Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The Mythical Eve Learning Curve


This image has been posted all over the web, primarily as a joke among eve players, but it also discourages some would be players who don't even get as far as the game. If you tell people a game is complicated they believe it and when they run into problems they give up more easily because they think it's due to game complexity.

The truth is it's not so much complicated as deep, but the other side of this is that it's an 80:20 proposition - 20% of the learning gets you 80% of the benefit. In Eve you never really stop learning new tricks, and at any point on the learning curve you're able to function quite effectively in the universe. Furthermore, those people that are sitting up on the top of that cliff are usually quite happy to help you out, although they might blow up your ship first to prove a point.

My kids play the game, but they don't take in the entire vista of Eve mechanics, they mainly concern themselves with flying a spaceship and shooting things. Fitting the ship, buying the parts and training the skills are left to me, and if you look at eve discussion forums you'll find plenty of other players sharing this information and doing all the complicated number crunching for you.

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