I can take 800k sp toon and beat the crap out of any noob who bought 90m sp toon. Easily.
That's how important sp is. Not at all.
You will never catchup to the vets in matter of SP. That's true and that's a "so what" at the same time. This is not wow where you have to grind to the top lvl to be competitive. Nor you need money. Brains are far more important than sp and wealth.
Let's not overstate the case. SP defines the range of things that you can do, so they do matter - of course they matter or why would anyone bother getting them? Let's not pretend that EVE doesn't have character progression. ISK is pretty damb useful too. But they're just another tool in the box; character progression isn't the point of the game like it is with many MMOs.
"Power" in EVE rests on a number of pillars, and you can often substitute one that you have a surplus of for another that you lack;
Skillpoints
ISK
Assets (this includes things like bookmarks, standings, etc)
In-game friends and contacts
Game Knowledge
Charisma/Intelligence/Aptitude - some people just get EVE really well.
Player Skill
All of these should increase as you play the game, but you can determine the rate of advancement of all of them except SP (and you can influence that).
Wanna bet on that overstating ? You can explore with small amount of sp. You can pvp with small amount of exp. You can even get rich with small amount of sp.
So what is that thing i can't do with low sp toon ?
Fly a ship with a covops cloak? A Carrier? Give Leadership boosts to a 5-wing fleet?
OK that was a cheap shot, but you didn't originally say "do" you said "beat the shit out of". That's overstating the case. SP do matter, and they do make a difference, but they aren't the only thing that matter and they make less of a difference than many people widely assume.
A low SP leadership character can give a handy set of +8% bonuses to a gang of 8. A high SP character can give bonuses up to 40% to a fleet of 200; it's nonsensical to say that the low SP guy can "beat the shit out of" the high SP guy. The point is that he can be useful, while still having room to progress and improve. That +8% extra EHP and agility will help a small gang of noobs in cruisers quite a bit; they dont need a maxed out unprobeable tiered Fleet/Wing booster set up to do a bit of co-op belt ratting or whatever. The high SP leadership guy is "better", but what are the chances he'll want to spend his time boosting a small gang of noobs doing noob stuff? The low SP leadership guy has a definite niche here.
That's the point: there are useful, meaningful things that even a very low SP player can do even with a small skill investment.
Malcanis couldn't have stated it better there are so many things a newbie can do to be useful to a gang of experienced pilots, you could train for a covert ops and probes and get warpins for fleets or fly an E-War ship or get an interceptor the possibilities are immense.
When I first moved to nullsec I had 3m SP and could barely fly anything but I found a niche and fitted into high end roaming nano gangs and was immensely useful, those 50m SP guys where grateful when my little Kitsune enabled their 300m ISK polycarbed nano HAC to escape after being tackled or my Crow got a tackle and I had a lot of fun doing it and got hundreds of kill mails
By the time I had 10m SP I flew Interdictors and had an important place in fleet battles and the thing is even though i am now approaching 65m SP I don't have any more fun than I did back then (in some ways less tbh I am a little bit jaded) sure I can fly a lot of shiny things like every single sub cap T1 ship, all weapons and BC sized>smaller T2 ships and fittings as well as maxed out cap ship alts there is a limit to how many things you can really afford at once and now nearly all my skin plans revolved around training 30+ days for an extra 2% effectiveness in something.
Currently playing:
EVE online (Ruining low sec one hotdrop at a time)
Gravity Rush, Dishonoured: The Knife of Dunwall.
(Waiting for) Metro: Last Light, Company of Heroes II.
I've played eve since 2006. The only reason I play EVE is because its the ONLY GOOD SPACE MMO. Not because of the 'deep universe bro' or the metagame, or whatever. None of that. The second a better space sim comes out, I'm gone. Why?
The controls and the physics. Yes, they take skill to master, mostly because its a completely unnatural physics engine. Is it fun? No, not at all, at least for me.
When I was a little noob I remember trying to control my Ibis with a joystick. Finding out EVE used a point and click control scheme was a massive dissapointment. Still, as a refugee from SWG I had no choice but to continue playing.
