CCP Comes Out Of Left Field, Shoots Everyone In Head

18Aug/09Off

CCP Comes Out Of Left Field, Shoots Everyone In Head

CCP announces new first-person shooter console MMO that expands Eve Online

The announcement, with the trailer tagline of "one universe, one war", came at the end of a talk about the history of CCP. It left many GDC Europe keynote attendees -- perhaps expecting an announcement for World Of Darkness, CCP's other rumored project -- significantly surprised.

The trailer, with slick in-game graphics, showcased a space station and then impressive first-person shooter gameplay. Petursson said that Dust 514 is "our take on a console MMO", and was made after the company "looked hard at what people wanted to do on consoles".

In fact, when Dust 514 launches, the map of EVE, currently divined only by player structures owned in the PC game, will also take into account infantry successes and failures within the console game. Players in the PC MMO can "fund mercenaries and give them goals" in the console title.

CCP's Petursson hope that "these communities will meld over time", expecting specific Dust 514 corporations to start with, but eventually social structures that bridge across the two. He quipped of the new game and the relationship between the two titles: "While the fleet does the flying, the infantry does the dying."

Filed under: CCP, Dust 514 Comments Off

Comments (118) Trackbacks (0) ( subscribe to comments on this post )

IainC
August 21st, 2009 - 05:59

Sov is being redesigned later this year. So far we’ve seen no real details on what the new system will look like.
IainC
August 21st, 2009 - 06:00

Oh, and the ability to have multiple characters on the same account is practically worthless as you can’t have more than one character per account training at a time.
Gx1080
August 21st, 2009 - 06:23

@IainC

It isnt. Alt hiding its one of the basic tools of PvP in EVE. And it gives the safety of Anonymous.
EpicSquirt
August 21st, 2009 - 07:08

IainC, the countless alt spies (just parked in a corp or in a solar system watching traffic), the countless specialized twinks (just a hauler, just a cyno field popper, just a Jita trader) were always getting on my nerves.

And they have severe impact on the game.

CCP will never fix it just like Mythic never fixed the original rule set servers and the buff bots as it’s THE (wrongly designed) feature that generates some serious additional income.

EVE’s (global) PvP had so much potential, sigh.
IainC
August 21st, 2009 - 13:59

Additional accounts is one thing (although I’m not sure that a developer can or should ‘fix’ that), alts on the same account as your main however aren’t as useful. No corp that is worth spying on will let you join without checking your limited API – which will instantly show them the main character on your account. You can’t pop cynos for your main with an alt on the same account.

Yes you can watch stuff passing through trade routes or have a Jita alt or whatever but you could do those things with an endless succession of trial accounts anyway, having the characters on your main account only slows you down.
Gx1080
August 21st, 2009 - 16:03

Yeah, but the average corp wont check tha alts that you use when they hide. And the average corp hide when the war its long and drawn out.

@Vetarnias
The cycle of EVE its basically farming for getting lots of cheap ships and blowing and get blown by other guys in lowsec or nullsec. Of course with looting the corpse of your enemies can net you nice profit but its random.

Of course, you need to enjoy the anger of somebody when you make a pretty explosion with their pixels. Money doesnt mean much if you dont enjoy playing the game.

In general, I think that DUST 514 its a great idea. I see it as an option for fighting with the resources of a planet, the CCP guys do not tend to make something absolutely neccesary. I mean people can stay in Empire all their boring time.
Dblade
August 21st, 2009 - 19:04

Epicsquirt

Odd attitude. Point of the zerg is the realization that you can’t defeat superior skill straight up, and have to use other means. It’s not like they’d be any less carebear if they fought you in even numbers and got demolished almost every time.

I never really got the skill-based argument, the more a game demands and caters to a high level of skill the less people actually play long-term, especially competitive. You see it a lot in online console fighting games. Eventually all the “carebears” get driven out, and you get around 20 people playing at such a high level of skill most new people play a few rounds and then stop.
Tremayne
August 22nd, 2009 - 02:05

EpicSquirt:
The guys you are complaining about zerging are “n00bs” – people who don’t play with the standard of skills and competitiveness you expect. “Carebears” are people who don’t PvP – in EVE that’d be folks who never leave high security systems.
If you’re going to go around copping a l33ter-than-thou progamer attitude, at least get the terminology right.
EpicSquirt
August 22nd, 2009 - 04:46

I really don’t care what your terminology is, to me there were and are many carebears in 0.0 and they were always in big packs.
Vetarnias
August 22nd, 2009 - 07:34

Ah yes, PvP “skill”. As much as you might call zerging “carebear”, however, it isn’t, and I agree with Tremayne. Zerging is all about minimizing risk, but the element of grief is very much present indeed. And if we return to the root of the “carebear” expression, it’s named after those fluffy cutesy creatures who wouldn’t do harm to anyone. A carebear in video games is someone who would avoid both being griefed (and, by the way, whatever happened to “grieve”?) and griefing others.

