Why I Stopped Playing EVE Online

I’ve subscribed to EVE Online (EO) three times and never stayed more than a month at any given time.  On an episode of, "Shut Up. We're Talking." Brent made a comment about EO not being fun.  It was something along the lines of it being a great game but it's not fun.  I don't agree with the not fun part and I'm not sure that's exactly what Brent meant either.  I think his lack of enjoyment (fun) comes from something else, and that something else is the reason I don't stay - the player gap.  The gap between new player and veteran is astronomical and the amount of time required to bridge the gap seems insurmountable – so I leave.  Truth be told, time investment or no, there are some aspects of the game for which it's virtually impossible to catch up to veteran players unless they leave the game for a long span of time.

Of all the games I’ve played, I think EO has hands-down the best user interface.  And in case you’ve never played, there’s a lot of interface to be had.  It could use some work on information overload. However, I always considered that a part of the experience.  I didn't expect outfitting and commanding a space vessel to be simple.  The game content is definitely full of walls-of-text, but I think they do a nice job of allowing you to scan by highlighting important text in bold and bright font colors.  I don't think I ever read a whole missions and didn't feel as though I was losing anything in the translation. Given that you live your life as a pod inside your ship the visual asthetics of the interface and its modules is very important.  They are sleek, clean and look other-worldly.

The universe itself, although marked as you’d expect with many pockets of black/empty spaces, still provides the appropriate ambiance and the spectacular views you’d expect to encounter in deep space.  The stations, hangers and jump gates are futuristic and just so sweet to look at – visually, EO is amazing.  And even though over time - asteroid belts, planets, celestial clusters, etc., all blend together and appear repetitive over time, IT'S STILL VISUALLY STUNNING.

There are two elements in EO that keep me from playing/staying:
1. Time required to skill up to moderate competence in the skills required to command a vessel, outfit the vessel and engage in PVP combat
2. No way to bridge the gap between newly arrived and veterans

I’m sure some people would slam me on the second item but try to keep an open mind until I get there.

Although the skill training takes place in real-time and you can be off-line while training new skills, there is a massive amount of training needed to be competitive or earn a living with a profession. You have to train attributes that improve your avatar, your ship - including commanding it, outfitting it and repairing it, in addition to your chosen profession.  Some skills take as little as 15 minutes up to the largest I saw or trained was 5 days! And you can only train one skill at a time.  I like the concept just not the durations and the fact that I can't queue a few of them up in advance.

It’s not uncommon to hear of people subscribing and then just spending 2-3 months doing nothing but logging in to initiate skill training – never even leaving their hanger.  That just seems an extreme skill level requirement in order to become mildly proficient, and a huge barrier to entry for new players.  Sure, you could start right away with the kill ten rats and mining tiny amounts that you’ll have to race back and forth to process until you get a bigger ship, drones, jettison cans, etc.  But that’s not so much having fun as working.  I don't know about you but I'm not in the market for a second job.  I don't mind paying my dues but they are just too high in EO.

My second issue arises from the fact that all the action is happening in low security sectors.  Therefore, if you want your game to be PVP oriented versus mining, spreadsheets and killing NPCs, you need to get into low-sec areas.  However, as a newbie you’ll be blown to bits and back.  You don’t and won’t, have any kind of ship or equipment that can compete for MANY, MANY MONTHS.  Besides which the death penalty for a ship is permanent loss.  You get blown up and it's bye-bye space ship.  Sure you have insurance and hopefully you cloned yourself in case you get pod ganked too but, the loss is of a magnitude that you can't just go play with the big boys and take your chances.

Contrast that with the typical fantasy MMO, if I arrive years late in EQ2, WOW, LOTRO and the alike, there is a point at which I can seriously bridge the gap.  Even if I never reach the smaller percentage of the player population in epic/fabled gear, I can hit max level while they are occupied with end game and waiting on the next expansion.  I won't be their equal but the gap is acceptable.  We have to acknowledge that these opportunities to reset or balance the playing field does erode the achievement of the veterans but overall, I think allows for a more diverse and a wider audience.

