
One player spent 10 years exploring every corner of Eve Online - mmastrac
https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/2/18286977/eve-online-explorer-10-year-journey-katia-sae
======
murat124
> The galaxy of New Eden is composed of nearly 8,000 star systems.

I loved Eve Online when I played it in the mid 2000s but its point and click
mechanics as well as you'd have to wait days even weeks to acquire skills in
some cases made me lose interest in the game. It has its addictive qualities
too where you feel you could go on playing it forever while knowing you have
got to stop playing it for your own good.

Years later I got introduced to Elite Dangerous and it's been a lot more fun
than Eve. Elite gives players the opportunity to fly by binary stars, fly
through neutron star jet cones to overcharge fsd drives, combats close to
stars, land on planets and even more simulated activities. If you have a VR
the game becomes a unique experience. The game's map is based on Milky Way
galaxy and the systems are procedurally generated. I remember last year the
devs announced approx 112000 individual systems were discovered and this is
about 0.028% of the total. Anyway, a few months ago I solo traveled to Sag A*
and returned later to the bubble (where Solar system and surrounding systems
are). It took me 2 weeks to complete the trip and at times it was pretty
boring. On the other hand it is the only game that let me experience the
stress of flying near a black hole and I am grateful to the devs for making it
possible.

~~~
nirui
I played Freelancer
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer_\(video_game\))
long ago. It had about 30 "star systems", each one is about 100KM~200KM in-
game distance in diameter. It's a fascinating game back in the day, and cost
me years of free time.

When I jump from that game to EVE, it's very obvious to me that EVE is not for
explore. You can do that of course, but you will be bored fairly quickly even
compare to games like Freelancer.

In Freelancer, every "star system" that I jump into gives me a feeling of
mysterious, until I cruise through every inch of the map, and memorized every
cruise path and hidden "Wormhole"s.

In EVE, every system _feel_ like the same. Yes, they have different layout,
NPC and background, but still, it feel like repeat.

I believe EVE is more of a game of politics. A game about ruling, conquer and
team work. Explore? not so much.

I don't know, maybe because the map of EVE is too big to provide saliency. In
Freelancer, every map is manually made to service the background story, so
each one is different in their own ways. Also, because the map is so small,
you can make them vibrant easily.

~~~
Causality1
Ever since Star Citizen betrayed us by walking back their "third person
Freelancer-style combat" promise there hasn't been much hope for anything that
recaptures that spark. I can tell you that Everspace is the closest I've come.
The lore and plot are skimpy and the star systems are procedural but it
absolutely nails the combat.

~~~
faitswulff
Damn, I wrote a sibling comment to yours. Looks like Star Citizen fell short
of Freelancer's legacy :/

~~~
Causality1
Indeed. I'm not sure Chris Roberts has actually seen a jet fighter because the
cockpits of all his space fighters look like those of World War 2 bombers with
60% of the field of view blocked by giant metal struts. My sedan offers better
situational awareness than his starships.

~~~
evgen
I am quite amused by the idea that you think someone in a spacecraft of any
kind would gain situational awareness by looking out a window using the Mk 1
eyeball.

~~~
Causality1
Which begs the question, why have cockpit glass at all instead of immersing
the "pilot" in a virtual environment with the most useful data available?
Maybe something resembling, say, a chase cam?

~~~
indigochill
If we were going for "hard sci fi", you'd need some kind of drone or something
to provide the chase cam perspective which seems like it would be a massive
liability in combat.

I agree a virtual environment would be preferable, although rather than
representing the surroundings visually (which has a lot to distract from
tactical decision-making), I'm picturing something like a higher-definition
version of Elite Dangerous' IFF interface (with the little dots showing their
relative angle to the ship).

~~~
Apocryphon
If you were going for hard sci-fi you wouldn’t even have human pilots at all,
the drone would be doing the flying.

------
galaxyLogic
This is all amazing but it makes me wonder if something is a bit crazy with
these games. Why explore a universe created by some game company when you
could be exploring the real universe by studying astronomy? Why try to earn
money and gold in these games which although it can be turned into real money
is part of a zero-sum game. Your win is their loss, why because there is no
real value created in the game after all. In real life you can make money by
creating a corporation which is not a zero-sum game because it brings value to
both the owners and workers of the company and its customers.

