Catering the hardcore

And you, sir, surely cannot speak as a casual player.

You found a quick way to generate money, and so? That's entirely not the point. The new professions are invisible in the game if you don't know exactly where to find them, and in every case they are tailored for a certain group of players. It's not content easily accessed, it's content hidden beyond multiple layers.

You are just another flavor of powerplayer disguised as a casual who also completely missed the point of what I wrote. The game lacks hooks and interesting things to do that are easily accessible.

Even if you found the optimized pattern to generate money quickly this doesn't mean that the game is any less hardcore.

And, yeah, it's exactly about NOT looking at things subjectively.

And you, sir, surely cannot speak as a casual player.

I seriously can't think of anything more casual than playing for 2 days 1-2 hours a day, with character started literally on first of these 2 days and with the starting gear, in a system you are being sent to by EVE equivalent of "beginner quest". Please enlighten me what *is* casual then in your eyes, if that doesn't meet the requirements.

You found a quick way to generate money, and so? That's entirely not the point. The new professions are invisible in the game if you don't know exactly where to find them.

The money making wasn't the main point. The point was, contrary to your claim (and contrary to the crythread you picked to use as springboard without bothering to verify the whine within) significant part of the new content is built in way which allows even freshly started player to participate in it with next to no effort, and/or to meaningfully contribute to joint venture with more advanced players running activities in other, more dangerous areas if they wish so. That is, exactly what you asked the game to deliver instead of "just catering to the hardcore"

You don't "have to know" where to find new professions. The basics are provided both in the tutorials accessible from main menu (that launch automatically when you start) You are also lead to them in the beginners' quest. And yet alternatively, they are listed on the features page for each of the released expansions. Finally, they are included along with most of the game skills and gear through the market page. In order to manage to miss every single of these routes so that one can play genuinely clueless, it would be pretty much necessary to avoid doing anything in game at all.

You are just another flavor of powerplayer disguised as a casual

Because I happened to check things first-hand and found enjoyable activity in game within hour of logging in, simply following provided breadcrumb trail... rather than sit and complain there's nothing in new expansion that is aimed at me because one thread on official forum said so? Wouldn't that make your idea of "casual" someone who *doesn't play* the game but rather bitterly complains about not being catered to, even though what they ask for *is* there and well within their arm reach?

Amusing conclusion, to say the least.

I think Innsmouth has a good point. But he probably couldn't be bothered answering your defensive troll post, so I'll answer your plea to "enlighten me what *is* casual then in your eyes":

A "casual" player is one who does not want to have to read pages and pages of stuff before they have a clue about how to play effectively. A casual player is happy playing a prettified tetris or snake, or even Windows Solitaire™. "Casual" means you can pick up a game and put it down at any time, and not be overly penalized; it certainly means you can learn to play well without having to read a lot of plain text or relying on expert players.

RPGs (or MMORPGs) in general are just not made for casual players. In EVE casual players are really the opposite of the target audience.

Even for an average player, the game is very intimidating. I've been playing for a week and I just heard about the existence of salvaging. I'm not sure how I was supposed to know about it. The only reason I did was I joined a corp and happened to hear a member talking about it.

As to how you found out how to make money, the "features pages" for the expansions are not places casual players will ever look. They aren't integral (directly linked from in-game); I haven't read them yet. Nor have I read through the market to find out what is possible. The idea doesn't seem much fun to me; I'd rather learn more gradually, than have to read encyclopedias before I play. Is the newbie player expected to do research like that? In EVE, and from your post, it seems the answer is yes; in fact you say you "can't thing of anything more casual"! This may be "casual" for EVE, but it is hardcore as far as most people in the general gaming audience are concerned.

Without direct help from expert players, I'm sure few newbies would stay. I've been asking questions constantly; Google isn't always good enough, and I think the average gamer would agree with me that they just want to play rather than have to read 20 "Essential forum threads for newbies".

In fact I think integration of help content and tools is essential if CCP wants to expand EVE's userbase (Innsmouth talks about this in a post below). The starting tutorial is great; but it hardly even skims the surface of the game. It could easily be ten times longer. Whether CCP actually integrates is another matter; perhaps they don't want the number of subscriptions to rise too quickly - lag and other player-number related issues are already a big problem (eg. Jita). I've really gotten the impression CCP doesn't care much about newbies - developing new expert features is much more important to them than fixing basic, glaring bugs or making sure beginner missions are more straightforward.

However I find it interesting that the complexity and user-unfriendliness of the big universe the newbie is thrown into the on of the biggest reasons I like EVE, it is part of the challenge and fun for me. EVE is made of players like me, but we are a very select group of the general gaming population - we love abstraction, numbers and optimization. That's just plain strange to most people. And look at the abysmal gender balance.

