Leaderboard: Free-form space combat vs. on-the-rails shooter

@fallwind

You're kidding right?

Eve Online is the pinnacle of free form space combat. To say anything differently is laughable. No other space fight game gives you the free will to do what eve online offers.

@Vanir

This comment has to be sarcasm, because EVE Online is one of the most 'rails' space flight things ever produced. To call EVE Online the pinnacle of anything other than asshat behavior is the laughable comment, much less laud its spaceflight and spacefight for being anything other than a boring extension of the 'attack of the spreadsheets' of the game's skill system.

@Vanir

I'm assuming you're joking....

@Vanir
I played Eve a little, and I specifically remember not being able to control my movement directly, and there was no personal aiming of my ship's guns. Looking at more recent Eve combat videos, it doesn't look like the core play has changed. Selecting an enemy and telling your ship to shoot at it, and then watching your ship do those things, is a very different kind of play. Instead of "my own flying and my own targeting", you have a ship that runs on its own and follows your orders, as opposed to being directly in your control. Thus, the original poster is absolutely validated in their stance.

You've obviously never played an actual space combat sim such as Freelancer, Colony Wars, X-Wing and TIE Fighter... there are plenty of games older than Eve that offer just as much, and quite possibly more, control over your ship. There may not have been nearly as much sheer content, or depth of ship customization, but actual play itself, and control of ones ship, was active, not passive. This isn't saying Eve's more chess-like, strategic combat is in any way bad, or lacking in depth. It's just completely different.

I'm not usually one to say this, but the sheer amount of fanboying in your comment is staggering. "Pinnacle of free form space combat"? Disagreeing with your opinion is "laughable"? I implore you to reconsider your openly biased stance, especially when your argument against someone's opinion doesn't even address the opinion itself.

@Vanir

Free form space combat....except steering your ship XD.

I didn't even know how to turn the ship around without something on the overview menu until I asked someone. It was THE biggest reason I didn't play the game.....the first time I tried it.

It wasn't until the second try that I gave it a chance and realized how intriguing it was. I learned that you need to play it with (or against) other people to get the full experience. You can't just solo missions all day and expect it to be good.

@Vanir

You make me laugh. EVE is the pinacle of carebear pvp. The community in EVE thinks it is so hardcore but i remember the days of losing lock going around other ships, not firing through other ships, torpedoes and missiles, mines doing aoe friendly fire damage to the point the whiny hardcore carebear lord of the flies community bitched and whined until the weak minded devs changed it.

the hardcore carebears then bitched and whined they couldnt go into other folks missions and they couldnt detect this or that with current mechanics, so again the devs catered to the hardcore carebears and made the game make even less sense.

When you have less than 100k active subs, cant pull more than 70k folks during an event or major patch day, and cannot muster more than a 25k daily concurrent avg (all metrics taken from eves server reports), that tells you your game sucks dick, and caters to a few diehards.

Eve is also as on the rails as you can get, there is no newtonion physics in that game, you drive your ship like a car, you might not be stuck to a path like the other game but it is no different in physics.

So telling someone EVE has "the best" space combat is like telling someone kudos for being able to walk down a sidewalk.

@Graill440

Wait what? Eve? What you are describing is Star Trek Online almost exactly: carebears, friendly fire mines, less than 100k subs, bitchy community and all that. did you get your games crossed?

Sounds like people are trolling Eve online hard here.

Ones experience with Eve online can be of either two extremes, mindnumbingly boring or heartpounding excitement.

I'll never understand why anyone would expect manual control of a spacecraft's navigation or guns, especially if they dare to use ‘realistic’ in the same sentence.

@Saerain when Eve brings in orbital mechanics and functional gravity, then you get your "realistic" flag... in the mean time...

@fallwind I agree. I grew up with X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, Freespace and that other space-fighter game with the kittehs. Eve may not be 'on rails' but if there's no banking and ganking, it's just not a space game to me.

