What are the good space games to be had?

[SilverWingedSeraph]

Hit me up in-game if you need anything, I can throw you some startup cash or what-have-you if you need. Andrew Riviera, Miranda Cho, or Oddbox, depending on who I'm online as.

Thanks for the offer, dude. Honestly, not really having a real cash-flow problem just yet, so I'm content to pump the Tutorial Missions for all the loot they're worth and just chill.

[Stark]

Because shithead has moved the goalposts from 'RP opportunities' to 'RP support' to 'ongoing RP handholding' I continue to prove him wrong.

between their empire and the rest of New Eden. When random wormholes through space began spawning after the Seylinn disaster, none appeared to connect to Jove space. This led players to believe that the Jove Directorate possessed some form of control over wormhole formation, able to at least block it from occurring in their systems.

Skip past the cut to read the startling revelations recently made in this epic storyline arc.

Getting a foot in the door

The possibility loomed that the Sansha fleet appearing to be stationed in 3-CE1R may not have been a mistake. Sansha incursions into high security space proved without a doubt that they had somehow mastered the ability to manipulate wormholes. Not only could they make the wormholes appear over their target planets with pin-point accuracy, they were also able to block non-Sansha pilots from entering the hole and could collapse it at will.

Speculation ran wild within the roleplaying community. Perhaps Sansha's Nation, possessing impressive knowledge of cybernetic integration, had managed to up-link with a Sleeper database and learn the secret to controlling wormholes. Worse yet, if they had managed to break through whatever defenses were keeping wormholes from forming within Jove space, they may have succeeded where the Amarr failed so long ago. Sansha's Nation may have gained a foothold in Jove territory.

Efforts to locate an entrance to the Sansha's base systems have been underway since the attacks began. Recently, a lone pilot managed to get a probe through one of the Sansha wormholes. The probe relayed a single image of the Sansha forces and the wormhole's target system before being obliterated. Upon posting the image on the forums, the EVE roleplaying community's worst fears were realise

No support, opportunities, participation, communicty, etc. You have to win the lottery to be involved!

OH WAIT EVERYTHING HE SAID IS WRONG. :d

[Serafina]

Stark, leave it alone!

Or else our VI without P will start to move those poor, innocent goalposts again. And i think they totally do not deserve that, those poor things. Think of their children!

[Stark]

The offical forums even have all kinds of RP stuff going on around the live events, participated in by dozens or hundreds of people.

BUT THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!

[RedImperator]

Pretty sure everybody's had an "oh shit, I forgot the ammo" moment. Good to see you've found someone to play with already; that makes everything about 100 times more fun.

If you're flying Amarr, the Punisher is the best T1 frigate for you. She's not all that fast, but she's a tough little bugger. Put an armor plate and an armor repairer on it, and it's a little brick that can handle L1 missions easily, especially if you've got a Merlin or Rifter with you.

Unfortunately, Amarr have a pretty crummy T1 cruiser lineup*, but once you hit battlecruisers, you're off to the races--the Harbinger is brilliant, the entire battleship lineup is rock solid, and Amarr T2 cruisers pwn your face.

*Omen: Has a slot layout for tank and gank, but neither the powergrid nor the CPU to do either very well. This is nevertheless probably your best bet if you want to keep your training focused on tank&gank.

Maller: You can mount a ridiculous passive tank, but at the cost of DPS--you literally can't fit cruiser-sized guns on it if you try to take advantage of this tank. Mounting cruiser guns and leaving off the tank turns you into a shitty gunboat--no bonuses to laser damage--for twice the price of an Omen.

Arbitrator: Actually a pretty nice boat, but it's a neut/tracking disruptor/drone platform, which is off the beaten path for Amarr, especially young characters who've been sinking their skillpoints into lasers. Takes more pilot skill to fly right, as well.

Auguror: If you are flying an Auguror, you're doing it wrong.

Now to mock and flame Shadowdragon:

It's definitionally true that I got ruined in EvE, see also the bit wherein I had to beg change to send an EvEmail.

This happened to you because you are stupid. Five minutes of research would have taught you that putting your last penny into one ship and then taking it into lowsec was a terrible idea. I can't figure out how you even managed to go that broke. I've never heard of anyone who's so bankrupt he can't even afford a CSPA charge.

Also, LOL at begging. One L1 mission--any mission, including a courier mission where you don't even need to fit guns--would have paid for a phone call.

