EVE General Discussion

Ok, I buy that. Subjective perception of griefing. I personally regard their perception as just being pussies, so ymmv.



How do you define casual? There are numerous activities that can produce a PLEX's worth of ISK with minimal investment of time. Updating trade orders takes very little time, for example.



How much ISK you need for PVP is really up to your own standards. Furthermore, if someone can't earn a living outside hisec, it's probably not the game's fault tbh.

Frigates are fun? Anyway, an average EVE player can well afford to fly BCs, like most in fact do. If you want fly Adrestias, you'll probably want to reserve some more play time- or get lucky.

You can do some professions in the sole pursuit of ISK but for most that does not end up as fun, more like work.



When I threw that list of 'Because' together it was not a list saying this needs to change, it was a list pointing out some of the reasons why we don't have more players. EVE is a niche game and those reasons (there are others of course) are part of why it's become a niche game.

Shouldn't the header be "popular" instead of "Successful?" EVE is successful. The only MMO where you need to be intelligent to succeed. I for one am not a fan of Skinner Box games.

Britney Spears is popular. So is Justin Beiber.

Why isn't Eve more successful?
Because of lack of content for casual players. Not everyone got enough time to play 2 hours a day, or 3, or 4...

Eve is great, complex game, with lot of possibilities, but unfortunatelly, if someone can play mostly in short sessions, lets say 0,5-1 hour at once, there is suddenly not much to do. Traders or manufacturers could live with this i guess, but for someone who just want to fly in space and shoot things, choice is very limited.
PVE content is crap, missions are boring and repetitive. Exploration is more challenging and fun, but requires more time. Much luck is needed,for finding and running decent site in below one hour...
PVP? If you have fleet on standby, you can join and maybye youll get lucky and get fight. Flying solo? Its not really fun, using your only hour of daily gameplay to look for a fight, and thats not sure, if you will get in the end. To be true, more probably youll just die to gatecamp of guys,that hang there for few hours straight, having nothing better to do. Ship loss is not a big deal, but fact that getting nice fight is such a pain, is.
Maybye i suck at finding fights, maybye i suck at exploration, but i consider myself as not so bad gamer after all, so i think im not the only one who cant truly enjoy Eve due to lack of time.

So, dear Devs, introduce more PVE content, thats not so boring like regular missions. Make missions more unique, not so repetitive, with different goals than "clearing all red crose in the room, move to acceleration gate, repeat". Epic Arcs come to mind, i realy liked for example "smash & grab", most missions should be developed around such scheme.
About pvp - id love to see some flagin system, so i can just undock, flag myself for a fight on choosen conditions, find someone, who flagged himself similar way, and have a fight, knowing, he isnt boosted by alt in offgrid ship, or he isnt a bait, whos only task is to hold me in place until his friends come...
Some of course will advice me to adapt, HTFU, GTFO and thelike, but i dont realy see who could be hurt by such pvp system, except those, who like to fight, always being sure of their advantage...

Compatibility.
Dumb friends wanting to use Skype. Which does not support, under any condition, way or shape, decent conferences.
In general, proprietary software own existance.

CCP tried this with WiS via WoD alpha development and utterly failed. The designs of the avatars, lets face it, weren't that great compared to more risque avatars in other games. And, with systems struggling to render 1 small room and 1 avatar, how the hell were players ever going to render large environments and dozens or hundreds of avatars?



Can't really compare Eve to Star Trek/Wars. You're comparing unknown lore to decades old lore. Of course more people are going to be attracted to Star Trek/Wars than Eve. If I put out a game today licensed to use Star Trek/Wars content with 8 bit graphics and 2 minutes worth of content, I'd have an immediate population larger than Eve solely because it's Star Trek/Wars. Unfortunately, most incarnations based off Star Trek/Wars tend to fail at meeting expectations. It's generally why I steer clear of them after years of gaming experiencing exactly that.

As for WoW? Same thing, it's been around for a long, long time.

It used to be that the new player experience was not so good, but CCP have remedied that with their new tutorials. That's not to say things can't get improved further though.

I think CCP could improve things by looking at the success and allure of RvB. This type of risk-controlled relatively inexpensive arena combat is what new players should be guided towards to get them to understand how brilliant PvP in EVE is, which will then move them towards a better relationship with the game. Basically, CCP would do well imho to consider Arena combat, even to the degree of providing "instances" with free ships for new players for use only in those arenas. This could easily be supported by the backstory: just invent a Gallentean entertainment corporation making gladitorial games holoreels, or Amarrian hunger-games-type arena warfare for Minmatars to earn their freedom. We need new players to PvP in a relatively risk free and inexpensive way as soon as they can and with the road to that PvP signposted and easy to traverse. Hold their hands and help them blow each other up!

Finally, I don't think EVE is a microcosm of society, because real life societies develop effective governance and law enforcement agencies providing meaningful repercusions for wrong-doing, which is absent in EvE.

There are lots of reasons. It being a niche game by nature of its design is probably one of the biggest ones.

This could also be a reason...

That would be even better with some of those programs open

He's not wrong, you know.

An older character can do more things, and better, than a new character.

Sure you could potentially max out a frigate class ship, all its weapons and systems and all skills that can affect it and "catch up" to an older character. By which point the older character already maxed out the bigger ship, and is spanking you with it. Example: Frigate vs Destroyer. So you train again, and max out destroyers. By which time the older character maxed out cruisers and is once again spanking you.

And even if, after years of training, you finally are able to fly most ships and use most weapons the same way the older character can, you'll realize that by then that older character can manufacture, trade, lead a fleet and do a whole lot more other things far better than you can, maintaining his edge because he can simply afford more expensive stuff to throw at you than you can.

Bottom line, the SP system in EVE is flawed at the core. A character you make today will not be competitive with a character that's 5 years old. It's just not going to happen. Within a limited scope (only frigate vs frigate, for example), yes you can sort of catch up. But in a broad scope encompassing the game in its entirety, you never will. That's what separates EVE from other MMOs, where you can create a brand new character today, and after a few months of work you would be on a 100% equal footing with a character 5 years old, the only difference will be in individual player skill.

What kills me, in ironic kind of way, is how the old hands who benefit the most from this arrangement fight the idea of revising the SP system that would make the game a little more even. So terrified of losing their SP edge it's actually quite comical. What is it that terrifies you guys so much? That you would actually have to depend on your personal skills more than character skills?