Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Eve Online vs Entropia Universe after 1 week

I decided to try different MMOs to see if Entropia Universe is really the best one out there. The most direct opponent of Entropia Universe is the massively multiplayer online role-playing space game Eve Online. Before making the comparison I want to point out that I am “old” Entropia Universe player and I am playing Eve Online from just one week. So my knowledge, experience and fun in Entropia Universe are way more than in Eve Online. I still don’t know what the feeling is when you play the endgame in Eve Online and I don’t understand the trading or skill building aspect of the game. My view of Eve Online is the view of a normal player playing for 1 hour a day for a week. It may change later in the game.
1. Character CreationMindark stated that they will do update of the character system, but for the moment character creation in EVE Online is little better then in Entropia Universe. Lightning is better, you can try different clothes, scars and make up. You can even change your avatar look later anytime you want for free.
In Entropia Universe to change that later you have to pay small amount of money (which is not so bad because there you have professions like beautician, hairstylist, make-up artist and people that make clothes, color them, put textures on them and so on which boost the economy of the game. ) Winner – Eve Online.
2. First Person View and Third Person View – I was so surprised when I realized that there is no First Person View option in Eve Online. One of the best 3D shooting MMO game and no FPV – this is huge mistake from CCP Games. Winner – Entropia Universe.
3. Graphics Engine – In Entropia Universe MindArk are using CryEngine made by Crytek. CryEngine is capable of some stunning video quality and in the same time provide easy to use WYSIWYG editor for the developers which allow MindArk to allow other companies to make their own planets in the same universe/game. Using CryEngine was one of the smartest moves made by MindArk. The Graphics Engine in Eve Online is fast and beautiful in space, but the avatar movement in station is ugly and just stupid.
Walking is the same as in third person view adventure game from 1990. Walking in Entropia Universe is realistic.
Winner – Entropia Universe.
4. Massively Multiplayer – In Entropia Universe from the first hour in the game you see other people playing around you – shooting creatures, mining or just talking. They are giving you advices and help you out with quests and moving around. In short you feel like you are in MMO game. For the last week in Eve Online I barely see other players. And if there are any in the station with me I just see their names in some text list and I am not sure if they are real people or just NPC with human names. May be if I ask for help I will get it but I don't need it for the first missions. I am making the starting missions but so far it feels like I am playing single player game. I am sure later in the game if I join some guild I will get some multiplayer action, but first few days are enough to make people quit the game. Winner – Entropia Universe.
5. Gameplay – And the most important of everything is how much you enjoy the game you play. When I started Entropia Universe on the starting island I had fun killing every creature I can or running for my life from those I can’t. The landscape was better than any game I played so far.
The avatar moving is so realistic on land and in water. And actually it is not hard to just start playing, no need to read endless guides to get some fun. There are much more in the game but I am talking about the first week of playing. With few words you want to get in the game and it is hard to quit playing. In Eve Online I have now code for 2 months play time. But it is hard for me to get into it without thinking of closing the game and logging into Entropia Universe just to drop 50 bombs/probes and kill few creatures. The reason for this is all above and the bad feeling of playing text based online game. Too much text menus in the game.
Not enough MMO feeling. Stupid and boring movement in space – You select from the menu “go to next jump gate” then you select from the menu “jump” and then repeat that few times and voala you are there. And then do the same in reverse order. Very bad avatar movement. No First Person View. And I don't know why but I feel like playing this old MMO game from 1999 called Diaspora.
I will try to play Eve Online for 2 months and see if I feel different about the game.

22 comments:

  1. Hi, it sure took some of your time to analyze EVE and compare it to EU, cheers for the effort. In my opinion your comments are a bit biased though. I have been looking at EU on Calypso and Arkadia for the recent three days and have to disagree on some points.

