God help me. Third time's the charm?

[Big Gulp]

There's the problem.  You need to download the new EvE client.  They listened to user feedback and streamlined the UI quite a bit.  The confusion has been reduced with a new one button, one click interface.

Already own it.  And yes, it's far better than Eve.

[Murgos]

I don't know.

Don't shoot any more rats though.  You've got enough cash to outfit about 30 frigates (so you can't really lose!) so fit one like this:

Newbie MWD Merlin

Hi
    2x 125mm Railgun (Antimatter Charge S)
    2x Rocket Launcher (foxfire rockets)
Mid
    1x 1MN MicroWarp Drive
    1x Stasis Webifier
    1x Warp Disruptor
    1x Cap Recharger
Low
    2x Nanofiber Internal Structure

This will take you far. Use the Microwarpdrive to get within 10km, use the Warp Disruptor and Stasis Webifier to pin your target down, orbit at 5km, and turn off your Microwarpdrive. If you leave it on too long you will run out of power. The reason you orbit at 5km is that this will keep you out of Smartbomb range while still letting you use your Stasis Web. If you find your target is still able to hit you, you can risk the Smartbomb and try orbiting closer.

Go find a 0.4 to 0.0 sec system near you, warp to a belt and shoot someone.  Maybe it will help with all that rage.  If there are no players there, just rats, leave immediately and go somewhere else.

If you still aren't happy call CCP and ask for your money back.

What I'm trying to figure out is how this game is for anyone.  Vanguard is more deserving of your money and time than this game is.  Fuck, Horizons is more worthy.

Last night I flew a Velator (Free newbie ship) with a 150 person fleet, got titan bridged, and helped put 5 POSs into reinforced while repping some of ours deep in territory that has been BOB for so long no one ever thought it wouldn't be.

Why did I fly a velator?  Because other players hadn't yet brought the market on line.  Why were those POSs even there?  Because players put them there.  

How many games released in the last 2 years claimed to be delivering this stuff?  Big realm changing pvp with real item loss and consequences?  Where skill and organization are way more important than levels or equipment?  Where the economy is player driven and the best stuff is player made? If that doesn't make this game stand out from the pack to you then, again, this game is not for you, because that's what it does that NO OTHER game does.

Everything else someone else does better and if those other things are what makes you warm and fuzzy then go and do that!

[Jayce]

How many games released in the last 2 years claimed to be delivering this stuff?  Big realm changing pvp with real item loss and consequences?  Where skill and organization are way more important than levels or equipment?  Where the economy is player driven and the best stuff is player made? If that doesn't make this game stand out from the pack to you then, again, this game is not for you, because that's what it does that NO OTHER game does.

Everyone claims to want this stuff, but it naturally comes at a cost.  The cost is too high for some people to pay, apparently.

The thing is, Gulp, remember what I said about you having to supply the imagination and awareness of the bigger picture?  It seems to me that you aren't even putting in a lot of effort to grok what's right in front of you, the UI.  It may be imperfect, but it's not impossible.  If you aren't willing to put that effort in, there's no hope for the big picture.

You're right, though, there are a lot of games that let you get to the fun a lot faster: push butan, get pellet.  If that's your thing, maybe you should cut your losses.  You already lost $15, don't lose your sanity too.  It might come in handy.

[Predator Irl]

Oh, I'm fully behind shooting spaceships.  What I'm not fully behind is selecting a target on a list, then selecting "Orbit 1000m" and watching lights go back and forth.

In what fucked up bizarro world is that seen as entertaining?

I believe its called video games; flashing sprites, exchanging blows, sound effects etc etc.

Seriously though, what did you expect to see in a spaceship game? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Majestic herds of Wildebeests?

This isn't a troll when I say this, if you hate the game within the first few weeks, then you may as well quit now because you are only scratching the surface when it comes to the depths of confusion or frustration you are experiencing. Eve is a game for the patient and those that like to explore and learn things for themselves, its not a pick up and play for 30 mins, shoot shit and log off. If thats what you are looking for, get a PS3 or Xbox and have fun button mashing.

