Hat tip to sid67 on the PLEX angle:
You want risk in your game? Something that can really kick you in the head for failure? Play EVE and try shipping some PLEX.
I’ll pass on that one, but as sid67 notes, this seems to play right into the EVE playerbase, and may well be sound business on CCP’s part. It hurts to fail when you’re involved in risky behavior, but some players like that.
I’ll also point out that this was something that the player chose to do, not something that the system imposed (a crucial difference). Sure, PLEX units are now destroyable, which is dev-imposed, but choosing to risk it was something that the player did. Also, the pirates risked the destruction of the PLEX (which ultimately occurred) with the ship’s destruction.
Player-defined risk, playing with dev-created toys. Interesting stuff, if you’re so inclined.
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Speaking of piracy, though, the Machinarium guys have a “Piracy Amnesty” sale going on for their game. It’s available for $5 until the 12th. Apparently, 2DBoy (World of Goo, annoyingly pirated rather extensively) isn’t the only indie developer team to have trouble with pirate scum. So, if you’re up for a good adventure game and don’t mind tossing $5 at some guys who do good work, drop on by the Machinarium site. Is it a perfect game? Nah, but it’s worth it.
90% piracy rate. Makes one despair. 5 bucks only – other companies sell a few extra pixels for 5 times the price.
No DRM apparently does not work. But funnily many different kinds of DRM used by big companies treat the legal customer like a potential criminal.
Stardock was trying to invent a customer friendly kind of DRM called GOO, that makes the customer independent of the platform he bought something on (like Steam) and all that. Have not heard about it in a while though.
I’ve purchased both of those games. With money!
Yeah, I wonder what happened to GOO. Stardock tends to have good ideas.
I purchased them both, too.
Good stuff. My little girl loves World of Goo, too, so that’s a big bonus.
It was all one-sided risk though. That’s why EVE sucks for many people: what did the gankers risk? Nothing. “Losing the drop” is no risk at all, because even if they lose it, they still accomplished their mission: doing a hell of a lot of damage.
To a lesser extent other professions suffer this as well. Mining barges always have greater risk than other ships, with no defenses and poor agility: they are one of the ship classes that it’s possible to suicide gank in hisec. Haulers have it worse, to the point where being a courier can be near impossible due to crippling collateral losses.
Plus, the player losing the plex wasn’t risking, he was being stupid. He undocked in the busiest market hub in EVE, where people often suicide cargo ships, in a t1 frig. He knew that in EVE, people can scan your cargo without alerting you to it.
I think risk should be encouraged, but not when potential loss is so lopsided.
At what point is the dev constrained to protect the player from their own choices? Is there a threshold for loss that devs just shouldn’t cross? Why not?
I’m not convinced that “anything goes”, and each game design will have its own sweet spot… but I do think that having a range of risk with player agency in charge of finding their own sweet spot is a good idea.
Yes, that pilot was an idiot. Does the game have to prevent idiocy?
Well, considering that you get a warning just for entering lowsec for the first time or shooting at something which might lower your sec status, and none for undocking in the biggest trade hub in the game filled with station suicide gankers, or even for carrying a plex at all…
Yeah, it should prevent high-risk idiocy with some checks. Respecs are doing the same thing, preventing risk in gimping your character.
That’s a large amount of risk to let any one player have, considering worst case it might drive him from the game. Luckily he used a cyno alt so his main isn’t known. I hope.
Where is the line drawn, though, and who draws it? Also, what is the balance between letting people do stupid stuff that they then suffer for, compared to letting people do stupid stuff that *other* players suffer for?
Also, respecs aren’t quite the same thing. They are there to compensate for bad decisions, not to prevent them in the first place. That’s a critical difference.
To give a little more background on the Eve story. His name is known, certainly to his Alliance. He was conducting an alliance wide investment scheme. The plan was to move plex from an area where they’re slightly cheaper to sell them. Someone worked out it would have been 85m profit had it worked out.
Next he was killed by War Targets. It wasn’t a suicide gank, some opposing alliance had formally declared war and their pilots, in the Local chat window, will have clearly displayed red stars.
I recently did something almost as stupid and it really hits home hard when things go wrong because you did something foolish. I have to say though I’m in favour of tough consequences. It makes the game much more profound.
(I actually had those consequences partially mitigated in my case – due to an exploit being involved. Nonetheless I would still be playing Eve had they not been mitigated).
I don’t know where the line is, but I think it’s not risk to give that much power and little safeguard. Giving one player the ability to devastate the assets of an entire alliance is not good.
I don’t think players should be “suffering” at all. Making losses hurt isn’t a substitute for making a decent game in the first place. Losing that much ISK doesn’t magically make getting ganked in a cyno alt any more fun or meaningful-it just hurts the player a lot more.
“Making losses hurt isn’t a substitute for making a decent game in the first place.”
I’ve argued that distinction before in a few different forms. I firmly believe it. That’s part of why I’ve been trying to point out the difference between risk and challenge.
Thing is, I think EVE players thrive on just this sort of thing. I don’t identify with it at all, but it seems some players do.
I’m oddly reminded of Filch in the second Harry Potter film: “my cat’s been petrified, and I want to see some PUNISHMENT!”…
…and it makes me wonder if the real desire isn’t so much one’s self defeating the odds, but rather, indulging in the Schadenfreude of seeing someone else getting hurt.
You want risk in your game?
not something that the system imposed
These are mutually exclusive notions – the idea risk is IN the game, yet the system doesn’t impose it. The system IS the game – if it’s not imposing a risk, there is no risk in the alleged game.
Trying to say that is like trying to say there IS a novel in the typewriter. There isn’t. Yeah, you can put one in there, but that’s not the same as it already being in there.
As much as the typewriter is absent a novel, a ‘game’ which doesn’t have system imposed risk is entirely lacking in risk. Yes, you can make up your own game out of it, as I’ve said before, but that’s not a counter point any more than saying you could type a novel on the typewriter is a counter point to the notion the typewriter doesn’t itself contain a novel.
On the piracy, I dunno – what if the 90% of pirates, if they were somehow forced to either pay or not have it, would choose to not have it? Then the issue of pirating wouldn’t matter one way or another – those 10% of sales is the most he would have gotten anyway. This is at best, just another sale, that’s getting press because of a supposed ‘pirate amnesty’.
How much of supposed ‘piracy’ is simply the authors fantasy that if everyone who was playing his game were forced to pay or not have it, they would pay?
Regarding Eve, Schadenfreude is a big part of it but it’s more than that. I don’t just, or even particularly, rely upon upsetting other players to enjoy myself. What mainly motivates me is the feeling of struggling with the challenge of a truly unforgiving game.
Good design (of which Eve contains a great deal) is vital. Where the design fails and you are killed or you kill because of an exploit it’s not really the challenge of a truly unforgiving game but the much less immersive challenge of badly written code and badly explained mechanics.
But at it’s best Eve allows one to do remarkable things that have long-lasting ramifications. Or have them done to you. Both make the experience fascinating.
It’s a very interesting concept and great publicity for the game. EVE players love revelling in how hardcore the game is whilst onlookers love the controversy and stories it generates. CCP are bloody clever