I know that a carebear is supposed to be the object of contempt, because he wants nothing to do with your pecking order of leetness — finds it ridiculous, you know. And he doesn’t want to be an unwilling victim to someone else’s e-peen gratification. At one point I used to say, no, I’m not a carebear, I still care about PvP in MMO’s if there is an underlying purpose to it. But I saw that PvPers don’t share my concern, or, worse, that they will pay lip service to it to justify every underhanded tactic they can think of (yes, including zerging), so I avoid that demographic altogether now.

In other words: Okay, I’m a carebear. So?
EpicSquirt
August 22nd, 2009 - 08:13

Vetarnias, I don’t care what people do/did in empire space, fact is, that a bunch of hilarious idiots are populating 0.0, most of them never learned to PvP on their own, but just joined a random blob and listened to some random fleet commander who never learned to PvP on his own either.

They’re happy to give you a fight when they outnumber you 5 to 1, but when their 1000-men alliance or corp gets under fire from 30 dedicated players, they usually just disband and reform under a new name, somewhere else.

Those are the carebears of EVE to me, I couldn’t care less about PvE players sitting in empire space, doing small scale PvP. By my broad definition the former Xetic Alliance was a carebear alliance, but I also include BoB in my definition or Goonswarm, because they are just a bunch of useless smacktalking blobbers.
IainC
August 22nd, 2009 - 09:07

Organisation is a skill too. And in Eve, superior skill in logistics can trump skill points or native skill with spaceships. Goonswarm are steamrollering hteir opposition at the moment because they are better at playing the game than their enemies. Not necessarily better at piloting ships but better at the strategy and logistics game. Winning battles is pointless if you were fighting the wrong battle to begin with or if you can’t follow up on that victory with territorial gains.
Vetarnias
August 22nd, 2009 - 18:30

“Goonswarm are steamrollering hteir opposition at the moment because they are better at playing the game than their enemies. Not necessarily better at piloting ships but better at the strategy and logistics game.”

No. They are steamrollering because they are from SomethingAwful, already organized long before they started playing. Hence, they don’t need to recruit; indeed, they won’t recruit except in the case of another SA member, or a player who has the support of Goons. They’re completely independent from their fortunes in the game, because they don’t care about the game. They take pride in destroying games, so they’re all about offense (all meanings of the word), a play style which is eminently favored in EVE.

It’s a case of numbers and outlook on online gaming, not of better strategy or logistics (unless you mean repairing to SomethingAwful for sneering at EVE when things go sour). And the Goons, if they do as well as you are saying, will end up ruining EVE Online without giving a damn.
Gx1080
August 22nd, 2009 - 18:49

I think that you overestimate GoonSwarm. They have been around as an independant alliance sice summer 2006, and they hadnt ruined the game so far. It helps that EVE its freaking huge. No single alliance can control everything.
IainC
August 23rd, 2009 - 03:22

You’re also underestimating the amount of logistics and strategic planning that needs to go on in a major war. Recruitment is not a major part of that.

Somethingawful also has next to nothing to do with Goons in Eve other than as a point of origin for a lot of them. There are many non-SA corps under the goon banner and it’s a rather curious claim to make anyway ‘they’re winning because they came from a website’? Really?
EpicSquirt
August 23rd, 2009 - 03:27

IainC, it’s just the amount of time you can spend in front of the computer without falling asleep that wins you the battles and holds you territory there.
JuJutsu
August 23rd, 2009 - 08:19

“…it’s just the amount of time you can spend in front of the computer without falling asleep that wins you the battles and holds you territory there.”

…or spanning multiple timezones.
EpicSquirt
August 23rd, 2009 - 13:55

Agleed.
IainC
August 25th, 2009 - 07:24

I’ll bite then. How do you define skill in a game like EvE?
geldonyetich
August 25th, 2009 - 07:45

@IainC
To be fair, the “amount of time you can spend without contracting keyboard face” model of success would seem to apply to all persistent game models.

