EVE General Discussion

Tldr, because maybe my post it is too long and ambiguous: I was talking about how long does it take to play eve full set of options aka being able to pilot and familiarised with end game ships, which might get you eligible to switch alliances at will when there's too much drama or inactivity; thus having more choices (some more efficient) of access the same content and not about how fast a new player can get into the game.

I'm not talking about making it easier, I'm talking about the lack of envirnoment that would give new players a a sense of identy within the game.

Like Brave was during the famous "This is Eve!" promo. Witnessed a few fresh rookies asking directly in the starter npc chat a single question: "How do I join Brave?".

Haven't seen that happening since and in the absence of alliances with a sort of lore in background there is no real involvement in game play. Like BoB or Goons were once, like Brave was or Black Legion.

Farming, camping, baiting or all the other known forms of fuckery are available to anyone and everyone but is not what holds a group together. If you want to retain new players you need to give them something worth associating and fighting for, a sense of pride and identiy in being part from a collective; and that can come only from dedicated players and an environment that permits developing that sort of interacton.. instead all the potential that could allow unique development in game (from the players) is pushed towards a generic, one-dimensional sort of gameplay.

Take fw for example. Every new player learns that "You want fleet content you join Gallente, you want farming you join Caldari etc"... you want this you go there and if you want that you come over here. No challenge at all in picking a path but no great satisfaction ever. Everything is set up you only need to apply and press F1. Afraid that isn't enough personal involvement to make a player feel he has achieved something. Prob a peasant planting and onion and harvesting it experiences more satisfaction.

Try starting something from zero in eve and you'll end up with the consolation of a green killboard or a fat wallet at best. For some people that is enough but is far from the complexity Eve strives to be. Only the mechanics are not enough.

Yeah you can build your own citadel but so what? Yeah you can start your own pirate gang but there are already thousands of them. Yeah, you can bait a bear but youtube is full of can flipping. It is like going to the zoo to see the cage where the monkeys live, then pay a visit to the elephant, stare at the croq in the pool and don't feed the koalas.... but it is just a visit to the zoo. You don't actually get to fight a lion in the arena because the lion got so much isk that he bought all the colliseum and the emperor as a bonus.

At the end of the journey you can only say good thing I've seen this movie, now I know what the other guys in the coffee shop are talking about and can participate in the smart ass talk too...

I tell my RL friend Ashley about Eve all the time but she doesn't have a quality gaming PC or the time. She's interested though and i think she will try it eventually

That's about all I've done to grow our game. The end.

Discussions can change as they go along, deal with it. In fact, a quick glance shows that you post about the PVP<>PVE thing yourself. You just don't like what I stated and like all carebears would rather that people who don't agree with you (especially if they make good points) would shut up.

Because that is the carebear way: Stifle any sort of competitive interaction.

If subscriber numbers do not grow or at least stay relatively stable, then ultimately CCP will shut this game down. It may be satisfying in an ideological sense if EVE stays "true to its roots" until it dies - but if you prefer actually playing EVE, rather than composing eulogies about it, then change is apparently required. So say the subscriber numbers.

It is also a simple fact that PVP plays a minor role in most EVE players lives. Here I mean actual spaceship pew-pew with PVP, not "market PVP" or any other of the many ways in which players can compete with each other online. Even the most dedicated hunter roaming low sec will spend a lot more time looking for a fight than actually fighting. And probably has a PVE alt to finance his PVP habit, which de facto means even more login time spent not actually engaging in pew-pew. EVE is simply not a PVP game in the same way that say Overwatch is a PVP game.

Furthermore, from wormhole crabs to nullbears, all EVE space is filled with people who mostly do not PVP, but PVE or simply hang out. Doubly so in highsec, where the majority of EVE players spend their time, but where PVP is negligible statistically speaking. Yes, you will be blapped on Jita undock if you sit in a PLEX-tanked T1-hauler. But most people just don't do that... You can tell that PVP is near irrelevant in high sec for example by noting that there are not only brick-tanked Skiffs with dishonour drones mining in the belts.

Here's a little thought experiment: if we took an average over all EVE toons that have logged in at some point or the other, how much login time would pass between two PVP events (either getting killed, or killing) for them? I'm certain this would be a few hours, probably days. Possibly weeks. Of actual login time (time spent in game), not real time. Keep in mind we are talking global averages here, not what some dedicated PVPer might experience...

So that's how things really are. Whether you think PVP (meaning here spaceship pew-pew) is the bestest thing ever, or irrelevant, or even something you hate - it is de facto not what most EVE players do most of the time. So if too many people are leaving EVE, presumably dissatisfied, and if too many people fail to join EVE after trying it out, presumably unimpressed, and if too many people do not even try EVE, presumably not attracted - then is it reasonable to think that you can change that by fixing (or fixating on) PVP?

