EVE online first impressions
Day[9] tweeted about an ongoing/upcoming war in EVE online. I had tried it briefly years ago, and was quickly overwhelmed and uninstalled. I thought I would try it again, because why not? I have a 14 day trial, downloaded the game (which didn’t take as long as I thought it would) and started into what I thought were the tutorials. The opportunities as they’re called in-game seem just like any other tutorial.
After making my character and jumping in I’m greeted with a monstrous display I can’t begin to wrap my head around. There are windows and button everywhere. These buttons will come to be easily remembered, but at first with no words next to them I had no idea where to begin. The tutorial instructions my only source of direction had me complete the basic controls for looking at things. It teaches you how to navigate, operate the primary control wheel. After 4 hours I began to feel like I had some sort of vague feel for the game. I have found out though, that the recommended tutorial comes in the form of training videos accessed through pressing f12 for help. The rookie chat room available from the start had some helpful tips.
The players in the rookie chat room seemed to understand that the complexity of EVE is one of the things that put people off of the game so much. They seemed very patient; no matter how many times the same question was asked they would answer. There were a few trolls and unhelpful people, but they were mostly drowned out by those that seemed to genuinely want to help. This is something I really love to see in a game I play. I have stopped playing other titles entirely due to the toxic nature of their community.
Most of my time has been spent mining, getting some resources to have a few dollars in the bank. I got a mission from an agent to see what that was like, battled with a few pirates, all-in-all a satisfying beginning. I’ll be trying to join a corporation today or tomorrow if I can find the time. I enjoy how passive this game can be. I can walk away from it without any effort.
Another thing I quite like is how stress-less the PvP aspect is. When I was being attacked by some NPC pirates my response wasn’t typical to PvP (even if it was PvE, the risk is losing everything.) In games where you can be attacked at any moment PvP can be an adrenaline rush just from the risk involved. In WoW on PvP servers if you’re in a neutral zone you may get sapped at any moment and find half your health missing by someone just wanting to ruin your day. In some games going into a certain zone with PvP on means that if someone ridiculously higher level feels like it you can be dead in no time flat and all your items are left on the ground free for the picking. This is stressful, to say the least.
In EVE, however, when I was being attacked, I didn’t feel a sense of dread at losing everything. There were no big flashing bars, no sounds of my character being whipped around like some user’s play-thing. I wasn’t being demolished and I didn’t feel like I was dying. There were just a few white bars that were turning red, and a few notifications on screen of the events. I had put some money into my ship to increase the cargo capacity. I did stand to lose something if I died, but I didn’t feel too worried about it. This game’s passiveness is relaxing. At no point do I have any issue with just getting up and going to get a cup of coffee. I’m as much watching the game as I am playing it.
This passiveness and stress-free gameplay, coupled with the utter, devastatingly enormous amount of complexity of this game has me sort of star-struck. Discovering the complexity of this game feels akin to when I started playing Minecraft. I know that may sound strange, given how incredible different both games are. What has me captured is the discovery and open-endedness of EVE online. The options for how to play the game are ridiculously wide open, and I adore that aspect of any game. The more freedom players are given, the more they will pick it up and run with it.
I’m not running yet. I’m still at a crawl, but I’ll work my way there and try to enjoy the journey a much as the destination.