EVE Online does seem to push things slightly further in that direction by ~~causing evil to flow from the game, into the user~~ allowing a little more of what you accrue to occur as a consequence of time instead of from choices.

The skill advancement model is the foremost aspect – if you can advance just as fast offline then your involvement is invalidated in this aspect – but there’s also a general “time investment > skill” focus in just about every activity in the game.

Mining? Grind to get better mining lasers and the ships that can carry them, play when there’s likely to be less competition or danger for the rocks you want.

Cargo Hauling? Grind to get better ships with bigger capacity, play when less players are likely to be on your cargo route.

Combat? Though this is probably where they’ve tried to even the playing field the most, better components and ship hulls will shortly bring about success. In corporation on corporation combat, the one that fields the most ships (e.g. has more players investing time) will have a definite upper hand.

That said, it’s probably the core mechanic itself which makes it difficult to identify where player skill can be applied in EVE Online. There is a certain subtle advantage you can pull if you know how to wield a spreadsheet, but the in-game interactions usually break down to pushing a few buttons and waiting. When you’re badly out-classed, you know it, there’s not much you can do about it but to hammer your panic buttons or wait for your inevitable destruction.
IainC
August 25th, 2009 - 07:49

You’ve answered a different question to the one that I asked Geldon.
JuJutsu
August 25th, 2009 - 07:54

“I’ll bite then. How do you define skill in a game like EvE?”

Luckily [from my point of view] it’s not based on fine motor skills. Since it’s not physiological, I’d say it’s cognitive. How about ‘depth of knowledge of game systems and their interactions”. Of course that leaves out the social and organizational skills that help with running a corporation and alliances. For those who enjoy accumulating wealth through trading we’ll call them ‘analytic’ skills.
geldonyetich
August 25th, 2009 - 07:55

You’ve answered a different question to the one that I asked Geldon.

I’m not sure if I’ve answered a different question so much as was so long-winded in my explanation that it may have seemed that way.
IainC
August 25th, 2009 - 08:23

You’ve defined how you advance in certain game activities. Some people have made a distinction between Eve players with skill and those without. I was asking how you determine where that line lies.
geldonyetich
August 25th, 2009 - 08:47

What I was trying to say is that the line is fuzzier than usual in the case of EVE Online because where the player skill lies is not in the overt activities in themselves, but rather in the planning stage.

That said, it’s probably the core mechanic itself which makes it difficult to identify where player skill can be applied in EVE Online. There is a certain subtle advantage you can pull if you know how to wield a spreadsheet, but the in-game interactions usually break down to pushing a few buttons and waiting.

The rest was pointing out that EVE Online’s activities, being a time sink and/or popularity contest in general, push this already subtle skill aspect even further beneath the surface.
EpicSquirt
August 25th, 2009 - 08:56

IanC, there is none. And I say it as a former top 10 pilot, when the server had like 7k players maximum and players like SirMolle (Shrike) were safe spotted, smacktalking me, after I podded his wingman.

The early dominance of some parties in EVE’s ship combat came mostly through ship fitting and heavy use of MWDs & EW (first dampeners on Blackbirds, later multispectrals on Scorpion).

Today the whole fitting and tactics doctrine is written down on every corp / alliance forum, every noob can buy a solid character, join an alliance with a solid industrial backbone and viable fleet commanders.

When it comes down to running an alliance, the alliance with the better long term determination will usually win and hold territory, from my experience in alliance warfare the hard targets usually will get outnumbered severely at some point, regardless if they are on an aggressive expansion or just hold territory.

Wielding or organizing superior numbers never was skill for me and the older EVE became, the less room there was for fights with equal numbers.

All the metagaming stuff was interesting to a point, but alts and multiple accounts made it less apealing for me and tbh I never really enjoyed all the wall of text propaganda from people like Jade Constantine or other alliance leaders on the forums.
JuJutsu
August 25th, 2009 - 15:38

“Wielding or organizing superior numbers never was skill for me and the older EVE became, the less room there was for fights with equal numbers.”

