Broken Toys

Actually, I would say that CCP offers their veteran players some pretty preferential treatment in that, by the very model of how skill and asset progression works, it’s unlikely a new player would ever catch up to them.

But then, there’s also been what you’re talking about – evidence that the GMs had been doing favors.

From the perspective of a player who plays games for the reasons I do, the odds are so stacked against new players or players lacking in social connections that I find it fairly indistinguishable from a GM cheating. Whether those competing assets that crushed your fledgling space empire were generated spontaneously or earned from years of grinding, the bottom line is that they’re well out of your means to do anything about.

Put another way, it seems as though the player is irrelevant in EVE Online. It’s not who you are, it’s what you have: ships, character skills, contacts. This is where “fairness” becomes a factor towards EVE Online’s value as a game. We don’t sit down to a table of Monopoly where the banker has dealt everybody else 1,000,000 dollars (“because they earned it before you joined”) and you get 100 and honestly feel we’re being invited to play.

Personally, I’d say progression based complaints are more than just excuses. They are a fundamental problem with the design of the games.

Maybe the trouble with really identifying if “fairness” belongs in a discussion about EVE Online is that there’s really not much in the way of a working alternative in the MMORPG genre.

I just finished explaining about how there’s no way to catch up the existing veteran players in EVE Online. This is true in EVE Online more than other games because EVE Online’s progression is locked behind a RL time investment table that cannot be circumvented by simply playing more or getting help.

On top this, there is no “maximums” in EVE Online. If you’re playing World of Warcraft or you’ll eventually hit level maximum, and be pretty much equivalent to every other maximum level player with the exception of gear whose earning is largely chance-based anyway.

However, upon starting out as a level 1 player in World of Warcraft, can I compete with a maximum level player? No, any progression-based game will manifest these kinds of “in-game assets trump player skill” mechanics.

Now, here’s what I’d like to point out: Unbalanced MMORPGs doesn’t have to be that way. They usually choose to be that way because it’s easier than trying to achieve fairness between players, or else they feel it’s important to preserve the power fantasy involved in allowing players to lord these kinds of advantages over each other, but it’s not like any of this is unsolvable.

I’d give you some examples (Guild Wars tournament model to assure even teams in PvP, for example) but I’m short on time.

Eve has no skill point ceiling and a new player will never catch up with an established player but that’s not the same thing as being automatically outclassed in any fight with an older character. Skills do have a limit and training has diminishing returns, the last 20% of a skill takes 5.6 times longer to train than the first 80%. It’s easy for a new character to have most of the effectiveness of a perfectly skilled character for a given role within a relatively short time frame. It’s possible to have exactly the same effectiveness as that perfectly skilled character regardless of the ‘headstart’ that he benefits from. Saying that ‘you can never catch up’ is true only in a very technical manner that has no relevance within the context of the game.

Additionally most of the training of an older player will be in broadening his role rather than a vertical progression. He may have 10 different spaceship command skills but only one applies at a time.

Skilled players with new characters beat older characters all the time, even with worse equipment in some cases. That’s something that cannot happen in most other games.

@Geldonyetich

“Actually, I would say that CCP offers their veteran players some pretty preferential treatment in that, by the very model of how skill and asset progression works, it’s unlikely a new player would ever catch up to them.”

Unless a veteran player screwed up his own leveling by failing to level up the learning skills first (unlikely), or that he did not renew his subscription for a few months, there is no way for a new player to catch up with him. It’s also that there are so many skills to level up that there is literally no end to it, and I would expect CCP to add new skills in a future build should the end of the current skill set be in sight.

Complain as I may about WoW or PotBS, at least in those games you know you can reach the endgame in a couple of months (for levels at least; equipment is another matter). And the irony is that they sell EVE as a level-free game, whereas it just means you can’t catch up with older players.

@IainC

True, you might be able to do something decent with a relatively new character, but what I hear about is some corporations requiring a skill point threshold of more than six months’ real time, and actually dictating what you should train next. This sort of behaviour is not a case of being allowed to test the game, see all that it offers, find out if you like it and want to stay subscribed; it’s a case of being forced to wait (and it’s wait, literally, since no matter what you do in the game, your leveling won’t go faster) six months to a year just to be able to join a corp which will then allow you to see the game which you were supposed to be able to see in the first place.

