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A question about play balance?
Tangogulf
Member UncommonPosts: 58
Hi all;
I played the two week free trial and felt that I had only begun to scratch the surface in the game, and thus could not form a valid opinion about it.
However, a friend of mine made a comment about the fact that you could never catch up in this game. This comment dissuaded me from purchasing. I'm wondering if some advanced players of eve can give some feedback here.
In a nutshell, he was saying that because of the timing of the skill based system a player who has been playing for a year straight, there is no way that a player who started 3 weeks ago could ever PvP against that other player. Of it they did, it would surely be a losing battle.
I like the sounds of the PvP in this game, but the prospect of never defeating a pirate who is constantly harassing me, does not appeal.
Anyone comment on whether this is true or not please
Comments
Indeed a 3 week character cannot possibly take on a (prepared) 1 year old vet. This turns you off to the game? What about us that have been playing for years, why should we die to 3 week-old noobs?
Now, strength in numbers, imagination, and determination will certainly prevail over a jaded 1-year old vet who is caught unprepared (or without his friends).
My advice to all the people who keep brining this topic up as if it is the bane of EVE and that new players have no hope of ever "winning" the game: Grow up, stop whining, and start acting. So what an old vet (pirate) killed you in one shot while you were traveling. So what you got war declared by a squad of very organized veterans. Instead of complaining about lack of "balance" you can come up with imaginative ways of getting around them, turning the tables of war to your terms, and beating them.
If you find that they are usually flying a specific ship, grab a blackbird and fit those racial jammers. You will find in this game that any setup has it's anti-setup. Now obviously you can't possibly expect to come up with these setups from a 3-week stint into the game, but ask around (even ask your attackers for some advice, it's a game afterall and they may help you). There are plenty of resources available.
I have posted before in other threads, EVE is open-ended. Isk does not fall into your laps. Agent missions and mining are only 2 ways of making isk. Get into the player market. Buy and sell goods/minerals/equipment/components. Learn a specific part of the industry, and learn it well. Become a specialist such that manufacturing corps come to YOU. It's going to take hard work and determination (otherwise everyone else would be doing it already).
Safe flying and have fun
Copy and paste from the last time this was brought up, on page 2
This has to be one of the greatest misconceptions about EVE. Sorry for the long post coming but this subject comes up so often in EvE, it gets on my nearves a bit. If you take the time to read this post fully, then EvE may be the game for you. If you can't be bothered to read it all, goto the last paragraph, and forget about playing EvE.
Ok here we go...
If your starting EvE today you can be as good, or even better, than someone who has played for over a year, within 3 months at the very most, in your chosen field. The most important thing new players to the game must understand is that EvE is unlike a "normal" MMO (DAoC, EQ, WoW, CoH etc). You should never try and "catch up" - it is not possible. What you should be doing is deciding something like "Ok, I want to be a good fighter pilot" - or whatver else you want to be - (Miner, Trader, Manufactuer, Pirate, etc etc) and focus on doing that. By only training the skills you need to be good at your chosen path, you will be as good as 80% of the players out there within 3 months, quite easily, as far as the skills are concerned. Experience of what to do with those skills, is another matter entirley. Not many MMO will let you be that good compared to those who have played a long time, within 3 months.
You should by this time be in a decent Corp as well, and then you will realise another important point about PvP in EvE...there isn't many occasions when your going 1v1. Three people who have played for 3 months and have focused on PvP can EASILY take out 1 "Vet" player who has been playing for over a year, even if that player has better skills in PvP and a better ship. this is the reality of PvP in EvE.
However to entertain those who are determined to compare PvP in Eve on a 1v1 basis :-
The older player may have 15million skill points, and you may only have 5million skillpoints, however as far as the fight is concerned if your using 4million of your skillpoints, and he is using 3.5million...as the rest of his are spread out into other areas, you can beat him. Even if he is using 6million against your 4 million, you can STILL beat him. He may have some slight advantages in certain areas, but who is the better pilot?
All you have been doing is concentrating on PvP, he has been doing other things, you could easily be better than him even with less SP. I would not sya this is likely - don't get me wrong - but it does happen often enough, that you shouldn't go into a 1v1 thinking "I have no chance". And if in doubt...warp out of there...nothing is forcing you to stay in a fight that you think you have no chance of winning, with a little experience you can get away 90% of the time.
The same applies to every single other career you could possibly choose. You can be amongst the top 80% of the Traders out there within 1 month, as long as you take the time to focus on what you need to trade well (usually an industrial class ship) and learn how the market system works.
