people enjoy spending hours and months playing chess. The fact that EVE fits people that like the games that take thinking and planning ahead does not mean its a bad game. its just mean that its a game that your not interested in due to what YOU like. You will never find me on your counterstrike server, and I don't expect to find you in EVE. Doesn't mean that one game is worse then the other its just that each one suits each of our different needs in enjoyment.
You seem to enjoy the fast pace no penalty games where a mistake is quickly erased. While that is fine you do need to realize that some of us do not enjoy those games. Thankfully in this wonderful day and age we have tons of different games for different people.
btw, what is left after you jumped hundred times of a cliff, lost hundred times against someone being surely stronger then you, backstabbed someone 100 times and got killed there.
without penalty its got pretty boring, thats what happend at least to me
Nicoli, as much as I do not agree with you in terms of "complex game mastery" vs. "simple game mastery"; I agree with you in everything else. I NEVER said EvE was a bad game; and I never complained about the fact that it wasn't for me (I just stated what I felt tearingly boring).
What I wanted to say is that EvE-players are not intellectually superior to [insert almost any game you like here]. EvE requires a certain understanding of fun (which I will not nominate in any form ), which does not correlate, in my opinion, with intellect. What actually brought me to the EvE forum here was the fact that players from other games tend to be considered passive, consuming, lazy low standard customers that buy everything that makes their pitiful life a little more exciting. But if you answer those very same people that theyre rabid, elitist fans of a non-quest, non-pve, non-action, hard-core text-MUD with pictures, people want to stone AND hang you...
I probably just can't stand the blind followers, be it EQ2, EvE, DaoC or WoW. All those games are fun, and not fun, good, and bad; All depends on the individuals that play those games.
Meridion
EDIT: And well, PvE games, when you have pretty much achieved everything, are about community I guess. PvP on the other hand never gets boring for me, new situations coming up every single fight.
All complex systems are complex do to the amount of variables and simple systems that compose them. In the end all complex systems are in the end complex do to thier mass. Now you can always do the simple to learn difficult to master for everything. Though based on the complexity of the system will vary the time and overall skill difference between a novice and a master. Checkers is a very simple game with very few game mechanics, its quick to learn and takes a while to master. Chess is also fairly easy to learn but difficult to master, however, overall a Chess master is on a entirely differnent playing field then a checkers master due to the overall complexity in the game.
We had this exact conversation the last time we did a Strategic plan to identify the target market of one of our new brands. There are some people who like a simple system that is quick to master but takes a long time to Truely master while others who prefer a more complex system that takes longer to master but once you become a master you are a true master. So in the "simple" you will have many people who can use the system, quite a few masters but very few true masters and the "complex" you find many more basic users and very few true masters. Neither is correct and neither is incorrect. Different people enjoy different things.
This is why the Eve community is seen as elitest, IMHO. Because they talk about the complexity of the game and enjoy that. While others prefer point and click. I tried many other MMO games and never enjoyed any of them. I enjoy Eve. I am not going to name them as I do not think that I have anything constructive to say about them but the reason I never enjoyed them is the reason I enjoy Eve. Does that make me elitest or a fanboy? I don't think so.
Back to complex v simple.
I have tried Counter Strike and I will never be good at it. Reasonable yes, good no. It is not my sort of game and I am not really good at it. Do I enjoy it ? Yeah from time to time. It is a simple game, easy to use, easy to plan and has instand gratification with little or no penalty for failure. I will never be a CS master. But I also do not enjoy those sorts of games as if I am going to get revenge (and I have a black book in Eve) I want the person on the other end to FEEL the revenge and it must hurt.
at first it was a bit confusing i will admit but it dont take a brain surgeon to lean what to do. it did not take me long and was not hard to learn what i had to do. now the game play is easy and fun. i am only on a 14 day trial but as of now i like it and will prob start playing full time
I have tried Counter Strike and I will never be good at it. Reasonable yes, good no. It is not my sort of game and I am not really good at it. Do I enjoy it ? Yeah from time to time. It is a simple game, easy to use, easy to plan and has instand gratification with little or no penalty for failure. I will never be a CS master. But I also do not enjoy those sorts of games as if I am going to get revenge (and I have a black book in Eve) I want the person on the other end to FEEL the revenge and it must hurt.
See, thats kinda creepy for me. Sure, I WANT revenge, I'm a really bad loser... But the difference is, my revenge is just based on my own ego, I need the psychological mechanism of getting revenge that tells me "now we're quit". I don't care if the opponent suffers from that, actually, I'm pretty happy if he doesn't, so he won't have to put up against my own disability to be truly forgiving. And if my revenge took a large-scale planning- or timeframe, I would probably drop it because my emotional motivation would cease, and objectively, revenge is an unbelievably stupid thing...
