Wargame vs "Living world"

[Diggles]

The main problem with EVE, as I understand it, is the tendency for players to avoid wars because they don't want to risk losing what they have. When they do want to fight, it's usually a for-fun attack on the other side of the universe, well away from their home sector, so that they don't risk starting a real war with their immediate neighbors.

Also, my time in EVE convinced me that a majority of their players are PvE bluebies. For every pirate, there's 50 dudes somewhere mining rocks or hunting NPCs, either in missions or in their guild's home sectors.


EVE has a lot of other issues as well ("price of admission" is too high, for one) but I don't think the sandbox is doing it any favors. Without some motivating factor, the galaxy can get very dull. I think I want a game where I can log into a fight every day if I want, and not just on days when the guild leadership has decided to launch an attack against the enemies in the Gamma Quadrant, 50 jumps away.


I think you need NPC pressure to keep things stirred up and interesting.

You also werent in 0.0 were you? and didnt have a guild backing you. Eve and space are not a place for a loner. I died several times trying to get my noobie as to GoonSquad controlled space. Once there I was able to quickly earn 10 times a day more than I did in the 'inner core' pve area.

There were daily patrols and raids into enemy space to pick off anyone that got sloopy as well as monitor enemy force movements. Large fleet operations were something that had to be planned.

You cant just jump your carrier into enemy space and expect not to get owned. A small group of figthers could keep you from warping out and your ship that cost you a month to build is destroyed.

Take a look on the corporate terrirtory maps and see the daily skirmishs along alliance territory borders. It was as real as any conflict that exists among real nations.

Goonsquads main enemy was able to push all the way into their territory, making progress daily and dropping the boarder sectors space stations. Goonsquad knew that isnt going to be able to repel the attack, so the he command was issused to pack your shit up from the home sector and fall back into allied 'Red Alliance' (russian guild) space if you didnt want to lose your belongings. Once the enemys took the sector they controlled the space station and you would lose access to any belongings/ships you had docked, until the sector was retaken.

If there was every a time that reminded me of Empire Strikes Back that was it. The siege of Hoth and the rebel alliance having to evacuate, you dont get that in kind of immerrsion in 'warhammer' or non sandbox games.

I was part of a 'team' or faction and part of a real war effort/campaign. Ships and goods required massive amount of materials to build to rebuild destroyed ships. THere were buy orders on the scale of billions of units of minerals to fuel the shipyards. You could see that your team wasnt keeping up and that you are slowly losing to attrition.