EVE General Discussion

I see a lot of rants about how CCP shouldn't attempt to lure the themepark crowd into EVE. I think this is fairly shortsighted.

Luring these people into the game could be very beneficial to EVE over the long term... as long as EVE stays EVE. My personal opinion (and that's all any of the rants on the forums are... opinions) is that EVE is a PvP game that centers around a player driven market.

Now, if CCP lures in 1,000 themepark types and 5% love the game, then great, the population has grown by 50 more players that appreciate the game for what it is. Good riddance to the rest. Growing the population is a good thing. The rest put a few more development dollars in CCP's pocket and go back to killing 50 squirrels and taking their pelts back to their quest giver.

I think that we can all acknowledge that there is no other game on the market like EVE, so there are literally millions of people out there that have never played a game of this type. Drawing them in and introducing them to a new type of gameplay can change their entire perspective on MMOs. It changed mine. I played WoW until I found EVE. I had no idea there was something better out there. There's no way I'll go back to that crap now.

Lure 'em in, keep the good ones, cull the dipsh*ts and spend their subscription money on developing the game.

And, I know its a constant battle to keep CCP from actually turning Hi-sec into a themepark, but as long as that doesn't happen, the meta-game can help CCP pocket some nice development dollars, can add some quality players to their subscription base and give some PvPers some nice targets to pop on their way back to WoW.

Being a sandbox, isn't part of that our responsibility as players?

part, yes

I will murder the person who drops another damned train next to me.

I'm not suggesting changing EVE to a themepark style game. Just suggesting a little bit of bait and switch.

Exactly my point. Lure em in then corrupt em.

We're in the midst of a big stupid brouhaha from a group of those very same players who, out of nowhere, have decided that they are entitled to the same safety they'd have in a theme park. I like Eve, so I'd rather not see anyone reach out to MORE of them.

I think CCP may have decided that that is a bad idea after the revolt.

And, I think blowing up thousands of miners is a great thing although, sadly, I'm probably a bit late to the feed trough to profit from it.

So sadly true.

New players under the current machanics are a commodity to be used up by anyone stubborn enough to survive that ordeal

To me there are 2 strategic problems:
1. They are not catering directly to the PvP crowd, they are trying to grow PvPers from the PvE players who come to play the game. The correct strategy is too make EVEs PvP cool and reduce the barriers to entry for new PvPers so we can draw from the millions of PvPers in the market.

2. They have not accepted, dealt with and allowed for the reality that they accidentally became the best PvE space ship game while building the best PvP space ship game. Somehow they need to build into their strategy this cash cow without letting it destroy EVE like it did UO and along the way avoid the trap of trying to market PvP to PvE players.

It's much simpler than that - far more people don't want to PVP at all, let alone unrestricted non-consentual PVP. It's nice to want success for Eve and CCP, but the reality is that it's a very niche game that's not going to have anywhere near the appeal that more popular MMO's have, and it's that way by design.