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I'm sure at least some of you have heard of JGE by now, sometimes referred to as an EVE killer, a game which I personally refer to as an abysmal failure in the making and vaporware at best based on the history of it's developer (Auto Assault) and the way in which they've basically lost every beta application sent to them at least three times. It recently came to light that the developers intended to have a fully functioning player driven economy and no item loss whatsoever. They may have also been making reference to trying to steal WoW's user base, which is a plan that can't possibly fail. It also appears that recently after all of this came out (And flagged PvP I think, which is similarly stupid given half of JGE's launch playerbase will probably be ex-EVE players who only want more entertaining combat) they suddenly decided to delay the game's release and "work over some PvP aspects" according to rumor...

I could stop there, but after reading several threads on their forums I concluded that most of the people there are idiots (Big shocker, right?) with posts telling others to "Stop comparing JGE to EVE/WoW/vastly more sucessful game than NetDevil has ever developed!" and more posts by former EVE carebears who think that frantically hoping through lowsec systems with a crippling fear of losing their internet space pixels on the way to more highsec systems is the only way people play in EVE and that nobody ever fights because the loss is too great. It's not like anybody has repeatedly lost the most expensive ship in the game fighting, right? Most notable are the sheer number of posts all agreeing that a decay based system for item loss is both not dumb and the way to go for a PvP heavy spaceship game, I'm not sure if it would actually work or not as my eyes kind of just glazed over while trying to read about it for some reason.

Thoughts?

Meh.

More elaborately: The entire starship game market has imploded and Eve is probably one of the least interesting games I have ever had the displeasure of squandering my living breath playing. Trying to make a 'different' flavor of Eve is just like adding flavor to cement. JGE is wasting their time.

Given that the idea of a player driven economy is entirely irrelevant to my interest in a game and often counterproductive to actual game balance as an objective reality, the idea of combining that with anything less than the softest and gentlest of PvP seems asinine, but that will surely upset the 'hardcore' players of EVE who seem to be all a-waggle over the idea of actually losing something in the process of playing the game, other than their time. I enjoy the chance to decimate my enemy as much as anyone on the planet, but I have yet to see a strong argument for the idea of loss that makes it anything other than a reductive system wherein PvP occurs less often, amongst fewer people, and with the least impressive vessels. Sure, there are people willing to gamble it all on what amounts to being the blandest combat ever, but I can't see why. They obtain some kind of satisfaction I neither understand nor wish to emulate. And having to do that within the confines of a player-driven economy adds another layer of annoyance to the entire thankless task.

And further given that Eve's market base is essentially anyone who plays Eve and nobody else, JGE is going to cut into Eve's market and nothing else, and since that means failure, it will fail. If you want more exciting combat than Eve, any game on the market provides it. If you want a better form of player-based economy in space, nothing will ever surpass it since all Eve happens to be is a spreadsheet, an opportunity for dickery, and a spaceship screensaver.

If the JGE guys want to bite into a real market, why not offer something to people who enjoy games, instead of the people who get improperly aroused at the thought of a quarterly earnings report. It will make the Eve people cry boring, math-flavored tears of woe, but if they made a game that is as to Eve as Team Fortress 2 is to the idea of a "serious first person shooter," they'd have buckets of money and a lot more players and you wouldn't need to compete with anyone since there is no actual "blast 'em up" online spaceship game.

Space games don't need to be grim, or about money. Not every game needs to be fucking Elite all over again.

JGE is aiming for a different market than EVE (playstyle anyway), and saying something is a '<game with 200,000 players> killer' is setting your sights a little low. Cov is right.

Ironically the improvement generally in network code and hardware means you might actually be able to build a space game without basing it entirely on EVE's latency-reducing remote orders.

Stark, would I like this game if EVE kinda bores me, but I enjoy the fitting out of ships and buying different cool modules?

To be honest if you like that stuff, Space Rangers 2 is probably what you want. It's not an MMO, but that's why it doesn't have the boringness.

Havok wrote:Stark, would I like this game if EVE kinda bores me, but I enjoy the fitting out of ships and buying different cool modules?

JGE is supposed to be a twitch-shooter dogfight game, not a MMO "wait and push buttons" game, so Strak is correct. I'm personally not antagonistic to the idea of Jumpgate Evolution being a good game, I'm just quick to criticize developers who put fun secondary to some abstract concepts that don't even make good business sense.

