1 Reply by Keeper Kaas

(14 replies, posted in General discussion)

Glad you're enjoying yourself Rupe!

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2 Reply by Keeper Kaas

(7 replies, posted in General discussion)

Nuking is best fluffy!

On a side note: It took EVE quite a bit of time before it had decent looking avatars. They look fantastic now, but they run on a completely different 3d Engine.

Playdough looking avatars look like Playdough.

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3 Reply by Keeper Kaas

(17 replies, posted in General discussion)

Sorry you had a bad experience.

I signed up 3 days ago, Sunday night (January 8th, 2012) and it took me approximately 30-45 minutes from the time I downloaded the executable to signing into the game for the first time.
I live in the Midwest with cable internet. In fact, it's not even the fastest package from my ISP.

I can understand your frustration with the first 10 minutes of game play but to be honest it is not nearly enough time to really feel the game. You have to remember, this is a Sandbox, not a Themepark MMO. It's going to feel very different than what you may be used to and the developers are attempting to help you acclimate through that unfamiliarity.

Again, I understand your frustration, there are a lot of unfamiliar windows popping up everywhere and taking up your screen. The controls are not familiar. The graphics are choppy (turned down for low end machines, beautiful when the anit-aliasing and antistropic are turned up in the options menu). There are no friendly NPC's guiding you on what to do, etc.

If you give it a chance to acclimate, you will understand that there is more to the game than the first 10 minutes. I'm still on the starter tutorial as well, but I'm an ex-EvE player so I know that there is a vast game play experience at the end of the tutorial tunnel.

Make it through the tunnel, join a Player corp, give it the 14 days of free time and then decide. One of the greatest differences between a Themepark game and a Sandbox is the "Multi-player" part of "Massive Multi-player Online". I'd hate for you and your friend to miss out on what can potentially be a genre of MMO of which you may really enjoy.

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4 Reply by Keeper Kaas

(9 replies, posted in General discussion)

Nova Davion wrote:

IMO, and the population figures, or more precisely the lack of, speak for themselves, that will seriously hurt people who wants to try out this game.  You veterans should know.  I only always see the same group of vets chatting among themselves, back and forth.

Knowing there is NO WAY anyone can be better XPed than someone who has been PAYING, not necessary PLAYING, earlier, is just demoralizing.  There is just no drive, no incentive, no motivation to play longer and smarter.  No matter how many mobs I kill, however long I harvest/mine, I just cant get better at it.  Only time, whether u lay or not.  You might wanna call this the grind mentality.  I look at it as reward vs investment (time played, in-game experience learnt).  Now, its reward vs investment (months subscribed).


There are 2 very HUGE misconceptions about games like EO/PO:

1. The first is your quote above regarding Time Progression XP.
     
     Sandbox games with Time Progression XP such as EO/PO are in fact the opposite of what most people believe it to be.
     
     They actually allow newer players to catch up to veteran players and be on par with them easier than a progressive XP game.  This is due to the fact that the need for XP is not progressively LINEAR.
In the terms of a graph, it's more like a BELL curve. At some point, the XP efficiency for a veteran player will begin to plateau and eventually decline based on a efficiency of XP to benefit ratio.
   
     To think of it like a Themepark game, it takes everyone the same amount of time to roughly hit LvL 20 for a specific specialization. You can then choose to progress to LvL 20.1, 20.2, 20.3, 20.4, etc in that same specialization, or use that same XP and time to diversify and begin leveling a different specialization to LvL 20. The model makes the difference between level 20 and level 20.4 very, very marginal. But due to the fact there are no "Levels" and and abundance of specializations, it is a moot point when trying to compare. There is a post above (blue text) that gives a more detailed example of how this XP model works in favor or the newer player.

     You used EvE as an example. Did you know that EvE has been out for 6+ years and that not one single player, even from Day0, has been able to learn every skill in the game to the maximum. Not one! Because it's not possible based on Eve's Time Progression XP model.

     This is very confusing to understand at first for gamers that are used to Themepark games where Levels have meaning and you can compare a level 40 to a lvl 45 being able to show a huge gap in player effectiveness against one another.
In addition, the time progression XP model is actually much more casual player friendly than a progressive XP model as you are continually gaining XP when not online. That's why it works for alot of people.


2.The second misconception is: "OMG...Sandboxes are Free For All PvP, meaning I will lose all of my epic gear due to griefers and idiots that play 24/7."
     
     This line of though relates to Sandboxes in general; regardless of it the Sandbox is FFA PvP or not.
Once again, Themepark games have conditioned players to believe GEAR is the all important aspect of the game as the 'rails' are built to do the following: grind a progressive level tree (with fluff) to reach endgame, endgame is then a grind of raids to gear up, gearing up is a grind preparing for the next raid to grind, rinse and repeat. Gear is very important and essential in a Themepark.

     The truth of a Sandbox is that 'gear' is marginally important and for the most part it's easily replaceable. Due to the lack of 'rails' there is not a need to grind for gear because there is no need to grind a raid. In fact, you can play without ever having to grind anything. You play the game the way you want to play it.

     It is understandable how a majority of MMO players do not comprehend this model. It's not very widely used as "progressive leveling" and "gear grinding" has become the norm due to the most popular Themepark MMO on the market. For alot of players, it was their first MMO and they expect a similar concept to anything else labeled an MMO.

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