Now – I can appreciate the depth and time required to play EO. However, as it stands now it lacks the incentive for a new player to wade through the white noise until they can hit the sweet meat.  And for a game with such polish and an active player community, their population is on the lower side.  They have one of the truest player driven economies, most sound risk versus reward system, PVE interwoven into PVP, player innovation and creativity, etc.  Yet for all this, they are still sort of niche and can't claim wide appeal.  CCP might be fine with that but lets be honest.  What game developer doesn’t want more subscribers? :-)  What player-base doesn't want fresh meat into the fray and economy?

I’m going to duck as I make these suggestions that are likely to rouse the EO fanbois in screaming, “We don’t want your WOW mentality here!”  I know that EO is a seamless universe/cluster.  I still think it would be great if there was a cluster for more casual or new players, where the skill requirements were lower or could be completed at an accelerated rate.  Some way for new players to get to the meat of the game well – faster than what is currently possible?  Not a fast track to uber or end-game so to speak, but a way to be competitive earlier in the playing cycle.  I guess I’m thinking of a cluster with a reduced rule set and we don’t ever cross over into the other rule set, so as not to be given an easy ride into veteran territory.

Everything else remains the same – quests, PVP rules, reputation, probably requires separate economy, etc.  Yeah, that’s a lot of work for them - more hardware to support and code-base to maintain so might not be worth their time.  Perhaps this world I’m thinking of and wishing for is much smaller and it’s where you get your kicks and learn the ropes while training your main in a hanger.  It would be the equivalent of the EQ2 starter isle.  You get to taste everything in that small zone.

You could argue that high security sectors are this equivalent but they're not.  You don’t encounter or engage in the open warfare in the high sec zones and as a result, you miss much of the PVP excitement. I’d like to participate in that sooner without the handicap of having no way of surviving attacks from players who have been in the game for months or YEARS.  I have zero chance of competing.  What is supposed to be the appeal for me the first six to eight months of play?  Obviously some people deal with it and enjoy themselves but a lot more come and go.  Or worse don't even try it because they've heard about how hard it is to get started.

Anywho – these are some thoughts that came to mind while playing PotBS.  PotBS nailed the introductory experience.  It happens gradually and for a while I didn't even notice what I'd learned until I had to do it.  However, the ambiance is lacking in this early part of the game I'm playing which made me keep thinking about EO.  From jump street I FEEL the part of living in a deep space society.  I FEEL a part of the civil unrest - the danger, intrigue and struggle to survive is very palpable.  Too bad the barrier to entry is EO is just staggering.

P.S.  Just thought of a different approach that would be easier to implement.  Why don't they accelerate the skill training rate up to a certain level to move new players into the mid-range faster?  After which time it reverts to the current/normal skill-up rate.  Let me get to those initial sets of upgrades - persona, ship and profession skills faster, so that I can reasonably engage in PVP sooner and participate in the economic strategies.

Thoughts?

Comments

[Flashman]

As someone who's just upgraded from a trial to a paid subscription, your post is pretty interesting to me. I've also been thinking about the amount of work that needs to be put into EO before you hit the big time.

The realisation that I didn't want a second job was a good start. That's why I made two characters: one 'carebear' whose job is to specialise in mining, and another who plays pure PVP with some of the proceeds from my 'main' character. I also made a promise: if I wasn't having fun, I'd either stop or change my style of play.

You may think this makes twice as hard to train skills, and to a point you're right. But I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll never catch to - or perhaps even mid-ranking - players. For me, the game is more about pushing my own limits and improving my performance.

Think of it like painting: while I may never rival Renoir or Rembrandt, I can still derive enjoyment from honing my skills and doing something that I enjoy.

Anyway. I'm enjoying EVE as a change of pace from my standard fare of WoW, Counterstrike, Halo and so forth. I'm still playing some of those other games - when I want a change of pace - but I can see EVE becoming a staple of my gaming as long as it doesn't begin to rule my life the way WoW used to.

