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Space Games

Epic Online Space Battle 296

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the get-the-hell-out-of-our-galaxy dept.
New submitter nusscom writes "On July 28th, as has been reported by BBC, a record number of EVE Online players participated in a record-breaking online battle between two alliances. This battle, which was essentially a turf-war was comprised of over 4,000 online players at one time. The load was so large that Crowd Control Productions (CCP) slowed down the game time to 10% of normal to accommodate the massive amount of activity." This is the largest battle to ever occur on EVE Online.
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Epic Online Space Battle More

Epic Online Space Battle

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  • Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)

    by C0R1D4N ( 970153 ) on Monday July 29, 2013 @08:27PM (#44418663)
    We saw basically the same story six months ago and already discussed it. [slashdot.org]

    Are we gonna put it on the front page each time they add a few people to their cap?

    • Of course. Otherwise it wouldn't be slashdot. Oh, and btw, it was very fun, but man was it frustrating to try to do *anything* in the fight.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
        Still TiDi is better than staring at a blank screen for 30 mins before your client crashes.

    • It's not a hard cap, it changes to match actual server load. The more they 'reinforce' the node(aka put it on the good machines) the better the numbers get. Can't wait for some serious cluster upgrades on the CCP end.

  • These big battles are a rarity (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GodfatherofSoul ( 174979 ) on Monday July 29, 2013 @08:34PM (#44418697)

    I started my account after hearing about the last huge battle a few months ago and very coincidentally uninstalled EVE the day after this battle. When the game is fun, it's great, but there's SOO much downtime in between PVP fights (PVE, PI, mining and such get old fast). CCP took the approach of more content rather than focusing on playability and new players get a truckload dumped in their laps. The UI is murder on new players and even the plugins could use a major upgrade or at least more consistency with colors. I had major friendly fire annoyances with color tags that were too close or misleading.

    Game could be fun if there was more interaction, but from my experience there's a lot of spinning ships in station and yacking on Mumble. My two recommendations would be for CCP to create true CCP-sponsored corporations that stage lots of PVP and training against each other (much like the Blue and Red do) and do away with the non-functional NPC noob corps where new toons get dumped. Second, they need to improve the UI standardize that overview. The colors and codes are head scratching and sometimes *way* too similar.

    The curve is just too high for people looking to have fun and not turn the game into a way of life. I felt barely competent after 4 months of play.

    • Re:These big battles are a rarity (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DJ Rubbie ( 621940 ) on Monday July 29, 2013 @08:46PM (#44418771) Homepage Journal

      > I felt barely competent after 4 months of play.

      Try three years. Nobody is really competent in this game. If you are looking for fun in the game play you won't really find it, I've had more fun chatting with the people I met there, maybe while doing things which may or may not be tangentially related to the actual game play. It is an MMO after all.

      • If you are looking for fun in the game play you won't really find it,

        Wait, what is the purpose then, really?

        • Re:These big battles are a rarity (Score:5, Interesting)

          by DJ Rubbie ( 621940 ) on Monday July 29, 2013 @09:55PM (#44419155) Homepage Journal

          Think of it as an open sandbox. There isn't any purpose to any single pile of sand, except to individuals who are creative and persistent enough to sculpt something out of it, and changes made inside the sandbox has long lasting legacy (if not impact) for future users of that sandbox.

          If you think of EVE Online as a means to an end, not the end in itself, it makes much more sense. Consider that in other games, the achievements within often are the end in themselves. While being the first group to beat a raid boss in WoW might get you talked about for a week, pulling off a legendary heist or being a double agent to take down an empire results in the party responsible still being referred to many years later. This is the kind of thing that EVE Online provide that no other games out there have.

        • Re:These big battles are a rarity (Score:5, Interesting)

          by dpidcoe ( 2606549 ) on Monday July 29, 2013 @10:36PM (#44419389)

          Wait, what is the purpose then, really?

