EVE Online is a PvP game where you can never catch up to players who started earlier. Skill points are time-based, the older characters have their attributes and learning skills maxed, and someone starting today will always be millions and millions of points behind veteran players. How do you avoid bleeding newer players under these conditions?
First, it is a big universe. Who has the time or interest to go swat newbies? The most powerful players are effectively dragons, out there in the reaches of 0.0 space, waiting for dragonslayers or fools loaded with coin. Or perhaps they are corporate managers, working safely in corporate space, more likely to exploit your labor than destroy your ship.
Second, even if you are in direct conflict, only so much force can be brought to bear. All those points in Caldari ships only matter if you are flying a Caldari ship. Those millions of points for flying your Iteron V (a hauling ship) do not do you much good in combat, nor do your trading or research skills. Furthermore, each skill has five ranks, further limiting the force available. Each rank of a skill may be worth the same bonus, even as each successive rank costs many times what the previous rank did.
You can be 100 million points behind but only 5% down in this particular combat. As long as you have the relevant skills maxed, you are on equal footing. Sure, he is equally good at flying a dozen different ships, but he can only fly one at a time. Of course, all his mining and production skills let him build ships faster than you can destroy them, but that’s his reward for having spent $500 more than you on the game.
: Zubon
A lot of the true PvP’ers discuss the need for penalty upon death. We aren’t talking about some pansy time-delimited death penalty (especially when you can just buy it off). We are talking about digital blood. Continue reading ‘The PvP Protectionists’
EVE is going to mix things up a bit. Soon, there will be planets that need to be controlled in order for the rich to get richer. Who controls which planet at which time will be determined by a new FPS / RTS game called Dust 514. The announcement was a while ago, but I didn’t hear about it until my husband saw it on EQ2-daily.com.
Continue reading ‘Dust 514: Sounds like a great idea’
EVE Online turned 6 on May 6th. Congratulations to CCP!
A 6 year persistant history. A living history where truly brilliant strategies have unfolded. Truly terrible betrayals unveiled. We are excited to see what will happen next.
This year has been very successful for EVE Online, thanks in large part to the Apocrypha expansion and a return to retail. We started out the year with around 244,000 subscribers and in five short months we’ve had a 22% growth in subscribers. In the past couple days we surpassed the impressive milestone of 300,000 active subscribers.
We’ve broken our peak concurrent user record 3 times this year alone, standing now at an impressive 53,850 in the same universe. That is exponential growth. We couldn’t think of a better birthday present than having more people playing EVE Online than ever before. It is another sweet reminder of EVE’s boundless potential.
As always, we encourage you to bring your friends, family and even enemies to New Eden. Cheers to that.
- Ethic
What glorious news is this? Band of Brothers is was a group of mostly elder EVE Online players that acted the playground bully for the last few years. They destroyed the alliance I was in (ASCN) and pretty much stuck their hands into anything they could mess with. It’s all part of the game, sure, but they had a knack for making things that were once fun – well not so much any more.
I have just heard the news that their alliance has been destroyed thanks to the Goons.
BoB is dead! BoB is dead! Let them shout from the rooftops! BoB is dead. For now.
- Ethic
I accepted a 5-day “welcome back” offer to EVE Online. It might take me five days to figure out where I am and what is going on.
I have about 8 million skill points. I was feeling pretty good about that, until the new (since I last played) Certificates showed me what a newb I am. I have 4 certificates, two of them in Drones. But I am a newb flying an Iteron V, darn it.
(For the curious, that is 2.7 million in Spaceship Command, 2.2 in Learning, 1.6 in Drones, .6 in Engineering, .5 in Social, and the rest scattered.)
: Zubon
How many people do you think they could get to sign up for this deal:
Due to popular demand, CCP is proud to announce EVE Offline! This evolution in MMO gaming allows you to create a new type of character, one accessible from the internet or your mobile phone, without the full game client. Take EVE Online’s acclaimed real time skill advancement system to the next level, changing your training in progress to another skill or even queuing up to five skills to start when your current training completes. No need to worry about losing points! As an extra bonus, EVE Offline characters will accumulate skill points 50% faster than normal characters.
You should know a few things before you take the plunge offline. First, EVE Offline characters are not part of a standard account. You can start an EVE Offline account for $5/month or add one to an active EVE Online account for $3/month. Second, these must be new characters, although we are working on a system to convert existing characters to EVE Offline. Third, because they are not using the game client, EVE Offline characters cannot log onto the game servers.
How will I get my skill books, you might ask. All EVE Offline characters get them free! You will have access to all skills at no cost, provided you have the prerequisite skills. As an added bonus, you can buy skill books with your existing EVE Online character and send them to your EVE Offline character or your friends’, and training points will accumulate an additional 50% faster on bought books, twice the normal speed!
Take your game to the next level by making your next character EVE Online character an Offline Character!
They could probably get a few more by denying rumors that do not exist, like “there are no plans at this time to allow EVE Offline characters to be converted to EVE Online characters.” But my real question is, how many of you play your EVE characters like this anyway, except for ~12 hours a month, only at full cost with no training bonus?
: Zubon
I received a re-subscription offer this week. Not a discount, not a coupon, not trial time: just an e-mail of “We would like you to re-activate your account. We have new stuff!” So thanks for letting me know that I can still pay full price. Glad to hear that you want my business.
: Zubon
ur doin it wrong
There are few improvements to be made on EVE Online’s economic tools. The more your system resembles that, the better.
Buy orders are a key feature. Most systems lack this, but it is the “Buy It Now” equivalent for the seller. It would improve economic efficiency enormously. Creating a market is hard, and letting either buyers or sellers make the first offer will encourage more use.
Continue reading ‘Improving Auction Houses’
My jaw hit the floor while watching the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica on SciFi tonight. There, before my eyes, was a commercial for EVE Online. Amazing. Nice work CCP!
- Ethic
