[UO] Kingdom Reborn Beta

[Fog]

Originally Posted by Duppin

I'm also not a big fan of the advancement model. Everything you actually do ingame in EVE is essentially farming, and your skill development is limited to clicking a new skill to train once a play session if that.

See, that's the problem with EVE - not that it's all farming, because it's not. But it leads new players to believe it's all farming.

I haven't really done any farming or grinding or anything much at all since about my second month in the game. Nada. What other MMO can you say that about? I've spent the entire time PvPing. Well, PvPing and sitting around chatting. The reason why I can get away with that is that you can easily PvP in ships that cost basically nothing to fit and fly and are difficult to lose barring unusual circumstances. Not even just frigates - T1 cruisers and battlecruisers cost jack all after insurance, too. We're talking like one hour of farming, two weeks of PvPing kind of jack all. I don't even have to do that because I invest my money in the markets and make enough trivially that I can pay for my account in ISK and PvP as well. When I fly more expensive ships, they are usually ships like interceptors that I will never ever lose unless I fuck up something godawful.

That's the whole point, though. You're not supposed to have to rat or mission or mine all day. You can do what you want, pretty much. If you don't like PvPing, you could spend the whole time doing whatever you like doing; in fact, it would be easier, because most of the other pursuits in the game make money, rather than lose it, in terms of trading and crafting and cooking up elaborate scams and schemes and jobs for yourself to do for people.

The big problem is that none of this is apparent to someone on their trial, because all the game introduces you to is how to play and how to farm. I would have never gotten to the fun parts unless I had known in advance that EVE was the sort of game where you have to go out and find the fun yourself.

[Drtyrm]

Originally Posted by Fog

I haven't really done any farming or grinding or anything much at all since about my second month in the game. Nada.

It's like Bizarro-WoW.

Honestly though, someone at CCP needs to figure out how to make the trial fun if they want more subscribers. There's just so much stupid shit.

I'd pay money to have someone video Zehn playing the EVE trial. Looting corpses in EVE takes MINUTES Zehn! MINUTES!

[Fog]

Here's what I'm thinking - there's this factional warfare coming out in a near-future expansion (think within the next year) for EVE, which is basically where players can ally themselves to NPC factions in some sense and presumably PvP and accomplish interesting objectives under their banner, if they wish. That might be a great way to hook new players into some interesting gameplay. If they can get newbies started out fighting - somehow - in PvP for their faction, interacting with the game world in some tangible way, that might pique their interest enough to keep playing and find their niche in EVE.

[Inconsiderable]

Originally Posted by FoghornDeadhorn

Well if you don't have a thing for spaceships the game is definitely not going to appeal ...

Most people that dislike EVE dont do it because of space ships instead of mages. I love reading about EVE, I love the features, I love the sandbox. But there is a major difference between most MMOs and EVE. You actually PLAY other MMOs, but you WATCH EVE. The fighting is beyond boredom, no matter if it is PvE or PvP. Its F1-F8 and then turn the camera around to have a nice view.
Maybe some people enjoy this or think its fun; great and have fun playing eve. But I need more button-mashing, I need fast-paced PvP and EVE is well... kinda boring combat-wise(, beside the adrenaline because you loose months of farming in alliance battles).

Beside the "passive" fights in EVE, there is more stuff that I hate:
- PvP winner are usually decided when the fight starts; either you have better skills or a counter-spec or you are dead. To make it worse, your skills are RL-time-based.
- Number are superior, making it hell of a zergfest
- No real space-feeling! I am sorry but there is no atmosphere. When I fly a small intercepter I dont feel like Luke shooting Tie fighters and when I fly a battleship I dont feel like Picard commanding the enterprise. There is nothing in this game that popular Scifi has, even shields are just a pve thingy.
"Torpedos incoming!" "Defensive manoeuvre incon-gamme-delta! All power to the front shields!" "Weve been hit, leak in deck 8 to 24!" "Seal and.." whatever. You know what I mean. Spaceship feeling.
(- Sometimes I feel like grinding my skills would be more fun than eve skillgain right now.)


Yes, EVE is a great game and I still pay my account to support CCP. But its boring, too. At least if you like fast-paced battles.
While EVE offers many things that UO also did and some more, it cannot match UOs "living and breathing virtual world" feeling. No game so far can do this. Personally I consider the old neocron the best MMO I played. Neocron also had "all features that UO had and more" as some of you said about EVE; still it wasnt the same. I dont remember doing the stuff I did in UO. I did PvE until I was maxxed out, farmed techparts and did PvP 95% of the time. It was a great time and I miss it; but in UO it didnt feel like "doing pve", "doing pvp".. you were just experiencing the world.
Its difficult to explain, as it is usually with "feelings". I guess UO got you or it didnt. Sure if you played all ultima parts in the years before than play it online and are busy being angry because its not how you imagined it...