Really, JGE has almost nothing to do with Eve, and a lot more to do with that ol' Microsoft-made game where you flew around in those jump tunnels, traded, and had factions... I forget the name of it. That game was an easy-to-play dogfighter with an emphasis on the combat, just spread out across a galaxy you had the 'fun' of traveling across. If JGE goes light on the economic bullfuckery then you'll also have a much more reliable game for people to play in. Honestly, player-driven economies are a bad idea. Player influence on the economy can be interesting as a concept, but an actual player-driven economy in a game that involves combat nearly never works out well. It just gets complicated--if money buys power, then the way to get the most power is to have the most money, so you are actually disinclined to have needless combat.

From a tactical and strategic standpoint, that makes sense. Eve simulates the real value of combat by making your battles between corps expensive and possibly enough to determine the direction a sector takes for the next few weeks or months as the funds roll into new hands. However, if your objective is to make combat fun and to let people relax from a long day by blowing up some spaceships, having the stress and risk of Eve's combat model is a good way to ruin someone's fun. When what you're selling is fun, that's bad. Eve doesn't sell fun though, Eve sells an experience and an environment and competition.

But honestly, I've never understood the idea of toiling away, paying my own money to play a game about collecting money, only to have the ultimate reward being the control over... vast funds. If those vast funds are used to buy a warship, great. But those big ships do get blown to shit pretty fast, and why? Why bother? Just let me be what I want and I'll pay money for that.

Freelancer, Cov. You're thinking of Freelancer.

To plug Space Rangers some more, it has a 'dynamic' (ie, interesting) economy that runs on sensible rules AND npcs that do things (ie take the sweet deals, upgrade their ships etc) and thus has 75% of what people like about the EVE economy, but with far more pew pew fun and harrassing miners.

Stark wrote:Freelancer, Cov. You're thinking of Freelancer.

To plug Space Rangers some more, it has a 'dynamic' (ie, interesting) economy that runs on sensible rules AND npcs that do things (ie take the sweet deals, upgrade their ships etc) and thus has 75% of what people like about the EVE economy, but with far more pew pew fun and harrassing miners.

Thaaat's right, Freelancer. That game was actually quite good at what it promised to be, and I appreciate that from a game. Simplistic combat, some fun exploration, interesting environments, and an auto-nav system--basic and fun. Honestly, dogfighting is overrated. I don't know why I want to spend 99 percent of my time in a goddamn banking turn trying to get behind my enemy, just to have it settle out for a few seconds while I blast away at their shields. You want to make a dogfighting game? Make it like a WW2 game--and have me rewarded by lining up a good shot by tearing through enemy ships like a shotgun through a kleenex. Ah well.

So far JGE reminds me a lot of a really fancy version of Freelancer, and that's promising. But if they keep chasing too many horses at once, they're never going to get anywhere. Pick one (space shooter with twitch dogfighting) and just run with that. Make every other goal in service of that. And don't make excuses for it, or try to compete with anyone else's broad scope. When it comes to game design, money talks, not integrity.

Dogfighting is also an 'easy' way for developers to make combat long and 'challenging' by tweaking two statistics, so I can see why it's popular. Frankly, even though EVE's combat is boring, the behind-the-scenes aspect+divergence+tracking speed thing was interesting.

Words words words, playable trial and then I might form an opinion. Otherwise I'd rather wait (hope) for Infinity, whose vapor-promises are more interesting.

It's pretty sad you admit you're incapable of making a judgement without direct experience, particularly given that so much of JGE is ripped off other games. Just sign up for the beta if you're so mentally deficient.

Damm it, all I'm saying is that, until a playable beta/trial is out, all the publisher hype is just that, hype. In fact, the OP even referred to it as vaporware given its current state.

I'm also of the kind of gamer that evaluates a game's long term performance, specially with MMOs. No matter how shiny the product is, I will reserve my judgement until it proves itself beyond fancy screenshots and the opinion of those suckered into paying for it at launch.

But since your thickness is as legendary as your hate, Stark, I'll outline it for you:
Infinity is an indie space-based MMO that basically makes promises that would make Will Wright ashamed of himself, and, save for a not-so-awesome combat prototype, it's essentially vaporware. Just a more interesting vaporware than JGE, hence my comment.

