DigitalCommunist
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Posted - 2006.03.06 15:57:00 -
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Good observation Mr. Thrace, although I'm not quite sure what sort of debate you are looking for. The main point you provide is not really up for debate, its pretty much fact. When a situation causes you a certain amount of frustration or suffering in the short run, its far easier to complain. Its the single greatest struggle for MMORPG developers.
Your examples are a bit narrow, so let me give you some of the biggest ones that are applicable to EVE Online:
1. Instajumps - An unintended use of a new feature (bookmarks) when they were released, circumventing the standard 15km warpin for gate travel. Logically speaking this has brought absolutely zero benefit to the game itself. It has increased lag, and restricted a lot of player interaction. It has reduced travel times and thus reduced the size of EVE, as well as made any logistics far easier.
2. Resources - Putting battleship spawns in 1.0 space, I think that says enough. People enjoyed it greatly, only seeing how it would benefit them. It went completely ignored by the masses until the inflation was clear as daylight, and your typical high-end module started going for billions. Ores used to require 15 jumps of hauling to bring to the nearest refinery. 10 if you were living in a good part of space. Shortages meant battles over resources, and death was painful due to these shortages. End result was a lot of whining, and redistrobution of resources to make life easier. Now losing and constructing a battleship is nearly irrelevant.
3. Class Based Warfare - People didn't enjoy the thought of flying a big badass ship, and not being able to annihilate waves and waves of enemy frigates. "My ship costs a hundred times more, it should be a hundred times better!" was the resounding argument. Three years into the game, and we still don't have proper balance.. resulting in things like precision missiles from your most popular race in EVE - Caldari.
4. Infrastructure - People got really excited over the idea of placing starbases, except they didn't get excited over all the work and risk involved in owning one. End result? Cheap towers, deployment in empire, and low uptime costs. Now anybody can own one, removing half the appeal of creating a permanent fixture in space. And of course theres conquerable stations. They were put into the game as a test, a pre-cursor to bigger and better things. Now they are everywhere, despite players being given the opportunity to construct their very own outposts. But that would be hard.
5. Death - Lossless clones, where they once had a small chance of losing skillpoints. Insurance increased from one week, to three weeks, to three months. Basic insurance for those flying ships which they cannot afford to lose. End result? Less subscription cancellations for CCP, more PVP, instead of meaningful PVP.
This is just five basic areas where the game has been made easier, and you compare the game we have today versus the game I played in Beta.. At first glance you go "wow! its so full of content, EVE isn't empty anymore!" and you might notice how its far less buggy, and full of exploits, but over time you'll see how much easier it is.
Within a few days you have enough to afford yourself a top of the line cruiser. Compare that to the weeks or months it took to save 14.8mil for a Thorax/Moa/Maller/Rupture. Within a few weeks you are flying a battleship, compare that to the months it took before.
There was once a great article from the "father of MMOs" whose name I can't recall which pretty much states what you are focusing on. It states that short term changes which make people happy are usually a bad idea in the long run. Repeated changes can reduce longlevity and pretty much kill high end gameplay. Where people would subscribe for a year or two, they might stick around for a few months before becoming bored. I'll try and go find it, since it applies to EVE very well (along with most MMOs I would imagine).
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