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Terra Nova: The moon is a harsh mistress
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The second problem Eve faces, which again can also be perceived as a strength, is complexity. I'm an academic scholar who has worked in IT and played computer games obsessively since I was 4. I've been lead QA on a very successful and fairly complex multiplayer online game. I'm not exactly a noob. However, even I would have to admit to finding the interface of EVE daunting, to be charitable, before you even enter into the complexities of trading, manufacturing and construction.
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Whilst this is not a problem for self-motivated individuals, goal-orientated players who expect to be provided an objective tend to flounder. As my wife described it, "Too big, too pointless."
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EVE lacks two important aspects that other traditional MMORPGs have.
First is a goal. EVE's strength and weakness is the open ended nature of gameplay. There is no maximum achievable level, except for a specific niche (and even these niches are constantly expanded upon with diferent specialisations). EVE also lacks any character class mechanic, preventing players from simply being a warrior, trader etc. In fact EVE resolutely shies away from pushing a character down any path.
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As I'm sure you know, I could go on at some length about the political environment of Eve, it's by far the most complex and nuanced of any MMO, *ever*. Just trying to give the general history of it would be incredibly difficult, because at any given time there are hundreds of parallel tracks of that history occuring, and every player is biased by his viewpoint to assume that the pieces he was involved in were the most important.
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The most interesting thing is the 3-tier structure that has grown up for exploiting and protecting chunks of 0.0. At the highest level you have major powers, capable of sustaining the economic and psychological strain of protracted warfare. The next step down are the minor powers, generally aligned with a major power for defense and usually contributing manpower and treasure to the offensives. At the bottom you have the "renters", much weaker militarily and focused almost exclusively on resource extraction.
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One of the biggest factors in why losers can rebuild: The scale of the world. If the tides of war and/or politics drive you out of your space, assuming you can retain a critical mass of people under a coherent identity, you can find somewhere else on the map, far away, where things are finely balanced. Your entry can tip the scales, and give you the opportunity to start serious rebuilding. Or you can become a "renter", a vassal that pays for the priviledge of using space somebody else "owns".
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Just one scenario that illustrates the number of ways the security, social, and economic terrain of the Eve-Online system may be exploited to regenerate the health of a tribe that once lost.
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"(i)t's pretty significant to the understanding of... EVE has large areas of "high-security" space wherein only special, legally-sanctioned and paid for wars are in effect (and few 0.0 alliances seek to engage in those wars) as well as much "low-security" but (NPC) Empire-claimed space where rules of engagement are typically relaxed in a friendly direction (Some corps in my alliance prohibit killing neutrals in lowsec. Mine doesn't, but we generally only go after them if we're on the hunt, and we usually have better things to do than hunt in lowsec). To put this in perspective, imagine that there are cities, and no one shoots strangers there. There are large areas of wilderness, and it's dangerous but rarely fully interdicted. And then there are clan strongholds, and a few of those ...are open to strangers, but most alliances, if they catch you on their land (or rather, in their space) will shoot you."
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Second, the Eve-Online game culture has also developed, I think, a number of narratives that allow players to more easily detach themselves from their losses:
1.) conspiracy theories and the shadow-world stories (subterfuge) distance blame
2.) the scale of the alliance struggle dwarfs individual losses
3.) the "intel" / information superiority game introduces a helpful fiction (not bested, but undone!)Beyond cultural considerations, I think there are at least two structural elements that help recycle losers:
A.) There is an interconnected social/economic/security ecosystem that spans the three distinctive types of "terrain" in Eve-Online: "0.0" space (alliances), "low-security", and "Empire Space".
B.) There exists a high degree of organizational fluidity that can exploit the ecosystem of (A.)
The combination of (A.) and (B.) above seems to faciliate the ability of players and player organizations to adapt to changing circumstances.
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First it has to a large extent (I reckon) redefined winning from the perspective of the individual away from simple metrics. Winning to some players is belonging to an "leet" (elite) corporation or alliance. To others it means reveling in (e.g.) "pirate" /trader /miner /mercenary /miner etc. subcultures. Pirates may be poor, without a permanent home and with bad breath. But what counts to them is a code of conduct that seems to bind them, for example.
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Eve-Online seems to not only have been able to recycle its losers, it has built an ecosystem to nurture them for another day. In its own way I think this speaks some to the ways social systems under stress can be resilient.
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In many ways, I think, how a game world handles the losers says more about it and its participants than how it handles the winners. If a game system can tolerate more losers (not scare them off) it can more richly reward the winners. Yet, to have winners a PvP game must be able to recycle its losers. If the losers feel like they are only serving as the redshirts to the fantasy of a few yellow-shirts (fn1) they will leave.
