Re-installed EVE Online a couple of days. ED could learn a lot from EVE.

[Snarfbuckle]

* The player-driven.... everything.

There's much more. Again, I can appreciate that a point-and-click game like EVE Online is totally different from a first-person space flight game like ED (with actual flight mechanics!), BUT I think there's much ED can learn from EVE nonetheless. It's certainly competing for my time, right now at least!

I agree with everything except the last one.

In EVE we are immortal demigods in spaceships and the plebs are our toys. The gods rules space and the markets.

In Elite we are simply a minor faction called the Pilot Federation.

In short, we are tiny, outnumbered and hold no real power compared to the sheer NUMBER of npc's going about their daily lives transporting goods, being pirates, military or other jobs not to mention planetary corporations with VAST amount of resources and power.

It's like wanting a private trucker company of 1 person to be able to have more economic power and maneuvering than the Maersk Group. It simply wont happen.

 

[Jmanis]

Full disclaimer: I'm not a long-time EVE player, I played it casually on and off for about 6 months.
...
* Missions. Much more involved than ED. Sure, the base mechanics are similar (go there, shoot stuff, pick things up etc.) but the mission zones all look quite different, with varying mission structures, craft etc. And the NPC dialogue is more involved.

As a long-time EVE player (12+ years), I disagree about the mission system. It's more stable and reliable, but in terms of content, they're quite indistinct. The critical component is that at it's core, ED has a much better and more flexible mission system which, frankly, has been under-exploited by FD.

Purely in terms of existing game mechanics, there is nothing stopping FD developing some frankly amazing story-based mission arcs except for the fact that development seems focused purely around A) New features, and B) Constant firefighting, rather than actually developing new content using the existing frameworks.

OK, so you compare, say "Angel's Extravaganza" to a massacre mission and on the surface you might think "Oh, it's a no-brainer, EVE dumps all over FD". But AE is AE is AE. It's not dynamic at all, just the constant, same thing over, and over, and over again. After one or two runs and getting a decent mission fit you stop caring about the content and just grind grind grind... and the mission system doesn't support anything dynamic. When you accept Angel's Extravaganza, you know exactly what it's going to be. Fit explosive resist and damage, don't shoot the trigger mobs til last, throttle to zero, cycle weapons and then just cycle targets as they drop.

Meanwhile you take a mission in ED... you'll run the possibility of:
- Destination change for extra credits
- Betraying the issuing faction for a bonus
- Getting a hostile tail
- Becoming wanted for illegal crimes and dealing with those consequences
- Other wrinkles I may have forgotten.

Wrinkles simply aren't a thing in EVE's mission system. No dynamics whatsoever. Other things ED can offer are:
- Dynamic mission offers based on current station/status/system/time.
- Specific mission offers could guarantee a chain to a guaranteed follow-on that leads to a procgen series of events (except FD simply choose not to do that in the general case)
- Tipoffs leading to new places which *could* be interesting or undiscovered (except FD choose to just lead to recycled procgen stuff)

Even the exception stuff is leagues above EVE in terms of functionality and potential... EVE literally has none of this. The fact AE, which is in the context of EVE's missions one of the more complex, multi-stage (5 stages) missions, the fact it can be boiled down to such a simply activity template kinda says it all.

Thing is FD haven't developed further, complex content for their mission system yet for god-knows why though. Yes it would be effort, but it would be well spent effort.

 

[EdzUp]

you should try Freelancer

 

[Madrax573]

So much true stuff about EVE!

So much this.

When you also consider that EVE has 13 years of 'content' added and it all breaks down to this from a PVE point of view ED has it over EVE in droves. If FD develop their PVE system for as long as EVE has been running it will truly be a marvel to explore it.

 

[xondk]

Okay, first: some of you (Mark Hicks) seem to be hostile by default. Fix your behavior.

Second: is anyone REALLY against:

1.) Some sort of hotspots in the bubble (perhaps literally heat maps in the galaxy map) that show where other CMDRs are so that if you want to see others, you can do so?

I've often wondered why we do not simply have a galaxy map filter that pools traffic information, I mean traffic info is already there, and only relates to players.

