EVE General Discussion

Hi friends, enemies and neutrals!

I wanted to share a mail I just sent to CCP regarding the current state of the game, and lightly share some of my experiences from when I started EVE in 2009, since I feel that the current game isn't even keeping up with the shadow of what EVE once was. Give some feedback about how you feel, do you agree or disagree?

(Please don't be too mean! )

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Subject: (Complaint) Sandbox Removal - My Story

Hi CCP.

I don't like complaining and i've never written a complain to a company
before, because until now i've never felt close enough to the problem to
be given reason to do so, but i've been so invested in EVE over the
years that I want to register a complaint now to express how upsetting
it is to see the modern day CCP destroying, in all possible ways, the
game I once loved, in the hopes that others might let you know the same
and go on to make changes for the better in New Eden.

I've played EVE since 2009, the first day of my trial introduced me to
an mmo like i'd never seen before, filled with endless possibilities and
wonder, with awe inspiring graphics (space was actually black and starry
back then, remember?).

Over my first few months of play, I thought EVE was one of the most
difficult and vast games to learn that I never had nothing to do. There
was little to no tutorial. The ideas behind manual flight and combat
tactics were a mystery, an obstable that needed to be trained out by the
playerbase by joining a corp that was willing to train new players.

Over the years I went on to run corps like that myself and did
everything from solo and small gang high sec war deccing, can flipping
and mercenary work, collecting killmails from those I was paid to find
and destroy. I designed an entire 2 days training plan for new players
to get them upto date with combat survival, and i'd welcome them in with
war-game tournaments that rewarded the most promising new pilots with
grand prizes and rewards.

The whole universe was difficult to survive in, you needed to stay on
your toes, be on your guard and use your initiative to set and complete
solo and corp goals, and everytime I logged in it felt like "Welcome
back to the sandbox, what will happen today?".

But then CCP felt that the game was too difficult and began introducing
better tutorials that explained everything. Then the changes to the
background visual effects came and space turned from being black and
vast, into colorful and friendly. Procurers were given more hitpoints
than battlecruisers when fitted, and yet no incentive was given to use
them in dangerous space, rendering them indestructable without a
catalyst fleet, spawning casual gameplay styles and players like CODE to
thrive.

The illegal friendly fire button was given to corps which, for me atleast, removed
a huge amount of the sandbox feel, as now at the tick of a button, you and your
corp mates are miraculously safe from internal firepower without needing to
design and execute your own internal security measures.

Haulers were given haulage catagories so now ore is in x hauler, ammo is in
x hauler and so on, yet more simplification, no matter how big or small, it all adds up.

Industry was overhauled and made easier, everything was and is still
being renamed to increase simplicity which reduces the feeling of huge
amounts of item variations in the game. Can flipping was practically
removed, ninja looting destroyed due to aggro switching AI which even
hurt the casual mission runner groups that welcomed new players, null
sec sovereignty control was turned into a weird faction warfare/easymode
hybrid where people just press a button to turn on their magic module
and it suddenly starts capturing a node in space which is, for no reason
whatsoever, apparently strategically important.

Now faction warfare lvl 4 missions for Caldari and Minmatar have been
smacked to the point of no longer being doable solo at all, let alone
farmable in a stealth bomber. It isn't viable to take anything larger
through low sec due to numerous strong gatecamping fleets, and the
missions don't pay out enough to warrant taking the required fleet of
3-5 people in smaller ships with you.

The only group left to thrive and enjoy their playstyle in the entire
universe now is high sec miners and mission runners. Exploration is and
always has been personal preference, some love it and some think it's
plain boring and repetetive, but that and wormhole life are the 2
exceptions, but even wormholes are now getting dumbed down with "frigate
only wormholes with ice belts" and stuff.

I can't help but be amazed at how well CCP has and continues to destroy
this once raw, mysterious and solid sandbox, and turn it into a
simplistic, easy to understand space mmo.

And is it working? I see only declining numbers on the EVE launcher.

When I started EVE in 2009, it was advertised as a place to live as your
alter ego, with a video showing a nerdy girl in a library in real life
who wouldn't hurt a fly, followed by her EVE alter ego of a supreme
space villain with no mercy given to anyone who crossed her. You've
destroyed EVE for me, CCP, and i'm very much struggling to find reasons
to stay around, since alot of the people i've known for years have
already left.

