OA Tries Eve Online

[RooksBailey]

I came across this Obsidian Ant video today where he returns to Eve Online after a multi-year absence to give the game a try again. You can see the vid here:

What caught my attention is where OA mentions that CCP reached out to him and asked him to check out the many improvements they have made, especially to the new player experience. In other words, the vultures are circling. This Odyssey fiasco has caught the attention of the competition and they are starting to use it to their advantage. There is nothing surprising about that, or inappropriate, but I think it is striking to see how quickly the fallout is spreading.

Just something I thought was interesting. For what it is worth...

 

[Old Duck]

FWIW, Eve Online is not a game I would choose to replace Elite. Don't get me wrong, it interests me, but that's because I actually like working with spreadsheets

 

[Screemonster]

the last I saw of eve online was the players lamenting that it was no longer socially acceptable to dox each other so I'll be staying away from that

 

[RooksBailey]

The worst thing to happen to Eve Online is its hardcore fandom. They remind me of the grognards I used to associate with who were always proud about how difficult it was to get into wargaming, and used to complain whenever a wargame dev came along who used graphics and UIs that were more recent than Win 3.1. If left in their hands, wargaming would have died a long time ago. The hardcore Eve players strike me as the same sort of folk.

Having said that, don't let them turn you off from trying the game if you haven't. I am an Eve dabbler - I only sub maybe three or four times a year, but I generally enjoy myself when I do. I can't recall the last time I was ganked by another player. A few months back I was killed while mining when a Triglavian cruiser and escorts popped into the asteroid belt I was in, but I should have taken more care when in a system being scouted by this AI faction. Point is, if you stay in high sec, it isn't a gankfest. especially now that sub numbers are way down.

(I just realized that in some ways Eve is having the same trouble as Elite: its grogs are abandoning ship because they are not happy at the state of the game.)

The only thing that keeps turning me off from becoming a frequent player is the boring NPC mission system. The community has complained about this a lot over the years and while CCP frequently mentions revising the system to make it more engaging, they never do. If Eve had Elite's BGS, I would probably be one of those taking out a 12-month sub.

 

[Hank]

Is there a link in the op I'm missing? I see no little bitty text at the bottom or anything. Is it a forum setting or something else that got changed when this stupid Win10 updated behind my back ?

 

[Gully Foyle]

Accept all cookies when you log in

 

[CMDR Dizzy]

I came across this Obsidian Ant video today where he returns to Eve Online after a multi-year absence to give the game a try again. You can see the vid here:

What caught my attention is where OA mentions that CCP reached out to him and asked him to check out the many improvements they have made, especially to the new player experience. In other words, the vultures are circling. This Odyssey fiasco has caught the attention of the competition and they are starting to use it to their advantage. There is nothing surprising about that, or inappropriate, but I think it is striking to see how quickly the fallout is spreading.

Just something I thought was interesting. For what it is worth...

World of Warcraft is having a mass exodus of its population and streamers currently as well. Seems to be a popular theme at the moment.

 

[Far Beyond Driven]

World of Warcraft is having a mass exodus of its population and streamers currently as well. Seems to be a popular theme at the moment.

Id be curious to hear more about that. If not wise to derail maybe if you are willing could start a new thread or pm me the deets?

 

[RooksBailey]

Is there a tl;dr ... errr tl;dw version of that? Something like a summary or conclusion? I'm so sick of videos right now, no matter if positive or not...

He just plays the game and shows the various activities you can do as a new player, from the tutorial to planetary exploitation.

Id be curious to hear more about that. If not wise to derail maybe if you are willing could start a new thread or pm me the deets?

I would be interested, too. I don't follow WoW. I did hear something about an awful trailer, though.

I think gaming is in a bad place right now. At least for titles in the hands of corporations. That is the scary thing about being a fan of a particular game these days: you are just one bad update away from a ruined hobby.

 

[StanleyDunkan]

FWIW, Eve Online is not a game I would choose to replace Elite. Don't get me wrong, it interests me, but that's because I actually like working with spreadsheets

 

[RooksBailey]

Fortunately, there is still Valheim - for me at least. Not exactly a space game, but should Frontier really go belly up, I certainly know where to go. When it comes to consistency, there's no game that can match Valheim anyway. And ED is pretty much the polar opposite of that in that respect, and not just in terms of setting. At the moment, though, I can't quite let go, there are still too many memories and dreams in ED for that...

