EVE General Discussion

Google "league of legends community" and see what the google suggestion is: "league of legends community is terrible". For Eve Online it's "spotlight", "forums", "service". Then it goes on to go into several constructive pages that help build up the community.

You're demonstrably wrong. :)

-Liang

problem is you could hit max lvl in like a week or so depending how much you slack, i think it took me 3 weeks playing on and off

This is interesting, and gets to the heart of why you misunderstand Eve's appeal. You see, the game has always been primarily a game against other gamers. That is its source of endless possibility. It will be that regardless of the existence (or non existence!) of new players, because all it depends on is the existence of players. That's not to say new players aren't important or even vital... but they are not the heart of the game. They're the growth of the game and the mitigation against natural and expected churn.

-Liang

lol These forums prove you wrong liang. Did you just get here and why do you sign every mfing post.





-travito

for Liang about "pure pvp game"

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2462718#post2462718

"We often hear "EVE is a PvP game, PvE is secondary". To this we would like to respond that EVE is a sandbox and shouldn’t necessarily favor one side over the other. What you do with it is up to you: all player activities should feel as appealing and rewarding no matter which choice you take, as long as you are willing to live up with the consequences of your actions."

I believe that PVP in that context refers to the concept of actively shooting people's space ships. In reality, running a level 4 mission results in PVP by virtue of buying the ammo, selling the loot, and converting the LP. Running anoms in null sec additionally provides PVP via scarcity and preventing other people from running the anom you are.

The truth is that there is relatively little distinction between PVP and PVE actions. And for that reason, I completely agree with that quote.

-Liang

Ed: You can really see the truth of this and the reference in the final line of the quote: "as long as you are willing to live up with the consequences of your actions..."

This is indeed the core of our differences. It sounds like you want a "game" whereas I am content with a sandbox.


*I fixed your quote

God I'm so tired of you "positive growth" guys! I mean, good lord!

After 10 years, EVE has "positive growth" and thus new player retention is fine? Positive growth towards what?! The game hasn't even broken a 500k barrier! And that's with ZERO competition in a decade. This game has had no competition in the genre, absolutely none, as there's been no spaceship MMOs since its release (I don't consider games like Black Prophecy an MMO or competition). Conditions for exploiting the IP have been, for lack of a better word, ideal. And all we have to show for it is sub-500k user base? And you guys think that's good?

Meanwhile, other MMOs have as many players as EVE has in total, only concurrently online, and before the game even goes live! Yep, Guild Wars 2 for example had over 440k concurrent users on its early access weekend before the game hit the stores, that was just pre-orders. So remember that EVE's "positive growth" is relative. Even with all it's growth it still has what, 20-22x less players than "dying" WoW? Freebies like World of Tanks has 500k concurrent users, and something like 40 mil registered. Granted, not all of them pay. But if out of those 40 mil only 2% pay, that's still DOUBLE of EVE's entire player base. Positive growth...

And that's another thing. When we are told EVE has X subs, does that include alt accounts? How many of you have alt accounts? Actually, it might be quicker to just ask how many of you don't have alt accounts, it's a much smaller group. And how many of you have 3+ accounts? Six or more? Eight or more? If I remember right, last year I was reading about a farmer being banned for RMT, and he supposedly had 40 accounts. Is it possible EVE's "positive growth" is nothing more than alt account propagation? Consider how we've had "positive growth" for a year now, and we still haven't broken the last concurrent user record (set in 2011)? What does that say? So how many PLAYERS, warm bodies, do we actually have here? Because it sure as heck is not 450k, it is considerably south of that.

So why is low warm body count bad for a game? Because it makes the population fragile. In a game with 1:1 body-to-subscription count (like WoW), when you lose a player, you lose one account. Now consider a game where 1 body corresponds to 5-10 accounts. A loss of a single player, even due to totally non-game-related issues (work, work, family, lifestyle change, death (since EVE's player base on average is older), etc.) leads to a loss of not 1 account but 5-10. So what happens when something awful happens to the game, like the introduction of the NEX store and the "Greed is Good" letter? A handful of players quit. But a handful of players multiplied by 5x-10x is immediately noticeable on the bottom line. The game could collapse in record time and virtually on a dime. Why do you think CCP panicked so much that summer? They saw that domino effect happening live.

Bottom line? If you want new player retention, you need to change the GAME, not fiddle around with new player experience. It helps to have a nice tutorial, and I really like what they did. Especially the in-space tooltips with arrows. In fact I think they should change the entire EVE UI to make better use of those and finally bring the game into this century user-interface-wise. But at the core, as soon as you get through that new player experience, the game is still very much the same as it was 5 years ago. If you want growth, that has to change. But if you want to continue to see the game stagnate until something better comes along and finally blows it out of the water? Sure, why not, I guess. And we can all continue patting ourselves on the shoulder and reminding ourselves that EVE has "positive growth" and resist any change.

I think trying to compare these styles of games is like comparing apples to oranges.

There are millions of people accustomed to buying the latest game for $30-$50, playing the heck out of it for a couple months, then moving on to the next "hot thing". EVE is like $180 a year, per account, assuming you aren't spending even more on PLEX (or someone is spending PLEX for you to play). AND, EVE is designed to be played for years, not weeks or months.

Its interesting that the WoW theme is played out. I wonder what the next big movement will be. Player created content maybe!