Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Before my rant I desire to give massive Kudos to CCP for having Planetary Resources on stage. That kind of idea was an idea that made me proud to be paying for your game. I hope CCP continues to Foster more Brainy things like that in the future.

There is a small mode to EVE Online that through fan fest had a unseen yet well heard message...CCP dislikes players asking the question "What do I do Next?" There was even some jibber that you plan on fixing this. Before you do ANYthing to change that question please carefully consider how powerful that question is. What you just heard is Proof someone is attempting to play your game. The doors just opened for interactions with other players, ie a door to finding people to play the game with ... corps ... getting yourself ganked ... the list is long but it is a Door Opener to find and create great play with others in EVE. By Fixing it you remove what is often the first question a player will ask in chat. Their first interaction with other players. IF This is a Sand Box then let the Players answer that question instead of the Pixels that make up EVE. Example of how this idea went Badly. Go look at your friendly Blizzard group in a small game called WOW - Warped Obsolescent Whackdumb is what it has become. Why? Well because you never talk to another player the guilds/corps fail on many levels. Groups drop together, yell, scream, and argue with each other because they didn't do it the old players way and both leave having had what...oo a PvP experience where they spent more time railing at each other then taking on the other team...Dungeons are silent now. These quiet tasks that are taken on by a role you never understood when you started the game so what happens to you when you screw up is ripped into ... yea you wonder why the numbers and the player counts are dropping. They no where in that game have the need to ask that incredible powerful question What do I do now?... Because they never have that question their brains never turn on. The interaction with the Others in the game rarely begins like it does here. Yes you can choose to play EVE without ever talking to someone else. Yet Curiosity drives Everything in EVE and most things in life. The more Curious, the more smarts you bring out in people,and you allow people to something even more powerful -- the ability to decide something ... and thus they themselves decide WHY they are playing vs being told to do something. Maybe you can look at your oldest players your long term players are they staying because the game told them what to do or they Decided because they all had to ask that most powerful of questions. What do I do now?

I am hoping that by sharing this with you CCP STOPS attempting to dumb its own game down. Leave the bar high. There is nothing wrong with it being there. You are watching your numbers grow and will see them get bigger as you do a single thing Leave the bar up there. If you think I am wrong, Bounce through other games, Ask the players how they felt about the game nerfs ... After all that time the player invested figuring out the game mechanics they changed them. Nerfed the time required, nerfed the effort needed and made everything perfectly equal. So now you have to do nothing to get the rewards nor do need to do any thinking at all. Real Life People set out in four different races would have built a whole slew of UNbalanced Everything ... Com'on. Players stay in crap games because they have no idea there is a company that LEAVES the Bar Alone. Leave it alone and as you prove to people you don't NERF your own game they will find you and Stay...

I spend a good bit of time mining which is about to change all over again. Why? Think on that idea then wonder if you would be making that change to the game if the players themselves had never had to Ask ... What do I do now? Leave the question alone. If you desire players to play in a Sand Box then let them Figure out what to do with the Sand instead of Telling them what to do like Blizzard does. I have bragged about EVE for a long time even when I wasn't playing. I say - It is a great game where it's not the amount of time you have played it. Its not the money you yourself have. It's not how many times you push the same button in sequence. It's the brains you have that lets you get ahead... and I am asking you CCP - Why change that? - Personally I think one of the Greatest loses in EVE was the training skills to learn other skills faster. ie proof to the concept if you choose to be a smarter player you got rewards...That loss was a sad day for EVE overall and I think it paves the way to remove all the skills. I mean why have them at all? All you have done is said pay me for a year and you can play the game.... But hey I guess we can call it stream lining the game so people no longer need to read or be curious. It Wasn't Broken it just didn't Look Pretty.... Big difference guys

And while I am complaining who can I snap with a rubber band across the forehead for making the ORCA an 18 day training program.... REALLY GUYS - REALLY - yea keep making it easier so the lazy people shut up its better for everyone that way??? Maybe my Grandfather was an idiot when he said - lazy people Never stop whining about things that are tough.

CCP keep expanding you universe bring on more graphics bring on more ships players stations that are worth building ... Smart ... Balancing every thing to be equal not so much ... Stream lining everything ... Not so much. Any chance I am repeating myself now?

Please tell us more.

Learning skills were removed because they didn't add anything to the game (other than a time sink). All you did was train them all to 5/5 anyway (or 5/4 for the Charisma one). That's not "dumbing down" the game in the same sense that changing all the module names was.

Really, the learning skills was a shining example of making something better for the newer players that benefits everyone. I know a few people who pulled up a trial years ago, heard "everyone" telling them to train learning skills for 4 days, and THEN get to training gunnery 2.

Making the differences in the races less (or none, in the case of character generation) is the "bad stuff" that CCP should have staed the hell away from (Kil2/Rise and Fozzie, pay attention here). It's sad (or, more accurately, "disheartening") to see that the "balancing" that's being done is more "make everyone the same" instead of the rock/paper/scissors/falcon that the game had used for the last 10 years.

As for the mining changes, these are sorely needed to get nullsec working to be able to produce their own stuff, and actually colonize their regions, instead of having 1-2 active systems, and then 49 dead ones 23/7.

Thank you to everyone who has responded.

I have three thoughts because of them. I will break them up over the next two respones.

First ... My whole rant in short is CCP please remember an epiphany you yourself had when you had to mine in a Tristan...Did Any one of those players who loved the game complain or did they have plans strategies for overcoming all the unbalanced items? Training trees filled with excitement about having Figured It Out and had Set out to Prove it? I am asking you to remember All of the people that have enjoyed your game had to ask the question -What do I do now?- and have stayed because they Decided to find an answer. Which is something no ad campaign can buy for a company.

Second ... I agree that CCP is first and foremost a company, yet I think there is a basic math problem that is being confused. Every time you do a New Release of the game you get FanFare, you get Media Coverage and the player who heard about the game three years ago says ... They are really still there? ... I got to check them out. The changes to the game having normally nothing to do with why they show up. Remember these players never played the game before. So in this math equation - that changing the game is causing more players to arrive, I think has some falsehood to it. Those changes often just upset everyone who figured out how to create and complete, a work around to the game. (Or was mining in a Tristan Really the First Choice?) Why go through All that effort to then tell everyone else who likes the game that much, Oooo man, you shouldn't have. Just come back and start playing next year when its easier??? There is much that can be done with out making this game easier....

I do agree with your comment overall though because it has taken this many years to see this size of a nerf...I hope its the LAST...and honestly if they wanted to create some HUGE media storm on their next release, do the UnThinkable ... Make it Tougher

I just hope someone somewhere in CCP's house stops and does the math about Easy vs New players due to free advertising that they could have just as easily gotten off of saying every one of their servers now can hold ship battles of thousands of players...A something that even the idea of surprises a lot of people...WHEN the finally find out about it. As they are all used to games where only so many people can be in any given area or instance.

Thank you again to everyone who has responded ... moving on to the next post.