What is a hard game: where you can only advance by becoming better and if you suck, you can't advance.
EVE is known to be the hardest MMO, with the infamous learning curve image:
The forums are full of tears of defeated, scammed, ganked players. EVE players who stood their ground are proud of themselves and look deep down on everyone else, especially WoW players. On the other hand many amassed large wealth and good killboard without much effort, showing it's an easy game. What is going on here?
The trick is that EVE - unlike all other non-trivial games - is not competitive. In a competitive game you can only progress by defeating other players. It just gets harder as you progress. To get to 1200 ELO from 1100, you just have to defeat 1150 average ELO players. To get to 2200 from 2100, you have to defeat players with average rating of 2150. On the other hand in EVE, you are never ever forced to or even rewarded for facing other skilled players.
You can gain ISK by very simple market moves, capitalizing on the laziness and dumbness of the masses. You can gain lot of kills by slaughtering miners or dumb players jumping into your gatecamp. Most "elite PvP" videos are about someone roaming around killing ratters (mostly bots).
The game is punishing mistakes and winning is mostly using the mistakes of others. Two players who aren't making mistakes are practically unable to hurt each other. You can't gank me, but I can't gank you either. However we can easily gank those who orbit a piece of ice while AFK. So the game is punishing bad players, while it's not at all demanding on the good players. So everyone who invested enough time to learn the game and not a total moron can "master" EVE and feel a winner. It's like swimming: if you can't swim, it's pretty harsh thing to be in the water. But if you learned it, it isn't hard.
PS: Tomorrow comes a business post. I've found an imbalance of a PvE system which allows you to gain lot of ISK with little effort, similarly to the old FW imbalance. Considering that the devs aren't famous for fast fixes, I predict some serious price changes in several game items, especially ice products and some people getting their titans in a few months. The best thing is that it's totally newbie friendly, so even few days old newbies (not few days old alts of informed players but real newbies with no meta-game or game mechanics knowledge) can use it. Of course they won't get titans with their one account, but they will have their faction battleship before they can sit in it (hopefully they don't fly it lowsec on the day they can).
EVE is known to be the hardest MMO, with the infamous learning curve image:
The forums are full of tears of defeated, scammed, ganked players. EVE players who stood their ground are proud of themselves and look deep down on everyone else, especially WoW players. On the other hand many amassed large wealth and good killboard without much effort, showing it's an easy game. What is going on here?
The trick is that EVE - unlike all other non-trivial games - is not competitive. In a competitive game you can only progress by defeating other players. It just gets harder as you progress. To get to 1200 ELO from 1100, you just have to defeat 1150 average ELO players. To get to 2200 from 2100, you have to defeat players with average rating of 2150. On the other hand in EVE, you are never ever forced to or even rewarded for facing other skilled players.
You can gain ISK by very simple market moves, capitalizing on the laziness and dumbness of the masses. You can gain lot of kills by slaughtering miners or dumb players jumping into your gatecamp. Most "elite PvP" videos are about someone roaming around killing ratters (mostly bots).
The game is punishing mistakes and winning is mostly using the mistakes of others. Two players who aren't making mistakes are practically unable to hurt each other. You can't gank me, but I can't gank you either. However we can easily gank those who orbit a piece of ice while AFK. So the game is punishing bad players, while it's not at all demanding on the good players. So everyone who invested enough time to learn the game and not a total moron can "master" EVE and feel a winner. It's like swimming: if you can't swim, it's pretty harsh thing to be in the water. But if you learned it, it isn't hard.
PS: Tomorrow comes a business post. I've found an imbalance of a PvE system which allows you to gain lot of ISK with little effort, similarly to the old FW imbalance. Considering that the devs aren't famous for fast fixes, I predict some serious price changes in several game items, especially ice products and some people getting their titans in a few months. The best thing is that it's totally newbie friendly, so even few days old newbies (not few days old alts of informed players but real newbies with no meta-game or game mechanics knowledge) can use it. Of course they won't get titans with their one account, but they will have their faction battleship before they can sit in it (hopefully they don't fly it lowsec on the day they can).
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