It's EVEning time

Or maybe just EVE time. EVE Online that is. For those who haven't heard of it before, let me open your eyes.

EVE is a massively multiplayer online game. It's set in space. And it's incredibly freeform.

If I had to describe it using the shortest explanation ever, I would call it an extreme close up of an RTS. You have people who choose to be fighters, killing NPC 'pirates'. Others who want to mine for a living in asteroid belts throughout the universe. People who like to make things. People who like to kill other people. Even people who like to be the boss of people. So from an RTS point of view, you've got fighting units, resource collectors, unit construction, and so on... You even learn skills in a way that is akin to 'researching' things during the course of an RTS match. It's quite a well made game and despite its lower points, I like it.

I am the instigator of a thread for the changing of the skill system as it is. You can find that thread OVER HERE =D I won't go into much more detail, although I may print out the forum page for memories xD But I will just run over the idea of the change, because I intend to use this blog also as a platform to make my ideas for games known.

How the skill system works is that you allocate a skill to be learned, and it learns it. It does this all in real time, and the length of time is dependent on your attributes. This is really good, considering some skills take minutes, hours, days, even months. Having to slug it out manually would be terrible. The one problem with this system is that when a skill levels up - the learning stops. You need to manually get into the game and start on a new skill. Several months into the game you will have accrued millions of these skill points, and after a year or so, forgetting to start training a new skill is not such a big deal. But for the new player, every minute is precious.

I proposed a system where instead of learning skills, you would just accrue the skill points into a kind of 'bank'. You'd then spend them on the skills you wanted to learn. So instead of needing to take a course in time micromanagement, you can just play the game, and tend to your skills whenever you feel like it without having to worry.

If you've taken a look at the thread you'll see that I've refined that idea slightly, taking cues from other games that have taken things in a similar direction. You'll also see that I've gotten little to no positive responses for the idea. Everyone seems to feel as though it is a stupid idea, and fails to give any constructive or critical reasons. All they say is that it's my fault if I don't manage my time right. That it's my responsibility to manage it right. So to them I said.

It's a game. Not a job.

I draw the line when a game becomes work, although right now I have little choice if I want to play EVE. I thought it would be nice to have the 'grind' take a backseat to actual gameplay. I like to mine in peace, it's a relaxing money maker. If I'm there when a skill completes, great, I can start a new one. But then when I go to bed, I quickly start training a skill that will take a lot longer. Why? So that I don't lose time. I'm already at least 3-4 years behind everyone in the game, and that is in real-time. Something I can never catch up to.

Although one response brought up the problem of account selling (which is OK in EVE - unlike in WoW). But that must already be a problem for it to have mattered, which means that this change will do nothing to stop farmers (nothing will in my opinion). But what else is there? Another said that newbies get scared when you say you have 65million skill points. So they should be. That is years of time. It'll be a week or 2 before they crack 1 million (you start the game with about 800k worth of skills). So it is scary to think you'll be behind everyone else indefinitely.

Want to know what the funny thing is though?

Despite the amount of EVE advertising I've seen (I only started playing because I saw an ad for the free trial @ Penny Arcade one day), the amount of players online at any one time, or even the amount of subscribers does not even compare to WoW. The most I've seen online in EVE is 20-25k. And this game is on one server - not like the multiple realms of WoW. The only reason it wins awards is because WoW isn't in the science genre. That's all. What's even funnier? EVE is the better game in most regards. It's just that the beginning is so unintuitive and unfriendly to the new player that most of them won't go beyond the free 14 days.

Their latest expansion featured a complete graphics overhaul. All their next patch needs is some reworking of the interface to be more user friendly, perhaps a simple and advanced version of the interface (so they can go advanced once they've come to grips with most of the game). That and some user friendly changes to skills, and they're one step closer to greatness.