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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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| Baron Von Xen has moved mostly online |
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I am currently playing EVE Online, which is like X2 only with thousands of players playing and controlling the market. And realistic scale (systems are about 100 AU across. Maximum warp is 5.99 AU/second. Ships are insignificant points of light compared to a station when zoomed out, which is a point of light to a planet, which is a point of light to the solar systems.) And something like 2,000 visitable systems. And with skills. And personal faction ratings to something like 100 computer owned corporations and hundreds more to player owned corporations.
Ok, it's got ships in space, mining, trading, and pirates in common with X2...
Like Freelancer X2 started to feel a little hollow to me. I played it for hundreds of hours (which can't be said for Freelancer, which got a total of 40 hours play... 20 on the story) and buying the biggest toys was beginning to wear a little thin. It was lonely in the universe. Eve fixes that. I took my combat freighter and protected a mining supertransport in a low security sector last night... it was a blast running a perimeter and intercepting pirates (fortunately no player pirates showed up) in exchange for 25% of the mining profit, 100% of the bounty on the pirates I introduced to twin 280mm titanium sabot rounds (to pay for repairs and ammo, mostly), and the pirate cargo that survived the explosion.
The skill system in EVE is ... wonderfully relaxed. Each skill takes a certain amount of time to learn, based on your attributes and skill rank (learning a skill to rank 1 takes 20 minutes to an hour, depending.... learning from rank 3 to 4 can take 1 to 3 days, and some skills take well over a week to learn.). There is no 'experience' or level treadmill... and your skills will train while you're offline... so if you're going out of town for the weekend pick a skill that takes three days to learn, turn your computer off, and when you log in after the trip your character will inform you that they've learned this skill.
There's no 'go, go, go!' rush feel to the game. It's very relaxing and not very time consuming at all, seeing as most of your advancement will be done while you're offline. I've heard derisive snorts that you either play EVE "PVP (player vs player) or AFK (away from keyboard)" but I don't mind a game with a relaxed pace. It takes more than a month to be able to pilot a cruiser, and probably two more after that to pilot a battleship... and no amount of 13 year old 'play for 16 hours straight camping spawns' can change that. Time invested is money, of course, and money is needed to buy skills (you basically buy 'capital ship piloting for dummies' and hit 'train' to add it to your skill list) and ships and such... but a good miner can make enough in two hours to buy a new skill every day if they want.
Can a sedate pace hold the attention of the Lightning Baron? We'll see.
But when waiting for a skill to train in EVE I've snuck in a few Khaak-busting sessions. 
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
Mon Apr 12, 2004 2:17 pm |
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NidPuterGuy
Fearless Paladin
Joined: 08 Jan 2003
Posts: 237
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Zen, now that you've been playing Eve some more how do they compare? I'm thinking of getting one of them but not sure which. For the $40 for X2 I can play Eve for about 3 mos. Kinda a toss up there. 3 mos is long for any game anyways. Tried the Freelancer demo and was not impressed. Go and kill the foozle was all I saw there. X2 demo is ok, keep having minor probs that I'm figuring out. So far the only MMORG I've tried is Everquest and I didn't get into it. To much killing to level. I like to explore some without fighting every twenty feet. Would have been much cooler to concentrate on story versus fighting. They would have gotten more of my money. I like fighting but constant fighting is boring. Let me know what you think. By the way I-War 2 totally rocked! Course I had to Hex edit to make it through the game but the world was so cool. To bad it just fell short of total greatness! |
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Tue Apr 20, 2004 2:14 am |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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The relaxed pace of EVE is really suiting my play style, I'm finding. I keep my character learning skills 24 hours a day... but that involves simply logging in from time to time to make sure he's learning skills. There's no 'grinding' except for money... and I'm now at the point where an hour of mining will let me buy something shiny.... or two hours of running missions for the same profit (at the moment... later missions can be very profitable, I've heard, and worth the effort of increasing your reputation) for a more 'action packed' session. Naturally I'll have to play more to get more, but I'm busy real life right now and it's great to see a MMOG where real life doesn't spell certain death to character advancement.
The player vs player is certainly there, but if you keep to high security sectors it's not really an issue. An exception to this are suicide Kestrel pilots... a ship that costs less than 300,000 credits to buy and equip and that can blind-side and cripple or destroy a 5 million credit cruiser or even mess up a 100 million battleship in a heartbeat before the system police destroy them (they're fast enough that they often get away from the police, actually). They can mount four missile turrets just large enough to load one missile of the largest type in each.... missiles hurt slow ships, like cruisers, a lot. There are ways to minimalize effect, of course, and I'm exploring them now.
At your fastest I think it would take two or three months to get a battleship in EVE (if that was even your goal... a lot of people like frigates, especially PvPers)... two or three months of hard play. I don't know how much longer I would play the game after getting my battleship... but a lot of players have been playing for the full year and say that entering a 0.0 security system in a battleship is a humbling experience, even if player pirates don't get you... the NPC pirates are just as well equipped. I think it will depend on community... if I'm part of a good player corp and having fun I could easily see stretching my enjoyment out a lot longer. A lot.
