So, yeah, Ripard wrote a thing. Go give it a read. I'll wait.
Now, he does mention a few things that could be changed. The LP Store for one. The clicking. It can be insane. A week ago, I was going to spend all my LP on datacores, make a mint over time. Except, after a quick calculation, I determined it would take 7748 clicks to spend every last point of my LP on only datacores. It probably doesn't need to be said that I bought other stuff. I would have needed reconstructive surgery on my wrist if I'd went ahead with my plan. So, yeah, having an amount edit field next to the accept button, would be a welcome change. On the other hand, perhaps it's good that I'm not able to buy 38500 datacores in only a few clicks.
He also mentions some possible changes to the new player experience. Good suggestions. New players should not have to experience the norm of playing this game, until after they've been hooked. (I've always started Gallente characters. I've never had to fly 10 jumps to buy some module I'm going to need for a tutorial mission. Is this not the case in the other starting areas?)
I somewhat disagree with his suggestions on simplifying mechanics. Such as letting us view the Jita market from anywhere in space. Or being able to put bounties on anyone. Or that the ability to place a POS should not be restricted by the standings of other people in a corp. Or automating market buy/sell orders into one-click updateables. Or automating PI into one-click management features.
World of Warcraft went down that road. Look at what their game became. Everything became simple. Anything that rewarded effort was removed. Everything became readily available to everyone. There were few areas left to elitism.
I'm a lazy fuck when it comes to certain aspects of EVE Online. I could probably make a shit-tonne of money on the market, if I wanted to put in the effort. But I don't. So I'm not going to be one of the elite in that area of the game. And I'm okay with that. The people willing to put up with the 0.01 ISK wars, the constant updating of market orders, the spreadsheeting and analysis, those people deserve to make as much ISK as they do, they deserve to be members of the market elite. I don't think CCP needs to add in a tonne of convenience so that a lazy fuck like me can compete with them.
I guess where I really disagree are those items he mentions that can lead to character tragedy. Forgetting to update a clone and then losing skillpoints when you get podded. Or losing skillpoints because you didn't eject from your strategic cruiser. Or being -10 security status and getting blown up in Empire highsec (because there's no mechanic to bribe CONCORD to ignore you.) Or that you autopilot 15km off gates and stations, not directly to them.
We need face-palm moments. Games need risk. Risk from ourselves, our own mistakes, our own oversights.
Hell, I got a Proteus blown-up back in March, because I like to auto-pilot sometimes. I was at a -2.6 security status and forgot that one of the systems on my route was a 0.9 system. There went 500M ISK. I lose a lot of ISK in this game due to my own mistakes (or laziness.) I don't think the game needs changing to protect me from myself.
Just last week I lost a Thorax to 23 people (well, Amarr, but let's not debate ). I was in a clone that I'd forgot to update 15 minutes beforehand, in my rush to get back to the fight quickly. I was lucky I was not podded. But, if I had been podded? I would have face-palmed. Hard. But, I would not have complained that the mechanic for clone updating needed to be changed.
Certainly there's no logical reason that some mechanics are the way they are, but from a game mechanic perspective we do need choices that exploit the fact that sometimes we are our own worst enemies.
"Or being -10 security status and getting blown up in Empire highsec (because there's no mechanic to bribe CONCORD to ignore you.)"
ReplyDelete^^ but that one, there should be.
Even better? CONCORD is a playable faction....and it has dirty cops, and while its ships are a bit tougher or better-bonused ... they can still be blown up! ;-)
With the exception of the autopilot thing, I'm with Jester on this one. I don't need obscure and needlessly intricate mechanics to generate facepalm moments. I can do that perfectly well by jumping poorly-fit ships with expensive cargos into obvious traps, or losing half my isk to a Jita scam. I think the question to ask is, whose gameplay experience is being enhanced by making it easy to forget to upgrade your clone? And whose gameplay experience is diminished by it? How is that rewarding player effort, as opposed to player anal-retentiveness?
ReplyDeleteHow is updating your clone, after you used your clone, obscure and needlessly intricate? It's actually quite logical and realistic. I don't agree that someone took steps to make it easy to forget to upgrade your clone, either. My gameplay experience is enhanced by EVE being realistic in this way, and your experience is diminished by it. Since your method of argument involves a metaphor in which I love to retain faecal matter, despite you knowing nothing about me, I must confess I've lost all sympathy for your perspective and now experience Schadenfreude when I think of your discomfort with things as they are.
