Anela Cistine
Amarr
GoonWaffe
SOLODRAKBANSOLODRAKBANSO
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Posted - 2010.05.17 17:56:00 -
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I'm not sure that the clicking is the problem. Look at nearly every game on Facebook, Puzzle Pirates, or Pogo.com -- they are all terrible click fests. Yet millions of people play them constantly. Millions. Clicking can be fun, or at least addictive. Once in the game chat for a terrible facebook game someone said, "I'm bored and addicted at the same time." 
The problem is that CCP has invented a mini-game that isn't fun to play. After trying out PI on sisi one of my corp mates said,  Quote:
here's my idea for PI:
make PI be a sweet picture of an otherworldly jungle with a bonzi buddy swinging back and forth, with you trying your best to click on it as many times as possible. each time you click on him, he drops a banana, which can be traded to the natives of that planet for npc trade goods. this would be an improvement over the current system.
Silly, but not entirely wrong. No one would be complaining about repetitive strain injuries if all the clicking was part of a fun and addictive minigame. It isn't fun though. It isn't even addictive. It is just another way to make isk so you can afford to play the fun parts of Eve.
People were looking forward to something like civ or simcity, and that definitely isn't what we have here. There is no way to form an emotional connection to your colony. Some of the descriptions indicate that there are at least a few real people down there, not just robots, but like the crew on your ship there is no way to form any kind of bond with those imaginary little people. No reason to care about them. I think that is going to be a real problem.
Why would I bother paying DUST mercenaries to defend my colony, when instead I can just demolish it myself and set up on another planet? I'll lose a few million isk in the process, but it is probably still cheaper than hiring mercs. Okay, maybe if you are stuck somewhere in highsec with a high population density and very few good planets to choose from you might try to fight it out, but if you are in the vast empty spaces of lowsec or nullsec, just move to a new planet.
Everything being remote and impersonal may be realistic for a space game, but it isn't engaging. It is probably a big part of the reason that Eve doesn't appeal to many female gamers, and I'm not sure that giving us pretty new avatars in Incarna is going to help that. People that like FPS are happy to fight just for the sake of fighting, the story is irrelevant. But Eve isn't a FPS. Giving people hooks on which they can form bonds to the environment and write their own stories would go a long way toward making Eve more fun for a larger segment of gamers.
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