Now I run with an elite wormhole corp and have tons of assets to pvp with. But every time we go out and fight.. I'm left with the knowledge that the ship I'm flying is nothing more than a point and click ball in eves physics engine.
What would be awesome for me? Take X3, make that an MMO. Holy shit.
It doesn't matter how many times you try to tell someone...they will argue. Large scale PvP in EvE is like no other game, much much more difficult than say, DF. I have been on 3 different vent servers, that were FULL of people....literally 300 people in ONE battle. Saying this requires no skill is ludicrious. I believe what many people want is the full control of your ship, and not the point and click.
I say to those people...find another game. It's not going to happen, never will.
What would happen if these 300 people would have to manually steer the frigates / tacklers to avoid collisions and manually aim their weapons ? And if bigger ships would require crews of 5-20 players working together ?
On one hand - without strict discipline, and a lot of pilots' experience - it could lead to total chaos. On the other - noone would fall asleep during "large scale PvP" - as it happened to few of my friends ...
I would hope that in the future that piloting a space ship of size would not require someone to sit at a wheel/stick to control the flight. I would hope that automated piloting computers that use data inputs from a user would do the work. Data like setting ranges, destinations, collision detections, and alignment targets.
It doesn't matter how many times you try to tell someone...they will argue. Large scale PvP in EvE is like no other game, much much more difficult than say, DF. I have been on 3 different vent servers, that were FULL of people....literally 300 people in ONE battle. Saying this requires no skill is ludicrious. I believe what many people want is the full control of your ship, and not the point and click.
I say to those people...find another game. It's not going to happen, never will.
What would happen if these 300 people would have to manually steer the frigates / tacklers to avoid collisions and manually aim their weapons ? And if bigger ships would require crews of 5-20 players working together ?
On one hand - without strict discipline, and a lot of pilots' experience - it could lead to total chaos. On the other - noone would fall asleep during "large scale PvP" - as it happened to few of my friends ...
I agree with this but I gotta say eve isn't the most fun out of games right now imo. And I do wonder how its 10k hits higher then everything else?
I would hope that in the future that piloting a space ship of size would not require someone to sit at a wheel/stick to control the flight. I would hope that automated piloting computers that use data inputs from a user would do the work. Data like setting ranges, destinations, collision detections, and alignment targets.
I can't imagine military spaceship with real people on board. Even current military jets are limited in turning and acceleration speed because of that fragile human in pilot seat. And human reaction time - hundreds of miliseconds - is just unacceptably slow ...
I would hope that in the future that piloting a space ship of size would not require someone to sit at a wheel/stick to control the flight. I would hope that automated piloting computers that use data inputs from a user would do the work. Data like setting ranges, destinations, collision detections, and alignment targets.
I can't imagine military spaceship with real people on board. Even current military jets are limited in turning and acceleration speed because of that fragile human in pilot seat. And human reaction time - hundreds of miliseconds - is just unacceptably slow ...
Only thing about that is how far can remote control by a human operator reach in space and how much trust do you have in the programing to handle situations and if the computer is so advance that is does handle all situations perfectly how well do you trust that computer.
I can't imagine military spaceship with real people on board. Even current military jets are limited in turning and acceleration speed because of that fragile human in pilot seat. And human reaction time - hundreds of miliseconds - is just unacceptably slow ...
Only thing about that is how far can remote control by a human operator reach in space and how much trust do you have in the programing to handle situations and if the computer is so advance that is does handle all situations perfectly how well do you trust that computer.
Yeah would you trust a computer to not glass the planet your on... reality is I can't imagine any serious military craft without direct human controls being required especially for the weapons systems. So humans are going to be there for everything except the things like drones. Add to that the fact that we aren't talking about little tiny fighters here. EvEs about ships of the line, the big boys, the ships that jump in and go toe to toe. Sure you got some smaller frigates but they still aren't exactly X-wing scale. Basically nothing player-piloted in EvE is smaller then the Falcon in Star Wars, most things are closer to the ISD level. If you ever want to experience the joys of manual input flying on one of those things go play X3 and hack your self into a capital ship... I never missed EvE controls more then there.