Which brings me to another insight concerning EvE; Its very much like "space wild west", survival of the fittest, sink or swim... which is, well, not what I see as a working society (which would, in my view, dedicate an objective instance to enforce peace).
So not only is EvE a working social image of the people that play it, but it also lets people do what they "want" (what benefits small groups or themselves)... And we all know what happens if systems allow people to do what they want - I'm german, I KNOW....
Well the thing with wanting to hurt other players does stem from the terriotry control aspect of the game. With out loss there is no way to deter people from entering your area. Now the wish for revenge stays fresh do to the damage they have done to you ingame reputation and the possible loss of control of assets like stations and outposts. Its the lack of permant change in the FPS style pvp games that gives me the same mentality for revenge. If some one kills me i'll try and find them and kill them next round if I even care to bothered to do that.
Comments
Thats what alot of these "adults" call hardcore PvP
<insert eve fanboi flames here>
<insert comments from people who think i lost my ship in this manner>
amended;
and yes EVE has the most elitist community in the history of MMO's. As demonstrated in this thread, some people think that because they play eve they are smart, tactical and the epitome of maturity.
Somebody please remind them that they are playing a COMPUTER GAME
I'd like to add that for some quick fragging, MMORPGs in general are the wrong genre. Something like Battlefield, Day Of Defeat or Call Of Duty multiplayer will give a lot more fun if all you want is to shoot things up.
I've read on this forum website that there exists an elitist gamer-mentality within the game of Eve. Can anybody corroborate this? I'm no stranger to playing within a MMO community such as this, but it certainly makes for a bad show all around when folk are referred to as simpletons or noobish nincompoops simply for not understanding a basic aspect of the game straight away.
Trellot
The attitude within the game itself is pretty much the complete opposite of elitist. I've been playing the game for less than a week but the community is easily the best i've ever seen. Everyone i've met and talked to has been more than helpful in answering my questions about the game.
The people on the forums have an attitude that comes off as elitist but to be honest the amount of people that come on and talk about how EVE is bad for reasons like "it takes too long to skill up" and "we need new servers so we can get a fresh start" and "this game is bad because it's too complicated and there's nothing to do" is insane.
I played WoW for two years, and this attitude that the EVE bashers have is the exact same attitude as 99% of the people i played WoW with. These people come to the game expecting it to be easy like their old game (*cough* WoW *cough*) and when they find that the game takes planning and work and *ghasp* social interaction they get mad and bash EVE. I'd say "go back to WoW" is a justifiable thing to say in 90% of the cases on the forums here. I think the truth is in between:
People are very helpful unless it is obvious that you did not even bother to learn the most basic things.
Spend a few hours with the tutorial, and you can ask intelligent enough questions to get help.
But if you ask stuff that Aura would tell you within the first two hours, the answer may be "do the fucking tutorial".
Yes EVE is more difficult to pick up than other games. I've had several friends come and try EVE only to see them leave because "they didn't get it". They all went to WOW eventually and are having a blast.
The reason they didn't get EVE was because they were looking "to be" entertained. Thats not EVE. EVE gives you the tools to "entertain yourself.
My constant recommendation for new people is to JOIN A CORPORATION ASAP. The interaction you will have with real corpmates is the best introduction you can have and uncomplicates the game significantly. If you "get it" the chances of you liking it are much higher.
I love Eve - it's like a huge IQ test and most, if not all of the people that seem to hate it are the types looking for instant gratification.
Less doods equals better game, in my book!
Meridion
PS: Oh and yea: One other problem that bothered me was total lack of reaction based gameplay. I'm not an action junkie, but playing a game where there is only "starship enterprise"-like combat kind of bothered me.
But keep crying about how the game wasn't hard, you just inexplicably sucked at it through no fault of your own.
Being successful in a totally open market doesn't require intelligence, it requires ruthlessness, coldness and greed, its THAT simple, but well, that's kind of a sidenote.
The real point is, you deliberately chose to reply in a form that puts me in the convenient position to let your words ring and speak for themselves, about intelligence, about manners, you know, all that crap that other people suck at when they whine so much about your favorite game
Meridion
PS: *i love PS* this reminds me of some fundamentalist of the religion of your choice: (lunatic voice) "You dont LOVE it???? You just dont understand it then. Nobody who TRULY understands can deny the LOVE for it"
You're right in one respect - you can play EVE without any intelligence whatsoever - play it as you did. That really only says something about people who play a tenth of the game and complain about how PvP is too hard because you lose stuff, it doesn't say much about the game (other then you do need some intelligence to play it well).
