What’s fun?
There’s been less wormhole whining than I expected, to be honest; probably because people are having so much fun. But I still see some folks who are profoundly missing the point.
Take this guy, for instance. He can probe pretty well in a Covert Ops, so he finds a wormhole, goes in, finds a site he thinks he can kill, and goes back for his Drake. Being no fool, he logs in an alt who can also fly a covert ops ship, to sit in the hole with him.
He does his thing in the Drake, great success. It’s time to go home.
Ohnoes, his wormhole is gone, and there are PEOPLE in the system with him! So, sensibly enough, he logs his drake and starts probing for a new exit on his alt prober. I’ll let him pick up the story from there:
THERE WERE SO MANY SITES IN THIS WH, i couldn’t find a WH. i found OVER 9000 grav sites, ladar, mag, camps, ambushes, etc… but no wormholes. this went on for almost 90 minutes.
scan, pinpoint, scan, pinpoint, for a very long time. i was getting pretty annoyed, as this doesn’t seem fun to me. but i’m not the type to give up, so i just keep plugging away, site after site after site.
finally i find an exit. to 0.3 space up in black rise (near Tama).
So, he spends an hour and half probing with a low-skilled prober before finding his exit. This makes him annoyed, doesn’t seem fun to him.
And that’s where he misses the point.
The wormhole probing mechanic is designed to be a challenge. If it were easy, fast, or guaranteed, there’d be no challenge. That aspect of wormhole risk would be gone.
Risk and challenge are what create a sense of triumph when you overcome them; without them, the game would be pointless.
I, myself, would have enjoyed those ninety minutes; but I do understand folks who think it’s a little much. However, the point is not that you’re supposed to enjoy getting lost, though many do; it’s that getting loss is a necessary possibility to enhance your pleasure and relief when you don’t get lost.
Consider an analogy to getting podded. Does anybody enjoy getting podded? I very much doubt it. But how many of us would enjoy EVE as much as we do if getting podded weren’t a possibility?
You don’t see people saying “I got podded and got pretty mad, it didn’t seem fun to me.” They’d be laughed out of space. Duh — podding is the consequence for losing. And just like that, getting lost (or what that old mountain man used to call “getting temporarily mislaid”) in w-space is the consequence of not “winning” a particular exploration experience. W-space wouldn’t be half so much fun without it.
Entries (RSS)