I've played eve since 2006. The only reason I play EVE is because its the ONLY GOOD SPACE MMO. Not because of the 'deep universe bro' or the metagame, or whatever. None of that. The second a better space sim comes out, I'm gone. Why?
The controls and the physics. Yes, they take skill to master, mostly because its a completely unnatural physics engine. Is it fun? No, not at all, at least for me.
When I was a little noob I remember trying to control my Ibis with a joystick. Finding out EVE used a point and click control scheme was a massive dissapointment. Still, as a refugee from SWG I had no choice but to continue playing.
Now I run with an elite wormhole corp and have tons of assets to pvp with. But every time we go out and fight.. I'm left with the knowledge that the ship I'm flying is nothing more than a point and click ball in eves physics engine.
What would be awesome for me? Take X3, make that an MMO. Holy shit.
I'm the opposite of you - jousting then chasing another pilots tail while they chase mine until one of us gets bored with it isn't my dream game.
What would be awesome for me? Take X3, make that an MMO. Holy shit.
I'm the opposite of you - jousting then chasing another pilots tail while they chase mine until one of us gets bored with it isn't my dream game.
Give me point and click any day.
There should be a possibility of aiming for and damaging ship engines. And big ships packed with advanced weapon systems should be slower than small ships.
Point and click systems allow for meta-gaming solutions, such as cyno-alt or reconnaissance-alt, or suicidal attacks. Current players may see them as a part of gameplay, but for me they're just out-of-place, making the game less fun.
There should be a possibility of aiming for and damaging ship engines. And big ships packed with advanced weapon systems should be slower than small ships.
A little off topic, but what you describe in that portion of your post really brought back memories of SWG: Jump to Light Speed. I remember using the '[' and ']' keys (if i recall correctly) to target different ship subsystems such as engines and whatnot.
While I like the EvE mechanics, I also really enjoyed JtL. Problem was, in my view, it wasn't featured enough to be a standalone MMO, and while the space game seems fairly unchanged, the disruption of the ground game has made SWG a no-go for a lot of people (myself included). Still it would be nice to see the implementation of JtL gameplay in another MMO (though I don't think it'd fit in EvE imo). I haven't kept up with Black Proophecy or Jumpgate, but if those projects are still kicking maybe one of those will provide that sort of "arcade" alternative for those who are looking for it.
Anyhow, sorry bout the derail, but your post just brought up a bit of nostalgia for me.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers. Do something wrong, no one forgets" -from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
eve is a nice game but its like watching microsoft excel spreadsheet, i use it for work and it could be fun for those people to me its just boring. its got potential but again its a niche market.
How can anyone possibly say that about Eve? It's like since day ONE you and I have been playing two completely different games. My God, I can't tell you, being the gunner on a POS at a moon that harvests a BILLION ISK a week worth of moon stuff, and watching fleets warp in, choosing my targets and firing those big POS guns, damn that was fun. Setting up stations around moons and harvesting all that stuff, and then making more stuff out of it, I enjoyed that.
And probing, I used to have so much fun doing that. I was one of the first to probe out a lot of 0.0 places, I say that because I found some great stuff out there! Abandoned cargo ships fulla stuff! Yeah I guess I like stuff lol If you like tons of "things" in a game, all of which actually can be used for something in the game, this is a great game.
I was in fleet battles for YEARS, sometimes with many 100's of people on each side, sometimes over 1000 in one sector although that usually didn't work out well for me. The Battles! Hearing some of the most famous commanders, many of them women, barking orders over the command channels, bringing my dread in with all my friends, landing salvo after salvo on the target. I didn't sleep for days sometimes. The damn game almost killed me sometimes. I never had so much fun in all my life.
I started playing online in the BBS days, on "Online America", playing VGA graphic games at $4 an hour, like Neverwinters Nights on the original service before it became AOL. So yeah I love games. Played Ultima online for 11 years. And I've played most of the rest at least to lvl up a major character. But never have I played a game like Eve.
