Zero Punctuation: Eve Online

[Voideka]

I didn't see anyone else mention this, though I might have missed it, but you missed out on the best description of EVE:

EVE Online is a perfect space battle simulator.

When you think about it it is true, and it is also why it is so horrible. Unlike more traditional space combat games, you are in a big ship rather than a small fighter. In a fighter you zip around, weaving through fire, dodging laser blasts and missiles like a regular dog-fight in a flight sim with fighter jets.

EVE on the other hand, is more like a naval battle. The captain of a battleship doesn't frantically steer around, aiming his weapons, dodging fire. No one on the ship does that. The captain stands there sorting through information, and then he tells everyone else what to do. You tell the helmsman or whatever it's called "turn 15 degrees north, then accelerate to 15 knots" and he turns the ship. Then you tell someone else "target that frigate and shoot" and the guy does so (not even in an interesting way, it's usually just punching numbers into a console or turning a dial). And that's EVE.

 

[Xennith]

Come to think of it, there seems to be a lot of people who registered on escapist JUST to respond to this thread, myself included.
Looks like Yahtzee is doing his job well, ahuahuahua!
Wow, we EVE players are a defensive bunch.

 

[Druidwitch]

Quite simply the review is good because it demonstrates what the game is trying to avoid - and mostly succeeds in doing - removal of thos elooking to skill / farm whore their way to the top. The restriction of skill training ensures that other players are on an actual learning curve, and this is a term you will hear within the Eve community a lot - HARD LEARNING CURVE. This is not a game for the low end of the IQ scale - if yoru preffered MMO style is wandering around like a numb nuts wafting a sword and shouting "i likes to beat up teh n00bs", then you are going hate Eve.

NPC missions are boring, shit and quite franckly a pointless element to the game, there only to keep aforementioned group happy (thats if they actually decide to play). Everyone else trains up a little, laughs in the face of player owened corporations operating in empire space and joins up with a deep space alliance who like to have huge 200 v 200 battles of various scales from frigate / cruiser small ships enagagements to Titans with BFG's. The game can be fun but it requires a degree of intelligence, a dash of persistence (which MMO doesn't?) and the ability to think outside your pre-fixed MMO box.

Low IQ numb nuts need not apply.

 

[Moravich]

He is very right.. I tried the trial and was bored out of my skull, it's just like WoW.. only in space, and 50x more complicated.

 

[Chromed]

I do have to ask, why review an MMORPG and try to avoid the whole MMO aspect of it?

EVE is no fun if you don't play it with other people. This goes for almost every MMO out there, but doubly so for EVE.

 

[shlobadov]

Wow, Yah, you put Cheltenham on the interweb map of shit! Good choice of random English town.

 

[Castar]

Y'know, I think a lot of people forget that Yahtzee approaches a game from a particular angle, with a particular goal in mind: Enjoyable, thoughtful entertainment that you can get into quickly, without depending on a lot of other people to make the whole thing fun.

Right. So next week Yahtzee totally *isn't* going to destroy Spore? Haha, you wish.

Face it, Yahtzee hates just about everything. I still find his reviews fun to watch, but sometimes it's clear he's just being a retard so he can do his thing. Seriously: "I will totally ignore the biggest part of this game and then declare it is boring and stupid!" Ok, mister, have fun, but know that you're now making bad comedy, not a review.

 

[Nadsat]

It doesn't really matter if Eve is intelligent, smart, sophisticated and has a fantastic user base !!SPOILER ALERT!! It doesn't !!END SPOILERS!!, if a game is not fun, it fails the primary function of a game. Eve was not fun for me, the best bit was the character creation screen featuring all sorts of useless skills and information. I was honestly pretty psyched about playing once I'd created my character but I felt my fun-levels rapidly decreasing once I was being sent to opposite ends of the galaxy in the slowest manner possible. M If I were to describe eve in one word it would be empty, there weren't many players (Jesus, even FFXI had more players) not much to do, except drive really slowly around a vast, empty void and mine asteroids. Maybe the fans are right, and player-run corporations are some-sort of magical turd-polish that makes even the worst game look like Christ himself had created it, but honestly going by what I've seen of Eve, it's not likely. A game, much like a book, TV series, movie, or any form of entertainment tbh, should be something that effortlessly draws in the audience, captivates them, and doesn't rely of the audience to do it themselves through user-created content.