[Saylah]

@ Flashman...It's good that you've come up with a strategy that you think will work for you. As I've said, there is a lot that I enjoy about EO. If I could queue up skills I'd probably be one of those people with a dormant account that just skills for two to three months and then go PVE for funds and PVP for fun.

It will be interesting to see if CCP attempts to bridge the gap when they introduce avatars to the game. Having avatars might initially attract RP style players and people who really need that physical persona to connect with a game. However, they may not come or stay if they do come given the barrier to be competitive.

I hope a little something gets done to help newbies along. EO really is an interesting and thought provoking game.

Good luck on your journey. IF you have a blog please respond with link so I can follow your adventures.

[Yeebo]

You've summarized pretty well why EVE holds no interest for me.

Standard EVE fanboy responses run along the lines of "with only a few hours of internet research and a few weeks time investment you too can actually have a smallish ship that can make some mildly important contribution in a big battle."

That doesn't really sound like much of a draw to me. If I'm not having fun in the first few hours I start a game, I'm not going to keep plugging away in the hopes that it might get fun. Let alone spend weeks or months to see if it's "fun" or not. Game designers that expect that kind of investment from an average consumer strike me as slightly insane.

[mutantmagnet]

All I will say is that you are wrong about the second point.
A new player can compete and/or participate with an old player.

In most MMOs if a new player pvped with an old player they would be killed outright and not even do any bit of serious damage. If a new player tried to pve with old players they would be a waste of a group/raid slot because npcs would be invulnerable to their ablities.

It is a rare game that manages to correct only one of these problems. Eve Online is the only mmo to my knowledge that solves both of them.

New players start out in frigates while old players like to use the bigger badder ships.

The problem with bigger ships is that they have issues tracking frigates for a lot of reasons. The problem for frigates is that they are so small they carry enough firepower that can't outdamge armor/shield regen by themselves. Get two friends in frigates and you are a threat for cruisers. Pimp out your frigates properly and you can kill it.

Even if the cruiser manages to kill the three of you the cost of frigates after you factor in insurance puts frigate pilots way ahead of pilots of bigger ships who have to survive a lot of fights against frigate gangs to justify the time and money spent on bigger ships.

In fact experienced players once they get low on money resort to frigates because even though they aren't as prestigous as other ships and are less capable of defeating another ship that isn't a frigate by itself frigates are very capable cost efficient ships at killing other players.

One of the biggest corporations in the game was an organized group of players from the somethingawful.com forums who understood the underlying principles of frigates and defeated established corporations while building their own empire, because everytime they lost a frigate they could come back fighting in half a day unlike the other ships which took atleast a day or as long as a weeks worth of work depending on how adavanced it was.

As for pve the same principles apply. In pve missions you'll have to deal with ships that are too hard to hit and as a result consume too much of your time to kill. In such cases old players benfit from teaming up with new players who have sufficiently upgraded their friagtes to deal with the smaller ships that would give them trouble.

[Syncaine]

It's been said 1000 times, but it really is true, EVE is a different game as soon as you join a good Corp. The whole 'I can't catch up, can't PvP' thing goes out the window.

You can bring your mining frigate to a mining Op and still mine away with everyone else. I doubt anyone will mind that you are doing 1/100th of the total mining. It's not like a raid or even group, where every single spot counts and you are only as good as your weakest link.

Same with PvP, one more ship flying along is just another ship. You are not taking the spot of another pilot. And flying a low-power craft will actually make you less of a target, meaning you might actually survive the encounter. If you don't, a good Corp will pay for your losses and get you back out there asap.

All the while you are training your skills and 'closing the gap'. And once you realize exactly how the skill system is set up, you will see that getting to 90% power of most players takes far less time than you think, at least in flying the smaller stuff. Cap ships are another beast.

[Adhar]

The fundamental premise underlying your piece is that the end game (ie, 0.0) is the only fun that is to be had. That is, it's the destination that is important, and how quickly you can get there.

