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There's a slow but constant haemorrhage of new players

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Alavaria Fera
GoonWaffe
#261 - 2012-03-17 08:46:15 UTC
Indahmawar Fazmarai wrote:
Cheap shot, i am not asking for invulnerability. I am asking for bounty hunting become both a viable profession and a deterrent to the instant reward scum.

Ah. That's very different then. A working bounty hunting system would be interesting. Not sure how high it is up on the priority list.

Triggered by: Wars of Sovless Agression, Bending the Knee, Twisting the Knife, Eating Sov Wheaties, Bombless Bombers, Fizzlesov, Interceptor Fleets, Running Away, GhostTime Vuln, Renters, Bombs, Bubbles ?
flakeys
Doomheim
#262 - 2012-03-17 10:52:34 UTC
Mars Theran wrote:
Guttripper wrote:
As a (bitter?) old vet, let me relate my early days of being a newbie...

The game was a download file only without a true rating attached to it. That is, while today it is labeled with a "Teen" rating, back then it was borderline "Adult" with items and themes that matched. When my very first mission with Caldari Navy was to supply the agent with a stash of drugs because she was the local supplier, I knew then this game was not another kiddie game. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Aura was borderline indifferent towards new players. "Here is your rookie ship." "Undock using the yellow arrow keys in the lower left hand corner." "Target the station but do not shoot at it." "Warp out to an asteroid belt and target an asteroid." "Let the mining laser run until you collect some rock." "Return to station." And then it was a kick in the ass and told to go make my own destiny in this grand universe. No further hand holding was offered.

Players as a whole were much more mature in my opinion back then. You did not have the constant stream of slang terminology, much less the pursuit of "tears". In fact, players were much more helpful without the need to get a quit killmail when the odds were definitely in their favor. As a personal example, I figured out how to use the market and bought something that was cheap for my Merlin frigate. I set out to retrieve the item and whereas today I would get warning messages that I am about to enter low security space, back then there was no such stoppage. So away I went to get my module, exited the station, and stopped to watch two players shooting themselves apart. After one blew up and I was thrilled, the other looked at me and noted I was relatively new. So after a round of questions based more around how do I like the game so far, this person explained to me the various differences between the security spaces, various career paths in the game, and other finer points. Then this player told the local chat I was leaving the area and I was hand's off since I was new (and green). And yes, nobody went for a cheap kill and let me pass.

The agent rewards were much different then too. Until manufacturing players protested, agents handed me enough ammunition and missiles to rival modern day stockpiles (to this day, I still am wittling those piles). Occasionally I would be granted skill books as rewards, Hmm, "Sharpshooter" - whoa, this skill would be handy!, since there was no EveMon to set the perfect path. Nor were there remaps, much less skill queues to build the optimal set-up. What you started with based upon what you read during your character creator days was what you lived with from there on out. And while there were some similarities among the races, each of the four races were quite distinct in appearance while retaining that futuristic space look (still waiting for my battle scars / facial implants CCP)...

So back to the topic - over the years, CCP has made it easier and easier and easier for players to get into the game and get a foothold in the universe. Yet it seems to me the overall player base has changed to an instant gratification crowd: nobody wants to wait, nobody wants to ~work~ (in a game!), and everybody wants to be the hero right now. Players get these radical ideas in their heads that skill points equals experience points and will never "catch up". Hell, CCP has made it easier to "catch up" compared to years ago; yet new players do not see that. New players are not fond of cutting their teeth on destroyers and frigates - they want the biggest, baddest ships right now or else they are leaving. And if they are not scared off by the pure time element with skill training, they throw a tantrum when the ship's maiden voyage ends in a wreck because the subsequent side skills are poor to non-existant and there is no reset button in this game.

Is Eve dying? - perhaps it is... but if it means that CCP needs to rip out what made this game special to me and all the other players that have stuck around through thick and thin just to placate a new breed of players, then Eve would be camatose and on life support with the death knell ringing in the near future.

But that is my opinion.