EvE is all about what you want to do, and going out and doing it. There are no "levels" as you would think of them. You need to stop thinking in these terms, they simply do not apply to EvE.
The only advantage an older player usually has over newer players, is that they can do various careers at will. If they are in need of extra cash they can stop PvP and go Mine or Trade for example quite well, in addition to being able to PvP.
These types of views (by the OP) are most often brought up by people who have little understanding of the game, how the game actually works, and all they want to do is jump in a ship and go kill someone. If this describes you, EvE is not the game for you. It has an incredibly steep learning curve, you need to be very commited to the game in order just to learn the basics. It is, without any doubt, one of the most complex MMO available.
It is so open, and so player driven, that you can never "beat the game". It never ends. This is what makes this game so incredibly GOOD. You will need at least 2 months of play to get into the game properly, and begin to understand it well. You will need to be patient. Very patient. However, after the initial steep learning curve, and you have some time in the game, it simply gets better and better. The more you play, the more you can do, and these options just get more, not less, as time goes by. Unlike most other MMO where you reach a point where you run out of things to do, so you either start a new character or quit.
This is nothing exclusive to EvE however, this applies to every single game out there. A level 10 fighter in DAoC won't be able to take on a lvl 50, for example, until he hits lvl 50 himself. That takes time. At least 6 months for your average player, sometimes over a year if you don't play that much. You could get 15 level 10 together in DAoC, and the level 50 would kill them all, without a scratch. In EvE if you get one player who has been playing for 2 YEARS, against 15 players of say 6 months, the 3 year old player is going to lose, no matter how many SP he has. All MMO require some time and commitment to get the most out of them, and EvE is no exception to this. Any MMO you choose to play, (and I have played many of them) your looking at 3 months to really get into them. The only difference with these others and EvE is that after 3 months your only really STARTING to get into it, whereas with the others you can be well on your way to "finishing".
The underling point of this entire post is really simple : if your the type of person looking for an MMO that you can log into, pickup very easily, go out and kill someone within a few days, and expect to be the best of the best within a week or two, this is not the game for you. It is definitly one for those of a more mature nature (Not that you have to be 30+, it's all about what type of person you are, not your age). Give it a try. They currently have free, no commitment, no credit card 14 day trials going. 14 days will let you see about 1% of the game, but by the end of it most will know if it is for them or not. Give it a try, and be sure to read the amazing wealth of info out there before you jump in. The tutorial has been revamped and is also very much worth doing. At the end of your first day or 2 you will have over 2million ISK if you do the tutorial and the 1st storyline, and sell the implant you get. And 2million is more than enough to get you going in whatever career you choose. Good luck.
Could not have said it better... someone better make this a sticky.. .
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Famous people speak out:
Im for the death penalty. If you commit a terrible crime you should have a harsh punishment...So you learn until next time.
-Britney Spears
I second that please sticky this, well written DraigCoch.
@ Bloodgood: I love your sig
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Originally posted by Mandolin
Designers need to move away from the old D&D level-based model which was never designed for player vs player combat in the first place.
Thanks
a quick bump to make this a sticky, since people seems to keep asking about this "balance" from time to time.
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Famous people speak out:
Im for the death penalty. If you commit a terrible crime you should have a harsh punishment...So you learn until next time.
-Britney Spears
Excellent excellent replies. I thankyou both. I attempted a long winded reply to this yesterday, but it would not go through.
I'm glad that you have cleared this up for me because it enables me to go back into the game with a much more open mind. I did not expect to be able to kill a powerful player in a small period of time. My concern was that I would never catch up because of the design of the skill system.
You have certainly put those concerns to rest.
Hello and welcome to EVE!
Just to add to what has already been said:
EvE is not for the meek. It is not for those that would hope to be "Uber" , EVER. There is no equivilent in this game to a lvl 60 Mage. This game is far too complex and it's character / game / skill / experience arcs are far too drawn out for most people. I have been playing religeously since March of 2003. I have 18 million skillpoints, most of them in Gunnery and Spaceship Command, yet I was popped by a 5 month old player just yesterday because he had 1) A nice set-up on his ( Tech1 ) ship that just happened to perfectly fit the circumstance 2) He was teamed up with a well organized corp. ....something that any n00b can do, regardless of skillpoints.
What keeps me interested after all of this time is that I still have a ton to learn and experience from the game...I still love it BECAUSE 1) It has a maddeningly long development curve and 2) It is absolutely ambivilent about providing happiness or safety to it's players. It's a harsh world, but I would love to see more people talk about enjoying the process, rather than winning / now.