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It is misleading to think of "0.0" or alliance regions as lawless. As I've tried to depict in my earlier posts in this series, these are surprisingly lawful places. It is just that all the law-abiding parties may be at war with each other.
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For a graphical depiction, consider the latest Eve-Online political map (fn3). The colored regions are spaces controlled by the largest alliances. There is a swath in the middle labeled "Empire Space." That is where most players, I reckon inhabit. It is too where most of the commerce occurs. Empire Space is as Devin wrote, the "big city."
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The fringe around Empire Space that is called "low-security" space. Low-security space is an estuarial place where Empire corporations and alliance interests meet-up. It too has wealth (minerals) and pirates. Alliance areas are everywhere else beyond the "low-security" areas.
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MMORPGs: What About the Losers? Virtual Worlds and Player Loss
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The action, the fun, the reward, mostly come from situations and scenarios created by the players -- the corporate wars, the alliances, the espionage, the trading empires. The game's fluid and open system allows just about anything to happen -- but it also requires you to really step up and WANT to make things happen, because it's easy to get bored or blown away if you're not really into it
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Terra Nova: Sleep is cancelled
Tags: eveonline, nate, terranova on 2008-02-12 -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromterranova.blogs.com
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Part of the demoralisation of ASCN before its defeat was a perception in ASCN that there was no safe places to discus strategy. BOB had guys on teamspeak, and tactical maneuvers would constantly be anticipated. This got pretty demoralising for them.
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Honestly, the solution is to recruit as many timezone as possible to counter. Part of the love between the goons and "the russians" (RA/AAA) is that the goons have 3 timezones, East/West coast American (our strongpoint), "Anzac" (australia, NZ, and asia), and "Euro" (Western Europe). We where however traditionally crap at Eastern europe timezones. RA however are absolute domination at this timezone. So it all works out well.
The solution to the war on sleep is a confluence of dreams.
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For those who have carefully read the series to date, one will note that there is a substantial gulf between most of the alliance players and those in the leadership cadre. This pattern is true for most mmorpgs but i think it is more complicated in Eve because of the different levels of organizations (corps/alliances/coalitions) and the wider range of ways they must interact in-game.
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In some repects EVE really is 'spreadsheets' online. Its not necesarily a relaxing game, and it not always 'fun'. But the compelling narrative thats being built communally by this big old community of dorks is what keeps me at it. Its our sandbox, and we are filling it with star trek. And loving it.
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I've heard a variant of this that goes as "you need to get them off their game" In this case what was meant was quite specific. It was made in recognition that very specific player niches have certain patterns of activity that they like to do. There are quite a few of 'em. To undermine a particular player group, you need to decode what they are about and as this reference meant it, you need to force them to play a different game from the one they like to engage in. The further you force them to play afield, so to speak, the more successful you will likely be in "winning."
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Standings are very complicated, but the primary things standings are used for are 1) visual identification of friend-or-foe by pilots and 2) automated FOF identification by game objects (for instance, telling POS guns who to fire at, or telling a station who is allowed to dock). In general, type 1 is determined by alliance standings, or if no alliance standing is set towards a particular pilot, by corp standings, or again if no standing is set, by personal standings. This means that if my corp has your corp set blue, but my alliance has your corp set red, I will see you with a red tag on your name and your ship.
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The problem and fascination with a sandbox is how every player has a different narrative - think of their story as a single thread moving across a very large space and time. Dave Rickey talked about this in comment earlier in the series. This is why I also think we need to - over time - pull our pants up a bit and try to apply the stories to larger understanding of what is going on.
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Ultimately its about control of fun. Goons observed a year ago, that the winner of alliance wars ultimately is the team having the most fun. The downside is it means denying fun to the opponent. Propagandists oft talk about 'make the enemy miserable'. Theres actually something to that (as horrible as it sounds). To 'win eve' , you need to control space, you need to control time, and you need to control fun.
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Terra Nova: Scarcely rare
Tags: eveonline, minerals, pvp, scarcity, security on 2007-09-24 -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromterranova.blogs.com
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On the other hand, sometimes truly epic things happen with free-PvP and Pax-locked servers are not an exception. Apparently on one server in Shadowbane, the Pax there left one enemy guild on an island somewhere to kick around and let their PvP army group have some fun. After some time, said PvP army got to know their opposition/chey toy, decided that they liked said opponents better than their own leadership, and promptly revolted.