Thanks for reading.


So what you're saying is, what kept you going was players respecting other players? Who knew? Go figure..


I think a lot of older mmorpg players , including myself , will say that the behaviour of people these days in most mmorpgs has not changed for the better.Yes a lot of people couldn't give a **** about what others think/feel as they themselves like to behave like ****.But there are just as many who do care.I've pirated in my eve time and never felt bad for a person when i shot him but that didn't mean you'd have to start behaving like a lill **** in local chat when you killed them.

As someone else pointed out it was 'normal' in the first years of eve to have chats about what person X or Y did wrong and how they would make their fit better if you had an engagement.I know i made a lot of friends back then because of this.It's just like local chat , it used to be just what it says a local chatbox and people in empire and specially null be it red or blue would just have a little chat while passing the system.Now all you see pass in local chat are people in empire trying to scam , a griefer and his victim insulting each other or the usuall HAHA I AM SO L33T and you're just a carebear faillure when a 30 man bc gang takes out a solo tengu pilot.

From my perspective the mmorpg community in general and eve for that matter in a worse case has not improved the gaming experience with the climbing numbers of people playing mmorpgs.I still like eve and mmorpgs in general otherwise i would not be playing but in MY experience i would not know what more players would add at all to the game besides more cash for CCP.

We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.
flakeys
Doomheim
#263 - 2012-03-17 10:56:37 UTC
Also in retrospect to my above post it is much like in the reall world , people are more and more allienating from the world around them and more and more focussing on what gives THEM a better way of life and what gives THEM a higher enjoyment factor instead of looking at what it does to their surroundings.


But then that just might be taking it to a whole other conversation Blink

We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.
Roime
Mea Culpa.
Shadow Cartel
#264 - 2012-03-17 11:46:57 UTC
Good points, flakeys.

Still I don't fully agree that the situation in EVE is that bad, at least not in lowsec or whs. In my experience most pilots there are really after the good fight. I've never been treated disrespectfully by ebil piwates - quite the contrary. People who accept the law of the jungle and live by it are in general quite chill.

Worst asshattery happens in hisec, where the extreme polarized ends of the player base meet in conflict. Result is not pretty when nerdragers with false expectations of safety get shot by people with serious epeen size issues.


.
Indahmawar Fazmarai
#265 - 2012-03-17 21:18:10 UTC
Alavaria Fera wrote:
Indahmawar Fazmarai wrote:
Cheap shot, i am not asking for invulnerability. I am asking for bounty hunting become both a viable profession and a deterrent to the instant reward scum.

Ah. That's very different then. A working bounty hunting system would be interesting. Not sure how high it is up on the priority list.


I just wrote a thread with my proposals on this issue...

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=956907#post956907

I foresee heavy trolling by butthurt griefers. Lol
Neill Deckard
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#266 - 2012-03-20 02:37:59 UTC
I have been playing for about a month now and I have to say that I really enjoy this game. I have always wanted to try EVE, but one of the things that kept me away from the game was other games that my friends were playing. They were heavily into fantasy games and that's what we all played. They weren't into sci fi games at all.

I finally started playing EVE because I got sick of the high fantasy theme and wanted to play something different. My life has also become a lot busier than it used to be with work, family, etc. so I don't have a lot of time to play MMOs like I used to. The real time skill based system of this game is actually a perfect accommodation to my current life situation. The slower consistent pace is what I needed and not having to drive myself mad constantly having to play to catch up to my friends is definitely a huge plus. This game is perfect in many ways for busy people who don't have a lot of time to play.

I think the main problem from what I've seen in regards to a low user base for this game is two fold.

High fantasy being the mainstream genre of choice and the younger instant gratification MMO demographic.

The first problem can't be helped. That's just what the market is right now.

The second problem, I don't necessarily consider too much of a problem in my eyes. At least in my corp, I have yet to see messages like "OMG! DIS SUX0R! SO LAME F@G N00B!" I consider this a very good thing and I would actually prefer the user base to stay where it is at if it means keeping the immature folks out of the equation.