    1 and 2 and 3. The EVE humanoid character in station is a relatively new addition to the game, it still has no real activities there in fact, no avatar interaction, it's planned for the (distant) future. Yes, it's movements are weird. The spaceships on the other hand have been around since the very beginning of EVE - and that explains the difference in graphics and feel. Also please note that fighting in EVE is not really a visual activity, so you don't actually need a first person view, and even the third person view is used only in exeptionally tight and demanding pvp situations.

    3. Then again, you have a valid point about scenery and views, it is the thing i miss the most in EVE from other MMOs. The recent enhancings to space backgrounds were only a partial remedy for the overall dullness of the environment graphics. The CCP could have added more visual content, yes.
    And I truly admire Mindark for creating vast and diverse lanscapes, cheers for the CryEngine. The lanscapes ar mostly empty though, and I have wandered all over both planets.

    4. I would strongly disagree on that one. For all systems you have a local chat channel where you can communicate with the players in your system. In rookie systems there are usually 30-50 new characters in local. Then there is the omnipresent Corp channel, which defaults to the newbie corp for a new character, you can ask about stuff there because there are seasoned players there too. Also EVE allows creation of multiple chat channels, try connecting to Help or Recruiting.
    In EU you are limited to chatting with the avatars around you and your friendlist. I failed to join any public global chat channel and to create multiple chat windows, most probably there are none of these in EU.
    Outright silly is the fact that I couldn't send any ingame mail to an offline character. Maybe I have overlooked the ingame mail function?
    5. About gameplay. It is human interaction that makes EVE adepts so fiercly loyal, not breathtaking graphics. Lots and lots of activities in EVE are done only in a team of 5+ characters. Average gang is 20+ and fleets of 300+ are not unheard of. Truly, when you have flown in a properly organized and disciplined fleet of 20+ it somehow changes you view of MMOs. You can try the EVE University for a real mass pvp fleet experience.

    Now some praise and some scorn for EU from an adept of EVE.

    Praise: In EU I really loved these bigger spaceships that have seats for the crew and space for walking inside. Multiple functions of the crew: captain, gunners, repairmen etc - is something EVE could really implement, especially with the capital ships. It is really crazy that titans and motherships are piloted by one guy in EVE.

    Scorn: the market in EU is not player driven, contrary to the pr catchphrase - it's TT driven. The auction sucks full time for being expensive (0.5ped minimum auction fee!) obscure and chypered with all these %% of TT value instead of straight quotes in PED. Mindark should look into the EVE market model for a truly player-driven economy and learn how to regulate prices and money mass without fixing buy and sell prices via TT.

    Yes, and the fact that I can't wire or mail some PED to a business partner is really frustrating. The Twins and Celeste Quarry flea markets are thus the real model of EU economy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for your comment. About 4 "Massively Multiplayer" you talk about the chat channels in EVE. And that's how I saw it. You don't see the other players around you - you see chat names and chat messages. That's not what I want to see in MMO. And you have all chat systems in EU. You have local chat, society chat, team chat, instance chat, player to player chat, and trade chat.
      The market in EU may not be perfect, but I think it's the next best thing you can have in a game. In EVE all the gazillions of ISK can come from nothing, in EU every PED comes from real dollars.
      You can just give PEDs to someone else in EU, no problem for that. You just have to do it in the game.
      May be I need to write article about the market and trade in EU.

      Delete
    2. Go sit outside the Jita 4-4 station and tell me you dont see other players..

      Space is big, you can't expect everyone to be in the same place when they have an entire solar system.

      Delete
    3. I know I'm a bit late to the party but I loled so hard.....

      Not so many players.... go in nullsec and w8 there for other players, you will see what that means :))

      Eve is for smart people, engineers mostly people that see through the lines, use their heads and keep calm when they loose 25$ worth of ship in a minute. Entropia is just the kid that nobody likes and keeps bragging about his mommy bought him a PC for 5000$, I have a siberian tiger farm abroad and so on... my 2 c

      Delete
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  2. Hey, just going to raise a few points:

    1. You'll never experience anything in EVE without joining a player corporation and getting into PvP. CCP and pretty much everyone else admits PvE is really, really boring, and I think they're doing work to fix that in coming expansions. The funnest part of EVE isn't really in the game, it's the communities you find in-game and then sitting on their teamspeak, mumble, whatever.