2.) Additional environmental differentiation? (Consider how much people complain about every landable moon being some shade of beige or white).

Sure, caves, more active stuff, but again, really should lean towards realism, if you ask me.

3.) Better branching missions and deeper persistent NPC interaction to do a better job of NOT breaking immersion instantly?

They seem to be clearly working on that.

4.) More objects and things to interact with in space (dark matter, comets, anomalies, debris fields that actually provide some gameplay, etc etc etc)?

They are adding more slowly but surely.

5.) Exploration that actually feels at least a little bit like exploration and not jump -> honk -> scan if water/earthlike -> jump -> repeat for a month? Pretty sure the much-laughed at No Man's Sky does exploration about 20x better, though ED is a pretty low bar to clear in that respect.

I don't know, No man's sky's exploration isn't 'better' in my book, it is rather similar, and the terrains on planets are rather plain, there's a lot more 'planet' to the feel of ED's planets, then no man's sky if you ask me.

6.) NPCs that aren't simple cows to the credit slaughter? (Oh wait, the community screamed for SJA's NPCs to get lobotomized. I'm sure you're all happy playing Duck Hunt instead of a challenging space game).

Difficulty in games is always tricky, especially in an mmo style game like Elite, you want it to be challenging, but at the same time, not so much that you make it a potential barrier for some, I could imagine they are working on some sort of special mission types or such, that would clearly indicate higher difficulty, for those that want to take them, course, some would likely complain that those higher risk missions pay too much and are too difficult, so yeah, this one I don't know if really has a solution as it is based on players opinions on difficulty and that varies from player to player.

7.) The full roster of ships being unique and valuable enough to be relevant whether you've been playing for 2 hours or 2,000 hours? As opposed to half of the ships feeling like stepping stones to a bigger and better version, which have little to no value in "end game" play?

I don't know, ED's ships seem very unique, they don't have wings and tails and whatnot like planes do, or like say Star Citizen's ships, but that's all the better in my mind for it, Star Citizen ships seem impractical at best, some of the more bulky ships are better but others yeah, I don't know, some of those ships in SC seem more related to planes then space ships.

Because these are the core themes of his first 7 points, reworded. I'm pretty sure I can see the half of these on the first 2 pages of this forum in different wording. There is absolutely nothing objectionable here. Player-driven stuff is debatable, but the rest should be considered expectations. Quality of life improvements that we should hope for going forward that will make the game feel more alive with players, more immersive, better crafted.

It's like half of you specialize in not seeing the forest (the core idea behind the suggestions) for the trees (omg EVE kill it with fire). I expect better. I keep coming here and getting disappointed.

Again I don't think people are against it, but there's generally a bad track record world wide with games when they try to take an idea from another place, instead of making their own version of it.

 

[gooddoc]

I downloaded Eve about five weeks ago......approx total time played so far?.....about 30 mins.....says it all!

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

Oh look it's the perennial "Turn this game into EvE-in-a-cockpit" thread again. What a surprise.

No thanks. I want to play Elite, not EvE. If I wanted to play EvE, I'd play EvE.

If you want to play EvE, go play it. It's right there waiting for you. If you want EvE-in-a-cockpit? Why not press the makers of EvE for such, instead of constantly coming up with threads asking for Elite to be turned into not-Elite?

I'm sure Frontier will add various bits of content which might be reminiscent of EvE gameplay, but it will be content in the style and design philosophy of Elite, and as long as it doesn't turn the game into not-Elite, I'll be happy enough to keep playing.

 

[irtuk]

The EVE Scanning mechanic is, or at least was pretty good. Launching a pattern of scan probes around an area to generate intersecting spheres that converged on objects of interest. I seem to recall a recent storyline that would have kinda benefitted from some enhanced scanning mechanics.... can't recall exactly what it was .. .. umm ...

 

[Toumal]

Learning from EvE does not equal making ED the same game. There's lots of things ED would benefit from, some of which would not come with the same limitations and problems because ED is so much bigger in simulated space size.

For example, player-run organizations and player-owned stations would be perfectly doable in ED without the risk of locking down entire areas. Think powerplay, but instead of some Frontier-created character, it's a faction that players created in-game. Think being able to upload new holograms to stations, or to restyle and extend a station. To add new services, to set up mining operations and whatnot.