[Rhaze]

to get people to stay they have to make it not take 6 months to have all the "necessary" skills trained. learning skills, advanced learning skills, nav, eng, electronics, etc etc etc.

and another 6 months to fly the type of set-up you want.


Yes I know you can fly a cruiser and web people....what fun....

[FoghornDeadhorn]

I've never found PVP to be that way Inconsiderable, it *can* be slow if you're just sitting in some slow ship with no MWD but picking what to orbit, setting manual flight angles, paying attention to collective gang positions, evaluating gang composition, knowing when to go down fighting and knowing when to gtfo...what I like is the fact that it's more "make decisions quickly" than "spam buttons quickly" ala WoW which probably took years off my wrists. I could point you to some good PVP videos that demonstrate what fights in non-gay ships is like.

As for being Luke in an X-Wing...couple issues with this:

A) Most major PVP takes place at points of interest. These are jump gates and POS, and the former will never give you an "out in spaaaaaaaace" feeling, the latter might do so more effectively with the new graphics engine making planets look less like gray mudballs.

B) Other PVP takes place in asteroid belts which currently are arranged in a pretty lame fashion. Soon they will need to be probed out which will make for a more "out in spaaaaaaaaace" feeling not only when you get to one but when you try to find someone in a belt.

C) Nothing is honestly going to make you feel like Luke in an X-wing except being in an X-wing playing a Star Wars game. The closest I ever felt was playing WC3 chasing ships down who were trying to break into the atmosphere of planet X, the day any space MMO recreates combat like that I'll shit my pants. EVE IS going towards planetary shit some time down the road though, which is certainly something to be excited about.

[Vorph]

Originally Posted by Rhaze

to get people to stay they have to make it not take 6 months to have all the "necessary" skills trained. learning skills, advanced learning skills, nav, eng, electronics, etc etc etc.

I've always felt that EVE would've been much better off if the Learning tree did not exist. I get what they're going for with the 'invest time now that will pay off a year (or five) down the road' but in practice it does nothing except detract from the game. Trying to explain to a new player who isn't sure about the game that it's in their best interest to spend the first month doing nothing but learning skills is a really good way to drive them away. It's part of what made me give up on EVE back in 2003 rather than playing it all along; something I kind of regret now that the game has vastly improved and I'd really like those extra 50-60M SPs I could have had.

[Cynno]

I agree, the learning tree is probably the lamest of them all. On my main account, I didn't really even leave the station til my learning skills were done. I didn't mind because I didn't really feel like playing eve at that time. I think by the time I left the station I was at around 5m SP. I'm right at 9.2m now and I still feel like a complete noob when others are running around with 50mil. The whole 1.5mil sp PVP is laughable, you will die and it will be very quick. Sure you can go stasis someone but that wont last long. PVP isn't even really fun until you can throw away the isk for Battlecruisers or if your skilled to the point where you can deck out a cruiser decent and don't get me started on the gay ass FLEET OPS OMFG X UP shit, they are fucking snorefests designed to suck the everliving life out of your fucking soul.

[Fog]

I just feel like I'm playing a different game than you guys. I have 9 million SP, but I'm specialized in small ships, because that's what I like to fly - I have 500k or so SP in cruise missles and Caldari BS so I can use a Raven for PvE if I want, but other than that it's all in frigate-sized things and support skills.

I feel very competent, probably above average (in SP and player skill), as an interceptor and frigate pilot, and I've been flying them in a useful role for about six months (it's the first thing I trained.) Combat is filled with split-second decisions and concentration. If I take my eye off for a second I'm risking my ship and maybe allowing whatever I am shooting at to get away. I am constantly gathering knowledge about my surroundings before and during combat and trying to put it all together to figure out what to do. It's sure a hell of a lot more difficult and intense than WoW combat; the difference being in EVE my brain is doing all the work and my fingers are doing less.

I guess if you choose to fly some big, slow DPS-machine into PvP, it's probably a little more boring (at least it would be boring for me), since you mostly only have to worry about who you should be shooting at. But nobody is making you fly a boring ship. The guy above me says he thinks anything smaller than a battlecruiser is boring - well, I don't think in my EVE career that I will probably ever fly anything larger than a cruiser into PvP, so different strokes for different folks.