    2. The MMO part of EVE happens in low and null security space, where you'll get fleet fights from between 20-1500 pilots. You won't find any real MMO stylings in high security space (most of the space you go in as a fresh newbie). It's mostly a PvE oriented place (not to say that PvP can't happen), and a lot of the people that live there delude themselves that the rest of the game isn't fun, and just make ISK to buy their next giant e-peen, which in turn makes ISK to buy their next shiny space toy. I don't see how that's fun, but they apparently do.

    3. Regarding movement in space - this is another pitfall of high sec. In null security space, there are interdiction spheres that pull ships out of warp, characters probing to actively screw you, and so on. Depending on if you're the one deploying the bubble or evading it, it can either mean great kills from dumb people, or it means navigating across a hostile system is genuinely difficult and requires lots of thought - again, another example of highsec ruining the game with mindnumbing boredom for new players.

    4. As you've said you haven't gotten into the market / other sides of the game much - once you get out of "do mission, shoot red cross, watch grey bars turn red" the game is very vibrant. Market PvP can be pretty cutthroat (and you don't even need to be in an alliance to do this), but once you're in an alliance a whole metagame opens up, with spying, diplomacy, cartels, you name it, there's someone abusing it for their benefit.

    As a final point, and I don't really like having to do this, I'm just going to put a little criticism down for your writing. You refer to certain gameplay as "stupid" and "boring". While this may well be a valid criticism, the choice of words with nothing to really back it up makes your writing seem a bit childish. I'm not digging at you, but what I would say is for future pieces, it'd come across better if you went further into detail about exactly why something was not to your liking rather than just calling it stupid. To give you an example using one of your points:

    Stupid and boring movement in space – You select from the menu “go to next jump gate” then you select from the menu “jump” and then repeat that few times and voala you are there.

    becomes:

    Movement in space is lackluster and repetitive - you will end up clicking the jump button to move between systems over and over again with no variation.

    It can really make a difference. Like I say, not trying to attack you, but just giving you some pointers. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Seems to me that your reply is the childish one.

      Delete
    2. Why's that, friend?

      Never make criticism without elaborating :)

      Delete
    3. your last piece was brilliant and constructive, madlof. dont listen to august16

      Delete
    4. Well As Old EVE Online player i decided to give this a go, an EU is okay from my view with some plus/minus tho.

      1. Wish some bugs was fixed for the game like the cant see info on tt stuff before You buy them, works fine in AH (Auction Hall info)
      2. Sure game can cost if not carefull with the peds!, but in EVE also + just to play cost me so thats bad for EVE.
      3. Alot of game updates on EVE, but fact is they just plaster a bug, and a new arrive soon after that so some code need total re-programming if i may say so.
      4. EU might not be full of players all, the time but I allways get some stuff to do, so I end up spending more time then i Wanted lol.
      5. Space is voring, and alot could be redesigned in EU, so it was more fun when using a Quad, but new plant to come promise something about that, so i wait.
      6. Well been in EU for 4 weeks now, adn well i stay here to like on my EVE, but a new one is one that might take me from EVE to Star Citizen, link http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
      Looks promising for me as I miss EVE and a better MMO concept.
      7. EU is not dead, but they need to support more, as I was born on Planet Cyrene I got nothing at hallowen, but people from Rocktropia got a Brumstick that now sell's for peds, and Calypso people also got something! So a bit unfair to some planets players.
      8. EU graphice is ok, not complaining there but, the mobs or monsters are some dumb or OP, to keep people only pay to get and so on.
      Also some spawn to much(to little and others never, some areas are full cant move there unless fly over them.
      9. Ifboth worlds could get together a perfect game would have been born, but that would never happen.