Oh yeah and corp theft. Man, I made some huge scores on an 2nd account set up just to be evil. I hit some of the top 100 thefts of all time in Eve, that's for sure. What other game can you be so evil in, if you want to be, and not be perma banned right off the server? Some of you great gamers may remember the early days on Ultima where you could rob houses, now that was a gas! I missed that, became proficient at finding houses that were about to collapse, did that for YEARS, had huge collections of "stuff" (and more stuff), until they changed that too and finally ruined the game for me. EVE has not changed in that way. You can be a theif in Eve, one of the few games around with real theives, but it's not done in such a way as to be a game ruiner.
Eve is great. It's not to be missed. And if you play for a week and you only see a spreadsheet, then you must not be looking in the right places!
I played EVE for a couple of months. Planned myself a nice combat pilot/mission runner and made it into a decently fitted Drake. Too bad I got bored to tears not long after that. There's was only so much "point, click and warp and/or watch the rockets go" I could do before I passed out on the keyboard. Missions were a complete borefest to the point I did them while watching TV. I thought it was maybe just the missions, so I decided to join a corp and try some PvP. I'm not gonna lie, some of the more even fleet battles were quite the adrenaline rush, but the other 90% of the time was spent clicking from point A to point B and camping gates waiting for unsuspecting SOBs to blob, or getting blobbed by even bigger fleets.
I can see why a lot of people like EVE though. It has the beefiest economy/crafting I've seen in any MMO. Its social aspects are also very strong and provide a lot of freedom to the player. Even to the point of letting you dwelve into your inner sociopath to scam and/or grief other players which surprisingly (or scarily) are activities a lot of players seem to enjoy. I found a large part of the game to be revolutionary, especially the skill system and the lack of levels, but I was turned off by the combat and flight mechanics. I'm not a twitch-monkey by any means, but holy crap, could they have made it any more boring? Someone compared it to chess earlier and I don't think it's a fair analogy. Chess is fun for me whether I play against a computer or a player because it keeps my mind constantly engaged, where as EVE's combat was mostly dull and boring with some engaging here and there.
I play Eve on and off. But honestly, it's about as much as I can stand. As far as I'm aware the only other semi-decent Sci-Fi/Space MMO is Star Trek Online (which I like more than Eve) and even that has major problems. Perhaps Eve will get less boring as more content is released.
THIS video by Zero Punctioation sums up a lot of what I think about Eve.
Eve is niche, always has been always will be, having said that it has a massive hardcore following, amongst some of the most hardcore gamers in any MMO.
It is far far from washed up, if anything it is over populated at the moment lol. And could do with some people leaving actually.
Yeah Eve can be boring if you come in to the game thinking it is like other MMOs, it is different (one of kind) and it is all about what you want to make it, it is classic "sandbox" you make your own story and fun etc. . Of course this is not everyone's cup of tea, and that is fine, but most who love it would not want it any other way.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
LOTRO and AoC can be considered niche, but not as niche as Eve IMO. That is to say there are levels of "niche-ness". I think a niche game is created by the IP or the gameplay(style) or both. Where gameplay(style) has a greater tendency to create a niche game than an IP.
I say this because if you play WoW or Everquest then you are more likely to get along with, and play, AoC and LOTRO, even if you may be indifferent to the IP. There will be a few who dislike a game simply because of the IP or like it simply because of the IP and this creates the niche game in these cases.
The opposite to niche is "main stream" which of course WoW is and Everquest was before it(still is). Eve is certainly not mainstream and not due to its IP(which is its own) but due to its setting(Sci-Fi which is not as popular as Fantasy ) and of course its gameplay style and sandbox nature.
It is worht saying that Mortal Online could be become a niche fantasy based game, as is Darkfall more so than Lotro and Aoc due to their gameplay styles.
These are my own thoughts on this are of course not fact.
LOTRO and AoC can be considered niche, but not as niche as Eve IMO. That is to say there are levels of "niche-ness". I think a niche game is created by the IP or the gameplay(style) or both. Where gameplay(style) has a greater tendency to create a niche game than an IP.