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So far as I remember, a Pax pretty much uniformly crushed gameplay in all forms of PvP. Nobody to fight, the PvPers left. Which hurt the economy. With the economy tanking, some mostly PvE/part PvP players left and some played less. Which hurt PvP action more. The servers with a Pax just got *boring*, and while in the real world boring is good these aren't real worlds.
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Yes, a Pax EVE is desirable for one superpower. It would rent out 0.0 space to people (read = carebears) paying for it. Having no pirates and rivals out there will make complex farming, exploration, NPC pirate ratting and high end mineral mining easy and profitable.
Meanwhile the superpowers PvP player base will still get its dose of fighting from
a) manning the gate camps into 0.0 space
b) do the occasional patrol or raider response
c) go hunting in low sec (0.4 to 0.1 security)
d) declare war on hapless empire alliances and blackmail them, else you will kill all their POS (player owned moon stations) with your (super) capital fleetAnd all this is financed by payments from the renters, so you dont have to lift a finger yourself (no need to mine or manufacture or haul or trade, unless you want to). You can PvP 100 % of the time.
Have fun
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If you want to know what happens when one power controls 0.0 space, look no further than the EVE China server. It busted. Big time. Peak concurrent users something around 3000, as compared to 35000 on the main server.
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The game in fact did come rather close to this previous a recent-ish patch that nerfed the titan, as the RSF was close to succumbed by the BOB team, largely due to the fact the Titan had the ability to kill an entire fleet with a button press, and no one in the game had any clear idea how to kill a competently flown one without some degree of metagaming (The previous two where killed by waiting till the pilot logged off, then attacking the ship before the agression timer ran out. Hardly a satisfying 'battle' for either side), and it made the game plain un-fun for both sides. The change made it possible to tackle a titan and removed its ability to kill fleets remotely (previously, one could send in a newbie frigate, and the titan had the ability to use that frigate as a proxy for firing its weapon).
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The theory however was interesting. Remedial, the CEO (Who ended up running off with the Goons tax, alas) theorised that the best defense was a strong economy. And noteing the smooth interactions between the Russian, French and Goon economys, all largely free market (I think) , figured the system worked well to be extended. Retrospectively the idea was a failure, but not because it cause any poverty for the Goons or friends, but ultimately the low tax regime and expensive to maintain open empire became a
financially crippling enterprise in the face of war. I think the current strategy is back to the 'pet' strategy, but with a focus on PVP corps. -
"What happens if there was a hegemony, an overpowering empire, a Pax Eve?"
Thats probably the grand fear that motivates why some folk get so passionate about the 'great war'. Both the RSF(Reds, Goons, Tau Ceti) & BOB(&Friends) are both entirely capable of pulling off a complete 0.0 takeover, if not for the factor of the other side. BOB in particular are exceptionally talented, but the presence of the other acts as a stalemating factor.
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There are quite a lot of internal structuring of Alliance economies, from "libertarian" (focused on individual wealth making and armament) to "communist" (player surrenders wealth and mining time in return for free ships) and all points in between.
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One interesting thing I've seen, is that many alliances, under severe stress from invasion will resort to a 100% taxation regime to, seemingly, maximise war-chest funds and encourage the more capitalist minded members to pick up a gun and join the front line.
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Minerals in Eve-Onine are scarce for lack of another in-game resource which can be indeed quite rare in some areas:
security.
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One advantage of alliances is that much of the security cost of an operation within its borders is amortized by the whole organization (see 1.-3. above). Without it, the direct cost of security at an operation site can be significant. As a for instance, operations where a beefed mining security extends well beyond the site to a convoy route is not unheard of (to guard against pirates molesting haulers) . Whether directly or indirectly, all those guns have to be paid for. The alliance system helps substantially to defray those expenses by limiting their need.
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Terra Nova: Real Politik
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None of the CCP founders has any pre-EVE experience of game design, and the incredible drive they've shown in bringing this project to life comes bundled with serious hubris about them being smarter than the lot of old-guard MMO* makers.
This is a company that pretty much reinvented the wheel, sometimes for the best, yet oftentimes falls for beginner's trap, especially in the PR/CM department.
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CCP's solution is intriguing, striking even, because it breaks from a largely unspoken assumption that the relationship between players and developers should be distant -- or, at least, heavily managed and regulated (by the developer). We'll have to see how this solution unfolds in practice, of course, but for the moment at least it suggests a new ethic surrounding these environments with regard to accountability and political legitimacy. CCP may have opened its doors in the name of transparency, but is letting those who are not gods (in Richard's formulation) check the gods' work the direction in which virtual worlds must move?
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Terra Nova: The face of information
Tags: comentario, eveonline, information, strategy on 2007-03-28 -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromterranova.blogs.com
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And here you see the real difference between successful corporations in EVE and mediocre ones. The good ones have strict com discipline. This results in a more efficient way of fighting and better results in PvP and fleet battles.
