Barriers to Entry

Some things in EVE Online are not easy to get into.

Capitals and Super Capitals constitute the highest end of content that EVE Online has to offer. With over a year of dedicated skill training required to pilot them and costs ranging between the hundreds of millions or tens of billions, this is the acme of flying in space; there is nothing bigger or more powerful. Once you fly super capitals, you've achieved the ultimate level that a pilot can expect to achieve in his or her career.

It makes sense that capital ships take the most time to get into. EVE Online is a subscription based MMORPG; the longer the game holds onto your interest, the more money CCP makes. The time taken towards getting into a ship like a Dreadnought or Carrier or Super Carrier can be delayed or further extended with detours like Heavy Assault Ships, Recons, Command Ships, and other, similarly high end toys. With lots of interesting ships to fly, it's hard to run out of things to want to try out in EVE Online.

But what happens when you get to the top?

What happens when those other ship classes or other races of ships don't gain and hold your interest?

Super Capitals have come to be known to a few of my friends as account coffins. They are juicy targets that leave you a prime target for ganks and hot drops. Eventually, most players who acquire super capital ships simply stop logging in after awhile, because their pilots have become tools of alliance warfare. The Super Capital's role in combat is largely limited, albeit not exclusively, to combat against large ships; they are tools for alliance warfare. Unfortunately, they are also unequaled as alliance warfare tools, which has created further pressure to start flying these beasts of burden. The Dominion sovereignty design and the desire to acquire the highest end content in game is highly counterproductive to the enjoyment of EVE Online as well as CCP's bottom line.

Something I've noticed over the years of playing EVE is that the more things you acquire, the greater my compulsion has been to hold on to the vast stores of wealth that I have earned in the game. My adversity to loss had increased. Even though I could afford to replace dozens of battleships, I feared losing even one. The compulsion to hoard was doing a number on my ability to enjoy PVP in game which is, arguably, EVE's one true strength in conjunction with the game economy. The biggest ship I had was merely a Nidhoggur.

To keep enjoying EVE Online, there needs to be value in flying a ship along every step of the way. When it's a race to the top to crush everyone on the bottom, there are no winners; the gears of the sandbox only stop turning.