A word of advice too - next time you want to pull out the P.S. STRAWMAN ARGUMENT, just stick with the Chewbacca Defense. It's a proven winner.
The AI tutorial is just a warm up, the real tutorial is with n00bs corps.
There are many corps that acts like a advance tutorial to the new EvE players, they guide, help and support those n00bs until they can stand on their on.
Meridion
Sure, EVE has a lot game mechanics to offer, and all of those can be used with a basic understanding of whats going on,
but to used them refined and so getting more out of them, you need to understand them fully.
Market, as your example, is easy in his conception, sure, but if you want to make profit out of it, you have to understand
how everything behind the buy and sell order works, even sometimes know how other marketeers think and will react on your actions.
Every aspect in EVE is like this, even ship to ship combat.
For me as still 2 year old PvP noob its still not much more then pressing a button doing pew-pew to the enemys ship.
for refined PvPer its deciding how they fit (Gank, Fleet and so on) and how they engage you as well (seeing a frig outmanouvring two
even faster cruiser).
and btw. doing solo PvP is the hardest way to enter such.
Get into a 0.0 Corp, you will earn more money than you can imagine, you will be shown the ropes of PvP and you wont
get biased about some losses.
Sure, EVE has a lot game mechanics to offer, and all of those can be used with a basic understanding of whats going on,
but to used them refined and so getting more out of them, you need to understand them fully.
Market, as your example, is easy in his conception, sure, but if you want to make profit out of it, you have to understand
how everything behind the buy and sell order works, even sometimes know how other marketeers think and will react on your actions.
Every aspect in EVE is like this, even ship to ship combat.
For me as still 2 year old PvP noob its still not much more then pressing a button doing pew-pew to the enemys ship.
for refined PvPer its deciding how they fit (Gank, Fleet and so on) and how they engage you as well (seeing a frig outmanouvring two
even faster cruiser).
and btw. doing solo PvP is the hardest way to enter such.
Get into a 0.0 Corp, you will earn more money than you can imagine, you will be shown the ropes of PvP and you wont
get biased about some losses.
Well that's perfectly what I wanted to say, the complexity comes from the mass, not from the mechanic itself. To master any easy process people need to be clever. If I give you - in generic MMOG X - a character with 3 skills, a dot, a heal and a direct damage and let you go PvP combat with this; Assuming everyone got the same possibilities; Its darn easy to DO somthing with it, but it will be VERY difficult to make a real difference against human opponents.
That wasn't even my point concerning EvE, I just said that the system "the guy that uses his tools smarter is the winner"-aplies to any competetive game/situation in life. It's not "intelligent people" only and its not "Eve only"...
Meridion
I agree with a lot of what has been said here and at the same time disagree with a lot that has been said.
Eve's players are not Elitest no matter what people think or say. They are just tired of people pretending that they know what they are talking about and flaming the game when it is obvious they do not know what they are talking about. Blatent lies, untruths and negative comments are what is more often than not thrown at them. I myself became rude to a few people because I don't see the point of flaming a game. For which I am sorry about.
If you do not like Eve then say you don't and why but with constructive comments. Also do not rip the game apart if you have not invested the time and effort into understanding what you are doing. Because you are ignorant in the game mechanics does not make it a bad game or you ignorant. But it does mean that you should not come here and flame (call fanbois) the people who have played. do enjoy the game and understand the game mechanics.
Does the game take intelligence to play? Yes it does. So do many other games. Eve is VERY unforgiving if you make a stupid mistake, just like real life.
The skill system suits those people who have busy RL's as they can go AFK for a long while even a month and not lose much or be "behind" other players.
The people in game are very friendly IF (big if) you have done the tutorial and you are polite. IF you are rude or have not done the tutorial they are not as friendly and even downright rude back to you. Why is this? Because the Tutorial is there and if you cannot be bothered to use the tools provided to you by the game then why should they spend their time helping you? I happen to agree with this point. If you have tried and forgotten something they are very very helpful and friendly.
Which brings me back to earlier conclusions: EvE requires "work-play" mentality, dedication and I'd add, seriousness. I guess you guys get your fun out of creating a paralell, working social environment, like in second life. Where you create and sustain something in interaction with other players.
While I still think it does not require more intelligence (I'm not talking about being clever, like "intuitive intelligence") than any other game, it is a place where one can not - which has positive and negative sides - just head out to space and have some fun.
Meridion
And I will disagree.
The person who you are is who you are in a game, Online, Offline, at work, etc. Eve requires you to be yourself and use your brain. If you don't want to think then TV is a good option. Other than that you are always thinking.
Why would I want to attack someone who should be able to kill me? Why jump off a cliff? Why would you want to play a game that is completely removed from all reality? Waht do you learn from that? How does that take away stress? Is it not the perceived challenge or the perceived danger that gives us the rush and thereby enables us to get over RL stress?
