EVE General Discussion

TL;DR: EVE is changing fast. Change is both positive and negative. Changing fast can be good if there is a goal good enough to compensate for the stress of change, or very bad if the only purpose of that change is to maintain the subscription numbers where they are.

The Red Queen's Race:



EVE used to change at the stately pace of twice a year, roughly. That allowed plenty of time (supposedly) to test all the content delivered, adapt to any changes, and look for any errors before launch. The fact was that it didn't worked as expected, as expansions often where delivered with new bugs added to old bugs, and suffered from poor design decissions and even lack of time to be finished properly.

After the Incarna fiasco, CCP adopted a new development strategy, and this strategy has come to fruition with CCP seagull's idea to release content as soon as it's finished, in a strategy involving 10 releases a year and whcih recently was announced to be allowed to release standalone features inbetween releases.

Reading and talking, I've had the impression that most people think this is good in itself, but the fact is that change is two-fold. it can be good, or it can be bad.

Change haves a negative impact on everyone involved. Developers run out of new ideas to develop; players may fail to learn of new changes and suffer consequences; new players may find that some of their pooled knowledge just changes midway; keeping uo to date requires more reading and thus less time spent playing; and sometimes a change will be wrong, may slip overlooked and do harm to the game.

On the other hand, change keeps the players interested, as the old biannual expansion system had a noticeable effect of "unsub until next season"; it allows to fix mistakes faster; also allows to reflect player actions as a part of the development process (Caroline's Star?).

Yet, in the long run, change is tiring. Change is like juggling many things in the air, with each change being a new thing to juggle: even the most skilled person will stress over time and mistakes will happen. Human are not built to withstand continuous change; our primal brains fear change because there's a threat in the unknown.

Change, and fast change, are good when there's a new stability ahead. When change is being performed in order to create a new stable situation, where change will occur less often and a positive gain will be obtained, then change can be endured temporally and then tune down as the rewards for change are reaped.

Change, we may hope, is being carried so fast because it's the way to reach the post-Rubicon development plan sooner. You know the wider strokes of that plan: more influence of players in their environment, new player built gates leading to new space to colonize with new rewards and new risks. In the process, nullsec will get a new nullsec gameplay with a different sovereignty, and we're seeing NPCs added to the mix to stirr the waters with a new threat.

All that is good, as long as players buy that goal. CCP supposedly knows better, and so when they took that path, we may hope it's because what players want is more pew pew, not better or new PvE. Personally, I think that according to CCP's own classification, 62% of their customer are not paying them for the pew pew... but that's just my impression and maybe CCP just failed to coomunicate that, yes, "Traditional" and "Entrepreneur" and "Social" players do lots of pew pew so more no-sec space to pew epw along is exactly what they want (just not me nor anyone I know in those cathegories).

Now, let's say that with or without Rubicon plan, the game was suffering from stagnating or decaying subscription numbers due to age, complexity, veteran bias, et cetera, and the reason for change was just to keep players subscribed. By avoiding the "unsub until next season", and by creating a (false) exciting atomsphere of change upon change where everybody can dream of getting his dream content eventually.

Such a scenario, were change is being carried for the sake of it, just to keep the players subcribed with new stuff, is a scenario we know from almost every conventional MMO. No matter what you add to such a game, once it's old and tired, it's old and tired.

For EVE, as a rare case of subcription MMO and a sandbox, spending development effort in change just to keep the subscriptions rather than to achieve a goal where CCP can stop changing and reap the profits of all the change, would be a Red Queen's Race.

And the final point is, is really the Rubicon plan the goal that EVE needs? Will it attract new people to the old game riddle with overskilled and jaded veterans? Will it keep interested the large majority of players who don't like to shoot at other players?

Is more to Rubicon than we know? Or what we know is all that's there, and CCP just embarked EVE in a Red Queen's Race, where after the stressful time of changes to get more pew-pew we'll have to endure even more fast changes for everything not pew-pew...?

eve is dying?

Precisely.

The concluding paragraph was a bunch of questions, so I guess the OP had nothing useful to say, just a lot of questions.

But on a serious note, I agree with a few points, especially if it seems to me like they are not entirely sure what is actually supposed to happen and then people leave the company and stuff is poorly implement and other stuff makes no sense and they said they actually have no idea where they are even taking the whole Drifters thing but that may have just been a thing.

Oh well.

EVE is ded. Lets all go play WoW, I'm sure trade chat will be almost as entertaining as alliance chat.

Change for the sake of changing is bad. Change for too long is bad. So the hope is that change is because they're moving to a goal where we can regain our collective breath and keep playing this game in a better shape than ever... preferably with a nice income of fresh blood. And preferably with something to do for all the people who is not buying EVE for the pew pew.

Now looks like nullsec will get their Sov by June so let's see how long until PvEr get something to bite on... preferably something up to EVE and not just more grind for ISK.

Sex and naughtyness.

*Snip* Please refrain from discussing warnings and bans. ISD Ezwal.

That's true. When things die in EVE, they die in silence.

The Circadian Seekers, the Drifters and Burner missions don't tell you what's going on?

These represent a global storyline.
They're essentially PvE, but for everyone.

And they're just the beginning!


Burner missions were introduced so CCP can show off, test and evolve their AI.
Seekers and Drifters are direct descendents of that. CCP said that they are "learning",
which translates into them adapting the AI to player's reactions.

When we look at all the changes CCP has made in the last many months,
it's clear that they are "pedal to the metal" into finishing EVE "2.0".

You already see "more PvE", but you have to see it.
You have to see it in the now and what will come of it in the future.

I wouldn't worry about this. If I extrapolate what they do ...
... and hope they then go these ways, of course ...

... then you will see new missions against new enemies ...
... most hopefully the old missions revamped with a new AI, making them actually hard ...
... and thus an end to the ISK-grinding mentality.


The biggest enemy of a brighter PvE future are those who do not want it to be harder
or more engaging or not about ISK at all. Those who only PvE, easy-mode, because
it fills their wallets with fake money and their ego with fake pride.

Also to add to what Eve said, look for answers in CSM minutes and eve videos