All those space-billionaires would finally have something to work towards.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

Learning from EvE does not equal making ED the same game. There's lots of things ED would benefit from, some of which would not come with the same limitations and problems because ED is so much bigger in simulated space size.

For example, player-run organizations and player-owned stations would be perfectly doable in ED without the risk of locking down entire areas. Think powerplay, but instead of some Frontier-created character, it's a faction that players created in-game. Think being able to upload new holograms to stations, or to restyle and extend a station. To add new services, to set up mining operations and whatnot.

All those space-billionaires would finally have something to work towards.

Yes this is precisely the thing I'm talking about. Player-owned stuff. not-Elite. That's why I call it "the perennial call". It just never goes away.

There's usually a coordinated push for this every year, various groups organise it and the threads pop up over a week or course of weeks - not saying this is one of them, but it does happen and the tactic is noticeable.

The usual response is "No.", and "Look at Frontier's various responses in the past, how they've said 'no' to player-owned starports, and how they have consistently and specifically designed the game with that 'no' in mind."

Other standard responses to "Sorry bud there are already player groups in the game and they're already organised" are "Oh okay then you can already organise yourselves outside of the game - that's great, good for you!" and "So you already utilise tools like Teamspeak, your websites/forums, and Discord! Great you already have what you need to organise and Frontier can concentrate resources on game content!".

As stated - you want Eve-in-a-cockpit, go pester the makers of EvE to make it more like Elite then.

Just a reminder of David Braben's opinion on EvE/Elite...

The Escapist: Are you interested in seeing Elite: Dangerous move more into the Eve Online space?

Braben: I don't feel like that. The way I see it, the important difference between Eve Online and us is that Eve is an executive control game and Elite: Dangerous isn't. That's a big differentiator. What I see us doing is moving more into the richness of the experience and expanding the depth of space gameplay. I think the more games we have in the science fiction genre the better, because it's a genre that has been languishing for a bit. If you think about the way people work together in squad-type games like Battlefield 4 or even in Warcraft raids, the fun of it is in playing together and actually planning a little bit ahead. I've seen it a little bit in slightly more arcadey games as well, like Battlestations Midway, where a group of four players go against another group of four players and the difference in tactics makes a big difference. It's not symmetric. Someone might go in with a big Anaconda and essentially draw the fire, but then there will be other players in more nimble ships.

 

[Jezzah]

I loved EVE played it for 9 years from release in all sorts of roles PvE, PvP, small and large, high and low security and everything in between. The impression sadly is that there is a toxic community in that game and it really isn't the case. The 99% of interactions I had in game were beyond helpful and in good spirit of the game.

They are different games but there is a lot that EVE does that would translate well into ED. Especially exploration and persistence.

 

[verminstar]

Full disclaimer: I'm not a long-time EVE player, I played it casually on and off for about 6 months. ED is obviously a completely different game, and with an arguably less toxic community. Still, even as a devout fan and premium backer of ED, it's hard to ignore some of the great features in EVE.

With that out of the way.... here is a random list of some of the things that I really like the most in EVE, and which I feel ED would do well to replicate in some way, shape or form down the road:

* That feeling of "life". The EVE universe is truly alive, and brimming with players. It's things like the local chat menu that shows me who's nearby, along with my ability to communicate real-time with any player online. It helps that players congregate and mess around by major centers such as Jita. In comparison, ED feels empty. Certainly we're restricted by the limit to some 30 odd players per instance and the scale of the universe. But chat features could help overcome that feeling of loneliness.

* COLOUR! I love the non-black look of the systems. I get that ED is more realistic, but I simply find the game "too black" and would love to see much more variety. Many will disagree with me here.

* Missions. Much more involved than ED. Sure, the base mechanics are similar (go there, shoot stuff, pick things up etc.) but the mission zones all look quite different, with varying mission structures, craft etc. And the NPC dialogue is more involved.

* Weather and random objects in space. Various missions involve flying through toxic gas clouds or debris fields. ED has the latter but on a much smaller scale, and they don't ever seem to contain anything of interest.