Was never a skill for you in what sense? It’s skill you don’t possess or you don’t recognize it as a skill?
geldonyetich
August 25th, 2009 - 16:32

There is a certain context of what falls in the definition of a game that will vary from person to person. To wield the cooperation of other people falls outside the context of many gamers because it just doesn’t make sense that you should win the game by getting other people to win it for you.

However, is it truly outside the context of EVE Online? Not at all. This is because the game’s primary appeal is as a meta-gaming spectacle. Played as game of personal skill, it leaves much to be desired. Played as a game of not playing the game, it can circumvent much of the responsibility required in providing more than a pretty 3D space backdrop for numbers to increment and decrement in response to time investment.

Even meaning that in the worst possible way, it can be interpreted in the best possible way. A game in which you can play by inventing ways not to play it is a game that some will find enjoyable. If they find the activity enjoyable, it’s as good a game as any, right?

The goons are excellent at EVE Online for precisely this reason. They take great joy in finding how to excel at not playing a game as intended. It’s their unofficial mission statement behind their visit to any game they play. What they didn’t realize, perhaps, was that EVE Online has become a creature that specifically seeks to cater to this niche.

What I’ve mostly been going over in the past few entries is just that asking, “what makes the dividing skill between a good or bad EVE Online player” is missing the subtle point of what EVE Online is, really.
JuJutsu
August 25th, 2009 - 18:28

“To wield the cooperation of other people falls outside the context of many gamers because it just doesn’t make sense that you should win the game by getting other people to win it for you.”

Maybe for gamers who play chess but gamers who play massively multiplayer games? The genre that has historically focused on coordinated small group play for the bulk of the game and coordinated large group play for the so-called end game? This is a strange claim to make.
geldonyetich
August 25th, 2009 - 18:50

This is a strange claim to make.

I don’t think so. Reading between the lines here, all I’m saying is that that different people will define different contexts in gaming. These definitions will determine the type of games I enjoy.

Me, I am a “chess” type (as you put it). I prefer to win at games because I’m a good player, and not because of the people I know.

EVE Online isn’t a game I enjoy so much because it doesn’t provide much avenues for me to be a good player – victory is more about who I know or how long I’ve been there than who I am.
EpicSquirt
August 26th, 2009 - 02:18

JuJutsu, I don’t recognize it as a skill.
Tremayne
August 26th, 2009 - 03:23

EpicSquirt
I think I see where the problem lies for you – you’re a “gladiatorial” PvPer. What you are looking for an even fight – one on one, or between even sized teams.
EVE, and most other MMOs, work on a “war” model where you are part of a conflict between two large factions (either player guild/alliances, or fsctions built into the game like DAoC’s realms).
Individual fights within that sort of situation can be wildly unbalanced – sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug. Except if you’re the guy running around looking for solo fights in a war zone, in which case you’re ALWAYS the bug.
Pirates of the Burning Sea has all combat instanced, so it becomes at most a 6v6 fight (apart from the port battles, which are also instanced at 25v25) and that mighht appeal more to your playstyle. For me, that was exactly what ruined PotBS as a RvR game.
Vetarnias
August 26th, 2009 - 05:31

Hmm, “my zerg is bigger than your zerg” is not exactly skill.

As for Pirates of the Burning Sea, I can’t say what it’s been like of late, especially since I did not even PvP when I returned for a month in April, but before that, the game was notorious for all the diversionary tactics to make sure the fight wasn’t on an equal basis (except for port battles, where your main problem was faction imbalance).

You had the inevitable case of trying to lure the opponent into thinking it would be a fair fight, but as soon as the opponent would engage you on the open sea, your five buddies in the nearest port would jump in, and that would quickly devolve into a 6v1. When facing coordinated groups, the common tactic was to divide them, keep some occupied while you got rid of the others.

That was how it was at launch and the months thereafter. The developer mantra in those days was “no crying in the red circle”, to which was added “war’s not fair, learn how to make it not fair in your favor”. “No crying” was dropped maybe five months later when ganking became such a problem that the game started suffering.

They tried to solve it, too, by allowing the defender in a fight was allowed to have up to eight players reinforcing him, as opposed to a maximum six for the attacker. But picture this, and add in the deceitful tactics mentioned above, and you’ll understand why that was dubbed the “Supergank” and stayed in the game for the entirety of one build.

Last time I checked, nobody expected a fair fight in PotBS either, so when people were ganked, they just shrugged and moved on.

