EVE General Discussion

Greetings.
This is a serious post.

This is not a rant and it has a rather long introduction,
to give you a context of what the frell i am talking about.



I know there are a lot of you out there, complaining about what they believe is the direction CCP
is heading with the game. I've seen the threads and i've posted in them, too.

Now ... you may know me, or you may not, that's pretty much not relevant,
but i want to add that in my years playing EvE, i have learned *a lot* about how peoples minds work.

Although i consider myself to be a solo player, 95% of my time i seek interaction with others.
This includes ganking as much as talking in local and several chatrooms at once.
I have no friends and need to compensate for that fact. Or something.

I have learned how information spreads and how to exploit specific human characteristica to my advantage,
in regards to how information spreads and how this information gets altered on it's way,
even by the first messenger.

I have learned that pushing specific buttons in people leads to specific, consequential behaviour,
by chance, but definitely when the specific button triggers an emotional (bodily) response.

Many of you actually know what i'm talking about.

It's when you interact with somebody (even a carebear) and trigger adrenaline in him,
completely altering his mind and thus his reality. (hi dave ^_^)

This works with noobs for recruitment purposes, for example. You all know (or don't) about those
who blow up noobs to recruit them. These are different than those who blow noobs up for laughter.
They just do what i've described above.

And of course, even if they don't know about this human mechanic, they exploit it.



So ... thanks for reading ... now the point.


You're all idiots. *lol* (i mean this in a nice, laughing way. really. i can point at myself with this, too!)
Except the devs, for obvious reasons.


You guys complain about the direction the game might be heading. Highsec safer blabla,
pvp free zones balbla, pay2win blabla, wow in space BLAAAAA, etc etc etc.

No, this won't be going into the direction of gankers or alts or whatever.

I can tell you *for sure* that you're exactly getting what you are afraid of is going to happen
*and* i can tell you the very reason *why* it *will* happen, unless we stop the process ourselves.

We can !
Well ... we could.
I personally can't, because i can't pull it off on my own.

People like TEST or the goons could do it much better and once it became standard,
it'll be more easy for everybody to do it. I'm also sure there are lots of people out there
who are perfectly suited for this kind of thing. Sadly, i am not.


So ... as the effect of my weed slowly volatilises ...


What am i actually talking about ?


I'm talking about New Players (tm).
I'm talking about the *fact* that it's the New Players that shape the future game.

I'm also talking about the *fact* that A LOT of New Players start their game through mining or running missions
and then sticking to it, because that's the first thing they've done.

There is no argument of "Let him do what he wants do to" here,
because he has no idea what he could do!

To change the direction of the game, we have to be actively involved in starter corps
and play with noobs the way they should be, instead of running missions or mining.

As example of what I've done: (yes, i've done my share :p)

Those noobs who joined me on ganking roams as scanners/looters needed SP of less than a single day.
They learned more about the game in an hour than mining or running missions could teach them
in a month, including situational awareness, predicting distances, reactivity and others.

It was hard work for them, but even a 30 Million ISK gank gave them the feeling they've achieved something
and actually worked for it.

(the money of these ganks went to the these guys, depending on their age/experience)

Then there was this carebear corp i wardecced. I had a talk with their CEO and encouraged him
to talk to his people about it and actually try and fight. We had a lot of fun and i even got fanmails! :D

The whole point i'm trying to make is that, if you keep letting carebears help new players take first
steps into the game ("go mining", "run missions", "avoid lowsec", etc.), then


YOU WILL GET EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE AFRAID OF !


I call out Tippia (as trustworthy source) to confirm that there are indeed carebears in starter corps ...
... ruining the new players right from the get-go ...
... which she, quite fittingly, called "griefers".


1407 Characters remaining. :)


I can't even imagine the responses to this, if anybody actually read through it. (hahahahaha XD)
I've come to realise that it's totally irrelevant what the public says or doesn't,
as long as i have tried. I am trying ... and i predict failure, but that's not only my fault then.