LordOskuro wrote:Damm it, all I'm saying is that, until a playable beta/trial is out, all the publisher hype is just that, hype. In fact, the OP even referred to it as vaporware given its current state.

Great. So your opinion pre-release is useless. Thanks.

LordOskuro wrote:I'm also of the kind of gamer that evaluates a game's long term performance, specially with MMOs. No matter how shiny the product is, I will reserve my judgement until it proves itself beyond fancy screenshots and the opinion of those suckered into paying for it at launch.

It's not just useless pre-release; it's useless for perhaps several months afterward!

LordOskuro wrote:But since your thickness is as legendary as your hate, Stark, I'll outline it for you:
Infinity is an indie space-based MMO that basically makes promises that would make Will Wright ashamed of himself, and, save for a not-so-awesome combat prototype, it's essentially vaporware. Just a more interesting vaporware than JGE, hence my comment.

I don't see how it's more interesting at all. Amusingly, this statement suggests you can and do make judgements before release.

Stark wrote: Great. So your opinion pre-release is useless. Thanks.
<snip>
It's not just useless pre-release; it's useless for perhaps several months afterward!
<snip>
I don't see how it's more interesting at all. Amusingly, this statement suggests you can and do make judgements before release.

Okay, let's draw this in large colored shapes so lil'Starky gets the idea:

I don't give a damm about pre-release hype. That's the opinion I'm explaining here, wich is not related to what I might think about the proposed content of JGE. That opinion was partially stated by my Infinity comment. Oh, wait, since you don't see how Infinity might be more interesting to me, then I must be wrong! Yipes!

Oh, wait, I beat you to claiming that hype-based opinions are simple speculation, right? Yeah, sorry about that, wouldn't want to steal your thunder.

LordOskuro wrote:... and, save for a not-so-awesome combat prototype, it's essentially vaporware. Just a more interesting vaporware than JGE, hence my comment.

Well, in the end you can at least say that Infinity released SOMETHING other than interviews and videos. People have been signing up for that [theoretical] JGE beta for how long now?

Wikipedia wrote:Originally scheduled for a June 23, 2009 release, it has since been delayed. A beta test phase is planned before the release but no exact dates have been made public yet. Players can apply for the beta test on the official website and as of November 10, 2008 there are over 150,000 applicants.

As for the game features, I'm highly suspicious of a twich-based system working properly on a high-latency environment, but the rest just sounds like Freelancer++, wich isn't a bad thing. A few space-based MMO's with a sane learning curve (unlike EVE's) and emphasis on casual players might be the incentive needed for players to get into them, thus prompting developers to refrain from churning out generic medievalish MMOs continually.

But, again, we'll see when we play it.

That's impossible, I've got beta signups dating back to April which I highly doubt was when it started. November is probably one of the times they switched sites or whatever and lost everything.

I think EVE's BIGGEST problems in the way of hardness is the fact that everything is soooo expensive unless you've got someone dumping 50m+ on you to buy fancy ships, with mechanics that only sometimes seem to make sense and are largely really boring coming in second and being turned off of the whole thing by having everything you own randomly blown up one day coming in as #3.

Hrm, I skipped the skills that sometimes take up to a month to train for...

LordOskuro wrote: Okay, let's draw this in large colored shapes so lil'Starky gets the idea:

I don't give a damm about pre-release hype. That's the opinion I'm explaining here, wich is not related to what I might think about the proposed content of JGE. That opinion was partially stated by my Infinity comment. Oh, wait, since you don't see how Infinity might be more interesting to me, then I must be wrong! Yipes!

Oh, wait, I beat you to claiming that hype-based opinions are simple speculation, right? Yeah, sorry about that, wouldn't want to steal your thunder.

And yet you keep posting. If you don't care (and even seem to be poorly informed), why do you keep posting 'I don't care about hype and am unable to make a judgment until several months after release when everyone else has done it for me'? Surely, you would have shut the fuck up by now.

I'm absolutely staggered by your comeback, though. After talking about how you can't make judgments (sometimes until months after launch) you then MAKE A JUDGMENT ABOUT A GAME THAT ISN'T OUT, thus making yourself look like A COMPLETE MORON. You then CONTINUE to make judgments about the likely content and success of a game that essentially doesn't exist!

