It hurts.
Note: This has been an article in the making for quite some time. I think I started on it before the summer 2011 therefore I have tried to update it to current levels of news. Anyway here it goes:
It hurts to be without EvE I must admit. It has been a major part of my hobby time and I miss it. Sadly the EvE I miss is no longer. The current shape EvE is in is not my EvE but I’m still struggling with ideas on how to improve EvE. In the following I will go over my thoughts on the different expansions. This is as much a tribute to my experience as an EvE player as it is a cry to CCP to focus on gameplay.
Expansions
I will focus on expansions I personally have experienced but here is the link if you are looking for a complete list of expansions. Wiki list of expansions.
Bloodlines – March 2006
This is the state of the game when I started playing. It was a huge world and exiting. I think I got to play this for a month before Revelations came out which was my first meeting with content development and why we subscribe to a game. To be frank I found 15 euro to be a huge sum initially. Diablo II had servers running for free for crying out loud. At that time I did not appreciate the development or the sheer size of EvE.
Revelations – November 2006
Invention ! Rigs ! Contracts ! Scanning and probing ! Exploration ! Invention ! New fleet system ! 8 New regions ! New Battlecruisers
Talk about game influencing mechanics. This was achieved from March to November. There were hardly any flaws as I remember it. Initially there was a some problem with the seamless map, a feature since abandoned and you could from the start turn it off so you went directly to the map instead of going over the animation. A patch later applied EvE voice. A tool I’ve never used much but when I have it has worked just fine for those small roams. Faction warfare relies on it heavily with its many smaller corps.
Just look at that intro video and tell me that you don’t get the chills. I was instantly sold. This what was I had been looking for. This redefined the very way gaming should be. Exiting, engaging and visionary.
Revelations II – June 2007
More more more, we the audience cried. We knew we were playing the lead racing horse. And more we got. CCP delivered Level 5 agents whose main intention was to bring people in groups out to low sec. Stealth bombers took to the sky as blob breakers. New players got introduced better and I got the feeling they more easily caught on. Sov, POS and Station changes brought promise to end the POS grind.
The release video. YES YES YES ! MORE !!! I am one with the gods ! That Nyx with the sunflare ? The stand off with the Amarr and Minmatar Titans ?
Trinity – December 2007
New times new engine. The Ravens now came off as… well not pretty, but at least something you would be willing to show the girlfriend without too much embarrassment. Brutix turned Corvette over night.
The heavy interdictor was brough forth and initially though I did not like it then it brought and end to the stabbed ships and could hold its own in minor engagements as well as tie down the more and more predominant Titans.
Black OPs, Jump Freighters and Maraduers was rolled out. Everyone was happy. Here was something for the carebears and the hardcore PvP’ers. We all wanted the marauders to actualy be roaming battleships but they turned out to be a ship meant for the NPC part of the game. Who do not fondly remember when they killed or ransomed their very first Golem. The joy !
“Walking in stations” was introduced for the first time at the fan fest. There were a flaw of the boot.ini files being deleted and after a quick firestorm on the forums everyone was happy with the fix. Though EvE players have always flamed and fostered trolls they also are very quick to back down when something is being done about a subject close to their hearth. 6 hours was what it took to fix this.
Everyone was lookingn forward to the faction warfare that promised to spark life into low sec. It was not delivered and postproned but none the less the new items and content was breathtaking.
The spectacular video.
Empyrian Age – June 2008
Factional warfare ! How I wanted to join this but I was busy hammering on CVA and was having too much of a good time to step over the threshold and try it out.
Roleplay and the in-game story pushed EvE to new heights. A book was released and I was ran out and bought it the day it came out. It was an ok read but nothing spectacular. The promise though of delivering books like starwars and other universes had my attention as I am a bookworm that eats 800 pages regulary. The book however did tie groups and factions together giving the impression of a dynamic and living universe. Again was the aim to bridge the gap between 0.0, low sec and empire. The factional warfare had rumours of being filled with bug and non optimal game play but CCP would fix this in future releases I was sure and confident.
Wiki: “This expansion was against the wishes of CCP Lead Game Designer Noah(CCP Hammer) and as such has not seen any bug fixes, patches or futher development since it’s release.”
The video is again very well done and bodes well for the future.
Quantum rise – November 2008
Quantum what ? Certificate system so you could see what skills a player have, why? But we already had that and much better in EvEMon… Medal system so the corporation can give medals for achivements. What ? We have an ok rank and title system. It seemed completely irrelevant to the gameplay. New ship called the Orca, ok ok so there is a new ship that I guess it pretty cool for those smaller corps. Why not just upgrade the Frieghters ?
So servers and hardware was upgraded but I failed to see the perfomance boost. Auto pilot updated and grouped weapons were the only real features I found relevant.
Speed nerf was introduced renting almost all non vagabond speed ships useless for running gatecamps. A lot of people were hit by this and I saw a decline in solo roams and solo fights. Solo Zealots and Ishtars were not uncommon at the time and some performed very well.
The video was great as usual but it had more roleplay and staged showoff than any really new content. After watching it you feel elated but at the same time very aware that you have just watched a directed editored video and not actual game content.
Apocrypha – March 10 2009
So soon ? Yes please. With the Quantum Rise fresh in mind I felt a bit cheated of my expansion. Tech III, Worm holes, Improved AI and Training queue.
This is what we are talking about. Tech III brought a long sought feature to the game in the form of modular ships. The wormholes were vast and the new AI sharp. A refreshing surge and a bit of a nasty surprise as my HAC now had real trouble with these new Tech III hulls. Huge tank or hard to break repping powers. They could even warp cloaked and ignore bubbles at a cost but still a formidable ship line.
