- ETERNAL, death is just a means to an end, persistent character progression through the infomorph and clone interaction
- EPIC, and the world does not revolve around you, you are a tiny forgettable speck
- dystopian galaxy at PERPETUAL WAR
- REAL, endless character, lore and backstory, names have a meaning, references are real
- SELF, ownership, you own your stuff, your story, your progression, collective ownership and achievements
- CHOICES, again progression, friends, foes, factions, allegiance, playstyle, strategy, tactics

I'll make my case again - it's not whether he's winning or not - it's the fact that he's fast-tracking something others have taken years to get to. It's definitely P2W, even if the person paying isn't necessarily winning. The long-liners do not like that.

Honestly, I feel like New Eden is unique because of how goddamn social it is, and DUST captured that so beautifully. Why is New Eden so social? I have no ******* idea, but it is for some reason. Same goes for DUST. DUST, for whatever reason, turned out to be the most social FPS ever. No idea why.

The problem with EvE is that it is slowly being turned into just another game that you can pay to get whatever you want. There's no requirement anymore to go through the whole skill training thing that made the experience of training worthwhile. This is one of the things that so many of the long liners are complaining about - they trained for years and years to get where they are and now suddenly, people can just buy the skills they need for ISK, which itself is easy enough to get from selling PLEXes. PLEXing used to be a very maligned practice. Now it's practically the primary way to do anything fast in the game, and since for most people they just want things fast, the logic follows that PLEXing is becoming a primary source of in game money.

No wonder the long liners complain so vehemently.

I never said you can "buy win" in EvE. I said that people are paying to win. That doesn't mean they actually win by it, but the effect is still pretty profound. When people can just buy skill injectors full of the skills you spend years training, you will feel pretty cheesed off, too. Yes, those same people then have to learn to use those skills, which is a whole other problem, but the fact they paid to get them fast tracked is what the long-liners have a problem with.

And these days, I myself am actually becoming a bit of a long liner. To me, paying for skill injectors to get to the level of my EvE main is tantamount to someone selling their EvE account, something which is supposed to be illegal according to the terms of agreement. The fact that CCP have effectively given people the means by which they can do exactly the same thing, but wait, now they have to pay CCP the real dollars to do it, means this is just another CCP cash cow.

I'll make my case again - it's not whether he's winning or not - it's the fact that he's fast-tracking something others have taken years to get to. It's definitely P2W, even if the person paying isn't necessarily winning. The long-liners do not like that.

You can't buy win in EVE Online. I've seen dozens of people in my 8 years in EVE playing on characters with crazy SP counts that they bought off the character bazaar. They've all been childishly easy to take down.

BPO was awesome!!! I want my suits back

If the person isn't winning, then they aren't paying to win. Mobius is right, you could have all the money in the world dumped into the game, if you don't know what you're doing you're gonna get blown up. Experience and knowing when to back off are gonna be the deciding factor in eve.

Who are you to speak for all "long liners"? Lol

I've spoken to many people about skill injectors. Many of them who have been playing since close to the beginning. Most of the responses I get are that of "I don't really think it's a big deal" and "will just have to wait and see"

Ccp spent a good portion of a year hammering out details with the CSM as to how these injectors would be implemented and what stipulations would be required to prevent them from unbalancing the game. Hence the diminishing return you get as your total SP count goes up.

Also your completely forgetting that players can spend isk on these injectors to. So it's not exclusive to people who spend money on the game. I run incursions with eve uni on one of my accounts and injectors have really helped a lot of struggling newer players. What used to take two-three months for our new guys to train takes like 1 month now because as they earn money picketing/scouting for us they buy sp injectors so that they can hop into a battleship faster and really get their eve career started.

And AGAIN let's not forgetting the eve character bizzar that's been around for forever. People have been buying fully skilled characters through that for years now and the game has been doing fine.

So where did you forget to factor in the eve character bizzar and how for a very long time now people have always been able to buy fully skilled characters?

Trying a bit to redirect the conversation back to it's original point, I'd like to argue the merits of why getting the feel of New Eden is so important, and why it's a thing that players can help out with. It is important that mechanics help bring the feel and theme of a game to life, instead of the two being created at separate points. (Often with mechanics before theme)

This can cause imbalances or inconsistencies in the narrative / feel of the game which generally detract from the fun and immersion of the game.

NOVA has the clear advantage of having two games worth of prior experience to establish the mood, feel, and themes that such a game should adhere to, as well as certain mechanics that help to enhance that theme. It is important then to distill those themes down as much as possible, preferably to a small list of bullet points (like what Rattati did) to keep in mind.

Then from those concepts and themes, mechanics can then be developed that tie into those themes. For example, if a theme is to feel a sense of "SELF" where things you own are important to you then mechanics that make you feel less ownership over things would harm that notion. As a minor example free vehicles spawning on a map would harm this as it does not grant a sense of ownership over things.

To continue on my line of questioning, let's look at a comparison. DUST and STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT both have "load out" systems. Here defining a "load out" system, as some mechanical system that allows you a difference in kind of gear and tools at your disposal that differentiates one load out from another in feel and mechanics. However, DUST managed to make fits feel unique or special to the point that some players considered a fit to be "theirs". Meanwhile, Battlefront did not grant this same sense of ownership despite also having the same mechanical system in place.

What was the difference that made one feel like New Eden, and the other... not?