So if I were to market this game, I would try and market it to mature folks who are busy with life, but are still interested in playing an MMO that isn't demanding and doesn't require your attention 24/7. I'd use the Real time skill based system as a huge selling point.
Ravyn Antollare
Dead Space Continuum
#267 - 2012-06-11 20:30:25 UTC
As a new player who just canceled their account today, maybe I can offer something:

I came to EVE looking for something different. Get out of the theme parks, into the wilds, the Sandbox. I knew the players ran this universe, that game play was largely emergent. I know trust matters in New Eden to a higher degree than in any other game. Clearly, EVE offers something other games do not.

Except...except, I can't see it. I was promised a different experience. Only to sub and discover that first I need to play WoW with Starships for six months to a year in order to stand an Asteroid's Chance in a Michael Bay film of ever getting to see the emergent, player controlled portion of the game.

Incursions, wars, low and null sec...I exist in these places for seconds, before adding to someone's kill count. I lost a nice Incursus today before I could even offer a ransom. Done before I could get typing, to a lone Amarr frigate while Defensive Plexing for Faction Warfare.

If you want to grow the game you must reduce the barrier to entry. Vets won't like that sentiment. I cannot blame them. I understand. But the alternative is sparsely populated low sec and abandoned null sec systems. And the reasons are plentiful:

-Too much high sec vis a vis the population numbers of the game
-Too many resources in high sec
-T1 ships are cannon fodder in low sec
-T1 ship's equipment is a joke in PVP


Sorry to say, EVE is not going to grow like this. It might stay the same. It might lose players. But grow? Not hardly.

If you want growth you need to motivate newer players to get involved in parts of the game they are locked out from now. I have a few suggestions:

-More powerful T1 ships. Don't debuff the bigger, better stuff. Just make Frigates more viable. Maybe a bonus to avoiding targeting. Maybe a way to avoid missiles, since missile boats kills us dead quick. Making Frigates more powerful will open the door to more new players in low/null sec, because Inferno did not do near enough.

-Bonus to skill leveling speed when logged in. As a new player I could not wait to get going. I had Isk, because I went through a 21 day trial and split it with the person inviting me. I had ships because I had Isk. Know what I didn't have? That I needed?

Skills.

Yep. Because decades after table top was replaced by interactive media, we're still playing spreadsheets. But that its too late to change that in EVE. So why not offer new players a bonus to skill leveling while they are logged in and playing. Bring them up to speed faster. It gets more people to the heftier content sooner, which is in everyone's best interest.

Otherwise, I could sub, mine and do something else, never really playing, all the while watching my skills grow and depriving the community of someone who wants to go out, take risks and earn big rewards but cannot because there is a spreadsheet from a bygone era sitting between me and something I can do with my mouse.

Or...you can just continue on having fewer than 50k people on at peak times. Which would be rather sad for this game.
baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#268 - 2012-06-11 20:35:28 UTC
Ravyn Antollare wrote:
stuff.


A rifter with a t1 MWD and a t1 Warp Disruptor can make all the difference in a fleet. Unlike just about every single MMO out there you can be usefull right away.
Lin-Young Borovskova
Doomheim
#269 - 2012-06-11 20:36:59 UTC
Ravyn Antollare wrote:
Or...you can just continue on having fewer than 50k people on at peak times. Which would be rather sad for this game.


That's more or less the idea for CCP. Probably to do something else rather than babysit some null dewlers that can barely stand up after a few beers. Lol

brb
ModeratedToSilence
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#270 - 2012-06-11 20:40:59 UTC
Guttripper wrote:
As a (bitter?) old vet, let me relate my early days of being a newbie...

