★★☆☆☆ Playing EVE is more convoluted than piloting an actual starship. The game is played entirely with the mouse, clicking on text lists, and feels more like managing files on your desktop.
EVE tries to play itself, but isn't smart enough to do so. You don't steer your ship, you don't aim your weapons, you don't manage subsystems, and yet, neither does the game. There's some awkward middleground. If a large portion of this game were more automated (combat, looting, drone management, modules, etc), and you didn't have to return to the station for every quest; It would be a drastically improved experience. The problem isn't just that those systems aren't automated, but that they go out of their way to work against you, unintuitive to the point of being anti-intuitive.
Also, it severly needs a Quick Play button, or something similar, as finding missions to do, past the tutorial, is even more convoluted than piloting the ship.
+ Drones + Ship variety + Visually appealing + Ship "wings" visually adjust when warping + Freely re-customize your character while docked
+- Zoom out crazy far +- Offline skill training +- By default, mousewheel is backwards, can be fixed in the options +- The graphics aren't necesarily bad, but the ships look more like toy models +- While you can customize your character's face, doing so is complex, and there are no presets (its also pointless) +- The world is made up of many small instanced areas of space debris, which you warp between. This works well enough, considering its space.
- PermaDeath - Audio crackle - No party system(?) - Esc doesn't close windows - Quests have (bonus) timers - Can't manually pilot your ship - Tutorial tips often cover ingame info - No way to follow people who warp(?) - Movement speed in general-space is stupid slow - Game is free2play, but majority of it is locked behind paywalls - Can't simply see energy spent/regen when mousing over capicitors - The 8+ hours that I've played this MMO have been singleplayer only - The little notches on the Shield/Armor/Hull HP bar don't actually represent HP - The list of nearby things doesn't actually seem customizable, just alternate presets(?) - There are no explorable ship interiors, and even in FPS-cockpit mode, you can't see anything - There is a tutorial (which is decent), then a series of quests (which are bad), and then nothing? - Return to the same quest hub every time you do a quest, even though you can contact them from anywhere - The character you spend an hour customizing doesn't exist. Then the ship that you stare at the entire game can't be visually customized. 10/10. - Some epic Section8 looking ground combat in the intro video, which doesn't seem to exist in any form in the actual game (apparently it was a standalone) - Locking on to things seems to be a painfully pointless step, if nothing else, they could at least automate it when you attempt to use a tool on an unlocked target - Some missions are designed to kill you unless you know to /flee. Others are designed to kill you no matter what. In a game with PermaDeath, this is even more idiotic than usual - No effective zoom ranges. You can get a good closeup of your ship, but then you can't tell whats going on, or you can zoom out so you can see where things are, but then they're so tiny that you still can't tell whats going on. - The data on modules is presented nonsensically. Even though it ticks over time, nothing is presented in that timescale. One shield might give you 30 shield every 2 seconds, while another gives you 50 every 3 seconds, and their energy costs are just as confuzzled. - The decimal moneys they use are for some reason confusing, even though this is how real money works. Maybe its because of how large the numbers are, and/or because its inconsistent and half the time they don't show the decimal, and/or because of the janky font they use
- Painfully unintuitive UI. Majority of this game is played by Right Clicking on units in a text list and selecting basic options, and most single actions require multiple inputs. To engage combat, for example, requires 4+ seperate menu selections, for every enemy.
Anti-Intuitive Quality of Life: - Modules turn off on warp - Items don't stack automatically - Can accidentally leave drones behind - Camera doesn't follow your movement - Auto-pilot turns itself off after every trip - Can't swap slots on equipped ship fittings - You have to leave the dock before setting a course - "Auto Target Back" doesn't seem to work, at random. It also has a weird name - No auto-attack, even if you lockon multiple targets in combat, it stops between kills. - Bringing up simple tooltips requires a manual menu selection, instead of just on mouseover - No auto-loot, the window doesn't even auto close. Quest windows don't close automatically either - When you destroy a target that you're orbiting, you don't start orbiting their wreckage, or stop moving, you just fly off in some random direction. - A lot of redundant features. You can Approach, Keep DIstance, or Orbit, these are nearly identical though? Left and Right Click menus are completely different, yet have nearly identical options within.
I'm still playing the game on occasion, playing it right now actually. Its not especially bad, its just layers of clunk on top of clunk. Likely because the game is 13+ years old. From what I hear, it took them 10+ years just to add a "Loot All" button, so...
I can guarentee you a lot of those redundancies and things like "modules turn off after warp" are there because once you start getting into higher levels of play, like blopsing, huffing or jump freightering, there's a LOT of logistics, and every single module makes a difference. Honestly, it's a matter of you need to get used to the UI and find a corp that will treat you right, if you'd wanna give it another shot I'd invite you to my corp and help you get setup
I think its like going from GarageBand to ProTools, it may seem like an overwhelming and unnecessary amount of options but as you learn you start to realize why they are all there.
Maybe its different with super high end mining tools or something. My noob lazers need 4 hits to finish a single asteroid, and they seem to just run a standard CD cycle of the lazers to do that. I have noticed weapon accuracy can be severly gimped by orbiting, but I usually just park in the middle of a zone and let my drones do all the work anyway =P
You can orbit while mining but due to angles it is better to approach then hit two different asteroids at once. Orbiting them takes you in and out of your angels = more time. The game seems overly simple at 1st but its all down to numbers. I mean, it is a spreadsheet lol
You likely wouldn't approach a station, but dock at it. Maybe I haven't encountered asteroid fields yet? You can orbit asteroids while mining, as you said, if those are something different. In all my time playing, I have really only used Aproach on a single occasion, and that was a mission specifically to suicide crash my ship into a pirate base.
Yes, I would approach a station. I would approach a asteroid field. I would orbit a ship, at different ranges depending situation. I will orbit an asteroid to look like a noob who dosn't know what approach and orbit are for.
I would orbit a ship, at different ranges depending situation. I will orbit an asteroid to look like a noob who dosn't know what approach and orbit are for.
"Approach, and you can Orbit, these are nearly identical though?"
LOL