The RvR just made matters worse, as it was shallow. In EVE, okay, I don’t like ganking or zerging, but at least you have your territorial space to look after, and when you lose it, you lose it. In PotBS, you lose a port, doesn’t matter, there’s a world map reset as soon as one of the factions gets enough conquest points, so all those ports that you worked so hard to conquer, well, they revert back to your enemy. I understand why it was done, to prevent the game map from being static, but it didn’t really change much if one faction was so powerful as to win every map anyway (things seem to have balanced out now, but at first, you had endless winning dynasties).

I’ve heard of cases where some factions on some servers were so dissatisfied with the shallow RvR that they just went after the most strategic ports (the deep water harbors, the only places in the game where the largest ships could be built) and just sat on them, making no further effort towards winning the map. On the Blackbeard server in the early months, there was a nasty rumor that the British were using extortion tactics to be convinced to win their map (which they had exploited their way through) instead of basking in the status quo, and for all I know, it was true.

And there were the so-called “underdog tools” giving you bonuses to loot and levelling speed and such if your faction was a loser of the previous map, with the further down the faction ranked, the higher the bonuses. And the rewards for winning were meaningless (to prevent a situation where winning dynasties would have an immediate advantage in the next round). So the inevitable happened: Can’t win a map? Why settle for second when you could finish dead last and have greater bonuses? (At one point I even heard that it was better to lose than to actually win the map.)
EpicSquirt
August 26th, 2009 - 07:33

Tremayne, you got it right.

The problem with EVE’s war model is that it is pointless.

I can only invest so much time into fighting a bunch of people who will use real world money to buy ETCs, sell them in game for the game currency and cover their losses with ISK, who are jobless, yet spend their time on running 8 accounts at the same time, outperforming me ISK-wise.

Same goes for the moon mining exploiters and the neverending stream of people who got CCP to mother them.

Without a few adjustments I will continue to percept EVE this way, pilots in local and the whole radar crap in 0.0 should have been removed a long time ago.

I didn’t mind fights while being outnumbered in EVE in the first 3-4 years, but after that, being a high profile target and having negative standings not only from real encounters but also from hearsay most hunters became witches ready for some burning.

Maybe I’m exaggerating here as there was always room for an organized fight, but I used to love the occasional 8 vs 8 fleet fight in 0.0 which just happened while you’re moving around and I am quite sure that a lot of veteran players feel so. Today it’s “we have a roaming gang incoming, stay safe, once we have 50 people in fleet we’ll move out.”.

After 3-4 years of hardcore PvP (all forms, from alone to large alliance warfare) in 0.0, I’ve moved back to empire space and all I do is chatting and missions.

I can only take so much PoS shooting and pointless roaming gangs.
geldonyetich
August 26th, 2009 - 09:41

It is interesting to consider that one thing Dust will be doing is providing the avenue for the Gladiator/Chess types to participate in the EVE Online universe.

That is, assuming the matches aren’t completely unbalanced popularity contests, as the typical open-PvP “War” model is.
EpicSquirt
August 26th, 2009 - 11:23

Sadly on the wrong platform with the wrong controllers .
Owain
August 26th, 2009 - 15:13

EpicSquirt, “IainC, the countless alt spies (just parked in a corp or in a solar system watching traffic), the countless specialized twinks (just a hauler, just a cyno field popper, just a Jita trader) were always getting on my nerves.”

May be annoying, but it’s realistic, as shown in the movie “Blackhawk Down”, when kids with cell phones informed the Somalian warlords of US troop movements. Spies and scouts have been around since people fought with stone knives and wore bear skins.

I always have to laugh at people who denigrate effective tactics they don’t like as ‘care bear.’ It says a lot about the person making the comment. How uber can you be if something so simple gives you grief?
Gabriel
August 30th, 2009 - 14:34

“Hmm, “my zerg is bigger than your zerg” is not exactly skill.”

On the contrary, it most definitely is skill. It’s just a different kind of skill. And, in terms of actual effect on outcomes, organizational and logistical skill is far more determinative of war results, and thus far more important, than individual tactical skill.

You may argue that being able to assemble and usefully deploy a larger zerg is not the kind of skill which you personally enjoy engaging for competition in the sort of games you like to play for fun, but that’s a very different statement.

