Or as I was going to call it: my take on different online games, part…I don’t remember so lets talk about Eve. Eve Online is today’s topic.
I would say this is not the most difficult game out there, I’ve already established how complicated Anarchy Online is. It is however not the easiest game out there and I think this is a good thing. It’s also one of the few sci-fi based games that really has it’s own world and isn’t built on something else. It’s mostly based on the idea that whatever is left of humanity has moved out into space. We inhabit ships and fly from place to place using jumpgates and the occasional, newly introduced, wormhole. Oh, and as to be expected we are at war with someone or other and then there are the pirates and low security space.
You have the option in this to not play the full on fighter. It’s a little tough at first if you don’t at least do a little fighting. Or learn how to use drones so they can do the fighting for you. I personally like to mine. I am adverse to high repair bills. I also get tired of spending the hard earned cash on bullets, missiles and the like. So I mine. I have even made my own bullets. And then made excess to sell.
I’ve hinted at what have turned out to be some of the more interesting or frustrating parts on some games.
The skill system, crafting, and the market system. I don’t think Eve has an NPC market for purchasing stuff that gets looted. I think it does for supply of things like skills not for goods. It is otherwise a player driven market and prices on various commodities have risen and fallen and exploded and tanked over time. The folks at CCP who make Eve Online even have an Economist advisor to consult on the in game markets. This is part of what interested me to begin with. A feature that I really like is that you can download a file that contains your market transactions so you can load them in a spreadsheet or a database and figure out how you are doing in the game financially and what items are more profitable for you. You can also do this for your Corp. We’ll come back to the Corp.
The skill system I really like. You purchase your skill book, you right click it and train and you start learning it. Now when you log off, you continue to learn. So you log back on and you ‘skill training complete’ message comes through and you do the same thing with that skill or another. Yep, you learn your skills whether you are in game or not. Kind of cool since I’ve seen skills that take 24 days to train. In fact, when CCP gets ready to to a major expansion/upgrade they tell you to be sure to setup a nice long skill training.
Now the way the crafting works turns out to have similarities to the skill training. If you have the skill and the goods to make something and the blueprint then you can go to a staion that has manufacturing facilities. You rent a manufacturing bay, load in what you want to make and how many and then you get a cost quote and the amount of time it will take to make it. Go off now and do more mining or fighting or whatever. Come back and pick it up when it’s done.
In Eve Onine the player organizations are called Corps, as in corporations. The idea being that the universe is run by corporations and powerful financial people. Of course, they can afford the good ships and to own a space station and well you get the idea. Let’s face it, with the way things have been going in the real world it wouldn’t surprise most of us to find out it’s the corporations that run the world not the governments. Many of us are sure it isn’t just that way. I digress. It turns out that to create a player Corp is not that hard. It’s a little costly. Not hard. And you can have a Corp of One. I did it. I did it because I wanted to see what it would take and what all additional stuff there was the access to and the whizbangs.
Corps can get large enough to own or rent space stations and have their own manufacturing facilities and all that. Given the profits the NPC stations must be making for rental and taxes, it seems like a pretty good thing to have. Of course, you have to have the player base and the equipment to defend it. And some Corps have people who just manufacture stuff for the corp and then the corp sells it. Usually large things like ships that take a lot of resources. With all this you can see where it would be nice to download all the Corp’s market transactions to keep track of them and to analyze them so you know if you are getting the highest profit margins. Or not paying too much for resources from other players.
As for aesthetics of the game…it’s a bit dark. It’s space, it’s going to be dark. It’s sci-fi. The only thing that is not easy to find in the interface is the quit/exit button. If you can get to the options you can figure out how to get out of the game.
Eve used to be a download only, at least in the US. They’ve come out with a retail version recently. If they are like some of the other manufacturers you get something extra if you buy the box. Though I don’t know that for sure. It is a monthly subscription game with the option to pay in multi-month chunks that gives you a little price break. You can also trade in game currency called ISK for game time codes, perfectly legally and within the terms of service.
For game play, there is a questing/mission system. As you get better standing you get better missions. Don’t decline too many of those missions that you ask for though, your standing will go down and you’ll start getting crappy missions. Either really hard or not a lot of pay out. There is in game chat windows with an area panel as well as corp panel that are automatic. I think there is voice as well though I admit, I don’t use it.
I like this one. I don’t play a lot because I really use the market data for some stuff like learning how to use and build databases and the like. I’m a geek what can I say. Still, I continue to pay my subscription and log on and check my skills periodically and once in a while I’ll log in and chat with my corp while I mine.
That’s my little bit on Eve. Go play it.
See you in the Machine.
Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.