The game was a download file only without a true rating attached to it. That is, while today it is labeled with a "Teen" rating, back then it was borderline "Adult" with items and themes that matched. When my very first mission with Caldari Navy was to supply the agent with a stash of drugs because she was the local supplier, I knew then this game was not another kiddie game. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Aura was borderline indifferent towards new players. "Here is your rookie ship." "Undock using the yellow arrow keys in the lower left hand corner." "Target the station but do not shoot at it." "Warp out to an asteroid belt and target an asteroid." "Let the mining laser run until you collect some rock." "Return to station." And then it was a kick in the ass and told to go make my own destiny in this grand universe. No further hand holding was offered.

Players as a whole were much more mature in my opinion back then. You did not have the constant stream of slang terminology, much less the pursuit of "tears". In fact, players were much more helpful without the need to get a quit killmail when the odds were definitely in their favor. As a personal example, I figured out how to use the market and bought something that was cheap for my Merlin frigate. I set out to retrieve the item and whereas today I would get warning messages that I am about to enter low security space, back then there was no such stoppage. So away I went to get my module, exited the station, and stopped to watch two players shooting themselves apart. After one blew up and I was thrilled, the other looked at me and noted I was relatively new. So after a round of questions based more around how do I like the game so far, this person explained to me the various differences between the security spaces, various career paths in the game, and other finer points. Then this player told the local chat I was leaving the area and I was hand's off since I was new (and green). And yes, nobody went for a cheap kill and let me pass.

The agent rewards were much different then too. Until manufacturing players protested, agents handed me enough ammunition and missiles to rival modern day stockpiles (to this day, I still am wittling those piles). Occasionally I would be granted skill books as rewards, Hmm, "Sharpshooter" - whoa, this skill would be handy!, since there was no EveMon to set the perfect path. Nor were there remaps, much less skill queues to build the optimal set-up. What you started with based upon what you read during your character creator days was what you lived with from there on out. And while there were some similarities among the races, each of the four races were quite distinct in appearance while retaining that futuristic space look (still waiting for my battle scars / facial implants CCP)...

So back to the topic - over the years, CCP has made it easier and easier and easier for players to get into the game and get a foothold in the universe. Yet it seems to me the overall player base has changed to an instant gratification crowd: nobody wants to wait, nobody wants to ~work~ (in a game!), and everybody wants to be the hero right now. Players get these radical ideas in their heads that skill points equals experience points and will never "catch up". Hell, CCP has made it easier to "catch up" compared to years ago; yet new players do not see that. New players are not fond of cutting their teeth on destroyers and frigates - they want the biggest, baddest ships right now or else they are leaving. And if they are not scared off by the pure time element with skill training, they throw a tantrum when the ship's maiden voyage ends in a wreck because the subsequent side skills are poor to non-existant and there is no reset button in this game.

Is Eve dying? - perhaps it is... but if it means that CCP needs to rip out what made this game special to me and all the other players that have stuck around through thick and thin just to placate a new breed of players, then Eve would be camatose and on life support with the death knell ringing in the near future.

But that is my opinion.

Thanks for reading.


Necroed thread needs necroed best response.
ModeratedToSilence
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#271 - 2012-06-11 20:42:31 UTC
Ravyn Antollare wrote:
As a new player who just canceled their account today, maybe I can offer something:

I came to EVE looking for something different. Get out of the theme parks, into the wilds, the Sandbox. I knew the players ran this universe, that game play was largely emergent. I know trust matters in New Eden to a higher degree than in any other game. Clearly, EVE offers something other games do not.

Except...except, I can't see it. I was promised a different experience. Only to sub and discover that first I need to play WoW with Starships for six months to a year in order to stand an Asteroid's Chance in a Michael Bay film of ever getting to see the emergent, player controlled portion of the game.

Incursions, wars, low and null sec...I exist in these places for seconds, before adding to someone's kill count. I lost a nice Incursus today before I could even offer a ransom. Done before I could get typing, to a lone Amarr frigate while Defensive Plexing for Faction Warfare.

If you want to grow the game you must reduce the barrier to entry. Vets won't like that sentiment. I cannot blame them. I understand. But the alternative is sparsely populated low sec and abandoned null sec systems. And the reasons are plentiful:

-Too much high sec vis a vis the population numbers of the game
-Too many resources in high sec
-T1 ships are cannon fodder in low sec
-T1 ship's equipment is a joke in PVP


Sorry to say, EVE is not going to grow like this. It might stay the same. It might lose players. But grow? Not hardly.