OO
I'm glad you took the responses well. I know mine was a bit harsh, with name calling etc. but when I talk about EVE I sometimes get over-excited because of my devotion to the game.
I have been playing EVE since release (May 2003) and have only left on 2 occasions simply becuase I was getting burned out. The best part about it though, on each occasion I just trained a long skill (30+ days) and came back with a better character than before. Now label me an MMO that rewards coming back like that. (No WOW doesn't come close, because you earn more XP by playing than rest points by not playing).
Edit...thats March 2004.
OO
If pitbulls could lock their jaw the first pitbull would still be hanging on
Exelent reply from DraigCoch.
Should be stickied. I was thinking something smarter to say but I can't say it more elequently tbh.
So I'll just give some addisional advice instead.
When you play eve. And you lose your ships and maybe your pod. It's not the end of the world. Even though I've been only podded once. I went to enourmus lengths to not make that happend. But it will happend to everyone. And you'll lose a great deal of assets even if it's only your ship. But they are only assets. And it only means you might just fight in a bit less uber ship for a while. And many prefere to use ship they know they can lose. Most do actually. So it's not the end of the world. Just plan for the uneveduble. The main part is that you go into this planing to have fun. The rest is just content. If your not having fun. Change your gameplay so it is.
I myself have often to long sit in a station wondering what to do about the situation. And having very little fun and being unactive. So forget about all that unvanted situation and just go for having fun.
You might find some very good ppl out there who will eventually become your friends. I wish you luck.
Edit..
Oh I forgot... Get ready for one hell of an andrenaline rush..
another thing to add, take the skill 'rapid firing' as an example:
level 1: 500 skill points; 2329 SP to next level
level 2: 2829 SP; 13171 SP to next level
level 3: 16000 SP; 74510 SP to next leel
level 4: 90510 SP; 421490 SP to next level
level 5: 512000 SP
since the time to train a skill depends on the SPs to get there, level 4 to 5 (max level for a skill) takes around 4 times longer than getting 1 to 4. each level gives you 4% rate of fire. so the new, low SP charcter gets a +16% bonus and the Vet, with hundreds of thousends of extra skill points in the skill gets a 20% bonus. As you can see, the majority of a Vets skill points will be placed in getting an extra 4% here. an extra 5% there, and while it will give him an advantage, it certainly wont decide the battle.
Make of it what you will.
I've been playing for a year and a half and im still learning things everyday. Ive only made a dent into what is eve, and theres so much more. Just when you think you know it all they throw more stuff you way. Perfect.
Absolutely true, this is a point that some people who complain about the skill system of EVE, seem to miss.
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Originally posted by Mandolin
Designers need to move away from the old D&D level-based model which was never designed for player vs player combat in the first place.
Also a very good point is how you fit your ship.
For example. You can fit it whit loads of guns. And some mods that increase your guns effectiveness.
But then you lose the ability to protect yourself whit tanking/mobility.
And you can use speed as defence to. The older players use information on how to setup they're ships optimally. Thats why they're so much "better" in combat. I know ppl who played for two years and got owned by someone 4 months old into the game. It's all about your attitude towards fighting.
Who dears wins. It's as simple as that. If you act like a victime, you'll most likely become one.
So getting friends in eve is really important. Becus they can tell you what to do and what not to do. Becus most likely they tried most things. But again. If you get into the right company. You can reach far.
Well now I have played this game for like since march 2004 and I have never tough about catching up to the older players once... I played my game in my pace.
Okey I have various fields where I have trained skill at, like combat, industry and science that means my 18 million sp (maybe closer to 19) is not only combat related, alot of them are at industry and science ... maybe 11 million sp are at combatrelated skills okey that sounds alot I know but out of those again ... I use even less each time I am out in combat !!!!
A while ago I went after a person who had been ganking my corpmate, I was in a cruiser and my victim was in a battleship, now I am still a novice in PvP as I don't really do that so often and my opponoment was or I think was skilled in PVP as he was doing that as a living.
With me I had another corpmate with a battleship, and some friends around in various ships that I don't remember.
So I warp around and find her at a belt and I go in... target the enemy, start warpscrambling him and shoot with everything I got, guns and drones... I keep tanking the damage I get and keep holding him to reinforcment arrives... by that time I knew my ship would not take so much more but what keeps me going is that I knew I would be loosing like 12 million isk in ship and equipment... while my foe will loose atleast 120-140 million isk in his ship.