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Yes, EVE has the new wing and squadron command options and I have acted as wing and squadron commander myself. But its mostly used to group support, capital, sniper, recon and close-combat ships into appropriate units BEFORE combat starts. To place them were they are most effective !! before !! the fighting starts. To jump as a unit to the system were the battle will take place.
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However, the onion owners I know prefer to use the fleet system. I know that one major alliance that been in the news recently, has wings specifically for support, and wings specifically for the objective. Thus although a single pilot is 'in charge', the wing commanders have say on what their group should be doing at any one time.
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All the people I talk to about EVE who know their onions, say that the imposed fleet structure is basically ignored, that commanders still command the whole fleet directly on teamspeak, and whomever has the most advantageous (in-game) leadership skills (aka gang-bonuses) are appointed as group/squad/etc leaders according to what gives the best boost to ship stats.
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Taking Eve Online as your example. Six months ago, all fleets were led by a single pilot as far as game mechanics go. 'Off' the commander of that fleet (by offensive action or through some unfortunate connection problem) and the fleet would most likely die.
It was not uncommon to see an overwhelming force literally annihilated by a smaller, more organised, force when this happened. The cries of despair are just as real, even if it is a virtual loss.
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Goonfleet - eve drama! - The Something Awful Forums
Tags: eveonline, kugutsumenscandal on 2007-02-21 -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromforums.somethingawful.com
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Approximate numbers involved now: Goonswarm and its allies, 22,000, BoB + LV + bob pets (even the ones who won't fight) right around 10,000.
Truly an epic battle. And for the first time, Goonfleet are the good guys in the eyes of the pubbie "community." I think that's what will hurt BoB the most in the long run* -- the fact that everything they've ever accomplished now amounts to jack and poo poo in the eyes of others who play the game -
I also find all of this fascinating and I'm glad that the OP brought it to everyone's attention. BoB's done. Devs won't be helping them anymore and many of their allied corps will abandon them in the next month.
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It's too bad the actual game itself is dry and boring like an excel spreadsheet. The community and people really make the game insanely complex.
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I for one have always thought BoB was kind of funny. I imagine BoB as a court noble in the middle ages. A fat pompous jackass with lots of land and money who commands dozens of vassals and knights based on his heritage but would cry and whimper if someone punched him in the mouth. Unlike the disorganized mining mob that was ASCN I think RedSwarm or D2 alone could give BoB a run but together they can run wild like old school Hulkamania.
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The war will involve around 40k players directly, and will basically shape how EvE is going to work from now on
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Goonfleet - eve drama! - The Something Awful Forums
Tags: eveonline, kugutsumenscandal on 2007-02-21 -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromforums.somethingawful.com
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yes and no. The eve world used to have 4 power blocs--BoB and its vassals, D2 (a bunch of ruthless Germans) and its vassals, Ascendent Frontier (a bunch of carebears), and the "Southern Coalition", a mix of PvPers left over from some dead alliances and some vassal carebears. Goonfleet allied with the Red Alliance (a bunch of ruthless cutthroad russians) and pretty much nuked the southern coalition. BoB nuked ASCN.
The goonswarm/red bloc gained a ton of allies in people who had been left out of the four old superpowers, and was slowly chipping away at the last hardcore PvP elements of the Southern Coalition, who then allied semi-secretly with BoB.
BoB is now attacking the goons/reds. -
The thing is, CCP really wanted to make EVE much more of a role-playing type game, where the 0.0 alliances would work with the NPC factions and create some kind of shared storyline. The problem was, the NPC/RP crap was more or less boring and lame, and the deep-space alliance battles far more compelling and interesting. The whole thing has really shown that what the EVE populace really wants is a game with fair rules and to be left alone by the management. That's kind of a big change from the old days, where it was almost more like playing dungeons and dragons with a DM buddy who, when the chips were down, always let you make that last saving roll.
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It looks as if God has chosen a side and made it known.
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You see up til now I've been interested in the comings and goings of eve (all the stuff about that huge corporation infiltration etc) because it's been players using the game to the fullest extent possible while constrained by the rules.
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I'm not a player so I don't have any vested interest in this, but I see this as more Machiavellian than outright evil. Their ill-executed scheme might have just backfired.