I say this because if you play WoW or Everquest then you are more likely to get along with, and play, AoC and LOTRO, even if you may be indifferent to the IP. There will be a few who dislike a game simply because of the IP or like it simply because of the IP and this creates the niche game in these cases.
The opposite to niche is "main stream" which of course WoW is and Everquest was before it(still is). Eve is certainly not mainstream and not due to its IP(which is its own) but due to its setting(Sci-Fi which is not as popular as Fantasy ) and of course its gameplay style and sandbox nature.
It is worht saying that Mortal Online could be become a niche fantasy based game, as is Darkfall more so than Lotro and Aoc due to their gameplay styles.
These are my own thoughts on this are of course not fact.
You are talking about the genres, fantasy and sci-fi. I did not ask about that as we already know fantasy is prevalent and mainstream in MMOs. I asked about the individual games. Do you feel AoC and LOTRO are niche games?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
There's no way LOTRO is a niche game. The IP is probably one of the most well-known fantasy IPs in the world. And the game was localized for 6 different regions/languages (US, Europe, China, Japan, Korea, Russia). But I think only 4 of them are still in service. Niche games usually don't get localized like that, as far as I know. I'd say it's pretty mainstream.
LOTRO and AoC can be considered niche, but not as niche as Eve IMO. That is to say there are levels of "niche-ness". I think a niche game is created by the IP or the gameplay(style) or both. Where gameplay(style) has a greater tendency to create a niche game than an IP.
I say this because if you play WoW or Everquest then you are more likely to get along with, and play, AoC and LOTRO, even if you may be indifferent to the IP. There will be a few who dislike a game simply because of the IP or like it simply because of the IP and this creates the niche game in these cases.
The opposite to niche is "main stream" which of course WoW is and Everquest was before it(still is). Eve is certainly not mainstream and not due to its IP(which is its own) but due to its setting(Sci-Fi which is not as popular as Fantasy ) and of course its gameplay style and sandbox nature.
It is worht saying that Mortal Online could be become a niche fantasy based game, as is Darkfall more so than Lotro and Aoc due to their gameplay styles.
These are my own thoughts on this are of course not fact.
You are talking about the genres, fantasy and sci-fi. I did not ask about that as we already know fantasy is prevalent and mainstream in MMOs. I asked about the individual games. Do you feel AoC and LOTRO are niche games?
" LOTRO and AoC can be considered niche" is the first line i wrote. So yes they are niche games.
Why do you ask?
Oh, and not all fantasy is mainstream as i pointed out, MO and Drakfall are certainly not mainstream.
LOTRO and AoC can be considered niche, but not as niche as Eve IMO. That is to say there are levels of "niche-ness". I think a niche game is created by the IP or the gameplay(style) or both. Where gameplay(style) has a greater tendency to create a niche game than an IP.
I say this because if you play WoW or Everquest then you are more likely to get along with, and play, AoC and LOTRO, even if you may be indifferent to the IP. There will be a few who dislike a game simply because of the IP or like it simply because of the IP and this creates the niche game in these cases.
The opposite to niche is "main stream" which of course WoW is and Everquest was before it(still is). Eve is certainly not mainstream and not due to its IP(which is its own) but due to its setting(Sci-Fi which is not as popular as Fantasy ) and of course its gameplay style and sandbox nature.
It is worht saying that Mortal Online could be become a niche fantasy based game, as is Darkfall more so than Lotro and Aoc due to their gameplay styles.
These are my own thoughts on this are of course not fact.
You are talking about the genres, fantasy and sci-fi. I did not ask about that as we already know fantasy is prevalent and mainstream in MMOs. I asked about the individual games. Do you feel AoC and LOTRO are niche games?
" LOTRO and AoC can be considered niche" is the first line i wrote. So yes they are niche games.
Why do you ask?
Oh, and not all fantasy is mainstream as i pointed out, MO and Drakfall are certainly not mainstream.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your use of the word niche. The impression that I got from the statement "Eve is niche, always has been always will be," was that you were using niche to mean having limited appeal. This seemed reinforced by the statement "LOTRO and AoC can be considered niche, but not as niche as Eve IMO," but it seems now you are just using it in the general sense of a distinct segment.
