Dr Zaius
Chief Defender of the Faith
- Joined
- May 1, 2001
- Messages
- 8,902
- Reaction score
- 408
- Location
- The Forbidden Zone
- First name
- Don
- Country
-
Word has it that CCP, creators of EVE Online, are closing their SF office and laying off numerous support staff. How that will affect EVE over the long term is uncertain, but it got me thinking about the state of the game and where it's headed. And, sadly, from where I sit it doesn't look good.
CCP wants a dark, dangerous, dystopian universe where actions have consequences and risk really means something. But the truth is that CCP has no idea how to create such a dynamic. What they've created instead is a chaotic stew of half-cooked ideas.
CCP and the EVE community rant and rave about the failures and childish gameplay of MMOs like World of Warcraft, and rightly so. But despite all the effort to make the gameplay more challenging and more consequence driven, EVE has devolved into as much of a pointless grind as WoW ever was. It just takes you a hell of a lot more time and effort to discover it's all been kind of pointless.
But it wasn't always that way. Back in the day, EVE had a ton of problems but it also had some very cool adaptive gameplay and a ton of potential. But slowly, inexorably, the most militant players systematically exploited every possible aspect of the game, forcing CCP to constantly make significant changes in order to try to maintain balance and stamp out the worst of the exploits. Sadly, the end result is a game that's so "fair" that there's hardly any point in even investing in your character. CCP has fallen victim to its own logic, and has helped foster a culture where the only thing that means anything is raw currency. Everything has been reduced to money, and since you can now easily buy as much game currency as you need with real world money, what's the point of playing at all?
You don't really get more powerful in EVE, and it's essentially impossible to really do anything meaningful beyond trolling your fellow players. So EVE, pretty as it is, is really nothing more than a giant sandbox to troll other people you don't know by blowing up stuff they don't really care about anyway.
EVE's purported goal was to be a persistent universe where actions had consequences, and one where those consequences mean everything. Instead, EVE has become an incredibly tedious, time consuming game where nothing means anything, really.
It's not all bad. There have been many small changes that add up to a significant quantity of overall improvement in the game. And you can still have some cool PvP action if you go and look for it. But EVE's problems are fundamental structural problems, and CCP won't ever change those things because the problems are simply beyond the skill level of the developers. The folks at CCP are wonderful game developers and they deserve credit for that. But though their technical prowess as developers is undeniable, their shortcomings as game designers is equally manifest.
CCP wants a dark, dangerous, dystopian universe where actions have consequences and risk really means something. But the truth is that CCP has no idea how to create such a dynamic. What they've created instead is a chaotic stew of half-cooked ideas.
CCP and the EVE community rant and rave about the failures and childish gameplay of MMOs like World of Warcraft, and rightly so. But despite all the effort to make the gameplay more challenging and more consequence driven, EVE has devolved into as much of a pointless grind as WoW ever was. It just takes you a hell of a lot more time and effort to discover it's all been kind of pointless.
But it wasn't always that way. Back in the day, EVE had a ton of problems but it also had some very cool adaptive gameplay and a ton of potential. But slowly, inexorably, the most militant players systematically exploited every possible aspect of the game, forcing CCP to constantly make significant changes in order to try to maintain balance and stamp out the worst of the exploits. Sadly, the end result is a game that's so "fair" that there's hardly any point in even investing in your character. CCP has fallen victim to its own logic, and has helped foster a culture where the only thing that means anything is raw currency. Everything has been reduced to money, and since you can now easily buy as much game currency as you need with real world money, what's the point of playing at all?
You don't really get more powerful in EVE, and it's essentially impossible to really do anything meaningful beyond trolling your fellow players. So EVE, pretty as it is, is really nothing more than a giant sandbox to troll other people you don't know by blowing up stuff they don't really care about anyway.
EVE's purported goal was to be a persistent universe where actions had consequences, and one where those consequences mean everything. Instead, EVE has become an incredibly tedious, time consuming game where nothing means anything, really.
It's not all bad. There have been many small changes that add up to a significant quantity of overall improvement in the game. And you can still have some cool PvP action if you go and look for it. But EVE's problems are fundamental structural problems, and CCP won't ever change those things because the problems are simply beyond the skill level of the developers. The folks at CCP are wonderful game developers and they deserve credit for that. But though their technical prowess as developers is undeniable, their shortcomings as game designers is equally manifest.