After my one month is up I'm subscribing for a three month period to EVE, no question about it. Save a few bucks and if it can hold me for a month it can hold me for a lot longer.
The in-game chat channels are critical to enjoying the game, though. When warping across vast distances of space the ability to talk to other people in the game in a chat-room style format is a good way to prevent mind numbing insanity. When mining, too.
I haven't seen a story yet, but I have it on authority that it exists. Like all MMORPG . 
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Tue Apr 20, 2004 2:47 pm |
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Chekote
Where’s my Banana?!?!
Joined: 08 Mar 2002
Posts: 1540
Location: Dont know, looks kind of green |
This is kind of a shallow question, but what are the Graphics like compared to X2?
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IMHO my opinion is humble |
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Tue Apr 20, 2004 3:02 pm |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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Gorgeous and incredibly lag free. Each race has their own style of ship, like X2, but the styles between the races are completely different.
In X2 all ships of a class fall into the same axis for size and dimension (with the exception of the Khaak). All M3 are basically square and have the same design cockpit... you can tell they were all built from the same wireframe. In EVE every ship is distinctive (though since the scale is realistic you typically cannot see anything more than a crosshair, like aircraft in the real world when dogfighting -- no worries, though, as you can right click and hit 'look at' just like switching your camera to your target in X2).
The ships in EVE look so much more... real... than the ships in X2 it's not even close. I much prefer EVE's style of starships than the cookie cutter approach of X2. Additionally, the stations in EVE are infinitly better done (and just as numerous). Stations are HUGE. You can zoom out 20 kilometers so your battleship is only an engine flare against a dark sky and the station still barely fits the screen.
The scale, the graphics, the weapon and missile effects, the engine sounds/look, the warp drive animation and sound... to me EVE beats the living crap out of X2 in all matters space simulator eye-candy. There's no first person/cockpit view mode, however... which some people complain ruins immersion (as does how hard it is to steer manually until you're used to it... it consists of double-clicking a spot in your field where you want to go and you go there. Of course, manual flight is as useless in EVE as it should be: The other ship's tracking computer doesn't care how you're dodging... you can't dodge a laser. Of course, you CAN be so fast that their turrets can't physically turn fast enough to keep up with you...).
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Tue Apr 20, 2004 3:13 pm |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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You be the judge how that compares to X2's stations. Check the rest of the screen shots at EVE-Online.com ... they are NOT retouched, I can personally guarantee. This is exactly how the game looks on my system.
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Tue Apr 20, 2004 3:48 pm |
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Lintra
Elf Friend
Joined: 23 Apr 2002
Posts: 9448
Location: Bermuda, the triangle place with SANDY BEACHES |
Wow.
Too bad it's an internet only game. I would love a stand alone that looked like that.
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=Member of The Nonflamers' Guild=
=Just plain clueless= |
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Tue Apr 20, 2004 7:48 pm |
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NidPuterGuy
Fearless Paladin
Joined: 08 Jan 2003
Posts: 237
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Keep us updated on what you think of Eve versus X2. I'm still tinkering with the X2 demo and I have a full shareware game call EV: Nova to play with that downloaded before I make any decisions. |
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Wed Apr 21, 2004 12:23 am |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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Being single player versus massive online comparing the two is like apples and oranges.
X2 - Economy that is easy to make money in - no trade competition. Player ships untouchable by the AI after M3 level. No racial tensions, despite in game flavor about friction between Split and Boron, etc. Unreliable mission selection process. Collidible objects... all too colidable. Flight simulator controls. Ability to control more than one ship at a time.
EVE - Prepare to be undercut by competitors: humans are ruthless in business. Let the buyer beware: The system tells you that you're about to sell an item for a LOT less than its worth but does nothing to say "Don't pay 1 million for a skill worth 50 thousand". I made a hearty profit by going into a dangerous sector to pick up a pile of rare skill books that everyone wants for 30 thousand... and putting them up for sale in a safe sector for a 1000% mark up (accidental. Meant to say 50 thousand, as 15k a book sounded good for me for the risk I took. Hit one to many 0s and submit... and still sold half my inventory in two hours. Blinked once, bought a mining cruiser.).
Player ships slapped around by AI... unless you're like me and play a sniper ship. Even then, other ships of your class typically have similar firing ranges. Player ships mostly slapped around by other players: I watched two battleships pound the hell out of each other with cruise missiles and heavy turrets last night... each waiting for missile boats from their corporations to show up and torpedo the other.
Faction ratings for everything... races will target each other in missions (Go destroy Amarr spies... yes it will affect your relations with them. Pick a side, fence-sitter!). Mission types are passed ouy by 8 types of agent.. the military will give you mainly seek and destroys, a refinery will ask you to bring them minerals fairly often, intelligence will send you into other faction's territory to retrieve information, etc.
No ship destroying collisions. Most objects aren't collidible, and the few that are ... you don't actually collide with. Your ship is neurally controlled and your survival instinct stops the ship a few hundred meters away. If you want to suicide, you can will your ship to explode... which is fun. I did it to a shuttle.