[Endie]

Ho hum.  This is a dumb argument, being based on a load of old bollocks.  Say what you like about Eve.  Say, if it takes your fancy, that you don't like the huge range of changes that have been made to the UI, to the tutorials, to the accessibility of 0.0 space and the like. 

Hey, shithead!  This is a forum where we bitch about games.  That's how it started, and that's how it's stayed.  You don't like it when someone calls your precious neckbeard eden out for what it is, but that's too goddamned bad.  You've spent how long now spamming the MMO boards recruiting n00bs, so I'd think you could handle a n00b telling you why your game of choice is a heaping pile.

And your "retention studies" don't mean a lot when you've got a complete freeze on recruiting.  So even if I wanted to go to 0.0 space and join a pvp corp I can't.

You know what?  I paid my $15, so fuck you.  I'm going to keep playing a bit every day and will dutifully update with a new bitch.

Calm down.  I can see that vein pulsing from here.  Honestly, you'd think someone had asked you to learn how to drag a skillbook into your hold.  People criticise Eve and you know what, often they are right.  But your spittle-flecked monitor suggests that you just wanted to be angry at something or someone, and that the best way to find a target was to troll a forum.  Not novel, but effective.

And I don't think that one thread every 15 months counts as spamming, but the day that we are guilty of that then I am sure that Schild and his rainbow alliance of coloured names will be damn quick to tell us.

[Jayce]

Oh, I'm fully behind shooting spaceships.  What I'm not fully behind is selecting a target on a list, then selecting "Orbit 1000m" and watching lights go back and forth.

Say you had warped to the belt as Murgos suggested.  You find a target.

Is he in range of your guns?  Can you get there before he gets spooked and runs?  Did you remember to warp scramble him so he can't escape? What if he tries to microwarpdrive away? Do you have a webifier? Does he have an active tank or a passive tank? Can you break it? If it's active, can you neut or nos it away? What if he shoots back? Will he break your tank first? What if you're pointed (warp scrambled?) Do you know how to break it off so you can escape?   How's your capacitor looking? If it goes, so does your tank, point, web, and (depending on race) guns.  How do you keep it from running out? At what point do you run if necessary?  Those six others who just entered local - are they the guy's friends? Should you bug out now before they get here to rescue him?  Do you know how gate and station aggression timers work?  Can you dock?  Did you set up safe spots in case you can't?  Can they probe you out?  ARE YOU FUCKED???

Is that enough entertainment?

[Quinton]

And I don't think that one thread every 15 months counts as spamming, but the day that we are guilty of that then I am sure that Schild and his rainbow alliance of coloured names will be damn quick to tell us.

Also, Schild already fills the role of "person who only visits the EVE forum to bitch about how incredibly awful he thinks EVE is", so we're good on that front too. ^^

[schild]

And I don't think that one thread every 15 months counts as spamming, but the day that we are guilty of that then I am sure that Schild and his rainbow alliance of coloured names will be damn quick to tell us.

Also, Schild already fills the role of "person who only visits the EVE forum to bitch about how incredibly awful he thinks EVE is", so we're good on that front too. ^^

I only do it when pulled in by external forces.

Edit: That is to say, I read just about every single post on f13, I visit the Eve forum because even if unpaid, it's my jobs to keep tabs on all you guys so when a mod says 'jackass is being a jackass' I can say I agree, or disagree and mete out punishment.

[Fordel]

And I don't think that one thread every 15 months counts as spamming, but the day that we are guilty of that then I am sure that Schild and his rainbow alliance of coloured names will be damn quick to tell us.

Also, Schild already fills the role of "person who only visits the EVE forum to bitch about how incredibly awful he thinks EVE is", so we're good on that front too. ^^

I thought that was much job. I'm not annoying enough apparently 

[Big Gulp]

I thought that was much job. I'm not annoying enough apparently 

I can help you out with that if you'd like.

[Fordel]

Man, I didn't even see my ridiculous word typo till you quoted me. 'Much' , where did I get that from?