          To do what you want and have fun. I know this is a foreign concept to veterans of other MMOs who have been brainwashed into thinking that fun == reaching endgame, but as soon as you break out of that way of thinking, a huge amount of possibilities open up.

          When I started playing eve, I subscribed at the same time as 3 other friends. We formed a corp, picked a .5 system bordered by several lowsec systems, and based out of there. After about a week of playing, we announced to anyone we saw in system that we were pirates and started demanding protection money from the local miners. No one paid up, so we read up on canflipping mechanics and started stealing their ore. Then we figured out how to suicide gank and racked up quite a few expensive mining barges that way. Eventually one of us pissed off the wrong person and a rather powerful mission running corp filled with veterans who had been around for years declared war on us. We read up on wardec mechanics, and won that through by exploiting the fact that an industrial is no match for three people in competently fit pvp ships, no matter what the player ages are. That got us into the business of wardecs, and we ended up merging with another corp at about the three month mark in our eve careers. From there we spent a good three years terrorizing people in highsec for isk, with some side interests of ninja salvaging and scamming.

          The end result of all of my time playing is that I legitimately ruined the lives of several people (drama queens make great targets, several corps we went after had members who are now no longer RL friends), have two scams named after my scamming character, and made some awesome online friends. And when I flew through our old home system recently after after having been unsubbed for two years, the miners apparently still remembered me. Within minutes of entering the system they all docked up and immediately began cussing me out in local chat, so apparently I made a lasting impression on them.

          • Re:These big battles are a rarity (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 29, 2013 @11:47PM (#44419753)

            So what you're saying is that EVE is a great way to be an asshole?

          • Sounds like you get off on being a dick. Which is cool if that floats your boat, but it is exactly why I never played Eve.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by rtb61 ( 674572 )
              Interestingly enough that is the sort of game play that certain three letter organisations look for when it comes to matching people's real world actions with their game actions. Not that all game players that do bad things in game, do bad things in real life but people who do bad things in life inevitably do bad things in game.

              • amen - the guy proudly says he lost several real-life friendships over this crap, and you think he might be the kind of guy who'll go to work one day with a shotgun? Well, I don't know, but it does seem he gets off much more with the notoriety than he does with human empathy.

                Maybe we'll read about him in a few years when they catch him with a few body parts hacked up in his basement. But it'll be ok, 'cos he'll have made a load of great online friends while he was doing it.

                Maybe EVE isn't the gaming role mo

    • I played EVE for years and I concur completely. It's more of a chore at times than a game. Ultimately I think that it's more fun to talk about EVE than it is to actually play EVE.

    • Re:These big battles are a rarity (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MacGyver2210 ( 1053110 ) on Monday July 29, 2013 @10:06PM (#44419225)

      As an 8-year player of EVE, I have heard this a whole lot. What you are really saying is, "I'm not good enough to play this game, waaaaaah". If you don't like it, don't play it. Much like I don't play Final Fantasy games, you're welcome not to play EVE. Some of us love it the way it is, and can appreciate where the good moments are without bitching about having to loadout ships or move assets to a system for a sov takeover.

      The more you play the game, the more you get used to the interface. The good players(the real die-hards) love the UI, and know and use every inch of it. We need all of those displays for information, because otherwise we miss something important and die(not fun). You think it's bad when your Battlecruiser goes down? Imagine how we feel when our supers pop. Hell, I know people who run 4-6 clients at once, some running ships that cost over a billion isk on all of the screens. I believe the guy on the Alliance Tournament this weekend would call them 'richfags'.

      The more you play, the less time you spend looking for controls and instead actually spend that time trading, building stuff, fighting, making iskies, whatever. You start to memorize components for your ships so you know exactly what equipment you want for what task. You get used to fleet formations and how to travel as a group without becoming the next Leroy Jenkins.

      Don't like PVP? Go PVE, Faction Warfare, or be a Miner/Trader or something 'safe'. You can make assloads of currency with a quickness if you pay attention and know what you're doing. Shooting rocks too boring? Join a decent corp/alliance, and get in on these enormous battles. You can find some REALLY cool mods on the field after popping a few old-hat players in their special tourney ships.

