Margin Call

This month’s intro text, by Seismic Stan:

As any games journalist would probably tell you, a true and complete review of a Massively Multiplayer Online game is impossible. MMOs are vast, forever evolving entities with too much content for a single reviewer to produce a fair and accurate review. However, a collection of dedicated bloggers and EVE players (past and present) with a wide range of experience in various aspects of the game might be able to pull it off.

This special ‘End of Year’ Blog Banter edition aims to be a crowd-sourced game review. Using your gaming knowledge and experience, join the community in writing a fair and qualified review of EVE Online: Crucible. This can be presented in any manner of your choosing, but will ideally include some kind of scoring system.

With each Blog Banter participant reviewing the areas of EVE Online in which they specialise, the result should be a Metacritic-esque and accurate review by the people who know best.

EVE Online – End of Year Review

As others have noted, reviewing the entirety of EVE is (for most) a fool’s errand. New Eden is a mammoth place, full of opportunities for the inventive player. From the newbie miner to mastering the metagame, it’s a big, big place. Consider this – it’s possible to “play” EVE without logging into the client for days or weeks at a time. A game you play…when you’re not even playing the game. How very Baudrillard.

Industry

Although Crucible didn’t impact industrialists in a major way, POS logistics aside, the manufacturing side of EVE remains as deep and complex as ever. The term ‘crafting’ applies in other games, but those are to EVE as Lego bricks are to an auto assembly plant. Same principles, radically different level of depth. Consider the Tech 2 production chain; it requires components from 4 completely independent disciplines (invention, mining, moon mining, and planetary interaction). The principles aren’t particularly challenging – buy the skills, train them, play the mini-game for that discipline (or buy them on the market).

The series of factors that renders industrial activity so compelling is the interaction with other players, the challenge of logistics, and the vagaries of the market. Profit potential shifts on a regular basis depending on impacts to any of the supply chains necessary to success. Some are more susceptible than others, and other players are always looking for the same market opportunities. Perhaps the only thing that might render industrial activity closer to its real-world counterpart (and still be playable) would be some level of branding and product differentiation.

Delving into the individual industry professions is beyond the scope of this review, although I will point out that each of them is played in a different way from the others. Playing ore miner is not the same as moon miner, is not the same as planetary interaction colony manager, is not the same as researcher / inventor. Some would rather hear the pings and groans of a ship hull failing under a storm of incoming fire than play industrialist, but there’s no doubt that it draws a great many people in (or there’d be no markets.)

PvE Content

I’m familiar with two facets of PvE in EVE: Missions, and Anomalies. Both are ISK faucets – they bring assets into the universe to enable player action. Neither are particularly exciting or have any lasting impact. In other MMOs, the quest system is at least nominally story-driven. Because EVE is a sandbox, however, CCP hasn’t found a way to offer a content experience that progresses the pilot through New Eden along a plot line. The Epic Arcs do this to some degree, but the universe doesn’t change really as a result.

Regular missions grow repetitive very quickly, especially for players inclined to run them excessively as an income stream. Anomalies are much the same, although you get to play the ‘probing’ mini-game.

EVE is a horrible game if you play solo; it is most definitely designed as group game, and solo players are generally hindered in their progress at every step of the way. The irony is that as much distrust as there is in EVE, you must trust to some degree to drink New Eden to the fullest.

The Market

The New Eden markets deserve a separate consideration from Industry. Playing the market game as a station trader (ie, cash on arbitrage) has never particularly enthused me, although it’s certainly a path to riches for the dedicated pilot. The intriguing thing about the market is that it’s almost completely player-driven, and therefore a form of PvP in its own right. (Skill books and blueprints come to mind as notable NPC holdouts).

Player Housing

Ok, that’s what it would be called in some other games. In EVE it represents a game of thrones played on a grand stage. Ranging from an individual pilot’s station hangar, to a high-sec small research POS, to a mighty nullsec outpost, each of these elements represents a place for the pilot to drop some assets, to put down roots. Someday, perhaps, Incarna will evolve to provide the corporate offices we hoped for back in 2008. The ability for an alliance high command to collectively view a 3-d rendering of a battlespace, sent by pilots in system, would be an amazing addition to the immersion.

To this must be added the Captain’s Quarters, which drags the score down on the implementation side, but still gets high marks for initial vision.

PvP

Bigger, more deadly, deeper, and with longer-lasting implications than any other game I’ve ever heard of. When a game comes along that deletes your account and steals your car when you die, I’ll concede the point.

A fleet battle with 3,000 ships – as others have noted, this is undreamed of in other games. When Time Dilation hits Tranquility, larger engagements should become even more commonplace.

The tactical complexity involved in the various types of PvP is equally as compelling. Solo PvP, small gang, gate warfare, station camping, sniping, blasting, ‘blob’ warfare, gate interdiction, trade-route ganking, and vanilla piracy; all have their own compositions and fail/hail fits, tactics and traditions. 3v3 Battleground? Pfft.

The MetaGame

In another MMO I played quite a bit, Scott Johnson did an amazing job with a very popular podcast. Our guild had some forums. That was largely the extent of the metagame in my experience. New Eden has… Chribba, Wollari’s Dotlan, EVE-Central, Mord Fiddle, the CSM, Failheap, and the blogosphere-sphere-sphere-sphere. Oh, and IRC channels. And EVE Radio. And Voices from the Void, and Tech 4 news, the list goes on and on and on. This is due in large part to the fact that EVE is a single universe – there are no shards, and so we’re all playing the same game, not just the same content, and that would seem to make all the difference in the world.

It’s not uncommon for nullsec alliances to engage in psyops and communications disruption OUTSIDE THE GAME before undertaking a big invasion. Seriously, DDOS’ing someone’s Mumble/Jabber/TS/Vent server so they have no fleet comms when your fleet jumps in? Amazing.

Stuff I’ve Got No Input On

* Nullsec – haven’t been down there since POSs were used to claim sovereignty, so no comment here.
* Wormholes – haven’t been to one, but really enjoyed Clarion Call 3.
* Piracy – haven’t been a pirate, although the ragtag bunch on the tweetfleet make it look like a great romp of fun!
* Griefing / Scamming (separate from piracy in method, but not intent – to separate the pilot from their ISK) – although it’s strangely reassuring to see Barbie in Amarr when I visit.

Reviewer Background

I played EVE quite heavily from early 2006 until mid 2008, returned briefly when Incarna rolled, and returned again just ahead of the Crucible expansion. During that initial play period, Adhar was CEO of 2 industrial corporations, lived in high, low, and null sec during the era of POS-Sov. The return to EVE during Incarna yielded some time with the Carbon character creator. Now I’m back with Crucible, and have been working out a deeper plan for Adhar’s time in New Eden. It’s these experiences I’ll rely on for this review; as they say, ‘write what you know’.

The rest of the reviews are over at Freebooted (Seismic Stan’s Blog).  If you’ve made it this far, take your masochism to the next level and read the thirty-odd other reviews!