I understand it can be much more fun in the game than the real life and that's
why people do it, but I just wonder if it's just escapism, avoiding the
challenges of the real world?

~~~
neumann
As I get older, I have had a harder time losing myself in many forms of
passive entertainment if I can see the author's - for lack of a better word -
schtick.

So, with games, movies, books, music and even paintings - if I my brain picks
up the process first and isn't impressed or curious by that aspect, I lose
interest. This is mostly common with movies and games, where the cost and
expanse of the created world often require some level of formulas/trope. It is
the inverse in a lot of music, where I am fascinated by the process and
production a lot and can appreciate it at both levels more. Similarly with
great TV - recently I watched season 2 of Fleabag and realised I was lost both
in the story telling and in wonder/amazement at it's construction and
execution.

Before full time work and a kid, there was a certain amount of time I could
afford to lose myself in another person's creation, but nowadays if I start
seeing the scaffolding, I can't unsee it. For this reason I am also starting
to be drawn back to the sciences. I sometimes worry that I am finding it hard
to relate to a lot of art and human expression because of this, so I try to
'lose' myself in it - but so much art (and predominantly so many games)
require a lot of scaffolding.

Interested if anybody else can relate and share how they deal with this.

~~~
justanothersys
If you go to art school or study the humanities then this process of getting
turned off after becoming aware of a piece’s “scaffolding” or let’s say...
algorithm, usually happens much faster.

The first thing that happened to me was I became aware that there is a
production quality bubble in commercial media that keeps most people sealed in
and once that popped I got more and more interested in obscure art related
films, music, scenes, etc. like the things you would find on ubu.com.

A lot of my old art school friends are still in this edgy mode and they no
longer respect any populist media. Somehow I’ve come full circle because I got
bored once I started seeing the “scaffolding” in all the radical 20th century
and contemporary stuff too.

Now I just try to find the free space where people are developing something
new and involve myself somehow either as an early spectator or a participant.

To put it simply, if you start watching Netflix as an anthropologist then you
might enjoy the scaffolding once again.

~~~
EL_Loco
'scaffolding' is a good term for this. It's hard for me to enjoy a movie, as I
can see all the structure unfolding and can predict a lot of what's going to
happen from the first 15 minutes or so. The good thing is that the very few
great movies that escape this are true gems, but the bad thing is that I jus't
don't have the drive/patience to watch movies anymore, so I don't get exposed
to the very few gems.

~~~
galaxyLogic
Isn't that much about how Hollywood works to produce "entertainment"? "Art
movies" are different, more inspiring. For them the "scaffolding" might be
there and made even more obvious it is scaffolding like in theater you sure
know you are not looking at a real-life Swan Lake etc.

There was a curious incident recently where Game of Thrones episode had a
Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts coffee mug visible in some scene. It broke the
"magic", revealed the scaffolding for most people.

But if you believe in fire-breathing giant dragons then why not also believe
in multi-verse where things from Starbucks universe can occasionally mingle
with Game of Thrones. It's magic!

------
giancarlostoro
I wish I had enough time to learn every programming language, just as much as
I wish I had enough time to play Eve online. The things we see here on HN and
hear about in regards to Eve online are incredible. Even when listening to the
Talk Python podcast one dev from the Eve Online crew came on to talk about it
all.

It's pretty incredible, and these articles are never not fun to read about.
There's also from time to time the World of Warcraft articles that pop up on
HN.

~~~
Merad
Having played Eve for the better part of 6 years (2003-2009) I can tell you
that it's a _lot_ more fun to read about than to play. In some ways the game
is way too close to real life. You typically have to put in a lot of work in-
game to support your in-game fun time. PvP combat itself is plenty fun, but
there were many times I spent all day (18-20 hours straight) logged in and
participating in fleet ops in order to get perhaps 15-20 minutes of actual
combat.

~~~
SN76477
I go back and for with MMOs and yes it is too close to real life. So much
downtime and waiting around then a burst of excitement. Lots of chasing the
carrot in games like WoW.

They do have magical qualities though. I look forward to my next MMO addition.

~~~
zrobotics
I've been enjoying the hell out of elite dangerous, but I play it in full-on
space trucker exploration mode. Great for getting in an hour of flying, but I
quit EVE because if I'm going to be doing a job I should be paid for it.

