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Rob Zacny

Episode 260: The Empires of EVE

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Rob is joined by author and EVE historian Andrew Groen as well as fleet commanders Molle and Manny to discuss EVE Online. Player machinations form the base upon which EVE Online is built and result in battles that are publicized for their massive player count, coordination, and real-world costs. Listen in to learn how and why these conflicts start and get an inside glimpse at the often intimidating EVE universe.

 

Make sure to check out Andrew's Kickstarter.

 

Listen here.

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Maaaan, the Idle Thumbs network is bringing it this week. Super fun interview, Rob. Great to hear such an inside (top level) take on Eve Online.

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I have not played Eve but a friend a mine is in deep and so we often chat about it.  One game decision decision that I'm not sure I like is the ability to so readily jump over intermediary space (cynos, bridges) seems to render a lot of strategic stuff not particularly relevant.  Oh you have a small fast fleet?  Well all the big alliances have cynos chains and can just dump ships anywhere they want so speed doesn't matter, so the loss of mobility in capital ships doesn't come into play much.

 

The area control aspect of Eve becomes really weird, because it's like every place is connected to every place (an exaggeration but still).  Your most powerful war assets can be almost anywhere at once!

 

Typically both sides of a conflict could escalate and jump in more and more ships if they wanted (well having enough awake players at a certain time is certainly a logistics weakness that can be exploited).  With power so mobile, this leads to the entire galaxy becoming one or two super allliances.

 

Great article explaining the problem (though not sure about the solution): 

 

http://marlonasky.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/cancers-of-eve-online-teleportation/

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This is the first time in podcast history that I haven't checked out when the topic was about a MMO.

 

Great interview! It's still so difficult for me to understand the motivations of EVE players, but it was super interesting to get their perspective.

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Although I don't play it I do find Eve endlessly fascinating. Great interview too with some of the less publicity seeking members of the community

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The human resources side of it is quite interesting. It is similar to my experiences in Planetside 2, although on a bigger scale. The sister outfit to my outfit, called RockPlanetShotgun will run 100 players + in a coms channel with a company level command structure. They do it pretty well with split comms and such.

 

I definitely understand far better from commanding in this game (the most I've ever commanded is about 30 people). Its not just a matter of having a good strategy, its a matter of people skills. Can you get 30 dudes with guns to do what you need them to do. Discipline is hard to achieve, but some of the commanders i know do it very well. 

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