Blog Banter: You Make EVE
Welcome to the sixteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than me, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves 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 to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles here.
The third Blog Banter of 2010 comes to us from ChainTrap of the Into the unknown with gun and camera EVE Blog. He asks us: “Eve University turns six years old on March 15th; six years spent helping the new pilots of New Eden gain experience and understanding in a supportive environment. EVE is clearly a complicated game, with a ton to learn, so much that you never stop learning. So, the question is; What do you wish that someone had taken the time to tell you when you were first starting out? Or what have you learned in the interim that you’d like to share with the wider Eve community?”
My younger brother is an avid RPG gamer. He played World of Warcraft with me for years. He’s eaten every Bethesda game alive, hundreds of hours put into the Elder Scrolls series. He’s had a fill of scifi with every Knights of the Old Republic, Deus Ex, and Fallout game. He does the number crunching, loves understanding character stats and long term skill development. In most ways, I’d say he’s a much more dedicated RPG gamer than I am.
But, against all my effort to convince him over the past year, he hasn’t gone near EVE.
And regardless of every explanation I’ve given him, he attributes his hesitation to the simple notion that he doesn’t “get” the concept. He says all the things I love about how different the game’s mechanics are, are the very reasons why he thinks it’s too far out of his comfort zone. No huge loot rewards? No levels? No experience grind?
The other night, however, I finally broke some ground with him when he asked me a very simple question: “Don’t you miss earning that one fat axe that looks better than everyone else’s?”
My response was that the feeling of reward in EVE isn’t about getting the axe, but what you accomplish with it.
He quickly responded, “That’s the best explanation of EVE you’ve ever given me.”
That ship you fly didn’t drop off a huge space boss. That new turret you own was bought off the market just like everyone else’s. There’s nothing inherently unique about the items you own in EVE, thus they aren’t the same means of gratification that other loot/grind RPGs give a player.
You have access to the same skills. Your ship looks like all the others. There are no rigid class systems that limits gameplay to a particular way that determines your advantage over competing pilots.
EVE’s gameplay is about how you use that ship in a way other pilots didn’t expect. It’s about modifying a fitting that the enemy can’t anticipate. It’s about finding a niche in the market and exploiting it. The feeling of reward comes when you carve a career out of a style of playing that’s exclusive to you.
How you decide to play EVE makes you unique, and creativity is a pilot’s greatest asset.
So for budding pilots with a fresh set of wings, remember always that you determine your gameplay in New Eden. If it’s boring, then make it interesting. If it’s hard, make it easier. And if you want that shiny piece of fat loot, make a lot of ISK.
For the record, my brother activated his subscription yesterday.
