I feel kind of bad, I have splintered my friends almost right down the middle. Before they were happy naive gamers, somewhat content with grinding out Levels and being pigeon holded into a personality the Developer told them to be. Slowly, I've been picking them off one-by-one, making them leave their friends behind to raid alone in their deep, dark dungeons to argue over who gets their next Epic item.
Sometimes I feel kind of bad, I recognize that new zeal in their eyes now. Yep, they're addicted to EVE Online and I'm amazed how fast they've gotten hooked with my firm guidance... I feel like a Dark Jedi master of a sort using the Force to mold them into productive Gallente (EVE Online race we all play).
Anyway, we have a hardcore raider (WoW). He's the only roleplayer/vet I've given up hope to seduce to EVE. One day he was complaining about how the Auction House doesn't allow World of Warcraft players to create Buy/Sell Orders. Darn, I think to myself I've taken that feature almost for granted in EVE Online. I just cant even imagine an MMO without this...
I say nothing though. I simply log into EVE Online, click on the Market tab, and he's simply speechless. Everything he was griping about was right there in EVE Online and flawlessly implemented complete with graphs, average market rates, and big huge letters "Buy/Sell Orders". He's stunned. And this guy can talk about WoW for many hours I lie to you not....
I then question him, "Why can't Blizzard do this?" No response for a few minutes. Then he finally replies, "I guess they are trying to keep the game simple for their players." He won't be playing EVE Online but I think he walked away with a huge amount of respect for the title and CCP.
Those that play EVE Online know what I'm talking bout. In EVE, players can create 'buy orders' in which indicate the pricepoint they wish to purchase an item. Many times, this is probably half the price of the average market price of the good in question. See, this is a metagame in itself- EVE's economy. If you know the market and understand the driving forces, then you realize how pure human nature comes into play. Due to the travel times in EVE Online, many players will pay more for an item if it saves them a trip. So I advised my Trader friend to create 'Sell Orders' at different regions with high prices for items.
At other regions, I told my friend to create 'buy orders' for items at a low, low pricepoint. PVE'ers, etc will sometimes sell items to you for a low discount rate because they need ISK right now.
"Why in the World would anyone sell it to me for Cheap and get screwed," he exclaims excited with that sharp business tycoon instinct already computing how much he's going to make and how to track the localized economies.
I tell him CCP are experts at economy. Players that are not adept at Trading can only make a small number of Sell Orders. Before you begin to post blah blah that sucks I'd challenge you to try the game yourself. You probably wont even be inconvinced by the order limit. If you are and you are not wise, then you wont realize that this creates a marvelous opportunity to make ISK
This guy (newbie) has made a lot of ISK for himself within 1 week and hopefully will make a fortune soon.
"Vajuras Long Distance Travel sucks and its not fun!"
Meh, tell that to our wallets. When I travel to new sectors in EVE Online I wonder how can make ISK. PErhaps there is rare minerals around the corner. Perhaps there is a fortune in Hacking to be made. Perhaps there will be a huge war and plenty of ship wrecks with millions of ISK for the taking. Perhaps I'm traveling with my corp and we will come across a vast new terriority that will make a great place to setup a new operation. Perhaps we will find our enemies hideout and can plan an op to take them down.
User Comments
I tried Eve a couple of times. I just couldnt get into it. Travel times are not quite as bad in this game due to auto pilot. If you really think about it, Eve can have the best economy in the world, obviously, a good economy is not what draws players. The game mechanics just dont feel good to me. I cant stand clicking orbit, then clicking guns, then watching the fight.
Long distance travel remains boring, even if it facilitates other points of entertainment. The ends does not justify the means.
I could create a game that has a vibrant economy with buy/sell orders and so forth, but without players sitting through long distance travel. It would have NPCs to transport goods. They do the transporting. So a single player can have shipments moving between a dozen systems and no player has to sit and wait for one shipment to be transported between any two points.
Yes, I know about shipping contracts in Eve Online. I filled a few myself when I was playing. That's still having players transport goods. Most players don't wait for another player to fill a contract. They just move the stuff themselves. Players spend time either manually flying between gates and hoping that nobody is camping the gate or they autopilot in high security space and wait.
