f13.net

I don't think I've ever seen a cockblock as blatant as EvE online's skill system.  It screams out "keep paying us subscriptions!".  It seems that the best way (read: most efficient) to progress your EvE character, is simply to logout.  I'm not even kidding.

If I want money faster,  I need a better ship.  If I want faction standing faster, I need a better ship.  If I want to PvP better, or be a pirate, I need a better ship.  So... million dollar question:  How do you get a better ship? 

Answer:  Wait.  I have enough money to buy lots of neat stuff, but I can't use any of it.  I need skills.  Skills develop automatically over time even when you are logged off.  It requires 0 effort.  The last skill I just picked on the way to my new ship said it would take SEVEN DAYS.  WTF?!  I need more skills after that one too.  There's nothing I can do to speed this up.  Nothing at all.  Meanwhile, everything I do in the meantime is just spinning my wheels.  I could maybe make 1-2 million ISK per hour now, with a new ship I would be making many times that.  Same situation for raising faction.

WoW's raid-lockouts are a pretty blatant cockblock themselves, but at least these happen end-game when you are running out of content anyway.  I'm just starting to play EvE and I've had my enthusiasm smashed in the face by this rigid, hard-coded, timed, cockblock.

Do they seriously expect you to pay for subscriptions for a month or two while inactive just to train your character up?  Because I'm not really willing to do that.  Tempted to cancel my 1 month sub just days after buying it... sigh.  Why do all MMO's have to fail so hard?

Seems like Eve is a good model for RMT.  Pay now for the sooper sweet content NOW!

Were it not for the fact that their player base is the hardcore contigent they've built, they may have already considered this.

Untrue.  Increasing your stats increases your training speed.  Train learning skills and train cybernetics for implants.  Yes these also take time, but the returns on that time spent are arguably better in the long run than the returns on any other skill.


Raising faction is really about the storyline missions you get every 16th regular mission.  Even with 39 million SP I still regularly run level 1 courier missions in a shuttle to grind up standing from the storylines.  You can also run COSMOS, they are much easier now than when they were first implemented.


You can set a long skill to train and cancel.  It will keep training even if you aren't paid in full.  Many, many people take every other month off while training stuff like cruiser or bs 5.


Having said that:

EVE, perhaps more than any other MMO I've played, will pay out exactly what you put in.  I play EVE as basically Progress Quest attached to an IRC client, and as a result I spend a lot of time sitting in a station with nothing to do.  Other people group up, or play the market, or get heavily invested in the political metagame (I often joke that our CEO plays Teamspeak, not EVE).

The game isn't black baby jesus, now matter how cool other players (recruiters) make it sound.

Interesting perspective.
One could say that no matter how fast you can grind mobs and XP in WoW, you still have to WAIT to get to level 27 to equip the Mauler of Eliteness.
That's playing, not waiting you say?
But I disagree. You are playing, but of all the activities the game offers you are forced to do JUST ONE to move your xp bar, fight.
While in EVE (and I dare to say in sandbox gamees), you can actually play the WHOLE game without feeling guilty because you are not moving the XP bar.

To be honest, in EVE there's lot of waiting to do. But I think that has nothing to do with what you say.



EDIT: spelling

I agree with what Falconeer points out. A lot of other MMOGs give you busy work to do to move that skill bar. Eve puts it straight out to you that moving the skill bar will take time, exponential amounts as the skill gets better.

But you don't have to do busy work to gain that skill. Some people may not like this mechanic. I do. It mimics the fact that becoming the best at anything will take increasingly more amounts of time invested, but it ditches the comparison to real life in that you don't have to play chess to become a master. Mind, that's just for the skills that allow you to "play" the game.

There are still nuances of the game that do require your play time and attention in order for you to become better at it. In any case, yes, it is no different than the level X to wear Y or skill U to use V mechanic of other games.

Your perspective is still valid, though, and is part of the reason why I don't play Eve regularly, but the older I get, the more fun Eve seems to be for me. Also, as mentioned elsewhere, if you do earn in-game currency, you can pay the game with it instead of with real currency, so a benefit to playing and earning in-game cash is that your efforts can pay for the game if you so choose.

Sounds more like he's pissed he just bought the game, bought a few hundred-million ISK (or traded a timecard for it) and is now pissed he can't do anything that a 2-week noob can't also do.

Money doesn't buy uber in Eve.. but it does keep you from being unable to do anything.

That said, 4 years into the game it DOES mean you're never going to 'catch up' to the high-SP guys.  There's no 'reset point' a la a level cap raise, or a soft gear reboot (like BC's for WoW) that lets new, good and skilled players compete on an even level with the 4 year vets.  And that's somewhat bullshit since it limits bits of what you can do.

If you don't think the XP curves in WoW or EQ2 or whatever are straight DPS vs MOB Hit Point calculations solved for time you got another think coming.

Just because it doesn't say "Level 50 requires a minimum of 7 days /played" doesn't mean that's not how it was calculated.

The difference is that in WoW or EQ2 you can trade your time (or someone else's) for advancement (i.e. that 7 days /played can be done in 9 days if you poopsock it and spend every waking minute logged in or can get some highbees to plevel you against mobs you normally couldn't touch), in Eve you might as well go to bed or go out and have a beer.

The lines might never meet but they do get close enough that to all intents and purposes they are identical. You aren't ever going to catch up with someone who's been playing longer than you and training continuously but you don't have to. You can match that player in any given situation and you can approach a similar level of competency with less time invested. Older players have a broader skill set but they can't infinitely increase their power vertically. Additionally a lot of the veteran player's training time is going to be bound up in the last level of skills which take a very long time for a marginal improvement. Large Hybrid Turrets V for example will take me 20 days for a 5% damage increase, I could get the same increase by plugging in a cheap implant instantly.

You can grind isk if you like watching a number increase. Around 5bil isk should buy you a 20mil sp char.

The OP's point of view is why I was frustrated with the game for the first couple years of love/hate relationship we had. I would pick it up and get excited due to its depth and its finer points. Then I'd get frustrated after a couple weeks because most of the stuff I wanted to do I couldn't do due to lack of skills.

Finally a while back I came back with the express interest of doing something that wasn't limited by skills. That was Trading. I made a new character, took 5 mil I had made mining from my old character, and started trading with it. There are some trade skills but they aren't as integral as other skills are to other aspects of the game. I did well and had a lot of fun doing it.

As time has gone on and I've made ISK the entire game has opened up more and more to me. If I want to do something that does require skills, I can make a new alt and train it specially for that task. I can also purchase a character with ISK that already has the requisite training. In Eve, characters are more like commodities than they are an extension of yourself. I want a cap ship pilot? I buy one. I want another trade character? I buy it. I have 10 accounts now that I fund using ISK.

I realize my path isn't available to everyone, making that kind of ISK isn't easy. But still, it shows there are ways to work around the system. It takes the realization that the system is malleable, and that it just takes creativity to make it work for you, to get past that time sink conundrum. The depth of the game makes it worth the effort. Very few other games come even close to it.

I have a firm stance against RMT so your assumption would be just that, an assumption.  I got my money from mining, shipping, ratting, and missions.  Thing is, I have nothing useful to buy because I have to wait on skills to train while I'm offline.

Used a couple implants already.  Trained all the learning skills I can up to a reasonable level (3-4) already.

Yikes...  I think if I cancel it will be for good.  This just smacks of bad design to me.

But... you don't reallly have to invest any time at all.  You just have to log on often enough to change your skill.  What you're really investing is money and I'm not interested in paying money to have a game play itself for me.

Would WoW really be better if you could sub for 2 months and then equip the mauler of elitness for absolutely no effort?  That doesn't seem rewarding, and it certainly doesn't make the mauler seem elite.

Agree completely.  I made this comparison early today as well. 


I was pretty stoked about EvE's massive market, player controlled structures, contracts, and piracy because it all sounds so cool.  The second I realized I was better off just logging off and waiting for skills to train I immediately became disenchanted.

Ah but here's the catch.  I can grind that ISK faster if I just let my skills train for 2 months and not play.  There's just no damn reason to play the game right now :(

But this kind of thinking leads us to progress-quest.  I'm playing these games so I have something to do, not so I can do something while they play themselves.