The are the wrong people influencing new players. I've seen massive carebear noob corps,
made by noobs, pretending to teach others. I've seen Pro Synergy ... a huge corp full of noobs
who want to make money by salvaging/looting missions. (legally)

I see corps pretending to teach others, totally ignoring any aspects of ship combat or anything
related to PvP, besides the market.



Anyhow ... to come to an end.



I have tried. I can only do so much.
Those who i have influenced, i have influenced in a way the (still) majority of EvE players would approve of.
Everybody else can be found complaining about it in this very thread. :)




If you want to shape the game, start a war about new players.


You might win the game. :)

People gonna do what people wanna do, yo.


Sorry to give such a simplified answer to such a monster post, but Im le tired.

No !

It's the PLAYERS who have responsibility here, not CCP !

So you basically just said you want EVE to be more Good VS Evil like all these other games you mentioned.


Sure, lets destroy EVEs uniqueness! That always works well for niche games!

I think history has shown how difficult it is to rely on the Players to do anything positive. At one end, there's herding cats, at the other end, there's ganking the crazy cat lady and then eating her cats alive, one by one, in front of her. EVE players tend to be closer to the latter.

Actually, EVE has a balance.


There need to be players like him that think the game is too evil.


Otherwise you wouldnt have people to harvest good tears from at your end of the spectrum.


One group of people tugging for a more safer and friendlier game and the other side tugging for a more free and harsher game is exactly what keeps the game in its current ballance.

And both sides will always say that the game is tugging in the opposite direction they want. ;)

You know what would happen if every miner left the game ?

Nothing. As soon as others realise that there are no miners left,
they will create mining alts, to mine.

No ?


I have nothing personally against Pro Synergy. I had a few talks with their CEO.
I was pointing it out to show that there's an inbalance in who forms new players.

Folks who come to EVE for PvP will try to Level V as many PvP skills as possible, and it takes years.

Folks who come to EVE for PvE, Mining, and Manufacturing will try to Level V as many of those relevant skills as possible.

Only after almost 4 years of SP Training would I now be adequately trained myself to show new players all sides of all aspects of the game.

But now I'm too busy in game to even want to bother 'showing newbies all of EVE'. There just isn't going to be that many qualified players to do this kind of thing.

Give the new players some credit for making their own decisions about how to play this game.

It's always been the way it is, and there is absolutely no shortage of any kind of playstyle within EVE. At all.

There is no 'problem' here.

Maybe your herbage magnified the issue in your mind. It can do that to me as well.

I'd say the vast majority of new players start with mining and missions to make their initial isk. Mining is a safe way to make some isk while in your first few weeks and your combat skills suck. Doing so does not commit you to a carebear life.

Edit: Off topic part removed, CCP Phantom

Nice read, although I have to say, you are not the first to come up with this point.

It's quite obvious that newbies are the future of eve, and it infuriates me every time our vets cry about CCP dumbing down eve and only catering to newbies. Although Eve has an exceptionally high player retention, players do quit, and without newbies Eve will slowly bled to death.

That being said, I agree that a certain kind of highsec indy corps are the cancer that is killing Eve. All those CEOs that tell their newbies to dock during wardecs or even impose hefty fees for pvp ship losses, since they look bad on the killboard- those guys are a direct threat to the future existence of this game.

Considering this, it comes to no big surprise that many (most?) of the more successful Alliances recruit their players from out of game communities.
While this might be perfectly fine for the newbies for said alliances, it puts the non-affiliated eve beginners even more at a disadvantage, since they will most likely be recruited by one of those carebear highsec indy corps and may quit the game frustrated without even having realized for a minute what this game could have offered them besides boring mining OPs.

For a long time, I believed that wardeccing those corps and trying to eliminate them as quickly as possible would help the situation, but I fear that it is just driving away the unlucky newbies trapped inside even faster.

So what can be done?
Don't expect the players to change, people are people, they will not change.
Some random ideas:
-CCP could remove all ore belts from highsec (maybe except for Veldspar), so even beginner indy corps would be forced to move to lowsec or null and adopt a less risk averse playstyle.
-Starter regions could be designed as single system highsec islands surrounded by lowsec.
-The scanning tutorial could let the newbie find his first wormhole and offer WH missions for a smoother transition into W space.