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Eve Online: had I but universe enough and time
Eve Online has a few different resources. One of the resources is spacebucks, or isk, which is used to buy ships, equipment for the ships, books that teach you skills, and so forth. Another resource is loyalty points that you earn by doing missions. Loyalty points let you buy faction specific loot. Another resource is ore and minerals, which you mine from asteroid or get when you render down loot you don't need. This can be used to build installations and ships, but I'm nowhere near to that point yet. Another resource is faction standing, which you earn or lose based on missions succeeded and failed.
But the most important resources in Eve Online is outside of the game.
Read about it after the jump.
There aren't any classes in Eve Online. Instead, there are skills. What you can do, and how well you do it, is determined by your skills. You can't fly certain ships until the appropriate piloting skill is the required level. You can't use certain cybernetic implants, weapons, or spaceship modules without certain skills. And you can't learn certain skills without certain other skills. The skill system is arguably the foundation for the gameplay of Eve Online. And its based on a resource that exists outside the game.
You won't need to worry about this resource at first, because when you start your character, you've got a few skills for free. To get additional skills, you simply buy the book for the skill you want, click on the book, and your character starts learning the skill. To improve an existing skill, you simply click on the skill on your character panel, and your character starts leveling up. The cost? Time. Learning any skill takes time. Real time. And not "real time" like in a real time strategy game, but "real time" like in the real world.
The early skills might take ten minutes. So you click the skill and busy yourself with something else, and then when it's done, you click another skill to get it started. Your character can only learn or improve one skill at a time, so every minute that you don't have a skill in training is a minute of wasted character development.
But one of the most insidious design decisions in Eve Online is that you can't queue up skills. When my character has finished learning a skill, she'll be fallow until I tell her to train another skill. I can't just log in, queue up a month's worth of skills, and then come back in March to play. With the early ten-minute skills, it's no big deal. But then there are the skills that take several hours, and then there are the skills that take several days. And if I want to make the most of my character development, I should be there to start the next skill up when the previous one has trained.
I've actually set the oven timer while I'm watching TV so that I can pause a movie and log into Eve Online real quick. I've decided to wait fifteen minutes before I go on my daily run because my skill is almost done. I've gone to bed thinking that I need to remember to log in and get my next skill underway before breakfast the next morning. I've even installed a little program that runs in my task bar and tells me how much time is left for my skill. It can play an alert when my skill is done, or send me an email. Right now, it says I've got 5 hours, 16 minutes, and 2 second until Learning level IV is done.
What this means is that Eve Online necessarily intersects with Eve Offline, also known as real life. The limit to how powerful your character can be isn't level 70, because there no levels and therefore no level caps. Instead, there is only the amount of time it will take, eventually measured in years - yes, years - to create a character with advanced skills. The limit is how long you will live. You. You, the person reading these words, not you, the fake avatar inside the Eve Online servers. Your life span is the life span of your character's ability to level up.
Is that pathetic, or fascinating, or daunting, or insidious, or effective? Or some combination of them all? Is it a grind? Is it an anti-grind? Is it brilliant for being hands-off or wretched for folding itself into the real world? At this point, I have no idea. I just know that I've got 5 hours, 13 minutes, and 11 seconds to go until Chickley reaches Learning level IV.
Up next: a few choice words not fit for print
(Click here for the previous Eve Online game diary.)
By GreyFox at 12:33 PM ON 02/11/09
In the upcoming expansion (March 10th) they are actually adding a skill queue, though all skills in the queue have to start within 24 hours. That's just Starting within 24h so you could add two 11 hour skills and then a 20 day skill at the end.
They are also adding an Attribute Points redistribute-thingie which will enable you to redistribute part of your attribute points every 6 months (5 base points in each Attribute cannot be moved).
By Balasarius at 12:40 PM ON 02/11/09
Can you play the game while learning, or does your avatar just have to stand there?
By Neopythia at 1:58 PM ON 02/11/09
You can play the game while training. My experience was very much like Tom's. I found myself training and then playing a different game, or doing something else. In my opinion that doesn't speak well for the game itself. I really, really want to like Eve. There is a lot to like, but it just doesn't grab hold of me enough to justify the monthly fee.