Free flight controls limited. Like X2 you'll use the autopilot for just about everything. Combat consists mostly of two super-large ships sitting a few dozen kilometers apart pounding each other with heavy weapons, with small and fast ships like frigates orbiting them or each other. How you've customized your ship and what skills your character possesses and what tactic you use against what target determines victory... not your twitch reflexes. This is a good thing, as the SLOWEST ship moves at 360 km/h and the fastest tricked out ships can move at 72,000 km/h or more.
I do not trust my steering capabilities at close range at 360 km/h.... dogfighting at 72,000 km/h would break my brain (it breaks the targetting computer's brain... ships that fast are largely unhittable, as even the fastest firing weapon finds that their target has moved 20km or more by the time the computer can pull the trigger.).
You may not control more than one ship at a time. You may own as many as you wish, however. Most players choose a home sector and park all their ships there. Shuttles are used for retrieving remote vessels (they're small, fast, hard to target as a result, and basically free. Fly to the remote station, transfer to the new ship, put the shuttle back on the market or junk it... or if you're lucky and there's a processing station onboard you can scrap the shuttle for minerals and load them into your new ship for future use or sell them (people are in the market for tritanium far more than for a shuttle).
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Wed Apr 21, 2004 2:00 pm |
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Wolfgarou
Guards Lieutenant
Joined: 29 May 2003
Posts: 163
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Hi, just want to ask this question since I have an Earth & Beyond disc with me. How does EVE Online compared to Earth & Beyond? It seems identical to EVE.
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The world is small, nasty and complicated, and everybody dies alone... - Sam Fisher |
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Wed Apr 21, 2004 3:02 pm |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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Warping is faster, you can fly up and down, and Earth and Beyond is going out of service in September?
EVE has a trial available for Earth and Beyond players in hopes of getting them to migrate over now. Consequently the channels are filled with comments like "This is so much better than EnB!" or "Awesome... it's exactly like EnB." to "EnB pwn3d this g4m3. This g4m3 5uxxor."
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Wed Apr 21, 2004 3:20 pm |
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Wolfgarou
Guards Lieutenant
Joined: 29 May 2003
Posts: 163
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LOL! E&B going out in Sept? I guess that's why there're not story updates anymore.
_________________
The world is small, nasty and complicated, and everybody dies alone... - Sam Fisher |
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Wed Apr 21, 2004 3:34 pm |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
A quick alternative view...I played Eve...nearly a year ago? I've seen that tech lvl 2 has been released and I'm sure things are quite different now. I should point out that so far, MMORPGs and me don't seem to go together, so I'm a little biased.
Control is point-and-click with a 3rd person view and that does decrease the immersion for me. I never felt like I was really flying a ship around the universe. Those stations may be huge but when I was playing you couldn't own one and docking meant flying straight through the structure until it registered...in fact you fly straight through most things like planets and so on.
I quit because after hours and hours of mining and a little simple pirate-hunting I bought a cruiser...I quickly took my new toy out for some "real" pirate hunting and realised I had found the level grind: I was doing the exact same thing, just a prettier ship and more cash for each kill.
To be fair, X2 is really the same. It's a "level grind" to obtain a capital ship for most players but I feel more sense of achievement because I can have more impact on a closed gameworld.
OTOH, Eve is massive, simply huge. And if you like the interaction with other players, that will be a huge bonus.
Hope you have fun, Xen.
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Editor @ RPGDot |
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Wed Apr 21, 2004 10:28 pm |
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NidPuterGuy
Fearless Paladin
Joined: 08 Jan 2003
Posts: 237
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So far I'm really digging it. Puts the demo to shame. That leader chick of terracorp looks really retarded with that blank stair sometime! LOL! What decided it for me was the trading empire you can build. I wanted to experience that and it doesn't sound like you can do that so well in Eve. So far I"m loving it! |
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Thu Apr 22, 2004 12:14 am |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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The game is apparantly so different than it was a year ago that CCP contacted all their beta testers who didn't register after beta and said "Here's a free week to see what's changed"... and a fair number of them are now in the game.
Dhruin hit the nail on the head about the level grind, of course. All games that have ever existed have a grind to them... people often come down hardest on MMORPG but I remember running through the slums of Phlan hunting kobolds for hours to get to level 3 in Pools of Radiance, running circles around the city for hours getting a few 'easy' levels within reach of a healer in Phantasie I through III, and running down the wrap around street or spinning circles (or hitting K against a wall) for hours in Bard's Tale I and III.
I'm the opposite of Dhruin in a way when it comes to that. There's a certain amount of satisfaction in grinding your way to godhood in a single player game... but other than bragging rights to a few friends what have you earned? In a MMORPG your bragging rights can be heard and seen across the game world. Sure, most games NOW a maximum level character is not really rare... but whenever you take that super character out and save some low level players from certain death and barely break a sweat... the 'thanks' and the 'oh wow!' are much more satisfying.
MMORPG are for social people with huge egos, like me. There's no doubt in my mind I wouldn't play EVE long if it weren't for the chat channels... my interest in the game largely depends on the community. Online games where you rarely see another player and never communicate with another living soul get uninstalled pretty quickly.
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Fri Apr 23, 2004 1:59 pm |
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