Eve is a funny game. On one hand it's hardcore PvP and corporation (guild) based, and on the other hand it's the one game that I always come back to. I don't play the Alliance game, and m y experiences of PvP have been rather few and far between. I have even survived a couple of encounters surprisingly enough. One was with a Merlin back near start out in 0.0 where two pirates with frigates started something and I almost took down the first before the second decided it was time for him to join it. I warped out down to my superstructure but got a friendly email from the guy a few seconds later. The second was just after the Destroyers had been added and I actually took down a ship that I assume didn't realise what that many guns can do to you if you get too close. I don't think he was exactly experienced at ganking people. Of course there were other occasions like where a Raven destroyed my Moa in pretty short order while tanking the gate guns, but all in all I'm not exactly interested in PvP at the moment. Maybe once I'm bored of all of the little goal I've set myself in the game I'll give it a try, but at the moment I don't have the resources to do anything.
I'm the CEO of a very small corporation and we're only really in it for the convinience of shared hangers and the corp wallet. If I wanted PvP I'd have to join somebody bigger in order to survive the ship loss, but that probably wouldn't be a problem since I've got some pretty good combat skills and that's always going to be in demand. I've also got a security status that I'm very happy with so I wouldn't want to just gank people, it would have to be proper PvP out in 0.0 for me to be interested.
CCP say that Eve is a PvP game, but most players don't play it that way. I don't mind the presence of PvP as it means that I have to keep on my toes, and I'm certainly not worried about the suicide kestrel run because 99% of the time I'm in something that they can't take out.
PvP just means that I have to be careful in 0.5 and below, but it never stops me going there. OK, I never go to 0.0 any more but if there was something worth me travelling there for then I probably would.
So, the question remains: Why do I play? The game itself can be considered very boring. You can mine asteroids, lug trade goods around the universe, or you can do missions for agents. On the other hand I cancelled my WoW subscription today and that's meant to be a lot more interesting because it's full of quests and things. The key to why I'm in Eve is the fact that the game designers got one thing perfectly right: You can do a very wide range of things. I can explore, blow things up or trade of course. I can also play the ship fitting game and try to come up with new and interesting ways to play combat. I can also do something that no other game (as far as I'm aware) lets you do. I can fly a battleship and so therefore can be considered to be doing missions at a high level in other games. For the sake of simplicity consider the newbie who can only fly a frigate and so is doing missions a around the beginning of the game. In other games if I wanted to group my level 50 character with my friend who was level 1 I wouldn't be able to, or if I did then I would be far too powerful. Now, in Eve I can jump back in my Merlin and fly easier missions again. Why would I want to? The combat style with a frigate is very different to that in a battleship and change is good. The best part is that although my skills may be better so I get extra damage, am faster and can fit better equipment than a newbie I'm still on their rough level so that we can both play and contribute to the combat if we're in comparable ships. Even better you can be up to speed so that you're flying bigger things really quite fast, but that doesn't mean that you're any good at it. Put me in a top end frigate against somebody who can only just fly a cruiser and I'll win because my skills will win out. This means that you can still, like I am now, go back and revisit your frigate skills and become as powerful as you can. Sure, I'm never going to be chaining Agent 3 missions in a frigate but I'll sure be doing Agent 2s. And there are actually some Agent 3s that I could do no trouble.
And yes, in the end there is always PvP for me to do when I get bored.
posted @ Sunday, June 12, 2005 3:14 PM