EVE General Discussion

I'd just like to point out that pretty much every EVE trailer in recent memory has made heavy use of Ambulation, Dust, or Valkyrie content to supplement it.

I'd say the trailer guys have a better grasp of what excites people better than the developers themselves do, and thats kind of a problem in and of itself.

I also think CCP needs to do something to expand this "niche" by lowering the Barrier to Entry. Barrier to Entry is a main reason that keeps new players out.

Eve is over 10 years old. Before starting the game, most new players would consider if they will ever be able to catch up to the "veterans" because it takes years to train skill points.

WoW is also over 10 years old, but they still have around 7 million subscribers. To keep getting new players, one of the things that Blizzard does correctly is to lower the Barrier to Entry. So they offer a service to instantly boost your character to level 90 for $60. Without these measures to lower the barrier to entry, I doubt they would have as many new players.

Here are a few ideas on how CCP can lower the barrier to entry:

1. Create a system where you can earn skill points faster by doing certain missions. Or these missions would reward you skill points that you can apply towards skills.

2. Use PLEX, or pay an additional $14.95 per month to earn Skill Points at double the speed for a month.

3. Create a rare item drop that instantly boosts a particular skill to level 4 or level 5. However, this item is very rare, and very expensive. Perhaps some noobs will consider buying plex to pay for this item.

4. Use PLEX to buy Skill Points, perhaps at a 50% premium or double the price. If you think about it, skill points are the same as game time. You use game time to train skill points. So why shouldn't game time be interchangeable with skill points?

1. Not necessarily add grind, but give the options to new players if they choose. That's why I said "certain missions". There would be missions that offer ISK, and also missions that offer SP, it depends on what they choose to do. They can do either one or the other.

2. There are MMO's operating successfully with both Microtransaction and Subscription. They are not mutually exclusive, because WoW is not doing it. I'm not saying Eve should copy WoW, but you can see they are not mutually exclusive. Of course you can never fully copy something 100%, but you take the concepts that work.

3. What's wrong with having scams involved in these items? There is already scams involved with everything else. I don't see a problem here. You see shuttles getting popped with 20 PLEX'es on board all the time.

4. To get new players. When I started playing a few years ago, one of the things that made me hesitate was the time it takes to train. So what I did was trade and make ISK, then spent 20 billion ISK to buy a fully trained character. But I would have never started playing Eve in the first place, if I didn't see a way to upgrade quicker. I didn't want to wait 4 years for a fully trained character. I would imagine a lot of players are the same way.

I don't understand why #4 is such a controversial topic, it doesn't have to be. Because you can already buy PLEX, convert it to ISK, and use the ISK to buy everything else. This just gives new players more options. Because otherwise they'd have to buy PLEX, sell for ISK, find a character on Character Bazaar, make the transfer, etc. It just makes the entire process more complicated than it has to be. I understand some people are concerned this might devalue their characters, that's if you noticed, I said Skill Points are obtained this way, are done so at a 50% - 100% premium.

Perhaps for some people there is also ego involved as a reason for the opposition. Perhaps some people enjoy seeing noobs forever below them.

These are just general ideas, and I don't think they're all that bad. They are just concepts.

If CCP think they might have potential, then it's their role to do the number crunching and see if it works.

Everything starts out with a general concept, then the concept is investigated further to see if they will work.

My role as a supportive customer is to pay the $14.95 per month on 3 accounts, and call out a few ideas (or concepts) if I think they might help the game.

I'm actually not against the idea of being able to buy skill points.

You have $2,000 to spend?

By all means, create your 200mill sp pod pilot brother.

Unless you have 30,000 friends doing the same, you wont affect anything in the sandbox

I'd say it was the FozzieSov changes and the general "sweeping" changes that CCP is trying to make to try and make the game relevant...at least as they see it....the game has been relevant without all these stupid changes (e.g. Fatigue and FozzieSov).

Barrier to entry is fine. There is a thriving market for "difficult" games, and things such as proper social and exploratory ambulation along with Valkyrie and Dust can pull people into the same player universe. That was the plan for easing in that demographic, and that plan was solid. There was never any reason to deviate from it, yet CCP did and this is the end result. Stagnation.

The hardline excuse of "EVE is about Spaceships" only goes so far. Yea, EVE is about space ships. But CCP wasn't supposed to just be developing EVE, they were supposed to be developing New Eden. And New Eden isn't about space ships.


I always found that bit out of Seagull rather perplexing. You know, the "Dare to Dream" bit during her presentations? Because all I've seen is more of the same. Even the prospect of opening your own stargates isn't terribly exciting to me. You open new space? Great, you know what it looks like? More of the old space. A big empty room disguised as stars. With a shrinking playerbase I'd say we don't need more empty rooms that can't really be filled with anything worthwhile. So whatever dream I'm supposed to be daring to have, it doesn't sound like a particularly exciting one.

CCP needs to get back on the horse they fell off of and branch out.

They sort of have with the changes that are making caps and supers more and more irrelevant. The "end game" for a lot of players is now a Pirate BS, Tengu or Ishtar, all achievable in 6 months.

The real issue is whether they want to focus on churn players (who will play the latest greatest shiniest game for a while then drop it like a hot potato when something newer and shiney comes along) and hence have a high player turnover rate and make the profit on the churn or instead build a dedicated player base who want to build characters up over a period of many years.

Uh, #KateeSackhoffIsHawt ?? Though most discussions are usually young boys participating.