You DO realize that relatively few things require you to get 5/5? in a skill? Getting 3/5 is generally sufficient, which takes MUCH less time (that last rank takes as much as all the other ranks combined).

I expect you're wanting to fit T2 stuff of some sort, or take an advanced skill set? Current character creation tends to really max out your basic skills along a given path (soldiers tend to start with the ability to fit T2 smalls, for instance), so you're going off into the weeds on something.

What is it you want to fly that you need 5/5 of to fly?

But you aren't. You can still do all that stuff even with rubbish skills. You can have a go at being a pirate or a marketeer or whatever, you can make progress in game in areas other than skill gain. Isk you make now with your crap ship isn't wasted just because you'll be able to make it faster at a later date. That kind of logic is pretty strange because there'll always be a skill you don't have that will allow you to make money more efficiently. The game is actually balanced so that small ships have a vital role to play in PvP, meaning that you don't need to show up to the gunfight in crazy gear to take part.

If you want to log straight in as a relative noob and instantly get behind the wheel of a very powerful ship that's not going to happen and the analogue won't happen in practically any game you care to mention. The difference with EvE is that you can do the part of the game you enjoy on a smaller scale right from the start, there's no 'grind 10,000 foozles before being allowed to play in the fun part of the game'.

No no.  I didn't say EVE was Progress Quest.  I said that I play it like Progress Quest.  I've been playing for 2 1/2 years or so, mostly solo, with a huge chunk of that time spent either sitting in station or running missions in empire.

This is a silly and ultimately unrewarding way to play, but I'm lazy and as I said mostly just chat with other people who play.  There are more people than I can count who have been playing for 6 months or less that have earned far more isk than me, regularly participate in PvP, scam the populous at large, fly around scanning out the secrets of the universe, and so on.

Trouble's post probably highlights the "best" way to approach EVE.  He engaged in a method of gameplay that took no real timesink and very little isk to participate in, fields a small fleet of specialized alts without considering any one character to be "him" in the virtual universe, and plays the game essentially for free.  I'd guess he also has numerous contacts with other players, at least reads if not participates in the on- and off-site forums, and has his fingers in lots of diverse gameplay pies.

The model of EVE does not lend itself to classic Diku MMO play.  Making one character and taking them from 0 to cap by questing isn't really feasible and soloing, while possible, will either be very slow with little reward or require you to already have a huge base of resources.

If you can't find anything to do at your current skill level you just aren't trying very hard.  If you've decided the only thing you want to do that will be fun for you is owning a POS, ice mining, or flying a cap ship...

Well your SOL and let me be the first to ask:  Can I have your stuff?

Otherwise the whole point is thanks to the you can go find your own path to fun, or not.  But the options are there.  Tired of whacking foozles in WoW?  Tough fucking shit.  Because you aren't getting that DING!Gratz  Any  Other  Way.



***want to edit this in***

If you want to be a SOLOPWNMOBILE you better just quit now.

1.  You are thinking too much like a diku player.
2.  You need to have amazing /played level to attempt it
3.  Its not as fun as you are imagining it, the universe is big and mostly empty, the wolves, the sheep and everyone in between operate in packs & don't take much shit from LoneWolfSniper666 types.
4.  The combat itself is setup to prevent any one ship from being able to handle all situations.

If you are just bitching about wanting a tech2 ship NOW to run harder missions; well sounds like your just grinding the most diku part of EVE in the most diku way and you really just don't get the depth of the game at all despite professing that said depth is what drew you to it.  Which has happened to me before as well as countless others who never got into the game.

Forget the Mauler of Eliteness then and let's say you want to equip a Regular Chainmail, which is a white item that still needs level 27 to be equipped because it is Tier 3 or whatever. Same thing.
EVE tells you to wait before you can equip anything but once you are there (level 27 for WoW or Hybrid Cannons Lev 5 in EVE) you still have to earn the good stuff. Meaning money, missions, loots, loyal points and the likes.

What is it that you can't do anyway? For me, I found that what limited me from flying the ships I wanted was cash much more than skills. If there's one criticism of EVE that I understand it's complaints about the ISK grind. There's literally nothing you can do that doesn't require constant piles of money.

Aah.. I hear you man. Such is life.

No seriously. That really depressed me.  :ye_gods:

About the OP: I felt the same way about the game 4 years ago and quit. I am pissed at myself for ever looking at it that way.

Eve's skill system is great. I have made a very solid PVE alt thats like 4 miliion skill points (flys a raven with cruise missiles). She is able to kill NPCs worth 500k - 1.8mil (and higher for dreads) per kill. She can do it probably 80% as well as a 4 year vet, skill wise.


Either way, I find myself defending the game strongly because I enjoy it. I am and was the same way with UO. I must stick up for my sandbox games! If you dont enjoy it, its understandable. Its definately not for everyone.

Download this free eve simulator!

(http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/9841/eveonlinesimulatorfw7.gif)

Actually, yes, I do think WoW would be better if it were gated by time rather than /played.

In WoW, you absolutely must play X hours of content, no matter what.  I don't feel like running my character through Silithus and the Plaguelands AGAIN, but I need to in order to get the XP I need to get to Outland, which is where I want to play.  If I take a break, I'll be right where I am now, so there's no reason to stop or anything, and more importantly, no way to skip doing this tedious filler content EVER.  If I want to see Outlands, I absolutely MUST spend X amount of hours killing mobs over and over and over again.

In EVE, this isn't the case.  If I want money, I still need to do stuff, but if it's just skill points, I can do whatever I feel like, and the game isn't going to force me to go kill widgets for an hour if that's not something I want to do.  I still have to wait X amount of time before my n00b character can do what I want (just like in WoW), but I'm not forced to kill rats and pick flowers for a week if that's not something I want to do.

And I don't think it would make the Mauler of Uberness seem trivial, because you'd still have to GET the mauler.  So rather than having to spend days doing pointless repetitive sludge and then going on a difficult quest for the mauler, you'd only have to do the difficult quest.  The only change would be the removal of the retarded mechanic which says that you must have killed at least one thousand five hundred bears in order to wrap your hand around the handle.

The bad ass ship you want probably isn't as bad ass as you think it would be.

I find it kind of refreshing that Eve puts it's time sink cockblock up front and visible, instead of hiding it behind an xp bar, like WoW.

Tastes do vary, though.

What kind of /played does it take to make a viable Arena character in WoW? Isn't it disheartening to look at that number when you're level 14 and just wanted to fight the damn arena?

It's about 400 hours for 1-70, the full off-set honor pieces, and the S1 set. The thing is, on the right battlegroups I could get that in 1-2 months if I desperately wanted a new character. 1-2 months of EVE wouldn't even get you rank 4s in learning. It takes an excessive playtime sure, but I can get pretty OCD when it comes to these sort of things. I quit EVE because I wanted something NOW and the game told me to wait a couple more months.

Correct.

What the Christ? Your numbers are way, way off.

I joined on 12/8, so I'm a month and a half in. So, in other words, I did the trial and one full month gameplay afterwards. I have 2.3M SP. I've made about 250m ISK all told. My current balance is 40M, the rest is 'invested' in equipment and ships.

 I have all basic learning to 4, advanced to 3. I have decent missile skills and fly a raven, a battleship, doing L4 missions that make millions of ISK per run. That means I did the learning "grind", the battleship piloting "grind" and the faction "grind" in 1.5 months of a time fixed game.

I also took 3 days upgrading my EW skills for PvP. I also trained for a really large hauler, a mammoth, which took 4 days.

You have a problem with the game, and that's cool. It's not for everyone. But don't say that it's a gigantic time cockblock, because I was PvPing my first week and now I'm running the best solo missions there are in the game.

I like the skill system actually. Like others have said, I can still progress toward a goal without having to whack-a-mole for weeks. Yes, it can be frustrating, but so far I have only seen 1 thing I want to do that *requires* a level 5 skill. I am sure there are more, but out of the 77 skill's I have initiated (most level 1... I am starting with a very broad base till I see what I want to do), I only have 1 to level 5 (Learning) so far. I admit though, that in the, roughly, month I have been playing, I do spend a lot of my time reading up on stuff while sitting in a station, waiting to change to my next skill training.
If I were to list my biggest beef with the game so far, it is the apparent lack of documentation on things. I find myself having to rely on chat channels to learn most things, which means I am subjected to off-topic political or religious conversations in the Help channel. The various fan sites are nice, but it takes time to try and figure stuff out. Luckily, I have lot's of time!