Yeah, you can lose a lot of assets in EVE, more than you can in other MMOs. This is not something that's kept hidden from the gaming public; it's practically a selling point. Plenty of stupid carebears have lost epic amounts of money and assets to pirates; plenty of stupid PVPers have lost billion-isk faction ships to obvious traps and enemy gangs they never should have engaged. Plenty of stupid alliance leaders have lost entire empires to strategic blunders or hilarious failures to understand basic game mechanics. But the amount of assets any player actually has at risk at any one time is limited to what he's willing to undock with, and the way EVE ISK-making activities are structured, there's never a point where you have to risk more than you can afford to lose; L1 missions can support frigates, large-scale mining can support retreivers, high-end industry can support billion-ISK BPOs. "You can be ruined at any time" is ludicrous nonsense no matter how often you repeat it. If you play smart and conservative, you can't be "ruined". Period.

Not if's telling the GM "lol, I'm so totally gonna shiv the idiot paladin in the back and take his holy sword so I can shit on it." That's not roleplaying, that's fuckbaggery.

In this thread, Shadowdragon defines "roleplaying" to exclude roleplaying as a jerk. That's awful convenient. Maybe you'd be okay with people being pirates if they were friendly pirates.

I have a feeling those carebears would stop feeling that way if it was their hauler that got popped by a sacrificial battleship and got all their shit stolen.

It's funny, I was just thinking how much you sound like the worst of the whining carebears on the Eve-O forums (the ones who would obviously be happier playing WoW). Of course, all the other carebears use their brains and tank their haulers, don't autopilot with valuable cargo, and don't put their entire net worth in one cargo hold. Generally, those carebears laugh at the whiners just as much as the pirates do.

Oh man, now I wish you'd been around for Hulkageddon. This butthurt rage-a-thon is hilarious as it is; I can't imagine how you'd react if you'd lost a Hulk or two to a suicide ganking contest.

I never said that wasn't RPing, though it sounds more like they were griefing assholes (and not terribly effective griefing assholes) who liked to spiel excuses for their griefing.

LOL. I can't believe I'm actually defending CVA here, but no, actually, they actually let neutrals fly in their space and dock in their stations--even mine and rat. They only shot you if you were a known pirate or had shot at them in the past.

But hey, keep on being butthurt and wrong about everything.

A game is supposed to be fun. If it ever puts you in a situation where the fun stops and the suck begins, the game is failing at being fun. And that includes allowing you to ruin yourself. Yes, I do bloody well blame EvE for that.

So in ShadowDragon world, games have no emotional range? What's the fucking point of playing a game you can't lose? Never mind your flat assertion that a game that allows you to ruin yourself fails at being fun. If it's not your thing, fine, but plenty of people love the risk--and as long as you're not a moron, the risk is manageable anyway.

tl;dr: ShadowDragon fails at EVE, is bitter and butthurt about it, blames the game for his incompetence.

[RedImperator]

PS:

'I have no idea how PVP works in EVE'.

PvP in EvE, almost all of the time, is a fucking mugging wherein one hapless moron gets blown up for no good reason other than some assholes decided to inflate their killcount. The rest of the time it's ridiculous lag-fests that people without really stable and fast broadband connections will just get slaughtered in.

'I have no idea how PVP works in EVE'.

[Isolder74]

In other words, if you can't fight a dragon don't try hanging out in the dragon's lair!

And don't poke the sleeping dragon either

[Temjin]

I'm going to try to condense your post, since you insist on quoting me sentence by sentence, leading to big ol' giant wall of text.

And that's kind of the point - those kinds of assholes can be intent on blowing you up and there's nothing you can do unless you're somehow a much better PvPer than he is.

And because of this, there's no RP, and no RP support. Riiiight.

The same shit happens in other games. In WoW you can be sitting in your tavern when a horde raid pops in. You going to try to RP with them, too?

You have no idea what roleplaying is; you yourself have said you don't roleplay. Kindly refrain from pretending you know what the fuck you're talking about.

"Ouch. He saw through my red herring. Oh, I know! I'll just ignore and say he doesn't know what he's talking about!"

Not if's telling the GM "lol, I'm so totally gonna shiv the idiot paladin in the back and take his holy sword so I can shit on it." That's not roleplaying, that's fuckbaggery.

If he does it in character, he's still playing a role. Therefore, roleplaying.

And if he destroyed the vast majority of your finances in one popping, it probably doesn't matter to him that CONCORD just fucked his shit up royal.

And again, why are most of your finances tied up in one ship? The game isn't going to protect you from being an idiot, and the playerbase wants it like this.

Same shit, diffent pile. I was really hoping for more substance than that.