But to answer your question, the reason I asked is because the three games all have relatively similar subscriber numbers, so I was curious as to your definition of niche for a particular game as opposed to genre.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Comments
Malcanis couldn't have stated it better there are so many things a newbie can do to be useful to a gang of experienced pilots, you could train for a covert ops and probes and get warpins for fleets or fly an E-War ship or get an interceptor the possibilities are immense.
When I first moved to nullsec I had 3m SP and could barely fly anything but I found a niche and fitted into high end roaming nano gangs and was immensely useful, those 50m SP guys where grateful when my little Kitsune enabled their 300m ISK polycarbed nano HAC to escape after being tackled or my Crow got a tackle and I had a lot of fun doing it and got hundreds of kill mails
By the time I had 10m SP I flew Interdictors and had an important place in fleet battles and the thing is even though i am now approaching 65m SP I don't have any more fun than I did back then (in some ways less tbh I am a little bit jaded) sure I can fly a lot of shiny things like every single sub cap T1 ship, all weapons and BC sized>smaller T2 ships and fittings as well as maxed out cap ship alts there is a limit to how many things you can really afford at once and now nearly all my skin plans revolved around training 30+ days for an extra 2% effectiveness in something.
Currently playing:
EVE online (Ruining low sec one hotdrop at a time)
Gravity Rush,
Dishonoured: The Knife of Dunwall.
(Waiting for) Metro: Last Light,
Company of Heroes II.
This is the great irony of EVE, and something few people will ever truly understand : )
Been playing since '05 and I understand it. Now punch back in from lunch we got more POSes to bust!
I've played eve since 2006. The only reason I play EVE is because its the ONLY GOOD SPACE MMO. Not because of the 'deep universe bro' or the metagame, or whatever. None of that. The second a better space sim comes out, I'm gone. Why?
The controls and the physics. Yes, they take skill to master, mostly because its a completely unnatural physics engine. Is it fun? No, not at all, at least for me.
When I was a little noob I remember trying to control my Ibis with a joystick. Finding out EVE used a point and click control scheme was a massive dissapointment. Still, as a refugee from SWG I had no choice but to continue playing.
Now I run with an elite wormhole corp and have tons of assets to pvp with. But every time we go out and fight.. I'm left with the knowledge that the ship I'm flying is nothing more than a point and click ball in eves physics engine.
What would be awesome for me? Take X3, make that an MMO. Holy shit.
I wanted so badly to like this game but it's simply too boring. A real shame, I would love to get involved in the stuff that happens in EVE.
What would happen if these 300 people would have to manually steer the frigates / tacklers to avoid collisions and manually aim their weapons ? And if bigger ships would require crews of 5-20 players working together ?
On one hand - without strict discipline, and a lot of pilots' experience - it could lead to total chaos. On the other - noone would fall asleep during "large scale PvP" - as it happened to few of my friends ...
I would hope that in the future that piloting a space ship of size would not require someone to sit at a wheel/stick to control the flight. I would hope that automated piloting computers that use data inputs from a user would do the work. Data like setting ranges, destinations, collision detections, and alignment targets.
I agree with this but I gotta say eve isn't the most fun out of games right now imo. And I do wonder how its 10k hits higher then everything else?
Free to play means pay to win.
No way, EVE will carry on just like UO has, even better than UO has since it's got better with expansions,not worse.
I can't imagine military spaceship with real people on board. Even current military jets are limited in turning and acceleration speed because of that fragile human in pilot seat. And human reaction time - hundreds of miliseconds - is just unacceptably slow ...
Only thing about that is how far can remote control by a human operator reach in space and how much trust do you have in the programing to handle situations and if the computer is so advance that is does handle all situations perfectly how well do you trust that computer.