After 1 month and a half. And you don't even needed to catass for that cause the game does it for you (the catassing part). You are free to just play!

I decided to give the 2-week-trial a try before joining a corporation.

After 1 hour I noticed that I had played this game before.

After another 30 minutes I remembered why I quit for the first time:

a) The GUI/HUD is too complex for me.
b) I don't like games with indirect character control anymore.

Good thing that I found a copy of World of Quin 2 in the local games market for 2.50 euro.
 I'm gonna give that grinder a try, heard there's pvp there. =D

Can I suggest to anyone who thinks that newer players in EVE can't achieve anything because of lack of skillpoints/isk/anything else checks out Agony Unleashed (http://www.agony-unleashed.com/)?

AU take groups of players in T1 frigates (small, cheap, easy to fly) into 0.0 and teach them gang pvp. The times I've flown in these classes we've taken out T2-fitted battleships, HAC's, Recons, etc etc, and had a blast at the same time! The minimum skillset they require for attendance takes about 3 weeks to train, tops, and most out-of-the-box new characters have most of the skills needed anyway.

It's the equivalent of taking twenty level 10 characters in WoW and kicking the cojones out of epic-geared level 70's.... superb fun :)

Learning 5, Advanced learning 4. That's what was recommended when I was playing and it did/does take roughly 2 months because I quit about 2 months in and they weren't fiished. And I wasn't saying it takes too long to do anything, I wanted something specific when I started to play and that something specific took too long to achieve for my OCD tendancies.

Just FYI, it only requires level 4 to train advanced learning skills now (not level 5 like previously) *and* most new chars start with some learning skills at level 3 or 4.

Indeed. It takes under a week to do the 'advanced learning training' - all learning to IV, adv to III. Except for charisma. That can stay at III, no adv.  Because it sucks.

They revamped character creation, characters now get about a month's worth of training out of the box.. And that's combat training if you pick the right starting template -- you can jump into cruisers on the 2nd day, if you really want to.

That's a pretty huge change. I have too many things to play to try EVE again but it really is the sort of change that would tempt me if I was bored.

Same topic was brought up on the newbie boards recently. (http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=685665)

I quit EVE in the trial period for the same reason. Can't stand the skill system.

Pay to watch a counter go up by itself. Leet.

And Bendrar is clearly Spiralyguy, it's the exact same post with the exact same points. He's arguing flawed logic based on bad analogies there too.

Threads like this are a good way to pick out which people play MMORPGs only for a sense of virtual achievement and no more.  Eve is definitely a game for the S, K, and E crowds.  At least at the beginning.

They're also an excellent way of picking out people who like to project values on others and make sweeping generalisations rather than discuss their own thoughts and feelings.

you must be some kind of acid dropping hippie

Yes.


No. 

It's what boards are for.  I post an opinion, people disagree and post counter opinions, and I post counter opinions back.  What exactly does "proejcting values on others" mean anyway?  How do you state your opinion without projecting values on others?  I said what I thought, no more, no less.  Feel free to disagree.

I don't think that's why I play MMO's.  It's really got very little to do with achievement and more to do with being able to access the games features.

In other games, through effort, you succeed and unlock features.  Be it higher levels, new skills, new tracks, new cars, new guns.  Whatever.

In EvE you unlock new features by waiting and paying their subscription.  I find this unacceptable.  The strength of your character in eve is directly related to the amount of subscription money you have paid them which is even more bogus then strength being directly related to time played.

Ok, here's my thoughts and feelings:  Most complaints about the skill system in Eve are from achievers who want DING GRATS in response to their actions.


I don't really see the difference between a Diku and Eve other than a separation of action and reward, and the flattening of character growth between people that play a little and people that play alot (which I think is pretty cool.)  Otherwise, yes, cockblocks are the essence of MMORPGs.  WoW, EQ, and Eve alike.

As opposed to non-achievers who want DING GRATS in response to doing nothing but waiting and paying a subscription?  Hmm.

The only difference between WoW and Eve as far as achievements go is that in WoW you have the option of spending gobs of your own time to gain achievements at a more rapid pace.  It's not like very casual players in WoW don't also pay a subscription and gain achievements at a slow rate.

Indeed, it seems as though Eve is the ultimate casual gamer game for this reason.

For sure.  The skill system does seem to be oriented to the guys who can only play once or twice a week instead of every night.

Me on the other hand.... I get a new game and want to play mostly every night until it's done or I'm bored.  Bored happened.

Up a few posts someone said something like "I bet the ship you want won't be that uber".  Well... i'm just trying to get a mining barge because I think thats the only way to mine ice.  Seemed to be the next logical step for a prospector.  Someone also said "level 5 skills aren't used for much".  Well... I'm waiting on Industry level 5 in order to start training astrogeology in order to fly the mining barge.  Like I said..... I can afford the barge now... I just don't have the patience to wait until this crap is trained lol.

The catasses are waiting and paying a subscription.

Gamers like me are setting our skills to train, and then going on to play the game.

It's too bad that you can't pilot that sooper spaceship as soon as you want. Kinda like me not being able to bypass all the lowbie bullshit and get into a damn raid in WoW within a reasonable (non-poopsock) amount of time.

Hmmm...

If you prefer, you can pretend that you are actually getting 1/10th the amount of ISK you are getting now, so that it would take you the same length of time to get the money as it does to get the skill points.  That would be the regular Diku method of gating content.  Don't fool yourself into thinking that Eve is more restrictive, they're just gating it differently. 

With regards to MMO's, that's nonsense.  If you don't think that MMO manufacturers aren't looking carefully at the statistical gain of XP's over time for each character class and setting the values based upon that, you're naive.  The ILLUSION is that it's through effort that you are succeeding, but the reality is that it is time that is being measured, not effort.  The only difference is that in Eve's case it's actual time subscribed, while in other MMO's it's time spent at the keyboard, logged in, killing stuff.

Gaining ISK is super grindy.
Gaining SP is super non-grindy.
You need both.  It's a Yin Yang sorta thing.

The main problem is the dull the low level game.  It still needs more spice so you aren't left looking at your skill tab wishing it was faster.

I don't get it.  My experience is not the same at all.

As of today I am 1 week in EVE.  I have accomplished:

Earned ~8 million ISK (half off of one lucky lewt).
Own a Gallente destroyer and a Gallente crusier (and have had several frigates).
Moved from flaying 1 drone in combat to using 5 drones at a time of either light or medium (depending on target)
Travelled all over the place.
Am now also capable of flying teir 3 Minmater frigates
Participated in PVP (and got thrashed)
Can now fit standard tackling rigs like warp scramblers and webber
Have moved from light guns to medium guns
Have added probably 20 skills at lvl 1 or higher
killed lots of 'rats, moved up in tiers of 'rats I fight and have even killed a 'rat cruiser.

So, no DING Gratz, but to say my character hasn't advanced is idiotic.  Is the time it takes to learn skills set?  Sure, but what skills I acquired and what order I acquired them in was my decision and I can pretty safely state that it would be amazing to see another character that after 7 days that was identical.

Say that in WoW you cannot, hmm?  </yoda>

Yeah, what Murgos said.

Eve doesn't add a cockblock, it removes a fucking array of cockblocks by dissociating the improvement track from the "What I spend all day doing" track.  What I spend all day doing might be mining Veldspar, or kamikazeing much better ships in 0-space, or jerking it in chat.  Meanwhile, the improvement track improves relentlessly.

I'd play WoW if I started with a level 70 character out of the box.

What you don't get Spiralguy when you talk about subscription money/time and that kind of stuff is that such logic is ABSOLUTELY true in WoW too. It's just that while in EVE the system assumes that everyone is grinding at max speed, and so the process can be automatized (to alleviate the burden and let players just focus on PLAYING), in WoW the only thing players can do is SLOW DOWN the max advancement and money/time function Blizzard setup for you.

And you can actually slow it down so much to the point that it stops (that happens every time you don't login or you wait for a party to form). But that won't stop them from taking your money.