Which is apt, really. Almost as good as the part where you're physic and think you know what I'm going to post. Obsessed, defensive, or stupid? Try all three, kids.

Stark wrote:<snippity snip snip>

At first I gave my opinion about one issue (vaporwareness), then I've contributed with my opinion on the promised features of the game, since it is true that my first post didn't contribute much to the discussion at hand. That is two opinions about different issues, wich is what you don't seem to grasp.

No good will come of this, but I'm willing to give JGE a shot, so I signed up for the Beta. If they let me in, I'll reserve my judgment until I've given it a run. It's going to be all about the execution--anyone who looks it up on youtube can see how basic it is, but that it has potential. It's got starfighters and giant leviathans, so it could be dynamic and awesome, or it could be full of grind and lame.

So far as they stay away from Eve, they'll have a chance to do something interesting. My issue with Eve is the dullness of it. It's an intellectual challenge... but it's just not fun for me. It's too much effort, time, money, and time to spend for the intellectual satisfaction of achieving a level of mathematical superiority that does not grant me a commensurate visceral thrill. You may as well play Asteroid Tycoon, but apparently tons of people would enjoy that too. JGE will probably suffer from a lack of flash as well--it has nice environments but right now the combat is pretty lame. Strange controls from the looks of it, some kind of dogfighting, and giant ships works strangely. Will you dogfight with your giant ship? I assume not. So at some point you're either going Eve/WoW style combat despite what JGE's people say, or you're going to be playing Wing Commander X-Treme Slow Edition. I've been dying to command a massive starship, but honestly, I'd rather they just bite the bullet and let me be a Starship Captain rather than Starship Pilot.

So let's discuss Space Rangers instead! I have no idea how to play that game. I seem to fly around, get harassed, mine asteroids, trade fruitlessly, and get butchered by the robots.

You've just got to get involved. I play scavenger and hero, but Flash plays merchant (ie loans + trade + scams). It's pretty easy to avoid the robots entirely if you want; some people avoid them until they've got decent equipment for scavenger runs, or simply funnel the profits of their trade into fleets and base establishment. Boosting Coalition research with dominator artefacts really helps too. The game responds to whatever you decide to do, really. In the Reboot (ie paid patch) the factional stuff actually works, so being a pirate or hero is much easier.

I suppose I'm just thrown by the classes. I don't want to be called "merchant," but I would indeed assume that starting off as a trader is easier and less dangerous.

I picked a pirate because I was thinking "Aha! Fast ship! Good weapons! I'll start with some low-end piracy..." but I haven't found a way to make it profitable at all. Can't take the Dominators, and I can't take the other pirates. If I find a solo guy I can usually scare him off fast enough to extort some cash, but it's usually not much, certainly not very profitable.

Now I'm thinking of picking that pirate ship, taking off all the weapons, and using it to trade goods at lightning speed. But I really have no idea what I should be doing. I do want to play on 'Impossible,' since it doesn't seem that much harder, but there's just a big gap in my knowledge base that makes it rather hard for me to get a grip on what's going on. I can trade effectively with my fast little ship and no weapons, but as soon as the pirates in the area notice me, I get waxed. I know I'm doing something wrong because I'm completely incapable of combat, too slow and blind to track down asteroids, and so broke that I can't upgrade anything. You'd think Earth would patrol the area around it a smidge. :p

If you're terribly broke, do footwork missions, or giant lame lego robot missions. Or explore those wormholes that turn your game into a messed up cross between Subspace and those 3d sonic the hedgehog bonus levels.

Don't think of them as classes, they're more 'background' or starting equipment. Don't believe the text either; you really have to try it and see what you get.

Piracy and roid mining will never make you big bucks, ever. If your starting outfit is weak in an area like speed or damage, start with the extra equipment in that area. Flash can saymore specifically, but I believe the best trade start isn't a merchant - one of the others starts with a decentsuze ship with plenty of assets, sell everything but engine, trade = profit.

I'd love to give that a shot, once I have the option. I really think they made the pirates too much of an omnipresent engine of destruction for the early players. I'm getting blown up by multiple pirates just while trying to kill my training droid.