      It's a difficult game for sure, but the fact that you want everything just handed to you immediately with no work or waiting, having only played the game for a few months, says more about you than about the game.

      • And, your attitude, much like that of CCP in general I'm guessing, is why nothing changes and why EVE is a minor MMO. If you don't appeal to new players and simply dismiss criticisms of game complexity as some "l337 h4x0r IQ threshold" to keep stupid people out, EVE is going to stay right where it is. CCP seems to have this philosophy that anything that exists in the game is acceptable as an artifact of the game world. They don't have to assume everything that exists is as it was meant to be. Make it be

        • The EVE fans are some of the worst I've seen (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Monday July 29, 2013 @11:16PM (#44419587)

          They seem to have a very self-superior attitude as though they are just better because they play a Bettar Game(tm) and if you aren't good enough to hang with them then screw you, you suck! However on the other hand they hate the other MMOs because they take players away. The wish there was no WoW, no Rift, etc so that people HAD to play EVE.

          Basically, what they really want is a large quantity of people who are not good at the game that they can pick on and hate on. They want to be the ruling class that has a lower class to shit on. They are bullies, more or less.

          He's mad at you because you tried the game and left, rather than stuck around to give him another potential target to beat up.

        • What makes you assume he wants there to be changes and more players? Apparently he's very happy with the game just the way it is now.
      • Geez, wouldn't it be more fun, and probably easier, to just start a business in real life?

    • but there's SOO much downtime in between PVP fights

      I reopened my account a little under a month ago (originally quit when Diablo 3 came out, THAT game was a waste of time and money.). After two weeks back with my old alliance, spinning ships, AFKing in station, I joined a new one. Night and day. I have seen more action every day in the new alliance than all 2 weeks with the old one. The problem for me was that the old alliance had largely faded from glory and the remaining members are 80% people in a 1

  • Snore fest (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aoism ( 996912 ) on Monday July 29, 2013 @09:03PM (#44418887)
    Before I tried out Eve, I thought these epic space battles were technological breakthroughs. At the time, I was playing WoW was was restricted to 40 players and some mobs up at once. When I actually played Eve, I was quickly disillusioned. There are not many real-time controls in the game. You pick an action, then when the game decides when it's time, it executes it. It's a queuing system and it's nearly turn-based, like Civilization. You aren't controlling your space craft in real time. I am not as experienced as a lot of you guys are and you may have other input, but I quickly gave it up because it was boring as hell to do something then wait 10 seconds until it completed.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      This lets you focus on the core of the game. Strategy and tactics. It's not a flight simulator. Which guns will you fit on your ship, at what range will you engage, which ships do you not bother engaging and run away from, what skills you have, what skills you need to fight more efficiently.....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by aoism ( 996912 )
        Totally. I am not knocking folks who enjoy that kind of game at all :) I think, if anything, is a pretty accurate simulation of what space would be like. Empty, quiet, not much action except on a few bases and sectors where there were resources. The newbie help channel was very beneficial -- the best community support in any game I've played (rightfully so, the UI is crazy). I was mostly speaking from a server technology standpoint. I marveled at how some random company could do better to handle user load t

    • You pick an action, then when the game decides when it's time, it executes it. It's a queuing system and it's nearly turn-based, like Civilization. You aren't controlling your space craft in real time.

      sounds close to what real space ship combat would be like.

    • Actually, I like that aspect. It simulates how a ship commander works. It's analogous to Warcraft III. You put one peon to work, and he does it until you tell him otherwise. Just like me, you probably assumed you'd by flying the ship like a simulator such as X-Wing.