Having NPCs transport goods would be returning Eve Online to what it is - a MMO RTS. Instead of players operating many units and keeping busy with decision-making, Eve Online has players acting in the roles of a single RTS unit that can do everything., grinding out mining, construction and combat tasks individually. Turn it back into an MMO RTS and you've got players operating many semi-autonomous units to build empires. Keep the pace relatively slow and players aren't forced to frantically click to keep up with what's going on in their empire.
Done properly, players can take over manual control of a unit that is doing something interesting. Including flying a boring transport between two points. If that's what a particular player wants to do, more power to them. It might be a nice break from whatever else they're doing. But sticking long distance travel into a game as a frequent activity is not good game design.
Anyone remember Earth and Beyond?
I loved that game.. I'm not really sure why.. but I loved it.
They had Trade routes.. pretty much, to earn Trade XP (you had combat, trade, and exploration XP) you had to buy goods at one location (from NPC vendors) and then travel someone else in the galaxy and sell these goods. You got XP from the mission to go from A to B and profit from the difference in price.
It was mind numbing... I remember one very profitable trade route w/ good XP that took about 30 mins.. 30 mins of flying... no combat, no nothing.. just autopilot flying from point A to point B.
I think they made it so you couldn't use any of the fast travel options... one class could teleport others or something... No, you had to manually fly from one corner of the galaxy to the other...
Oddly, I enjoyed it. It was a beautiful game, and I wouldn't mind spending a few hours just flying trade routes.
There were shorter routes, much shorter... but they didn't give nearly as much profit or Trade XP.
I think a good addition to the system would be (as I described in a blog I made about a Trade Routes system) to add shorter, but more dangerous alternate paths. You could go the long way, but it's 100% safe.
Or you could go the dangerous way, but it's much faster.. but you risk combat.
As I described in my blog, make NPC "caravans" that travel these routes that you can join up with, either as a trader or as an escort in case things get ugly. You could form totally player-run caravans too.
Then add a dynamic factor. The most profitable and dangerous routes change... one route becomes popular, more traders travel it, more escorts, more pirates/bandits are killed so the route becomes safer... the end destination has an abundance of the good they once were so desperate to acquire.. so the price goes down.. the pirates/raiders look for additional targets... etc.
Keep it shifting, keep it dynamic. This way you can enjoy the profitability and exploration without the risk of combat, or bring along some back up and take the risk for increased profit.. etc.
Combine this with the idea to have all crafting resource nodes at centralized locations (like AoC is doing I believe) and include these locations in the Trade Routes system...
That'd be a fun economic system IMO. You could post wanted signs for combat oriented players to serve as escorts for a small fee and a cut of the profits you make trading... Because it is dynamic and always shifting there is a competitive element...
Leave the system open for exploration, building your own routes.. and who knows, find a good route and NPC trader factions might even pay you for the coordinates.
I can cope with long distance and painfull travels. But I would never cope with raiding/PvP/RvR ever again.
You enjoy such a game? Good for you. I would not even play it even if you would threaten me physically.
I will be happy to pinpoint to you however what is flawed in their design, they all have a desire to FORCE me to do something I don't like.
Long travels? Kinda in the same boat, yet, I would accept it and cope with it, as a lesser evil. Do I crave for long travels? Nope, never will. But I may accept it, if the remaining of the game is that nice...but for a game which force PvP on me? LOL, never.
To the OP:
I agree, the trade/economy system in EVE is probably the best around. Some of the features would be great to have in most games.
About the travel times, let's face it, this is one of the points in EVE that turns people away. There is nothing like a 7 gate trip, where you're ambushed and obliterated at the final gate, this one of the main reasons I stopped playing. Like heerobya pointed out, the travel would be interesting were there multiple options and activites to keep you engaged while flying from point A to point B.
But you have to be careful...
You only use the trade routes (i.e. must fly this way or that way and face this this and this) when you are TRYING to do a trade routes...
PvE without time limitations and without long travel times is a must, as has been proven with the wild success of certain other games...
Travel time and routes / destinations can be a KEY factor in trade, warfare, economics, etc. but is just a burden for the PvE crowd.
You have to create a system that rewards the trader for their investment in terms of travel and time vs. risk etc.
