EVE Online trial reviewed

An online game trial should show off enough of the enticing features of a game and hook a player’s interest in subscribing. It’s important that the game not only make an effort to help the player learn the game reasonably enough to play but also welcome her to the community of other players. I think EVE Online does a pretty decent job at doing that. I downloaded my trial version about 9 days ago, so I have 5 days left until the game subscription expires. Overall, I had a lot of fun playing; however, I won’t be subscribing (more on that later).

The Client

You can find the download for the 14-day trial by going to the EVE Online web site. There’s a huge link on the right side of the home page where you can sign up for a trial account and download the 3.2 GB client. Getting signed up with an account and password was painless and easy. I was also impressed that EVE offers clients in PC, Mac and Linux flavors. That’s the sort of choice that I wish more game developers would offer.  I started the download overnight (I’ll be getting upgraded to FIOS in two days but right now I’m on low grade DSL) and went to sleep. The next morning, I installed the trial by double-clicking on the client and clicked through the inevitable terms of service and next buttons.

And then I was ready to play. No post installation patch was needed (I was expecting one) and once I entered the user name and password, I was at the pre-game cinematic which precedes character creation.  At this point I was pretty happy. I really was expecting that EVE would force another patch of several hundred MBs down my throat. The game was released in 2003 and so I sort of expected 5+ years worth of patches. The CCP development team thoughtfully combined the patches into the client making that all unnecessary. Kudos to CCP.

I’d also like to note that the game client ran on a really underpowered three-year-old PC. So, if you’re worried about hardware requirements, don’t. EVE can run pretty well on even under-spec’ed machines.

Character Creation

A view of two of my characters. One's a Caldari military type, the other is an Amarr miner.

The pre-game cinematic introduces the world and does its best to immerse you in the history. It was interesting, but I was eager to get to character creation. Character creation in EVE is simple yet really complicated. I didn’t have the faintest idea as to what race I should choose among the four offered: the Amarr, the Minmatar, the Gallente or the Caldari. Each race has differing base ability scores (charisma, intelligence, memory, perception, willpower). These abilities are further modified by choosing a bloodline within your race (think of it as a sub-race), by career path (industry, military, business) and a specialization within that career path.

I’m sure there are min-max combinations of what to pick if you’re interested in building a warrior type character, a business type character or a crafter. However, I didn’t have a clue so I more or less picked at random and drew on my MMO experience in thinking that military types needed high memory, perception and willpower, while business types needed charisma, intelligence and memory. It’s a game trial, so I really didn’t care at this point if they weren’t optimal choices. I did like that while the character creation process wasn’t difficult (it only involved five or six screens), it did allow for a multitude of different combinations.

Beginner Tutorial

My newbie ship going through the tutorial. Note the robotic like instructor at the bottom right.

After you create your character, the game provides an optional tutorial that can be skipped if you’re already familiar with the controls. Given that I was a newbie, I elected to try it. The tutorial tries its best to walk you through some of the initial screens you need to fly your ship, target and fire your weapons, mine ore and dock at space stations.

Honestly, it wasn’t the best tutorial. It’s not that the tutorial is designed badly, it’s just that the EVE interface is really complex. The game has a gazillion contextual menus buried not only in the various screens but also depending on what you happen to right or left click.  As a MMO veteran, I spent a lot of time knowing what I wanted to do but not being able to find exactly how to do it.

Also, flying your ship and getting used to the camera angle wasn’t easy. You fly your ship by double clicking on an area of open space that can be positioned by holding down both mouse buttons to change your camera view. It’s tricky if you’re not used to it, or more accustomed to the keyboard plus mouse based movement in other MMOs. I ran the tutorial twice to get used to steering and moving the ship, because the first time around, I just didn’t feel comfortable.

Game Play

My ship is fighting off a pirate vessel you see targeted in the top right.

EVE Online doesn’t have the best combat mechanics. In fact, you can consider it downright boring. You see an enemy vessel in your overview menu, lock the target when it gets in range and then fire off your weapons by clicking on the weapon icons. The weapon auto fires and only stops when the target is destroyed. And since the ships are either orbiting around you or you’re orbiting around them, you don’t have worry about moving your ship at all, letting the game AI handle that for you.

Now I realize that fighting a computer controlled ship and fighting another player would be entirely different. I also recognize that at the beginning levels, the amount of variety of weapons limit how exciting your game play would be.  That’s not just true of EVE but of essentially any MMO.

Mining an asteroid is quite tedious.

Mining minerals is much the same as fighting. Find an asteroid, lock the target, activate your mining laser and then go browse the Internet for a couple of minutes as the mining laser slowly fills up your cargo hold. The mining laser will conveniently auto stop when your cargo bay is full. When you get your fill of minerals, go back to a space station, dock and reprocess them so they can be sold.

At this point in the trial I was just about to quit. Combat and mining both seemed boring, and while I understood that I was dealing with a beginner ship with beginner level missions, the game play was uninspiring. Furthermore, you do a lot of traveling (and I mean a lot), which consists of watching your ship through some space. The scenery is very pretty but after awhile that too gets dull. All that changed when I got my second hull.

A look at a ships fitting screen showing weapons, defenses and utilities.