    • Your complaint is so generic, I feel like I'm reading about someone complaining that they have to move a mouse to click on something. How abstract and ubiquitous of a concept can you find to bitch about? As was said, it's not a flight simulator. Your job is to fly to the right place, lend your guns to the right team, and make better decisions than the other team. You are a pawn that trains to become a better piece. Like in Chess, you can't win if you're playing as a pawn all alone.

      Would it be amazing if you

    • Re:Snore fest (Score:4, Informative)

      by iczerjones ( 1902502 ) on Monday July 29, 2013 @11:24PM (#44419627) Homepage
      As a frequent nano pilot, I beg to differ. Double click on a point in space, you fly there. Control you engine throttle manually, activate weapons, shield boosters, cap charges, warp scramble opponents, adjust transversal.. You call an action, it occurs. In any other game, you press button, thing happens. Are you instead referring to the lack of a flight stick style control method? If so then yes, you are correct. There is no flight stick or controller input. Are you perhaps talking about warping? That is a bit different as part of the game mechanics dictates that when you select a warp to target, you warp drive has to 'spin up' before you leave grid. This ensures you, as a potential victim, can't just run away without proper planning. Part of that whole 'risk-reward' system that EVE does so well. The controls are definitely real time, though I do understand your position. The EVE style of input is definitely something that takes getting used to. It is not Wing Commander. Well, unless you are flying an interceptor, that is. ;)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by X.25 ( 255792 )

      Before I tried out Eve, I thought these epic space battles were technological breakthroughs. At the time, I was playing WoW was was restricted to 40 players and some mobs up at once. When I actually played Eve, I was quickly disillusioned. There are not many real-time controls in the game. You pick an action, then when the game decides when it's time, it executes it. It's a queuing system and it's nearly turn-based, like Civilization. You aren't controlling your space craft in real time. I am not as experienced as a lot of you guys are and you may have other input, but I quickly gave it up because it was boring as hell to do something then wait 10 seconds until it completed.

      Hahahaha.

      Sure thing mate, orbit and F1, right?

      You haven't played EVE at all if you think that you don't control your ship in real-time.

    • "Time to die", or in this case
      "Time to slow down the game time to 10% of normal to accommodate the massive amount of activity" ; ).

  • Any idea of how many kilowatt hours it consumed? CPU hours? Bandwidth?

    Pull it together, Slashdot. If this is "News for Nerds" then let's go full nerdgasm!

    "Set the Mertilizer on Deep Fat Fry!" -- Spaceman Spiff

  • "Epic Excel Spreadsheet Recalc" just doesn't have quite the same ring to it :-P

  • The battles was just bang at the end (Score:5, Informative)

    by NeoKarn ( 3000973 ) on Monday July 29, 2013 @09:38PM (#44419065)
    I was there (TM) It's not just the battle. It's the buildup. For 4 days we worked the system. Disrupting the enemy, destroying infrastructure. In the background spies worked there magic and Logistics move the materials of war into position. The phyc-ops and propagandist people boosted moral an got people to log in and participate. The battle is just one of the fun bits. 4000 pilots where just in the system. Without a doubt over 6000 pilots were involved on the day and closer to 10,000 for the buildup. EvE is serious spaceship business and this whole war is business. In EvE we are not ashamed to admit. We went to war for the Space monies.

    • That sounds pretty cool, but one thing I didn't like is the spying aspect. Not because spying isn't cool, but because the spying is external to the game. People use their alts to see what's going on in an enemy corporation, then report back. CCP should either limit alts to NPC corps or to the same corp as main.

  • Wow (Score:5, Interesting)

    by readingaccount ( 2909349 ) on Monday July 29, 2013 @11:09PM (#44419553)

    I'm amazed how much effort people put playing games these days. I honestly think some like games (like EVE Online) are more like jobs than entertainment, if what I've read is any indication. Shit, if some people spent their time in the real world doing and learning things with the same level of zeal and dedication as they do in the virtual world, we might all be Tony Starks. :)

    Having said that, the virtual world provides more immediate payoff for your efforts compared to the real world sometimes... which is probably what makes gaming so addictive.

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