While you perceive that in WoW you can speed up the XP gain by playing, actually you can only slow it down. And the better grinder you are, the less you slow it down. That's just it.

I can understand Spiralguy's complaint though. It sounds like he's entirely focused on getting into that fancy mining ship and the fact that he's not flying it and making the most money he can by mining is actually spoiling his fun. EVE is a game that needs you to be interested in more than just one thing so that you can avoid situations like that.

The same applies to all MMOs I think. The people in WoW who are happiest are the ones that like questing and raiding and crafting and PvP rather than just one thing.

This is probably the best description of Eve's skill system, and reduces complaints against it to what they actually are: complaints about either the amount of time CCP wants you to wait for skills, or the reduced ability to feel direct character advancement based on time actively invested, which is an emotional/perceptive preference.  Neither of which can be argued any more so than 'chocolate is better than vanilla' and '1 bar of chocolate per week for the next two weeks is better than 2 bars of chocolate now'.

Hurray!

You guys calling it "ding gratz" are forgetting that you max out in WoW. 2 weeks of leveling if you go at it reasonably hard and you will not get another ding gratz until the next expansion (1-2 years). If you've been playing since release on one character you would have hit 60 in roughly a month, then gone 2 years without another ding gratz, then gotten 10 on a few days, and then gone another year without ding gratz. In EvE is never ends. I don't like WoW's system better because it gives me the ding gratz, I like it because it gets you out of ding gratz mode and into the game you actually wanted to play and keeps you there. It ends, and ends very fast for an MMOG if you know what you're doing and play a lot.

This, I'd have to say, was primary among several things that put me off of EVE.  I personally like to directly influence the growth of my character.  Now while I understand that yes, in EVE I still have to make ISK and whatever other activities, my character getting more skill points and therefore being able to gain greater power to do more damage (by both leveling and gaining access to superior weaponry) and 'equipping' better equipment in general (flying better ships) is beyond my control.  I can select what to do and slightly influence how fast I do it depending on what skills I learn first.

I picked up Lineage II recently, and in less than 30 days I've gained 53, almost 54 levels (which means I'm almost at the HARD part, wee!).  Why?  Because I set my mind to it and I grind like crazy when I have to.  I haven't even done as well as I 'could' have done, as I spend a good bit of in-game time puttering around doing nothing-in-particular.  But the thing that matters to me is that I gained those levels.  Other people I know didn't.  Some people that were in their 20's are now in their 30's, some that were in their 40's are now near my level.  I'm not saying I wouldn't be able to 'catch up' in EVE (though technically, CAN you catch up?  Sounds like no.) and soon be capable of playing and contributing with long-time players, but I really wouldn't feel like I'd done anything to earn that.

I suppose it is in great part the mentality of the person.  I don't like 'luck' in games, either - I like my advancement, as well as my victory or defeat to be mostly in my hands, and anytime the game takes it out of my hands, whether for 'good' as in, you don't have to expend any actual effort to get this, or bad as in, you do your best and it's still pretty much a crapshoot whether you get what you want or not...I don't like it.  To me, the only difference between EVE's automatic advancement and, say, setting up a completely AFK bot group in Lineage II is that in one game, that's how the game is designed, and in the other it's cheating.

Calantus is also right in that in many games, the leveling ends at some point, allowing me to get on with whatever I want to play the game for, be it raiding in EverQuest or WoW or PvP in Lineage II or WoW or what have you.  Now some people are saying you're free to just play, instead of trying to advance.  There's two reasons that doesn't quite work out for me.  First off, if I have advancement that remains to be done, I want to DO it, not putter around with other things.  The other things are what I can relax and do after I have achieved my primary goals.  And usually, if I ever do achieve those primary goals, and the game doesn't raise the bar pretty soon afterward, I'm getting bored and leaving.  And second, working on improvement is just playing.  That's basically the point.  Almost everything I do in-game is toward the goal of making my character more powerful in one way or another.  Sometimes (rather rarely) that is to improve my own skills at playing the character.  Usually it's to gain better stats/equipment on the character.  And as a final nail in the coffin, unlike some people, I don't particularly enjoy the financial game, which is the main part of EVE that the player can affect.  I don't like trying to learn a market, selling, buying, and trading in order to make money.  The tendency of money to become useless in most of these games works just fine with me because I don't like to have to be concerned with making more of it.

In the end, the main problem with EVE for me is it takes out of my hands the part I actually care about in these games, and the only part it gives me to affect is the part I dislike.

I take it you don't like choices then.

Koyasha, to me you just used lots of word to state that yes you really like *DING GRATZ* and you play this kind of games for that.

Good for you, but keep in mind that advancement in EVE follow other vectors, not just UP.

This is why there is no cap.
This is why noobs can play efficiently along 4 year veterans after a few days. Something very rare in MMO-land, and sounds sweet to me.
And while you got stripped away of your satisfying LevelUP sound, in return you get a game with the most customizable character system ever and where you are asked for choices in your advancement path since day one... and forever.
While in regular MMORPG save for a few skills (like talents) you are only free to choose where to go XPing, in EVE, on top of that, you can really decide how to grow your character along so many many differet ways. It's really about choices.

I can see why you like caps and glowing milestones, and no need to say that if that is your cup of tea then great.
But in EVE you don't have and don't need caps because the game focuses on something else than just a predictable and locked set of achievements.

I think for me the EVE pool is too deep for me to swim. And doesn't give me as much satisfaction as say...uh...character PVP. I admit the massive fleet battle, hit and run tactics sounds inspiring...I sincerely doubt I can keep myself interested past a month looking at skill sheet and numbers on my 'avatar': the ship.

I'd like to be a crew in a ship though...some guy who observes and carry out orders etc. Heheh. It may sound boring but at least I don't have to worry so much about my games that they invade my RL thought patterns Yeah I got this issue of thinking too hard about games I can't focus much on my work. I had to quit some MMO I played due to that.

I kind of disagree with this, personally. 

First off, WoW's progression doesn't "end" once you hit 60, that's just where it jumps the track, to where it's out of the reach of about 90% of the playerbase.  I don't personally see much difference between complaints of "I'll never have the top end raid gear in WoW" versus "I'll never be able to fly top end superships in EVE".  If you're setting an arbitrary end point for yourself in WoW, you could do so in EVE, as well, if you wanted.  Getting to level four missions, for example, or being able to fly battleships (which are the largest ships you can pilot in Empire, I believe?) should be do-able in a few months.

Second, EVE doesn't pull the same "bait and switch" that WoW does at 70.  If you want to do something in EVE, you can probably do it (in some form or another) in a week or so.  Not that you can fly your Star Destroyer around with a week's worth of skill points, but you can fight in a frigate... and if you don't like fighting in a frigate, you probably won't like fighting in a Star Destroyer, either.  While I can understand that it feels a bit futile to be making one-tenth the amount of isk we'd be making after a week's worth of training, I strongly suspect that in a week, when setting out in our new super mining truck, we'll be looking at the Tech II super mining truck and saying "in just a month, I can fly one of those, and THEN things will be awesome."  Maybe it's just because I found mining to be boring as hell, but I really, really can't see it suddenly becoming fun just because I'm making more imaginary money by doing it.  In WoW, there's a REASON to grind to 70, if you're interested in Raiding or Arenas, because you literally can't do them before then, but this kind of situation doesn't exist in EVE, as far as I know.

Which isn't to say that EVE is the OMGAWESOME game and everyone who doesn't like it must be stupid.  If someone doesn't enjoy playing the game, then I'm not saying they should keep playing it.  But it's not like there's some promised land filled with new gameplay types and experiences never before seen, which you can't get in to if you don't have "Sensor Linking IV" or something.

2 weeks to cap out a 70 in WoW? I never hit 70, took until just before BC to hit 60 and start raiding, and I consider myself to be spending possibly too much time at my computer games.

Back in 2004 when I quit playing WoW I had 9 days of /played (as in 24*9 = 216 hours) and I was level 38.

Guess I was playing too much and grinding too less. I was my cockblock, OMG!