I could press F1-F8 and turn the camera around in combat. But I would die all the time then (and probably get rather less kills), and I'd have to sit around grinding missions to pay for my incompetence. I would prefer to pay attention.

As for learning skills, that was a problem before, but I don't see how it is one now. Getting them to level 4/3 takes all of a week.

[Jabberwhacky]

Well that's just the problem with learning skills. Telling someone new to the game that their method of advancement is turning "on" a skill to train AND that that skill does nothing other than speed up the training of their other skills isn't a very good hook. Ya, in the grand scheme of things, 1 week isn't a long time, but how many games have you played for more than a week thinking "This will get better soon!" It's not a huge issue, but it is an issue.

And lol to this thread; I thought I was posting in the Tabula Rasa thread, which has also changed course into EVE general chat. Interesting dynamics between Garriott and EVE apparently!

[Vorph]

Originally Posted by Fog

I guess if you choose to fly some big, slow DPS-machine into PvP, it's probably a little more boring (at least it would be boring for me), since you mostly only have to worry about who you should be shooting at. But nobody is making you fly a boring ship. The guy above me says he thinks anything smaller than a battlecruiser is boring - well, I don't think in my EVE career that I will probably ever fly anything larger than a cruiser into PvP, so different strokes for different folks.

I agree with both of you (unless you were referring to me as the person who has said anything bigger than a BS sucks). It's a pain for some parts of PVE, but I don't feel like it's going to be an issue in PVP at all to never fly anything larger.

As for learning skills, that was a problem before, but I don't see how it is one now. Getting them to level 4/3 takes all of a week.

It actually takes ~12 days for everything to 4/3 (knock 2.3 or so days off if you're not a real newb and have +3 implants from day one), plus the 22.5M ISK in skill books. I still think it contributes to scaring people away from EVE and doesn't really add anything good to the game.

[Fog]

Aha, now I've got you - because a real newbie doesn't have 4.5 million for his advanced learning books. He might train the learning skills to 3 each if he's a powergamer, then nothing for awhile. That's only a day of training!

[Inconsiderable]

Originally Posted by FoghornDeadhorn

"make decisions quickly" than "spam buttons quickly" ala WoW which probably took years off my wrists.

I consider WoW as too simple and also abit too slow. Not slow as "I can two-hit anything in 3 seconds".. that just shows that there was too much damage around, but movement / global cooldown / casttimes / swingtime(!) and so on.

Right now I play Guild Wars for PvP (playing PvE in GW is very very low..) and I am happy with the PvP itself. I miss an open gameworld and sandbox gaming, but its a good, fast-paced pvp-system. More difficult than most (all?) other MMOs I know.
You need to pay attention to so much stuff in order to be actually good, sometimes its really maddening. When I first played GW and after every break I took to play other games, I was completely overwhelmed with GW again. As healer you just dont stare at healthbars, but you actually keep track of the position of yourself, 7 allies and 8 enemies. Not only because bad positioning usually means your dead, but also because casting prot spells on someone before he takes damage or while he just takes damage is better than healing after he took damage. So while having an eye on the healthbars, you try to find out to what target the warrior is moving and in what direction the caster is casting and who is standing there.
Its important because there are quite some spikes you just cannot heal; either you proc or the target dies.

There is more stuff, but no need to write it down.. its offtopic already. Just wanted to explain/clarify what I think a good PvP system is. Fast-paced, quick decisive decisions, pressing buttons alot and important to know what the fuck is going on.

[Shots]

So back on the UO topic. I tried to get back into the game (not the KR Beta client, as I heard that it is buggy still). It's mind boggling that they haven't made it easy to register to (thanks EA... eat shit!). After spending quite a bit of time trying to figure it out, I just gave up.

So I head over to the Stratics board to see if I can find any posts about the issues I'm having. Wow, they've STILL have speedhacks, dupes and other cheats that they can't get rid of....

So, I guess I'll just enjoy the memories and if I really want to play I'll possibly jump on a player shard (there's one that has a large amount of people and registration is the easiest thing in the world; you just log in with a new name and password that you want). In fact, the player shard has better CS than the real game!! HAHAHA!

[RiskyChris]

Originally Posted by Shots

So, I guess I'll just enjoy the memories and if I really want to play I'll possibly jump on a player shard (there's one that has a large amount of people and registration is the easiest thing in the world; you just log in with a new name and password that you want). In fact, the player shard has better CS than the real game!! HAHAHA!

Oh so true, haha. =D

Just upgraded my one room shack to this fine piece of masonry yesterday on Marble Island.