DeleteI'm with Jester as well, I think the RSI-inducing things like LP store and invention click-fest should be looked at. It's a list of good suggestions, except for the autopilot, and except for the handholding safety warnings, and except for the seeing markets at a distance. Looks like I'm not with Jester after all. The key here, is that once you have a successful MMO, the most important thing is not regular updates of new awesome stuff, the most important thing is avoiding ruining the game to satisfy ill-considered requests like the above. This makes a post like Jester's rather reprehensible, as he's vomited out a giant mass of annoyance, without taking the time to analyze which of the items are necessary, which are beneficial, and which are worth fixing, thus aligning himself with the worst enemies of any MMO.
You're saying it's *realistic* that the *clone* that holds my *informorphic soul* which I can jump in and out at will and which can only hold so many of my *skill points* has to be manually *reupgraded* every time it is destroyed? Realistic compared to what? If you really want to talk about realism, how is it realistic that the human race has colonized another galaxy and flies around in ships measured in kilometers but I can't call the clone company and tell them to keep the next-size up clone on file for me, here's my spacecredit card number?
DeleteBut on the an actual argument, it's stupid that the game makes me do something manually that there is literally no reason to not do. When a player is podded in EVE, the first thing they do is update their clone. Unless they forget. Why does CCP want me to forget about that? They have a warning for when I jump into lowsec, a warning for when I'm going to get concorded, a warning for when I might not want to remote rep somebody, why don't they have a dialogue open when I get podded that says "Your clone was just destroyed, would you like to upgrade your current medical clone Y/N?" Guess how many people will ever click "No."
Having to manually upgrade your clone is bad game design, it is not a feature.
"Guess how many people will ever click "No.""
DeleteWell, anyone who didn't have enough liquid ISK to cover the charge at that instant, or anyone who wasn't willing to spare that ISK from whatever else was important to them at that instant. I've read about that occurring, so it's a nonzero number of people. So what you're asking for is a feature where you can autopay for things, preset in advance, unless you don't have enough to cover it, in which case it will pop up a warning message that you don't have enough to cover the preset thing you set your character to automatically do? To be consistent, this feature should be available for all or most actions, not just clones, yes?
There's a world of difference between making one action, in response to one situation, take less clicks to accomplish, and what you are suggesting, which is automating gameplay completely and then only requiring human input when your preset conditions don't cover what just occurred. You are free to claim that the former situation is bad game design, but I'm just as free to claim that it's a feature--the difference being semantic, it moots nothing anyway.
The real issue here is that if CCP fixed the one thing you always forget to do, and then the one thing that Johnny always forgets to do, etc...then every char in the game would have a huge database of thousands of automated tasks. What if the thing I pick to automate is running lvl 4 missions? You've failed to argue in a fashion clear enough to rule that out, so it's up for grabs as far as I can see. Even if you do rule out automation that complex, you've still drastically changed the gameplay by automating thousands of simple tasks--so basically your argument boils down to "EVE
's gameplay should be drastically changed because I can't remember to upgrade my clone." I click No.
Imagining EVE with tons more automation, where you could legally macro simple tasks like rebuying clones or mining with 10 auto-dock-unloading post 1.2 skiffs, is interesting and it doesn't seem obviously less fun. But, I'd hope CCP would give it more thought before switching it over than you have.
Agree with Ramm. Many of Jester's complaints just show the age of the game. Its needs some polish in the area of "needless busy work (too many clicks)."
DeleteTake off the tin foil hat poetic. If you disagree with some of the things on the list fine (I certainly don't agree with the autopilot one, but I can understand his reasoning) but don't imply that the post was a plea to make EVE like today's WOW, or todays UO :(.
You're reading deep. I never said Ripard was making a plea to turn EVE into WoW. I simply said, the road to removing all inconvenience will lead to WoW. Perhaps Rip doesn't see that.
DeleteSo basically EVE can't be a good game if it doesn't have stupid inconveniences. That's like saying excel 2010 is bad because it doesn't suck as much as 2003.
DeleteExcel is a game now? Is it multiplayer?
DeleteSome inconveniences are valid to fix and remove, because they have no consequence on character or game. Others are not, especially where they have negative character consequences.
You can make an argument that ANY inconvenience in EVE negatively affects your character. Even LP store clicking. Since you didn't want to click some 7k times, you probably didn't get the most efficient conversion rate or best discount you could have gotten on datacores. So we should leave that in the game too to deter people from getting the best rates on stuff.
DeleteThe question is how minuscule do these inconveniences need to be vs the (sometimes massive) detriment they can on your character.
The game doesn't need to be rigged for facepalm moments vs the client. EVE is about the players and its the players who should give other players facepalm moments (and the players are more than capable of doing that).
And yes Excel is an EVE addon dinchuno?