If you want growth you need to motivate newer players to get involved in parts of the game they are locked out from now. I have a few suggestions:

-More powerful T1 ships. Don't debuff the bigger, better stuff. Just make Frigates more viable. Maybe a bonus to avoiding targeting. Maybe a way to avoid missiles, since missile boats kills us dead quick. Making Frigates more powerful will open the door to more new players in low/null sec, because Inferno did not do near enough.

-Bonus to skill leveling speed when logged in. As a new player I could not wait to get going. I had Isk, because I went through a 21 day trial and split it with the person inviting me. I had ships because I had Isk. Know what I didn't have? That I needed?

Skills.

Yep. Because decades after table top was replaced by interactive media, we're still playing spreadsheets. But that its too late to change that in EVE. So why not offer new players a bonus to skill leveling while they are logged in and playing. Bring them up to speed faster. It gets more people to the heftier content sooner, which is in everyone's best interest.

Otherwise, I could sub, mine and do something else, never really playing, all the while watching my skills grow and depriving the community of someone who wants to go out, take risks and earn big rewards but cannot because there is a spreadsheet from a bygone era sitting between me and something I can do with my mouse.

Or...you can just continue on having fewer than 50k people on at peak times. Which would be rather sad for this game.


You need friends.
SetrakDark
Doomheim
#272 - 2012-06-11 20:46:34 UTC  |  Edited by: SetrakDark
You fell into the trap of trying to start Eve solo. It is by far the biggest problem with this game, and why retention is so terrible.

The game takes you on this rather long path where you do all this stuff alone, then it just drops you there. Many, many people then think they should continue as they have been taught to play, and at one point or another they get ******* stomped on. You can successfully play Eve solo, even PvP, but it takes experience and knowledge, things you are far more likely to learn in a group.

Far too many people have the experience of steeling themselves for their big break from hisec, only to meet the utter disappointment of getting blapped at the first lowsec gate. This is nobody's fault but CCP's. That said, it is easily avoidable by getting out there and meeting people, something the game has only recently started to suggest to new players, but it is still miles from the properly formatted transition by purposeful game design that it needs to be.
Istan Mahwi
Aliastra
#273 - 2012-06-11 20:52:16 UTC
Lady Spank wrote:

New Eden is overcrowded anyway.


quoting for JUSTICE

.
Hakaru Ishiwara
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#274 - 2012-06-11 20:56:11 UTC
Lin-Young Borovskova wrote:
Ravyn Antollare wrote:
Or...you can just continue on having fewer than 50k people on at peak times. Which would be rather sad for this game.


That's more or less the idea for CCP. Probably to do something else rather than babysit some null dewlers that can barely stand up after a few beers. Lol
There may, in fact, be a sweet spot for CCP in terms of server activity numbers when put up against their existing infrastructure investment, capacity and human resources available to manage the above.

If current revenue levels are able to support current and near-term projected operating costs (infrastructure, rent, human resources, marketing, etc.) as well as feed the banks and investors their due, then perhaps CCP is content with things.

I could easily see CCP and their investors betting (hoping?) heavily that DUST 514 will bring them into the era of "gold shops" and the fairly robust associated cash income that other gaming IPs have been able to generate. Where that leaves EVE-proper and its fee-for-play model is guesswork over the next 6 - 12 months.

+++++++ I have never shed a tear for a fellow EVE player until now. Mark “Seleene” Heard's Blog Honoring Sean "Vile Rat" Smith.
Totalrx
NA No Assholes
#275 - 2012-06-11 21:00:10 UTC  |  Edited by: Totalrx
Over the past month, I have sent out 4 invites to four people who do not play subscription MMO's.

Out of those four invites, only one person is going to try and stick with it.