Here I'll provide an argument, then you can turn it into rage-posting or whatever Gulp.

Say you had warped to the belt as Murgos suggested.  You find a target.

Is he in range of your guns?  *1v1 Pvp description...*  ARE YOU FUCKED???

Is that enough entertainment?

No?

You've described every 1v1 PvP situation that has ever existed since they invented MMO PvP. Replace Tank and Cap and Scrambling with Health, Mana and CC. It's not unique to EVE. What is unique to EVE is the detachment from your actions and the outcome. I've never played a game where I felt so removed from my 'character' (obviously a ship in this case). I'm not piloting a ship, I'm not the Captain of a ship giving order to my crew. I'm a politician sitting at a desk lightyears away, giving order to a Captain, who in turn is giving orders to his ship.



Let me pick out one line and attack it a bit unfairly. "Can they probe you out? ".

The Mechanic and Requirement of probing is very illustrative of what is 'wrong' with EVE for many of us.

Lets say some sneaky ninja bastard somehow ganked your best buddy and flew away. So you and your friends are like "Fuck that guy, were gonna get him back!" . So what do you do? You probe him out, you toss out your probe thing, and begin scanning. Then you read your probe output, which is a fancy chart/graph/table thing, and determine the most likely area he would be in, click a menu item and watch your ship hurtle to the spot. (I probably glossed over some probing details, I'm sure).

Now let's look at the same scenario in say WoW (since we are all familiar with WoW). Some ninja bastard somehow ganks your buddy and runs away into the barrens (remarkably similar to outer space!). So you and your friends once again rally up and go "We'll get that fucker!", mount up, and go looking for him. As in with their actual characters and eyeballs. Chase after him in the direction they last saw him, by actually moving in that direction. Check out likely hiding spots along the way, by physically interacting with these areas.

EVE has an abstract mechanic to replace SIGHT.


Now, RPG's are about what your character can do vs. what the player can do. They are all slaves to the Dice and Stats and etc, but EVE just seems to take it too far and at the same time not far enough. It's "interactive" enough where you must give it constant attention and input, but not interactive enough to actually simulate what your supposed to be doing. It's the worst of both a RPG/RTS and a Turn based tactical/strategy game.

If they could somehow make the actual gameplay not suck, while retaining all the crazy world building, political scheming, endless warmongering...

[Big Gulp]

Here I'll provide an argument, then you can turn it into rage-posting or whatever Gulp.

No rage-posting from me, I think you've pretty much nailed it.

Look, as much as I rage against the UI, I could get past that if there actually seemed to be a game underneath it.  The problem with EVE is that if there is a game there they do a great job of hiding it.  Too great for me to want to bother to find it.

At no time did I actually feel like I was in command of a spaceship.  I felt like I was clicking on lists with a pretty backdrop going on in the background.  Shouldn't there be some sort of visceral enjoyment from even a small scale space battle?  I never felt it.  I felt cold, alone, and frankly, bored.  And then i got angry at the makers of the game for making me feel that way and calling it a game.

[kildorn]

I feel like I'm in command of a spaceship, but I also think that the scifi romantic ideal of being a spaceship captain isn't that accurate, and this is likely very accurate as to what it would be like to command one.   

[Slayerik]

Its really really simple. If you don't want to shoot spaceships or build spaceships, or you're unwilling to grow some balls and make either of those things happen, then you're playing the wrong game.

Oh, I'm fully behind shooting spaceships.  What I'm not fully behind is selecting a target on a list, then selecting "Orbit 1000m" and watching lights go back and forth.

In what fucked up bizarro world is that seen as entertaining?

The first time you hear your scout on Vent go "They have 2 Vagas, a myrmi, a sabre, and 2 crows on gate" and you have 3 battleships and your scout. You have to quickly analyse so much shit in small gang fighting here. How many are in local on the other side (this will help to tell.... How many cloakers are waiting for us? Who do we primary? Should we run?