Speaking to loadouts and pride in ownership, acquiring and learning skills needed to use specific equipment give a sense of investment on property. It reinforces our notions of ownership and primes us to feel a need to protect our property (protecting our equipment through survival). That has always been another attraction of mine with EvE---the risk of loss through a severe death penalty. In the case of DUST, that was a great sense of immersion too; though it did have flaws IMHO.

BPOs (as used in DUST) directly contradicted that notion of investment and risk. What risk is there with an infinite stock of equipment? I am not going to derail with an argument of balance or other subtleties involved as to why this was a benefit to some or not; I'm just speaking on a philosophical view of an element that countered what, in my view, is, in part the spirit of EvE and what was potentially the spirit of DUST.

Bleh. On my phone and it's too early for this! I'll come back to finish my thoughts on skill progression.

Mornin =/

Exactly, Byte. Once you can have an unlimited supply of a certain kind of gear, it reduces your investment in the fight and also means that win or lose you still get paid substantially thanks to not having to replace lost gear.

If Project Nova were to have industry elements that blueprints could be used for, and BPOs worked like they do in EVE Online, I would be fine with them.

To be able to use BPOs like in EVE, players would have to get a hold of materials to craft their gear off of the BPOs not to mention a way of creating the gear once you get the materials (BPO + material + production cost = produced gear). This would likely add a whole other complexity to development of the game. I'd be for it but I doubt CCP would. That said, I think Project Nova would likely be best without BPOs (at least in the short term to enable time to get them to work right). The shortcutted BPOs as provided with DUST did kind of kill the point of the game.

Taking a quote from CCP LogicLoop:



So this brings up, in my mind, an interesting point of discussion that warrants its own thread. What feature or features distill the universe of New Eden into a tangible form for you? How can somebody make a game that feels like it belongs in that universe, and what components are core to it's setting.

I think that is a topic we would have the best shot of answering, and hopefully bring insight to the devs who read the forum (or at least LogicLoop if nobody else)

To that end, I feel New Eden is best defined by its sense of Consequences.

By that I mean that choices you make in the game have a weight and importance to them that have meaningful impact down the road. This is done by having them affect all levels and types of play, from the minor details of skill application defining your character, to the larger politics of entities that affect the power balance of space.

New Eden's history is, in my opinion, defined by player action and the consequences those actions carried. DUST was able to achieve this through a number of ways, from the skill point system, to the ISK cost of suits, to the tug of war between Faction Warfare and Planetary Conquest.

When these features fell flat for the players was only when that sense of consequence and impact was disrupted or began to ring hollow. Such as when people had enough money to not care about it, or when the FW battles seemed arbitrary and had little impact on the greater war, or when Planetary Conquest felt it had no real benefits aside from the fights it generated.

To that end, I feel that any game that wants to feel like it belongs in New Eden needs things that tie together individual play experiences to feel like they are impacting a greater whole.

• There needs to be player progression that involves choice, not just a static level that dictates what you have for you.
• There needs to be an ability for player's moment to moment gameplay affect some meta aspect of their experience that goes beyond simple statistics. DUST did this with consumable fittings that impacted the player after a match.
• Activities need to be in place for a group of players to impact larger aspects of the world in a way that has some degree of persistance. DUST tried to do this via FW and PCs.
• Players need a variety of ways to impact other players beyond simple combat mechanics. This can be done via trade, industry, politics, or any other activity that touches upon the play experience of other players outside of matches.
• The world / universe needs to feel as if players can impact it in some way. Some aspect of the world needs to be able to be changed by player action. Such as ownership of a system, availability of resources, or generation of missions.

All of the general points I laid above help to create a setting that is more distinctly New Eden, even if it lacks some of the more familiar trappings of EVE or DUST. The important things about New Eden and the experience players seek from it lie in a perception (not necessarily a reality) that their actions can ripple through the universe and some consequence of their actions affects future events which can be limited to themselves, a few others, or the entire cluster.

Avallo, unrelated to your post, but I thought I would ask. Have you joined the DUST vets Discord yet? If not, you should.
https://discord.gg/0o2qgQkvz7aOoq0f

Avallo, unrelated to your post, but I thought I would ask. Have you joined the DUST vets Discord yet? If not, you should.
https://discord.gg/0o2qgQkvz7aOoq0f

Exactly, Byte. Once you can have an unlimited supply of a certain kind of gear, it reduces your investment in the fight and also means that win or lose you still get paid substantially thanks to not having to replace lost gear.

If Project Nova were to have industry elements that blueprints could be used for, and BPOs worked like they do in EVE Online, I would be fine with them.

To be able to use BPOs like in EVE, players would have to get a hold of materials to craft their gear off of the BPOs not to mention a way of creating the gear once you get the materials (BPO + material + production cost = produced gear). This would likely add a whole other complexity to development of the game. I'd be for it but I doubt CCP would. That said, I think Project Nova would likely be best without BPOs (at least in the short term to enable time to get them to work right). The shortcutted BPOs as provided with DUST did kind of kill the point of the game.

- ETERNAL, death is just a means to an end, persistent character progression through the infomorph and clone interaction
- EPIC, and the world does not revolve around you, you are a tiny forgettable speck
- dystopian galaxy at PERPETUAL WAR
- REAL, endless character, lore and backstory, names have a meaning, references are real
- SELF, ownership, you own your stuff, your story, your progression, collective ownership and achievements
- CHOICES, again progression, friends, foes, factions, allegiance, playstyle, strategy, tactics

Exactly, these pillars should guide our development.

Totally agree with you. The social aspect of Dust is what made it so unique. I and many others could spend hours without playing, only chatting and tweaking dropsuits.

All the point s that Rattati said are true, but this one is the most important.