While the learning curve is steep (think cliff), there's plenty to do. New player? Join Eve University - lots of other folks there to join up with.

In many respects EVE is "More MMO than other MMOs", in that to really hit the big time, you need to have lots of friends. That's it, period. You will never own a solar system on your own. You will never own a Titan (the largest ship in the game) on your own. To be "successful" under the original poster's premise means that you *must* participate in something much much larger than yourself.

Ok, so you have some new friends to fly with you, but you're all new to the game and have no skills to speak of, so what? A gang of frigates (the smallest combat ship in the game, and available to the newest of new players) can still take down a much larger ship - if you have enough of them.

Regarding skilling, yes, the ability to queue up some skills in sequence would be very convenient (the metagame implications of that are best left for another post, though). It's important to note here that although EVE itself is essentially "classless" (no wizards, no re-specs, etc), there are most definitely defined professions. The key to competing against much older players is *focus* - keep the skill development of your character focused on the profession you want to get to. There are (very!) many examples of where a fairly new character has stomped all over a much older character because they had different skill profiles. (That is, the new player focused on their combat/pvp skills, and the older character was a miner, or an industrialist, explorer, specialized in a different size ship class, etc.)

What is lacking in EVE is a concise (official) set of what I'll profession recipes, for lack of a better term (there are plenty of guides written by the player base). It would be great for new players to have a reference that said, "Ok, you want to mine - here are the skills you want and the best order to train them". Rinse and repeat for other professions.

EVE certainly has its challenges, but I'll give kudos to CCP for sticking to their guns. EVE doesn't try to be all things to all people, and they're pretty up front about that. The game's not for everyone. Let me repeat that - *the designer of the game is OK with the fact that the game doesn't meet everyone's idea of fun*. In today's instant gratification culture (yeah, I'm an American, can you tell?), that can come across pretty harsh.

[Saylah]

I agree that EVE is a great game and I know they aren't looking for the masses. However, even if you want to do the slow maturity into the game by doing missions, mining, manufacturing and fly under the radar until you're ready, it's very hard to that with roving bands of extortionists. :-)

I've played EVE on a few occasions and an trying to trial again since I gave my original acct away. I'll post more on that later, but I think that CCP did realize something needed to be done to get the new player going because there are SEVERAL changes in that regard since I the last time I played. Including providing the first two ship upgrades as mission rewards. :-)

[Michael, St Erroneous]

"You don’t encounter or engage in the open warfare in the high sec zones and as a result, you miss much of the PVP excitement"

This is not true. Corps get wardecced by other corp and alliances, the resulting high-sec PvP goes on all the time.

Join EVE University (or, heck, Goonswarm) and they'll soon demonstrate just how nasty a horde of very slightly trained (hours of training and free skills) new characters can be.

Joining a good player corp is everything in EVE.

[Saylah]

I don't think my premise is that 0.0 is the end game and where you want to rush to experience. It's more that people who play EVE are highl likely to be PVP oriented players. As such, they're likely to want to get into PVP combat rather quickly in what is, a PVP game. I'm sure there are notable examples, which are probably exceptions, of noobs in lower tiered ships betting more veteran players. However, I'd have a hard time believing that to be the norm.

I'm not a big fan of the WOW Battlegrounds implementation because they collectively killed world PVP. However, had they been done differently or in moderation, they were an excellent opportunity for players to compete against players of equal level, regardless of experience. You could be a veteran playing a new character which would give you the advantage of experience and probably better gear, but we are on relatively the same scale, certainly closer than no boundaries encounters. What I'm suggesting is something along those lines. A sandbox where low level characters can duke it out and experiment.