***END RANT***

 

[PegasusJF]

Come to think of it, there seems to be a lot of people who registered on escapist JUST to respond to this thread, myself included.
Looks like Yahtzee is doing his job well, ahuahuahua!
Wow, we EVE players are a defensive bunch.

LOL, yes we are.

I once read a post on MMORPG.com that said eve online players are "The crazed physco cult of the MMO world."

I have to admit, I laughed at that.

But, there is a deeper reason. As I stated before EVE players are pretty fond of our game because it is so unique in the MMO world. I believe the fans and the critics can both agree with this.

Also, I didn't state this in my previous post but every other MMO I played was easier to get into and fun for awhile, but in the end it seemed so shallow and empty in the end compared to EVE.

But the main thing, especially we Eve players that frequent MMO forums, we so often see so much misconception about what EVE is. Misconceptions that if you took a hard look at them and begin to understand what really is going on (The "I'll never catch up with vets" is a classic one), and even if you still don't like it, even if you don't find it fun, you can still appreciate what the devs are trying to accomplish.

Yahtzee's review REEKs of this ignorance I'm sorry to say. His admission that he didn't even try to engage the player base during his trial, something that is absolutely critical to "getting" EVE, to understand what the devs set out to do when they made this game.

That IMHO, makes his review worthless, because he didn't bother to gather all the necessary information to make a truely informed decision. If he did that, spent a month with a corp, messed with the PVP or faction warfare and still came to the same conclusion, all power to him.

But he needs to encounter more than he did during his trial.

 

[nastykerm]

God some people go on my nerves. Let's weed out some crap here.

1) YOU NEED TO SOCIALIZE!
Shut the fuck up, right now, and quick ( goes to those "vets" how they call them ). Socializing in a game? Am I a fucking emo kid? Jesus if I want to socialize, have fun and meet people then I go out with my friends, yes, REAL LIFE FRIENDS! Socializing on the internet is a big looser and majority of those are emos. If I play a game I want to have fun. Fun I can have with others... PoA for example or others. But wasting weeks over weeks talking to people while doing shit... sorry... my time is too valuable for that.

Uh, do you even know what mmo stands for? IF you play an mmo to be alone then you are a fool. The whole point of mmos are to play with other people and to *gasp* socialize. Its like playing a single player and whining (thats what you are doing) about the game not having other human players.


In any case, I think EVE deserves a fair review. You dont give an mmo a bad review because you refuse to play it as anything other than a single player game.

 

[GaryH]

Multiplayer does not mean cooperation.

But EVE is designed to favour cooperation. A person foolish enough to play alone against people who cooperate is doomed to fail.

Solo PVP (one player against another) is simple and boring; target, activate weapons and wait until one person dies. However the game is geared around team play; small, fast ships to fly in and tackle the larger ones to hold them still and cripple their targeting systems and weapons, bigger ships to do the bulk of the damage, support ships to repair damage and recharge shields. It's essentially the MMO holy trinity of archetypes with fancy names. The only difference is that in EVE, the support ship is a support ship and nothing else; you need a friend in a bigger ship to do damage and that friend is a huge target and so needs some other help to make sure that the target doesn't actually hit him in the first place.

In EVE, a group of relatively new players in cheap frigates can band together and take down an experienced player in a big, hulking battleship if they use the right set up and tactics. EVE is a game ABOUT teamwork and cooperation; if you only play it in single player, never join a corp and never leave secure space then yes; it is everything that yahtzee described. If you play it how Yahtzee played it then I'm not surprised that you didn't enjoy it, but you missed out on some of the deepest and most engaging multiplayer gameplay available.