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The Escapist : News : Jumpgate: EVE's Devs and the Friends They Keep
Tags: eveonline, kugutsumenscandal on 2007-02-21 -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromwww.escapistmagazine.com
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EVE Online | EVE Insider | Dev Blog
Tags: eveonline, kugutsumenscandal on 2007-02-21 -All Annotations (0) -About
more frommyeve.eve-online.com
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Kugutsumen - Powered by vBulletin
Tags: eveonline, kugutsumenscandal on 2007-02-21 -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromwww.kugutsumen.com
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Goonfleet - eve drama! - The Something Awful Forums
Tags: eveonline, kugutsumenscandal on 2007-02-21 -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromforums.somethingawful.com
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Here's what you don't get:
1. People find out, legitimately, that there's a problem related to Devs and Bob.
2. The incriminating evidence gets posted, which has happened tons of times already. Many times Goonswarm's private director convoes, due to spies, have been reposted all over eve-o. This was never an issue before.
3. When BoB's messages get leaked, the leaker gets banned. Keep in mind he had done this 4-5 times to other alliances and no one ever gave a poo poo. Suddenly he's banned.
4. Kieron tells the community that they're on a witchhunt, that all of this is unproven, and they're just "bashing band of brothers."
5. Kieron proclaims that the investigation is over and the appropriate parties have been punished, and deletes 90% of the responses that are negative in both the COAD post and the Eve Announcements forum.
6. T20 is fingered as one of the main culprits in the drama.
7. All posts RELATED to that are deleted.
8. Finally T20 fesses up, and it turns out that:
1. BoB was wrong
2. Kieron was wrong
3. Everyone shouting at all the people investigating this as "Accusing for political gain" were wrong.
So basically, the eve community forced CCP to do the right thing, all the while they were kicking and screaming, and while BoB professed innocence, claiming it was all lies. Only none of it was made up, and neither BoB nor CCP are really trying to take any real responsibility for it. CCP has had the guilty party come out and admit it, and the CEO has implemented some new policy, and that's about it. Where is DBP or SirMolle's mea culpa, for lying to the community? After all, he said this was all lies - when he knew flat out that it wasn't. So wait a sec, BoB will lie to all of Eve to keep their shady dealings secret, who knew?
And if you can't understand why people are upset that legitimate claims take mass bannings, suspensions, and deletions to get investigated, and the investigation is half assed every step of the way, and that the "Devs in BoB = basically untouchable" myth gets PROVEN TRUE, then it's quite clear you have a slanted point of view and the only reason you see it as no big deal is because you happen to be in BoB.
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Terra Nova: Lawful Carp
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Ah, that's the pros and cons, and perhaps the beauty, of 0.0 space. Having the government coming to impose law just ruin it the essence, paving the way for the masses.
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I'd say the exact opposite was true - good alliances have a strong sense of "virtual nationalism". Sometimes it gets a bit too linked to real nationalism, especially in the ongoing RA versus Coalition war. Sovreignty and unity are realised through common action in adversity; dispute management isn't all that well developed, but people who make trouble can be kicked out.
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Or, we may be. Again, if Eve is meant to be "The Old West" where no laws apply, and the only rule is caveat emptor... well then, to the victor go the spoils, keep your hand on your wallet, and only do biz with people you know well. If that's the case, bravo to Mr. Ponzi.
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So in this case, all the customers would have a good chance of recognising any of the Scammers ALTs as him, because he was a significant figure in their characters world. They could put out wanted posters which when seen by others would increase their likelyhood of spotting the scammers ALTs as him. In this was the players gain the power to self police that is currently denied them.
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In order to allow self governance there needs to be a way to trace back to a RL person
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CCP want EVE to be self governing, and I am sure that the playerbase would step up to the challenge if they were but given the one tool required to do it.
The means to identify people.
In the real world it is very hard to create a completely untraceable false identity. Nearly everything we do is recorded, or seen by someone, and with enough time, effort and luck, it is possible to trace just about any identity.
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The RW analogy applies. In a modern society it is impossible to verify everything yourself all the time. You need to trust institutions etc.
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there is no real need for game mechanics (like eve's PK-mails), the mechanic to rule this out is a social one. get friends and reliable business partners, stay away from big promises, or fail. some of us will learn social skills no sooner than at entering virtuality. at least.
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I have writen up some thoughts about this epiode here. My take is that the EIB came quite close to fraud and/or theft, and that it is only a matter of time before some such scheme lands its perpetrator in the defendant's chair in court.
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What's the difference between having a meta-game to scam people from outside the actual gameworld and using out-of-game scripts (bots, macros) or resources (RMT) to also advance? There's a troubling lack of "boundaries" of play, and maybe that's part of the appeal
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I think this is part of the "fair play" of Eve's open world, but I also think that what's disturbing about this is that this guy and other scammers use the out-of-game forums for their work.
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