EVE General Discussion

I've replied to your same post about the "Rush" in two other threads a while back, but the discussion has always died. I think your view is not exactly complete.

The actual term for the bodily reaction caused by pvp is the flight-or-flight response. It's a natural state of your body, launched by a stressful situation and aims to prep you to cope better when threatened- one could argue that without it, we wouldn't be here now, sable tigers would have eaten our ancestors :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_response

Anyway, while the response has immediate adverse effects that can be experienced as feelings of sickness, it is not connected with an inherent negative emotional experience. Much like after an extreme workout, your whole body hurts like hell, but you still feel good in your head, why? Because of conditioning. You know from your previous experience, that this terrible state is good for you. Your body starts to connect the pain with positive emotions.

I believe the same conditioning works with flight-or-flight response. Obviously previous experiences and especially those gathered during childhood have a huge impact on how you take it. In EVE, if your fight-or-flight is connected with losses, you subconsciously connect the response with negative emotions... but if you win, you will start associating the rush of adrenaline and hundreds of other hormones with the sweetness of victory. Turning EVE into a promoter of eustress,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustress

I'm not denying that there wouldn't be any individual, genetic differences, and science certainly doesn't know what all the other hormones do to each person, but I do think that it is possible to condition yourself to enjoy the fight-or-flight response.

One of the issues I see with attracting new subscribers is CCP throws EvE out there as a exciting space exploration and combat game...with the epic electronia laced trailers showing shaky cam, swirling frigates and the like.

Then a new subscriber joins and they are greeted with menus, spreadsheets, and those eerily silent starter systems...

which usually sends them packing.

The Inferno trailer was the most honest I've seen with its "numbers" speech...EvE *is* about numbers, assets and the like...and less about epic piloting skills.

I'd say be more honest. Show EvE for what it is, a game filled with money, spies, lying, backstabbing and tentative friendships. A place where trusted comrades and good leadership are far more important that the ability to make spaceships explode.

If done right, I think WIS could get some more subs. We're used to seeing our game characters displayed as lonely space ships flying through the black void. We don't think about twice anymore. But is it the same for everybody? People go for MMOs for the interaction with other players. In EVE, that's so abstract that I'd bet that a lot of people checking it out fail to immerse. I myself quit EVE at one time partly because I was tired of looking at lonely black space graphics all the the time. I personally think CCP was/is on the right track with WIS. It needs a little party time with other characters though-- not just sitting in CQ.

Except the according to Dr Drew Pinsky, there is a very strong genetic component. He is an expert on addiction, and it turns out that if you get The Rush, you are also more prone to addiction. There is a real difference in the brains between people who get the rush and those who do not. You are welcome to take the matter up with Dr Pinsky yourself. (Dr Drew, hes on TV and the web these days. He was my personal doctor for a few years.)

Also, not everyone gets a good feeling from exercise. I thought they did, and was using it to help with depression.. until one day I has laser eye surgery. I told them of my exercise schedule, and they suggested I lay off for a month so as to not get sweat in my eyes.

And my depression went away. I could not believe it. It was contrary to everything I had heard. After a month I started up again and the depression returned. After several months I settled on a greatly reduced schedule that balances the need for doing something with the effect it has on me.

Even though I was fully conditioned to believe exercise would give me a good feeling, it did not.

In eve, I have been in many PvP combats where I came out on top. The impact of the stress results in me having no desire to repeat the experience.

I do not think telling people "Just train yourself to enjoy the stress" will result in increased subs. Giving them the option to either avoid it, or try and accustom themselves to it, at their option, would be better.

With any business you need to understand your customers.

I'd actually like them to focus on what we want rather than stabbing stuff in the dark and seeing if it works.

To me; the game is too simple when it comes to PVP.

Its too easy to hot drop; too easy for ratters / miners to warp to safety; to easy for people wanting a fight to be baited into having a fight only to be "blobbed much??"...

They should do away with alliances and corps and "SOV". Null sec should be about "today; i'm going to go here and reuine your day"; It shouldnt be "today, tomorrow, the day after and the day after that im going to try and have fun".

If you really want people to subscribe and keep them subscribed; you need to keep it so people always have that "Oh ****"...

Oh **** I lost my bs to a frig
Oh **** my tengu is scrambed in a plex and i've been found
Oh **** my Hulks are stuck in a anom and i've been found
Oh **** oh ****, oh ****....

Don't get me mistaken- this has nothing to do with the fact that according to our CSM we are all rich and is why we don't feel the loss.... Its the fact that the game, once you understand it, is written on rules which don't pave way for invention and "emergent" play.

As an example whilst hunting; this is what the game has come to when trying to catch people in null:



Callmedick > he must be cloacked in hub or smth
Callmedick > 0/
Idranel Hacksong > yeah
Callmedick > bad connection :)
Callmedick > or logoffski manouver
Idranel Hacksong > pls lof off again
Callmedick > haha
Idranel Hacksong > log*

Sorry state of the game when the only way to try and get a fight is to log off in those money making machines with the hope of signing in for a catch.

new account characters started with 1m sp to allocate

60% of all the skills in the game were removed or consolidated and all sub cap skills could, using isk or plex, be trained 50% faster. make it about what you do not what waiting a year lets you maybe do. get people hooked, and they'll stick around. bore them to death and/or force them to literally not play the game or buy characters from day 1 and you lose.

high sec was literally just a handful of systems and was truly aggression free

low sec had the same rules as null sec ie no sec status bs but sans bubbles. you know, so people could pvp with their main

players could pay a one off fee to activate parallel training on each account/s

the economy was less open to manipulation ie more npc stuff more ceilings on key items
finally and most importantly: there are literally no isk faucets in high sec and all pve was refactored to be do-able with pvp fits and tactics

in summary stop punishing players who try eve online and dont come from a pre established social group which can give them limitless stuff and support them in nullsec from day 1. end high/null sec apartheid. eve is real and harsh. and you're in it from day 1.

oh obviously you'd need to completely rip out your terrible sov and resource monopoly system that has rendered null sec completely static.

I reckon you'd lose about 5, 000 subs and gain maybe 10-15 in the first 6 months. then it would grow exponentially as word of mouth got out that eve is actually a game you can access and play without waiting a year for skills to train and requiring multiple accounts per individual to even access said content. critically over time you would see more individuals playing eve not just more of the same 15, 000 people subbing their 7th or 8th account. such a strategy would render your business far less fragile in the long term.


eve's core product and main draw is the sandbox, whilst the main deterrent is the skill system you have that completely throttles an individuals ambitions. fix that, see population grow.the only bar on someone's aspirations within eve should be isk. arguably it is now, but by removing the need to buy and sell characters to progress you'd make the entire mmo far more attractive to a wider spectrum of demographics.

Yesterday at work as a little experiment I asked every avid gamer at the office what they thought about EVE Online, four out of nine people asked made similar responses, "Isn't that the game with the "mean" (other more colorful words were used) community and the skill progression that takes forever?".

So what can CCP do to attract and keep more new players? Well after reading a lot of these posts and listening to what people at work had to say I think it's pretty obvious, but I don't think the "uber elitist internet spaceships are serious business keep EVE how I remember it back in 2008" demographic is gonna like it.