I was the branch leader for a guild in Shadowbane. My guildies, seeing me standing around inside my city walls doing nothing but talking, would occasionally ask if I was having any fun and if I ever got to play the game. I explained that I was having a great time playing the game; it was just a different game. They were playing a fantasy FPS, and I was playing a fantasy RTS.
geldonyetich
August 30th, 2009 - 16:11

This thing where you call managing your guild as being a game-playing skill… or where you might say it’s okay to roll up alts to spy on other factions in the game because Somalian kids were ratting out soldiers with cell phones IRL… these are not things many gamers will see eye to eye with you on.

They’re not wrong, insofar as you can identify these things as definitely being factors of victory in certain games, it’s just that many gamers find it a fair assumption that games are primarily supposed to be fair contests of skill between players. If you decide the game is, instead, about exploiting social networking, then you’ve opted for an incompatible focus.
JuJutsu
August 30th, 2009 - 17:42

@Geldon

You have any basis for your claims about ‘many gamers’?
Gx1080
August 30th, 2009 - 18:06

@geldonyetich
The issue is that a large scale PvP game its going to have social networking you want it or not.

Its necesary for organizing several players in an specific objective and, given the fact that humans are social creatures, they are going to organize whatever you support it or not.

And in a war somebody needs to be the one calling the shots.
Viz
August 30th, 2009 - 22:04

@Gabriel:
I disagree. Comparing organizational to tactical ability is basically about leverage versus strength. They’re both valuable, imperfectly substitutable, and neither is useful if you lack the other altogether.

In a good game both need to be important. A game in which tactical ability or “game skill” is unimportant is a game in which all players are basically interchangeable. Since it’s then only about the size of the zerg, the organizational game itself becomes shallow and boring.
Guy
August 30th, 2009 - 22:42

Hey man, they don’t call it Massively Multiplayer *Chess* you know.

Sorry, I don’t really have a dog in this “fight”, just couldn’t resist making that comment… But seriously, for pure X vs X fights, it’s better to rely on stricter rulesets, such as organized arena fights. Which there is always room for (although balancing for it along with everything is challenging in an MMO).
Owain
August 31st, 2009 - 07:31

It depends on what you are simulating. I think I’ve mentioned this theory before, but it probably bears repeating.

Some gamers view PvP as a spectator sport. They say they are looking for a ‘fair’ fight, although in practice, not so much. It’s all about their individual skills, and if they die, it’s because someone else did something ‘unfair’. It’s all about them.

Other games look at PvP as a combat simulation. There is no ‘fair’. If the game permits it to be done (barring the use of outright exploits), it’s all good. Anyone who finds themselves in a ‘fair’ fight has screwed up. The ideal fight makes good use of the element of surprise, concentration of force, and the application of overwhelming firepower. Your target force is wiped before they know what hit them.

Individual skills, while still important, are subordinate to effective coordination, strategy, and tactics. It’s all about the team. One man’s zerg is another man’s small unit tactics and superior organization.

In the words of the philosopher, “Learn to play, noob!”
geldonyetich
August 31st, 2009 - 09:31

@JuJutsu

You have any basis for your claims about ‘many gamers’?

You’re confusing “Many Gamers” with “Most Gamers.” The later requires I’m able to quantify, while the former is a common sense assumption that, given the diverse tastes of humankind, “many” (meaning simply a goodly amount) gamers will have tastes suitable to what I was mentioning.

In any case, you’d have just as hard of a time quantifying gamers to disprove such a claim as I would to prove it, so (assuming you are indeed a logical fellow) you’re just going to have to accept what I’m saying is a viable possibility.

@Gx1080

The issue is that a large scale PvP game its going to have social networking you want it or not.

The issue as seen by the “many gamers” of my previous comment is precisely that. A “large scale PvP game” – or, more accurately, an open PvP game where there’s no regulation of the involved parties on either side of the conflict – is inherently an unbalanced game. As far as being a fair and reasonable competition is concerned, such a game holds little value. Thus, “many gamers” would prefer to play something else where a fair measure of their skills applies.

Life isn’t fair. We prefer our games be, nonetheless. Perhaps it’s because, for many of us, it’s more enjoyable when we’re reassured the competition isn’t stacked against us.

I think that, of most the people who enjoy EVE Online, they’re not really concerned about “fairness” as much. They’re mostly there to participate in an epic happening of sorts. It’s not really a game, insofar as a game would be defined as, “a competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance on the part of two or more persons who play according to a set of rules, usually for their own amusement or for that of spectators” so much as it is a spectacle, as defined as, “a public show or display, esp. on a large scale.”

