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Comment by ubermonkey | Hacker News Reader

I have zero interest in playing Eve, but I do enjoy reading about these enormous in-game events.

Absolutely; the way people are conversing here about this event, using the same kind of language they would use for events in meatspace, is fascinating.

Right?

I find the whole affair super compelling.

No way I have time for it though.

It's one of those worlds that doesn't matter to outsiders but means everything if you're inside it. Kind of like academia, or prison gangs.

Same here. It seems so interesting I don't dare touch it for fear of addiction.

It's very dangerous.

I've been "dry" for about three years now but I still have to fight the urge from time to time!

You're not missing much. The game is like war: fucking boring for the vast majority of the time, interspersed with short periods of absolute terror. Watch any Eve online streamer and note how much time they spend sitting around or flying from one place to another. [1]

My experience with the game is that the PvE elements are entirely forgettable and uninteresting. The PvP elements could be amazing, but there are too many mechanisms to favor experienced players. It's almost impossible to find a "fair" fight, even as a person with several months of experience under your belt, to the point that it's kind of a joke.

Personally, I don't have that much free time, so I prefer games with a higher ratio of fun to boredom. That being said, if I had to pick a game to play all day for a long time, Eve might be a good choice, simply because of the diversity of experiences and complexity of optimization it offers.

[1]: I just checked. Out of the top ten streamers, nine are ratting (the most boring form of PvE) and one is doing PVP, but he just got killed by five guys after ten minutes of warping around.

This was exactly my experience. It was massively boring and time consuming, except for the meta-gaming/data analysis.

Then when you finally did deal with people, they were tribal dicks and any battles were 100% lopsided to the benefit of the experienced player.

Eve Online is everything great and awful about online gaming all in one lag-filled package.

The spaceship combat is incidental, the more important part is collecting enough people that you can go look for fights that are decisively in your favor.

the more important part is collecting enough people that you can go look for fights that are decisively in your favor

So basically, it's like real life. "Bigger army diplomacy," as CGP Grey says. I think this is also extending to social media space.

"It's almost impossible to find a "fair" fight, even as a person with several months of experience under your belt, to the point that it's kind of a joke."

This is why I prefer Starcraft and Dota. Both games start with a clean slate. No matter how many games played you have under your belt, you and your opponent are on an even footing at the beginning of the match.

Have they opened up the game to any significant automation? Does trading still require manually entering orders or can it (is it allowed via EULA to) be automated? Does travelling through systems still require ~1 minute minimum (assuming no scouting) per jump? Do they still prohibit any external app attempts at automation?

EVE is a job. It's a job that gives you an occasional adrenaline dump from some awesome or horrifying event, with no real-life consequences (other than memories), in a space-based violent virtual environment with no judicial system.

Anyone looking for something fun to do in real life, you're probably not going to match the addictive kind of "fun" you can get in EVE. The isolation from real-life consequences also isolates you from most real-world feedback that would discourage you from continuing to play. Spaceships, lack of judicial system, and the extremely long-interval-based variable reinforcement schedule of boring activities (trading, ratting, logistics) punctuated with very occasional great deals, great drops, or PvP or empire-building success, make it pretty optimal in terms of addictive "fun". If you want to dedicate a part-time or full-time job worth of time to achieve that fun, and you can stomach an environment that's often sociopathic, then jump right in, you'll have a blast... for whatever that's worth... but your real-life life might well suffer for it.

In a nutshell, EVE is a combination of paper-trading (it's not paper-trading in the virtual world, of course... virtual proceeds support virtual world activities), virtual logistics, virtual rock climbing with good loot at the top of each climb. And — for players who do PvP — that part is like WestWorld, with long stretches of anticipation-fuelled scouting and voice comms fun leading up to short, adrenaline-fuelled encounters with an enemy... with much of the virtual money and equipment gathered through trading and ratting being put on the line in combat.

Layered on top of that, on a corp and alliance level, it's like trying to build a real company, with factories and outposts and such, but in a virtual world, while trying to defend and expand the corporation's assets... again in a space-based world with complex but often obtuse game mechanics, and with no judicial system. That means a lot of successful corp and alliance activity centers around psy-ops and team-building to keep all the people in your corp or alliance happy and doing their jobs, and to demotivate and distract opponents... otherwise the corp/alliance assets will get blown up or stolen.

> Have they opened up the game to any significant automation? Does trading still require manually entering orders or can it (is it allowed via EULA to) be automated? Does travelling through systems still require ~1 minute minimum (assuming no scouting) per jump? Do they still prohibit any external app attempts at automation?

Automation remains prohibited at least as of the last time I played (~1 y ago). It's hard to picture that ever changing.

Yep, I don't see that changing either, but I wasn't sure. The game isn't like that because it's good for the players, but because it keeps the game on a very low-frequency variable reinforcement schedule, which is what makes it so addictive.

I wouldn't say so. Many game functions which are currently handled by players would be done much better by computers. But that means that much of the content of the game would now be consumed by computers. It's very expensive to develop content, so as long a significant fraction of your player base sees it as a worthwhile activity, you would not want to make it amenable to automation.

"If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn't plan your mission properly" - David Hackworth

Of course, in real life, this makes sense. In real life, you only get one life, and fighting is not generally for fun. But in a game, which needs to be fun, this type of construction is only going to appeal to a narrow slice of the populace. Which is fine! CCP has created something magical for the small subset of gamers who are interested in this kind of experience. But it's not for everyone. In fact, it's not for many people at all.

> But in a game, which needs to be fun

An assumption. Like RL, a game cannot be fun 100% of the time. MMOs are the Metaverse simulation Neal Stephenson wrote about in Snow Crash.

I've considered playing it from time to time, but then I remember that I already have a job.

In theory, for me, it should have everything: a sophisticated in-game economy, spaceships and espionage/political drama.

And yet, I find it utterly dull to play, and only enjoy it with these yearly big events that seem to trickle out.

There's lots of fun stuff you can do in Eve, but partaking in huge battles is not one of them. Reading about them is way more fun. You can sit around waiting for hours for the battle to start, then IF it starts it's not much more exciting than sitting around waiting for it to start.

If you enjoy the more political aspects to space strategy games and the inter-alliance diplomacy derived gameplay, you might want to give my game a try: https://www.clicktaz.com

Too bad, only facebook login possible.

after logging in with facebook, there is a in-game sign-in if you don't want to use the facebook login. Due to ALTs we can't really allow non-fb signups.

What is an ALT?

Asinine License Terms?

It means Alternate account. players are pretty bitter about the use of ALTs because they're used to join opponent alliances and then spy on them. hence, most alliances now have a pretty rigorous "getting to know you period"

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