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[CosmicMaher]

It's management and reflexes, look on youtube.

[Toeofdoom]

Personally I think the fact that grinding is boring as shit in eve is great. It means it can't waste as much of my time as WoW etc. can. If it was interesting enough, I would quit. Seriously, I would have to, simply because I wouldn't get anything else done.

Anyway, what's cool about it? The politics is obviously kinda cool.

The combat is... well, pilot skill often comes down to "avoiding ganks" before anything else. Or seeing how many enemies you can kill before you have to leave or lose ships of your own. Fittings can affect the equation just as much.

Then there's the fact that because you can choose so many paths, no-one really has expectations of you apart from "don't be an idiot/jerk". I found that in wow, there's generally pressure to level as fast as possible, or raid to get gear etc. Eve is just "train skills, it will happen eventually".

[SirNiko]

Personally I think the fact that grinding is boring as shit in eve is great. It means it can't waste as much of my time as WoW etc. can. If it was interesting enough, I would quit. Seriously, I would have to, simply because I wouldn't get anything else done.

So you're basically saying that games should carefully straddle a thin line between fun and boring, and be JUST fun enough to be worth your time, but not too fun so as to make you play in exclusion to other activities.

This is an interesting theory. I've never heard anyone suggest before that games can be TOO fun.

-SirNiko

[Kekskiller]

This is an interesting theory. I've never heard anyone suggest before that games can be TOO fun.

-SirNiko

If you played Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and got addicted to finding new ships parts: they integrated a mechanic to prevent people from getting too many new pieces to limit the fun. And it worked. If you play some hours, the game disables new pieces and you have to wait some days to get new stuff. It limits you to not waste your too much.

You could fake it by changing NDS' time settings. I abused to a point of sheer frustation.

[The1ManMoshPit]

Cosmic went into the social aspects of the game a lot, but one of the most unique and important aspects of EVE is that everything in the game universe (with a few exceptions) was created from raw elements by the players.  All the mining that people complain about yields minerals that get combined with other parts to build all the ships, guns, and other modules used by every player.  It makes everything in the game more 'real' and is one of the big reasons why losing a ship can sting so hard: You're not only losing out on the isk that you spent to buy the ship, but that ship probably had a story of some kind attached.

Maybe in the corner of the galaxy you call home that ship is a rare commodity because all the blueprint holders live on the other side of high-sec space and you had to run the ship from the nearest supplier yourself.  Or maybe you were personally responsible for the supply-chain that carries the one rare mineral used in the ship's production and having to take another one is another chunk out of your profits.   Or maybe you're in a big group of friends and you'll just grab another one out of your corporation's hangar, but sooner or later they're going to expect you to stop losing so many damn ships.

I haven't played EVE in a few years but the sheer sense of awe at the size and depth of the player-driven economy has stuck with me since.