EDIT: But that's the point. In other MMORPG Everyone is his/her cockblock, preventing him/herself to level up at max speed. In EVE, that doesn't happen. You grow up, no matter what. Such is life (sandbox yay!). You STILL have to earn money, items, a position, credit, respect. Just because you don't have too earn your aging process it doesn't mean there is nothing to do/enjoy or you are not living life properly.

Yes, it doesn't take very long if you know wht you're doing and play a lot. I realise it takes a massive amount of time per day to pull that off, but that's the way I do it, and since I'm arguing from my point of view it's valid. 70 takes me ~7 days /played depending how much I mess about. For 2 weeks that's roughly 12 hours a day, but provided work isn't too busy I will easily pull that off (my permanent duties take 10 hours a week to complete, the rest of my time spent depends on what projects I'm on at the time).

I realise the skill system is a casual utopia as far as advancement systems are concerned, but I'm not casual and it rubs me the wrong way when I want to play it hardcore but can't really do so in the way I wanted. I don't like the economy game. Never have, never will. In WoW my priest has enchanting for the +20 healing to each of his rings and I never, ever sell enchants now that it's maxed. His other profession slot is empty because none of the other professions give enough unique benefit to be worth it, and I don't care about the trade skill itself. I don't buy/sell on the AH. When I sell something on the AH I price it to sell and wash my hands of it. I hate finding blues because now I have to sell them. Etc. So unless I can be PVPing in my own right (and not just being a tackler or part of a freighter swarm) I'm not interested in what the game was offering. Grinding money wasn't important because I had already bought everything I could use and making money itself is boring to me, and I couldn't be a force in PVP for a couple more months either. There was nothing to do that I would enjoy for too long. Yes there were options, no they weren't options for me.

Personally I'd prefer very shallow advancement. Give me 90-100% of the power a maxed character will have, then let me choose a loadout of skills/whatever at creation then if I want lateral movement have me earn those new skills/whatever through whatever mechanic so I can build up a portfolio of skills and tweak my build from that. This way you can instantly be doing what you want to be doing at or very near full capacity and advancement becomes more about fillout out your character at your leisure so you can. I don't care about the ding gratz, I got tired of leveling for its own sake a long time ago, I just want to play the endgame in the quickest calendar time possible, and currently that puts WoW above EVE.


You don't grind to progress in WoW, not if you want to do it quickly, you power quest. I'm sure that sounds anathema to you but I enjoy power gaming of that sort.

Personally I find the skill complete messages to more than adequately substitute for the 'Ding! Gratz!' of other MMOs. I don't however measure my progress purely in skill points, as said there are multiple advancement vectors - some more quantifiable than others - and very few are tied directly into your skill progress.


It's not the same thing. WoW has a content price - you cannot experience certain modes of gameplay without first 'paying' for it by engaging in a different and specific type of gameplay. You can't start a new account and see what the fuss about battlegrounds is or sightsee in raids. When you say the 'progression ends' what you mean is that the boring stuff you don't like is over and you are able to enjoy the cool stuff that you do like. As pointed out previously by multiple posters, EvE lets you try pretty much any aspect of the game right out of the tutorial, there is no 'apprenticeship' period as such.


Then try doing something else with your time in game if you feel it's a waste to be mining with a lesser ship. Learn how to PvP, try playing with the market, try out missions and build some loyalty points with a faction while learning how to deal with the belt pirates that will inevitably come to harass your cool ship when you do start your mining career. Now is the time that you want to be making all the expensive mistakes that lose you ships, not when you're sat in a valuable mining hulk trying to figure out which of the icons on your overview is shooting at you.

Spending all your time on a single activity in most games is a fast ticket to boredom or burnout. EvE is no different.


You can get 80% of the power of a veteran character in any one area very quickly (within a couple of weeks) in EvE. Most of a veteran players training time will be on diversity skills and on the last level of training which, as training times increase exponentially, means that the training time/benefit ratio goes way down past level 3 of any given skill.

EvE has no end game. There is no 'you've hit the level where you can go and play with the big kids' moment, the game play is not divided into 'stuff you need to do in order to have fun' and 'fun'. You do not need to be this tall to ride as in other games.

AKA grinding quests.

Doesn't change a thing.
And besides, quests in WoW are just themed grind.



EDIT: oh, tkinunn0 was there.

Yeah but I power quest in singleplayer RPGs because I just enjoy doing it so it's not really grindy to me (the first time, alts feel grindy though). :-P

You know, the thing that kinda bothers me with these types of discussion is, what exactly is the point?  Everyone is arguing and whining ("EVE is a cockblock!!!" is a whine, although there are arguments in the thread too) about 3-5 year old games that have not changed for those 3 and 5 years, and that have no chance in hell of changing.  I mean, they're not going to change the core of the gameplay 3 years after the game was relased, right?  So I can agree or disagree and discuss it and what's the point?  Are we just socializing here?

Hi, I'm Bob and I disagree, nice to meet you, welcome to the forums, watch out don't be labelled a "catass" by your peers here.

Is this a problem for you Bob?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!


"Oooo, i got a quest to kill 60 razorback, and the item that drops IS RANDOM and LOW rate! I love power questing.This isn't grinding at all, look at the dumb asses killing the razorbacks with NO quest! Wonder if they will let me group....?"




Sorry, you left your self open for that one.

I haven't looked recently but I think I have 55million-ish skill points.

after you get you first set of skills to level 4, you are within 5% of power parity with *anyone* regardless of their SP's... given the exingencies of engagement in eve, that just isnt a big deal. if you get to level 5, (and you will) you will be identical to them in all circumstances where the skill is applied. After that, all you can do is learn to fly a *different ship*. The very old guard in eve 90m+ SP can fly more things than I (or you can) but they can't fly them better. The marginal benefit from skill increases in EVE is tiny. Really.

For the last 2.5 years I have been desperately looking for skills to train, since I had my command ship, which had been my goal.

Eve is really about goal setting. I want a vexor, I want a apoc, I want a trillion isk. (don't recommend the latter, it's real grindy if your name isn't Khatred.)

and the nice thing about EVE is that you can have *different* goals from other people, it isn't always about max lexel with combat optimized gear. (optimization is rather situational in EVE)

The point is, the "cockblock" is VERY short term .... especially now that you can pop into a cruiser almost instantly with the right creation choices. Until you pick a new goal. Then you will be "blocked" as long as it takes you to achieve that goal, which unless you decide on something insanely grindy, won't be very long. Welcome to a realistic virtual world.

Useful, exciting combat is quickly available. Since EVE life is mostly about the corp op, even not being able to pilot the Strip Miner of (a)Steroidal Death immediately shouldn't be an issue. You might have to guard/recon someone else's strip miner of (a)Steroidal death for a little while. Believe me, it isnt less fun.

Plus you can have (and destroy/capture) player owned spacestations. Holy shit but that's cool.

I suppose one could eventually reach the point where one's only remaining goal, is "I want to pod that evil SOB repeatedly, until he loses his mind on the forums", if the political and economic metagames aren't interesting to you, but really someone having more skill points than you is so very irrelevant.

I know someone with 100m+ skillpoints. They haven't undocked in years. Literally.

EVE is the least restrictive mmog I've seen (where you are allowed to blow shit up at least). It is absurdly deep. I think it takes too much real life time to play well, but the idea that the in-game skill system is limiting is silly.


Snee

Once again, this is demonstrably untrue.

1.  Start a brand new character on a free trial.
2.  Scam, scam, scam.
3.  Scam some more.  I'm talking Phantom console level scamming here.
4.  Take your ill-gotten isk, head over to the official trade forums, and buy yourself a high SP character.
5.  (optional) Use that high SP character to regularly earn enough isk to pay your subscription fee.

I'm trying hard to think of another monthly subscription based MMO where you can go from free trial to "epic" while never paying a dime of real money to the company (hyperbole; you might have to pay a character transfer fee) or engaging in RMT, using methods that are 100% sanctioned by the publisher of the game.  Can anyone else point to one?

Lemme just say, Snee, the skill point mountain looks a LOT taller when you're at the bottom of it.  For example, I just blew eight days training Frigates V so I could open up Assault Ships and Interceptors.  And if I want Heavy Assault Ships, which I do, I need to train up Assault Ships, Cruisers, Weapon Upgrades, and Starship Command.  Once I have that, I need to get Medium Laser Turrets to 5 for the T2 lasers...