~~~
83457
Just out of curiosity, do some people actually get paid for work in the game
for others?

~~~
Merad
Depends on how you look at it, but IMO: yes. Eve is one of the few (maybe the
only?) MMOs with a direct and legitimate conversion between real currency and
in-game currency.

You can purchase (with real money) an item called PLEX, which can either be
applied to your account to extend your subscription, or sold to another player
for in-game currency. There are many players who pay for their subscription by
farming in-game.

~~~
PeterStuer
Wow has the same. You earn in game gold convert it to gametime and real money
on your Blizard Balance account. With this you can buy stuff from their
digital store, both other games or in game goodies. Once setup, making gold is
so ridiculously fast and easy that you can buy everything in the store in no
time.

------
xwdv
Eve is probably most interesting game and community to read about that I never
actually feel like playing in.

~~~
duxup
Eve probabbly is a good example of the level of time and environment you need
to get all these cool things to happen with a big universe to explore, all the
weird politics and etc ... but sadly to get all that you need a fairly time
consuming system.

I remember some old MUDs.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD) I
didn't play much but I tagged along with some committed players. In that MUD
(I don't recall the name) death was a serious consequence, something like a
25% exp hit when you die... serious consequences. Also the players role played
pretty hard. No need for silly language but if you were a knight you were
expected to be helpful, etc. Everyone played along.

One day a little trash talk happened when unexpectedly some high level dark
players who you rarely saw (they had their on private island on the MUD and
rarely left) hassled some random user in a big city. I was hanging with the
knights and then all hell broke loose. Most of the players involved died
(including me who was dumb enough to grab a sword I couldn't handle and ... it
was cursed so I started attacking at random, dark guy's didn't like that).

The great part was that for years afterward people read and commented on other
people's description of the fight. Totally organic event, serious consequences
for all involved... it was great.

When games like WoW came out I was just ... not interested if there wasn't
really anything on the line.

Eve looked awesome, but man I got a family and career ;)

~~~
checkyoursudo
I believe the following is a common phrase, but when I quit Eve years ago, my
friends would always respond to "Where is [me]?" with "Oh, [me] won the game."
I always thought that was funny.

~~~
duxup
I like to think there is a victory screen.

------
rdtwo
It’s a lot more fun to read about in 10 minutes then to experience in the 10
years it took to do it

------
Vaslo
This game is really amazing, and I’m often trying to find something like it.
My problem, besides lacking the time to do all the things I wanted to in game,
was that some people are just so far ahead that you will just never catch up
without spending a bunch of money for skill injectors. I’d love to get into a
game like this from near the start. I had 3 accounts on it at one time!

~~~
misnome
I played a few years ago before skill injectors and this was definitely a
problem - progression was literally a function of account time owned.

The main thing that killed it for me was the frustration of large battles -
when the server was running at frames per minute and apparently impossible to
assign more resources to the server even if you told them where a battle was
going to happen. This just wasn't fun.

~~~
Accujack
CCP was and is crippled by the legacy code in the game... and they chose to
not try to fix it all at once(which to be fair would have required major
refactoring and cost) but to try to evolve the code over time.

I think if they'd just spent the time on a major rework the game would still
be growing today.

On the server side, the design is still better than any other I've seen, it's
too bad they were so handicapped making it even better.

------
miguelmota
I've never played EVE Online but the explorable universe looks pretty
incredible

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPFII3ozSHI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPFII3ozSHI)

------
cf498
Without getting killed or loosing a ship once

~~~
snuxoll
Wonder how much time the character spent idle training skills to fly, you can
get basic cloaks fairly quickly but to be able to fit a ship to never fall
victim to a web, decloak, etc? That’s a lot of SP, and you’re still reliant on
luck and skill even then.

~~~
jniedrauer
Honestly not really. I used a low SP alt to run blockades with expensive cargo
all the time and never once lost a ship. And these were systems I knew were
being actively camped.

It's almost impossible to catch a fast cloaky hauler if they know what they're
doing. It's been a while, but if I recall, you wait on the gate for around 15
seconds, then decloak, pulse your MWD, cloak, and immediately change
directions. It's almost foolproof if you execute correctly. Now use a frigate
like an exploration ship, and it's even easier.

------
xtiansimon
Off-topic, sort of, but with 212 comments I don’t think I’ll derail
anything...

I’m not a big gamer, but one of my favorites was Cataclysm Homeworld [1].

Part of the gameplay was navigation. But there was a strange artificial limit
to rotating the map—it had a hard stop. Which I guess eliminates the need for
instrumentation.

But I’m thinking with these programmatically generated worlds, it would be a
mad skill to navigate in unlimited 3D orientation—infinite planes.

Anything like that in the wild?

[1]:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeworld:_Cataclysm](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeworld:_Cataclysm)

~~~
kriberg
Off-topic funfact: one of the more eve famous players, SirMolle, was also one
of the best homeworld players.