An easy game gets boring really fast.
And still, by a crazy mechanism called loss-induced-ambition, you just want to "get the sucker next round". I dont need to have game mechanics drench me in "whoa, take care, this could be the end of your precious 50 million ISK ship"; that just doesnt motivate me. it motivates me to get bashed and be able to take revenge in a very close time frame.
Winning a battleground in WoW against a much better equipped group, capturing the flag in UT, shadowmorph-backstabbing a guy that just killed your teammate in Guild Wars. Priceless. Not because its realistic, not because its complicated, no, because its fast pace intuitive superiority. Win... and lose, in an instant, thats what drives people to game, to play soccer, football, where every second of a 90 minute game can turn the tide...
Because its NOT like life, where everything is compromise, long-ranged thought and well-planned insurance-based action.
Meridion
Also the "Quantity-Complex" phrase is well pretty pointless. All complex systems are complex do to the amount of variables and simple systems that compose them. In the end all complex systems are in the end complex do to thier mass. Now you can always do the simple to learn difficult to master for everything. Though based on the complexity of the system will vary the time and overall skill difference between a novice and a master. Checkers is a very simple game with very few game mechanics, its quick to learn and takes a while to master. Chess is also fairly easy to learn but difficult to master, however, overall a Chess master is on a entirely differnent playing field then a checkers master due to the overall complexity in the game.
Now I say that overall EVE takes a bit more thought (or would forethought be a better word) then many MMOs. With risk you need to be able to think before leaping. Now personnally I enjoy games that require a little thinking ahead. Doesn't say I don't enjoy ones that don't require any thinking ahead but they don't hold me for long. agian nothing is wrong with games either way.
You seem to enjoy the fast pace no penalty games where a mistake is quickly erased. While that is fine you do need to realize that some of us do not enjoy those games. Thankfully in this wonderful day and age we have tons of different games for different people.
without penalty its got pretty boring, thats what happend at least to me
in many games.
What I wanted to say is that EvE-players are not intellectually superior to [insert almost any game you like here]. EvE requires a certain understanding of fun (which I will not nominate in any form
I probably just can't stand the blind followers, be it EQ2, EvE, DaoC or WoW. All those games are fun, and not fun, good, and bad; All depends on the individuals that play those games.
Meridion
EDIT: And well, PvE games, when you have pretty much achieved everything, are about community I guess. PvP on the other hand never gets boring for me, new situations coming up every single fight.
We had this exact conversation the last time we did a Strategic plan to identify the target market of one of our new brands. There are some people who like a simple system that is quick to master but takes a long time to Truely master while others who prefer a more complex system that takes longer to master but once you become a master you are a true master. So in the "simple" you will have many people who can use the system, quite a few masters but very few true masters and the "complex" you find many more basic users and very few true masters. Neither is correct and neither is incorrect. Different people enjoy different things.
This is why the Eve community is seen as elitest, IMHO. Because they talk about the complexity of the game and enjoy that. While others prefer point and click. I tried many other MMO games and never enjoyed any of them. I enjoy Eve. I am not going to name them as I do not think that I have anything constructive to say about them but the reason I never enjoyed them is the reason I enjoy Eve. Does that make me elitest or a fanboy? I don't think so.
Back to complex v simple.
I have tried Counter Strike and I will never be good at it. Reasonable yes, good no. It is not my sort of game and I am not really good at it. Do I enjoy it ? Yeah from time to time. It is a simple game, easy to use, easy to plan and has instand gratification with little or no penalty for failure. I will never be a CS master. But I also do not enjoy those sorts of games as if I am going to get revenge (and I have a black book in Eve) I want the person on the other end to FEEL the revenge and it must hurt.
See, thats kinda creepy for me. Sure, I WANT revenge, I'm a really bad loser... But the difference is, my revenge is just based on my own ego, I need the psychological mechanism of getting revenge that tells me "now we're quit". I don't care if the opponent suffers from that, actually, I'm pretty happy if he doesn't, so he won't have to put up against my own disability to be truly forgiving. And if my revenge took a large-scale planning- or timeframe, I would probably drop it because my emotional motivation would cease, and objectively, revenge is an unbelievably stupid thing...
Which brings me to another insight concerning EvE; Its very much like "space wild west", survival of the fittest, sink or swim... which is, well, not what I see as a working society (which would, in my view, dedicate an objective instance to enforce peace).
So not only is EvE a working social image of the people that play it, but it also lets people do what they "want" (what benefits small groups or themselves)... And we all know what happens if systems allow people to do what they want - I'm german, I KNOW....
Meridion