It's not perfect though, I'll admit. The UI is clunky, the game has it's bugs and imbalances, it's nigh impossible for new players to get past the learning curve nowadays and the developers frequently make some questionable judgements regarding rebalancing and general patches. Including recently changing a gorgeous looking and extremely popular ship model to a hideous and bland one for no reason whatsoever, out of nowhere; upsetting half the player base in the process... WHY!?.

I just find it weird how I simultaneously agree AND disagree with this review.

 

[Nadsat]

But, there is a deeper reason. As I stated before EVE players are pretty fond of our game because it is so unique in the MMO world. I believe the fans and the critics can both agree with this.

Ummm, didn't Yatzee just say it wasn't?

 

[PegasusJF]

But, there is a deeper reason. As I stated before EVE players are pretty fond of our game because it is so unique in the MMO world. I believe the fans and the critics can both agree with this.

Ummm, didn't Yatzee just say it wasn't?

Well, I guess there are exceptions. I can give you a list of reasons if you what, but I think just one will suffice. You can conquer, hold, utilize resources, and improve (as in building permanent structures in the game) star systems. EVE is alone or among a elite few there.

But also, when I say critic I mean people who actually have seen all facets to make a fully informed opinion.

Yahtzee clearly has not, and from what I have gathered from your previous rant, neither have you.

 

[Azhrarn-101]

I've not seen the review yet but I'm pretty sure eve came before Wow...? did it? honestly i might be confuzzling it with everquest or something.
Anyway i personally went from wow to eve because three (useless) years of WoW left me wanting something deeper, and i think eve is by far a better game.
Of course my stance is fairly rare, and not everyone feels the same way about mmorpgs as i do (i challenge u to find another who is just over fighting) but of all the mmorpgs i've tried eve is definatly the best. Doesn't mean it's a good thing...

EVE had its fifth birthday this year (not counting the beta), so yes it is a good deal older than WoW.

 

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

tried the game once. After about three or four hours I was simply bored to death and quit the game with about the same conclusion as Yahtzee: This game manages to make outer space boring. Quite an achievement, in my opinion.
The unintuitive interface results in a tutorial that's just ridiculously long and at the point that the combat got explained I simply asked myself how this game is any different from the tons of other MMOs out there.
EVE feels to me more like those MMO browser games than anything else. If it wasn't for selecting an enemy and pressing number keys every now and then, I could just choose the skill I want to develop and leave the game for the next three days. I don't like those browser games and I don't like EVE for the same reason. I want to play the game in order for my character to get better, not just wait it out. Sadly, otherwise EVE is the typical MMO. So, if I actually feel the need to play an MMO, I play a different one than EVE. One that actually rewards me for playing.

 

[Fools Paradise]

[bitter nerd rage directed at eve players]

tl;dr - Judgement was accurate. Should really have tried being part of a corp. God, EVE players are dicks.

I'm sorry you lost your ship the first time you went into low sec, told said PvPer exactly how you felt in this in eve mail/local/the forums, got mocked for it by everyone and then rage quit eve.

 

[Nadsat]

Yahtzee clearly has not, and from what I have gathered from your previous rant, neither have you.

Elaborate, please. Use that superior EVE-playing intellect to mentally destroy me, I beg of you

 

[Fools Paradise]

Yahtzee clearly has not, and from what I have gathered from your previous rant, neither have you.

Elaborate, please. Use that superior EVE-playing intellect to mentally destroy me, I beg of you

re, your last post and this one come to think of it, and tbh it probably applies to a lot of people in this thread.

Posting in the style of Yahtzee in one of his threads just makes you look pathetic.

 

[Syaoran05]

You know...I think a better MMO for the space scene is SpaceCowboys/Flysis/AirRivals. There's too much to even explain about that game in a post that I feel like typing this early in the morning. But it totally rocks and it's free.

 

[Sir_Substance]

Yahtzee clearly has not, and from what I have gathered from your previous rant, neither have you.

Elaborate, please. Use that superior EVE-playing intellect to mentally destroy me, I beg of you

given that's the best you can muster, i think he probably has.