      Well I leave it to the trols and haters now, but i still play on both, even they both have plus/minus.
      Just my 2 cents for now.

      Delete
  3. Are you trolling or just retarded?
    "Very bad avatar movement. No First Person View."

    ReplyDelete
  4. You understand nothing of EVE - if you try to play eve like any other MMORPG, you're missing the point.
    You don't understand trading, yet trading is 50% of eve. the rest is blowing up stuff. There IS no endgame in eve. You start endgame the moment you jump in your ship.
    Go back and try again, this time try playing like someone who is interested, and not like someone who has to write an article. Maybe you'll get it, or maybe you'll GTFO.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ahhh boo the fucking hoo. I think the reason why each and everyone of you are bitching about eve is because you are all carebears. Every freaking game has bugs and don't say they don't. Eve has bugs that are visible and eventually get fixed. Players receive the support that they need.

      Then again seems to me you are all q bit retarded here. EVE IS REAL. And not made for idiots like you

      Delete
  5. I have tried both for a fair amount of time, hands down winner for me was EU, of course all games have something that can be taken from them to help improve others and I have seen Mind Ark and one of the planet partners taking great strides in the improvement of the game as a whole. The population of entropia universe is so small that future plans for advertising and expansion of player base will definitely help the economy. I mainly play on planet calypso because to me it is the most populated with the best economy and content for the player. I am hoping the other planets make a push at bringing player base so the game expands faster. I also like that players can make a difference in the game and push to make it better, BIG Industries and the rewards program has been great for making me some extra peds and even redeemed some points for a RL visa card, I also enjoy entropialife.com because it really helps me focus on what to hunt or where to mine, I have seen the population steadily growing of new player base in the sweat camps and hunting areas that have lower level mobs. My post is definitely more for eu than eve as it was the game that has held my interest for a good amount of time now. Good Luck out there and happy hunting.

    ReplyDelete
  6. As a newbie to EU.
    In my experience - UE is boring.
    After short and not really explanatory tutorial - game throws you into deep water with feeling that if you do not invest some serous cash in it - you will be farming sweat till the end of your life...
    Investing cash into game also do not help coz game is kinda slow, emotionless definition of boredome - there is nothing really to do (I was already cashing myself with live money so whats the point of earning peds in game...). At least thats my feeling as a new player to EU, not to online gaming.
    Games need action, purpose and reasonable way to achieve it - in me experience EU lack first and last.

    I am going to try EVE now.

    ReplyDelete
  7. EVE Online is one of the greates- zzzZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz

    Skill training completed.

    ReplyDelete
  8. This last post has a good point. In Eve, you sit and wait to be better. Station-supernewbies being a good example. The only way to get better at something in EU is to DO it. And yes, EU makes no bones about a real-world economy. Complain about the TT prices, but at least it's up front. Everything in Eve centers around the price of a PLEX now. A bit more obscure, but the link still exists. The big numbers may make you feel sexy, but they are just that, big numbers. I've played both Eve and EU, from Beta. I still have EU installed on my computer, Eve was removed some time ago. Have a nice flight.

    ReplyDelete
  9. As an experienced user of Virtual Worlds related platforms (Second Life/OS Grid) and less related (IMVU) and for over 8 years an EVE online player, I need to comment this article. A short one.
    First of all if you want to compare to online games, to be fair you have to spend equal time in both. (if you playing EU 5 years for example, you need to play EVE online 5 years and then to get an opinion).
    BUT!!!
    I think that you’re trying to compare 2 non identical things.
    Eve online it is a space universe and your “avatar” it is your ship. There is anything to do with the cosmetic avatar you choose when you start (and I think it will be remain like that) and of course there isn’t any compared futures with EU. Except that both are online game services and you pay for both either wise.
    Entropia Universe it is a multi – Virtual World and it is available to everyone that like to join and live in it.
    Without monthly fee and time restrictions or any special knowledge!!! (That’s the awesomeness about it).
    The only product that can be compared to it, it is Second Life.
    But in SL, there is no competition, no achievements and no goals and if you want to do something and to earn money, you have to spend thousands of dollars in external applications (like Adobe Photoshop, DAZ, ZBrush and many more expensive graphic, animation and 3D Designing applications).
    Even then, if you are not a professional development, designer or programmer, you can do nothing.
    My conclusion,
    for me Entropia is the best Virtual World with Great Gameplay also and that’s why I choose to stay and live in it.