Thank you for the 6 years of entertainment, but please forgive me if the
next time I leave for a short break, I don't return.

I sincerely hope that in the future EVE returns to its difficult
learning curve and raw sandbox roots, but until it does I can no longer
recommend the game, as I honestly don't believe that today's new player
experience will live up to the stories I tell people about my own
experiences.

As somebody who commented on Steam said... Post ~2011 EVE was a sandbox,
now it's 50% griefers, 50% industrialists.

Long live legacy EVE.

Sincerely,
Mevius Three

2 billion ISK/hour isn't right, it was never higher than 400mil ISK/hour per toon, but your point is the same and I agree.

It definately needed a nerf. Half the LP payout by 50% or make the target rat(s) harder to kill so it takes longer and the ISK/hour drops by half, 200mil an hour is fine and in-line with other higher risk activities, but now they are not doable, so income on FW lvl 4's has gone from MAXIMUM, with max skills and implants, 400mil ISK/hour, to 0.

Most people though, who weren't hardcore players, made around 100-150mil ISK per hour in tier 4, and that's IF they cash out decent items from the LP store and IF the tier is infact that high. tier 1 and 2 paid high sec level 4 mission amounts.

It needed an alteration, but it wasn't as broken as you think.

Someone beat me too it. This is about FW missions.

CCp has to know by now that any time they fix something that should have never been allowed to get out of hand in the 1st place, you will get posts like this. Stop giving people unbalanced stuff for them to become spoiled by and these posts stop happening.

This happened when CCP finally got around to fixing the bug that allowed people to farm lvl 5 missions in high sec after almost 2 years of allowing it. It's happening again on a smaller scale now that people are having trouble afking null sec anomalies (one guy literally said using guns to make isk with is too hard LOL). It happened with the 1st incursion nerf and every time CCP tries to balance high sec incursions. It's even happening with missions now that some people are noticing you can't blitz a few of them like you could up till last week lol.

I'm proud to call myself a PVE player (in a pvp centric game) but hot damn, PVErs can be some of the worst whiners you ever met (not just in EVE, change anything about awards or leveling in ANY mmo and you get this whining). It's good that CCP has historically focused more on pvp.

Sometimes its not the game that changes, but you. One can become bored once they have mastered a thing.

Now given that, mastering from one side and some playability changes from the other can make things seem worse for the older players in regard to dumbing things down.

I've played this game off and one since early 2006 and many of the things you dislike and think detract from the game I enjoy.

So, essentially, CCP can't please everyone, nor should they try to.

I was making 200m ISK/hour with a 50m Stealth Bomber in Caldari FW under Tier 2 (about 15k LP per mission). And that was through a grand total of 3 low-sec mission hubs that were available - and with quite a number of opposing players (both Gallente FW and neutrals). This was cashing out for fairly basic LP items, so I certainly wasn't optimizing conversions.

FW income was insanely broken - to the point where it was impacting LP tables in standard Empire corporate high-sec and low-sec missions.

Personally I'm waiting on what CCP decides on Skill trading and frankly, 2 months into that blog and zero updates from the CSM or CCP convinces me more and more that we're back to 2011 where CCP is doing monumentally ******** stupid stuff. Making dumb decisions and not at all focussing on EVE or its core.

I had hopes past 2011 because some really good stuff has happened since (also a lot of monumentally terrible stuff) but it seems it was misplaced.

He's whining that he cant make 3-400m p/h anymore in FW plex's.
Writes an open letter to CCP but doesnt hide his real intentions very well.

IB4L

Dear CCP,


Please make T3 tear jars. My T2 ones are insufficient for this Niagara Falls-like outpouring.

Thanking you kindly,


Bumble

Gasp! CCP has evolved the game by actually documenting it, reworked the NPE to make getting started easier to understand (and thereby converting more trial subscriptions to full ones), substantially upgraded the graphics, etc. Oh my lord! Now there are more players who have a slightly less steep learning curve and who may actually have enough of a good time as newbies to stick with the game. Horrors!

News flash to the OP; CCP is a corporation in business to make money for its investors. Keeping the game stuck in 2009 with half the subs it has now would not accomplish that. Also, grrr new players having it easier than you did.

Get a clue man and get over yourself. Eve is a game not a MENSA exam or a RL job. It's supposed to be fun not just an eternally dark and grim grindfest.