EVE General Discussion

More like a few people did, and then there's a bunch of blobbers.

Sooner or later, the great debate always gets around to this position. I paid my dues, the vet says. Why should new players have it any easier? Well, that argument's valid up to and only to the point at which vets really would ragequit in numbers that outweigh the new subs CCP says it wants.

Have no vets read the parable of the vineyard? All the change you adapted to back in an age of climbing subscriptions was simply the price of your doing business with CCP. The company is under no obligation to continue to present exactly the same experience to today's new trial player. None. If they see a direction in which to develop that seems likely to gain and retain subs, they're likely to pursue it. This is rocket science, I guess, but of the elementary sort we should all be able to comprehend.

If it's true that subscriptions have been declining significantly, and you vets really, really want to prevent change, subscription is your prescription. Open and pay for several new accounts right away; tell CCP in the language they *must* understand that you like things as they are. Tell them to halt development of that new, mysterious space and player-owned stargates. Tell them to drop Valkyrie and Legion, and to prop up the game in which you are comfortable. Pay them not to change, or they will continue evolving to attract the players that will pay.

Actually, all rocket science is pretty elementary and easy to comprehend. You just need a little algebra, trig, and some ability to interpret data. Which is what CCP is doing every day, but I'm confused, are you saying a change is coming, or a change is necessary? Because if it's the former, what premise do you base this assertion on? And if it's the latter, what data do you base this assertion on?

Because CCP have tonnes of data - data on the audience they have and data on the audience they want. This kind of data tells them whether or not they're heading in the wrong or right direction.

Anyway, if you're gonna say "EVE is dying" and "EVE is losing subs" again, this has already been explained and dismissed. Stop beating dead horses or I'll call PETA.

I played for a while back in 2005/6, then quit for a long time, and came back a year ago. I figure I am still n00b enough with EVE to weigh in for new people...sorta.

EVE doesn't need to change to cater to new players. It already has. The hisec beginner game is a lot easier now than the game I remember playing back in 2006. Just the introduction of PLEX drastically lowered the difficulty of being a new player in this game. And that is one "improvement" of hundreds that catered to the new player experience. It's a much, much more inviting game. If I was going to change any one thing to entice new players to stay longer, I'd make lowsec much more rewarding relative to highsec. Right now, with incursions, L4s/salvage in any decently fitted battleship, PLEX, the markets, etc....being set up all righteous and proper in highsec is sorta time consuming maybe, but not real hard and actually quite common.

PVP'ers already go to lowsec because that's where their game is, so my advice to keep new players longer...make PVE'ers want to go there a lot more as well. EVE has me for the long haul because it's cheap, training queues let it play itself in the background (and if I want to play other games, there's always training a 6x-8x skill to V to give me a few weeks to a month off), and I will eventually move through what I think is my proper progression of high-low-null-low, but that's me. Thing is, right now other than the curiosity of trying to duo L5s someday, I have no compelling reason to stop off in lowsec ever. Living the nullbear corporate life sounds more appealling, and lowsec seems like something to skip entirely. It shouldn't be like that.

Low should have more/better stuff than high ever sees and should be such that PVE'ers, even ones like me who hate (but appreciate the need for) gankers, have a compelling reason to go there other than just getting their gank on. The candy should be such that I will travel close to the evil witch's house to steal a piece.

That would keep new players longer imho, it would make a lot of veteran players happy I think, and with more high sec folks wandering around ganksec, it would benefit CCP with PLEX sales. Lots of ways to do it, but just make lowsec substantially more rewarding. I'll go there at some point like I said, but the average MMO "new player" needs that carrot on the stick. I think lowsec should have a bigger carrot for them.

PS - @all the people with the "EVE is dying" nonsense...no it isn't. Not by a long shot. EQ1 and AO still have loyal subscribers, and neither of them have half of EVE's subscription numbers nor CCP's PLEX sales. Of the non-WoW clone niche MMOS, EVE is kicking ass and taking names imho. People who don't play the game still talk about it. I was in a GameStop like a month ago and at some point in a Dark Souls II discussion, the manager said "well, it could be harder...it could be EVE." And we all laughed because everyone in the store knew what he was saying. Sorry, but all these years later, find any list of "greatest crimes/griefs in online gaming" and EVE has at least one of the top 5, no matter who made the list. It should stay that way, not become a place where every truly epic event has the devs shut it down.

This is exactly what I mean, and have always meant.
+1

While I agree with you mostly, I think people tend to overreact when it comes to change. I think this in turn discourages CCP from making changes that need to be made, because they are afraid of backlash from the community, and the effects of more drastic changes aren't always known with a high degree of certainty.

CCP needs to be able to make more risky changes, and *not* be afraid to change the game in big ways, at least if we want to see EVE grow. (One way to do this is to try more drastic things out in a controlled environment within the game (i.e. on TQ) and expand the scope gradually. A shorter release cycle would actually be good for this type of thing.)

It's just I imagine most players (including myself) feel that EVE has a crazy amount of potential as an open universe space game, but a lot of it seems wasted right now. IMO, the game is *too* niche. You can make it less of a niche game without affecting those that like the game now, but many ideas of change are immediately shot down as opposed to developed further into something more reasonable (at least in the discussions on these forums). So many good ideas die out, or CCP sees the many responses of "just NO, this would destroy the game that I love" and dismisses them (just look at the HS ganking thread, maybe 10% of the posts say there is a problem maybe with some solutions, 90% is the same people repeatedly saying "no" but contributing no useful ideas).

I would love for CCP be willing to make more drastic changes, add more content generators like FW to the game (but that encourage fights in things other than frigs), make PvP in HS more fair and engaging (so gankers need to do more than mind numbingly hit F1, and carebears have more encouragement and guidance to fight back and help each other), etc. But none of these things will happen if we and CCP are all afraid of change.

First, PLEX is well over 600m right now.
Second, that's only free, if your time is worth nothing to you. No matter what you are doing, or how much you enjoy it, there is a time expense involved. It's been said that the only real cost in Eve is time. Currency is meaningless when the balance on your time account reaches zero.
Third, look at the player retention rates of most F2P games. They are generally quick cash grabs that offer fuckall for the player interested in a long term investment. However, they do cater very well to people with attention spans measurable only in microseconds, which would explain their success.
It's kind of like music: just because it's popular, doesn't mean it isn't ****.

But with micro transactions comes a sense of player "class" in that those who are willing/able to purchase XYZ are at a greater advantage than those unable/does not wish to. While micro transactions seem to be the word of the day, the resentment and holes within that business model became apparent almost immediately.

If companies behaved themselves and kept micro transactions to cosmetic features only, nobody would have a problem with it. As it stands, many games that have adopted the micro transaction business model block access to various parts of the game, for the sole purpose of forcing customers to cough up the cash. Agreed, a business needs to make money, but it also needs a withstanding reputation to.

F2P generally also encompasses P2W. I'd much rather pay a subscription and play a game where all of the content and gear is available to anybody who has the gumption to grab it, than one where your real life wallet is the key to some of the content.

Case in point : Bieber.

Sorry Jenn, but I just don't agree with you at all on this. You want to rely on people making the game what it is. I think that's true only to a point. Most people don't want another job, they want a game, and so they are lazy. They want to control what happens and generate their own content, but they want it *to be easy* for them to generate content, and this is where CCP comes in.

And no, I don't just want CCP to "give more encouragement" for only things that *I* think are fun. If they can make the game better for others I want that as well. I just don't want them to make the game worse for me. Many people assume you can't have one without the other though, and that's where I think people jump to conclusions and dismiss ideas too quickly.