EVE Blog Banter #9: What a new pilot could do without

I’m fairly new to the blogosphere, and I’m also fairly new to EVE Online. Thus this will be my first contribution to the wonderful EVE Blog Banter series sponsored by CrazyKinux. This is the ninth entry in the series, so I have a little catching up to do.

Welcome to the ninth installment of the EVE Blog Banter and its first contest, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banterinvolves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out otherEVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

“Last month Ga’len asked us which game mechanic we would most like to see added to EVE. This month Keith “WebMandrill” Nielson proposes to reverse the question and ask what may be a controversial question: Which game mechanic would you most like to see removed completely from EVE and why? I can see this getting quite heated so lets keep it civil eh?”

As I stated earlier, I’m pretty new to the EVE Online universe of New Eden. Thus my thoughts on the proposed topic of discussion cannot be based on years of EVE experience and won’t take into account the nuances of all things ‘EVE’, yet hopefully will still contribute to the overall dialog.

So after spending a mere 8 weeks in New Eden, what would I take out of the game if I could? I’ve been reading many other wonderful topics already presented, most of which cover things I had no idea even existed in EVE. Clearly there have been some heated opinions on the subject for years, pity i wasn’t there to experience them more myself.

Regardless, there have been a handful of issues I’ve encountered so far. I want to lay out all my thoughts first, before pinning the tail-on-the-donkey at the end. I know this banter isn’t about nit picking and is specifically about what you would remove from the game, but as a new player I don’t have as much to pull from so I’m simply going to list my frustrations and go from there. Here are the things that have annoyed me the most so far:

• Certain aspects of the UI have been extremely difficult at times, specifically the clunky pinning and docking mechanism, transparency overlay, and unresponsive drag and drop.
• Information can be buried deep within the tabbing system panes. Some pieces of info should be pulled up higher or given their own category/organization mechanism.
• The endless floating spam containers
• In order to apply to a Corporation you must visit a station with one of their offices, yet finding this information is nearly impossible without having to bother one of the corp members directly.
• The overview can be quite difficult to manage. So many types of information to ‘turn on/turn off’. Could it be possible to have multiple overviews at the same time, displaying their own separate information?

Alright, enough ranting, I’ll get to the point. I think the single most frustrating thing for me as a new player so far has been that characters in my account cannot train simultaneously.

I’m an alt-oholic in other games and I realize how different EVE is in terms of character progression, yet with the huge selection of skills and specializations that EVE has to offer, there is no way to experience them all without either staying in game for years to come or purchasing another account to play.

I’m not saying newer players should be able to do everything at once, or even eventually, but in order to get a good feel for the various pieces of the game it would take months and months of training on a single character to be at a level where you can contribute something of value. Whereas if I could train all three of my account characters at the same time it would vastly lower the time it takes to experience the other areas of EVE, such as industry, combat, science, etc..

Granted such a change would have a large impact on the player ecosystem. The economy would see a large influx of goods into the marketplace since everyone would now have industrialists and traders in their account. The combat pilots would see battles with many more ship types being flown from various factions because everyone would have greater access to them.

Presently many players purchase multiple accounts so they have the ability to run several EVE sessions simultaneously. However I’m sure there are also some that do it because they want to have specialized pilots which they can play sooner rather than later. Waiting for a main character to accumulate all the necessary specialized skills, which would in turn take away from his or her’s current skill focus, is just not something many are willing to do.

Since only one character can log in at any given time it would help lessen the impact such a change would have. I’m sure CCP wants to keep it’s players occupied and continually reaching forward, but as stated many times in the past this limits a new player base from reaching all aspects of the game by requiring several years of dedicated training to a single character. Every expansion further increases this seperation between new and old.

Ultimately I can see why the simultaneous training contraint is present, but I can also see the benefit of removing such a restriction. I believe it would provide new adventures for young and old players alike, since there is just so much to do in New Eden. It would only serve to enhance the player experience of the game we all know and love today.

Thanks for reading!

List of Participants:

1. Diary of a Space Jockey, Blog Banter: BE GONE!
2. EVE Newb, (EVE) Remove You
3. Miner With Fangs, Blog Banter – It’s the Scotch
4. The Eden Explorer, Blog Banter: The Map! The Map!
5. The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, “Beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, mushroom, MUSHROOM!!!”
6. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, Kill the Rats
7. Mercspector @ EVE, Scotty
8. EVE’s Weekend Warrior, EVE Blog Banter #9
9. A Merry Life and a Short One, Eve Blog Banter #9: Why Won’t You Die?
10. Into the unknown with gun and camera, Blog Banter – The Hokey Cokey
11. The Flightless Geek, EVE Blog Banter #9: Remove a Game Mechanic
12. Sweet Little Bad Girl, Blog Banter 9: Who is Nibbling at My House?
13. One Man and His Spaceship, Blog Banter 9: What could you do without?
14. Life in Low Sec, EVE Blog Banter #9: Stop Tarnishing My Halo
15. Cle Demaari: Citizen, Blog Banter #9: Training for all my men!
16. A Mule in EVE, He who giveth, also taketh away?
17. Dense Veldspar, Blog Banter 9
18. Morphisat’s Blog, Blog Banter #9 – Randomness Be Gone !
19. Facepalm’s Blog, EVE Blog Banter #9: What a new pilot could do without
20. Memoires of New Eden, You’re Fired
21. Kyle Langdon’s Journeys in EVE, EVE Blog Banter #9 Titans? What’s a Titan?
22. Achernar, The gates! The gates are down!
23. Speed Fairy, EVE Blog Banter #9: Down with Downtime!
24. I am Keith Neilson, EVE Blog Banter #9-F**K Da Police
25. Ripe Lacunae, The UI… Where do I begin… (Eve Blog Banter #9)
26. Clown Punchers, EvE Blogs: What game mechanic would you get rid of?
27. Estel Arador Corp Services, You’ve got mail
28. Epic Slant, Let Mom and Pop Play: EVE Blog Banter #9
29. Deaf Plasma’s EVE Musings, Blog Banter #9 – Removal of Anchoring Delay of POS modules
30. Podded Once Again, Blog Banter #9 – Do we really need to go AFK?
31. Postcards from EVE, 2009.07.02.00.29.06
32. Harbinger Zero, Blog Banter #9 – War Declarations & Sec Status
33. Warp Scrammed, Blog Banter 9 – Never Too Fast
34. Ecaf Ersa (EVE Mag), Can a Tractor Tractor a Can?
35. Thoughts from an Accidental Minmatar Revolutionary, EVE Blog Banter #9 – Aggression timers, WTs and Stargates
36. Mike Azariah, I don’t put much stock in it…
37. Rettic’s Log, Blog Banter: Overview Overload
38. A Sebiestor Scholar, [OOC] EVE Blog Banter #9: Slaves
39. Diary of a pod pilot, [OOC] EVE blog banter #9: Because of Falcon
40. Roc’s Ramblings, Blog Banter #9 – Taking Things Slow
41. The Gaming-Griefer, EVE Sucks, But I Love It: The Memoir of a Masochist
42. Letrange’s EVE Blog, Blog Banter #9: Bye Bye Learning Skills
43. Lyietfinvar, Remove that monopoly
44. Sceadugenga, Blog Banter #9
45. Industrialist with Teeth, EVE Blog Banter #9
46. More articles as they are posted!

~ by Facepalm on June 30, 2009.