* Meaningful exploration. Not only does it take skill to find stuff, but it can be fun to go off in search of things. This is much more limited in ED.

* The feeling of real and imminent danger. It's palpable. Nothing like ED even in Open.

* The variety of ships and outfitting options (and the lack of engineer upgrades!). I quite like the more passive skill-based learning.

* The player-driven.... everything.

There's much more. Again, I can appreciate that a point-and-click game like EVE Online is totally different from a first-person space flight game like ED (with actual flight mechanics!), BUT I think there's much ED can learn from EVE nonetheless. It's certainly competing for my time, right now at least!

Fully agree and have said as much many times...but frontier is special apparently. Without reading the entire thread Im gonna guess the white knights are literally frothing at the mouth at the mere notion of it, but numbers speak for themselves...played eve fer 7 years, played ED fer 9 months. When ye look at those sorta numbers based on personal experience, ye start thinking about frontier being special alright...though not in the way they think ^

 

[Don Alvarez]

Did you read the OP

Nope

and do you have anything of worth to say to the points they brought up instead of stupidly starting the hate train?

Nope

In case you have somehow clicked the wrong link, this thread isn't titled "What is your opinion of EVE in general?".

Have rep.

 

[Mu77ley]

> ED could learn a lot from EVE.

It certainly could. How not to do it for starters... And I played EVE pretty solidly for almost 7 years...

 

[Princess Nia]

I downloaded Eve about five weeks ago......approx total time played so far?.....about 30 mins.....says it all!

what it says is that you only played eve for 30 minutes.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh look it's the perennial "Turn this game into EvE-in-a-cockpit" thread again. What a surprise.

No thanks. I want to play Elite, not EvE. If I wanted to play EvE, I'd play EvE.

If you want to play EvE, go play it. It's right there waiting for you. If you want EvE-in-a-cockpit? Why not press the makers of EvE for such, instead of constantly coming up with threads asking for Elite to be turned into not-Elite?

I'm sure Frontier will add various bits of content which might be reminiscent of EvE gameplay, but it will be content in the style and design philosophy of Elite, and as long as it doesn't turn the game into not-Elite, I'll be happy enough to keep playing.

And what exactly is "not-elite" why cant we have dynamic markets in Elite? Why cant we have sov and player built stations, player owned stations? In eve, mining is an actual profession that leads into industry, whats wrong with adding industry?

i dont get how these things make the game "not elite"

 

[Toumal]

Yes this is precisely the thing I'm talking about. Player-owned stuff. not-Elite. That's why I call it "the perennial call". It just never goes away.

There's usually a coordinated push for this every year, various groups organise it and the threads pop up over a week or course of weeks - not saying this is one of them, but it does happen and the tactic is noticeable.

With all due respect, but Frontier had the same opinion about anything automated (docking computer aside), any kind of third person view, and any kind of remote control. Let's take stock:

1) Limpets came in and are fully automated, after Frontier realized that forcing people to pick up every fragment manually is not practical.

2) Third person view is not only in the game, but the new camera suite was a headline feature of 2.3, after Frontier learned that having the community make beautiful videos is a major sales driver.

3) Remote control is the official way of how fighters work, and holo-me is yet another form of remote control. Frontier did a complete 180 on this.


I think nobody will argue that 1 and 2 were changes for the better, while 3 is something of a debated subject. Player owned mining equipment, player owned small bases, and the possibility for players to "run" minor and PP factions would give ED high level gameplay that longtime players can enjoy, and it is definitely possible to balance this in a way that you can't lock stations or entire areas of space.

The automatic "ED isn't EvE" response is more akin to a religious mantra. This is a game, not a faith. It can be anything the developers want it to be.



P.S.: The exact same discussion raged in the Planetside 2 forums when the PS2 diehard fans were strictly against adding spitfire turrets and orbital strikes, which were in Planetside 1. "This is PS2, not PS1, different game!" they changed.
Then they simply stopped playing and left, at which point SOE was dead and PS2 was a mere shell - Daybreak did implement spitfires and construction and orbital strikes are coming too now - now that the diehard naysayers moved on and abandoned Planetside 2, the game they fought so hard to keep from growing...

