EVE Interview: the 'necessary evil' of a steep learning curve

The casual-type market may be larger, but there's still a place for us hardcore players.

I'm glad they are sticking to their values and I'm glad people like Eve. It's not the game for me, but I'm still happy it exists for people that like it.

It is to weed out the non-believers D:

I wish he'd stop saying "necessary evil." The necessary evil is dumbing down a game or compromising on principles to win market share. To limit or be limited, in order to be appealing, is the compromise. To create and celebrate complexity, trusting your players to be capable of appreciating it, is a supremely good achievement.

There is nothing evil about creating a game that provides a challenge beyond those based on reflexes and a random number generator. EVE Online's growth is proof that it can work. I wish them all the best.

Now if they would revamp their extremely ackward windowing system (the one you have to suffer with when you're flying your shift, not the new spiffy planetary interaction ones), I might just give it another try.

lol, its so true. Although I think they COULD do a better job explaining, the game is just too different from traditional mmos. Patience is the name of the game, its a rough cliff to climb.
Theres a reason googling "game curve" or "mmo curve" yeilds that popular graph.

Thank god they haven't been tempted to dumb this engaging and complex jewel that they have created down to simple just to please a larger audience; like others have done. CCP gets its fair share of ingame criticism from the player base, but adolescent troublemakers and simplistic, pointless time sinks aren't among them.

I hate to be the Debbie Downer here, but as someone that has played for the last 5 years (admittedly off and on, only 10 mil SP character) I can say that they *have* dumbed it down in some areas, something that he admits to: "We took strides in trying to improve it [the learning curve], but I think that as well is a necessary evil."

Calling it a necessary evil doesn't take away from the fact that they did it. In other words, they have done what many games have done and have changed here and there to not only gain new players but to also please their playerbase. There's nothing wrong with it, and tweaking areas of your game that just don't work that smoothly is standard.

If you compare the EVE now to the EVE 5 years ago, you would know the difference. Granted, they have done less to "dumb it down" than some games, but I wish the whole thing wouldn't be played off as "hardcore" when in fact it's fairly easy to play. "Mastering" the game is tough, but that's the case with any game. Yes, even WoW, EQ2 or LoTRO.

I can't remember when it was, but recently they handed out those "Harden the &^@$ up" buttons at a convention. Who were they talking to with those buttons? To me, they made them for their current fans...any outsider that saw that would probably chuckle.

It's a great game, don't get me wrong. But describing it as something that is "hard" to get into and play takes away, in my opinion, from so much that the developers have done to make it a well rounded game.

Beau

No such thing as non believers in EVE, it isnt hardcore no matter how many folks want to think that, its trial and error because of no documentation, nothing steep about that, though a simple dev choice to be lazy and save money.

CCP has devs that have flip flopped so much in the game, corrupted it, that they are in the middle now and trying to push this as a major selling point to new folks, Touting the game is like it is because its "hardcore", rubbish.

Poor choices, corruption, and lazy devs have made EVE and its stellar community what it is today. This game and EVE beta have zero in common.

Lets see CCP bleed another MMO when its in develoment is finally released, can they handle two niche titles at once? we shall see.

I find it insulting to be calling a game with steep learning curve "nescessary evil". I'm sorry but MMO games are very much entitled to be complicated and deep. The "nescessary evil" is on the players if they want to invest the time and money into a hobby.

Video games should definitely not be getting dumber, that will only shorten it's lifespan because casual players don't commit to one game, they get bored real quick and move on to the next big craze.

I do think developers can strike a balance between simplicity and depth for the integrity of the game.

(played eve for 4 years, i.e. entitled to an opinion)

It seems to me that there are two types of complexity we are discussing here. The first is the huge number of career choices that can be made in the game. The second is how the rules of the game itself have a depth.

In the first category, I know that EVE has a LOT of different ways you can play, all of them requiring totally different disciplines and skill sets. The question is, are there really that many more professions in EVE over other MMOs? This I don't know seeing as I'm hardcore and I only play EVE. I would be surprised if they were top of the heap on this account.

The second type of complexity, the rules themselves, I would argue are very complex. The basis of EVE is physical and mathematical. Just like baseball or roller-coasters, you could spend a lot of time (*ahem*) studying the physics alone. Its all based on real world stuff and that means that mastering it isn't just about maxing out one number. There's a tremendous amount going on, even in what appears to be a simple fight.

Just my two cents.......

Eve has no steep learning curve.
Read tool tips, ask a few questions, and you know mostly what you need to know.

"Mastering" an aspect of the game takes a lot more time and commitment, but I really don't understand why people think the game is so complicated. It's one of the simpler games available. I suppose the people who say so are folks more accustomed to massively multiplayer action adventure games, like WoW ;)

The irony is that EvE isn't challenging at all once you get used to it. It's very basic, and combat is dull and monotonous. It just uses a different ruleset in terms of character creation and combat: but even then it's a lot more basic than being a class in another MMO.

If hardcore is the issue, why then are they focusing on things like Incarna and planetary interaction? To get more casuals in. They know from their experience the hardcore simply isn't enough to make them a success, and that the future is making people feel hardcore while making it carebear friendly. The future is not 0.0, but empire.

Ask anyone that knows anything about EVE and they will tell you that learning combat and becoming good at combat takes about a year and a half of combat playing.

Say you fly an interceptor, arguably one of the harder "classes" to play in EVE, first you have to learn what skills you want to train to fly it, then you have to learn how to fit it, then you *have* to know about agression timers, then you have to actually learn how to dogfight, what a transversal is, how you should be going towards ships in a slant instead of a straight line or they're going to blow you out of the water, then you have to learn what to tackle and what not to tackle...all of this is done from trial and error in a usually 20 mil ship that is uninsurable that has about 1500 ehp.

Don't be silly, there is a lot to learn in EVE, the game mechanic you don't know is the game mechanic that is going to kill you and there are oh so many game mechanics in EVE.

I've played a lot of MMO's out there, EVE is one of the hardest and most rewarding. You not only have to learn your ship but you have to learn all of the other combat ships in the game and how they're likely to be fitted.

There are about 175 different "Classes" in EVE you have to learn, that being how many different types of ships there are (minus the cov ops which only count as one in my mind, and the indies and the noob ships). 175 different ships you're probably going to go up against in a fight, from a rifter to a ragnarok.

What other MMO has 175 different classes? None. The learning curve is a cliff, I don't know anyone who learned to PvP, all of it, in 6 months.