EvE is similar but with a functional economy including scammers, thieves and general douchebags… And spaceships, is pretty fun but extremely addicting and technical.
The problem with Eve is that you will have to join a big group to enjoy it, and if you join one up, you are increasingly going to feel the pressure to whale if you are a normal player who isn’t min-maxing the system. The game is chock full of whales.
I’m a miner, my father was a miner, my mother’s a miner, my father’s father was a miner.
Yeah some pressure you sure but I just stayed with newbie guilds and turned to helping people instead.
Honestly some of the technically non combat classes are quite fun. It’s been awhile since I’ve been on but I have more money than I could honestly figure out what to do with just from mining.
That said yeah even mining has spreadsheets, which is both neat and kinda daunting.
The people who are most successful don’t just stick to one defined job, they min-max to the extreme. They can be taking down freighters with their multiboxed destroyers one day, and they can be multibox moon mining with orcas the following day.
I don’t believe there is anything fun about mining. It’s just an activity that when you believe you’ve sufficiently secured yourself enough you can do with relative minimal investment in it. Usually the people who mine the most aren’t enjoying Eve, they are enjoying the conversations and the Netflix they are watching on the side. About the only thing tickling the dopamine with mining is getting to think you are getting ahead from doing a comparatively less stressful activity for longer than other people doing riskier activities more prone to failure and doing so for less amount of time, allowing you to fantasize about how you will spend your gains in the future. Mining barely has any user involvement as a game mechanic in Eve, there are idle games with more user interaction.
I miss having time to play Eve - big fleet battles were fucking epic but I can’t dedicate the hours anymore.
Yes I’m aware there are ways to have quicker fun, I remember faction warfare, but that’s even hard to do when you have to drop at a moments notice (kids don’t pause well).