I've heard good things about Valheim. I just have trouble getting into the fantasy genre. Playing a spaceship game on a PC sort of makes sense, but swinging a sword or axe in a low-tech medieval fantasy setting on a PC just seems like too big a non sequitur for me to get over. It's silly, I know. But that's the way my broken mind works. I really wish I could get into a fantasy game with the same passion as a sci-fi game because, frankly, I think the fantasy genre has far, far more quality titles than the space game genre. I don't know why that is. You would expect the reverse, wouldn't you? I mean, the charm for a dev of space games is that you don't need to worry about as many graphical assets as a space game, right? Just planets and stars and open space. Fantasy games need trees, and houses, castles, monsters, mountains, etc., etc., etc. Yet, fantasy devs seem to easily overcome that greater developmental burden and produce one quality fantasy game after another. Meanwhile, we spacers get to fight over two or three decent space games every decade, with even odds that two of the three will crash and burn for the dumbest of reasons. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Fortunately, I think it is premature to count ED out. Given enough time, there does not seem to be a lot wrong with the game that further development cannot fix. It may take an additional six or more months, but it should be doable. If ED goes down, it will simply be because FDev wants it to go down. Honestly, I've always had a sense that FDev was annoyed that the game succeeded as well as it did. Almost like it was meant to be a short-lived vanity project to take the company public and then was supposed to fade away but wouldn't, so they were stuck spending time and money on it that they weren't planning on doing originally. EDO would seem to suggest that they finally accepted its success...but just botched the development and launch. Time will tell.

Honestly, I wish I was more of a board game enthusiast these days. At least once you buy a game, you don't have to worry about the developer releasing a bad expansion that ruins your copy of the game. I might be turning into a Luddite. Maybe that is why I started playing chess again.

 

[Space Menace]

I play quite a few of the space games around, backed most. But I go from which I'm playing most at the time, that seems to be Empyrion at the moment.

ED, S/Engineers, Emp, NMS, SC, Eve, DU, Starbase etc all have their bad points and good. I think most of these games will be played for a few years to come, however Eve will probably last the longest, just because of the proved longevity already shown.
ED will have to be allowed as sp on our own hardware, should anything happen, ie. not needing to log in online. The game will always be played then.

Same with most of these games, we sort of lease them and when they decide to switch the power off, we'll lose the games. We need them on our machines and totally playable without a connection, just in my opinion.
Some can be played offline, but without mods.. But some of these games need mods to play them, vanilla play is poor on some of these games.

Don't count any of them out yet though, some years left I think.

 

[Fishy]

World of Warcraft is having a mass exodus of its population and streamers currently as well. Seems to be a popular theme at the moment.

I miss the good old days of mmos. Every couple months we'd have a WoW player exodus invading random game X with "OMG I'm a WoW refugee! This game is so much better" and about a month later they'd all be back to WoW.

 

[RooksBailey]

ED, S/Engineers, Emp, NMS, SC, Eve, DU, Starbase etc all have their bad points and good. I think most of these games will be played for a few years to come, however Eve will probably last the longest, just because of the proved longevity already shown.

There is a good chance that Eve will outlast them all. CCP certainly has built a solid foundation. I would only add that I think CCP, like it or not on the part of the hardcore PvP players, will eventually need to make it more inviting to solo players and PvE types. The oft-repeated apology for ganking that "Eve is PvP - like it or play another game!" is not going to sustain the title over the long term. I think we saw this when LotRO went F2P and Turbine made a decided shift away from balanced PvE and PvP to almost a PvE/solo-centric game style. That is where the money is (ie., casual players) as the dedicated corp player who is willing to sit in a fleet for hours is in the minority. Those players have sustained Eve Online in the past by generating all those war stories that play so well in the gaming mags, but now there are more space games, with most of them being solo or MP optional, which is telling. I think Eve is going to need to change in the near future.

ED will have to be allowed as sp on our own hardware, should anything happen, ie. not needing to log in online. The game will always be played then.

Same with most of these games, we sort of lease them and when they decide to switch the power off, we'll lose the games. We need them on our machines and totally playable without a connection, just in my opinion.

I agree with you. Coincidentally, "Mac" over at "Worth A Buy" has a video today where he believes the "game as a service" model will be the death of AAA gaming. Worth watching:

I find it both interesting and laudable that No Man's Sky can be played offline. I didn't even suspect that was permitted!

 

[shreddog]

I agree with you. Coincidentally, "Mac" over at "Worth A Buy" has a video today where he believes the "game as a service" model will be the death of AAA gaming. Worth watching:

Death of single player AAA games.
Indeed, just look at the The Elder Scrolls series. 10 years now, and no new single player game in sight.
The reason is most likely the relative success of Elder Scrolls Online
Releasing a new epic TES will probably draw allot of the customers from the online game, and big corporate won't allow that. Not until they have milked ESO for all they can, and the interest in it has faded. So I don't expect another TES for a long, long time.