From playing the game and fighting other space nerds like yourself, you know that a Vaga = Vagabond : Heavy Assault Cruiser class, you know it's strengths and weaknesses. You know that the Myrmidon is a drone boat with an Armor repairing bonus so it can tank some. You know the Sabre can drop a bubble that disrupts all warping, enemy as well as friendly. The two crows are interceptors, tacklers with little DPS but fast as fuck.

You know you spent a few hours ratting for this boat you are flying. You know the guys in the Vagas did as well. They are your enemies, you been having skirmishes with them the past few weeks. The one guy you know is running low on cash from the fights cause he's in a sabre now instead of his usual Vaga.  You don't want to die. You want to wipe these guys out, and send them running, and loot their shit. You jump through on command.

The combat can be intense. I been part of an outnumbered, outgunned gang that absolutely debacled some less battlehardened noobs. People freak out. They don't know who to attack. They just saw their boy get melted under heavy focus fire. He forgot to fire up his damage control and armor hardeners, so he was a quick kill. They scramble to warp out, but have already put our warp disruptors on secondary targets (which we called out on Vent - "Point on : Endie"  " Point on Sparky"). "Fuck FUCK FUCK. I'm fucked." I gotta lock something, but what....AHHHHHHH BOOOOOOOOM ...Shit Im in a pod I need to..... BOOOM

Fuck, I hope I updated my clone.


Not fun for everyone, not even close. But small gang shit can be pretty amazing.



EDIT: Fuck, everyone beat me to it :)

[Fordel]

I feel like I'm in command of a spaceship, but I also think that the scifi romantic ideal of being a spaceship captain isn't that accurate, and this is likely very accurate as to what it would be like to command one.   

Which is the entire point.


Hardly no one would play WoW if things were 'reality' based. Oh look, I died of gangrene and/or dysentery. Joy!

[Jayce]

EVE has an abstract mechanic to replace SIGHT.

Yeah, I'll agree with this.  Where I said cerebral and imagination, you can replace with abstract.  If you're cool with that, EVE is incredibly entertaining.  If not, then you'll hate it. I have a buddy who lasted almost the same amount of time that you did.  By the time we got him from Empire to our station in 0.0, he logged off and never came back.

I seriously got chills from my own description of 1v1, let alone Slay's.  I much prefer it to the WoW model of bopping along, when in flies a hunter's arrow, stunning you so you can't move, then two-shotting you, and only thing you can do about it is go grind Arenas more for better gear.  It'd be cool if something like Fordel described ever happened, but in three years of playing on a PvP server it never happened to me.

[apocrypha]

I could get past that if there actually seemed to be a game underneath it. 

Woah ok, here's the problem. For those who are into EVE at it's purest and deepest level... it's *far* more important than a game. Skim through the war thread sometime. The shit that goes down fucks people's lives up.

As a mere game, yeah, EVE is rubbish. As a complete way of life, as a total obsession, as a never-ending source of massive drama, intrigue, elation, pain, despair and exhilaration.... it is perfect.

[schild]

The shit that goes down fucks people's lives up.

I think the meme "I too am gay" should be replaced with "Eve has made me irresponsible."

[Endie]

Seriously, read the thread that someone posted in The War Room, guys.

[Fordel]

EVE has an abstract mechanic to replace SIGHT.

Yeah, I'll agree with this.  Where I said cerebral and imagination, you can replace with abstract.  If you're cool with that, EVE is incredibly entertaining.  If not, then you'll hate it. I have a buddy who lasted almost the same amount of time that you did.  By the time we got him from Empire to our station in 0.0, he logged off and never came back.

I seriously got chills from my own description of 1v1, let alone Slay's.  I much prefer it to the WoW model of bopping along, when in flies a hunter's arrow, stunning you so you can't move, then two-shotting you, and only thing you can do about it is go grind Arenas more for better gear.  It'd be cool if something like Fordel described ever happened, but in three years of playing on a PvP server it never happened to me.

Heck, I play on a PvE server and I can find the scenarios I describe on a nearly daily basis if I go looking for them. Playing 'tag' with the Horde in capitals is always fun 

[Viin]

Maybe abstract is a good word for EVE. The important part of the game is not who's scrubbing the deck on your ship or what color your armor repairer is (though there is some of that), the important part is the abstract concepts: tactics, strategy, logistics, politics, and markets.