------
Krasnol
Does anyone know what gallery they run this on:
[http://gallery.saganexplorations.net/#](http://gallery.saganexplorations.net/#)
?

~~~
xymostech
Based on snooping around the javascript, it looks like probably
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallery_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallery_Project)

~~~
teddyh
Tip: Wappalyzer ([https://www.wappalyzer.com/](https://www.wappalyzer.com/))
can automatically do this snooping for you. I use it all the time to answer
the question “What is this site running on?”

------
azdacha
I find it very amusing that eve somehow constantly comes back to hacker news
front page. I don't believe there is another game that made the headlines here
THAT often

------
ericcholis
Surprised that nobody mentioned Earth and Beyond from EA. One of the earlier
MMOs, released and cancelled before World of Warcraft came out. They actually
had a dedicated class for Explorers, with experience points awarded for
exploration-type content. It took place in the Milky Way, which helped keep
things a bit grounded.

~~~
Accujack
I played E&B at first. I lost interest when I realized that the only thing
worth doing in the game was following the high value trade route to get better
ships. Over and over. Nothing else let you advance remotely as fast, and if
you didn't do the same thing as everyone else you'd have the worst ship out
there.

~~~
ericcholis
For sure. The combat only got interesting about a year before it was
cancelled.

------
mpfundstein
I don’t want to hate because the article in general is great. But it bothers
me tremendously that the author continously refers to the player as ‘they’,
‘their’ etc in order to be gender neutral.

1) it reads like shit 2) screenshots even shows the player char is female? 3)
it feels so freaking forced.

I know i am probably downvoted now like hell but I am so sick of this movement
to get rid of gender in text. It started with all of this ‘the programmer, he
or she ...’, then everything was a ‘she’ (any male coders in modern textbooks
anymore?) , and now all are ‘they’...

Call me conservative but I don’t like it. And tech is especially affected...

Every stupid js conf only has gender neutral toilets. And people fucking hate
it. But no one dares too say it loud. Too easy to get banned...

~~~
genmon
It might not be that "no one dares say it too loud," it might be that people
don't hate it or even (like me) like this work towards rebalancing.

btw being from the UK, "they" singular in text is normal, especially in this
case where the gender of the player is unknown, and seeing he/she here would
really trip me up (as it does when I read older articles from the US that use
"he" arbitrarily). It's a style thing, but one I've always liked as more
accurate.

~~~
edejong
To me and many others it feels as a forced, immature (almost childlike), aloof
desire for change. You use words like ‘rebalance’ as if there is an objective,
universally shared belief our culture is out of balance. Thank God we have you
as our savior.

Things will get out of balance the more it is forced, because with every
politically correct motion, there is an equal opposite motion. All that is
achieved is further polarization and misunderstanding.

To say the articles’ use of ‘they’ is normal in the UK feel duplicitous. I’ve
read my fair share of British literature, newspapers and articles. The text
feels completely alien to British writing.

~~~
genmon
Because "they" in text has always been common for me, it's not a change and
not forced -- it's been like this as long as I can remember.

I can't speak for the British writing you've read, but as a Brit living in and
having grown up in the UK, singular non-gendered "they" is normal and common
in both formal and informal text. Could be a function of my social context or
the writing I've been exposed to, it's true. We all have our own perspective.

~~~
jon_richards
There's even an example of it in the Canterbury Tales (one of the most iconic
early English texts). I can't remember the exact line now, but it got me quite
annoyed when American writing teachers would mark my uses of "they" as
incorrect and demand "he or she".

~~~
edejong
"They" as _generic_ third person singular goes back at least five centuries. I
am (obviously) referring to address a _known_ _individual_ using "They" /
"Their".