 

[thirstyfish]

what it says is that you only played eve for 30 minutes.

- - - Updated - - -



And what exactly is "not-elite" why cant we have dynamic markets in Elite? Why cant we have sov and player built stations, player owned stations? In eve, mining is an actual profession that leads into industry, whats wrong with adding industry?

i dont get how these things make the game "not elite"

In Elite, you are one pilot out of hundreds of thousands. You don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Just a drop in a bucket.

In Eve, you have players who are practically demigods.

See the difference?

Player built or owned stations aren't terribly likely because a player is just one pilot, and we aren't nigh-immortal demigods. Politics will continue pretty much without us.

No issues with making mining something viable, but it has to be done right.

And 30 minutes of play time in any game means a person doesn't like the game that much.

 

[Toumal]

In Elite, you are one pilot out of hundreds of thousands. You don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Just a drop in a bucket.

So you are afraid of players being able to influence the game? Did you know that there's a BGS and that you, the player, and a few of your friends can lock down stations?

So by your own standards, Elite isn't Elite.

 

[Princess Nia]

In Elite, you are one pilot out of hundreds of thousands. You don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Just a drop in a bucket.

In Eve, you have players who are practically demigods.

See the difference?

Player built or owned stations aren't terribly likely because a player is just one pilot, and we aren't nigh-immortal demigods. Politics will continue pretty much without us.

No issues with making mining something viable, but it has to be done right.

And 30 minutes of play time in any game means a person doesn't like the game that much.

no, because in eve, you are one pilot out of the 40 or something thousand that are online.
there's a whole different ballgame between npc's and players, they may be "classified" as the same, but they're obviously not the same. It's kind of like justifying it cause the lore says something, lore isnt a great thing to balance gameplay off of, content is. Even if we take the "real world" as an example, where you are one person out of hundreds of thousands and more, those people can start businesses, start corporations, be successful, build things. In Elite we cannot do that, we are restricted from them no matter how rich or how great our ideas are.

If someone only plays 30 minutes and doesnt like it, it just means they dont like it ya know? he said "it says something right there" but it doesnt really "say anything" on terms of the topic at hand. (basically he's saying that because he personally doesnt like eve means there should be no implementing of eve features into ED)

The thing about ED especially the community is that they think people want to make ED into eve, well if we did we'd just go play eve right?. You can kind of port over some ideas but change others. For instance in eve you can build something anywhere, in ED we can say you can only do that in anarchy systems where you can claim the sov over them. That way you still have that huge bubble of NPC space, much like hisec, where there are NPC stations where you can still do your own thing, and not be effected by anyone else.

Another example is Industry, why not import building and manufacturing materials and items into the game? How does this change the current gameplay? IT DOESNT! you can still mine and sell the ore. People are so afraid of things messing up "their way" of playing, when it just doesnt. But they are so keen on putting plugs on other people's ways to play. "I wanna play my way, so you cant play your way, even if there are ways that you can play that dont effect me, you still cant do it cause it's not in MY spirit"

 

[Katkon]

> ED could learn a lot from EVE.

It certainly could. How not to do it for starters... And I played EVE pretty solidly for almost 7 years...

They must've done something right to keep you entertained for 7 years.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh look it's the perennial "Turn this game into EvE-in-a-cockpit" thread again. What a surprise.

No thanks. I want to play Elite, not EvE. If I wanted to play EvE, I'd play EvE.

If you want to play EvE, go play it. It's right there waiting for you. If you want EvE-in-a-cockpit? Why not press the makers of EvE for such, instead of constantly coming up with threads asking for Elite to be turned into not-Elite?

I'm sure Frontier will add various bits of content which might be reminiscent of EvE gameplay, but it will be content in the style and design philosophy of Elite, and as long as it doesn't turn the game into not-Elite, I'll be happy enough to keep playing.

Easy tiger! No-one is suggesting ED become EVE. What I am suggesting is that SOME of the systems in EVE are superior to ED and should act as a source of inspiration. Frankly, the quote included from Braben talks about improving on the richness of the gaming experience. I think that's what EVE has done - over time. I'd prefer to see much more effort invested into gameplay vs. new features that don't evolve the current experience.