If you aren't prepared to play either one of those games, and maybe eventually all of them together, then you will probably be disappointed. The interesting thing about it, though, is that all of those areas are completely player driven. There is no dev content that covers those, they simply provide the ruleset and mechanics to do certain things, it's the players that actually provide meaning in each of those areas. The whole game is PVP.

This is why it's so deep and entertaining - you *know* why you are attacking Player X. Not just because he's an easy target (though that happens sometimes), it's because he's poaching in your space, or you are bitter rivals, or he called your sister fat. Either way, you have a connection. A cause. You almost never do anything 'just because you can', as it's too risky. You must make calculated risks, because you want to come out on top in the end - it *costs* you ships, modules, and time to lose.

In WoW there is nothing to lose, so you do stuff 'just because you can'. That gets old fast. There's no reasoning behind it, there's no cause. There's no gains or losses that matter. You do it because it's there and the devs said "this is the sanctioned way to pvp"... and, really, you don't have anything else to do because you can't spend 6 hrs in a raid tonight.

..

To expound on the tactics / strategy thing, I just want to make sure anyone else thinking of playing EVE, especially for PVP, understands how this works.

When you are in a small gang, is the duty of the individual fleet members to provide their part of the overall tactical capability. If you are a tackler, you need to know what your job is and how to do it, and what the fleet commander will be asking of you. So your job is fairly mechanical at this level, but as you get more comfortable you will being to see the tactical side of the role and how to better perform it.

The fleet commander's job is to provide tactics and strategy to the whole gang. He/she knows the roles and capabilities of the pilots flying with him, so his job is to make sure his objectives are meet using those resources. This may be as simple as finding bad guys in enemy territory and killing them. But along with that comes a slew of information he has to process in order to ensure the success of his operation. Without the individuals working in his fleet he has nothing to leverage against the enemy. Without the commander, the fleet has no coordination or ability to respond to a particular situation with any kind of expediency.

While larger fleets can be fun, it's the 10 man gangs that are the real blast in EVE. Everyone has a job and does it to the best of their ability, and just like a good game of football or basketball or what-have-you, if everyone plays hard everyone has fun regardless of the outcome.

/WALL_OF_TEXT 

[Quinton]

Maybe abstract is a good word for EVE. The important part of the game is not who's scrubbing the deck on your ship or what color your armor repairer is (though there is some of that), the important part is the abstract concepts: tactics, strategy, logistics, politics, and markets.

On that note, something I'd love to see in the UI is *more* tactical overlay goodies, markers, maps, and plots! 

CCP should work with somebody to sell big translucent chart displays that you can write on with grease-pencil for those of us who feel the computer room is lacking in starship bridge decorations.
I still feel like I'm lacking a good map table...

[bhodi]

CCP has this theory that if they make the UI too good, or allow outside modders to have a go at it, combat will no longer be a "level playing field". So instead they'd rather just keep everyone at minimal level.

[Endie]

Maybe abstract is a good word for EVE. The important part of the game is not who's scrubbing the deck on your ship or what color your armor repairer is (though there is some of that), the important part is the abstract concepts: tactics, strategy, logistics, politics, and markets.

On that note, something I'd love to see in the UI is *more* tactical overlay goodies, markers, maps, and plots! 

CCP should work with somebody to sell big translucent chart displays that you can write on with grease-pencil for those of us who feel the computer room is lacking in starship bridge decorations.
I still feel like I'm lacking a good map table...

Ok, geek confession here  .  I have, on my desk here at work, a printouts Delve and Querious (and Period Basis, for the future), and as Bob lose sov in systems, or as we challenge for them (that I know of) I mark them with different iconography.  It looks good: Kenny have four non-station systems in Delve lost, and I know that just under a third of their station systems are either coalition-majority or are very close to it.

Also, my Goonfleet Secret Santa last year gave me the big, A0 glossy wallmap of the south-west, and I have that on my wall, and am ready to use wipe-clean pens to mark what has fallen as we (hopefully) progress thruogh the next few weeks...

