Talking About Eve

I have been neglecting this blog for a few days now, but it’s not my fault. Eve is the culprit!

No, I’m not talking about a girl here. EVE Online is an MMORPG that I started to play – again – on the 16th. I’m actually not sure what attracts me to that game. But let’s start with a description!

EVE Online is an MMORPG based entirely on space ships. You don’t have some character to run around with, you’ve got vessels floating in the endless void of our universe. There are starbases where you can dock, but even then you don’t ever see more than the face of your character. And the ship, of course. I can’t say much about the graphics, because there has been an optional graphic update that my computer wouldn’t cope with. The old graphics look nice, though.

Gameplay: You start with a frigate, run a tutorial and a few missions that show you the ropes, and then you’re left alone. The learning curve in EVE is pretty steep, but luckily there are a lot of helpful people around who answer most questions, even the really dumb ones. That’s something that not every MMORPG has: a community that actually helps newbies. Most of the time. Since EVE is supposed to be one huge sandbox where you can do what you want, there are also a lot of people with… evil intentions. Pirates, scammers – you name it. Anyway, the sandbox: You can mine ore from asteroid belts, you can process that ore into minerals and use them to build ships, equipment and other stuff, you can do missions for non-player characters (the “quests, more on them later), you can transport stuff for a living, just play the market or you can engage in player-versus-player combat. This last thing is what most people see as the core of EVE.

And indeed: PvP is everywhere. Especially when you know its definition as seen by the developers: PvP is any action that puts you into a conflict with other players. Like trying to strip all the asteroids in a belt before anybody else can. Or trying to controll the prices for certain items. Well, by this definition, every online game has lots of PvP and thus I don’t think it’s well suited to define EVE Online. But combat PvP is still a very important thing: Pirates will try to attack and rob other players or maybe hold their ships to ransom. Anti-pirates either hunt the culprits actively or accept mercenary contracts. Some corporations (groups of people with one or more leaders, headquarters, maybe even a player-owned starbase) wage war on eachother. There’s always lots of fighting going on in EVE Online

By the way: Fights are more tactical than in other games because the vessels aren’t controlled by keyboard, but by giving movement commands with the mouse. Changing directions takes some time due to inertia (and sometimes lag).

The peaceful activities (mining, producing, trading, courier services) don’t need much of an explanation. Generally higher risks net higher rewards. Asteroid belts in dangerous systems provide more valuable ore than safer systems. And no matter what you do, if you leavea station you can be attacked by other players.

But PvP isn’t the only combat there is. Asteroid belts are plagued with non-player pirates and many missions include fighting computer-controlled enemies. The rest of the missions are non-combat ones. The missions, by the way, are downright boring. Most enemies won’t stand a chance against a decently equipped player and more often than not you can just warp to safety, repair everything and come back to where you left off. And since there aren’t that many missions, they get repeated quite often. That’s why a lot of players think that missions are the only risk-free way to generate money in this game.

Anyway, a very important part of any RPG is character advancement. In EVE, this is handled in a very convenient way: Trainable skills. A player sets one skill to be trained. This takes some time, but it’s done in the background and in real-time. Yes, a player can be offline without the training stopping! This is the best thing about EVE in my opinion. And there’s no end to the skills that can be trained. It would take decades for a character to learn everything there is to learn. Because of that it ist best to concentrate on those skills that are necessary for what the character should do, e.g. mining skills, production skills, science, fighting…

Some players think that they could never catch up with a player that has been training skills for years. This is not true. There are only so many skills benefit a specific activity. After a few weeks of training, a character will be just as effective at flying battleships as a player who has trained his for years. But the older character might be able to fly interceptors too, and maybe be quite proficient in mining.

Anyway, to cut this whole story short: EVE is a great game for anybody who doesn’t mind a harsh environment. Killing other players regardless of where they are and how strong they might be is a commong practice. Complaining about that is laughed upon by most and not cared about by others. Peaceful activities carry that risk, but that makes them more fun in my opinion. Otherwise they would be extremely dull. The sandbox experience is great, since one can really do anything. That’s something I miss in most RPGs where you can’t be anything else than a fighting hero. Oh, and the skill training is a great idea. Of course it’s bad news for people who want to reach the highest level there is as fast as they can, but the lack of levels should keep those away anyway.

Oh, and this is a picture of EVE’s learning curve (not by me!). Let it be a warning…