[Dysfunktion]

I've played EVE for about a year and a half and the game is fantastic but as mentioned above, the price per month is nuts! It cost $19.99 a month or you can pay for 3 or 6 months at a time and get it chaeper. But still, as mentioned, the skill requirements to fly curtain ships is insane!
Mentioned above someone said that the longest skill they've seen to train is 5 days. My friend you might want to wet yourself and wake up....no offense intended. I worked forever and a day mining just to get a mid-sized mining barge which cost about 20mil, not too bad, however, it took 15 days (realtime, not game time) to build that skill. If I remember right, it takes around 26 days to build the skill for the large barge and even longer for the special barges. And that's not all....you have to also make sure that you have the other skills required to fly it and the skills to use the equipment that you need. All that is after I had improved memory and other attributes with bought or found plug-ins for my character. You can build skills a bit quicker using the character plug-ins....if you can afford them. One high end memory plug-in was at a cost of 15mil. and only took off about a day of skill training time. Doesn't sound so bad until you're training a skill that takes 26 days...I can only think , DAMN!
This game is brilliantly designed to keep you playing for at least a year if not longer.
About getting in with a good corp. whoever mentioned that was absolutely right. However, that's if you have skill points high enough to get into a good one. Most, not all good corps will require you to have a minimum of 2-3 mil. skill points before they'll even look at you.
Money making on EVE isn't so hard but on the flip side of the coin, it's not. To explain, it depends on what you want to buy (A big ship for example), the EVE economy is completely player ran so just about everything is so damn expensive. There's nothing worse than a new player not understanding all the skills they need to make just one ship work right and end up wasting 2 or 3 mil. on equipment they can't use because either their ship can't install it or you yourself don't have the skill to use it.
In short, you really have to do your homework putting a ship together so you don't waste money needlessly. The Barge I flew was a retriever and the combat ship I flew was a Ferox. Which brings to me a good point. Somone said above that a few frigates could take out bigger ships. I agree to a certain extent. I had two frigates, kestrel and a Heron try to take out my ferox in .6 space,
they used weapon system jammers and warp scramblers for what seemed like forever(about 20 minutes) and only did about 2% damage to my shields the whole time. My point is is that had they used better weapons they may have been able to take me down in that amount of time.
By the way, if you buy a ferox (20mil. or so), you should insure it if you're going to use it for battle and the plattinum insurance will cost you about 7mil. or so. So, what I'm saying is that if you want a battleship or something (somewhere around 60-100mil. depending on type), they you better make sure you can insure it for about 25-30mil or more for plattinum if you're going to battle.
I think one of the worse things is let's say you have a character and want to go back and make another character to start a new game. If your original character is training a skill at the time, your new character can't train one at the same time. You have to go to your previous character and abort his training before you can start training on your second character. Goofy!
I just read something above about the frigates, and my bad, yes, you are right. Frigates can certainly take out a cruiser if decked out properly, I thought you meant other ships bigger than that.
What else kinda blows is that every time you want to install a better module, you always have to sacrifice something like speed or hull stability or something. A few times I figured it wasn't even worth installing.
This game will deffinately make you think and keep thinking about what you're doing for quite some time.
As I said before, this game is fan-freakin-tastic, but the price for it is nuts. And it can easily take over your life if you let it.
The only other game that I've played that can even come mildly close to EVE is X3 Reunion.
It's not an online game...yet and the graphics on it are awesome, enough to rival EVE's. The ships on there also are awesome with awesome textures. The learning curve can take a bit but once you get used to the controls, it's pretty awesome and with the Xtended mod it's even better.
You can mine nicer looking asteroids and even build your own stations. The battle in it I believe is better than EVE's because you have full control over it. When mining, you can remote use as many ships as you can afford to collect your minerals and as many ships as you want to break up asteroids. The trading with the dynamic economy is awesome to...and yes, you can get however many ships you want to trade for you.
The X-universe is about 150 sectors (Huge) and
you have many different enemies to go up against including pirates.
I love EVE and always will but it's a waste of hard earned money to spend every month.
Note: I've played EVE Revalations but havn't played the new Trinity build.
I do keep up with the EVE universe and they did supposedly make it easier for newbies, but easier in what is the question. They also supposedly overhauled the whole game for better graphics and better ship textures. But it is still way to time consuming for my taste.
I still give EVE a 10 in their genre.