Here's to the buffoons who kept yapping on the old TES forums about how we must have a multiplayer TES Thank you for ruining a great franchise

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

There is a good chance that Eve will outlast them all. CCP certainly has built a solid foundation. I would only add that I think CCP, like it or not on the part of the hardcore PvP players, will eventually need to make it more inviting to solo players and PvE types. The oft-repeated apology for ganking that "Eve is PvP - like it or play another game!" is not going to sustain the title over the long term....

EVE has been sustained for almost 20 years. It made its "long-term" sustainability proof of concept a long time ago already.

 

[Leadfoot]

Death of single player AAA games.
Indeed, just look at the The Elder Scrolls series. 10 years now, and no new single player game in sight.
The reason is most likely the relative success of Elder Scrolls Online
Releasing a new epic TES will probably draw allot of the customers from the online game, and big corporate won't allow that. Not until they have milked ESO for all they can, and the interest in it has faded. So I don't expect another TES for a long, long time.

Here's to the buffoons who kept yapping on the old TES forums about how we must have a multiplayer TES Thank you for ruining a great franchise

I fully agree with this point. I've played Skyrim through three times (also played Morrowind three times, even did a website about it on the third game*). Noted the spacing between Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim and figured "Yeah, a few years, if they use the same engine they used for Skyrim, we'll be just fine." And then the wait...and wait...and wait. ESO comes out and it's all multi-player. While I'd love exploring all over the place, I never know when I'll get a chance to get on the game and for how long (I even have the same issue with ED). That said, I like to be able to pause the game when necessary. Not possible with an MMO.

I keep hearing rumors about TES VI once in a while, but then nothing. And I believe you when you say it's because of ESO. Bethesda seems to have lost their way somehow, wandered off in 3 different directions, got flack for one of the Fallout games, etc.

EVE started 20 years back and players there that stay with the game now have corporations, i.e., if you're the new guy, you work within THEIR rules, not the way you would like to play. One friend I know tried it, gave up after a few weeks. If it was an off-line game with NPC's one could start from scratch and build their own empire. Unless the entire game resets to zero, no new player is going to have an easy time in that sandbox. And maybe they SHOULD reset to zero every 5 or 10 years (though I would imagine the salt there would reach critical mass in very short order if that were to be implemented).

Well, let's just hope that FD gets their act together and gets Odyssey up to a good place so we can eventually find out what's in COL 70 Sector. We know something's there. The Halloween scare we had last year was (in my opinion) a big hint in that direction.

*Link: https://eldorf.tripod.com/

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Death of single player AAA games.
Indeed, just look at the The Elder Scrolls series. 10 years now, and no new single player game in sight.
The reason is most likely the relative success of Elder Scrolls Online
Releasing a new epic TES will probably draw allot of the customers from the online game, and big corporate won't allow that. Not until they have milked ESO for all they can, and the interest in it has faded. So I don't expect another TES for a long, long time.

Here's to the buffoons who kept yapping on the old TES forums about how we must have a multiplayer TES Thank you for ruining a great franchise

MP competes less against SP. MP cannibalizes other MP titles mostly.

 

[Krash]

I fully agree with this point. I've played Skyrim through three times (also played Morrowind three times, even did a website about it on the third game*). Noted the spacing between Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim and figured "Yeah, a few years, if they use the same engine they used for Skyrim, we'll be just fine." And then the wait...and wait...and wait. ESO comes out and it's all multi-player. While I'd love exploring all over the place, I never know when I'll get a chance to get on the game and for how long (I even have the same issue with ED). That said, I like to be able to pause the game when necessary. Not possible with an MMO.

I keep hearing rumors about TES VI once in a while, but then nothing. And I believe you when you say it's because of ESO. Bethesda seems to have lost their way somehow, wandered off in 3 different directions, got flack for one of the Fallout games, etc.

EVE started 20 years back and players there that stay with the game now have corporations, i.e., if you're the new guy, you work within THEIR rules, not the way you would like to play. One friend I know tried it, gave up after a few weeks. If it was an off-line game with NPC's one could start from scratch and build their own empire. Unless the entire game resets to zero, no new player is going to have an easy time in that sandbox. And maybe they SHOULD reset to zero every 5 or 10 years (though I would imagine the salt there would reach critical mass in very short order if that were to be implemented).

Well, let's just hope that FD gets their act together and gets Odyssey up to a good place so we can eventually find out what's in COL 70 Sector. We know something's there. The Halloween scare we had last year was (in my opinion) a big hint in that direction.

*Link: https://eldorf.tripod.com/

My favorite kind of game is one I can pause due to RL unforeseen issues (i.e. the wife wants a word, now not later). Its a small problem with Elite, but a huge problem with Eve Online. Skyrim and NMS are my goto games for this reason.