Yeah would you trust a computer to not glass the planet your on... reality is I can't imagine any serious military craft without direct human controls being required especially for the weapons systems. So humans are going to be there for everything except the things like drones. Add to that the fact that we aren't talking about little tiny fighters here. EvEs about ships of the line, the big boys, the ships that jump in and go toe to toe. Sure you got some smaller frigates but they still aren't exactly X-wing scale. Basically nothing player-piloted in EvE is smaller then the Falcon in Star Wars, most things are closer to the ISD level. If you ever want to experience the joys of manual input flying on one of those things go play X3 and hack your self into a capital ship... I never missed EvE controls more then there.
I'm the opposite of you - jousting then chasing another pilots tail while they chase mine until one of us gets bored with it isn't my dream game.
Give me point and click any day.
There should be a possibility of aiming for and damaging ship engines. And big ships packed with advanced weapon systems should be slower than small ships.
Point and click systems allow for meta-gaming solutions, such as cyno-alt or reconnaissance-alt, or suicidal attacks. Current players may see them as a part of gameplay, but for me they're just out-of-place, making the game less fun.
A little off topic, but what you describe in that portion of your post really brought back memories of SWG: Jump to Light Speed. I remember using the '[' and ']' keys (if i recall correctly) to target different ship subsystems such as engines and whatnot.
While I like the EvE mechanics, I also really enjoyed JtL. Problem was, in my view, it wasn't featured enough to be a standalone MMO, and while the space game seems fairly unchanged, the disruption of the ground game has made SWG a no-go for a lot of people (myself included). Still it would be nice to see the implementation of JtL gameplay in another MMO (though I don't think it'd fit in EvE imo). I haven't kept up with Black Proophecy or Jumpgate, but if those projects are still kicking maybe one of those will provide that sort of "arcade" alternative for those who are looking for it.
Anyhow, sorry bout the derail, but your post just brought up a bit of nostalgia for me.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers.
Do something wrong, no one forgets"
-from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
How can anyone possibly say that about Eve? It's like since day ONE you and I have been playing two completely different games. My God, I can't tell you, being the gunner on a POS at a moon that harvests a BILLION ISK a week worth of moon stuff, and watching fleets warp in, choosing my targets and firing those big POS guns, damn that was fun. Setting up stations around moons and harvesting all that stuff, and then making more stuff out of it, I enjoyed that.
And probing, I used to have so much fun doing that. I was one of the first to probe out a lot of 0.0 places, I say that because I found some great stuff out there! Abandoned cargo ships fulla stuff! Yeah I guess I like stuff lol If you like tons of "things" in a game, all of which actually can be used for something in the game, this is a great game.
I was in fleet battles for YEARS, sometimes with many 100's of people on each side, sometimes over 1000 in one sector although that usually didn't work out well for me. The Battles! Hearing some of the most famous commanders, many of them women, barking orders over the command channels, bringing my dread in with all my friends, landing salvo after salvo on the target. I didn't sleep for days sometimes. The damn game almost killed me sometimes. I never had so much fun in all my life.
I started playing online in the BBS days, on "Online America", playing VGA graphic games at $4 an hour, like Neverwinters Nights on the original service before it became AOL. So yeah I love games. Played Ultima online for 11 years. And I've played most of the rest at least to lvl up a major character. But never have I played a game like Eve.
Oh yeah and corp theft. Man, I made some huge scores on an 2nd account set up just to be evil. I hit some of the top 100 thefts of all time in Eve, that's for sure. What other game can you be so evil in, if you want to be, and not be perma banned right off the server? Some of you great gamers may remember the early days on Ultima where you could rob houses, now that was a gas! I missed that, became proficient at finding houses that were about to collapse, did that for YEARS, had huge collections of "stuff" (and more stuff), until they changed that too and finally ruined the game for me. EVE has not changed in that way. You can be a theif in Eve, one of the few games around with real theives, but it's not done in such a way as to be a game ruiner.
Eve is great. It's not to be missed. And if you play for a week and you only see a spreadsheet, then you must not be looking in the right places!