But you can't use that a means to punish the PvE who is just trying to get to point A from point B because he/she has something fun and cool to do at point A....
If it takes too long, they may just say "screw it i'll go to point C instead because it's closer.. even though it's not as much fun."
You really want to avoid that IMO.
heerobya: "You have to create a system that rewards the trader for their investment in terms of travel and time vs. risk etc."
But the cost doesn't have to be measured in player time. Elapsed time is enough. As I mentioned, having NPCs carrying goods in real time on behalf of the players is sufficient to retain risk/reward as well as elapsed time costs without wasting the player's time while they perform some mind-numbing task such as a 7-jump trip in a freighter.
I see no reason that a trading corporation wouldn't play Eve Online via email, sending order to NPCs and receiving notifications of significant events. If a player wants to actually drive a freighter between destinations, he just hops into the freighter and drives it. When it gets bored of sightseeing, he goes back to running his empire.
The problem with automated trade routes off hand it messes with the economy. To be frank, I dont think it would be a good fit for EVE Online for many obvious reasons. If I could automate my trade route, I'd send my NPCs to 0.0 to sell items and hope they make it through the gates. Now, goods are much more common in 0.0. Sort of messes with the incredible economy we have now.
And of course once you start making the game more casual for players you are blighting the loyal fanbase that enjoys the rich Impact we have in 0.0. So even though the idea has interesting potential for other titles, I'd say no way introduce it to EVE Online to put it bluntly.
EVE Online is up to bout 40k+ concurrent players now, over 220k subs I think. Albeit, who knows how many are dual box but its doing great for the lightweight category its in
TonyD - true enough. I do love auto-pilot for high sec travel. And the jump clone feature is a real time saver. And there are other funny ways to get around it.
Heero - I need to go re-read the Trade Routes blog you should have posted a link. Might not be a bad idea for bloggers to expand on other ideas more
crap gotta run :/
vajuras: "If I could automate my trade route, I'd send my NPCs to 0.0 to sell items and hope they make it through the gates. Now, goods are much more common in 0.0. Sort of messes with the incredible economy we have now."
It doesn't work that way. Eve Online relies on natural forces to balance its economy. Throwing five times as many haulers at 0.0 space will not result in five times as many goods reaching 0.0 markets. An increased number of pirates will start picking off the increased numbers of haulers. Costs for haulers will go up if they blithely pump haulers into 0.0 space. The economy would rebalance, probably back to more or less what exists today.
One important question here is whether or not there is significant skill in hauling. If a hauler's real-time decisions are critical to the success of a run, then NPCs won't cut it.
This is all based in my preference to be actively playing a game instead of nodding off to sleep as my character jogs/rides/flies here and there and everywhere. So if controlling any single character is fairly boring most of the time, I want multiple characters to control so that I have something interesting to do all the time.
Yeah your ideas have merit for sure but if you allow NPC traders to sell/buy now its conveint to send an NPC to make 2 jumps to buy an item. Now I'm less prone to pay more for an item in my local region.
The economy would change and now in 0.0 I'm no longer killing real players I'm killing bots, which sucks.
Good ideas but much more applicable to a PVE centric title.
I'd love the idea of automating tasks like mining and hauling but really they've done that already to a pretty big extent
vajuras: "The economy would change and now in 0.0 I'm no longer killing real players I'm killing bots, which sucks."
If you say so. You're still attacking a player's assets, just as you do when you take down a POS. Or an AFK freighter for that matter. Is there really enjoyment to be had in killing a merchant ship that can't shoot back? Is it important that the player be at the controls to watch his ship be destroyed?
Yeah PVP against human opponents is a real rush. Never know what they're going to do. In EVE Online you can 'ransom' players if you know the value of their equipment. If I'm ganking a mindless NPC, there is no point in delivering a ransom demand
Theres all sorts of ways NPC haulers would mess up the game
Interesting, the guy I described in this story (the WoW raider) is creating an avatar in EVE Online tonight. I'm not sure what exactly got him interested he really seemed really negative towards it and I understood he has a huge amount of time invested into World of Warcraft
But he says he's gonna give it a go and asked for build advice!
I thought I was strong in the ways of The Force but somethings just cant be predicted....
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