And so on and so forth.  I'm looking at at least a couple of months of skill training, just to be able to pilot a relatively small ship in the grand scheme of things.  A couple of months in most any other MMORPG gets you to max level with all the goodies.

To be fair though you're looking at some pimped options in that lot. T2 ships are leet for a reason. If you just wanted to fly something better than a frigate then a cruiser and a battlecruiser would be doable in about half that time. I'm working my way up the T2 ship tree at the moment but I went a different route through all the T1 sub-capital options first, filling out fitting and combat skills as I went.

For a relatively noob pilot with poor fitting skills, you're nearly always better off in a larger class of T1 ship than you are in a T2 vessel.

I'd second that -- I wouldn't want to fly ANY T2 ships without my support skills being really well developed. It's a good way to lose a nice T2 ship. :)

A couple of months into WoW you're level 70 depending on how often you play.  But if you want to REALLY see the good stuff you now need to grind out reputation, you need to grind out some good gear, you need to get hooked up with a guild and possibly start working on organizing raids.  The good end game guilds probably won't even give you the time of day because you are unexperianced and undergeared.  Then you probably need to start clearing the easiest raid first in order to get good enough gear to move up to a more difficult raid.  But since it's random loot tables and you probably won't have the same people in raid every time you need to clear it over and over and over again.  Oh, did I mention you're on a raid timer and can only clear the place once or twice a week?  Then after you finally get the instance down and get enough gear you can move up to the next more difficult raid and start the process all over again, but then OOOPS your two main tanks quit for a different guild and now you are set back to the previous instance for a few more weeks.  Before you know it you are playing 40 hours a week for 6 months and you STILL haven't been able to see the Black Temple.  Eventually you realize you will NEVER see that endgame content, and since the motivation to get to it was the only reason you played you get sick of the game and quit.

Meanwhile, I've been playing EvE, I've been going out every weekend and playing when I feel like and I'm still progressing at a decent pace to whatever my personal goal may be.  But with my relatively low skills I can still be of help to a fleet of veteran players and enjoy, or work to any of the game content I wish to explore.

I'll tell you a little lesson I learned over a year ago.

I was in a low sec alliance continuously harrased by jerks (by the way the jerk quotient in eve is extreamly high and they always are in their pimped out bought characters) I was in a Dominix Battleship, level 5 and  evil drone skills but because I only have 1 character I never had the income to compete with the twerps that had a 10/10 complex. So I used to throw myself infront of their gangs and die but time how long I lasted. Then one day I thought "Hey I have some cash, lets put on some t2 hardeners on the Domi and see how long they last. And I might as well train up t2 drones as well." Loaded them up and expected to last a bit longer but still die.

The result was 2 months of solid pownage where that ship lasted through several major battles and the war that destroyed that alliance and killed a metric fuckload of crap.

I was the same person. Same skills, same reactions, same setup, same tactics. The difference between me bieng a footnote to a 4 man raid gang and having them run in terror was the t2 gear.

Thats when I stopped believing eve PVP has anything to do with skill. The guys you are fighting will have faster, more maneuverable ships, be tougher and do more damage even before you factor in the multiplier of their better gear. On top of that they will have the combat implants that mean they are even more powerful in every way and the rigs that mean their ships will be even more effective. And when the ship you have worked on for two weeks is blown to dust by this guy that had 5 similar ships in his hanger and several sets of those implants just in case, simply because he has a 0.0 moon somewhere and access to 0.0 rats, he will tell you you lost because of "lack of skill." Raw skill means jack all and its the hidden little secret of eve.

Its designed so that you need several characters to be effective, because having only 1 character and gaining he income for the good shit you need to even be in the ballpark is practically impossible. Its designed so that you can buy isk from CCP  so that you don't have to grind (you trade game time cards.. but its a legal way of using real life cash to buy an advantage in the game, and lines CCPs pockets) Its a very cleverly hidden little pyramid scheme, and frankly its boring as hell once you realize that. Those that realize it buy characters to stay ahead of everyone else. If skillpoints were not a big factor, why do you think there is such a demand for high skillpoint chars? Enough said.

[edit] Oh can I say it obvious the servers can't handle the "cool" shit that they have already in the game, but they are still answering complaints about the worsening performance with "Hey look new promised feature! Shiney!"

I will say I agree somewhat....but now with invention Tech 2 mods are pretty damn cheap. Back in the day, with the T2 BPO monopolies people could charge outrageous prices. The gap has somewhat closed.

Ouch.  I was considering continuing after the trial, but that was a wakeup call.. in a game that stresses PvP, that doesn't sound like much fun..

Yeah. Tech 2 is a decent and valid complaint. It's what's kept me from PvPing more.
The counter (AFAIK) is to get a blob of tech 1 guys together, and outnumber them. Not a possibility for some people.

I still contend that Eve has a shallower power curve than most EQ clones, but it's not non-existant.

A year ago I would have thought the same thing (Folks with T2 modules pwn!) but now, with just a little money, I can have a T2 fitted BS no problem. T2 modules have dropped a *ton* in price, so anyone with just a little bit of cash can fit out T2 gear without a problem. (I think I bought a new BS and all the T2 modules I need with my plat insurance payout from my last BS - maybe a little over, but not more than 10-20mil).

They sometimes even cost *less* than the meta 4 version of the T1 module, but are normally about the same.

The only thing blocking you from using T2 may be skills (such as T2 Hybrid turrets needing small/med/large turret specialization).

It's bullshit. You'd be better off talking to some of Bat Country. Yeah, T2 makes a difference -- just like raiding gear makes a difference over quest gear in WoW. It just doesn't make NEARLY as much of a difference, and fighting is rarely 1v1 with "all else being equal". You're rarely, if ever, going to be fighting someone in the same ship with the same fittings as you -- EVE is pretty unique.

It doesn't really matter in any case, as early PvP you don't WANT T2 shit because you're going to die a lot getting the hang of it, and you lose everything when you pop. As it is, right out-of-the-box characters can and do lock down 3 year old characters in full T2 shit. Your newb ECM frig isn't going to kill his nice BS on your own, but you've taken his ass out of the fight as effectively as if you had blown him up.

And your swarm of friends WILL kick his ass and turn his T2-fitted ship into dust.

Skills are much the same way -- take Mechanics. Each rank gives you 5% increase to your armor (or is it structure? Doesn't matter). Sure, the guy that spends two weeks training it to 5/5 will have a 25% boost to his armor. You can train it for about a day and get a 15% boost to yours, and save the other two ranks for some other time. 25% is better than 15%, but it doesn't really mean much in the long term of a small gang fight.

T2 stuff works a little better, you can fit a bit more -- T2 ships are the big jump (T2 modules are generally pretty easy to get) and they cost an arm and a leg, and they're easy to swarm with T1 stuff. And the odds don't have to be that tilted -- someone in a T2 deathmachine is going to be useless if you're flying with a decent EWAR friend, even if both of you are flying T1 and fitting T1. He can't hurt what he can't shoot.

Skill matters a great deal more, as does effective tactics.

Sir T's exagerrating matters rather heavily, as best I can tell. Yeah, my Vex in full T1 is inferior to a Vex in full T2 (fuck, it's mostly the T2 drones there. T2 drones are nasty), and I'd lose 1v1. But all I need is a friend with a few smartbombs and I'd be okay. :)

Viin: Are the insurance payouts on Domi's still worth more than the hull these days? :)

Can't say for sure on Domi's, but payout on a Rokh leaves you about 60mil extra after replacing the hull. Of course, that doesn't count the actual insurance payment (40mil) so I guess it's really around 20mil extra.

The T2 thing is not such a big deal in all honesty. Firstly gear and skills nearly always lose to numbers. Secondly T2 stuff isn't hard to get and often isn't markedly better than T1 modules.

In general if there's only two versions of a thing; a T1 and T2 option (like drones for example) then the T2 version will be far and away superior. For most modules though the difference isn't so clear cut and in some cases there may be a better t1 variant (T2 modules often take more resources to fit and have higher training requirements). There is nearly always a T1 version available which has 95% of the effectiveness for a fraction of the cost.