Are they wrong to do this? No! If you enjoy what you’re doing, far be it from me to say you’re wasting your time. However, different people find different things entertaining. It has ever been such, and this is why trying to get my “many gamers” to see eye to eye with your average EVE Online player is an exercise in futility.
JuJutsu
August 31st, 2009 - 10:04

@Geldon

“You’re confusing “Many Gamers” with “Most Gamers.” The later requires I’m able to quantify, while the former is a common sense assumption that, given the diverse tastes of humankind, “many” (meaning simply a goodly amount) gamers will have tastes suitable to what I was mentioning.

In any case, you’d have just as hard of a time quantifying gamers to disprove such a claim as I would to prove it, so (assuming you are indeed a logical fellow) you’re just going to have to accept what I’m saying is a viable possibility.”

All true but, imo, intellectually dishonest. “A goodly amount” and “many” being any number greater than 1 and less than 50% allows you to say pretty much anything you want as a viable possibility but it doesn’t help the discourse. Owain and I expect more from pundits [well I do anyway ]

I think Epicsquirt is much more honest: he says what he sees as a skill and what isn’t and how he feels about it. Personal tastes are what they are and not refutable. You want to make assertions about what other games think and , at the same time, maintain the ability to not be refuted. It’s psychologically comforting but it doesn’t add to the discourse.
geldonyetich
August 31st, 2009 - 10:48

@JuJutsu
It would be intellectually dishonest if I were trying to prove something with it, but I’m not. I’m not trying to wield my “many gamers” as a bludgeon to convince anyone that’s there’s something wrong with EVE Online. I’m just saying that, amongst those who do not enjoy EVE Online, this is the reason why some of them will not be changing their minds. It’s not talking science, but rather elaborating a bit on a difference of philosophy.
Owain
August 31st, 2009 - 12:30

Many gamers enjoy all sorts of things. I could say many gamers enjoy free for all PvP, which would be true. Many gamers DO enjoy free for all PvP. Many do not. So what?

I’m not entirely sure what JuJutsu’s complaint is here.

“Owain and I expect more from pundits ”

Hey, don’t drag me into this. Geld originally said, “it’s just that many gamers find it a fair assumption that games are primarily supposed to be fair contests of skill between players.”

I have no problem with that. Many gamers DO think that. I don’t think it’s necessarily a valid assumption, but a lot of people disagree with my thoughts concerning PvP, and I’m OK with that, too.

I have a problem with people who think ALL games should be exactly alike, either because they don’t like free for all PvP, or they don’t like PvP at all, or they like it just fine, and want to force everyone else to like it to, or else.

So, I guess the best bet is to either make a niche game that caters to a specific audience, or segregate your game areas if you want to appeal to a large audience. Have PvE only areas, but allow duels for people view PvP as a spectator sport and who want a ‘fair’ fight, or battlegrounds for team fights, contested areas for people who want RvR, and separate area for the fans of free for all PvP. This allows people to select their own pain threshhold, and hopefully, preclude ‘many’ gamers from being subjected to a playing style they want no part of.

Yes, this does smack of UO Trammel, but back in the day, that never bothered me because I never went there. Live and let live (or not, depending on where you play).
Gx1080
August 31st, 2009 - 12:44

Raph Koster said it best:

“The expectations are higher than of similar actions in the real world. For example: players will expect all labor to result in profit; they will expect life to be fair; they will expect to be protected from aggression before the fact, and not just to seek redress after the fact; they will expect problems to be resolved quickly; they will expect that their integrity will be assumed to be beyond reproach; in other words, they will expect too much, and you will not be able to supply it all. The trick is to manage the expectations.”

Since CCP basically said: “The real world isnt fair, so neither our game that is supposed to be realist”, of course that it always will be a niche game. It isnt good or bad, it just is.

My opinion: I rather play a game that walks its own path that a game that its just an insipid copy of another one.
Owain
August 31st, 2009 - 15:09

Gx1080: Since CCP basically said: “The real world isnt fair, so neither our game that is supposed to be realist”…(sic)

What about Eve is unfair? Does ‘fairness’ even make sense in this context?

If you mean that CCP provides one group of players preferential treatment over a different group of players, then yes, that would be unfair.

If you mean that Eve allows the players to perform criminal acts, that has nothing to do with ‘fairness’.