Is EVE Online Brutal Enough Already?

EVE Online’s universe is split largely by degree of safety. There’s the wilds of Nullsec, where the only safety is belonging to a large player corporation. There’s lowsec, which has some NPC support, but not much. And then there’s Highsec, which is – in theory at least – patrolled by NPC peacekeepers.

But is Highsec too safe? Should it be made riskier to make EVE more fun? That’s what a lot of commentators on EVE Online have been claiming – but veteran EVE blogger Jester doesn’t agree, and he explains why in a fascinating discussion of how high-sec PvP has evolved. It’s a little EVE-jargon heavy, but if you’re at all familiar with the world of EVE, you’ll be able to follow it:

“Is high-sec “too safe”? In my opinion, no. People who do dumb things with their expensive or even not-so-expensive toys are getting themselves killed with no war-dec in evidence and CONCORD reduced to a foot-note in the affair. If you leave an expensive Antonov AN-12 cargo plane unguarded in the plains of New Eden, you’ll soon find it reduced to metal scraps. And this is particularly true if you choose to go AFK with your ship in space or use auto-pilot. The system, in short, is working as designed… again, in my opinion.

While I understand the desire to make high-sec less safe, the problem with doing so is that the advantage right now is still in the hands of the gankers. And even if all other factors were eliminated, the reason for this is that they get to choose the terms of the engagement.”

Read “How Safe Is Too Safe” here

Tagged as: ganking, high-security, PvP

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Should GW2 give in and introduce quests already?

Everything old is new again. Guild Wars 2, famous for its innovative “no quests” MMO gameplay, now has a growing demand from players for old-school, kill-ten-rats quests as part of its game world.

But why? Well, there are definitely problems with the way the game works already – but does that mean that quests are the solution? Jeromai of Why I Game really doesn’t think so – and he takes the “gief quests plox” argument apart in a fascinating post looking at the problems and solutions of GW2's current gameplay style:

“As for stories, well, even across the open world, some of the dynamic events may feel more generic than others – nameless bandits, centaurs, Inquest, Risen, whoever, just rushing to the slaughter.

But I remember Rhendak the Crazed pretty well, mostly because I keep joking he’d have to be crazy to sit all day underwater waiting for people to come by. I remember the ghosts in Barradin’s vault VERY well, because Ivor Trueshot kept pwning my lowbie and Horace still tears up my downleveled 80 and I recall them as people from Guild Wars 1. I even remember the Bane warband going on their regular ghost patrol, if only because they and my character share part of their surnames.

(I even remember that most useless group of almost-pacifist ogres that need their hand held with everything – even if I don’t remember their names.)

I think what we’d really like is to get to know some of the characters in the open world a little more. Learn their names. Hear their stories. Get involved in meaningful ways. Bring a little more personal story into the world story.”

Read the rest of the article here

Tagged as: quests

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