After going through about 5 or 6 beginner missions, your contact will give you a second spacecraft for free. All of a sudden, I realized what made EVE so interesting. It’s the spec’ing and planning out of ship configurations and testing them against the computer environment and other players. Unlike your beginner ship, your new ship can be fitted with more weapons, defenses, cargo capacity, strip mine lasers, shields and all sorts of different utilities. Weapons, defenses and other doodads have to balanced out by a ship’s capacity of CPU and power.

Skill training takes place in real time in EVE Online. The book icon indicates that the skill can be trained.

Getting your new ship actually makes you start looking at your character screen as well too. If you want to take on that new weapon system or shield, your character has to have the skill to utilize it. Skills development in EVE is unique in that skills are trained in real time. Suppose you want to train in the skill repair ship. The game will tell you that the skill will be available for you in 17 minutes of real time. Some advanced skills can take days or even weeks to train - that’s all real time! In order to take on cybernetic implants for example, I had to train up on level 3 science which took nearly 8 hours of real time to acquire (I started up the training, logged and then went to watch TV).

Getting new ships is one of the best things about EVE. Take a look at my Caldari frigate.

It’s clear to me that EVE is really about the strategic choices you make in how you fit your ship and how you develop your character. This would have a significant impact on how successful you are in the tactical side of the game (which seems a bit dull).  I’m a big gear fiend in other MMOs, so I really got wrapped up in looking up guides on what kind of weapons to choose, what defenses work best, what types of skills you needed in order to add in certain upgrades and the effect that racial modifiers have on certain equipment. The combinations you choose are myriad, complex and can really appeal to a player who loves to plan and come up with an innovative combinations.

One of the other things that distinguishes EVE among other games is that it’s a single game world. There are no multiple servers, so anytime you log on, you’re bound to run into tens of thousands of other players. Also, there’s PvP everywhere, so any time you log on, you can be attacked by another player. There’s certain safeguards of course for beginner players (lots of computer controlled guards around) but theoretically, no place is safe. However, if you don’t care for PvP, you can generally avoid it. The game world is HUGE and if you want to avoid other players, it’s relatively easy to do so. You can even invest in a cloaking shield if you want to make doubly sure.

Trial Restrictions

Like many other online game trials, EVE Online has some restrictions. The first and most obvious one is that you’re limited to play for 14 days. Still, I think that’s long enough of a time to get the flavor of the game. Second, you’re limited to only one contact after the beginner tutorial contact. Your second contact will give you ten missions, award you two additional ships and won’t offer to send you to other contacts. More or less, after you finish the second contact missions, you’re done. As a trial player, you aren’t eligible to join factional fighting against other computer controlled races, which is a choice you’d probably undertake if you’re a military type player. Bounty hunting is an option and I think you are eligible to try to claim a bounty on a wanted player. However, given your newbie equipment and skills, bounty hunting is probably something that is way beyond your abilities. Overall, unlike many other MMOs, I don’t think EVE’s restrictions are severe at all and give you a really good introduction to the game.

Community

When you log on to EVE, you are automatically put into a Rookie channel. The Rookie channel exists so that new players can ask how-to questions of veteran players and of game staff who frequent the channel. The players I chatted with obviously love the game and are helpful. Further, since player run corporations become far stronger with additional players, you will find most players welcoming of newbies, hopeful that you’ll join their corporation. I’d have to say that I found the community pleasant, helpful and friendly.

So Why Didn’t I Subscribe?

There were certain aspects of EVE I enjoyed immensely. I did enjoy getting new ships. I enjoyed planning out ship configurations and even planning skills. However, I found that tactical game play (fighting other ships, mining ore, traveling) was a bit dull. However, what pretty much broke the camel’s back for me was the crafting side of the game.

The market screen is complex and confusing. However, it's easier to understand than the crafting screens.

I rolled an industry-based mining character to see if the game also provided a set of missions that was geared to a player who wasn’t as much interested in fighting but more into making money, mining resources and crafting. As a mining character, the missions provided by the second contact were quite different than the military based ones I had with my first character (that’s a good thing!)  However, the mining missions were also really, really frustrating. Crafting, inventing and manufacturing things in EVE was quite hard. I wasn’t too familiar with the interface, didn”t understand how the player run market worked and was surprised to discover that component availability changed depending on the star system you occupied. The fifth mission asked me to craft some sort of propulsion widget and I was lacking a component called a Villiard Wheel. After about three hours of searching around where I could find this elusive item, I pretty much threw up my hands.

I know that judging an entire game just because one aspect of the game was not to my liking isn’t fair. I did enjoy many of the other aspects of EVE quite a bit, but it was the frustration with not being able to craft something simple that pretty much decided for me not to subscribe. Crafting is a major part of the game and I didn’t relish going through that every time I wanted to make an item in game.

Conclusion

I’m hoping that EVE’s new update, Apocrypha (due out on March 10), will address some of the issues I mention. I do recommend the game for people wanting a deep game that has a lot of complexity and doesn’t depend on twitch reflexes.  But I would also caution them that the learning curve is steep and you’ll inevitably face frustration in trying to get certain things done. I will note that every almost player I’ve talked to have told me that once you get past the learning curve, EVE is one of the most satisfying games out there.

For now, I’ll put EVE aside, but I’ll check back with the game once Apocrypha launches.

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