I'd quite like that sort of tool on the map: user annotation.  Maybe in the walking in stations thing.

[Goumindong]

I'd quite like that sort of tool on the map: user anotation.  Maybe in the walking in stations thing.

You have no clue how bad i want the time to write up a proposal for using the map as a corporate information system. There are so many awesome things that you could do with it that would really bring corporation/alliance information disparities up to par(I.E. big alliances have the organization and resources to do a lot of this jazz out of game, while smaller ones do not) while making the game a lot more user friendly for your every day corporation member.

[Jayce]

I have paper printouts of Ombey's maps all over my desk that read like a progression of F13's time in game: Providence, Catch, Venal, Geminate, Feythabolis, Detorid, and now Delve/Period Basis/Querious.

My long term goal is to get them all laminated with acetate like I used in the military and get some of those alcohol markers that don't wipe off unless you use rubbing alcohol, then bind them into a binder for use when FCing.

[Fordel]

To expound on the tactics / strategy thing, I just want to make sure anyone else thinking of playing EVE, especially for PVP, understands how this works.

*etc etc*

/WALL_OF_TEXT 

Not to be contradictory for the sake of it (well, actually yes, for precisely the sake of it) , but none of that is remotely unique to EVE. The same processes went into 8v8 in DaoC, goes into 5v5 in WoW, or Set-Teams in WSG/AB/EoTS. I'm sure folks who played Shadowbane can confirm the same system for small scale fighting.

PvP requires teamwork, news at 11?  

[amiable]

To expound on the tactics / strategy thing, I just want to make sure anyone else thinking of playing EVE, especially for PVP, understands how this works.

*etc etc*

/WALL_OF_TEXT 

Not to be contradictory for the sake of it (well, actually yes, for precisely the sake of it) , but none of that is remotely unique to EVE. The same processes went into 8v8 in DaoC, goes into 5v5 in WoW, or Set-Teams in WSG/AB/EoTS. I'm sure folks who played Shadowbane can confirm the same system for small scale fighting.

PvP requires teamwork, news at 11?  

Well, not really.  Last I remembered none of the games you mentioned had over a hundred clasees each with relatively unique abilities/role.  none of the games you mentioned had mechanics requiring not only an understanding of position but of the things like "transveral velocity" which affects your incoming and outgoing DPS on certain weapon systems based on the relative speed of the two parties. 

I have played in ALL of the situations you mentioned above and can honestly say none of them compare to the degree of complexity and variation that exists in EvE.  The rudimentary tactics are there I suppose but there is about an order of magnitude more complexity in EvE.

[Jayce]

^  Pretty much this, with the additional advantage that you don't have to "level up" to be able to contribute.  As lots of us here have stated before, a day 1 newbie will pretty much have character skills before they have the personal skills to contribute to combat. 

I played most of the listed games, and enjoyed some of them, but among other weaknesses, the biggest one for me was playing an entirely different game for a set amount of time to get to the shiny. And many didn't have the territorial control metagame that make it seem worthwhile to fight (for those who care about such things)

[Fordel]

Each ship is hardly comparable to a unique class. A ship's unique bonuses are much more comparable to a spec or talent tree, with the ship size being it's 'class'.

Plate wearing classes with giant 2h'ers might have different specifics, but they all generally follow the same trend of smacking you with their giant weapon. A Frigate might have a bonus to CCing or Speed, but you generally know a frigate is going to be fast and nimble and relatively lightly armed/armored compared to the larger class of ships.

Shit, if you split DaoC classes along their spec lines you easily break a hundred variations, not counting minor alterations to specs.


TransVel is just another abstract that is used to replace/mitigate the lack of things like Line of Sight and Directional/facing requirements. TransVel is the EVE version of circle strafing. (Guild Wars has a similar system for arrow projectiles, it takes into account distance, height, angle and speed. They just don't feed you literal numbers to crunch/input on the fly)

[Seanzor]

Any interest that might be generated by shit like transversal velocity (or sig. radius v. scan resolution) is immediately crushed by the fact that the only obvious strategy in blob v. blob combat is trying to get the other guys to come to you so you can plow them while they lag-load themselves into oblivion.