That's why I play Vendetta Online. It may be dated and have a small community, but I don't see that anyone has trumped the gameplay mechanics of VO -- not even Eve.

For those who aren't starfighters (and I imagine most would not be) I would suggest mixed mechanics that allows for rails-like travel as well as including dogfighting. Anything larger than a corvette class ship can and should be made -almost- impervious to small fighter assault and should navigate its own charted course on-rails while allowing players to use the ships turrets.

Space combat can have both and be dynamic and inclusive even of those who don't want to play the space-shooter aspect of a game.

@Borick

It's funny that you say that.

It seems to me that what you're -really- after is an air combat game re-skinned with sci-fi trappings.

@Zyrusticae Well, of course.

I explain this a few pages down. Realism was never part of the discussion here. Eve physics aren't any more realistic than those of a twitch-based space combat game.

In a sci-fi fantasy MMO I think it's safe to say that we're dealing with ethernaut spacejamming physics, rather than orbital elements.

@Borick

Hm? Okay, but I think you're stretching it a bit.

Relatively speaking, EVE physics ARE more realistic than a typical twitch-combat space fighter game. They are not truly realistic, what with the limited max velocity (though I think this can be justified with an alternate-propulsion system that does not use actual thrust to displace ships) and engagement ranges that would actually be more appropriate for air- and not space-based combat (but even these can be justified with EVE's bizarre technological development, which essentially restarted after the EVE gate closed), but it is far more realistic than piloting space fighters with fixed gun emplacements that fight with engagement ranges in the hundreds (or worse, dozens) of meters.

That being said, the complaints about EVE combat obviously have more to do with expectations than anything to do with realism. These players expect joystick jockeying, not anything resembling an actual simulation of space...

@Zyrusticae You're wrong.

Saying that Eve combat is 'relatively' more realistic is meaningless.

In actual space combat you'd be dealing with orbital mechanics. You do not deal with orbital mechanics or mass attraction at all. You move fleets in a manner that is inconsistent with how the mass of those ships would have to react to each other. You fight on the order of kilometers instead of thousands of kilometers.

What is 'more realistic' to you isn't realistic at all. It seems realistic because to you, conning a battlecruiser is more realistic than conning a fighter plane.

In both systems you're dealing with naval and/or air combat simulation. You are NOT dealing with realistic effects or even injecting 'more' realism into the game.

That Eve is more realistic than a shooter is a false argument based upon your opinion of what realism should be.

It's space opera. Fighter pilots belong in space opera.

@Saerain Did someone use the word realistic?

Is it the Eve fans doing that? Is that their crutch that lets them think they're actually playing a better game than something with fighter-based combat?

Realism is checked at the door with regard to space opera -- in Eve or X-Wing, it doesn't matter.

@fallwind Orbital slingshot mechanics would be so hot. :D

Or colony drops, talk about OP.

@Borick

I concede that EVE's mechanics are very much closer to a naval simulation than a space one, but I am not convinced that thousand-kilometer engagement ranges are particularly realistic, nor that orbital mechanics are particularly relevant in the event that ship-based combat occurs in ranges that are not in the thousands of kilometers (seriously, at least back up that one claim, would you?).

@GenXCraig

No, i refer to you fans of EVE online, lord of the flies carebear pvp at its finest. Vote my comment down all you like it wont change the fact that EVE is not what people look for in an MMO, reasonable people that is, and your population an metrics prove that that out month after month.

Even your own devs do not care about EVE and use what money they can from it to fund their other projects, including personnel. The slow pace of those projects and employee musical chairs should also clue you into the health of your game and the overreach going on at CCP.

Laugh. Support the game if you must, its your dollar, but leave the hype to the devs, they are better at it. As for the on the rails comment, any space ships that drive like a car is said to be on the rails, not using proper physics, but then this argument is as old as EVE, something we could almost write a book on at EVE's start.

Have fun with your game, its your right. (Grin)