By mr. pearce at 2:09 PM ON 02/11/09
The overhead fades to barely anything after a month or two. Each level in a skill takes the square root of 32 times longer than the last (between 5 and 6). So 80% of your training is for level 5, which takes days. Those skills that takes a few hours are really irritating, though. Thank goodness for the skill queue.
By malkav11 at 6:14 PM ON 02/11/09
This is one of the single biggest things keeping me from liking EVE. Because your skills plug merrily along with or without you, (at least until they finish), nothing you do in game has any real relevance to improving your character. It's all just accumulating virtual stuff. And I don't care about that.
By ComplexedOne at 6:22 PM ON 02/11/09
I have found myself drawn to games that seem to bleed over that line between game and real life, and this learning system seem both insanely interesting and a little daunting to me. I love the idea that your avatar persists in the online world, but at the same time the fact that I have a two year old son means that my life is very chaotic most days and I know that I would constantly forget to setup the new skill.
Oh, and what is the monthly fee? $15?
By Tom Chick at 7:21 PM ON 02/11/09
Mr. One, it is indeed $15 a month. Also, the skill reminder program I mentioned is called EveMon. It can keep you posted on your training progress.
But as Mr. Pearce explained, it seems like it's eventually not a constant factor. I'm at the point now after barely a week where I can dink around with skills that take 2-hours, or I can go ahead and set up skills that take 2-days or even a week. It seems like you set up a lot of the basic skills while you're dealing with the learning curve, and then just sink into whatever long-term plans you've made. At this point, I expect to be able to pilot a cruiser sometime next week!
By Moggraider at 7:26 PM ON 02/11/09
I bought The Club on your recommendation, but it came with no CD Key. Apparently plenty of copies lack one, and now I gotta bug Sega support about it. Dammit.
By Aeon221 at 9:47 PM ON 02/11/09
So, apparently, your vegetable love is growing. How does the combat work? Is it real time? Like Freelancer? Or more like, uh, something that isn't Freelancer?
By Tom Chick at 10:55 PM ON 02/11/09
Aeon, check in tomorrow. I'll be offering my thoroughly uniformed opinion on combat (PvE, natch) at that point.
By Ian at 11:33 PM ON 02/11/09
i've played with the concept of real-real-time upgrades before in a game called nile online. its super addicting and super fun for the first week or two, and then it boils down to nothing as you wait days for stuff to upgrade. the only problem with that game was that there was very little to do between upgrades, especially long ones. If eve online can keep you busy in between upgrades it should be totally awesome. too bad i'm to busy to play it :(
By mr. pearce at 12:28 AM ON 02/12/09
Eve combat is MMO combat, not space sim combat. However, the original Eve developers were old school UO PKers (see devblog http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=322). The central idea of Eve combat is: assume everyone is a jousting tank mage and give me variations on that theme. Around four years ago they patched in the concept of gun tracking and transversal velocity so smaller ships could compete with larger ships. Last December they reworked the missile formula so velocity and ship size are more significant in the damage outcome.
Tom will really see the impact of these design decisions when he gets in a cruiser and starts using medium weapons against small ships.
By Yook at 1:22 AM ON 02/12/09
The best* thing is that you can only train one skill per /account/. Mind you, that is not often an issue, but every so often, you'll probably find that you wish you could train a skill on two PCs at the same time.
I have incredibly mixed feelings about EVE, and will not be going back to the game despite the occasional yearning I feel. Because, dammit, looking at those gorgeous spaceships is just not enough...
*(Not best, I lied.)
By tortoise at 7:49 AM ON 02/12/09
mr pearce is precisely right, the base combat mechanics, which might initially appear shallow, certainly have a bit of depth when it comes to the velocity & signature issues that allow small ships to avoid serious damage from larger weapons.
like so many other parts of eve it's a pity these mechanics are so unintuitive and poorly expressed by the game itself.
tortoise:
mr pearce is precisely right, the base combat mechanics, which might initially appear shallow, certainly have a bit...More »