Nariko Tenrai
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Posted - 2004.06.02 06:59:00 -
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As I see it, EVE has two large barriers to new players. Note these are not criticisms per se, merely my own observations as someone who's played many MMPs in the last four years.
The first barrier is the learning curve. It's not a sheer cliff like other MMPs (*cough* Ryzom *cough*), but it surely isn't as easy as City of Heroes. There are several aspects to this issue.
First, the tutorial. It's been improved a great deal, but it's still possible to get lost. Second, the interface. Again, it's improved since ship, but the overall design makes the game seem like a spreadsheets over outer space wallpaper. Lots of nested tabs, neat columns, and itty bitty text. Third, controls. I realize this is a matter of opinion, but most MMP gamers - indeed, most PC gamers - are more comfortable with WASD and mouselook movement with hotkeys. EVE's default system of double left clicks and right-click nested menus is cumbersome and frustrating in comparison.
Finally, pacing. EVE is slow. Terribly slow. Painfully slow. Moving to another system takes time. Mining ore takes time. Combat at the newbie level is slow - unless you blunder into low Sec, in which case it becomes perilously fast. I'm not saying these things shouldn't take time, but I often feel that everything takes an eternity in EVE. And I like the game. Imagine the impression it leaves on a trial sub n00b who's trying to decide if he wants to pay $15 a month for it.
Overall, EVE is a game that requires a great deal of patience to play and to learn how to play. Unless a new player already has friends in game with an established corp, it's pretty unlikely that they'll stick around long enough to get to the "fun parts."
The second barrier to newbies is the world environment. EVE has a fabulously original backstory that, at present, doesn't really exist outside of stories on the web site. A player reading the peeks of the week might expect to enter a universe in which they can interact with dozens of vibrantly portrayed factions and larger than life NPC personalities, all vying against one another in overt and covert warfare around planets, moons, belts, and stations. Instead, a new player will spend most of their time moving between dozens of systems that are pretty much all identical, docking in a handful of station interiors, and interacting with agents that all say the same thing.
But more bluntly: unless you're playing the low Sec Elders' Game - which newbies most emphatically are not - EVE is a pretty boring world to play in.
There's a lot of talk about the "World of EVE" on the website. Much as I'd like to say I "feel" this World, I don't. I've played for eleven months now, and if anyone asked me to point to evidence of the World in the game, I'd have to point to the PROM and PIE. Player driven content is a noble goal, but you shouldn't rely on elder game players to immerse newbies in your fiction. EVE is the most beautiful and unique MMP I've ever played, but it is paradoxically also the one most devoid of personality.
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I have measured and described the stars, their great and countless multitude. What man has seen their revolutions and entrances? Not even the angels see their number, yet I have recorded all their names.
- The Book of the Secrets of Enoch, Jewish Pseudepigrapha
We won't talk about how many cruisers I lost this weekend, nor how many nice railguns, or T2 enhancers. We're going to skip right over that. We're going to talk about my new Raven. It is like flying a small city, and the city's only export is missiles.
- Azeraphel |