Cromm Cruaich
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Posted - 2007.06.11 17:41:00 -
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Edited by: Cromm Cruaich on 11/06/2007 17:42:29
Level 4 missions in high sec remains the biggest mistake CCP ever made for the quality of this game as reactive, logical, dynamic persistant world, and the best thing CCP ever did to turn EvE into a game of grind for showing off your 'skill', 'wealth', and 'ability' through simply shooting NPCs for what they drop.
No doubt a great many of you enjoy reading the forums to find other peoples setups for lvl 4 missions, logging into EvE and grinding out a fortune with zero risk to spend on toys that show off you 'prestige' and 'social/ability rank', but EvE was never about this. EvE was an entire virtual world where the new would sit in safety untill they had the ability to strike out into a PLAYER DETERMINED VIRTUAL WORLD. This is no longer the case, with 2 year mains sitting in 1.0 doing nothing but farm level 4s, destroying the flows of wealth from 0.0
EvE used to be a first person MMO RTS, but now you dont even have to mine.
I returned to EvE recently after 18 months to two years out of the game, with a new character, and what I saw when I returned turned me right off of EvE again. I had two choices in this game on how to proceed. I could strike out alone into ever deeper, more dangerous space on my own adventures seeking wealth and power, or I could follow my agent mission 'quests' and get equally rich, equally fitted out, and equally skilled up but by taking no risk and not even leaving my races high security space.
I dont know how CCP goes about changing this while ensuring they continue to attract customers, but one this is absolutely certian, EvE at its most basic core is slowly dying. Its no longer one single world, it has become two immensely shallow games.
If EvE cannot reintegrate both aspects of itself back into a single game, if it cannot reorganise generation of wealth to those that take the biggest risks, and ease those averse to risk taking into its own world, then the two aspects of EvE will destroy it. EvEs PvP will be surpassed by games more balanced, and that have even less waiting time to get back into the action, and EvEs PvE game (HAH!) is already surpassed by every other mmorpg out there.
EvE does not need to be hardcore as in difficult, it needs to be hardcore as in retaking revolutionary steps. If carebears are farming isk, they should be doing so deep in protected 0.0 space subject to taxation by player entities. If players are losing ships and purchasing insurance, they should be purchasing insurance from other players.
EvE has to be a world determined and controlled by the players. You cannot have massive centres of immense financial production and generation that are completely isolated militaristically from the rest of the game. Either reintegrate these 'carebear' missions *****s back into the player determine political and military landscape, or this game is going down the pan.
I joined a corp not long after restarting EvE, a corp of friends I met online elsewhere. I had played EvE before and wanted to get out into low sec space, risking my neck, exploring the player controlled and driven world. The other three of them ALL joined a corp that offered tips on how to efficiently farm level 4 missions.
New players to EvE are being sucked into the NPC grind of other MMORPGS. The NPC grind is not guarenteeing new players. EvE is not famous for its NPC grind, it is famous for its ruthless player determined world. This is what these new players will know about EvE.
How can these players understand that EvE is about what you do with your ship, not what ship you have, if all they see upon starting is a risk free method of getting rich?
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