EVE General Discussion

Dear CCP,

Are you happy with the current player base ?
Is 20 to 30 thousand players at any one time enough ?
Is losing more than 90% of new players within the first 2 months ok ?

Answer yes then ignore this post.

I think my time in Eve is over, while traversing a 0.4 region to get to a level II mission giver, to increase my standings, so I could install jump clones, I got podded (first time). Second time in a lowsec region I think, yes this happens all the time, yes it was my decision to go through the gate; but the relevance for me was how I felt. Empty, like when my grandpa died, a deep felling of loss and I began to question why I was playing Eve at all. I did not feel angry or upset, or care about the loss of the ship and isk. I have a second account that mines while I play the main, I can easily replace the ship 10 times over. The significance is the empty feeling, I have never experienced that in any other game.

I read a post that said over 90% of new players quit Eve in the first 2 months, didn’t think I would be in that group, stayed in hisec, built up my skill levels, built up isk reserves, intended to try the less secure systems, eventually, learnt how everything fitted together, bought and sold on the market. Now I don’t know if I want to play, I knew I would lose ships and get podded, eventually, that is part of the game mechanics; but it is how I felt when it happened for real that surprised to me. I have lost ships running NPC missions, that wasn’t the same, I was trying to kill them and they me; the podding last night was me minding my own business and accidently running into a gate camp, someone elses little war. Strange that I felt the way I did, still trying to understand my feelings.

With respect to how the game works and the questions to CCP, my assumption is that CCP are happy to lose over 90% of new players, otherwise they would change the game. But if they wanted to keep new players the flaws I see in the game are core to the game mechanics and would be difficult to change.

Skill training is simply too long. To have the ability to compete with older players, six months to a year of real time may not be enough.

Skills are too many and too complex, it is difficult to determine the training path necessary for what you want to do. (I wasted over 2 weeks training skills I didn’t need to at the time)

System travel, while realistic, is simply too long. Over half an hour of real time to travel less than 20 jumps is a waste of my game time.

Too few NPC missions, and none that teach you relevant skills. But that is another story.

Please don’t see this as a complaint, or QQ because I got podded.
I just want to relate my Eve experience. Of all the games I have played Eve has the most potential and is the closest to a true sandbox. I just don’t feel motivated any more.

Cheers

Here's yer answer, straight from CCP.



Sauce

*slow melancholic violin tune plays in background*

That feeling is probably the dissonance between the idea that you like the game and are adapting to it and the idea that the game is somewhat indifferent to you and rather than accomodate you, it is going to use you as basically a resource to entertain the people that it actually does like. That would be my guess.

EVE gave those people in low sec YOU to play with. You're handling it very well, honestly. I'd guess you're handling it better than 90% of people who try this game.

Wut....Are you stupid. How did you waste 2 weeks?
Skill training too complex? Not really. Its not complex at all. Theres a lot of damn skills i'll give you that but you can ignore most of them.

Yes they are happy to lose 90% of new players rather than lose old ones.

That all depends on what you mean by “compete”. You can beat older players within a matter of weeks (or even days) of starting the game, and the main thing that's holding you back is not skills, but contacts and ISK. The only thing you can't “compete” in is total SP, but as luck would have it, total SP is worthless since all it does is make your clone more expensive.

This is intentional. Well, not the wasting time part, but the amount and complexity. It's there to ensure that you can't do too many things on your own, but have to rely on other people. This is the solution to your wasted time problem as well: ask other people for advice. Use the myriad of player-made (and even some CCP-made) tools at your disposal to determine where you're going and what you need to get there.

That said, you need to be a bit judicious in whom you listen to. If you spent two weeks training useless skills, chances are you came across one of those griefers in newbie corp chat that tells you to train your skills to IV or V just to try something out, when trying something out takes all of 15 minutes (training a skill to I).

It's massively unrealistic, and a common complaint is actually that it's too fast and easy. The time is there to make space appear vast and to make you think twice about doing those 20 jumps and consider maybe doing business locally.

There's a bunch of them, and aside for the tutorials, they're not there to teach you any relevant skills. You're meant to turn to other players for that (you could just experiment on your own, but that's immensely inefficient), and missions only have one purpose: to inject ISK into the economy. That's all.

By the sound of it, the main problem you're having is none of the above, but rather with your presumption that the game will provide you with a purpose and motivation. EVE is not that kind of game. Instead, it's a game where you create your purpose and motivation, and the game gets the hell out of the way so you can pursue your own goals. Stop looking to NPCs to do anything for you, and start looking to yourself and other players because that's where every last bit of content in the game is.

The answer to your initial questions is yes.

Some people just can't handle pvp games.

Some people also have a third nipple, but as far as I'm aware the two aren't related.

It honestly sounds like Eve might not be for you.

FYI, Eve has been vastly streamlined over the past few years. It's a game designed to be played for a decade, not a few months until levelcap like other MMOs. The scale of the game is huge, and systems like skill training are designed accordingly. If CCP, say, cut down skill training by 50%, there would be a sudden disconnect between the overall scale of the game and the skill system. The game would suffer.

But, I don't think that's the issue you're having. I think the reason that you felt "empty" instead of having pumping adrenaline or a sense of loss was because you're not working towards any goals. I too lost an indy when I was a noob, but it added an important experience to the game. I was moving minerals and (ammo) BPOs to 0.0 to try and make it on my own in Syndicate. I'd imagine if I wasn't working towards a goal, I would just be annoyed at the loss.

Perhaps try setting goals and achieving them, you'll find that the game suddenly has more purpose. also, play with other people. if you're playing solo... well there's your problem. Solo play isn't suitable for most players, because most need to share achievement to bring meaning to events.

Try a newbie friendly corporation, they'll teach you some skills and - more important - the attitude to conquer Eve.

If you want Eve to be a solo-game, you'll have a tough road ahead. It is a game to be played with and against other players. Content is mostly player generated, the designers try to stay out of our way most of the time - which is good.

It IS a tough road, and i can fully understand people who are not willing to commit so much time to one game in their spare time. Some want EXACLTY that -> those stay and make up most of Eve's player base.

If you want to give it another shot, try something new and crazy first. See how you like that side of Eve. I can recommend RvB (google it) and Brave Newbies Inc.

If you want a slow and steady - almost methodical - approach, Eve University will teach you.