IMHO what this comes to mean is that EVE is much more about powergaming than emotive experience (I used these as roleplaying terms). There's a whole lot of math and very little roleplaying. This is a common problem to MMORPGs; it's even worse with EVE. Again, this is good if that's what you like, but I think it is possible to broaden the target audience.

There is almost a way for a casual game to play EVE: a good corp could support the preferred playing style of more casual players by doing all the "boring stuff" like fitting a ship, and just giving it to the casual player, along with a little advice. So the casual player could just run missions etc. for their corp, which gives them good ships and gives them tips and slowly encourages them to venture further afield. However unfortunately there is no way for the casual player to get around the rather complex skill system - something which turns off many players on sight. Or even the complex interface in itself (not to mention its jerkiness, or bugs in general - I counted 15 in my first few days).

Casual gamers play the games with the most mass appeal (eg. minesweeper, bejewelled), games largely despised by the hardcore. Average players play games between the extremes, games balancing storytelling, tactical skill, prettiness and fun (and socialising, in the case of MMOGs). Hardcore gamers play powergames; games centered on the attainment of supreme player skill and in-game power.

Although EVE has some room for different play styles, casual players are generally not attracted to the game in the first place, some average players are attracted but many are weeded out in the trial period. EVE Online is a game targetted to a small niche and always will be. However, it's a committed and even fanatic niche - good for CCP's profit projections ;)

What exactly is the "hook" to just about every game? Getting better, you play WoW because you want your character to get higher level so you get more abilities and can kill more dangerous things. With MMOs the hook is also playing with other players and fighting other players. EVE has all of those things just like WoW, infact the player with other players and killing other players is much better in EVE. The character development is a lot slower in EVE, but it lasts a lot longer too.

The things you do when you start EVE are, mine, killing NPCs, and take missions to kill NPCs. What you do when you start WoW is you kill NPCs, or take quests to kill NPCs. Both you get items to make yourself better.
If you aren't hooked because you don't like shooting ships, and would rather hit humanoids with sticks, well that is not a failure in the game to hook you, that is just the fact that you don't like what the game has to offer, it might seem the same but it really is a completely different thing. Instead of killing something to earn EXP to get to the next level and get more powerful you instead kill something to earn ISK to get better items to make you more powerful.
The only extra thing with EVE is that skill training is time based, but that doesn't make a huge difference early on since most skills are fairly short in time at that point and you will have the time for the skills before usually before you have the money for the items. This changes after a couple months but its not an issue that comes up until you are already into the game.

EVE is very complicated, but most of that: T2, 0.0, player controlled areas, manufacturing/BPOs, logistics, PvP, doesn't happen until you are already into the game a little ways.

The difference is that EVE's "PvE" (if you want to call it that) content frankly blows. It's not fun. For the player coming in completely fresh, without the benefit of friends/contacts in an established corp, there's very little to do that's even remotely fun or interesting after the initial "wow, that's really cool" novelty factor wears off.

On more than one forum I see posts from people recommending new players to be prepared to not have fun for at least the first month or so, and my experience reflects that. I'm really digging the game for the first day or two, and then it just totally dies on me.

The majority of people aren't going to make the final decision to pay up until their trial period is almost over. When the game stops being fun two or three days into a two-week trial, or when they are told "look, the game is no fun for at least a month", then there's a problem.

The skill system is another problem. Not because it's time-based, but because the tech trees are so incredibly complexm and the game has no mechanism for easing new players into dealing with the trees. There's nothing more frustrating than getting an item off an NPC kill, or finding a good deal on the market, just to find out that not only can't you use it yet, but that there's a bunch of prerequisite skills you need (which sometimes have pre-reqs of their own) before you can even train that skill. It's a total buzzkill and a REAL good way to turn off new players.

I'm not saying it's a bad game. I'm saying that it's far too hostile to new players who are coming in blind. I don't want to compare EVE to WoW because they are totally different games, but in terms of those new players, WoW's early game is extremely well designed to get them hooked, and fast. Outside of that I think the games are way too different to make any worthwhile comparisons.

I really want to like EVE, I wouldn't keep trialing it otherwise. But no matter how bad I want to get into it, by day 3 or 4 of the trial I'm either bored or annoyed, which is not a good thing if CCP wants my money.

This is a great post. I really don't know why CCP doesn't listen to players who have your experience (ie. almost all players who trial but don't subscribe).

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test everything. hold on to the good.

So true, a while back I gave my cousin a trial to the game (being a fairly active gamer, he gave me a decent opinion on it). He said about the same thing, that when he started he had no idea what 90% of the skills did, what he could do other than the little the tutorial gave him, which he skipped half way though. (I can't blame him, I did as well, it's pretty bad)

He didn't know anything about setting up a decently fitted ship, or much else. He said he either had to ask me or other players about it, which was a kind of a turn off as if just getting into the game is so hard, is the rest of it worth it?

Sure you can get a lot of info on the forums, but not everyone is a "forumer" (if you will).