I played EVE for a couple of months. Planned myself a nice combat pilot/mission runner and made it into a decently fitted Drake. Too bad I got bored to tears not long after that. There's was only so much "point, click and warp and/or watch the rockets go" I could do before I passed out on the keyboard. Missions were a complete borefest to the point I did them while watching TV. I thought it was maybe just the missions, so I decided to join a corp and try some PvP. I'm not gonna lie, some of the more even fleet battles were quite the adrenaline rush, but the other 90% of the time was spent clicking from point A to point B and camping gates waiting for unsuspecting SOBs to blob, or getting blobbed by even bigger fleets.
I can see why a lot of people like EVE though. It has the beefiest economy/crafting I've seen in any MMO. Its social aspects are also very strong and provide a lot of freedom to the player. Even to the point of letting you dwelve into your inner sociopath to scam and/or grief other players which surprisingly (or scarily) are activities a lot of players seem to enjoy. I found a large part of the game to be revolutionary, especially the skill system and the lack of levels, but I was turned off by the combat and flight mechanics. I'm not a twitch-monkey by any means, but holy crap, could they have made it any more boring? Someone compared it to chess earlier and I don't think it's a fair analogy. Chess is fun for me whether I play against a computer or a player because it keeps my mind constantly engaged, where as EVE's combat was mostly dull and boring with some engaging here and there.
I play Eve on and off. But honestly, it's about as much as I can stand. As far as I'm aware the only other semi-decent Sci-Fi/Space MMO is Star Trek Online (which I like more than Eve) and even that has major problems. Perhaps Eve will get less boring as more content is released.
THIS video by Zero Punctioation sums up a lot of what I think about Eve.
0118 999 881 999 119 725... 3
Eve is niche, always has been always will be, having said that it has a massive hardcore following, amongst some of the most hardcore gamers in any MMO.
It is far far from washed up, if anything it is over populated at the moment lol. And could do with some people leaving actually.
Yeah Eve can be boring if you come in to the game thinking it is like other MMOs, it is different (one of kind) and it is all about what you want to make it, it is classic "sandbox" you make your own story and fun etc. . Of course this is not everyone's cup of tea, and that is fine, but most who love it would not want it any other way.
Do you feel the same way about LOTRO and AoC?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
LOTRO and AoC can be considered niche, but not as niche as Eve IMO. That is to say there are levels of "niche-ness". I think a niche game is created by the IP or the gameplay(style) or both. Where gameplay(style) has a greater tendency to create a niche game than an IP.
I say this because if you play WoW or Everquest then you are more likely to get along with, and play, AoC and LOTRO, even if you may be indifferent to the IP. There will be a few who dislike a game simply because of the IP or like it simply because of the IP and this creates the niche game in these cases.
The opposite to niche is "main stream" which of course WoW is and Everquest was before it(still is). Eve is certainly not mainstream and not due to its IP(which is its own) but due to its setting(Sci-Fi which is not as popular as Fantasy ) and of course its gameplay style and sandbox nature.
It is worht saying that Mortal Online could be become a niche fantasy based game, as is Darkfall more so than Lotro and Aoc due to their gameplay styles.
These are my own thoughts on this are of course not fact.
You are talking about the genres, fantasy and sci-fi. I did not ask about that as we already know fantasy is prevalent and mainstream in MMOs. I asked about the individual games. Do you feel AoC and LOTRO are niche games?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
There's no way LOTRO is a niche game. The IP is probably one of the most well-known fantasy IPs in the world. And the game was localized for 6 different regions/languages (US, Europe, China, Japan, Korea, Russia). But I think only 4 of them are still in service. Niche games usually don't get localized like that, as far as I know. I'd say it's pretty mainstream.
" LOTRO and AoC can be considered niche" is the first line i wrote. So yes they are niche games.
Why do you ask?
Oh, and not all fantasy is mainstream as i pointed out, MO and Drakfall are certainly not mainstream.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your use of the word niche. The impression that I got from the statement "Eve is niche, always has been always will be," was that you were using niche to mean having limited appeal. This seemed reinforced by the statement "LOTRO and AoC can be considered niche, but not as niche as Eve IMO," but it seems now you are just using it in the general sense of a distinct segment.
But to answer your question, the reason I asked is because the three games all have relatively similar subscriber numbers, so I was curious as to your definition of niche for a particular game as opposed to genre.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre