EVE General Discussion

As an economist I will say this,

You do not understand the game. That what we see is only the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the iceberg is not seen it is below the water line. When you say suicide ganking is easy that is simply not true. It is not like some random group of players decide to do it. No, instead it is Miniluv, CODE. or some other group. A group that has an SRP, comms, FCs, a logistics operation to ensure there are ships in place, etc.

All of that you want to discount as meaningless and of zero cost.

This makes you a liar...a despicably lying douche bag.

And despite several rounds of nerfs to ganking here you are again saying that more nerfs are needed. And you are oblivious to the fact that CCP keeps on boning you in the butt. For every "nerf" they give you they also do you in the butt like the little bitches you are. Please CCP nerf ganking and do me in the butt again and again so I know my place as the dirty little tart I am. That is what you are Infinity Ziona. CCP's dirty little laughing stock of a butt **** that they throw out on the garbage heap after the fun of Fanfest. And you keep crawling back to them again and again, and they keep treating you like the cheap whore that you are.

The number you need to tell if Alpha Clones failed or not is the share of new players that keep playing compared to the old trail. And you would need to know if some vets were droven away by the new model. But active player total has far more causes to look at.

Player numbers had a couple of reason to go up and down and it is hard to tell what had the biggest impact:
- Players coming back because of alpha and subbing again because they found a couple of old friends online
- New players starting because of Alpha Clones and staying
- Players unsubing off-grid booster alts
- Players taking a break after month of war campaigns
- Players unsubing alt accounts because they switched from multi-account mining to Roqual mining
- What time of the year and what part of the “EVE is Great –EVE is Dead” curve we are in.

I witnessed FTP models that drove long time players away and CCP was very careful with their own plan. Alpha is nothing that would make you say: ”AWWW freeloaders, **** this I am out.” EVE does better than all other sandbox MMOs and I think CCPs product and brand development (for EVE, can’t tell for the other CCP games) is on spot.

From a business decision perspective, what should CCP do? Look at the evidence and make the best decision they can on the basis of it, or not try to validate anything they do and just guess?

No you are wrong.

First off, new players should not be out there booming around in freighters. If they are they are being very imprudent and foolish and that should not be rewarded. Second, again looking at the CCP presentation new players who are suicide ganked or even killed legally tend to stay longer. There could be a type of selection bias here, but the evidence does not show that shooting new players is bad for retention. Third trial-and-error only works when you let players make errors. Remove the ability to make errors, or reduce the costs of making errors and they either are not a method for learning or they stop being errors.

And interactions with other players is what seems to keep people engaged with the game. Both negative and positive interactions. At least that is my view. Trying to limit negative interactions means you limit interactions and on an arbitrary basis and in a way that may end up rewarding players being imprudent and foolish. Once that kind of protection ends it will likely be bad. A player wondering why his foolishness was not costly and suddenly now is costly? Just make it costly from the beginning.

As for keeping players, if you decide that keeping players at any and all costs is the route to go I think you'll end up being ******. Eventually many of the current players will quite. I'd quite. My guess is Daichi, Jonah, Jenn, Torin, Nana, Cade, Scipio, Shae, Linus and many others would quit. You might keep some new players, but a large portion of the long time paying customers would walk. If HS became "locked at safeties green" I'd have to seriously reconsider my financial support for the game. That is some salty nonsense, it is simply a statement of fact. I like playing a game where no matter where I go or what I do there is an element of danger. Take that away and my interest is largely gone.

Or let me put it this way: the idea of making the game safer appears to be costing CCP many long term players. And it does not seem to be resulting in many new subs/players. In fact, the professional ganking groups that have arisen and the HS terrorists that are CODE. maybe be exacerbating the problem....but that is entirely the result of CCPs own blinkered policies.

It does, however, mean that it was not a failure, therefore "Alphas and F2P Have Failed" is a factually inaccurate statement. Also, go here (http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility) and look at the actual player count over the past five years. Notice how the player count increased to numbers that hadn't been seen since 2012 at the exact same time the game went F2P. Also, note the fact that the player count has remained above average in comparison to the 18 months prior.

I watch those numbers pretty closely. After the f2p launch, there was no new upward momentum. Nobody going "hey, this is great, tell your friends" causing the numbers to gain an upward trend and continue upward. It was a single peak with a decline at approximately the same rate that it has been declining for the preceding several years. It's like people saw advertising, tried the game, decided it wasn't worth their time, and didn't ever come back or tell anybody about it. All trend graphs are about momentum, and the f2p peak didn't break the downward momentum at all, despite a 1-day peak. Of course the numbers are higher than they were before (but not higher than they were last year), you don't have to pay to log in now. Shoot, the "increase in revenue" could include an "increase in valuation" based on weird icelandic banking math (have yourself a read about icelandic banking, it's ridiculous.) And yeah, it could actually represent an increase in income and profits from EVE (except it probably doesn't) and f2p could still be a failure because it didn't turn the momentum of EVE's decline.

PVE has nothing to do with anything you are talking about. This idea that PVE players need protecting from PVP players isn't just stupid, it's insulting. Everyday legions of real EVE PVE players not only don't get ganked by gankers, they watch gankers explode while they fail, and those PVErs loot the gankers wreck.

And every year we get nerfed, because the weak minded "please protect me CCP" pve minority players convince CCP to add more and more safety. WE suffer for it, not the gankers, the gankers just adapt, but those of us who didn't need any hand holding watch all the fun ways to screw with gankers ripped out from under us. It's irritating.

CCp can make the game fun again by rolling back some of this mechanical safety and let people know the joys of figuring out how to deal with other people again, like we did for years before all these pop ups and safetys came about. EVE is a game, games are fun because of challenge, not hand holding.

Safety is a non-issue. Getting people engaged is the issue, that's where the game has been failing.

I know exactly what I'm talking about - I have encountered the clueless dweeb many many times.

This is why EVE did better when it was "here is a space ship, **** you". How some of these people can't understand that is beyond me.

The 'safety' people honestly think more safety is the answer. They are making the same kind of mistake modern day parents make, ie "if i keep my child safe enough, they will be ok". What they end up with is a bunch of people who can't function in the adult world and who need their participation trophies to feel special.

I don't think people like that are capable of changing their ways though, when your whole self image is built around "hey, look at what a good person I am, I oppose space tyranny in a video game", there's just no helping it