If the corp gets tired of mission running or whatever, they can all sit back and do a relaxing mining op shooting the shit in corp or local or whatever.

Oh wait! They need a space tavern or a yacht to do that!

Yeah, that's the look I had reading your post.

"Interesting" doesn't interest me, because it typically involves me getting the works.

So.... not the kind of RP you're into. Check.

It's a hell of a lot more epic than anything I ever fucking saw in EvE.

EvE's backstory is a thin veneer of wordspam over an excuse to go and grief-PK someone for flying the wrong kind of ship/being from the wrong part of space.

Personal tastes. I actually tend to enjoy the background story more than the one in WoW. And I like the fact that they don't force feed you it.

And how, exactly, can you do that in EvE? Oh right, you can't except by using a group chat and imagining that cantina, because CCP won't let you actually get out of the starship and go to the cantina.

And in that cantina.... You're still using the fucking chat.

Meanwhile, while EVE doesn't have that space tavern, it still provides more options for RP'ing. Since it's a wide open sandbox, you can make whatever the kind of character you want. You're not rail-roaded down one path. To me, that's a whole lot more RP friendly. Oppurtunity versus... a tavern.

And now you've got the goalposts mounted on rails! Let's recap: when it's my argument that the "reality" of the game can be bent for RP purposes (suspending disbelief about the number of times you may have done something mechanically in order to talk about it as if it was some heroic epic eed that you did once,) then it gets mocked; but when it's your argument, suddenly disbelief gets suspended, locked in a pod and ejected out the nearest airlock so you can use EvE as a very, very expensive text-based chat client for imagining the roleplaying.

Conversely, you're able to suspend Disbelief about Lord Whogivesashit going to the spirit healer to explain why he's never gone for good, but not being able to leave your pod just completely breaks it for you.

You have no idea what kind of RP I'm into.

Oh trust me, we're all starting to get an idea.

I didn't say "all", moron.

Then why even fucking use it to support your point? Especially since there's obviously more and bigger reasons for the difference in the playerbase.

And you call me the moron.

I have a feeling those carebears would stop feeling that way if it was their hauler that got popped by a sacrificial battleship and got all their shit stolen.

Aaaand.... you'd be wrong. What, you think none of the people arguing with you ever lost a ship to a jerk? It's happened to all of us. We just never whinged about it. Because that's the game we signed up for.

I never said there was no RPing in EvE,

Fair point. I misspoke.

I said there was no RP support from CCP. Fine, I'll amend it to there being very damn little RP supportand most of it based on finding new ways to get your name on the frontpage by either fucking up royal or capitalizing on someone's fucking up royal.

Okay, out of curiousity, what is RP support to you. Besides providing taverns and the ability to change you're wardrobe?

[charlemagne]

What I don't get is how it's not "rp support" that you (oh sorry, of course not you alone, but you and a gang of friends, like, what MMOs are made for) can make an actual difference in the political landscape of the game. No other MMO I know of let's you do that.

And the devs actually comment on wars the players fight and on many other developments in the game world by making them "official news" - within the game world (as I said, that news column from the website can be read ingame at every billboard).

That's a whole lot deeper than "Guild X cleared Raid Y for the first time".

Oh yeah, and there's constantly other new stuff. New chronicles, event-related news reports, and all of that is written in character.

[Neko_Oni]

I love that ShadowDragon thinks that the news page in EVE only details the ''first to cross an arbitrary line'' kind of news. When it is actually more along the lines of ''sweet jesus did you hear that 9 titans got wiped out in a fleet action recently?'' which is actually emergent, interesting real news from the game.

Also I've had my most interesting RP moment in EVE. My carebear corp and I were out mining when a wannabe pirate jumps onto us and starts demanding ransoms. Well we stall him for a bit in private chat while in corp chat we manage to get a hold of one of our corp-mates who is out cruising in his battleship. Said corp-mate joins our fleet and proceeds to jump right on top of my ship, ECMing, webbing, warp scramming and generally terrifying the newbie pirate. The two have a private chat and the pirate leaves never to be seen again (so far). During that whole incident I felt I was RPing more than I ever have in games like WoW. It felt like a real thing that just happened, not scripted bullshit.

Also I've been away from EVE for awhile (jumped back in with the 5 free days and a cheap month) and while I was gone my corp appears to have been crushed in a war. Where do the EVE players here hang out? I'm over in The Citadel in Caldari space trading at the moment.

[Stark]

It's clear that the only RP he wants is zero-threat stuff where a bunch of IMVU avatars spin shit about the same raids over and over while pretending to be women.