Picking an example at random, compare this T2 Large Armour Repairer (http://www.eve-online.com/itemdatabase/EN/shipequipment/hullarmor/armorrepairsystems/3540.asp) with this T1 equivalent (http://www.eve-online.com/itemdatabase/EN/shipequipment/hullarmor/armorrepairsystems/4613.asp).
The T1 repairs 720hp every 15 seconds as opposed to the T2 units 800hp but the T2 module takes more CPU and powergrid to fit. In Sinq Laison now, the T2 repairer goes for around 2.4 million Isk while the T1 version is about 200k. 90% of the effectiveness for less than 10% of the cost with a lower fitting overhead.


Domi's cost about 50-55m each, insure for 18,750,000 and pay 62.5m so, you still lose overall.

Thats a large "accommodation" Vestment reconstructor, the "Best named" t1 amour repairer that is only avalible from battleship NPC drops. Its still fairly common whatever. The actually player built non named t1 is here http://www.eve-online.com/itemdatabase/EN/shipequipment/hullarmor/armorrepairsystems/3538.asp (http://www.eve-online.com/itemdatabase/EN/shipequipment/hullarmor/armorrepairsystems/3538.asp) which only repairs 600 units per cycle And if I used it I'd be repping 5-10% faster than you because of my skills. Thats if I don't have an implant or a rig in.

You see just focusing on t2 is not the Whole issue. There are implants that make your armour reps go faster, and rigs that make them give more as well. Its the whole multiplication effect of all that that makes things go screwy. if you have rigs and implants and the other guy doesn't then you will win. Yes there are theoretical tactics to work around that but basically 99.9% of the time all the effects of all those different things working together will make an older player unbeatable.

Oh and did I mention the gang links that people can give? the ones that make you faster and toughter just becasue billybob is sitting in your gang in a gang lead position. Add those multipliers in as well.

Its t2*implants*rigs*gang stuff*your basic skill effects.. Gear gear gear. All those effects combine. Thats one hell of a cliff to climb before a shot is even fired. And if the other guy had the income to consistently throw that stuff onto his ships and you don't then you are in for a hard time.

Anyway I take everyones point. Yes I admit I am a bit bitter, but I have seen so many people try their best, do everything right and simply die in battles that they simply had no chance at all. I found it heartbreaking.

T2 ships are not necessary or even recommended for most combats. War in EVE is often one of attrition, which usually means economic attrition, and stingy use of ships wins. Ships pop a LOT in eve. If you are pvping in perma-t2, you better have more money than you know what to do with, or an alliance with a frightening complete set of BPO's.

 I haven't played in a long time so it may be t2 is cheaper now, but that still doesn't make it a no-brainer.

This is gang warfare. whether you have slightly more grid or recharge isn't nearly as important as how well you tackle, and whether your tactics are better than the other guys.

IMHO- Once you have basic skills to 4, you're fine. Everything else is just ding! addiction or bad math and misplaced envy.

I don't know exactly how many SP you need to be combat viable, but if it's more than a couple million (with adv learning to 3 or 4 even) I would be surprised.

Learning to pilot a Titan or any T2 ship at max efficiency does take a lot longer, but its not relevant to the actual gameplay, and shouldn't be the standard of "parity".

Snee

So don't fight in battles you know you can't win. Seems easy if you ask me!  :awesome_for_real:

There's no shortage of them in the market. There are about 100 for sale in the station I'm in (Auvergne) alone. And yes, if your skills were better than mine it would do more but that's true for all modules.



Not to point too fine a point on it, but you sucked. Rigs and implants are mostly used in PvE because they are insanely expensive for the benefit they give you. Also if you get podded then they are gone forever. Rigs die automatically if your ship goes, if you lose ships regularly (which all PvP pilots do) then rigs are just a very efficient way to give money to the market.

Gang bonuses are nice to have but again, people like AU and GF prove every night that the most terrifying thing on the server is a swarm of 1.5M SP characters flying T1 frigates with some clue of how to play together. I don't care what you're in, your entire gang is going to get violated totally by that lot.

As I said, they are fairly common.

Whether I suck or not, rigs now show up on killmails. They are used all the time IN PVP, and especially by the very wealthy who can afford to piss away money on killing you. Check it out if you don't believe me. And pirate implants are used all the time. People are screaming right now because they have been banned from the latest PVP tournament and the loudest are the "elite" pvpers. The stacking issue should be a major concern for anyone.

I have tremendous respect for AU and Goonswarm, but the power gamers in eve like outbreak. play it like I just said and 90% of the time they are bloody right.

I fly with a couple of guys that run full snakes. 99% of PVPers dont run repair amount shit, or other hardwires, or any combat implants...its a fuckin myth dude. Most PVPers expect to die and be podded and they don't bother. My friend does snakes and faction fitted machariels and have a claymore in their gang for more speed. That's a BS doing over 7,000km/s...

He got caught by an interceptor/rapier at a low-sec camp. http://tri.exanimo.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=94271 - That crow coulda had 3 mil SP and owned his ass for like 3 billion isk.

Basically, saying the old guard will forever be flying around with uber faction fitted stuff and hardwires and snakes is so far off it is crazy. These guys are the exception, not the rule...and I have been doing 0.0 warfare a long time.

You are complaining about people using rigs? This is PVP. You have those slots for a reason, use them.

Tournament play is a world apart from the regular 0.0 fleet ops and gang roaming. Of course they're going to gear up and fit the expensive implants, T2 rigs and faction fittings for a sandbowl tournament. For flying around EC8-PR on a random week night? Not so much. If you're basing your assumptions about PvP imbalance on tournaments then no wonder they seem so far divorced from reality.

Well, anyone can check out my killboard (http://privateer.griefwatch.net/?p=pilot&pilot=Stone+burner) from the Privateers where I sustained a ~10:1 kill ratio with T1 only gear except T2 small/heavy drones and maybe a T2 medium armor rep once in awhile. I refuse to run T2 shit (cost) and I pretty much suck at PVP. I do have all the gang bonus skills though because they fit my play style.

Buy an account with a 70 toon.

Gay.

That the leadership stuff? I've started training that, just in case. Not really hurting me to get it to 2 or 3/5. Does it all work at once -- if you're running the gang, does everyone get the bonus from ALL your skills, or do you have to pick one?

All. You need to be in Squad Commander role.

Unless you train up wing command and shit (dont bother)

Bad shiznitz, bad. Don't buy accounts people, its a surefire way to have it taken back from you. I used to hear about it happening all the damn time.

 :rock:

I wasn't. I was just going to train them (all but the mining boost, although I should probably snag that) to maybe 3/5 and leave it. Figured if there was no one else, I'd be offering 4 to 6% boosts to armor, shield, lock range, velocity, and targetting speed and that'd be nice. And like I said -- I WILL have a carrier someday, and I might want to train more then. :)

Yes, I have Armored Warfare 4, Information Warfare 4, Leadership 5, Mining Foreman 4, Siege Warfare 4, Skirmish Warfare 4, and Wing Command 3 (w/ Charisma 18). Which is basically +8% all options and lets me give the bonuses to 3 groups of 10 people if I'm Wing Commander in the fleet. Use to be able to buff the whole gang regardless of size with it.

I could train Capital Ships and Gallente Carrier but I refuse to pay 360 million and 450 million for the two skills.


WoW costs $9.99 or some such so that leaves $30 available for a level 70 character. You're selling me yours, right?

You're way, way overstating how popular pirate implants are.  They're uncommon enough to evoke comment ("fuckin snakes") when you see them out in the wilds of Delve fighting the highest end alliance in the game.  People with billions to throw at an epeen tournament are complaining becuase they were risk free - no podding allowed on pain of disqualification - so it was worth the edge.

Certainly rigs are common in more expensive ships.  But again a few low SP buddies in their T1 scrapmobiles will pwn that T2/faction rigged out preener and cost him an arm and a leg if they know what they're doing.

I see the conversation has gone off this a bit, but bringing it back to the original topic:

What is a cockblock for some people isn't for others, but that doesn't mean that those who find it a cockblock don't have valid reasons for dislikeing it- reasons that go beyond being a catass achievement whore.

I don't think WoW is that great, but I have played it in the past on two occasions for a few months both times. In both these instances I was able to do everything I wanted to do in that time and could work towards it from the first time I played the game to the day I unsubed.

