EVN, In Retrospect

I've read through Travis' critique of EVN several times since he posted it way back when, and it's good stuff. I don't have the energy to write out a thorough analysis of the game like he did, unfortunately, and I've been meaning to post this for a while, so I'll just outline my thoughts.

Stuff I liked:

- The ships and their graphics. Each faction had a great design aesthetic, and the ships and outfits were all really well done.
- Federation and Polaris space was fleshed out really well. Interesting, unique worlds and stations with a lot of history and even some ambiance.
- The Pirate string was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed playing as the Bureau. Most of the strings were a decent ride, to be honest.

Stuff I didn't like:

- No room to expand. Some of the mission strings explicitly lay out the rest of the history of mankind. Hard to come up with an EVN2 or even an add-on if you know for a fact that everything's going to be peachy keen.
- Many of the spaceport descriptions, especially those for the Auroran planets. It seemed like every Auroran planet fell into the same basic mold. Lots of arcologies. Heavily overcrowded. Warriors lording it over everyone else. Primitive and barbaric. Throw in the token hospital station or agricultural planet, and that's the Auroran empire in a nutshell.
- Game balance. The Polaris are freakishly overpowered. I don't think I've ever seen an Auroran Cruiser engage a Polaris warship and come out alive- even a fighter can take down a cruiser easily. Get a Raven angry, and you have a hundred torpedoes shooting up your tailpipe before you can turn around and do anything about it. I know it's intentional and 'realistic'. That doesn't make it any less of a horrible design decision.
- Game balance, redux. There's no sense of scale in the game. Capital ships begin fighting, twenty seconds later the battle's over. You can buy a civilian Starbridge and with the right equipment waste military flagships that cost thirty times as much as your ship.
- No creativity in mission design. Half the strings make you run those stupid Merrol food missions. Fleet battles are terrible. Most of the missions are glorified shuttle missions with blocks of text in-between. EVO had all sorts of interesting stuff, including the Zidagar photographer who triggered the evacuation of the base if he got away. I think there's one mission of the sort in EVN, where you fly around hoping that your erstwhile 'allies' and escorts are destroyed by hostile forces. That's it.
- Like Travis said, the entire northern half of the map is completely wasted. It's empty, there's nothing interesting there except Korell, that system with 5 planets in it, and a couple of Wraith flying around near Polaris space. BORING. Again, like Travis said, EVO got this completely right, whereas Nova got it completely wrong. There's no exploration, no sense of discovery or true amazement at what's lying ahead waiting to be uncovered.

Other notes:

- Trading is less of a gameplay element in any of the EVx iterations as opposed to a chore in tedium. Why trade when you can pirate renegades who are carrying 300k credits a pop? I remember EVO- started a pilot, ran the Earth-->Alpha Centauri string for an hour until I had a reasonable amount of money, then copied that pilot and used it whenever I wanted to start playing. We can do better, especially considering the fact that the player starts off as an independent trader.

My assessment? Nova was decently good. EVO is still my favorite out of the three, though. As always, the criticisms seem so long as to make me seem like I hate the game. I think my role as a developer, though, is to point out flaws in the harshest manner possible so that we can try our best to avoid them