Actually talking about things you did doesn't count, of course. Hell, even watching the sov map and talking to people ingame is full of 'role playing' 'stories'; turns out 'role playing' doesn't mean GANDALF THE WIZARD?

[Temjin]

What I don't get is how it's not "rp support" that you (oh sorry, of course not you alone, but you and a gang of friends, like, what MMOs are made for) can make an actual difference in the political landscape of the game. No other MMO I know of let's you do that.

And the devs actually comment on wars the players fight and on many other developments in the game world by making them "official news" - within the game world (as I said, that news column from the website can be read ingame at every billboard).

That's a whole lot deeper than "Guild X cleared Raid Y for the first time".

Oh yeah, and there's constantly other new stuff. New chronicles, event-related news reports, and all of that is written in character.

Yeah, but that's all stuff done by "griefers" so it doesn't count.

The guy has his "all EVE players=griefers" blinkers on. According to him, anything anyone does is just a thin excuse to grief other players. Even, apparently, CVA. You know, the famous RP alliance that ran a region of 0.0 and made it in some ways safer to be in than high sec for neutrals. All just an excuse to grief other players.

[JointStrikeFighter]

And that's kind of the point - those kinds of assholes can be intent on blowing you up and there's nothing you can do unless you're somehow a much better PvPer than he is.

protip; stay in hisec

[SilverWingedSeraph]

I have to ask, did it used to be a lot harder to gain ISK and acquire ships than it is now? I've been playing for less than a day, and haven't spent even a large portion of my day on it, and I have around 2 million ISK and six frigates, accumulated all myself, without any handouts from other players. Wait, no, five frigates. I blew up my starting one because I didn't like seeing that horrible, dinky little thing every time I went to change ships. I mean, I could easily replace my Punisher if it got destroyed. Not that I would need to, since I already have a back-up Punisher ready for just such an occurrence, but... yeah, replacing Frigates at least is fairly easy. I don't understand ShadowDragon's complaints at all, unless he just aimlessly wandered off into 0.0 sec... several times...

I've found much of my enjoyment in EVE so far has come from having friends to play it with. I'm thinking I might join a corp at some stage, but for now I'm not having any major difficulty just soloing things and occasionally chilling with some friends.

[Stark]

When I started, maybe five years ago, the tutorials you're doing didn't exist. There was only the auto-help that stepped you through the basics but that was it, you just had to jump into level 1s

it was complete bullshit

also the missions now pay significantly better than they did many years ago

[ShadowDragon8685]

I have to ask, did it used to be a lot harder to gain ISK and acquire ships than it is now? I've been playing for less than a day, and haven't spent even a large portion of my day on it, and I have around 2 million ISK and six frigates, accumulated all myself, without any handouts from other players. Wait, no, five frigates. I blew up my starting one because I didn't like seeing that horrible, dinky little thing every time I went to change ships. I mean, I could easily replace my Punisher if it got destroyed. Not that I would need to, since I already have a back-up Punisher ready for just such an occurrence, but... yeah, replacing Frigates at least is fairly easy. I don't understand ShadowDragon's complaints at all, unless he just aimlessly wandered off into 0.0 sec... several times...

I've found much of my enjoyment in EVE so far has come from having friends to play it with. I'm thinking I might join a corp at some stage, but for now I'm not having any major difficulty just soloing things and occasionally chilling with some friends.

This, more or less. Breaking the 1,000,000 mark took me about a month of play-time, then someone from my corp at-the-time tossed me another million like it was pocket change. That was kind of crushing, to be honest.

Maybe things have changed, because the stuff you're reporting is completely alien to my experience with EvE Online.

[Nephtys]

A /month/?! Holy shit. That's bloody well near impossible. Back when I played (Like STRAK's time), it took me about a day. How the heck did that happen? And yeah, if you think a million is a lot, that's going to be crushing when most players have billion(s).

Hell. Each level 2 mission pays out almost 100k and can be done in a 50k frigate. Running 10 of those doesn't even take that long.

[ShadowDragon8685]

A /month/?! Holy shit. That's bloody well near impossible. Back when I played (Like STRAK's time), it took me about a day. How the heck did that happen? And yeah, if you think a million is a lot, that's going to be crushing when most players have billion(s).

Like I said: my corp kept hammering home learning all the learning skills to Rating 5, so I had damn-near newbie level stuff. I wasn't confident enough to go running missions alone (Gallente, but I had a taste for missile weapons and drones, so that made my builds fairly poor) so I basically floated around asteroid fields, harvesting cheapass rock, chatting, and occasionally getting a chance to fit the launchers and load the bay and go run some fairly easy missions with a mate or two.