When I tried EvE I found that the skill system didn't give me that control over the game that I wanted, to play at my own pace, in spurts or with large gaps and feel like I could slow down or speed up what I was doing at the time. It wasn't about racing to the finish, it was just about never feeling like I was waiting around for something that couldn't be achieved faster by me actually going out and playing the game. The idea that I could play every day for a month or only log in and learn skills for a month and would not, in an important aspect of the game, have advanced was something I didn't like. Not because I wanted to be better than others, or level up super quick, but just because I wanted to feel like every moment I played the game I was getting something out of it that I wouldn't be getting if I wasn't playing. (I quit WoW the first time when I hit 60 and had done all the instances, I quit the second time when I was 70 and was in TK and being completely over the 'clockblock' that was other people's ineptness.)

Whenever I'm not able to do what I want to do in a game, and the limitiation is beyond my control to change, I get bored and don't want to play. Hardly unreasonable to want to have fun. Eve's skill system makes me feel this. This is a personal criticism of the game based on how I like to play. It's not to say that the skill system is the worst thing ever, just that it doesn't do it for me. I wouldn't like to play a single player game that limited me to only completeing 10% of the game in a single week either.

But that is demonstrably not a true statement.  As long as you had set a skill to train it would have advanced.  As long as you were playing you would have advanced other things such as standings with NPC faction corps or your in game wealth or your pvp kill count or etc... etc... etc...

No one is saying you can't like a game or a mechanic of a game but that is NOT what you are have been saying.  What you have been saying is that the game itself is stopping you and that is an untruth.

It basically comes down to this: Some people like cock, some don't. End of story.

Viin:  :heart:

Pro tip for the OCD gamers who can't advance fast enough: fly faction ships and fit deadspace or faction modules. You will not need much SP at all, just loads of time to make isk.

For those who say Eve blocks you from doing what you want: Eve does a poor job of showing people the path. I'm lucky enough that I stumbled into a group of guys that play late PST who enjoy the casual 0.0 NBSI. It took a lot of missteps to figure out I wanted that and to get to that place, though. In my opinion, though, you can always do want you want in Eve, even on your trial. It's just difficult to find out what you want and how to get it.

T2 modules are important for effectiveness. I always feel embarrassed when I fit named. But T2 modules are cheap, cheap, cheap.

It's pretty important to note that no matter what kind of ship upgrade you get, you'll still be doing the same stuff. Running L4s in a Raven is still running missions, just like L2s in a Caracal. Flying a command ship in a roaming gang is still being a small gang PvPer, just like the frigate tackler. Mining in a Hulk is still mining, just like mining in a Scythe. Solo ganking in an Arazu is still solo ganking, just like a solo Vexor.

When I said "an important aspect of the game" I mean "one specific aspect of the game".

I don't have control. Sure, I have control over advancing some parts of the game at will. But not over skills. And I want control over all the parts of the game I might choose to play, it doesn't matter if it's just one part of 20, if that is a part which matters to me then I want the same from it.

But EvE is less limiting from a skill perspective than almost any other MMO out there. Sure there might be a limited number of ways in which you can increase the rate of skill gain but the actual choices that you get to make are unparalleled. Whatever it is that you want to do, you can learn the skills for it. You aren't told that because your starting guy was muscley he can only learn combat skills as you are in most class or archetype based games. You plot how your character develops and only you get to make those choices, the game doesn't foist the picks of the design team on you as you advance.

It seems to me that you're seeing skill gain as the analogue of level advancement and are frustrated because you can't grind levels in EvE which isn't really a valid analogy for the reasons that have been laboured to death already in this thread. There are no 'Ding!' moments in EvE really. There are milestones you pass but you can define those yourself and decide your own route to them.

No, I understand and appreciate the difference, and the skill system itself has many things I love.

It just doesn't let me play the game the way I best like to play. Personal taste.

There is also an aspect of not wanting to play a game where I cannot catch up to people who've been playing for 4 years, even if I could get within 99% in a few months. I think that's a silly system. (Just as I think levels in DIKUs are fucking stupid too).

The only thing you cannot catch up with is some theoretical "character" that doesn't exist that you've imagined and set your sights onto.

I've played for 4 years.  Seriously, since the last days of beta.  Participated in the free-for-all-with-battleships that was the day before the opening day.  Have character with bugged employment history that doesn't show, a bug that's only possible with characters created in 2003.  What's my highest SP character?  5 million skill points (a newbie), and I'm selling it.  Highest all-time? 20 mil, sold more than a year ago.  I've taken breaks, some of them a year long.

I will grant you that there are a few who have kept and advanced their release-day characters, but most people have taken breaks or restarted or quit the game.  People do that all the time.  And so you CAN pass them.  You can be a wolf, better than the majority of the playerbase in this PVP game, quite easily.

The problem with EVE is that there is no cap, that one could theoretically progress to infinity.  So people imagine that everyone else has progressed to infinity.  In WoW the limit is L70 with full Black Temple gear, all the mounts, Exalted all factions.  You don't worry about beating others to it, you just worry about reaching it, in say 3 years (let's forget that they keep adding content and raising this limit (Tier 6, etc) before most can reach it).  In EVE, it's infinity skills with infinity cash, and we don't know what other players have, really, so I suppose we imagine that everyone's piloting all the ships from all the races, and can also do manufacturing/industry with maxed efficiencies.  That's unreachable.  Nobody has that.

I guess games need a cap of some sort, a limit to reach, an end.  Without it, some people feel like they can't catch up, even though they can. 

The reality of EVE is one thing, but I also just dislike the idea of a time based skill system.


In WoW I started TBC knowing that no one else had an advantage over me in it by dint of having played more. It was a clean slate. Also, TBC gear is a flat point, It's not just diminishing returns. You can get up to the idealised character.

I don't like the idea of a game where I have to make a significant commitment before I can do what I want to do. I don't mind a little commitment, or a learning experience, but I think that there's no good reason to limit what skills I can have (which in turn will stop me from doing some things) because I've only played for a little bit of time.

EDIT: WoW is the same - no MMO is great. But its method at least lets you speed things up for yourselves by playing more if you wish; it's at your discretion.

I think we're arguing what "significant commitment" is, then, and also the fact that WoW and EVE are different enough games that it's possible for you to be OK with the WoW commitment requirements but really not OK with the EVE ones, and me vice-versa.

Of course. I said right from the start that it was just personal taste.

I just outlined it because of the silly stuff some people were saying about how people who like EVE have better personal taste.

What the EVE defenders don't seem to have the same level of distaste for the nature of the rate of advancement.  Best way I can think of explaining it is like this - in WoW you are limited by how many hours in a day you can play the game - that is a "natural" limiter of how rapidly you can advance.  In EVE, the game decides how fast you gain skills, the player has no control over how fast you gain those skills, it's an "artificial" liimiter.

Regardless of whether or not it's a significant impediment, it is immersion breaking for some folks (such as myself).  I realize that for the amount of actual time I could spend playing the game, EVE's system would probably allow me to advance more rapidly then in WoW, but it still doesn't feel right in my head. 

Witout the illusion, these games are all just spreadsheets.

Which is freakin awesome for those of us that married time nazis that won't lets us play any games for more than a twenty minutes stretch without askin why we aren't paying attention to them. Oy.

Send that bitch back to the kitchen where she belongs.

I think Falconeer said it best about how in games like WoW or EQ2 the same limit applies but you are allowed to work at less than that optimal rate.  If you were able to play WoW or EQ2 24/7 with a perfect group there is a maximum rate at which you can earn exp, and a statistical rate at which you can earn drops (Bernoulli Distribution).  However, the less you play and the less optimal your groups are the longer it takes you to reach that max point.

Yes but you still feel you're in control. You can point out all the ways in which it's still arbitrary and whatever else, but you feel in control. Like Typhon said, illusion is everything in gaming, so the reality is meaningless if the design can smake and mirrors its way into making you feel in control.

He is just making a bullshit excuse for why he isn't playing so I snarked at him.

Nah, I don't anyway.  Other wise I would still be playing CoH.

I refuse to level anymore. Still waiting on my $30 level 70 WoW character from you.