Join the CFC, put a 100mil bounty on someone and let ~the right people~ know, and pretty soon you'll see them ragequitting live on the Eve-O forums.
ReplyDeleteRemember Krixtal? Someone put a 100mil bounty on him, and there was no end to the hilarious boohooing.
I wrote on Ripard's blog, that whenever things like this come up people invariably jump up and down that its making the game "easier" and this should be avoided.
ReplyDeleteGranted, some of his peeves are 'by design' and shouldn't be changed - but a BADLY DESIGNED feature does not equal A DIFFICULT GAME FEATURE. Well it does, but not in the way you think. The game can be usable and intuitive without detracting from the harshness or difficulty of the actual game (most of which is imposed by a ruthless player base...tidying up the UI does not make the player base cease being ruthless).
Removing idiotic click fests, or immersion breaking 'mechanics' can only be a good thing for the game.
You say that you don't want EVE to give you (as a lazy person) the advantage that others have (as not lazy people), with regards to things like PI restarts and market sales. That's fair.
ReplyDeleteEven so, the things Ripard suggests won't necessarily take away from that. If you've ever run a PI setup you know that if you move the extractors around a little bit you'll get much better returns than if you leave them in the same place and just hit restart. Wouldn't that be the penalty for pressing "restart all extractors" on the industry tab? If you wanted to put in the time and effort you could go through all your planets and maximize their returns (while setting a 3-hour extraction cycle so you could come back in 3 hours and restart them), or you could just set a 3 day cycle and keep clicking "restart all extractors." Less effort equals less reward.
Ripard asks for a "sell all selected" option. What's wrong with that? You could check each item for the best market and carry them all around to sell them, or you could just grab a group of them and sell them all at the best price in station. I know a lot of marketeers would be overjoyed if such a feature were implemented (for taking advantage of "those stupid mission runners") and a lot of "stupid mission runners" would be happy because their time spent in station selling item by item is worth less than the time out making more bounty and LP money.
I don't see a problem with including features that take out the necessity of using macros and things. Let's use the example of ejecting from T3s. Is CCP unhappy that people are using macros to avoid the skill loss? They should fix it so it is impossible to eject or there is no advantage to ejecting (I don't know how, although I'm sure if T3s were made un-ejectable we could find plenty of people defending the realism of being unable to eject from a T3). Is CCP happy that people are avoiding skill loss in that manner? Why not include a way so everybody can avoid the skill loss, like an eject macro or *gasp* a removal of the skill loss.
I'm pretty much with Jester on this one, there are a lot of stupid things in the game that are adding nothing to anybody's experience, and it would be nice if CCP changed them.
"I'm pretty much with Jester on this one, there are a lot of stupid things in the game that are adding nothing to anybody's experience, and it would be nice if CCP changed them."
ReplyDeleteIs the above statement true? Yes, it's literally true.
Does the above statement ignore the fact that the pitfalls in doing so are huge, in that you might accidentally include a nonstupid thing in the list of things to 'fix' and by doing so ruin the game? That many popular MMO's, WoW, SW:G, Rift, were completely ruined in exactly this fashion? Yes, which is why the initial statement, and Jester's entire post, was incredibly naive.
Rammstein, by your logic Crucible should have put the last nail in Eve Online's coffin, because that's exactly what it was: tons of small fixes all over FiS. Yet in reality it was the turning point on the game direction, not it's final doom.
DeleteAsk yourself for each of those "features" - are they fun? Do they add to the fun of the game?
ReplyDeleteIf not, there should be a really good reason why they are there.
Most of Ripard's list sound more like partially completed features, really.
Wrote a reply here:
ReplyDeletehttp://interstellarprivateer.wordpress.com/2012/07/28/tilting-the-balance/
Taking out timesinks and pointlessly uncomfortable things was NOT what caused downturn of WoW for challenge-seeking players like me.
ReplyDeleteIt was the welfare. When you get almost everything for almost nothing.
Noone is asking for any kind of welfare here, just the rationalization of uncomfortable and time wasting game mechanics. The game will only benefit from this, retaning more new trials.
"On the other hand, perhaps it's good that I'm not able to buy 38500 datacores in only a few clicks."
ReplyDeleteseriously?? When i consider that having a R&D Agent running for half a year you won't get that many datacores out of it...
I thought about that on T5 Warzone control if those it shows again that stuff is too cheap with factor of 1/4 of actual price.
But i agree with you about the clicking. The R&D agent offers you an input box to tell him how much you want. something like that added to the market with a upper cap at lets say 2k DCs per type per month.
Doesn't change my point of war zone control having a too huge impact on prices but DCs not coming from FW because it is too many clicks is bad too.