Originally posted by Beatnik59 Who is more of a "vet?" The one who has more hours played, or the one who has more hours subscribed?
In EVE PVP it's the guy with more hours played. SP can never replace real playing experience. The extra SP will give you a small edge but you still need real player skill to take advantge of that edge.
"Memories are meant to fade. They're designed that way for a reason."
Eve's system is nice in that it frees the player to focus on other tasks. That's probably the only good thing about it. That is, one doesn't need to fly a cruiser for X hours, hunting Y number of rats in a boring progression just so they can pilot a battleship and use better weapons.
The way I see it, MMORPGs need a more "natural" progression scheme that ditches the grind and let's players focus on doing what is fun, during which advancement just so happens to be coincidental. Eve takes one approach to this, though it does seem a bit frustrating that there is nothing a player can do to improve their learning speed. That is, the grind is replaced by a steady, unchanging clock.
Another MMO-like game that has an interesting approach is that of Guild Wars. In it, players complete "missions" which are generally well thought out quests with discernable goals (besides kill X number of creatures). Levels don't quite mean that much, at least in PvE, and there's no need to grind for levels since it happens pretty naturally. Unfortunately, the low level cap makes it more of an action game than an RPG, but that's just how it goes, I guess.
There are many side effects of having such an artificial advancement system eve has.
The unability to catch up with veterans is one. Granted, catching up with veterans in any game is often very hard if not impossible, but with this model all hope is gone. Humans tend to find hope even in the nearly impossible, such as feeling excitement in participating in a lottery with diminishing odds of winning.
Another side effect is that actual gameplay is not as gratisfying. If we for example consider IRL time=game assets then, the best thing to do would be to train a char offline for a year or so and then start gathering items/isk etc.. This because there is no real point in playing at low levels, and that regresses the game to IRL subscription time=power leveling service.
There are many more sideeffects but to keep things short, I will limit myself to those two, since they both have high impact on game experience.
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"Memories are meant to fade. They're designed that way for a reason."
The way I see it, MMORPGs need a more "natural" progression scheme that ditches the grind and let's players focus on doing what is fun, during which advancement just so happens to be coincidental. Eve takes one approach to this, though it does seem a bit frustrating that there is nothing a player can do to improve their learning speed. That is, the grind is replaced by a steady, unchanging clock.
Another MMO-like game that has an interesting approach is that of Guild Wars. In it, players complete "missions" which are generally well thought out quests with discernable goals (besides kill X number of creatures). Levels don't quite mean that much, at least in PvE, and there's no need to grind for levels since it happens pretty naturally. Unfortunately, the low level cap makes it more of an action game than an RPG, but that's just how it goes, I guess.
Hello!
There are many side effects of having such an artificial advancement system eve has.
The unability to catch up with veterans is one. Granted, catching up with veterans in any game is often very hard if not impossible, but with this model all hope is gone. Humans tend to find hope even in the nearly impossible, such as feeling excitement in participating in a lottery with diminishing odds of winning.
Another side effect is that actual gameplay is not as gratisfying. If we for example consider IRL time=game assets then, the best thing to do would be to train a char offline for a year or so and then start gathering items/isk etc.. This because there is no real point in playing at low levels, and that regresses the game to IRL subscription time=power leveling service.
There are many more sideeffects but to keep things short, I will limit myself to those two, since they both have high impact on game experience.