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Can the EvE formula be achieved without being in space?
injenu
Member CommonPosts: 142
A game that caters to those who like full loot ffa pvp as well as the pve crowd such as in Eve, could it ever be done on land?
The main incentive to be in null-sec is increased risk for better resources. Empire space has faction warfare, as well as war-decs that also incorporate risk, except the rats (mobs) don't yield the best loot, and the belts do not have the best value.
So what is it that enables this balance? Is it Jita? Is it having "gates" to separate systems? I actually want the opinion of this board as I feel that it can be done, it's just a matter of figuring out the mechanic(s) that create this balance.
Comments
Full Sail University - Game Design
Kinda odd that this is in the Darkfall forum without mentioning anything about darkfall, except perhaps to mention there is "land".
Anyways, if you want EVE-on-land, look at perpetuum. It's the closest game to that.
If you want the perfect storm of player interaction, freedom and freeform play, and risk vs reward choices... well I don't know of any other game that comes close.
Edit: Also the "Jita" part wasn't a developer designated trade hub. It arose from player choice, exactly how it should.
PLEX is just a disguised cash shop which turns Eve into F2P for some people. So what you are saying is that Eve is successful because it being a disguised F2P?
Hm, yeah I am not buying it. I think it is successful because the game is quite deep, complex and has relatively few boundaries when it comes to PvP.
My gaming blog
People should not play DF:UW expecting it to be anything like EVE, totally different focus for each IMO.
Both can be fun, but don't assume because EVE has certain features that they are (or should) be part of DF:UW.
Play the new game for what it has and if its any fun as delvered, don't focus on what it lacks compared to other titles or you're bound to set yourself up for disappointment.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I do think that there are more similarities than differences between the player base of Eve and that of DFUW, which is why I put this on the Darkfall board. I never really considered the PLEX idea, as I don't play enough to be able to support that as my means for the subscription. In regards to crafting, you're absolutely right, Darkfall could never have the same crafting system but that I don't believe is the main reason for Eve's success.
I think Darkfall or any game venturing in the Full Loot FFA pvp niche could in fact mimic a lot of core mechanics within Eve. If I recall, UO had war decs whereas players could kill other players within cities if their guilds were at war. So basically a game where there was a "lawful" land that only declared faction warriors could fight other faction warriors, or guilds that have declared war on another guild which would obviously cost a lot of whatever the currency would be. Then there would be the lawless land in which the real meta game occurred, where everyone/everything was fair game.
Will darkfall be this game? It could be.. The good news is that I think there will always be a following for this type of game, hence an indie developer that tries to capture this niche. Hell if I ever made it big I'd certainly trying to create one.
I also think one of the core reasons Darkfall failed was the grind, and the disparity that this caused by hardcore players/macroers vs. the casual crowd. Add no skill cap and this gap is widened even further.
Another reason Eve is successful is accessibility. While the learning curve is pretty steep, you could fit out a tackle rifter in less than a few days and be part of fleets. There's also the fact that there really wasn't a deeply OP ship that one could fly - it's more about strategy and the situation itself.
Crafting may not be EVE's main reason for success, but its role in the overall economy could arguably be in the top 3 reasons for why the title has endured for so long.
There's a good reason CCP employs a full time economist to watch over and analyze the in game economy.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Hey how does one go about PMing a mod to let them know this topic needs to be moved into the EVE section?
Based on the first post in the thread and the subject, it has absolutely nothing to do with Darkfall: Unholy Wars in particular, and it is obviously causing some confusion to people who reply that it is supposed to be about Darkfall: UW.
At best, this thread could possibly be seen as a more general than EVE discussion about Sandbox elements, using EVE as an example of success.
But it has absolutely nothing to do with Darkfall: Unholy Wars specifically based on the thread authors original post.
Drekor Silverfang
The Shipwrecked Pirates
In DF1 the closest thing DF had to EVE's security was guard towers throughout the starter cities and random banks along the way. They would ZAP and attack red(there was/is an alignment system.) players or players of an enemy race. Blue (friendly) would not get attacked, but if war were declared on enemy clan and you were both in said city, it was fair game. There use to be clans who would war dec everyone just to grief them in starter cities, but they fixed that issue, i have no idea why they decided to go with straight safe zones.