    P.S. Sorry if my typing isn’t quite good, but I’m not a native American and English is not my language.
    Take care all

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hello, eve player since 2008. You need to join a good noob corp. You need to be patience too, skill progression is time based. You skill even if you dont play.
    Entropia is fun game, only been playing for 1 month and im still noob. Maps are quite small compared to Eve and so are the NPC options.
    I dont kill NPC's in Eve any more, I kill other players. You dont start playing Eve until you get good at PVP. In Eve I have been in 0.0 battles with over 3000 players, not going to happen in EU.
    EU space ships are pathetic, so is space travel, feels like a game from the 80's in that aspect.
    EU is fun on the planet, the only thing Eve is missing.

    Eve is different, in many ways better than EU. Player community is amazing, you cant get bored in the game so many things to do and explore, so many ways to die, scam, trade, hunt, murder, contract kill, spy, create an empire and watch it be torn apart by me and my friends for a laugh, get ganked, hot dropped, camp jita, kill noobs, live in a wormhole, get held for randsome, become a pirate, kill CCP, boicot official in game events just becuase we can, RIOT and get CCP to chage stuff on our demand.... I mean you name it Eve does it.
    What does it not do, what Entropia offers first person planet interaction. Eve economy offers way s more opportunites, it does not offer to the aveage Joe 10.000$ real oney for a loot or mining item, Eu does that but if you play EU just to see if you get luck you going to lose.

    Eve is amazing, EU can do better but very much addictive and so far I like it. PED economy dictates game play, so the freedom you find in Eve is just not there, nor are the opportunities.

    Look me up in Eve (Eve Midnight) and EU (Yoghurt Strawberry Iscream).

    ReplyDelete
  11. Entropia universe sucks. The game is really a waste of time and money. very boring grind. Its mainly works like a casino. Awful support system and a very small player base in comparison to other mmo games. Also seems like the game will be going bankrupt soon.

    ReplyDelete
  12. entropia captured me from the moment I was done with the atrocious tutorial (worst 2 days of my gaming life). Being able to raise your skills by performing the relevant actions, from 1 to basically infinity, is exactly my cup of tea. sure not everything is perfect in the universe, but there's one thing you can't say about EU... that there's nothing to do. LOL. I wish the day had more hours so I could play more. And of course while sweating I play another game at the side or watch videos. little reason ever NOT to sweat while I'm in front of my computer

    Eve sounds interesting enough (I'd sure like the trading aspect a damn lot), but being forced into joining a clan and all that claptrap as a mandatory element is really off-putting. The only team game I ever played was LoL and even that was horrible enough with the flamers and complainers. also Eve seems REALLY hard to figure out. I could always play the X games instead for none of the multiplayer hassle and a story to boot! (I didn't bother to play more than half of an hour for the first game in the series though - I'm 30 years old, I don't have the patience to figure out games that are hard to get into anymore :-( )

    ReplyDelete
  13. Just want to point out I played both about a month and EU is hostile in their "rookie" chat where new people would think to get help but instead get WOW style attitude with Hostile political insults without even knowing you (by those been in game for over a decade). Eve...I am visual and social ...so...you lack there on both parts but the social is mature in a way of respect that is way more rare in Rookie on EU. The Noob on both point of view. The greed and risk of being scammed is way higher in EU!

    ReplyDelete

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