Eve Online

[solipsistnation]

At the urging of a bunch of people to whom I have said basically "What is there that compares to ATITD?" I am trying out Eve Online.

My first impressions aren't terribly favorable-- the tutorial missions are kind of sparse, and they seem to leave you hanging, zipping around between systems populated by basically nobody, delivering things only NPCs care about. I realize that a tutorial mission is a delicate sort of thing, but so far mostly what I've seen is that space is big, getting between systems takes a long time of mostly just watching the autopilot zip you around, and that the interface is complicated and annoying (not to mention hard to read at any reasonable resolution).

Oh, and there's some kind of giant market system, and there are corporations, and that you can buy 1,000,000 ISK for 4.99 euros. (ISK spamming is ridiculous. Embarassingly so. In the 2 or 3 hours I was on, I blocked chats from something like a dozen bots, all spamming for the same site.)

Anyway, it's neat, but so far (and I do realize that this is a pretty superficial overview) it lacks the sort of community aspect that I really like about ATITD. I haven't been pointed toward what I'd think of as mentoring guilds, and the game structure doesn't seem to encourage the sort of mentoring I enjoy in Egypt. Quite the opposite-- I spotted a ship named "IKillNoobs" zipping around one of the tutorial stations. I also spotted what looked like a couple of high-powered ship battles going on while I zapped around delivering my code notebooks and mining my noob ore and stuff. Overall, not a particularly welcoming universe. Sure, Egypt isn't ALWAYS welcoming, but by asking questions on regional, newbies can always find somebody to give them a hand with something, or at least to tell them how to find info on the wiki.

I suspect that ATITD is truly unique, and that the sort of community that has grown up around the constraints and freedoms of Egypt has not been duplicated elsewhere. I guess the biggest thing I miss from ATITD is the feeling that, although we know we're all competing, we also know that we stand to gain a lot more from even the most minimal possible cooperation than from outright cutthroat competition. My attitude toward Eve may change, but I'm not sure it will. After all, it bills itself as a universe of piracy and capitalism, and I'm not exactly the most fervant capitalist...

Comments

[purple-terror.livejournal.com]

Yes, the tutorials are sparse and the learning cliff is steep. But they get you decent cash to start doing other things.

Ignore the noob chat channel that you're required to be in for the first month. It'll be almost nothing but isk farmers and idiots.

Never fly on autopilot. It drops you 15km from the gate, and motoring to the gate is what really slows you down. Also, autopilot usually signifies AFK and the griefers/gankers are more likely to target you when you get into bigger and better ships.

Stay away from Jita on weekends. 6-800 in local make it a lag monster.

Go find Eve University and join. There's a lot of turnover, but their express purpose it to teach new folks how to play and they are probably one of the most highly regarded alliances in game. But then there are the folks that have never left EUNI and stay because they like the folks there and like to teach.

And you're right, it's less about the community and more about fighting, whether it be pewpew in space or in the market (it does have a fascinating economy and attracts people just on that mark alone; they're probably day traders IRL or something :-P). There are certainly some communities, but it mostly stays at the corp level and is not a global thing.

Lots of Europeans, though; Americans tend to be treated like annoying interlopers, even though we make up the largest player segment now. Watch out for the Russians, they're fucking crazy.

Drop me some email if you want to connect in game.

[kittenexploring.livejournal.com]

purple_terror is a bitter, twisted, Eve veteran. There's actually more sweetness and light in Eve than they suggest. I agree about Eve University, though. They do good work introducing people to Eve.

The ISK spammers come in waves. It's a continual battle between GMs and ISK sellers. Currently we're at an ISK seller peak.

[kittenexploring.livejournal.com]

Bah! I am a damn noob who should be podded back to a base clone and have their stuff stolen. I meant to preview, not post.

[purple-terror.livejournal.com]

Can I have your stuff?

;-)

[kittenexploring.livejournal.com]

Might as well. I'll wait by the Torrinos gate in EC-P8R for you. If you don't see me, just hang around for a bit about 20km off the gate.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Imagine if doing your taxes were a massively multiplayer online game where other taxpayers could gank you.

There you go.

[purple-terror.livejournal.com]

:SNERK:

[uvasagrias.livejournal.com]

I don't know anything about EVE except that my boyfriend was addicted to it for a few months. It looked really neat, but other than that, I hated it, because he loved EVE more than he loved me!

[em-yrt.livejournal.com]

space hamsters!

[blarglefiend.livejournal.com]

I've tried to try EVE, and might even have enjoyed it a little if text weren't so small as to be unreadable.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

...and pretty much not adjustable at all, either. Heck, I've got pretty decent vision with my glasses, and I still have to lean forward and squint to read things on the display. It doesn't help that the default window settings are semi-transparent grey and lighter grey, either.

Don't worry, you're mostly missing an awesome trainwreck of an interface anyway.

[kittenexploring.livejournal.com]

You can change font size in chat windows easily. I haven't seen any way to change the font elsewhere but I haven't looked, either.

You're not the first to complain about the fonts. As best I can tell the fonts used in EVE are very carefully chosen to work beautifully on every monitor used by the developers and their testing team yet be near unreadable for a lucky few in the gaming population. CRT tubes don't like the fonts much when they're near their resolution limits but some people who call the fonts unreadable use LCDs.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

I looked a LOT. I have been playing it at 1680x1050 on my fancy-pants giant LCD, and the fonts are maybe 8 pixels tall. It's teensy.