EVE General Discussion

Wow. It's like we're playing two totally different games.

Seriously though, if you really feel that is what Eve is why don't you go to another "gym" where you can maximize your subscription and be happy? I just cannot fathom how someone could feel the way you do about a product and still willingly continue to support it. I'm not trying to be mean. I just don't understand how someone wastes time and money on something they essentially consider to be utter ****.

Well put!

While I believe CCP bears a tremendous responsibility for the current ill-will of the player base. (They really had to work hard to earn it.) I have to agree that from what I have seen personally it is hard to get players to stay in the game. The learning curve is killer and there are just so many things that can make new or old players just throw up their hands and quit. If it takes space barbie and space poker or whatever they are planning with the stations so be it.

Hard core Eve players may be a niche group that is unable to take the company where it needs to be growth-wise. Also, for our standpoint more players can't be a bad thing.

The thing is it doesn't seem to be working as intended...

EVE players despite their inflated EGO's are no more "hardcore" than players of any other game. They run the gambit from guys who can only get on a couple hours here and there to those who practically live online just like WOW just like EQ just like every other MMO in existence.

The players of all MMO's like to think of themselves as superior to players of those 'other' MMO's, EQ players looked down on WOW players just as much as EVE players do, and I suspect WOW players look down on EVE players as a bunch of lifeless geeks playing around with spreadsheets.

What's different about the EVE player-base isn't that it's anymore "hard-core" it's that it has a different "value" system from other MMO's. While other MMO's reward focused action EVE rewards planning and patience.

I often like to make the point that PVP in EVE is much more realistic than that in most games, obviously not in mechanics afterall real soldiers don't wake up in a clone vat and get to go back out and obviously we're not fighting in spaceships but as far as mindset and what's important to victory it's far more realistic.

My grandfather a WW2 vet who served under Patton (he hated the man said Patton cared more about his tanks than his men) once explained to me that almost everything the Germans had was superior to that of the allies. Their tanks were better their guns were better their aircraft were better, that one thing that we had that was better than the German's was our trucks and he said that's why we won the war.

Why was having superior trucks important? Logistics, managing a supply chain is the most important part of any military operation. Why were the Germans crushed at Stalingrad? Because they couldn't maintain their supply chain through the Russian winter.

Beans bullets and bandaids is what we called it in the Marines. Food, Ammunition and Medical supplies, without those things no army can function so maintaining their supply is the most important thing in warfare, it's why insurgents attack convoys it's why the Uboats went after cargo shipment.

I often call EVE Logistics in Space, I call it this because to be successful you have to be competent at managing your assets and keeping yourself supplied with ships and modules, This requires forethought and planing it requires work at what I jokingly refer to as non-killmail generating activities.

In EVE much like in real warfare victory or defeat relies as much on advanced planning and preparation as it does on individual skill and tactics, usually the outcome of an encounter is essentially predetermined before the first target is even locked.

This is a completely different mindset than PVP systems where it mostly comes down to twitch skill/ equipment and character power.

For the most part the crowd of gamers who flock to themepark titles like WOW do not have that mindset and don't adapt well to it. We see it constantly in the forums from people whining about not being able to "catch up" or bitching about a lack of solo combat or a lack of e-honor.

Even many of the self proclaimed "hardcore" who complain about risk adversity yet are mostly whining about prey not baring their throats to be ripped out.

This is all a consequence of the fact that loss has a cost associated with it. That unlike most MMO's or FPS's there is an actual tangible cost to defeat beyond respawning at your bind point and a tally on a killboard. That ship you were in and all it's modules are lost and will have to be replaced, If you are podded you'll have to spend the isk to upgrade your clone and replace your implants. If you lose SoV you may have billions or even Trillions of isk worth of assets locked behind enemy lines on top of what ever investments were tied up in Upgrades and various sov structures.

Most people can't stomach that kind of risk period and that's the sort of thing that keeps EVE a niche game. And that's the sort of thing that would have to change in order to really appeal to that wider audience you are suggesting CCP should go after.

Which means you have to mess with every aspect of EVE's economy and industry you do that and the game ceases to be EVE and just becomes another STO clone.

The other thing to remember is that that market is already highly saturated with every developer and their dog vying for a piece of that pie and trying to be the next WOW. Because of that the margin's are tiny the competition fierce and failure rate high. The gaming world is littered with the corpes of games who tried to out WOW WOW now don't get me wrong some day someone will unseat them, I still remember when EQ was king of the hill and everyone laughed about the next big EQ killer coming down the path until WOW came out.

The thing is that I can think of no example of a game that changed it's fundamental format and thrived. The main reason is that the mass market only cares about what's new and fresh and well EVE is anything but. Even with Incarna it will still be that oddball little game with all the spreadsheets and sociopaths as far as the majority of Gamers are concerned.

Hell when CCP was still concentrating on FIS EVE actually bucked the normal trend of the slow spiral to entropy that most games suffer with subscriber levels steadily climbing rather than dropping. That's a huge thing in the MMO world.

Don't get me wrong I'd love to see EVE grow in population but the way to do that is by focusing on improving the core strengths of the game itself not by antagonizing your strongest advocates, by all means work on other projects and develop WIS but don't alienate your existing player-base in the process, and always remember the old saw about the superiority of a bird in the hand vs the two in the bush.