Am I being bitter? Yeah, I suppose I am, if that pleases you to hear me admit it. Because EVE was the first game I played in a while that promised not to revolve around a hand-holding mindless grind for levels; what I got instead was players themselves drawing lines, not to mention the most arrogant community I’ve ever experienced (one whiff at the official forums and I’d had enough of those) and a grind for money just to afford training the skills needed. Despite its skill-training system, it’s definitely not a casual-friendly game, and that annoyed me most of all. On the one hand, I’m supposed to be dedicated to EVE; on the other, being dedicated to it changes nothing, since I won’t level up faster if I log in and do stuff twenty hours a day.

@Owain

“It’s not that you’ve sat down at the Monopoly table, and the banker has given everyone else $1,000,000 while you just get $100. You’re coming into a game that was started a week ago, and all the properties have been acquired, and you are whining that you don’t own Boardwalk. Damn, I hate whiners!”

Then you may want to ask yourself: What is the point, for a latecomer, of wanting to play at all?

“In short, if EVE was truly unbalanced, if it wasnt no way that a new player beat an old one, it would have sunk like WAR.”

I assume you mean unbalanced in the RvR, as far as WAR is concerned. I don’t recall hearing much about individual imbalance, especially not in PvP, where the game was particularly innovative. Other things seem to have sunk WAR, such as its failure to set itself apart from WoW or the lack of a united community.

EVE’s RvR still seems to be doing well, though it will be something of an anticlimax if the Goons win. I agree, though, that the CCP response to the “Band of Developers” scandal was decent enough to restore trust in the company.

This looks tight!

Geldonyetich says, “From a perspective of a “play to crush” follow like yourself, I can see how you’d feel this way: I need someone to crush, you’re the one who hasn’t earned the right not to be crushed, so sit there and stop whining as I commence with the crushing.”

Not at all. Were I to still be playing Eve (which I am not), and you were just starting, our paths would never cross, because you would wisely be spending your time in 1.0 space learning the interface, acquiring skills, and accumulating assets while I would be elsewhere. There is no benefit to be gained for me to come looking for people in 1.0 space and there is considerable risk. That looks to me like good game design.

Again, Geld says, “However, from the perspective of a, “I play games with an understanding that they’re fair competitions,” it’s not whining, it’s pointing out that this is not the kind of game I’d be interested in playing.”

In 1.0 Space, it’s about as fair as is humanly possible, since almost everyone there is just starting out, just like you would be, and the penalty for aggression from the NPC patrols is an effective deterrent, so one can only presume that is Geldonyetich, yet again, talking out his ass about a game he apparently knows little about.

He says further, “Perhaps, but would a new player be able to gain this kind of understanding implicitly? ”

Perhaps not, but would a new player know implicitly that there is an numerical, although not an insurmountable functional skill gap between him and those who have played longer, or would he simply like the sound of the game and jump in, as many still do? Once the new player becomes more familiar with the game, he can always choose to learn more on the Eve forums, where he can learn as much as he ever would want to know about the game. Even if he never visits the forums at all, Eve allows him to seek his own level in the game. Venture too deep too soon, and you will get burned. Bringing a friend (or a dozen) is a good idea.

Like many games, you can play Eve as casually or as seriously as you wish. But for a casual new player to criticize the game because he can’t compete on an equal footing with an experienced dedicated player is foolishness.

I’m not really sure what CCP could do more in order to accomodate players with different playing styles.

Further, Geld says, “Then there’s the matter of actual asset accumulation – earning ISK. EVE Online is a very good unregulated capitalism simulator in that the rich simply get richer, and the players starting off are pretty much working for them to make sure they stay richer. Those giant offers to buy piles of ore in newbie space are coming right from the pockets of veteran players who can break down the ore and make more profit from it than the newbies can.”

Exactly what is wrong with this? Sounds like a equitable arrangement. The new player is unskilled, and veteran players provide him a market for his raw goods that allows the new player to generate more profit that he would be able to make on his own. Both the new player and the experienced player benefit from the relationship, and as the new player gains experience and becomes established, he can take advantage of the same ecomomies of scale and efficiencies over time. What is you complaint here?

On a different front, Vetarnias says, “Unless a veteran player screwed up his own leveling by failing to level up the learning skills first (unlikely), or that he did not renew his subscription for a few months, there is no way for a new player to catch up with him.”