In the end... smaller ship can be just as good as bigger ships, I have been fighting NPC in 0.0 and was tanking a battleship and 3 cruiser in a Assault frigate while shooting at the battleship where I did get it down to half armor before I had to leave (work and such).
The way EVE is made right now "catching up" like your friend says is pointless.. There is specialization though, you can specialize in the areas you like more.. and therefore be one of the best in those areas even if you didnt spent 2 years playing.
Eve is so vast now that nobody can really rule over the rest of players no matter how long they've been playing.
My gripe with EVE is only the time it takes to do things.
Time it takes to get to tier 4 is STILL very intense. To get to Tier 4 in ONE skill takes days. To get to Tier 4 in all the skills for combat takes over 2 months (Trust me, I tried to do it in a month... not happening). But... that said... I could live with this.
To travel takes time. I wound up picking an area where I could get good missions without risking .4 and below sec space missions and staying there till it was useless to me then moving on to my next trainer. It worked pretty well but I wound up feeling disconnected and isolated from my Corp (which was very small as well and that didn't help at all). But... that said... I could live with this.
And my biggest gripe, as someone who really enjoyed doing missions:
Time it takes to loot the cargo after a long fight. I mean... c'mon now... I already spent 15-30 minutes killing all these ships. I should NOT have to spend another 30 minutes flying around to pick up the cargo. That was one of the BIGGEST irritants to me. Travel time didn't bother me so much. Feeling disconnected was annoying but livable. But the time it took to "clean up" after a big fight was just flat out a game killer for me.
If it weren't for that I Would love the game. I'm not sure how they could alleviate that 1 problem... but for me it'd be enough to bring me back to EVE I think.... it really was the single biggest irritant. THIS I cannot live with. I only have a little over an hour to play each night. Some nights a little over 2. When over half my time is spent flying around picking up cargo while I watch TV between cargo cans I have to sit down and re-evaluate if my money is well spent.
I'm not into mining. If I use a Jet Can some ass comes up and steals the cargo. If I use a secure can I have to drag it out there. Go put the indie away, come back in my osprey, fill the can, go get the indy, haul the can back, and rinse-repeat. And using a secure can isn't much better than just sticking the stuff in my cargo hold because they're MUCH smaller than a jet can. That and the fact that Mining is pretty mind-numbing.
And I'm not that into playing the market because I hate bilking players out of money.... never been a 'screw the other guy' kind of person
I've always been that person who finds UBER ITEM OF ULTIMATE destruction and gone "OH WOW!!!!" then, after realizing I don't need it I usually say "Ok who needs this?" and give it to them either free or for very little in return... So playing the market doesn't really work for me. I DO love finding great deals. But I never charge more than the going rate. And travel, as has been mentioned, is too painful to do what I used to do in Elite (just travel to a system where what I got cheap averages a higher price). I tried doing that and it was fun. But the agony of travelling that far eventually just drove me too bonkers to keep it up.
PVP would have been very cool.... because I have always loved PVP in just about any format... but unfortunately my template never got to where I would have been 'useful' in PVP... I think I could have gotten useful after about 3 months of boredom...
All that said:
A good corp would help. Because you'd have folks to help you along and folks to talk to and socialize with. My problem is that since I play from 9pm to about 11pm Eastern time (EVE-4) the European players are usually almost done by the time I get on. Add to that that the bulk of corps want you to have 1mil SP before they'll even glance at you and I'm in an even bigger jam... I now have to find a corp that takes new players AND has a good number of people on during my play hours. I've found that task near impossible. A month and a half later and I now have to re-subscribe to the game just to find out if one that was suggested will work for me. I'm not sure I'm willing to do that....
But, and I re-iterate, all those minor annoyances asside... if I could complete a mission (meaning start to re-dock) in less than 30 minutes? I'd come back. Right now you have 0 control over which missions you get. And you can't just turn them down either because it will hurt your standing with the mission giver. (Trust me, I tried). So what mission you get is totally random. And many of them have some pretty steep time requirements.
Oh and um... can someone please tell CCP to get a little more inventive with their missions? I can only rescue the damzel so many times before I decide it might be more fun to shoot her... or kidnap her myself.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
want to know exactly how fast you can become an effective pvper? Here's an interesting article from the official forums. People say "oh i won't be effective" before they have even tried pvping.
Make of it what you will.
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MMOs Retired From: Earth and Beyond, Project Entropia, There, A Tale in the Desert, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, City of Heroes/Villains.
MMOs Currently (worth) Playing: None.
MMO hopefuls: Age of Conan.