Thursday 3 March 2016

Great Expectations

When I first started playing Eve Online I had a lot of expectations. Many of my expectations were based upon science and science fiction, others based on articles I'd read about Eve Online in particular, still others based on what's usual in most games and based on what's "right", "proper", "fair", or "balanced".

- I was expecting the universe and the environment the game is set in to be more like that found in popular science fiction novels like David Weber's "Honor Universe".

- I expected Wormholes to be a method of faster than light travel, similar to how Gates are implemented. Difficult to protect, control or deny access to without a large, strong, permanent fleet... Shortcuts between different parts of normal space, not just entrances to and between small pockets of inter-dimensional space that isn't accessible in any other way.

- I expected futuristic technology based on real science, physics and realistic, believable science fiction. Not a horribly mismatched collection of unrealistic, unbelievable technology with absurd capabilities, equally absurd limitations, contrived rules and bandaid "fixes" all cobbled together into one gigantic immersion killing mess.

They like to tell us the Eve Universe is this huge massive universe with vast swaths of uninhabited space to explore. Really it isn't very big at all, you can travel across the entire Eve universe in less time than it takes to drive across a moderately sized city in real life.

That isn't massive or uninhabited, that's small and crowded. And that's flying manually without using Jump Drives or portals, with them the Eve Universe is even smaller.

They like to tell us about the massive battles in Eve Online and try to make it sound exciting. What they forget to mention is those battles happen rarely and involve massive purposely induced lag (called Time Dilation or TIDI for short).

They also forget to mention the individual pilot is practically irrelevant in such battles. Big sov wars in Eve are really just RISK in space with modified rules allowing for unlimited air drops. IOW, the biggest blob wins virtually all the time.

The big battles aren't at all exciting, what they are is incredibly boring.

They like to tell us Eve is such a great PvP game, yet most of what they call PvP in Eve would be considered griefing, ganking and harassment in most other games. Bannable offenses in many games.

They like to tell us Eve is a sandbox "you can do anything you want and play however you want". Then they try to force everyone to play the way certain players and the power blocs they control want us to play. Which basically boils down to if you aren't a member of one of the giant power blocs and won't do what the blocs want you to do, then you should be easy prey for them.

Note: This is an article that's been sitting here on the blog in unfinished draft form for a long time. I don't play Eve Online anymore because I got fed up and bored with it. Consider this more of a goodbye to Eve statement than anything else.

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