Plus, I did tend to suck a lot. That cruiser that broke my bank? I didn't lose that in lowsec. I lost it on a mission against NPCs. I overextended myself, thought my drones would hold out long enough for my own launchers to kill the NPCs but the mobs targeted me instead of the drones while I was looking at something else. By the time I looked back it was too late; drones weren't killing them fast enough, and I couldn't jump out in time. Boom, one destitute escape pod floating around in space.

In hindsight I could've done a lot better if I'd been able to mount more appropriate equipment, but I was too fired up about the flashy new cruiser and undocked it as soon as I could. Hindsight is 20/20, after all.

Hell. Each level 2 mission pays out almost 100k and can be done in a 50k frigate. Running 10 of those doesn't even take that long.

A hundred kay? Goddamn. I remember it being more like 10-20K. I really have been away from this a long time - that, or I never got into Level 2s and I'm remembering level 1s.

[Stark]

Urns out spending three months getting no useful skills makes the game boring. Who knew?

Oh right, everyone who can do maths. I do like being right.

Seriously, hating the game because you weren't even aging attention and list your one ship?

[Nephtys]

I didn't even know it was POSSIBLE to lose a CRUISER in Level 1 missions. I don't even think the NPC Mobs do enough damage to overcome your natural shield regeneration even if you're AFK. It's barely possible to even lose such a ship in a Level 2...

[Stark]

Well he had no skills; all kinds of modules wouldn't have been usable, and his performance would have been baseline.

Remember that time guys tried to say that spending months learning nothing but learning skills a good idea.

[ShadowDragon8685]

When it comes to playing MMORPGs, my performance tends to defy the bell curve by winding up on the bottom of either slope; my moments of brilliance are matched by the moments of sheer, luna-flying-high pants-on-head retardedness.

If it's remotely possible to fuck something up more horribly than anyone thought was possible, eventually I will pull it off - like the time I used that Paladin spell that put the healer a three-minute no-harm bubble, killing myself in the process and causing a complete wipe in the middle of a battle that was until then a huge bowl of no-problem. I'm also capable of pulling out the occasional godlike performance that makes those who witness it go "wtf did you put on your wheaties this morning," like the times when the main healer would go down and I (a Retribution Paladin) managed to off-heal the MT well enough to win the fight and Redeem the main healer.


Man... All of this is making me want to try EvE Online again. Maybe it's not quite so horrible anymore.

[Norade]

When it comes to playing MMORPGs, my performance tends to defy the bell curve by winding up on the bottom of either slope; my moments of brilliance are matched by the moments of sheer, luna-flying-high pants-on-head retardedness.

If it's remotely possible to fuck something up more horribly than anyone thought was possible, eventually I will pull it off - like the time I used that Paladin spell that put the healer a three-minute no-harm bubble, killing myself in the process and causing a complete wipe in the middle of a battle that was until then a huge bowl of no-problem. I'm also capable of pulling out the occasional godlike performance that makes those who witness it go "wtf did you put on your wheaties this morning," like the times when the main healer would go down and I (a Retribution Paladin) managed to off-heal the MT well enough to win the fight and Redeem the main healer.


Man... All of this is making me want to try EvE Online again. Maybe it's not quite so horrible anymore.

Wait, you're saying you do things that aren't pants on head retarded? I'm not entirely sure that I believe you...

[Norade]

Missed my edit window...

Anyway, for something more on topic, I'm downloading the Eve demo all the talk around here makes it seem worth a try and anything that isn't WoW will be a nice change of pace right about now. My only issue is that I don't have a credit card right now... Anyway to pay for time on Eve without one?

[Temjin]

If it's remotely possible to fuck something up more horribly than anyone thought was possible, eventually I will pull it off - like the time I used that Paladin spell that put the healer a three-minute no-harm bubble, killing myself in the process and causing a complete wipe in the middle of a battle that was until then a huge bowl of no-problem.

Ah, yes, the Divine Intervention spell. That caused me quite a few embarrassing times...

I remember this one time, I was doing an instance run with a couple of friends. I had become their go to healer, since their guild lacked good ones. Anyway, their guild leader was coming along on this one, and they really wanted to impress him with my skills. And what do I accidently do on the first pull? I DI the tank, of course. Wipe.

Cool that you're thinking of getting back into EVE though. But watch out, as I said, the game isn't for everyone. And make sure you have a good book next to you while playing...