There's a few reasons for this:

1) as stated many times over, Eve isn't for everyone. One of the people just didn't get into it.

2) The other two players made the mistake of coming to this forum before activating their account and reading through the first two pages of drama-filled dribble. How Eve is dying, there's nothing to do, PVP should be mandatory, carebears should die, etc etc etc

They didn't activate the account afterwards. To read these forums, a new player has to wonder if their time and $14.95 a month are really worth it?

50% of the players I invited thought "No"

Sadly, I can understand where they are coming from. There are good arguments made in GD on how Eve seems to be stuck and how it would benefit Eve is people played a certain way or avoided certain play styles. At the same time, the pointing out that one can be podded for playing how they want in the Sandbox is a deterrent for many new players. They also get the feeling that it's not worth the risk of flying the ship they worked so hard to get until they have enough ISK to buy 2-3 more of them. Additionally, I got asked what good is playing a game where one corp seems to make the rules for the game instead of the developers.

My biggest piece of advice to a new player is "Don't read the General Discussion forum until you've been playing at least a year."

Sadly, I did not think to tell that to the two people who decided not to subscribe to a paying account.
SetrakDark
Doomheim
#276 - 2012-06-11 21:04:16 UTC
I am 100% serious when I say that CCP should delete this subforum. It is just a haven for the unfortunately mentally unbalanced and trolls trolling trolls. For new players it must be utterly demoralizing and extremely unappealing.
Sarton Wells
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#277 - 2012-06-11 21:11:03 UTC
SetrakDark wrote:
I am 100% serious when I say that CCP should delete this subforum. It is just a haven for the unfortunately mentally unbalanced and trolls trolling trolls. For new players it must be utterly demoralizing and extremely unappealing.


Absolutely. In the past I've come a few times close to unsubing based on what I've read in GD. Before I realized it's mostly troll posts. Now I can calmly ignore the trolls and focus on the interesting information. Something a new player has no way of doing.

I wonder, though, how many of the new players are reading GD? From my experience most players (in any game) don't follow the official forums.
Jayrendo Karr
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#278 - 2012-06-11 21:13:36 UTC
EvE is boring unless your willing to gank or have a ton of SP and a ton of ISK. 250 mill for me is a week or 2 worth of work, assuming i can stand to even log in, Eve is boring as **** solo, and group things require insane isk and SP. Want to run incursions in a drake? You'll get told to **** off every time. Want to run sleeper sites? buy yourself a 2 bill tengu with deadspace mods. Another thing is skills, no matter how much I have someone is gaurenteed to have more. Anything you can do to make good isk requires lots of isk and lots of SP to do.
Ranger 1
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#279 - 2012-06-11 21:14:46 UTC
SetrakDark wrote:
I am 100% serious when I say that CCP should delete this subforum. It is just a haven for the unfortunately mentally unbalanced and trolls trolling trolls. For new players it must be utterly demoralizing and extremely unappealing.

... and yet, if they can't take a little forum drama do they really have the mental fortitude to actually enjoy the harsh, cruel universe that awaits them....

Actually, I do completely understand your point. Often the EVE community is it's own worst enemy.

View the latest EVE Online developments and other game related news and gameplay by visiting Ranger 1 Presents: Virtual Realms.
Ranger 1
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#280 - 2012-06-11 21:17:08 UTC
Jayrendo Karr wrote:
EvE is boring unless your willing to gank or have a ton of SP and a ton of ISK. 250 mill for me is a week or 2 worth of work, assuming i can stand to even log in, Eve is boring as **** solo, and group things require insane isk and SP. Want to run incursions in a drake? You'll get told to **** off every time. Want to run sleeper sites? buy yourself a 2 bill tengu with deadspace mods. Another thing is skills, no matter how much I have someone is gaurenteed to have more. Anything you can do to make good isk requires lots of isk and lots of SP to do.


You desperately, desperately need to find yourself a decent corp.

View the latest EVE Online developments and other game related news and gameplay by visiting Ranger 1 Presents: Virtual Realms.