
Into the Wormhole: An afternoon with Eve Online's least understood demographic - cwilson
http://www.techhive.com/article/2044495/into-the-wormhole-an-afternoon-with-eve-onlines-least-understood-demographic.html
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cwilson
The thing I love most about this story is that the developers (CCP) added a
feature with zero documentation or explanation of how it works. Players were
left to figure it out on their own (and subsequently many of the player groups
who have mastered this feature have kept the knowledge to themselves, only
making it more alluring).

I remember when a TON of games worked this way (not always by intention), and
it's one of the things that drives me nuts about gaming today. Everything has
a guide, maps, tutorials, and you are essentially told exactly what to do
every step of the way (especially in MMO's). There is absolutely no sense of
exploring the unknown or messing with the system and game-play mechanics to
figure something out.

~~~
Retric
There is plenty of exploration in modern MMO's if you sit at the top of the
player curve. Unlike single player games they often have vary little
documentation or handholding it's only the shear number of players that makes
most secrets leak so fast and more importantly you dont't need to read all
that player documentation of you don't want to.

A great example of this might be haste vs crit vs power. There are generally
trade offs between them and the game in no way says which is more useful per
point. In large part because the math depends on play stile, spec, and the
dynamics of a specific fight. Still players often spend a lot of time trying
different optomizations and building different simulations based on different
assumptions. End result tens even hundreds of thousands of hours of
experementation that ofen gets tossed out after each patch.

And because players will find this crap out on there own games have become
vary vague with exactly how things work or what they changed. Aka "spell power
less useful for ability X" which says vary little overall.

~~~
nrivadeneira
One of the nice things about not having documentation is that only those that
take the time to explore and learn can exploit the feature. On the contrary,
when documentation exists, not reading it would put you at a disadvantage.

~~~
brazzy
> One of the nice things about not having documentation is that only those
> that take the time to explore and learn can exploit the feature.

Why exactly is this "nice", but having features that can only be exploited by
grinding XP and equipment drops is horrible?

I mean, yes, exploration is more _enjoyable_ than grinding, but isn't that
already its own reward?

Why does it make a game better to reward one kind of massive time investment,
but not another?

~~~
nrivadeneira
Nobody said anything about a massive time investment. When I said "take the
time to explore and learn", I just meant somebody who does it, as opposed to
someone who doesn't.

In my opinion, putting options in a game for people who want to discover
mechanics on their own and be rewarded for it is appealing. It goes along with
the hacker mentality.

It's a subjective opinion...you don't have to agree with me.

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rjd
Since I miss eve wormholes so much I thought I'd entertain myself with some
reminiscing. Heres goes.

I was amongst the first people to take up living full time in a worm hole in
eve. We got stranded, and while getting ourselves out we stumbled onto some
corps in the middle of a war dec and stole a tower off a freighter pilot that
exploded right in front of one of my corp mates, who stole in and docked up,
waiting for the cool down timer (or so the tale goes, he showed up with a
small serpentis tower so no reason to doubt him). It was like an act of god to
set up a base and we spent almost every day over two years in wormholes
hunting other players, raiding, laying traps, and generally just being the
unseen death of hundreds of players.

There where days when between 5 of us we would get 20-30 kills in a few hours,
especially if we got a Jita opening. One weekend we managed to two down two
towers between about 7 of us (by controlling the collapse of wormholes so
reinforcements couldn't be brought in by our targets, effectively stranding
the targets) just using Battleships, took forever but was heaps of fun.

I would describe living in a worm hole more like hunting than anything else,
spending heaps of time trying to create a bait scenario, then releasing the
trap. Nothing funnier than having the a covert ops ship accidentally bump into
few retreivers, decloak, and watching them scramble in panic before we can
drop on them. As must people are aligned to warp, when that happens you only
have the time it takes to warp a barge to get the drop down.

We eventually got our comeuppance though. Lost something like 20 billion worth
of ships, probably about 8 capital ships atleast, as well as a tonne of T3
stuff, one of the players came online outside of our normal hours with a bunch
of mates... and just stole everything. Left us unable to defend against the
C6, 20 strong cap fleet came in, towers fell within a fortnight, ordered out
by the new occupants, and we I went back into 'normal space' and hated the
game.

Within a two month most of our core group quit. I went back to boost some indy
guys I was helping from within teh hole, and sent my main character to join up
with a null sec group. A few months later I lost totally interest, and quit.

I still miss the wormhole days TBH, the amount of laughter, emotions, hours
sitting around trying to release a trap talking on vent. I feel like signing
back up now, but I know it wont be the same.

~~~
rkuykendall-com
I love reading Eve stories. The world is so open and real that it's like
reading good science fiction.

~~~
joezydeco
I love reading them too, but the jargon is the thickest I've ever seen. Not
saying that's bad. There's just a _lot_ of stuff going on here.

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kevingadd
Wormholes are definitely one of the most interesting parts of EVE. Even if
you're a player with powerful ships and allies and money on your side, going
in and exploring one comes with the palpable risk of getting stranded inside
and having to surrender all your stuff, or suddenly getting ambushed by people
you didn't know were there. CCP does a nice job of making it worth the
trouble, by putting all sorts of interesting stuff in wormholes that you can't
find anywhere else and making the built-in AI residents more dangerous than
other enemies. The fact that the connections change all the time means that it
remains interesting to pop into a wormhole and explore it. On the flipside,
when a wormhole opens up in comparatively 'civilized' 0-security space,
sometimes wormhole denizens pop out and wreak havoc, which is fun too.

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nikatwork
Reminds me of a higher-tech version of Chaos Zone in Continuum/Subspace. All
formal etiquette was out the window, it was always funny to see zone newbies
complain until the penny dropped.

~~~
serf
I still play SS, I feel ancient.

~~~
fein
I haven't in ages, but I used to frequent metalgear CTF often. 7 Sniper or
tubes all day long.

I haven't heard this mentioned in ages, so my question is which servers do you
play? I now have the urge to pick up a Leviathan and get killed a lot.

~~~
ramchip
I remember the snipers... cursed them because I had a low resolution screen,
so I couldn't see them from afar.

The star wars one was great too (is it still alive?)

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dageshi
I remember early on in eve (I joined pretty much when it launched) there were
hidden asteroid belts in various systems that didn't appear on the maps. You
instead had to warp into planets/moons, sometimes other belts if memory serves
and then use the "scanner" to try and find them. I loved doing this, you'd
spend a load of time constantly narrowing your scanner down to a particular
direction then flying off in that direction, constantly rescanning to make
sure you weren't off track.

Eventually there was a website setup by another player who'd buy the locations
I and others had found and sell them on to others, since the hidden places
often had better loot, or sometimes asteroid belts with no enemies.

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duaneb
I used to run my own wormhole when I played—the threat of losing my stuff was
such a thrill it kept me playing. Of course, I mostly lost my stuff due to
stupidity.