This game wasn't designed for hardcore PVErs, sorry but thats how it is and I don't think it will change anytime soon. Any PVE safezone will be player created by the clan you join, if you join a highly active, large numbered clan, people are going to be scared to come near your cities, or your mob spawns, cause they know they're going to get zerged out, this is about as safe as it will get. Even if you aren't in a big clan, just cause you don't have your unstoppable NPC guarding you will you mindlessly kill AI doesn't mean your going to get ganked 100%. Although the risk is high, finding remote low traffic areas, farming close to a bank so you can at least have the chance of saving some of the loot you worked for. Remember there is no local chat icons to tell who is in your vicinity, people have to visually spot you, or hear you to find you. (assuming they fixed load lag)
The solution is rather simple and ArcheAge is going down this road: split the world into continents divided by sea and have items destroyed by either PvP or PvE.
This way you solve it all actually. You can have different PvP-rulesets for the continents and the destruction of items creates constant demand of ressources leading to a working economy.
You don't actually need a very complex crafting-system like suggested by many other posters and I don't think EvEs crafting-system is very complex. The only thing that makes EvEs crafting complex is the number of ressources and the number of parts needed to manufacture the end-product, but once you've setup your production-chain and took care of the logistics, it doesn't require any thought actually.
All you need sort out is the supply- and process-chain in the beginning, which doesn't take longer then a day and an Excel-spreadsheet.
Key to EvEs success is the good combination of economy, PvE and PvP, where players can choose the way they want to play the game without being forced to do anything.
Tons of players in EvE never took part in PvP, yet they cater to the community by fueling the economy by doing PvE. Works the other way around aswell.
That's where Darkfall failed. There was no option to play the game without being constantly forced to PvP.
I'm sure you could do a Waterworld-style setting where everyone is a boat.
Come to think of it, that could be cool...........
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
This guy has it. Darkfall only caters to those who like to PvP. EVE gives you a choice. Even if someone can gank you in High Sec it happens very rarely, as they aggressor will 100% lose his ship doing so.
In Darkfall outside the cities there are no safe zones. It does not mean you might get ganked. It means you WILL be ganked.
Call me a carebear but we keep your MMOs alive
It's very unlikely that any land-based MMO will ever come close to EVE's scale.
Consider the fact that EVE's game world is MASSIVE in comparison to any other past or present MMO. There's over 5500 star systems, so that's 5500+ instanced areas. EVE can pull it off because space is empty. There's no terrain LoS issues, and no need to constantly calculate character position to make sure that people don't "fall through the map". There's minimal assets to be rendered in that vast space.
It also means that a group of players can permanently control big chunks of the game world, and deny access to anyone who's not strong enough to break in. It's possible to do that, because each star system has a very limited amount of entry points which can be patrolled and blockaded.
No land-based game can afford to allow groups of players to "exclusively own" large chunks of the game world, because there simply isn't enough of it. It would mean that anyone not playing as part of the land-owning groups would only have free access to a tiny part of the already small game world.
You're pretty wrong about this.
In a landbased MMO you sure can control large areas. All you've to do is built armed and manned outposts/outlooks that are in sight to each other like it was done 2000 years ago in the roman empire.
Once enemies appear, you exactly know where to send your troops to fend off an attack.
In a modern setting this would be even easier, due to known technology such as radar, camera or satellite and a border guarded with unmanned and remote controlled towers.
Also, making huge maps in a landbased MMO is no problem either. We've all seen huge maps in several MMOs allready. And the maps become even larger, if we apply realworld speeds. You know... a soldier in full gear can't go any faster by foot then some 10 km/h, especially not over longer distances. So let's settle around 5 km/h for walking.
Go take a walk from Booty Bay to Startholme without mounts nor running... should take you some hours and Kalimdor is sure not the biggest continent to be found in a MMO. As comparison... Kalimdor is only as large as Manhattan (20x3.5 km).
A continent the size of of New York City would allready be 10 times as large as Kalimdor, so go figure how much area there is for the players.
Remember Earthrise? The map of Earthrise was 30x30km allready, and that was a low-budget-studio pulling it off.
So no. Landbased MMOs can totally be made the way EvE is.
Perpetuum is very simmilar to eve except it has was movement, you can terraform, high sec is really high sec and it has anti blob mechanics with the interference system.
Df should have a look at interference imo. They could make it so spells have more chance of missfiring when close to other casters, would be an interesting zerg break mechanic.
In short, not any time soon. Even doesn't pretend to be anything more than a somewhat pretty spreadsheet. The moment a game starts introducing things like animations and character models, expectations go up way too high for the game to recover unless it truly is the great white hope of MMO's. With Eve, the dev's have been able to spend most of their time fine-tuning all the mechanics in tha background and cultivating the economy and such, due to the very basic graphics engine (starfield backdrop with static ship models and a few laser animations). No terrain to load in memory. No characters to customize (although they do have that now, although you can't interact with anyone).
In short, Eve worked because they targeted a very niche but worldwide audience, and didn't even try to go after the "mainstream" or average MMO player.
You make me like charity