Numerically, perhaps. Functionally, and for all practical purposes, as IainC points out, within a relatively short period of time, the new players can be roughly equivalent with the more established players, due to diminishing incremental returns on subsequent skill gains, and because you can’t use all skills simultaneously. I may have maxed out energy weapons, and missiles, and slug throwers, and all the classes of ships available, but I can only fly one type ship at a time, and I am limited in the number of weapons I can equip, so the more experienced players can only use a subset of skills at any one time, allowing a new player who has specialized in a small number of skills to start with rough parity.

He ends with, “Then you may want to ask yourself: What is the point, for a latecomer, of wanting to play at all?”

The point is that Eve does permit reasonably safe environments to permit you to develop to the point where you can compete effectively with those who have been playing longer.

If you are a casual player, you never need worry about the giant corporations, and can spend an enjoyable time by yourself or in a small group of like minded friends in areas that are only as risky as you want them to be.

If you are more ambitious, then you can strive to build your own empire. Over time, the functional difference between you and those who have been playing longer will diminish, and eventually become inconsequential, because if you are an effective empire builder, there will develop a synergy between yourself and your partners, and collectively you will be more effective than you are alone. That is how these games work.

If you insist on treating an MMO as a single player game that happens to include an inconveniently large number of other players, then taking on the large corporations may not be your best course of action, but that seems to be the chief criticism of Eve around here, and as criticisms go, it’s one of the more pigheaded ones I’ve heard lately.

Finally, Geldonyetich offers this bit of irrelevance. “Personally, I’m not such a great believer in tradition to find that something which survives is necessarily in an ideal state.”

There is no such thing as an ideal state, and tradition has nothing to do with it, which is the root of your irrelevance. The fact that Eve has survived, prospered even, demonstrates a degree of success that is by no means guaranteed in the MMO industry, as can be seen in a landscape littered with failed MMOs.

Eve is not to everyone’s liking. I don’t care for the ’ship as a personna’ aspect of Eve, but otherwise, there is a great deal about the game from a design point of view that I admire, and that over time has proved to be very successful. You should be so fortunate as to be as successful as the Eve developers have been.

Owain, although I’ve generally been agreeing with what you’ve said, just a comment: when something is described in terms of the “rich getting richer”, it by definition means the “poor” can’t catch up, ever. Which is an inherently inequitable situation.

I understand skill improvements in EVE are asymptotic, but I wonder how the relationship looks with ISK. Still, though, there are other balancing factors, such as shifting alliances and rebalancing of alliance populations.

EVE could probably do with a bit more “regulation” to provide a more interesting and robust competitive environment (as is true with real capitalist environments), but I suggest this more as a refinement than a fix. This are quibbles, I’m not EVE-bashing.

@Owain
Judging by your dropping frequent references as to the irrelevance of what I’m saying, it’s sounds like I’m rubbing you the wrong way again (though I’m not entirely sure I’d ever rubbed you the right way). Considering how what you consider what I’m saying is so very irrelevant, I’ll not pester ya with the gritty details of where you misinterpreted me.

So instead, lets step back a bit. We’re in general agreement that EVE Online is a game which doesn’t particularly care about “fairness,” it’s closer to real life.

A new player will grind one million ISK worth of ore, and the veteran player who purchased that ore will have the skills and connections to turn a ten million ISK profit by manufacturing parts from that ore. This is the “rich getting richer” with no chance of the new player to catch up.

As a new player, my 10 million ISK ore trawler might be all I have, while the guy who I’m selling the ore to is able to afford ten said ore trawlers.

Sometimes, as these new players with their ore trawlers are harvesting for the safety of 1.0 space, somebody will come in with a tricked out Frigate and they don’t particularly care about losing, and obliterate the trawler. The new player loses everything, the guy in the tricked out Frigate loses the frigate to the 1.0 security forces. He ganker doesn’t care because the Frigate is cheaper and, unlike the new player, he might have several fold more wealth than the new player.

This happens so often that this is what Ganking means in EVE Online. Again, realistic, if not particularly fair.

Now, if you’re fine with “realistic, if not particularly fair,” then that’s all that needs to be said. Many EVE Online players don’t particularly care – they’re just in it for the moment, not to win. Me, I prefer to have a chance to be something more than the established player’s wage slave or pinata to burst.