No, it isn't. Most likely you need to work on those parts of the game that most people engage in most of the time - which is not spaceship pew-pew. If CCP gets that, and does that, then you might well be playing EVE for another decade. If not, then I suggest that you start composing your tearful tributes to EVE. Maybe a Dust bunny can lend you a handkerchief.

Well thought out and simple description.

Since the start of this thread I started to look around at the "true" PVP games and as I may have pointed out elsewhere, the kind of character and loadout/vehicle customization that Eve Online offers to players is occurring in PVP games.

That is, Halo players can customize their armor or choose not to, and the equipment they spawn with. I see games, the "world of " battle games, notably let you customize whatever kind of vehicle you are using and also direct your own skills with them.

But.. in those games, you can be fighting in mere minutes. People go to PVP games for PVP. It would appear that the whole time of "Eve is a PVP game hurr durr sanbox hurr durrr gank gank gank!" was a lie. It was PVe all along.

Now I won't say that these other games offer as big a variety of customization as Eve does with ship fittings and SP. In fact I would say that rigging and fittings of ships and SP allocation is pure genius. (Though Tiericide is apparently becoming a huge mistake). Eve's customization of fittings and skills is probably some of the best.

But it would appear that the big kid on the block won't be the only one when others find out they can lift weights too, so to speak.

For a long time perhaps maybe it was the PVPers leaving Eve, but with only a small minority of miscreants claiming that this was due to nerfs to ganking (apparently most of the gankers are alts of nullseccers who don't get enough PVP) but if they left it may have had more to do with advances in designs of other games than any kind of nerf from CCP.

But as the baby that cries the loudest gets fed the most, CCP may have been goaded into neglecting PVe. Or there's a faction in power that is all about this PVP dream and taken things down the wrong road? The same old PVe year after year does get boring. And seeing what an unholy grind that Serpentis event was, it's understandable that the playerbase is going "meh" about what would have once been considered epic changes to the game. Transport all of these changes back to say 2008-2010 and there would have been certifiable cases of death by nerdgasm. But it would appear the kind of people who would have cared are gone already.

LOL it doesn't take years and never has to fly certain ships. Also with skill injectors it can take minutes now or did you forget that

That all depends on how you define fly, sure I can dump a load of money into skill injectors and undock in a wtfbbqpwnmobile tomorrow, but can I actually fly it effectively?

Being able to use it effectively does take time, because it requires experience and knowledge, both of which take time to accrue.

That remains to be seen. We simply do not know what EVE would be like if NPCs had a brain and came in more random waves. We do not know what EVE would be like if it actually encouraged social interaction apart from corps. We don't know what might happen if EVE spaceships were heavily customisable not just concerning battle-related modules. We do not know what markets would be like if they were more complex than simply listing all offers for all to see in one spot. We do not know what would happen if skills had more complex relationships with each other than a linear progression. We do not know how player would respond to a heavy infusion of lore through sophisticated story-NPCs. Etc. There are so many things that could be done. Not all of them would turn out to be good, of course. But the point is that it simply hasn't been tried much.


It's not a PVP-centric game, at least not considering how it is actually being played by most players. It is marketed as PVP-centric, and has been developed with (maybe too much) emphasis on PVP. But that's not the same thing.


I have said nothing about abolishing or weakening PVP, and very little about what I personally would want. I've made a simple assessment of what people actually do in EVE, and I have drawn some general conclusions about maintaining subscriber numbers from it.


There have been umpteen iterations of just that. It has not been working, and trying it several times more will not result in a different outcome.

Yes, indeed it is on page 22 of 38 of the new Pilot FAQ . But then let us not act surprised when the game bleeds subscriptions.

Threads like these are worthless because what CCP needs is what CCP doesn't want. Or, this game is about a small percentage of players needing to be consistently fed fodder. Either be a ganker, be a gankee, or go back to WOW. That's it. Those are your three options. And you're not wanted unless you fit one of the first two. These are the two "careers" that ads should be promoting.

The only persons I would recommend Eve to are severely demented people in need of a relief valve. Why do I still play Eve? Well, I don't. I used to play in spite of the horrendous mean-spirited attitude of players because I enjoy sci-fi games with complexity (not many choices out there).

So then, what will save Eve? Hard to tell. I guess they could believe the rhetoric that's been spewed for so long (that this game is not meant for the masses) and slash infrastructure, work force, and resources to accommodate its few elitist players. Trim the fat. But then you have the problem on how to keep the elitists around without fodder to feed them. Quite the conundrum.