Now, it gets quite interesting for smaller fights, and I'm a 1v1 man myself, but, of course, 1v1 in EvE is 50 minutes of directional scanning, avoiding any fight you can't possibly win (because fights are either: same ship, I can't win, I can't lose), and finally finding and killing a dude in a fucking kestrel because those are the only people green enough to stick their necks out in <0.5.

Big Gulp: man up and do what I did after my fifth re-activation of EvE: delete your characters.  EvE is a lot more fun in one's head than it is in reality, and as time goes by since you've last played, the mirage solidifies.

(I will say that it was fun making the ~800mil credits I had when I deleted my guys.  Playing the market was a blast, and I love EvE for having an in-game currency that actually impacts gameplay, as opposed to being a just another xp bar to one's mount in WoW.  Just, when it came down to actually doing something with that 800mil, that's when the fun fell through the floor.  Also, fun to read about.)

[Thrawn]

We need a stickied thread just for people to come and post "EvE is terrible, EvE is the worst game ever, EvE compared to X is crap because of Y and Z, if you play EvE you like spreadsheets and are a Nazi, etc. etc. etc."

Would save a lot of wasted reading for the people actually playing and enjoying the game.

[Sparky]

Any interest that might be generated by shit like transversal velocity (or sig. radius v. scan resolution) is immediately crushed by the fact that the only obvious strategy in blob v. blob combat is trying to get the other guys to come to you so you can plow them while they lag-load themselves into oblivion.

PL reguarly slaughters fleets outnumbered who think like that.  There's a surprising amount of twitch in Eve if you have an FC who can think on his feet and a gang who know their roles well.

[Slayerik]

To expound on the tactics / strategy thing, I just want to make sure anyone else thinking of playing EVE, especially for PVP, understands how this works.

*etc etc*

/WALL_OF_TEXT 

Not to be contradictory for the sake of it (well, actually yes, for precisely the sake of it) , but none of that is remotely unique to EVE. The same processes went into 8v8 in DaoC, goes into 5v5 in WoW, or Set-Teams in WSG/AB/EoTS. I'm sure folks who played Shadowbane can confirm the same system for small scale fighting.

PvP requires teamwork, news at 11?  

The main thing destroying your point here is you are forgetting what really separates these games and Eve, Item loss and looting. Travel time back to a fight.

Sure, to the ADHD this is a horrible thing, but to many its good that you take out (or get taken out) of that fight for a long period.

After my deaths and podding, my heart is usually racing and I think...ok here is what I did wrong. Or well, I had no fuckin chance there. Or fuckin lag bullshit. So I go buy and fit a new ship (I actually love this part of the game, in wow I'm a hunter forever...in Eve I switch between cloaking recon ships, extremely high DPS command ships, agile HACs, remote repping logistics,  brute force battleships all depending on mood and cash flow). There really is no comparison.
 

[Fordel]

I'm not arguing for or against the Item Loss system of EVE. I already know it's not for me, I never get a'rush' from that kind of loss system, just annoyance, resignation and often a bit of guilt when I wipe the other guy out. So without the rush, the suspense or whatever you want to call it, what is left?

I'm arguing against the combat mechanics themselves. You could make it as carebear friendly as WoW, you keep everything forever and never have to worry about 'loss'. It still wouldn't change the actual mechanical game play. There are many redeemable qualities in EVE, the gameplay is not one of them.




Slay, how long did it take you train all the skills for that kind of versatility? Probably a investment in time and effort not unlike the folks who have multiple alts in a WoW style game. Probably far more investment then the versatility provided in a Guild Wars type of game. <Insert Slay's quote here with Druid Class/specs in place of EVE Ship types>



If I'm coming across as "haha your all stupid for liking EVE" I apologize, because that's not what I'm trying to do. I just want to yap about mechanics, and why so many of us find EVE's so boring and detached.