I flew a cloaked Vagabond at the time so I was not hit hard by the speed nerf but I saw some of the oldies drop out as they no longer saw their race as a functioning entity.
No scripts, this was a gameplay trainer with real content ! Hell yes my game was back in business and delivering.
Apocrypha 1.5 – August 20 2009
Mission arcs (Never reaaly tried it though I wantd to try), Rigs in different sizes, Specialized cargo bay.
Fair enough. Now with mini expansions. CCP did what it could to press content out as fast as possible.
No video and no fanfare.
Dominion – December 2009
This was the promised land. 0.0 was about to get the love it needed for it to grow. Warfare and sov mechanics, redesign of planets and our new EvE gate from where everything would be handled.
On paper the expansion looked good in reality the mechanics were non optimal and the redesign of alliances and the tools they cry out for were in sour demand. I could not care less for the In Game Browser updates.
An attempted implementation of EvE-Facebook, a browser and some mechanics that for some reason did not seem thought through. On paper it did look like a good idea though. Ohh well, everyone can slip and CCP will pick up the ball and run with it.
The worst thing yet to be implemented in EvE was anomalies/sanctums. Bringing ships into little caves to farm rats. Solo PvP took a turn for the worse. Entering, scanning and catching took so long time that the hunter became the laugh stock of the system. It went so far that we had to further nerf our fittings in order to scan down the anomalies making it extremely hard to break the tanks and at the same time putting as many people into a single system as possible making group defence easy. The battlecrusiers out there could outdamage, outperform and outright laugh at the HACs that were needed to run the camps to even get to the systems with anomalies. At the same time the carebears could use jumpbridge systems completely negate any and all risk of 0.0.
0.0 died with this patch for me and I moved to NPC space and then to empire. This was the all time low with worm holes not being for me nothing had really happened since end of 2007 which was the all time high. Tech III was supposed to be a saviour but it never really materialised.
The video spoke of tactics and dynamic combat. The reality was more grinding and timers. I loved the Russian “Burn em all” but that was about the thing to be said for the expansion.
Tyrannis – May 26 2010
Planetary interaction, completely needed in regards to making the major bits of the NPC market cut off and make EvE even more player driven and controlled. I had bought 6 POS towers and could stand and watch the prices drop. meh. But none the less a good development.
New land marks were added, gives depth to the story but really nothing more than anchoring cans in space with a text on and some graphic to go with it. Not spectacular.
Scorpion overhaul brought hope that the other ships would see some love and undergo beautification. Not spectacular but promising.
EvE-Gate or facebook is implemented but really brings little of value to the game that is not already covered by 3rd party. Having access to eve-mail OOG is very cool though and the calendar showed promise. Full integration with the forums were what we were hoping for.
Video was great as always. Overview HUD stuff has started popping up that does not exist in-game, this time it annoyed me. Why the fluff ?
Incursion – November 20 2010
Sansha invasions, New portraits, Fighter bombers, Noctis, Upgrade to planetary interaction, EvE-Gate. Learning skills removed.
Sansha incursions were on paper a good thing and I took part in quite a few but they somehow seemed stale. Something was missing but I still had fun when hearing an incursion had landed in 0.0 and shut down the jumpbridges. Freaking hilarious seeing just how dependant the big alliance had become of those. Ofcource I used them as well but I did not feel dependant. They are/were nothing but risk avoidance in what should be risk filled space. Yet another thing to ruining the solo or casual PvP experience.
The upgrade to the planetary interaction was much needed because you could get carpel tunnel disease before you could say “Restart or reconfigure my extractor”. Should really have been thought through the first time. When planetary was initially deployed I had a feeling that the developers had not really played it and that it was the work of a small group who had not properly tested if the gameplay was good vs a larger audience. Players had been vocal enough on the feedback but it should never have left the test server in the shape it came into being. It prompted me to start my own little production. I never came to enjoy it but the ISK was ok and the income semi passive which were good for my game time.
In all this expansion brought nothing of real value to me and I guess some extra content for the carebear which in it self is good. We want as many of these as possible so we can shoot them. We can till they move to 0.0 and do risk free PvE anyway… (Butthurt bittervet alarm). I was tired of not being able to play the game I had signed up for, the increasing breakage of risk reward. The anomalies and the difficulties they gave. Things simply worked better when people were in the belts. Up the belt spawns then but for the love of god remove anomalies or make them visible on the overview and easy to directional scan.
The video showed promise of epic battles and to an extent they delivered in the first days of the incursion. CCP even did in-game event with developers who controlled the Sansha but these were abandoned and became what we have today. Scripted incursions not much different than a regular mission lvl 5. Lets call it level 6, but still just a mission now in high sec with little risk. The whole risk reward structure seems broken somehow.
Incarna – June 21 2011
Leaks, backstabbing, RMT, Vanity items, Vampires, DUST, NeX.
Where did it all come from ? This had nothing to do with my EvE. Yes I had clapped at the prospect of walking in stations at fan fest but this was not what I had been led to believe was coming. The things that surfaced, CCP inner tourmoil, CSM trip to Iceland, Hillmars letter, the internal newsletter. This certainly was not the EvE I knew or the CCP I had come to trust would fix things. I realise they must develop other games and that some of my money go towards this goal but the sheer mindnumbing “I dont care about you” attitude displayed came as rather a nasty surprise.
The only thing that this brought was the limitations of jumpbridges but it is hardly an expansion worthy, it should have been a patch.
Still cant get used to your avatar but you have made some fine posts over the last few months. Though many have the lolRP approach you have shown that the RP’ers have a firm grasp of this game and what it is about)
